Chapter 30 #2
Yeah, everything with the boys up until this point has been wild—helicopters and missiles and finding out angels are real—but at least those were things I could wrap my head around. Weapons and vehicles and immortal beings were weird, sure, but they still operated on some kind of logic.
This? This is straight-up magic.
The kind of magic I stopped believing in when I was eight and my mom told me fairy tales were for lazy girls who didn’t want to work hard in the real world.
The kind that makes my skin prickle and my chest tighten because some deep, primal part of me recognizes that something fundamental is shifting in the air around us.
Thunder cracks overhead—sudden, violent, splitting the gray sky. I yelp and duck instinctively.
The chalk-marked runes around the circle blaze to life with blue light, the same electric shade that poured from Layden’s hands. But now they’re glowing on their own, pulsing like a heartbeat. And then—impossibly—they begin to spin.
Some of the interlocked circles rotate clockwise. Others counterclockwise. They move independently but in perfect glowing synchronization, like gears in some cosmic machine.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, unable to look away.
The wind picks up—gentle at first, then stronger. Kharon and Abaddon immediately move, herding their women back toward the safety of the courtyard walls. Their bodies form protective barriers, wings flaring out to shield the mothers and babies from whatever’s coming.
But Remus doesn’t move.
And neither do I.
We stand there, transfixed, as the wind whips faster and faster around the circle.
It’s becoming a small twister right before our eyes, a localized tornado contained within those glowing blue lines.
My hair whips across my face and I have to squint against the force of it, but I can’t make myself look away.
The wind stirs my clothes, pulls at my jacket, but it’s nothing—nothing—compared to what’s happening to the three people inside the circle. Their clothes are being torn by the force, fabric snapping and flapping violently. Phoenix’s dark red hair streams behind her like a banner.
And then—oh god—and then Phoenix starts to rise.
Her heels lift first, toes pointed down like a ballerina. Then her toes leave the cobblestones entirely, and she’s floating. Actually floating. Levitating in defiance of every law of physics I ever learned in my one semester of college.
First she’s one foot off the ground.
Then five feet.
Ten.
She hovers there, suspended in the center of the swirling wind and light, and even though her eyes are closed, there’s an expression of intense concentration on her face. Like she’s listening to something none of us can hear.
“I call to you, spirits.” Phoenix’s voice shouldn’t carry over the wind, but it does. It reverberates through the courtyard. Through my bones. “I call to the hungry ones. Who can help us?”
Spirits? Hungry ones?
I feel Remus tense beside me, his tail—the one that had been playfully swishing earlier when we were kissing—goes rigid.
“Does she even know what she’s doing?” Abaddon’s question rings out, loud enough to carry from his position by the wall.
“Leave her alone!” Vlad snaps, and there’s something raw in his voice. Fear, maybe. Or pride. Hard to tell with a creature that old.
We all stand frozen, watching as Phoenix floats in the middle of that massive, light-filled circle. The wind screams now, a living thing, and her hair whips so violently I’m afraid it might tear from her scalp.
She frowns suddenly, her expression shifting. Even with her eyes closed, it looks like she’s seeing something. Searching for something in whatever spirit realm she’s accessing.
The furrow in her brow deepens. Then, just as suddenly, it smooths out. Her face lights up with excitement—actual joy—and she shouts into the void:
“Yes! Yes, I see you!” Her voice is triumphant, ringing with power. “Come over, Devourer. Come near and devour all of it!”
Ice floods my veins.
“What the fuck?” Remus’s curse mirrors my terror exactly. “What the hell is she calling?”
“I don’t know.” Abaddon’s voice is tight, measured in that way that means he’s seconds from losing control. “But it doesn’t sound good.”
I back up a few steps, my survival instincts finally kicking in through the shock and awe. But I don’t run. I… can’t run.
I’m transfixed by what I’m seeing.
None of the others are running either. Granted, they’re immortal beings who’ve probably seen worse, and I’m very much mortal and very much could die here. But my feet stay planted. My eyes stay locked on Phoenix floating in that circle of light and wind and power.
Call it morbid curiosity. Call it the same self-destructive impulse that made me stay with Michael for seven years. Call it whatever you want—I’m not moving.
Phoenix’s eyes suddenly fly open. Wide. Panicked.
That’s when my stomach really drops.
