Sixty-Seven
With every minute that passes, Varius is getting weaker and weaker. He’s alive because of the dark magic his mother tied to his soul when she cursed him, but it’s still based on his vampire side. If he doesn’t feed soon, he will die. If he takes the time to feed though, Antonio will cut him down all the same.
I’m not fast enough to fight the blur of bodies. I can’t risk letting my fire outside of myself because I won’t be able to control it at all then. All I can do is wait for Varius to press him hard enough against a wall that I can dart in and strike, burning a clump of the knife into his flesh to stop him from being able to shift and thus heal that part of himself.
Varius takes the hits for me whenever I do that though, protecting me from Antonio’s claws and bites. But he’s not losing chunks of himself like he was before – that smokey substance that filled his chest seems to be everywhere inside him now, and he shifts between smoke and flesh whenever he’s about to get hurt.
Still, he is tiring.
And when he collapses, Maddox and I will be alone, and neither of us are strong enough to fight him off.
“Where’s Aleric?”
I shout, risking a glance towards the youngest Shadow brother. The cage is fucking empty.
“I don’t know!”
he says. “There’s no blood in it, so he wasn’t eaten.”
Unless they took him away and ate him elsewhere.
But I don’t have time to argue with him. I barely have time to dart into the openings when I see them. Every time Varius gets him in a hold or pushes him against a wall, the next second, Antonio is free and going on the offensive. But the burn on his chest has killed a lot of his speed, and he’s using a lot of energy shifting the parts of himself that he still can, going back between human and wolf to heal most of the damage he gains.
With two punches, an elbow, and a kick, Antonio sends Varius stumbling back a few steps. Not far. He hasn’t even bought enough time for himself to turn all the way around if he wanted to. But he’s bought more than enough to lunge for me because I’m way too damn close.
Way too optimistic in my ability to defend myself alone.
But just as his teeth are about to snap across my face, a large body with black smokey eyes barrels into him from the side.
My heart leaps out of my chest.
Dayne!
He’s alive, and we know each other’s moves. I don’t have to be as fast as I do with Varius because Dayne and I work like two streams merging into one. I dart forward, expecting him to get Antonio to turn sideways like he usually would, force him to open himself up for an attack from me in order to block one from Dayne. But he doesn’t. He fights with the same animalistic, mindless ferocity as Varius, and I end up stumbling to a stop with a claw piercing my shoulder. The knife I’m holding falls from my grip.
The world flickers as the planes of Purgatory tease me with their proximity.
Knowing I’m going to die anyway, I look at Dayne.
But instead of finding comfort, I see that it’s not him at all.
It’s a husk filled with the shadows that swirl around my husband.
Antonio yanks me to him, and I’m just about to give myself up to my fire when Varius lunges past me.
And another blur joins him.
Aleric has finally fucking arrived, and he’s wielding two monstrous blades – the front legs of an echidna perhaps (the same monster that lives in the Shadow’s kitchen counter) and then worked down to be his size.
With a movement too quick for me to track, he slices off the arm that’s holding me. I only know when I stumble back in surprise, not having expected the sudden release. Maddox catches me and pulls me back even further. He removes the claws in my shoulder, then points the wand at me again.
“He’s going to go get Sau in a moment,”
he says. “She’ll make sure you’re healed properly.”
The internal bleeding in my belly tells me I might not have that long.
“What’s he done to Dayne?”
I ask, wanting to hope that he’s still alive. That the smoke trailing out of his eyes does not mean he’s gone. It just means Varius is healing him in his own way.
Maddox’s voice softens. “He can turn people into husks,”
he says. “It doesn’t seem to be reversible once it’s in deep.”
“But is he still alive?”
Can we find a cure eventually?
“They don’t seem to be,”
he says, and my heart shudders, wanting to break. But I do not have that luxury.
Because even with Aleric helping with his knives, we’re not going to win. Varius is slowing down, starting to get cut. The smokey blackness isn’t trading places with his flesh anymore.
His timer on his curse is running out.
If he doesn’t feed, I’m going to lose him.
I stumble forward just as Aleric vanishes.
