Chapter 40 #3
Tears streamed down my face as I tried desperately to get to my brother. The shell had reached his waist, and, ironically, I willed it to go faster, to cover him over so he wouldn’t be able to hurt himself. We’d figure out how to get the thing out of him later.
Samhail, Talyn, and the twins were all trying now to get through Magdalene’s warding, but a pulse of power sent them flying backward onto the ground.
The symbiotic shell was at the base of Brix’s neck now, and the dagger he held inched toward his throat.
“No!” I screamed as Brix tried to raise his chin above the rising skin, like a drowning man struggling to keep his head above the waves. “Brix, don’t! Please!” I begged him with everything I had. I could see he didn’t want to stab himself, but I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t.
I needed to break Bressen’s hold! I needed to…to port.
My anger flared as I realized Bressen wasn’t trying to calm me. He’d been trying to make me forget I could port, that I could get away.
“Cyra, no!” Bressen shouted as I ported out of his arms and through Magdalene’s warding. “Cyra! Get out of there!”
I was directly in front of Brix as my eyes met my brother’s.
I grabbed his wrist with both hands as the blue shell crept up his chin, and I tried with all my might to hold it back.
I no longer had Maziren’s strength, but I had Samhail’s forcefields, and I sent a concentrated field to push his hand away.
To my relief, the dagger came loose from his grasp, but it was a small victory.
The shell was up to Brix’s lips now, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“Cyra, I love you,” Brix said before the skin closed over his mouth, leaving nothing but smooth blue shell there.
I watched helplessly as the shell finished its lazy crawl up Brix’s body to cover his terrified eyes, leaving those glowing yellow pits all the symbionts had. I heard Bressen behind me trying to get through the warding, but he sounded distant, as if my ears were stuffed with cotton.
Then Brix was gone, and I was standing in front of a creature that was no longer my brother. No longer even human.
I couldn’t catch my breath as the symbiont and I stared at each other. For several heart-stopping seconds, I dared to think that nothing had changed, that Brix was still there beneath that blue skin, fighting the creature’s control.
Then the creature let out an ear-piercing screech, and I felt white-hot pain across my shoulder as it slashed me with its claws.
I screamed and grabbed the wound as I stumbled backward.
I looked down at the tattered shreds of my dress.
Months ago, a bear had slashed my shoulder open, and I now had a matching set of claw marks on the opposite side.
“Cyra! Get out of there!” Bressen screamed at me from outside the warding, but he still sounded muffled.
I lifted my hand. It was covered in blood, and it shook violently as I held it in front of me.
I’d once seen a villager in Fernweh snap the tendon in the back of his ankle.
His foot had gone limp, and his calf muscle pulled up his lower leg as neither part had that critical piece holding them together anymore.
Something in me snapped like that now, as if the last thread holding me together had just let go.
A primal scream erupted from deep within me.
The world went red, and my power exploded, sending everyone around me – Bressen, the gargoyles, Talyn, and Brix – all flying backward to sprawl on the ground.
I felt Blink materialize on my shoulder again as his sharp little claws dug into my flesh, and I welcomed the bite of them on my skin.
A heavy weight settled on my back then as voluminous shapes stretched behind me, and it suddenly felt as if someone had turned all my senses up.
My ears rang with the din of every little scrape of a boot or heavy breath as the others rose.
My blood thrummed through my veins, and I squinted as everything seemed brighter.
I felt every fine hair on my arm as the air brushed against them.
The sensitivity lasted a few seconds before everything returned to normal. Everything but the weight tugging at my back.
On my shoulder, Blink made a soft clicking noise, and I wondered if it was the creature’s version of a purr.
“Cyra…” Bressen’s voice was full of awe as he picked himself up from the ground. His eyes were wide with shock.
I looked to either side of me to see what had drawn his attention.
Huge wings of deep crimson feathers extended out from behind my shoulders, sleek and beautiful like Bressen’s black ones. Their color seemed to shift in the light from the bright ruby of newly spilled blood, to the deep burgundy of red wine, to the black of endless nothingness.
“Cyra, you’re…you’re an angelus,” Bressen said with the same mix of awe and dread as before.
But he was wrong.
“No,” I said. “I’m not an angelus. I’m…”
I flexed the wings behind me. They felt foreign, and the muscles in my back and shoulders protested the added weight. I let the wings beat once, my body instinctively knowing how to make them work.
“I’m not an angelus,” I said again.
I paused to be sure the words felt right before I spoke.
“I’m the Nemesis Incarnate.”