Chapter 51
“Mom?” I balk.
“Oh, fuck,” Ward breathes.
For a brief moment I think the worst—that Caspar hurt Penny to get down here—before I realize he’s come in through a different tunnel. One that looks to be like the actual museum-built entrance.
“Honey.” My mom’s voice is tight. “What are you doing down here? Who are all these people?”
“What are you doing down here?”
“Caspar was giving me a tour of the—” But then she sees it. I’m surprised it took her this long, before I remember my vision is better than hers in this grimy dark. Her scream rips at my ears.
“Mom, it’s okay,” I mutter. “It’s just an—”
“Ogre,” Caspar supplies.
My mom shakes her head, takes one step forward, then thinks better of it and stays completely still. “What the hell— What the hell is going on?”
“Why did you bring her?” I hate the pleading sound of my voice. “Why involve her?”
“Beatrice shares many of my values,” Caspar says, observing my mom with a strange, sociopathic fondness. I wonder if all the years he spent wooing her weren’t purely for political gain. Does the High Thane actually…love my mother?
“She wishes to fix the cesspool that is South of the Chasm—as do I. Deviants are an integral part of that work. It was about time she understand what it is we’ll be building together once the Chasm is opened. We’ll need them to cull the insubordinate humans.”
“What the fuck?” my mom spits.
“You’ll understand soon, dear.”
“Stay the fuck away from my mom,” I growl.
Caspar’s brows lift like my vitriol is misplaced.
“Contrary to your misguided beliefs, I have great respect for this mortal plane. I’ve lived here for over a thousand years—I don’t wish to see it destroyed.
But you can’t think it’s fair that all of my creatures must suffer down in hell while we few deviants revel up here in blood and souls and human flesh.
When the Chasm is fully opened, I can purify this world.
Can regulate the crime. My deviants will be not only royalty but also the law this city—this world—is so terribly lacking. ”
“Viv,” my mom says matter-of-factly, as if there could still be a logical response to all of this. “What is happening?”
“And you, Reid,” Caspar says. “It’s clear both your father and I underestimated you. You swayed my warlock, escaped my son…I can offer you much in my new world.”
Reid says nothing, his eyes unreadable.
“We can take you,” I tell Caspar, sliding out my daggers. My mother makes a strangled noise of fear. But it’s true. My eyes scan over Ward, Deacon, Sophia, and Peter. Versus the High Thane and his men, Reid and his turned warlock…“Who knows if we’d win, but…who knows if you’d win.”
“She’s got a point,” Caspar says good-naturedly. His CEO voice is just as chilling as his High Thane one. “Finn?”
Beside me I hear Peter draw in a tight breath. The demon who killed his mom. Who let him live out of nothing but cruelty—
Perhaps there’s a smattering of dead Citadel hunters and security guards upstairs. Perhaps he’s just paid off someone—either way, when Finn walks down the steps behind Caspar, he’s followed by an army of Brood.
Nasty, thuggish demons, eyes glowing red. Tall, gaunt vamps. Burly men I know can shift. Snout-nosed, gray-scaled brutes I’m sure span all nature of half-borns. A faint, melodic voice babbles from the back of the procession.
“No—”
My mom’s eyes cut to mine as if she can’t fathom what could be worse than what’s already occurred just as Ada is brought into the crypt.
“Ada?” I don’t blame my mom, who cannot make sense of what she’s seeing. When she moves for my grandma, a vamp yanks her back and holds her tight, and only then does she begin to panic. “What do you want with her? What is going on?”
Though the sight rips at my heart, I cannot break now. They’ll do what they please. I need to be smarter, faster—
“Where is Elliot?” There are tears pooling in Sophia’s eyes.
“How do you think I learned you’d be down here in the first place? The hunter and the vampire both are locked in a room across the street at Maison with a demon who knows to execute them should I not return by midnight.”
Sophia looks at me like she desperately wants to believe that’s true. My dark soul wonders if our friends have been dead for hours. I don’t dare look at Deacon. If they killed Baz…
“Give me the ring, Viv,” Caspar says.
His greed is unmatched. He had a viable host right there in his clutches, and still he followed us down here for the ring. I’m not naive enough to think he’ll give Ada up if he has it. He wants both. He wants all the power he can possibly get.
“The ring,” Caspar repeats. “Or I’ll have to use your sweet grandmother as my sacrifice.”
My mom begins to cry. So much she doesn’t understand. But the threat of imminent death, undeniable.
“A fate I’d found, a face I know, my only son lost long ago…” Ada’s eyes are pale, her fingers tapping kindly on the hands of the men who hold her hostage.
My entire body is shaking with the heft of my heartbeat. I can’t think my way out of this nightmare. I go with the only thing I’ve got. “I never found it.”
Caspar has no time for my lies. “Reid, display your allegiance to your High Thane now, or die before the night is concluded. Rip off the aeon’s dress and show us her back.”
“What?” My mother gasps through her tears.
Dread drips through me. If they see that the syrabraxa isn’t in me anymore…I watch Reid debate his next move.
Ada babbles to herself quietly. Sophia brandishes her crossbow and Peter his sword, but when Reid prowls toward me, it’s Deacon who steps in his path. “You cave that quickly, brother? Have you no spine?”
“Unlike you,” Reid growls, “who had everything handed to him, I spent my youth studying monarchs and political machinists of every era. Do you know what they all knew?”
Deacon remains silent, studying his brother. Finn watches, eyes wide and bulging with violent glee.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Now move aside.”