And doesn’t reappear.
“What the fuck!”
Maddox shouts. But Aleric was never one to hang around on the losing side.
Antonio pivots and slices his arm across Varius’ face. He shifted his half-severed arm, healing the open wound so it no longer bleeds. He’s weakened, but not weakened enough.
He turns to me. “Dayne”
jumps on his back and bites him. He doesn’t have any powers in his husk form. He’s just a mindless zombie. Antonio pays him little mind. I call on my fire, and his eyes widen. He pivots and dives for the window. My mouth drops open first in shock, then utter rage. He’s trying to leave. To fight another day. A tactical retreat.
“No!”
He crashes through the glass, taking Dayne with him. I run to the ledge, wanting to jump after him, but someone grabs me and hauls me back.
“Wait,” Sau says.
She barely finishes speaking before Aleric appears back in the room, having brought Antonio with him.
But no Dayne.
The wolf falls to his knees, defeated, one blade through his stomach. Aleric raises the other one to cut off his head.
“He’s mine,”
I hiss as I walk forward.
“Pretty sure he’s Antonio,”
he says with a cheeky smile. He cocks his head, his smile drops. Then he vanishes to who knows where.
The wolf lunges, and Sau shoves me to the side to take the hit. I remember how easily he tore her to pieces. He isn’t as fast, and he’s more wounded due to me and Aleric, but that trauma must still be imprinted in her mind. And yet, she did not hesitate.
He tackles her to the ground. Shadows open up beneath her, sucking her down. She can’t bring out her monsters, but she can sure as hel take him to them. His teeth dig into her neck, then rip free. A fountain of blood shoots up high. Her shadows die, and with severed feet and hands – those parts that touched the ground, he lunges for the window.
And I lunge for his back, refusing to let him go. I’ll kill him even if it kills me.
I land on top of him. He tumbles through the window. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I push out my fire.
And together, we fall into the sea.
I gasp as the impact of the waves knocks into me. Water fills my mouth. I hold my breath as we go under. I let go of him instinctively.
I try to swim to the surface, but my arms won’t work. The fire I pulled on to burn him also burned me. I start to sink, going down, my eyes closed tight but still able to see all the sharks circling me. Imagining the worst. An end of torn limbs and eaten misery.
After all that’s happened… how funny would it be if this is how I go?
I imagine Dayne’s body floating beside me, beckoning me.
Perhaps there are worse ways to die...
Hands grab me as my head grows heavy and my lungs burn. They pull me to the surface as I struggle to keep my mouth closed. They push my head above the water, and I gasp, sucking in a huge gulp of air. A wave comes, hitting me in the face.
Varius turns me in his arms. “I’ve got you,”
he says. “It’s over. We’re going home.”
“No!”
I rasp. “Where’s Antonio?”
I need to see his body. I need to make sure he’s gone.
“He’s gone.”
“He might not be!”
“Your fire can’t be put out,” he says.
Normally, no. But I don’t have control of it anymore, and the ocean is such a vast amount of water…
“Where is he? I need to find him!”
I turn my head, trying to spot him through the waves.
“Let him go, Micha,”
he says, so much pain in his voice. “If he comes back, we’ll deal with it then, but for now let’s just go home.”
He tugs on my chin, and I let him pull my face towards his. As he looks at me, I feel so utterly empty when I should be feeling safe and alive and full or hope. Or at least happy that the nightmare is over.
But I don’t.
Because I need to see his body. I need to cut off his head and rip out his heart and bury him in fucking cement inside a containment circle so I can know for sure he’s dead.
Otherwise, I can’t trust that he won’t come back.
“Come on,”
Varius says, ducking his head to press a kiss to my forehead. “Let’s go bury our daughter.”
I rear back to look at him. My throat burns at the idea of seeing her one last time. Of being there when she’s sent off into the ether. Of having that closure. “You haven’t taken her into your shadows already?”
I rasp, barely letting myself believe it. It’s been months...
His eyes grow wet as he looks at me. “I was waiting for you; we should tell her goodbye together.”
Closing my eyes, I finally tell him to take me home.