Chapter 38 #4
Gadreel roared a command, and the undamaged ones darted to the left and right, avoiding the shades’ onslaught, barreling toward the portal.
Damien and Alexei leapt for them, Damien taking the left flank and Alexei the right, their teeth sinking into the demons’ flesh.
Silver-blue blood spattered the walls as the Shadows took down their prey.
But no sooner did they vanquish one than another took its place.
The Grigori fought viciously, their venom-infused blades flashing in the flickering light of the portal. One of them had the better of Damien now, pinning him to the ground, gnawing at him with its teeth, its knife sinking toward his throat—
He gave a yelp of pain, and Niko bellowed in fury.
A tendril of Darkness snatched the blade from the demon’s grip and wrapped around the creature’s throat, tightening until it gasped and spluttered.
Its face turned purple, and its red-tipped claws pulled fruitlessly at the band that ensnared it, struggling to get free.
A moment later, it was naught but a shriveled heap. But Damien…Damien was bleeding—
“No,” Sofi signed, each movement jerky. “Saints, no.”
She ran for her Shadow, who struggled to his feet, his teeth bared and a growl rumbling from his chest as he backed her up, toward relative safety.
Katerina bit her lip, fear trembling through her.
A venom-infused blade couldn’t kill a Shadow in the form of his black dog, but it could wound him, and badly.
The demon had slashed at his leg, trying to incapacitate him, and Damien limped, off-balance, his fur slick with blood.
“Gods.” Ana’s jaw was set, her fingers drumming against her leg as Katerina had often seen them do when her friend sought to channel excess energy. “We’re cornered like kittens in a barrel. Katerina, think. There has to be a way out.”
Katerina was thinking, to little avail. Saints, what could she do?
They were trapped here, their magic useless.
Fire would kill them all; water couldn’t breach the fortress; earthmagic would bring the building down around them; and wind…
could she and Sofi use that to save them somehow?
What good could witchwind do in a tiny room inside a library, writhing with tendrils of Darkness?
What if she tried, only to send the shades straight at her friends and kill them?
Sofi stumbled back to Katerina and Ana, her face white with worry and her hands shaking. “I have antivenin,” she signed, gesturing to her pack. “Why didn’t he let me help?”
They all knew the answer: unless a Shadow’s life was in mortal danger, there was no way he’d turn from a fight. Even as blood dripped from his injured leg, Damien had charged back into the fray. But Niko…it wasn’t his life that was in danger. It was his soul.
If he did what he intended—if he drank this Darkness down—there would be no coming back. His soul would be consumed, its Light extinguished. He would be no more than what he feared: an instrument of the Dark. A weapon to be destroyed, before it did its master’s bidding.
Katerina couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t lose Niko again, not like this.
There was no escape to the left. None to the right. None forward. And behind them was that flickering curtain, a gateway to…somewhere.
For all she knew, it would lead them to the Underworld. Straight back to Rivki, where the remaining Druzhina waited to capture and execute them. Into the heart of the Void.
But what choice did they have? Damien was wounded, and though Alexei battled on, ripping out the entrails of a demon who sought to get to Ana, he would tire soon.
There were so many more of the Grigori, a battalion’s worth.
The demons wouldn’t stop coming, and the clock was ticking, and at their backs lay the mystery the Magiya’s warriors had laid down their lives to protect.
And here stood Niko, his jaw set and his gray eyes blazing with obsidian flames, wielding a power that would obliterate his soul to save their lives.
She couldn’t let it happen. She wouldn’t.
Katerina glanced at her friends, their faces blurred by the tears that clouded her eyes, and jerked her head at the portal. And then she stepped forward, grabbed her Shadow by the arm, and tugged with all her strength.
The moment her fingers touched him, ice seeped into her veins, as if she’d plunged headlong into the Vohdanya.
Shivering, she clung tightly, refusing to let go.
He fought, baring his teeth and snapping, but then Alexei and Damien were there too, pressing their bodies against him, shoving him backward.
Niko roared at them, tendrils of his shades separating from the rest and coiling toward his fellow Shadows, and for a terrible instant, Katerina feared the worst.
