Chapter 48
Seen
Jess and Callie began circling, spinning around to gauge where Max could emerge. Although Hope had virtually erased the front entrance, flashes of light from the courtyard lit up the sanctuary. Yet, there were still far too many angles and notches inside the old sanctuary. Max could conceal himself almost anywhere.
Jess’s growing exhaustion spanned decades. She’d been a part of Max’s world for too long and knew its effect. She could still remember the loss of sensation as he’d injected his paralyzing potion into her neck, then blinding vertigo as he heaved her over the railing of the yacht, and she plummeted into the darkness of the gulf.
Callie was in front of her, looking everywhere, but she was in a lockstep stalking movement with Jess. Never too far away—and, in Jess’s eyes, a little too close—as she spun her staff in a circle, then swept it, pointing it into the darkest corners of the sanctuary.
They appeared to have each other’s backs, though every few seconds, they would scan up to the altar stone to see Virelich’s feral face pressed against the side of the translucent stone, gasping, soundlessly screaming in fury. For the moment, he seemed contained.
Yet the sanctuary seemed to groan around them. Outside, the sounds of plasma bursts and energy discharges still echoed, some shaking the foundation of the entire complex.
Callie and Jess moved in a slow, deliberate circle, mirroring each other—Jess armed with plasma and energy distortion, Callie with her magic staff, swinging the glowing weapon, its laser green beam illuminating every possible corner and shadow of the space.
Jess’s boots scraped across the stained glass and chunks of plaster ceiling as she continued forward, but Callie was drifting too close to Jess. She knew that Max could already be moving, and the grip on her staff tightened.
“Callie,” Jess warned, voice sharp, “you need to shift. We’ve gotta hold until Isabel can get inside. Back up.”
But Callie wasn’t listening; she was reading the room and trying to pick out shapes among the destroyed front half of the building. Nothing was registering until she tried to recall the entire episode. There had been a flash of light, then an unnatural sound wrapped in the heavy cracking and twisting sounds of collapse. In Callie’s vision, Max had come from behind the flash of light.
Just then, Callie, peering into the left wing of the sanctuary transept, saw a flash ignite exactly where she was looking. The intense blast of white light was followed by a cascade of debris as another section of the sanctuary roof caved in. It fell with a growing roar, splinters and arches shattering, plaster raining all around them—and that’s when Callie connected the missing piece of her puzzle.
Sound.
Callie replayed her visions, starting with the very first whisper of insight. One by one, she opened her mind to wonder what sound, what volume, the lilting sound of Jess’s voice—they all filled in to make the Seer’s foresight whole.
The stained glass, almost vaporized from the battle, shattered by the percussion, was raining from above. Scraping and grinding as they fell, the little shards of leaded glass filled the air with a discordant chorale. The colors shifted into a curtain of jagged royal blues, gold, and blood reds.
Callie’s stomach turned. This was it.
Replaying the last moment of her desperate vision, Callie listened—then again—as a wail, a scream of pure fury welled up, masked by the falling debris.
Her eyes snapped to the right transept, but nothing. Then to the gaping maw where the towering front doors once stood.
“Jess—” she shouted, too late, but she was already moving, focusing months of worry and wonder into one finite thought. Targeting Jess with both hands, Callie swung her staff, bringing it tight across her chest.
Max appeared, wild-eyed, from behind the shower of glass. He was high in the air with something in his hands. A sword.
“Dearest Gods,” Callie screamed, seeing a double-bladed weapon flash in the light.
Jess had started to turn just as Callie came at her. With sound footing, Callie had both speed and momentum.
“My love carries forward.”
It wasn’t just for Jess. It was for the old witch in the stone, too—an instinctive benediction, a promise that whatever had been marked at Callie’s collarbone would not end here.
And Jess’s body rag-dolled sideways as Callie, with her staff gripped in both hands, violently cross-checked her out of the way.
But Max was still coming.
Callie only had a split second to react. She rolled, bringing the staff—the gnarled hickory prop, the custom birthday gift from Jess—toward Max, anything to get in the way of the sword as he came down on her. She braced for impact, and at the moment when vision and dreams became reality,
Callie’s world went silent.
The sword came down with a roar, but the iron-hard wood shattered instead of slicing clean through. The pewter runes, thought mere decorations, shot outward like startled birds, glimmering as the metal pieces spun free, the magic within shrieking loose into the air.
But his blade struck more than wood.
It hit Solrien’s stone, and reality shattered.
A soundless shockwave burst out, light within light. Shards of Jess’s worry stone, honed and polished for eons, erupted into tiny pieces, each a glowing star—every piece of the crystalline stone now a targeted weapon.
Streaking through the air, their ballistic pattern wasn’t random. Their trajectory had purpose.
They streaked through the air like meteors called down by the gods themselves. Lines of burning light coalesced around Max, the displacement of the blastwave hurling his body across the sanctuary, only to smack hard into Virelich’s soul vessel on the altar.
The streaks of Solrien’s stone fused as ragged glass rods, pinning Max’s frame to the charcoal containment box like a dissected butterfly. Blood surged as magic boiled, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
On the other side of the blast, Callie didn’t rise.
She’d taken the brunt. Stone splinters seared through her cloak, burying themselves deep across her collarbone. Blood was already pooling from an unseen wound, and she lay sprawled against a jagged chunk of the fallen ceiling, one leg twisted, her breath coming in awful, ragged pulls.
Jess staggered to her feet, blinking against the burst of light, ears ringing as if she had been standing inside a cathedral bell.
She saw her—Callie’s chest still rising, barely, blood pooling beneath her, lips already growing pale.
Jess dropped to her knees beside her.
“No, no….Callie—”
Callie’s eyes fluttered open. Her voice was cracked glass. “I’m good,” she gasped, forcing a smile. Her neck craned to see Max pinned to the altar. “Finish this.”
Jess turned.
There was Max, struggling against the ragged glass shards like the trapped animal he was.
But Jess—she was no longer broken.
She was rising.