Chapter Fifty-Six
FIFTY-SIX
I PLUMMET TO THE GROUND, the shattered bits of stained glass that exploded with my blast of power raining down over my head. Time slips back into its natural cadence. Nothing has changed. It’s only been seconds, though it feels like an eternity has stretched before me.
I saw it all, in flashes of visions. Razor-sharp stills. As alone as I’ve felt since Gigi died, that’s never really been the case. For my whole life, my ancestors have had a hand in my destiny.
Somehow I land safely in a crouch. Guardians rush toward me, but I fling them off, suddenly feeling renewed. Powerful. The exhaustion from earlier completely gone.
So is the pain that had been growing throughout my body, the gash above my eye and the scar on my arm from the hedge maze.
One hand, firmer than the rest, grabs me and tugs. I go flying over Kai’s back, and I roll, my head snapping up. Kai faces the hoods, his legs bent and arms raised. I don’t question it as I run to stand beside him.
We don’t talk; we don’t need to.
I can feel him. And I know he can feel me, too.
The beat of his heart, the sweat dripping down his back, the disgust for everyone around him. All this bloodshed, and for what? No, he won’t stand for this.
Something about his power is different, too, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.
“Don’t do this, boy!” Alastair growls. “Who will you have after this? You’re no one without me. You’re nothing!”
A frustrated grunt leaves Kai as he lunges forward. “Would you shut the fuck up already?” His hands meet Alastair’s, and they fall to the ground.
I look up at Lucas, whose ocean eyes have turned bright red as he stands over Maureen’s limp body.
“What—”
“I—” His hands are held out in front of him, face stunned as he looks down at them. “I don’t know what happened.”
“Maureen?” I fly across the room and collapse by her side at Lucas’s feet.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” I wail, a sob catching in my throat.
She’s a husk. Skin and bones. Like she’s been drained of life.
I rip the tape from her mouth with one swift tug before laying her on her back and shoving two fingers against her throat in search of a pulse. It’s there, but it’s thready.
I place my hands on the sides of her face. Her eyes flutter for only a moment.
“Please,” I beg. “Please don’t go!”
Her hand rests on my arm.
Her lips move, but I can’t hear her over the chaos surrounding me.
“Ma’am?” I lower my ear to her mouth.
Her voice is so quiet that I can’t be sure what she says.
“Syphon…,” she croaks, and my head snaps up to where Lucas looms above us, practically glowing. Vines erupt from the ground and twist around his body like anacondas.
Earth magic. I glance at Maureen, and it’s like something clicks into place. Lucas has drained her of her renewed power brought on by my catalyst. She never even got a chance to feel it. To wield it as she always wanted.
When I look back down, her eyes are frozen. Eternally fixed on the stars peeking through the slanted skylight.
There’s no time to cry. To mourn.
“Harper,” Lucas breathes. “What… I feel…” His eyes are not his eyes.
The twist of his mouth, that isn’t him either.
I scramble back, standing and spinning as I search the room for anyone with any goddamn sense.
Instead I’m faced with Guardians and Alastair, his mouth wide open as he stares at his son.
“How is that possible?” he marvels, his palms turning upward, a string of unintelligible prayers falling from his lips. “I always suspected, but I was never sure…”
In the distance Kai’s gaze meets mine, his cheeks pink, his chest heaving, desperation written all over his face.
He’s just as confused as I am.
From the side a hooded Guardian’s fist flies toward Kai’s face, and he ducks just in time.
I take off again, crisscrossing through the pews, and as the Guardians close in on me, I turn to face them.
I can feel it.
I picture a storm, massive and rushing through the sky. The air around me cools as the wind picks up, whipping, rotating like a hurricane. Thunder crashes in the distance.
I pocket the grief rocketing through me once again. Burning the image of Maureen from my mind.
I am fated.
And these freaks are about to learn exactly what that means.
Now when I reach for my magic, it’s near endless. Overwhelming. Like if I’m not careful, I might accidently flood the whole world.
I open my eyes and grin when I see the look on Lucas’s face. Despite the vines crawling along his skin, he’s scared of what he sees.
And he should be.
“This is going to be fun,” I say, thrusting my hands out and releasing my light.
He freezes, his head cocking at an uncanny angle before he moves, lightning quick, dodging the strike as he flings his hand out and matches me magic for magic. Maureen’s stolen ability manifests in thick ropes of thorned ivy that creep up through the chapel floor and wrap around my legs.