“You touch her,” Deacon warns, “and I’ll kill you.”
“This is the only way,” Reid says, harsh and hushed. “Can’t you see? Give me the ring. Let me end this now.”
Deacon doesn’t even flinch. “Touch Vivienne and I will kill you, brother. I will.”
My mind is racing to find the path of least resistance. If Reid gets the ring, every deviant will die instantly. If Caspar gets the ring, I don’t believe he’ll spare Ada. He’ll have two syrabraxas, one woman to kill now and one ring for a rainy day.
I need to get the ring onto Ada, and everyone I love out of these tombs with the least amount of bloodshed.
A novel feeling, after months of syrabraxa-fueled rage: I don’t crave the fight.
I don’t want to slice and maim. I want to see my mother walk out of here alive, and there are too many Brood for me to ensure that with my blades.
“Okay,” I say quietly, hands finding my zipper. “Okay.” I turn and pull my hair over my shoulder, displaying the scar I know is fading on my back. “Here.”
My mother’s gasp brings hot tears to my eyes. “Oh, honey…”
I wish I could tell her it looks worse than it felt.
Finn snickers, his claw-tapping noticeably absent in the presence of his father.
“Will you zip me up?” I ask Deacon quietly. He does so without words, his fingers warm on the tender skin of my back.
“Isn’t that sweet,” Finn says.
“Isn’t it,” Reid snarls.
“Well done, aeon,” Caspar murmurs. “You freed yourself, and powered my ring by doing so. You should be proud. But the time has come. Give the Caspian Ring to me now.”
When I turn I have one move left, and I make it. “Give us Ada and my mother. An even trade.”
“Viv—” Sophia breathes before a Brood slaps his hand over her mouth.
I wince at the sight. Peter moves for her, until Deacon yanks him back by the collar. His pale eyes scanning, assessing.
My mom holds Ada’s shoulders. Her face is filled with more fear than I can stomach. Caspar just stares at me, calculating.
“You don’t need Ada anymore,” I tell him.
If he’s going to open the Chasm either way, let it be without any more bloodshed.
“The ring can be used to accomplish the same goal.” The words are like ash on my tongue.
The silver lining might have been that wielding the power would kill him, but at midnight it’ll be the new moon.
He’ll have the magic of the censer to protect him.
He makes one cruel nod toward his men, and despite Finn’s glower, they trot Ada and my mother over to me.
“Viv,” my mother whispers, holding me tight. Her yellow dress is caked with dirt and dust.
Ada’s milky eyes hold mine as she mutters, “Trickery, trickery in the tombs, soon we’ll fall and meet our doom…”
Sophia fishes through the bag and hands over the ring, tears in her eyes. Reid watches with clear devastation as it’s passed to Caspar.
“You have the ring,” I say, moving slowly toward the tunnel that led us in. I drag Ada and my mother with me, stepping around the ogre’s cooling body. “Open the Chasm if you must, but we’re done here.”
We cannot win this fight, and I won’t risk the lives of those I love. Sophia and Peter follow too, weapons raised. If we can just make it to the arched threshold. Just make it back out of these tunnels—
“Almost done here,” Caspar corrects.
The chamber floods with wisps of smoke. Rich cassia and myrrh.
Ceremonial incense, coming from the censer.
Sure enough, a warlock behind him reveals the golden antique and begins to chant the incantation.
Hisses the words until the High Thane clutches his chest and sucks in an inhaled gasp of smoke as if bursting up from beneath a sea.
My stomach seizes—it can’t be midnight already. But if it is…that means—
Time slows. I pray that he’ll use the ring. That the censer won’t work despite the new moon, and even if he opens the Chasm, he’ll die instantly.
But he doesn’t. Without another word, six of Caspar’s men descend on Ada.
It happens so quickly I barely get my silver into one demon’s head.
Caspar shoots out his fist—now a gray-scaled claw—and a shard of ice flies from his outstretched hand.
I can do nothing, held back by Brood demons, but watch the stake of pure ice fly directly into Ada’s heart.
My screams and the screams of my mother are lost to the sound of Caspar’s wretched roar.
Ice climbs up his legs, sprawling fiercely across the floor of the catacombs.
His tuxedo busts open as he thunders. His chest is not human flesh, but an impenetrable armor of scales, his arms the same, ending in sharpened, silver-tipped claws.
No, no, no—
My knees give out as I watch him absorb Ada’s syrabraxa.
Caspar’s back spurts wicked, reptilian wings the color of old castle gates—thick and leathery, veined and tipped with jagged points like his claws.
Two short, pointed horns spear through either side of his forehead, and he roars as they do, baring fanged, crowded teeth.
Furious, frigid winds funnel through the ancient chamber, swirling the debris on the ground and freezing it solid.
When Caspar’s eyes reopen, they’re a glowing and poisonous yellow, only that little serpentine slit of black jutting through the center.
A wicked chill rends the tombs as his roar becomes a malicious laugh. An uncanny, resonant noise. Reverberating, as if coming from every tunnel and every hall.
Not a mad laugh. Very, very sane. The laugh of vicious victory.
Of evil incarnate. Of a High Thane not only in possession of the charged Caspian Ring, but wielding the full magic of a syrabraxa.
He’s carrying more power now than even the High Thane who opened the gates of hell the first time around.
Caspar gives me one wicked look through his glowing serpent’s eyes and drives his silver-tipped demon’s claws into the ground at his feet.
And then the world shatters.