Chapter Twenty-Seven
An agony like she had never felt before burned through her.
Every nerve in her body screamed. It was a mindless, searing pain, unmooring Lavinia from reality.
It was so intense that her consciousness tried to dissociate from it.
Dark spots bloomed in her vision, a blackout beckoning.
Without thinking—any rational thought was impossible—Lavinia scrambled backwards, finding herself on the concrete floor.
The movement tore her from the woman’s grasp, and the sounds and smells around her burst back into her senses.
Echoes of pain cascaded through her body still, but she was able to force herself to rise back to her feet and hold off the woman’s attempts to touch her again.
“They’ll tear out your soul if you let them,” Arran warned. Lavinia didn’t bother looking at him. Even just moving her eyes hurt. Her soul was staying put, if she had anything to say about it.
“How do we make them stop?” she shouted over the din of battle. Somewhere, a fire was blazing, throwing heat and soot into the air. She hoped that her Sisters were unharmed, whatever horrors they were facing.
“He must be here somewhere, controlling them. He can’t be far,” Arran grunted.
Lavinia chanced a glance towards him. Many of the souls of the victims had surrounded Arran and Octavia.
They stood back-to-back, Octavia dashing forwards and backwards, keeping the crowd at bay.
Arran’s hands moved, whispered spells tumbling from his lips.
In the half-light of the warehouse, she could see the ashen pallor of his skin.
Whatever magic he was using, it was taking a toll.
Octavia was breathing heavily, beads of sweat running down the side of her face.
They were in a stalemate, and Lavinia didn’t want to bet on the warlock giving up before Arran or Octavia were depleted of their strength.
Who knew the limits of a combined power of vampire and witch, of someone who had collected the power of a dozen souls to do his bidding?
If they stayed in a defensive position, they would lose. There was only one way to end this.
Every muscle in her body ached as Lavinia slashed at the souls reaching for her, driving them back momentarily.
She didn’t wait to see them regain their shape.
She turned and ran, trusting that they would react too slowly to grab at her defenceless back.
She dashed around the pile of gravel and found herself almost upon Brigh.
The young warrior held her battle axe aloft before she brought it down with a splintering crash onto a wooden pallet bearing a large network of interconnected signs and smeared with the telltale bloody handprint of the rogue.
Whatever spell the sigils had been driving collapsed.
Lavinia didn’t stop to find out what it had been.
The summoner had to be close. She kept her pace, reorienting herself towards the centre of the building.
If none of the Sisters had smoked him out of hiding yet, he had to be somewhere along the north wall.
She launched herself over the top of a pile of leaking sandbags and crashed through a forest. She ignored the trees that sprang up around her, obscuring the cement with their gnarly roots.
The smell was all wrong: not the green of sap and the edge of natural decay, but only magic, the scent of magic suffusing everything, lined with the bitter stench of the rogue.
Her ears told her that her footsteps were muffled on the forest’s earthy floor, but she ignored this, trusting instead on her sense of smell and the reverberations underneath her boots that told her she was still in the London warehouse.
The rogue had employed some kind of magical illusion.
Ignoring the intense feeling of wrongness, she barrelled through the forest, not bothering to go around the trees.
No branches tore at her arms as she ran forwards blindly.
Green flashed before her, and her momentum ground to an acute halt, shifting the earth beneath her feet.
The forest had disappeared, and she lay on a pile of broken chairs.
Her armour broke her fall, but still she experienced a moment of sharp pain where a nail had pierced the flesh of her palm.
She tore it loose, ignoring the sting. The smell of fresh, bitter blood alerted her to another sigil nearby, painted on a piece of cardboard lying on the ground.
She pushed herself back up to destroy it with her sword.
If her Sisters followed, they wouldn’t be blinded by the illusion.
The smell of her blood mingled with the stench of magic thick in the air.
A long strip of armour along her left arm had been torn away, the skin underneath scratched.
She only briefly took stock of the injury, then dismissed it.
It wouldn’t kill her. The only one that would die today was the rogue.
Shaking off the pain and regaining her breath, she pressed on.
She’d ferret the rogue out of whatever hole he’d hidden himself in.
* * *
Michelle tried to pass the time by watching some TV, but her mind kept wandering to Lavinia.
Twenty minutes had passed since she’d sent her last text, letting Michelle know that they were going to raid the warehouse where they thought the rogue was hiding.
It had been a quick, business-like text, and Michelle found herself reading it over and over, wishing for her phone to show a new message, anything to let her know Lavinia was okay.
No message appeared. On the TV, actors cracked jokes on a panel show.
Michelle couldn’t stomach the laughter of the studio audience and turned the sound off.
She glanced back onto the balcony, where Zachary was enjoying his fourth cigarette of the day.
