Chapter 36 #2
It hits in my chest with a dull thud. That’s why Diavola wants me. Why she’s been obsessed with me all these years. It’s not because we have a connection, or because I haunt her the way she haunts me. It’s not love. Not for her. It’s just survival.
She’s hungry, and I feed her.
I look in her eyes and I realize it doesn’t matter. I don’t care if I’ve been nourishing her all these years. In fact, I’m glad. After the life she had and the things she’s endured, Diavola deserves someone who gives to her without question.
I almost tell her that, but then something else occurs to me. He could have killed us by now. He’s talking to us, instead. He wants me to be hurt by this revelation. And then once my pain crescendos, I’ll lash out at Diavola to break her heart and hurt her, too.
He’s stalling. He needs to feed off us so he can be stronger than Diavola. Whatever he might claim about his time in the cave…he’s scared of her.
We can still win this, together. I take several steps back, gazing wildly around the room as though I’m panicking. One, two, three, four. The fourth pole. I stop and shake my head, pressing my fists into my eyes like I can’t bear to look at Diavola or the Watcher anymore.
“No, it’s not true. Diavola told me, when we were on the Ferris wheel.
She told me I’m like a rock at the bottom of the river, and she’s a leaf, floating above me.
I can’t see clearly because I’m sunk in so much suffering, but she said she’d pull me up with her.
Free me. She promised.” I lower my hands and glare at her.
“You promised if I helped you, you’d free me. ”
Diavola’s back is to our devil. Her smile spreads like frost across the surface of my canal. She knows we’re still a team. Partners.
“If I can’t have you,” Diavola says, lips twitching at the corners as she tries to sound devastated, “no one can.” She wraps her fingers around my throat. Her unfeeling touch is so gentle it’s a caress. I make a choking sound as I pretend to tug on her wrists, trying to dislodge her hands.
“No,” the Watcher says, right behind Diavola now. “You don’t get to decide how it ends.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing.” Diavola brushes her lips against mine.
It’s a whisper of a kiss, a dream of achingly sweet longing, forever unfulfilled.
Then she pushes me so hard I fly back and fall onto the floor.
She reaches up, grabs the fourth pole, and then grasps the Watcher’s wrist like an iron manacle.
He laughs. “What are you—”
There’s a sizzle and a pop as electricity flows freely. Diavola gasps—a real gasp, the gasp of lungs taking in air. Her fingers tighten involuntarily around both the pole and his arm. They’re locked in place together, bound to each other and to reality once more.
He convulses, his face at last coming into focus. He’s so ordinary and hateful and human. I smell burning hair and see sparks dancing along his gritted teeth. But still, he’s breathing.
Which means his heart is beating. Which means I can stop it.
I glance around, desperate—no, determined.
Where is my knife? I’m not sure the handle is enough to keep me from being electrocuted, too.
I stand, ready to take my chances, when my foot clatters against an abandoned shovel.
I pick it up and break the stick over my knee. The edge is jagged and sharp.
The Watcher might not be a vampire, but right now a stake will do just fine.
His eyes fix on me with all the malice of an infinite life feeding on suffering. I approach him, careful to avoid the arcs of electricity, careful to stay out of reach, though I doubt he has control of his limbs. Every contact leaves a trace, and I don’t want any more contact with this leech.
“This is for Dávid. And for Leda.” I shove the stake straight through the rose on his chest and into his heart.
His eyes flutter once, and then he’s gone. Withered to dust like he never existed. I did it. I killed the unkillable. I stopped the monster I devoted my life to hunting.
I won.
But Diavola hasn’t let go of the pole. “I left a letter for you,” she says through a locked jaw, her whole body convulsing. “One last letter, at your home.”
I still have the stake. I know what she wants. What I never actually promised her. Tears stream down my face. “Don’t make me do this,” I plead.
“I’ll always be the devil he made me into,” she says. “I’ve been feeding on you. I can’t live with that. I can’t live at all.”
I shake my head, hating that he’s still lying to her even now that he’s gone.
“You don’t feed on desperation. You feed on determination.
That’s why visiting your sister nourished you.
She was determined to live a life worthy of your sacrifice, and she passed that down to her children and their children.
Even Eleni, determined to stay where she was born, to love the life she was given through your generosity.
That’s why you were drawn to me. Because I was so determined to find you, so determined to stop these killings.
Nothing was ever going to stop me. And if you stay, I’ll always be determined to take care of you and nourish you and value you the way you deserve.
You deserve to live, whatever that looks like.
You deserve to be a part of the beauty you find everywhere.
I’ll feel it for you. I’ll feel it all for you, for as long as you let me. ”
The next sentence nearly kills me to say, but I have to.
Diavola was trapped in life and then afterward, too.
If this is what she wants, if this is how I can show her I love her, then I’ll do it.
“But it’s your choice.” I lift the stake.
“Whatever you decide, you’re not alone. And someday when I die, after everything else rots away, you’ll remain.
You’re not just written on my heart and soul.
You’re carved onto my very bones, and I will carry you with me into eternity. ”
She smiles and releases the pole. She’s still real, still human, but already the charred scent of flesh and hair is fading away as her ice seeps back in. She’s the woman of my nightmares and dreams, my torment and my joy. My own personal demon.
“It’s now or never,” I whisper. “But either way, we’re forever.”
Diavola wraps her fingers around the stake and tugs me toward her.