Chapter 27
Everyone was there.
Everything was in place.
Eva, with Logan at her side, sat curled up in a blanket in Thanatos’s great leather chair—a relic he’d maintained for a gazillion years. Aleka knew the exact number, but Scotty had never listened to the boring stories from the past that all her relatives seemed to delight in sharing.
All four Horsepeople, as Wraith called them, stood near the head of the great hall’s dining table, and Idess had placed Scotty, along with her cousins Amber and Leilani, at the four corners.
The bowl of dried blood Wraith and Serena had procured sat in the center of the table, where Aleka, Raika, and Idess had placed a bunch of mystical crap that, again, Scotty didn’t care about.
Dried herbs, vessels containing various-colored liquids, some crystals, a shard of bone, and a couple of bowls of stinky organic matter Scotty didn’t ask about, because, ugh, just get on with it, already.
“Everyone,” Aleka called out. “We’re starting. We need you all to step straight back but remain relative to your positions at the table. It’s possible that if this goes wrong, there could be an explosion.”
An explosion?
No one seemed overly concerned, so Scotty leaned against the archway between the kitchen and the living room and waited for her sister, Raika, and Idess to do whatever it was they were going to do.
It started with chanting—Idess in an ancient angelic language, and Aleka in a Sheoulic dialect.
Then little fires sparked in the organic matter.
Aleka poured liquids into the stinky bowls while Raika, her eyes glowing garnet, watched.
They mixed stuff and chanted, and it was all so banal…
until the dried blood in the big bowl began to liquify and bubble.
Raika, arms outstretched and palms up, pivoted to face Eva.
Suddenly, an oppressive thickness settled over them, and everything went still.
Except Raika’s hair, which whipped around as if she were caught in a windstorm.
Eva gasped, and curiously, Scotty felt a weird tug in her chest. As if something inside her was being pulled.
“It’s working,” Raika rasped, lifting her palms higher as Eva’s head fell back, her mouth open as if in a scream, but nothing came out.
Nothing that Scotty could see, anyway.
Logan clung to Eva, his expression a mask of worry and fear, his eyes bloodshot and glistening with unshed tears. Poor guy—
Pain, as if a fist or an alien had punched through her rib cage from inside, absolutely wrecked Scotty. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t even collapse to the floor. She just stood, frozen, as a sensation of losing a part of herself, like an organ—maybe her heart—held her in place.
Then it was over, and she slumped back against the wall, exhausted and shaking, just as Eva collapsed into the chair, her head tucked against Logan’s chest.
The blood in the bowl sloshed upward, spinning into a funnel that made grotesque wet sounds. It started to form limbs, a vaguely female form…a head.
It rose higher and higher, becoming more recognizable as a female. Long hair, slim waist, breasts.
Harvester.
“No!”
Reseph’s roar drowned out the wet, squishy sounds. Scotty wheeled around in time to see him charging the partially formed body, his summoned sword raised, poised to lop off the head.
“Kill her!” he screamed.
Limos blocked his path. He wheeled hard to the right, only to get tackled by Ares and Thanatos. They took him to the floor, Thanatos pinning his shoulders and Ares straddling his legs.
“It’s not Harvester’s blood!” Hatred burned in Reseph’s eyes, his struggles growing more violent. “It’s Lilith’s!”
Oh, shit.
Scotty tasted bile as she looked at the figure. It was solid now, skin forming on the feet and spreading upward. The thing twisted and writhed, its eyes, now fully formed, gleamed with dark evil.
“I destroyed Harvester’s blood,” it said in a raspy hiss. “And now I will have her power and her—”
Scotty finished what her uncle had started. She hadn’t even realized she’d moved until she stood there, her summoned blade dripping.
Lilith’s nearly fully formed body turned to liquid, and her blood splashed to the floor.
For a few heartbeats, everyone stood still as the growing implications of what had just occurred sank in. They’d failed.
“How?” Aleka croaked. “How could this have happened?”
Ares helped Reseph to his feet. “Lilith must have found Harvester’s blood before you did and swapped it for hers. She probably arranged for Wraith to find it exactly where and when she wanted him to.”
“I don’t understand,” Aleka said. “What was her plan? Is she dead now?”
“No.” Raika, her eyes and skin back to normal, crouched on the floor and dragged her finger through a splash of blood.
“Harvester’s Grace mixed with Lilith’s blood, and she was controlling it from afar.
Like an avatar. The plan was probably to join it with her physical body. The power Lilith would have wielded…”
Scotty didn’t even want to let her mind go there. She turned, a bit unsteadily, to Eva. “How’s she doing?”
Eva smiled weakly, her eyes still closed, her head still resting on Logan, who held her so tightly it was a wonder she could breathe. “I feel better. Tired, but better.”
