Chapter 31
Periwinkle
Raze hurtles after Viscera first, shifting into his full basilisk form as he charges. His black eyes glitter—but the rogue shadowkind vanishes into a patch of shadow.
“Keep after her!” I shout. “And we have to let Rollick and the others know somehow.”
Jonah waves the rest of us onward, his eyes wide. “I—I might be able to signal them with my sorcery. Just go. If one of you can pop out of the shadows here and there so I can see you, I’ll follow as well as I can.”
I leap into the nearest patch of darkness and flit through the rivulets beneath cars and street fixtures in the direction I can feel Raze giving chase. Hail and Mirage race up beside me.
Mirage flickers in and out of the shadows just before we veer around a corner. Jonah’s feet pound across the sidewalk after us, a slew of sorcerous syllables tumbling out of his mouth between his breaths.
Even in the shadows, I’m not much of a sprinter. As I push myself to stop the distance between Raze and me from widening, the strain reverberates through my essence.
Hail lets out an unusually gentle chuckle. “Come on, Cream Puff. We’re not leaving you behind.”
His presence tugs at mine, urging me along as if he’s swung me onto his back. As our energies mingle, we surge forward even faster.
Mirage lets out a yip of excitement and dashes alongside us, but splinters of tension radiate off him. We all know that Viscera can’t have anything good in mind.
Should we have killed her to begin with? If I’d let Raze inflict the full power of his gaze or Hail freeze her while she was briefly trapped, this fight would be over.
But I’d have needed to live with that decision for the rest of my life. It’s hard to say I regret trying to choose compassion.
Whether I find myself regretting it an hour from now will depend on what she does next.
We’re still lagging behind Raze, but not by much. Jonah’s breaths have faded to a distant panting, but I can hear him loping after us.
However his sorcery tugged at Rollick and our other shadowkind allies, I hope they felt it. I hope they understood what he meant.
We swerve down another street—a wide one lined with cars. Several blocks up ahead, the two- and three-story buildings give way to towering apartment buildings and skyscrapers.
My stomach drops. Oh, no.
Is she going to bash up one of those places—bring down a structure that’s holding hundreds, maybe even thousands of people—all in one go?
She said she was going to bring as many humans “crashing down” as possible. Is she powerful enough to collapse an entire high rise?
The chill that washes through my essence has nothing to do with Hail’s wintry affinities. I don’t want to have to find out the answer to that question.
“Faster!” I cry, willing my being forward with everything I have. Hail grunts, but he manages to rush on with a tiny bit more speed.
What if we can’t stop her in time? Even if we catch up with her at whatever building she plans to target, I don’t know if we can subdue her on our own. We might not even get another chance to kill her if she stays in the shadows.
No, I can’t let my doubts rattle me. We held her in place before, if not for long. We don’t have that much experience at combining our talents, but we’re only going to get better.
I believe in us.
Even as I think that, Viscera blinks into view on the road a couple of blocks ahead of us. A car honks and swerves to avoid her. She dives back into the darkness beneath one of the parked vehicles… but not before I make out a flicker along the edges of her physical body.
A few plumes of black essence trail from the spot where she vanished.
My gut twists itself into a knot. “She’s starting to disintegrate. Like the creatures Rollick captured did.”
How long does she have before she completely goes up in smoke?
We still have to put an end to her reign of destruction now. It might take a day or two before the warped effects completely overtake her.
We don’t know how long ago the process started—it could have been creeping over her since yesterday, or it could have begun this very moment.
Whatever’s happening to her, it appears to be messing with her self-control. Several seconds later, she wavers into physical form again with a ripple that passes through her body before it fully solidifies.
My pulse hitches. Before I can think better of it, I throw myself out of the shadows too, springing on top of a car—without smashing it, of course. I have manners.
“Viscera!” I holler. “Your body is starting to fail because of the rift you came through. You’ll die soon. But we can try to help you!”
I can’t say I’m surprised by her snort in response. “You don’t know anything, Shiny Girl!” she shouts back, and manages to slip into the shadows again just as Raze bursts out of them.
More cars honk. Tires screech as an SUV collides with the back of a pickup truck.
With a growl, Raze lunges after Viscera. Pedestrians along the street gape as his tall, sinewy body ripples with basilisk scales.
