Chapter 31 #2
Jonah reaches us, his breath rasping from how fast he was running to keep up.
His voice comes out ragged but firm. “The others are coming. I can feel it. I just called out to Rollick and Sorsha’s men with my sorcery again.
” He lets out a short laugh that doesn’t hold much humor. “Let’s hope they forgive my intrusion.”
“How far behind us are they?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
Viscera darts around Raze’s next lunge and aims a roundhouse kick at the apartment’s shiny face. When her body shivers with filminess, Hail’s wind makes the edges of it jitter even more.
Streaks of her essence darken the air. She groans but keeps swinging.
My thudding heart lodges in my throat. “They might not get here in time. We have to make sure she doesn’t send this whole building toppling over.”
So many people inside. So many lives hanging in the balance.
Viscera’s next blow knocks off a whole chunk of marble and bends the steel sideways. Sparks fly from her fists as she throws them even faster.
Fear and horror knot in my chest… but stronger than them is the swell of determination that rises up inside me.
Yes, I’m afraid and horrified. I’m pretty sure the situation warrants it.
I’m also grateful for the men who’ve followed me this far, spoken in my favor, and listened to my pleas. I hate what Viscera is doing, and I love my companions who are braving her rampage with me.
All those emotions, good and bad, twine together inside me into something even more powerful than the flare of darkly vengeful energy I spewed at my former captor or the blazing glow that seared marks into my men’s chests.
We’re stronger together, and everything I can feel is stronger if I don’t deny any of those feelings.
My power surges beneath my skin. I yell as loud as I can. “Surround her!”
Because they understand me, because they trust me, my men spring into action. Jonah dashes toward the apartment building. Raze settles into a tensed pose at its other side, beyond Viscera. Mirage and Hail close in, Mirage leaping onto the hood of a nearby parked car.
I focus on the blare of emotions inside me and let them pour out.
The light that erupts from me now doesn’t blaze but beams. It shimmers the same turquoise shade as my hair, as all our marks did last night when I declared my love.
It streams between all of my men, joining us by our marks in a ring.
A ring Viscera is now inside.
When she flings herself at the building, the glowing torrent between Jonah and Raze tosses her back. They step forward, driving her farther away with the thrumming light.
I keep pouring more out, giving them and her everything I am. Every bit of hope and denial, joy and anger I have in me, resonating stronger as those feelings are echoed by the men I’m connected to.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Viscera shrieks.
She hurls herself at one side of the beaming ring and another, but the currents of energy just bounce her back. When she propels herself toward the sky like she did with Hail’s wind, a turquoise sheen curves over her head, nudging her back down.
We’re doing it. We’re really doing it—the five of us together, penning her in, preventing her destruction.
But any dreams I might have of Viscera surrendering and accepting whatever help we can give dwindle with each cry that leaves her lips, each blow she aims at my men only for the glow to deflect her.
She spins in the center of the ring, seething so visibly I wouldn’t be surprised to see steam gusting from her ears alongside the essence wisping from her skin.
How long can our combined power hold her when we haven’t even really touched her?
My horror at the destruction she’s dealt out peels back like a bitter rind. Inside lies a kernel of something tarter and more poignant.
I had us stage a spree of violence to pretend we were joining her rampage. Can I accept what she is and what she’s done for real, not just as a ploy?
She’s been cruel and brutal… because she feels as if she was tormented first. Because she wanted to fit in here but couldn’t.
Isn’t that what we all crave, in our own ways? Her recipe of wanting cooked up a storm of devastation… but I’m not sure she’s the one who wrote it.
My voice comes out gentler than before, pitched just loud enough for her to hear. “I’m sorry. It makes sense that you’re angry—that you’d want to break everything.”
Viscera falters in her flailing. She stiffens on a patch of road, staring at me. “What are you doing now?”
I swallow hard. “Telling you that I can see how hard it’s been. This is the way you were built. There was something you needed that never came. It must be so painful. I wish I could take that pain away, but it isn’t wrong for you to feel it.”
Her eyes widen. Her stance seems to deflate, but the next shudder that runs through her stocky body looks like a release.
“I thought I belonged here,” she says. “It was all lies.”
As she holds my gaze, her form spasms. More shadowy essence billows off her.
She hisses a breath through her teeth and squeezes her eyes shut.
And then she seems to detonate.
The burst of fractured essence slams into our barrier of bonded emotion. We all rock on our feet, my heels stinging harder with the impact.
I catch a flare of concern from Raze, but the basilisk shifter holds himself in place, knowing it’s riskier to break our circle than to let me hold my own.
Darkness flares across my eyes. An ashy taste fills my mouth.
When I blink the haze away, the shadowkind woman is gone. I can’t sense her fraught emotions anywhere nearby.
Her essence has dispersed into the world, never to reassemble.
A pang shoots through my heart. She wanted to destroy this city on her own terms… and she decided to go out with a bang herself rather than have the choice taken from her.
Did my acceptance help her accept what she assumed had to be her fate rather than continuing to rail against the rest of us?
I’d like to think I gave her some tiny bit of comfort in the end, but a lump stays lodged in my throat like I’ve tried to swallow a walnut whole.
Jonah meets my eyes from across our shining ring. “There was nothing else you could have done,” he says, speaking to the guilt that’s started to creep in. “I wish we could’ve snapped her out of her madness too.”
I dip my head, and just then a whole crowd of shadowkind materialize around us in tandem with the familiar screech of a van’s wheels.
While the shadowbloods pile out of the van, Rollick strolls over to my glowing ring. I pull the energy back inside myself, a flicker of embarrassment passing over my face and my hair.
The demon clicks his tongue. His tone is all dry amusement. “I wonder if you’re ever going to stop surprising us, Periwinkle.”
“I hope not,” Mirage says, throwing his arms around me in an emphatic hug.
As my other men hurry over to surround me, Rollick takes in the rest of the scene. “I gather our rogue shadowkind is no longer a concern. You have left me with another large mess to clean up, though.”
I can’t tell if he’s actually upset. “Sorry?”
The demon aims a crooked grin my way. “At least it should be the last mess—in this city anyway.”