But the shades stopped, hanging a hair’s breadth from Alexei and Damien’s fur. Niko shot them an incensed, agonized look, then renewed his fight to get free.
In the middle of the room, the rest of his shades still battled the demons; some had shriveled to nothing, mere husks of their former selves, but others fought on, evading his grasp.
Gadreel’s commands rose above the melee, urging his soldiers onward.
His wings sprang from his back, onyx and massive, and he soared toward Katerina, his blue eyes lit from within by hell’s own fire.
She choked, horrified, as his body swelled and twisted, contorting.
“Oh, gods,” Ana whispered. “Katerina—”
But she never got to hear what Ana meant to say, because a thunderclap split the air.
Midflight, crimson-tipped claws ripped their way out of Gadreel’s fingertips and a spiked rack of horns burst through the cage of his skull, like roots shoving through reluctant earth.
Barb-coated scales coated his skin, black as pitch, and serrated ridges bracketed his spine.
His lips drew back, revealing venom-coated fangs as long as Katerina’s forearm.
“Niko!” she shrieked, digging her nails into her Shadow’s arm. But he wouldn’t budge more than an inch, no matter how hard the five of them tried. It was as if the shades had given him unnatural strength.
Gadreel hovered above them, his wings fully extended, blocking out the light. Venom dripped from his fangs, sizzling as it made contact with Katerina’s gear.
“You have nowhere to run, Little Firebird.” The words were a hiss, as if a serpent had spoken aloud. They were in the room and in Katerina’s head; they were a portent and a promise. “Give yourself to me, and your friends will live.”
“He’s lying,” Sofi signed, her fingers trembling. “Don’t do it, Katerina, please.”
Once, Katerina had offered herself to the Dark Angel of War to save her Shadow. She would never do so again. “Sofi,” she said, low-voiced. “With me.”
Together, they summoned their witchwind.
It unfurled from their fingertips in a gust so strong it blasted Gadreel back and away, and Damien howled in triumph.
The Dark Angel of War soared through the air, his minions in his wake, and into the corridor beyond, where the books lay piled.
The demons’ snarls and shrieks competed with the frenzied rustling and flapping of loose pages, like a flock of frantic birds scattering amidst a massacre.
Katerina didn’t care. If the alternative was death, then to the Saints with finding answers in books. They would defeat Gadreel and his minions, send them flying through the fortress and into Lake Svetloyar, and then the Mavky could have them.
For a moment, she allowed herself to hope.
But then, through the whirl of ancient paper and the twisting gloom of Niko’s shades came retribution. Gadreel dove for them, wings folded and gleaming fangs bared, and Niko stiffened in her grip. He spread his arms wide and tilted his head back, preparing to drink the Darkness down.
Oh, Saints, no.
“Don’t do this!” she pleaded, pulling as hard as she could on his outstretched arm. “Damien, Alexei, help me—”
Together, they tugged and shoved, but her Shadow didn’t yield. And Saints, Gadreel was five inches away now—three—two—
“My little Firebird. At last.” The demon’s claws scraped her arm, and Katerina screamed, terror searing her throat.
Staring into his blazing eyes from inches away was like gazing into the abyss. His slit pupils expanded, bleeding outward until his eyes became fathomless tunnels of solid black. Hunched shapes twisted in their depths; hellhounds howled in victory; a thousand broken, bent souls wept.
And then, the Dark Angel of War shuddered.
Katerina tore her gaze away from the pits of his eyes to find Niko’s shades twining around his ankles, like the Lisovyki’s vines.
They coiled upward, binding Gadreel’s legs, then wrapped around his scaled torso and pinned his wings.
The demon ripped at them with his crimson-tipped claws, but he might as well have been grappling with smoke for all the good it did.
He choked as the shades wound around his throat, tightening until his blackened, bifurcated tongue lolled from his mouth.
Niko could kill him. But the price wasn’t one Katerina was willing to pay. She would get them both out of here, if the effort tore her body apart.
Her fingers had gone numb where they gripped her Shadow’s arm, but she clung tight, even as her skin burned as if from frostbite and her bones ached. She channeled every bit of her magic, every last inkling of her strength.