The rogue shadowkind is bringing out the predator in him, and he’s so focused on catching her that he can’t concentrate on his form.
We’re charging past the high rises now. Just a couple of blocks up ahead looms the tallest of them—that glinting structure of mirrored windows and smooth steel that Rollick said the city’s people are particularly proud of: The Diamond Victory Tower.
It stands out like a single candle on a birthday cake. One I can’t help thinking would be awfully tempting to blow out—or over, if you’re so inclined.
Certainty sinks into my essence that Viscera must be aiming for it. Taking a deep breath, I plunge into the shadows and hurtle onward.
I’ve just come up on her last location when she pops into being at the base of the looming tower.
As she appears, her figure morphs. Her hair shrinks again, deepening to an unusual grayish-mauve hue. Her biceps bulge.
Which gives her all the more power to ram her fist into the polished marble wall next to the glinting lobby doors. Supernatural energy warbles alongside the impact.
A flinch ripples through my essence even in the shadows.
“Stop her!” I call out, not even sure who I’m talking to.
As I speed the last short distance between us, Viscera pummels the skyscraper again. Then her skin seems to shudder.
The outline of her body wobbles with a momentary translucency, as if she’s turning into gelatin from the outside in.
For the first time, a dash of coppery panic reaches me—sharper than the stew of bewildered uneasiness that’s wafting off our mortal audience.
Viscera’s expression hardens, but I know what lies behind her fierce mask.
She’s scared of what’s happening to her.
Raze materializes a few feet away and tackles her without hesitation. Viscera’s screech suggests he’s exuded some of his basilisk poison.
Her body flickers again, and she slips through his claws as if she’s made of mist.
I sway to a stop a couple of buildings away, my breath rasping and my feet radiating an ache up through my ankles.
It takes a massive effort to push the words from my throat. “Viscera, please! You’re going to fade away. All you have to do is stop fighting us and stop breaking things. I swear we’ll do whatever we can to make sure you survive.”
She wavers right through a parked jeep and ducks under it when Raze pounces, but her voice peals out from the space beneath as if she couldn’t meld with the shadows. “What good is a promise from a weakling like you?”
“That ‘weakling’ convinced the rest of us not to kill you in the first place,” Hail snaps. A frigid wind whips down the street, shoving aside the stunned pedestrians and warbling around the jeep. “You already owe her the life you still have.”
Mirage makes a brusque sound of agreement, circling the vehicle. “Our Rainbow isn’t weak. She’s kind.”
“Who the fuck wants kindness?” Viscera bolts for the tower just as Raze wheels to leap at her under the jeep. She batters the panes with her fists again. “Nothing in this place was kind to me. It called me and now it won’t let me in.”
She’s opened up spidery cracks all through the marble. With each new blow, the gaps spread wider. The bands of steel around the panes shudder increasingly visible indents.
How much more will it take before the foundation itself starts to buckle?
I’d suggest that if she wants to go inside, trying the door would be a good start, but I don’t think that’s what she means. What is she so furious about?
As Viscera wrenches away from Raze’s clawed hands again, a guttural sound reverberates from her throat. Her frustration smacks into me, harsh and acerbic as pure wasabi.
“If this realm is going to break me, I should get to break as many other things as I can on my way out,” she shrieks to the street at large. “It should all fall down!”
I guess there’s a certain logic to her approach, but I don’t have to like it.
My men can’t seem to contain her fury, though. Her increasingly warped and wavering form is working to her advantage.
If we can distract her until Rollick and the others get here… Maybe I can keep her talking.
“How is it breaking you?” I ask. “Why did you even come through the rift if you don’t like it here?”
She grunts through clenched teeth. “One pulled me, one pushed me—there was supposed to be a home. Everything together. But nothing’s mixed right. I don’t fit. It doesn’t work. So we’ll all shatter apart!”
She slams into the side of the tower with even more force and a metallic groan.
Pulling and pushing—like she said before. Like the dissonant energy from the rift.
I don’t understand what she means about the rest of it. What was supposed to be mixed? What doesn’t work?
It occurs to me that she might not even know. But I can’t help trying again. “There are places here that could be home. We could find somewhere that you fit. If you’d just stop and—”
“It’s too late,” she screams, cutting off my plea, and whips away from Raze before bashing her shoulder against the other side of the doorway.