She looks down at Layden, then her friend Sabra. Phoenix’s expression shifts from triumphant to desperate in a heartbeat.
“They can’t get through!” Her shout cracks with frustration. “The circle doesn’t have enough power—either that or I don’t!”
Oh no. I don’t know what it means, but the desperation on her face feels catastrophic.
Layden immediately starts running along one of the inner circles, his hands blazing with that blue light again. He’s laying down more runes, working faster than should be humanly possible. But Phoenix just keeps shaking her head, hair whipping around her face as she hovers there, helpless.
“They can’t cross the plane from theirs to this one.” Her voice is breaking now, desperation bleeding through. “We didn’t have enough time to—”
She sounds like I felt when my mom told me I was being dramatic in the hospital. When Michael threw my stuff out on the curb. That special kind of helpless frustration when you’ve tried everything and it’s still not enough.
And if Phoenix—who’s probably centuries old and clearly powerful enough to float and summon spirits—isn’t enough...
What chance do any of us have?
“I will give you the power to cross planes.” The hiss comes from right beside me. So close I feel the words against my ear.
My head snaps toward Vlad.
He’s standing maybe three feet away, close enough that I should have noticed him or heard him move. But vampires don’t move like normal people—I’m learning that.
His voice is barely audible, quiet enough that I’m not sure anyone else can hear over the wind. But when Remus’s head whips toward the vampire, I realize I’m wrong.
Remus heard. And from the way his eyes widen, the way his whole body tenses—
He knows what Vlad’s about to do.
“Wait—” Remus starts.
Too late.
Vlad moves.
I’ve seen fast before. I’ve seen the brothers move with inhuman speed, when they blur from point A to point B. But this? This is something else entirely. Vlad doesn’t blur—he’s just gone. One second beside me, the next he’s—
I blink.
He’s across the courtyard. Standing beside Kharon and the cluster of women pressed against the wall.
Another blink.
No. Not standing beside Kharon.
Vlad is on top of Kharon.
“What—” I start, but the word dies as my brain catches up with my eyes.
Vlad has literally climbed the massive Horseman like a tree, arms and legs wrapped around him, and—oh god, oh fuck—his fangs are buried deep in Kharon’s neck.
“NO!” Someone screams—maybe Hannah, maybe Ksenia. The sound is primal and terrified.
Remus is already moving, sprinting across the courtyard. His wings snap out, catching air, propelling him faster. But not even he is fast enough.
Kharon roars—the first sound I’ve ever heard him make—and grabs Vlad by the back of his coat. The vampire’s ancient, but Kharon is Death incarnate. He flings Vlad away like a ragdoll, sending him tumbling through the air.
Vlad lands hard on the cobblestones, rolling twice before coming to a stop near where Remus skids to a halt beside him.
But the damage is done.
Kharon clutches at his neck, and even from this distance I can see the blood—dark and glistening—pouring between his fingers. His wife is screaming something, reaching for him, but Abaddon holds her back.
And meanwhile the circle—
Oh shit.
The circle—
The baby twister inside the orbit of burning runes has become a full cyclone. The wind screams now, a living thing that tears at the courtyard. Loose stones skitter across the ground. One of the fire pits tips over, coals scattering.
“They’re coming!” Phoenix’s shout cuts through the chaos, and her voice carries notes of triumph and terror in equal measure. “I’ve opened the portal!”
My head swings back and forth between Kharon—still clutching his bleeding neck—and the increasingly wild tornado contained in the circle.
Lightning crashes. Once. Twice. Three times in rapid succession, each bolt slamming into the ground inside the circle with enough force to make the cobblestones shake under my feet.
The light is blinding. Blue-white and electric, burning afterimages into my vision.
Sabra is suddenly lifted off her feet. She doesn’t float gracefully like Phoenix. She’s flung, her body tumbling through the air like a leaf caught in a hurricane.
She hits the cobblestones hard near me, the impact making me wince in sympathy. Her grunt of pain is audible even over the wind.
Then Layden’s body comes flying out next, toppling end over end, limbs flailing. He crashes down further away, rolling across the stones.
This is going wrong. This is going so wrong.
I don’t think—just react. I drop to my knees beside the woman, reaching for her. “Are you okay?”