If Lucas was able to syphon her power, then that confirms what I already suspected.
I really am the last Cardinal. My emotions are slippery and strange.
Relief because this means I succeeded in reaching my catalyst before the century’s end.
Grief because Maureen is gone. Fear that I won’t survive long enough for any of this to matter much anyway.
I yank my feet from Lucas’s vines, breaking them as the Guardians form a circle around me. Somewhere in the distance Kai has taken care of the hunter he was fighting. Now he and Alastair circle each other with fists raised, shadows snaking from Alastair like extra limbs.
The leader of the Midnight Guard has rolled up his sleeves, and for the first time, I see them.
Several static black symbols against his skin, like Kai’s mark, but not.
Perhaps that’s what happens when the hunter kills the witch he’s marked, the roving swirls transform and find a permanent place of rest along the hunter’s body. Like a trophy. A medal of dishonor.
The storm brewing above us peaks, and the rain falls in fat droplets that splash against the wood panels and pews. The organ beneath the cross has gone crooked from the force of my atomic blast.
I focus my magic on Lucas, who’s become my greatest threat.
Pulling the falling water into a cyclone that circles him, I watch as the others back away. Closer and closer, I guide it toward Lucas.
“You don’t have to do this, Harper!” he warns as he uses his new magic to pull dirt from between the slats of the floor. It turns to mud as it mixes with the rain, and he molds the wet ground into fist-sized balls and flings them at me. I dodge them as I struggle to maintain a hold on my power.
Cloaked figures try to restrain me, but each attempt is warded off by spouts of pressurized water and gusts of howling, storm-fed wind.
I turn in circles as I maneuver around their advances, holding them off with my lightning all while trying to keep my eye on Lucas.
I’m being pulled in too many directions. It doesn’t matter how powerful I am. I have no idea what the hell I’m doing, and though my magic felt limitless at first, it’s clear to me now that it’s not.
I hit something warm, soaked, and solid.
Somehow Kai and I have wound up back to back. “Give it up, you little brats!” Alastair screams against the raging storm. “It’s over! You lost!”
I shake my head.
“Lucas, son,” Alastair calls. “Come.” He folds his hand and gestures for Lucas to join him at his side. Alastair’s hair is wet and plastered to his forehead, and his chest rises and falls so fast, it’s a wonder he hasn’t died of a heart attack by now.
“You know, Harper, the Guardians have been made in opposition to all that you are: a witch. An abomination. A blight upon the earth. We were created to reclaim this unrighteous power, to transform it and wield it in the name of the Lord. To help cull the earth of the unworthy. Some among our ranks may call my methods ‘extreme,’ ” he puts air quotes around the word, “but in the end, we all have the same goal. Absolution. Eternal power. To not only walk in the image of God, but to become Him. Some may call that blasphemy.”
His eyes gleam with a fervor akin to madness.
“But I call it verity.”
I cringe at his words. Verity. What the hell does that even mean?
“I’ve always known that Guardians are not yet all powerful, and that power would come at a cost. That is, aligning with other… beings that believe in our ministry. I just never thought I would have one under my nose this whole time.”
He turns his face to his son.
“A gift from the most righteous!”
Lucas pulls back his lips in a true smile. He’s startlingly beautiful, even now. Maybe even more so.
I reach behind my back and grab Kai’s hands, stifling a sigh when I feel the familiar surge of electricity.
It’s still loud, the feel of him. But it’s no longer grating, discordant. Instead it harmonizes with what’s already burning up inside me.
Somehow, we are bound together. More than the hunter’s mark. More than history. More than summers in Earnest. The prophecy foretold a traitor among the ranks of the Guardians. I think I’ve found him.
“Who’s the abomination now?” I spit at Lucas.
He only smirks, eyes a swirling, devil red, before he cocks his arm back and roars.
Vines shoot from the ground, bobbing through the air like the heads of snakes.
I squeeze Kai’s hands, and when he squeezes back, I let our magic sing.
It bubbles, rising like a wayward tide, and crashes around us, rippling across the ground in waves.
The Guardians go flying, but something’s wrong.
Alastair has lunged at the last second and grabbed on to Kai’s sleeve, dragging him along with the wave of power, ripping him from my hands.
A scream tears from me as they’re flung, skidding to a halt at the edge of the nave.
“Kai! Watch out!” I don’t know if he can hear me over the chaos of the Guardians’ shouts and the wind that whips around us, full of loose papers and tiny pencils and hard-candy wrappers turned projectiles.