To hell with the Magiya’s secrets. Let the damned thing burn, and the demons with it.
In her mind’s eye, she pictured the library’s profusion of books: tumbled onto the floor, jammed like crooked teeth on the shelves, crushing the bodies of the scribes and warriors who had died protecting their sanctuary.
And then she sent her witchfire outward, catching every single one of them aflame.
At first, there was only a faint crackle, as if a campfire burned in the distance.
But then, the sound grew into a snapping, hissing beast. It roared down the hallway toward them, its jaws open, breathing flames as it went.
She could feel it deep in her body: this was her fire, and it had come when she called.
Ana shrieked, her face gone deathly pale and her eyes glazed with terror, as the beast Katerina had summoned roared into the room.
Tongues of flame lashed Gadreel’s army, and the demons screamed as they burned.
In the distance, glass shattered as the windows of the Magiya’s rotunda exploded.
The building heaved, wailing as its floorboards gave way.
Nails flew through the air, the projectiles narrowly missing them thanks to Sofi’s witchwind.
“You’re fools,” Gadreel roared, fighting the shades that bound him. “We will all die here, and for what? Because you refused the offer to fight by my side?”
Katerina ignored him. Heat licked along her body, searing her skin. Sweat slicked her spine. “Go,” she screamed at Alexei, Damien, Sofi, and Ana. “Get out of here before the portal collapses!”
“We’re not leaving—” Ana protested.
“Go!”
Tears rolled down Ana’s face as she leapt through the shimmering portal. Casting a miserable glance over her shoulder, Sofi followed, the two Shadows trailing in her wake. The curtain of light closed behind them, as if they had never been there at all.
Strips of wallpaper peeled away like curling tongues, revealing the scorched plaster beneath.
Flecks of fiery parchment rained down on Katerina, stinging every bit of exposed skin.
Desperate, she cradled her Shadow’s face in both hands, heedless of the pyre that raged around them and the icy sensation that trickled through her veins.
His eyes were wide and blank and unseeing, the Darkness rippling in their depths.
Gadreel was shouting something, the words unintelligible over the cavernous bellow of the fire, but Katerina had no time for him.
“Niko,” she said, and opened their bond.
Down it, she sent every memory of the two of them together, every kiss and touch, every victory in battle, every bit of grief and joy.
“Come back to me. I love you, now and always. If we die, we die together, for I will not leave your side.”
The flames gusted closer, the bellow now a violent, air-sucking howl, accompanied by the screech of rending metal and the thud of falling beams. With a boom and a groan, the roof ripped free, the rafters collapsing inward as the shingles whirled up and away.
Wooden shards tumbled all around them, missing them by inches.
But Katerina held fast to her Shadow, refusing to let go.
She had raised him from the Underworld. Surely, she could wrest him from the clutches of his shades. In his heart of hearts, this wasn’t what he wanted. This was a decision born of desperation, of the conviction that there was no other way.
Well, then Katerina would have to believe enough for both of them.
“Niko,” she said, again and again. “Come back to me.”
Beneath her touch, he shivered as if freezing, despite the unbearable heat of the room. Bit by bit, like ink seeping into an empty well, his soul filled his eyes once more. He blinked at her, the flames reflected in his gray irises. “Katya,” he said, the word ripped from his throat. “Why?”
“Do you trust me?”
One scorching breath. Two. And then her Shadow nodded.
“Then set him free.” She gestured at Gadreel. “And live.”
Niko set his jaw, stepping away from her, and for a terrible moment, she thought he would deny her. She took hold of his arm once more, his muscles rigid under her ice-cold grip.
Together, they stared at the Dark Angel of War, in his prison of shades. And then, with an effort so great that it resounded down their bond, Niko let go.
His shades recoiled toward him in a wave of Darkness, absorbing back into his body.
An instant later, Gadreel’s wings unfurled and he arrowed toward the gaping hole that had once been the roof of the Magiya, disappearing into a haze of smoke and ash.
His howls of fury rang in Katerina’s ears as she leapt through the portal and into the unknown beyond, dragging her Shadow behind her.