She clutches her head with both hands, and when she looks up at me, her eyes are wide with shock. Dazed. Maybe concussed. She stares back at the cyclone with an expression that can only be described as dread.
Pure, undiluted dread.
“Are you okay?” I shout again, louder this time, trying to cut through whatever fog of shock she’s in.
She just keeps shaking her head, over and over, like a broken record. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.” Her voice is thin, breathless. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“What wasn’t supposed to happen?” I grip her shoulder, trying to ground her. Trying to get her to focus because whatever’s happening in that circle is getting worse by the second.
But she doesn’t answer. Just keeps crab-walking backward, away from the circle, her eyes locked on it in horror. Like she’s watching a car crash in slow motion and can’t look away.
I follow her gaze back to the circle and immediately understand her terror.
Phoenix is still rising. Higher and higher into the sky. The dark funnel cloud lifts with her, stretching up like a finger pointing at the heavens. Or like something reaching down from the sky toward us.
She’s so high now she’s barely more than a speck against the gray clouds. A small, dark figure suspended in the center of an impossible storm.
Layden appears beside us, limping slightly. There’s a cut on his forehead, blood trickling down into his eye. He wipes at it absently, his attention moving back and forth between Sabra and Phoenix. “What happened?!”
“I don’t know.” Her voice shakes. She’s still staring at the cyclone, and I notice her hands are trembling. “One second, we were at a standstill, and then—”
She gestures helplessly at the chaos in front of us. At Phoenix disappearing into the sky. At the lightning still crashing down. At the wind that’s starting to pull at even those of us outside the circle now.
Layden looks around, clearly trying to piece together what went wrong. Abaddon has fled back to his wife and daughter, using his massive body to shield them against the courtyard wall. Remus still hovers over Vlad where Kharon tossed him, and the vampire isn’t moving.
Did Kharon kill him? Can you even kill something that old? That powerful?
“Vlad just went nuts.” The words tumble out of me as I put my hands on my head, a useless gesture that does nothing to help but makes me feel slightly less helpless.
“He said something about giving her the power she needed and went and attacked Kharon. Just— Just launched himself at him and bit him.”
Layden and Sabra exchange a look that’s loaded with meaning I don’t understand.
“How did he find out?” Layden asks Sabra, his voice tight.
Find out what? What am I missing?
The woman is finally getting to her feet, and Layden and I both reach out to help her up. She sways once she’s standing, and I keep a steadying hand on her elbow.
“Find out what?” I demand, looking between them. “What the hell is going on?”
“Kharon’s a plane-crosser.” Layden says it like it explains everything. Like those three words should make sense of the chaos around us. “He’s the Horseman of Death.”
Sabra’s mouth drops open. Actually falls open like a cartoon character. “You’re the Horsemen—” She shoves Layden in the chest, hard enough to make him stumble back a step. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“Will someone please tell me what’s going on?” My shout comes out more desperate than I intend, but honestly? I think I’m entitled to a little desperation right now. “In words that a normal human can understand?”
Sabra finally tears her gaze from the cyclone to look at me. Really look at me. There’s recognition in her eyes—not like she knows me, but like she understands what it’s like to be the confused mortal in a room full of supernatural chaos.
“Vlad must have figured out that feeding off a plane-crosser might give Phoenix the extra juice she needed.” She talks fast, words tumbling over each other. “To help the spirit she contacted on the other side make its way across the barrier between worlds.”
She gestures wildly behind her, and I finally get a good look at her face. She’s pretty in an unconventional way, with sharp features and intelligent eyes that are currently dilated with shock. There’s chalk dust on her clothes and blood—Phoenix’s blood, I realize—on her hands.
“Wait.” I hold up a hand, trying to process. “So Vlad purposely attacked Kharon? And somehow that— That gives Phoenix more power?”
“Looks like it,” Sabra says.
“But how did he even know—”
“Oh my god, she did it.” Sabra’s voice pitches up in horror. She shades her eyes with her hands, squinting up at the sky. “Look!”
I follow her pointing finger, craning my neck back to see Phoenix.
Except I can barely see Phoenix anymore. She’s so high up, so far away. Just a tiny silhouette against the roiling gray clouds.
But I can see something else.
Something massive and dark moving in the clouds above her. Something with too many limbs and a shape that makes my eyes water when I try to focus on it.
“What the fuck is that?” My voice comes out as a whisper.