“So…” Limos absently rubbed her forearm, where the glyph of her hell stallion used to be.
Scotty couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.
Like her brothers, Limos had been linked to her warhorse for thousands of years, and even though it had been a carnivorous monster, its death at Lilith’s hands had been hard for Limos. “Where is Harvester’s Grace?”
“I can’t see it.” Idess sounded worried. “I can feel it, though.”
Aleka paled. “But we don’t have Harvester’s blood,” she croaked. “We’re done. She’s gone.”
A pall fell over the room as months of hope crashed and burned.
Tears stung Scotty’s eyes, and exhaustion sapped her energy. She barely made it to the couch before her legs gave out.
“This can’t be happening.” She wished Blade and Mace were here. She should have insisted that they be allowed to attend.
Raika studied the blood on her finger, fascinated by a drop that dripped down her knuckle. “Lilith just went to the top of my Most Wanted list.”
“She wouldn’t be on any list if your father had destroyed her soul instead of releasing her from Sheoul-gra,” Scotty snapped.
Raika turned, her body taut, her expression unreadable. “I know.”
Dammit. Scotty knew that what she’d said was unfair, but the pain was so raw that when she opened her mouth to apologize, all that came out was a sob.
“It’s over,” Aleka said numbly. “We’ve lost her forever. All we needed was a drop. Just…a drop.” She covered her face and wept.
Scotty wanted to hug her sister, but Aleka spun and rushed for the door.
“Wait!” Reseph caught Aleka by the elbow. “I think I can help.”
Scotty leaped to her feet. Well, she tried, but she felt so slow. This was hitting her hard. “How, Uncle Reseph?”
He swallowed. Looked down at his boots. “When I was Pestilence…” He took a deep, ragged breath. “Pestilence drank a lot of blood. It’s how I knew Lilith was here tonight. Some blood splashed on my mouth. I…tasted her.”
The horrors her uncle had committed when his Seal had broken, unleashing the evil Horseman, Pestilence, upon the world, never stopped. Scotty had a hard time imagining him capable of some of those atrocities, but she knew they’d happened.
“I carry the blood of everyone Pestilence fed from inside me. Harvester…she was one of them. If Harvester’s Grace can find it, I’ll gladly drain my body of every drop.”
With that, he slashed his arm open from elbow to wrist.
Idess let out a surprised breath, her gaze locked upward. “The Grace is forming again.” As Reseph’s blood poured out onto the floor, her gaze followed what Scotty assumed was Harvester’s Grace. “It’s swirling around Reseph. I think it’s looking for what it needs.”
As one wound healed, Reseph made another. And another. His slashes grew more vicious with every slice of his blade.
“Reseph?” Scotty stepped toward him, but Limos snagged her shoulder.
“Don’t,” she said quietly.
“But—” Holy shit, he was literally hacking at his arm now. His expression was one of pure anguish, and his eyes burned with unholy hatred. Hatred of himself. On his knife arm, his stallion raged, the glyph bucking and kicking. “What’s happening?”
“Something that’s been coming for a long, long time.”
“I don’t understand.”
Her father’s hand came down on her other shoulder. He looked sad, but he made no move to stop his brother. “He’s purging his sins. One of them, anyway.”
Reseph crashed to his knees in the rapidly expanding pool of blood. Head bent, he sagged, the knife falling from his fingers. Blood ran from dozens of wounds in his arm, on his torso, and even his chest. How many times had he stabbed himself? How much pain was he in, both physically and mentally?
“Idess?” The layered, 3D tats on Thanatos’s throat writhed as he looked over at Mace’s mom. “What’s happening?”
“It’s circling,” she murmured to no one in particular. “Circling…”
Suddenly, a thin stream of blood rose into the air the way it had earlier. Anxiety shot through Scotty. Last time, Lilith had tried to steal Harvester’s Grace. Now, Scotty was afraid to hope. Afraid to be crushed once again.
Please, please let this work.
The form took shape. Scotty held her breath as the skin began to solidify. Long, black hair flowed down its back, growing longer…just as it had when Lilith appeared.
But as the facial structure solidified, Scotty couldn’t hold back her excitement.
“Harvester,” she whispered. “It’s her. It’s really her.”
Harvester’s limp body lowered to the floor. For a heart-stopping moment, there was silence. Stillness. Not a single twitch or breath.
And then she took a huge gulp of air.
They all rushed her, laughing, cheering. Crying.
She opened her eyes, taking each of them in in turn, but when she got to Reseph, on his knees next to her, the color drained from his face, his blue eyes tortured, she paused. Their gazes met. She reached up, her hand trembling, and placed her palm on his cheek.
“I forgive you,” she murmured. “I forgive you.”