Perhaps if she’d picked up smoking, she’d at the very least have something to do with her hands.
There wasn’t even anything to clean or tidy in this apartment, nothing that could give her the semblance of activity. All she had to do was wait.
Thoughts whirled through her mind, round and round.
What if Lavinia got hurt? What if the rogue—this person who had decided to attempt to take Michelle’s life for reasons she didn’t understand—what if they were too strong?
Vampires, witches, and demons were new to Michelle, but it hadn’t been difficult to understand the unease that the vampires had shown when they found out that the warlock and the rogue were the same person.
Whatever rules there were in the supernatural world, this killer broke them.
She trusted completely in Lavinia’s skill, her strength, and her speed—but what if there was something about this…
abomination that would be too strong even for Lavinia and her Sisters?
There was no way for Michelle to know, and she realised this.
Yet there was no stopping her thoughts, her anxious desire to hear something, anything.
She was suspended in fear, the not knowing of whether Lavinia was kicking the rogue’s ass, or whether she was lying in a puddle of her own blood somewhere.
Michelle squeezed her eyes shut, willing that image out of her mind.
She tried to remember Lavinia as she had been this morning, her eyes softened with sleep and satisfaction. Tried to get some comfort out of the memory. But no matter how much she attempted to hold the image in her mind, it kept slipping away from her, fleetingly out of reach.
Michelle stood up, restlessly walking back and forth through the room.
The movement helped a little bit. Some of the jitters in her legs stilled—or perhaps they were just less noticeable when she was moving.
It had gotten darker in the apartment, the sun disappearing in a bank of clouds.
She’d have to turn the lights on, or Zachary would have to sit in a dark room when he was done with his smoke.
Michelle leaned over to turn the switch on the lamp that sat on the side table, when she froze. Her eyes had caught a movement.
“Zachary!” she shouted.
He turned around, cigarette held loosely in his hand, a question in his eyes.
Michelle yelled again, gesturing for him to come in, to please get away from the demon that was tearing through reality beside him.
Before Zachary could react, one arm cloaked in shadow appeared behind him.
It was almost comical, the way he looked at Michelle quizzically, while his death loomed over his shoulder.
This couldn’t be happening. It was impossible.
Lavinia was with the rogue right now, the Sisters were at his doorstep, and yet somehow he had sent a demon here.
In her anxiety and nervousness, Michelle hadn’t realised the sun had set.
Congealed time moved so strangely. It had snuck up on her, snuck up on both of them. And the balcony wasn’t protected.
The demon’s talons flashed pure darkness, and Zachary screamed.
It was a horrible sound, carrying the agony he felt when the talons dug into the flesh of his back.
Michelle didn’t wait to see what happened next.
This time, she would not be a bystander.
She wouldn’t, couldn’t watch as Zachary died, the kind man who had ordered food and made sure she’d eat only an hour ago.
She couldn’t watch as the demon tore him apart, until he was little more than the dead bodies she’d seen earlier. The Sisters were too far away.
It was just her. And this time, there wouldn’t be a gorgeous vampire bursting in at the last moment to save her.
Without thinking, she grabbed the lamp right in front of her and tore its cable from the wall socket.
Her hand scrambled on the balcony door handle, Zachary’s scream quieting into a low moan.
He had collapsed onto his hands and knees.
It was only a couple of steps, but in that strange way of nightmares, it seemed like it took minutes for her to reach him.
The demon raised its head, the glowing coals that sat in place of its eyes trained on her.
Michelle raised the lamp and brought it down onto the creature’s head.
The lampshade crumpled and burst into flame.
Underneath, the light bulb splintered, glass flying.
The demon didn’t even flinch. It left Zachary for dead, blood spilling from his shoulder onto the ground.
Michelle desperately wanted to check on him, make sure that he was okay.
There was no time. The demon came at her, and she warded off his outstretched talons once, twice, wielding the lamp as if it was one of Quintia’s training swords.
It kept coming, relentless, and her panic rose to a fever pitch.
She reached out, trying again to hit the demon.
Impatiently, it grasped the metal bar of the lamp stand and tore it away from her, the lamp clattering onto the ground.
The railing of the balcony dug into Michelle’s back.
Somehow, she had gotten turned around. The demon stood between her and the open door to the apartment, the only place where she could be safe.
She was trapped. The demon had no face, consisting only of shifting smoke. Somehow, it seemed to be enjoying itself. It was enjoying Michelle’s panic. Savouring the fear that shook her legs. There was no way for her to go.
This was it, Michelle realised with painful clarity. She was going to die. She would never see another sunrise. She would never be able to kiss Lavinia again, tell her how much she wanted to be with her. Tell her she loved her.
The demon lunged and Michelle’s world turned black.