Chapter 26 #2
But that golden light shooting all around has alerted the acolytes that all is not well on the sacrificial rock. Some of them start to turn back, and the fight begins to change shape.
I keep running. I can see a gnarled trio of priests in front of me, chanting as they march around what looks like a rune burned into the earth.
I don’t have to know what it means to know it’s not good.
I pick up speed, and when I get closer, I launch.
I leap straight into the air, claws and teeth ready. I take down the first priest, ripping out his throat, and then I throw myself at the next. He tries to fight me but I tear him apart, using his body to climb until I can get to his throat, too.
The last one breaks and starts to run, but I catch him in two quick strides and make short work of him as well.
I realize as I wheel around that whatever wormy bullshit Vin?a cursed me with is gone. They settled down when the paste washed away, but I knew they were still there. My full shift cleared them off me. I hope Savi and Winter can do something similar, stuck in their bodies the way they are.
I run back and forth across the rune, tearing it apart and flinging the pieces in different directions. I dig my claws into it. I wreck it, because Savi’s rain is still pouring down, and the last thing I want is some evil rune lurking beneath the water when the crater fills again.
Seems like what’s happening now is an object lesson in letting evil things lie where they shouldn’t.
Only when I’ve destroyed it do I start running back toward that figure I can still see up above the rock in the distance.
The moon is moving over the crater, and she’s calling for me. She’s reminding me what day this is, and that only makes me angrier. I shouldn’t be here. I should be on the hilltop above the den, listening to the drums, getting ready to run with Ty.
I run harder over the crater floor. I make myself run faster. On the screen in my head I can see myself, a blur of speed on the far side of the main fight, zipping across the crater like a comet.
When I get to the rock, I jump. I bound up, rebound off the rock, and yank Vin?a right out of the sky.
In the distance I hear a wolf howl of loss and I freeze.
I can’t move again until I hear Ty’s voice joining in the chorus.
There are too many Kind down. Wolves and vampires are lost. This crater is awash in blood.
But the scene Winter shows me makes it clear that our losses are nothing compared to theirs, and that’s what I hold on to. The moon is fully above the crater now and I understand, somewhere deep in my bones, that this is Vin?a’s moment. This is why she’s here.
Sure enough, even though I knocked her to the ground—because she’s so fond of sucker-punch tackles—she is laboriously climbing to her feet in the janky, messed-up body that she stole.
“You are a pestilence,” she screeches at me. “You are nothing but a vile little dog—”
I shift as I throw myself toward her for the pure joy of rearing back with one arm, then punching her in the face.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I tell her as she sprawls out on the ground at my feet. “I want to talk to the girl whose body you took.”
The goddess is flat on the crater floor. She looks up at me, touching her face as if she’s never felt pain before. She looks . . .
Horrified. Shaken.
I kick her again, so she can truly experience it. So she can marinate in mortality and the delights of a mortal form.
“Where’s Briar?” I demand.
The goddess shoves Briar’s dark hair back from her face. I see that flicker of static, and I can tell when it’s Briar looking back at me. Her eyes are wide and solemn. The way she holds her face is completely different.
She gazes up at me, looking something like woozy.
“Why are you doing this?” I grit out at her. “And why are you doing it to us? We were friends with you.”
“Were you?” Briar touches her spilt lip and winces. “That’s not how I remember it, Maddox. You thought I was a freak.”
“Look where you are,” I shoot back. “You are a fucking freak. So what?”
“You wouldn’t understand.” She coughs, then looks bewildered and a little bit scared. I wonder what sort of rearrangements have happened inside of her, organs and bones, muscle and fascia. “I made a promise lifetimes ago.”
“Some promises are not meant to be kept.”
“You would know about that, wouldn’t you.” She snarls as she says that. “Behold the queen of the hundred-year king who will not take her crown. Who are you to talk about vows?”
“Actually, asshole,” I retort, “that’s what I have planned for after this. After I take you, and that wormy, disgusting death goddess bitch, and stomp you out of existence. Crowns all around, Briar. I wish you could see it.”
“You should worry about what you’re going to see,” Briar shoots back. “The darkness will come alive. Death will sing.”
“But I’m the one with the pretty voice,” I say. “Didn’t you hear me howl?”
I don’t wait for Vin?a to come back, to flicker into control of this body.
I don’t have to consult with anyone to know that what she’s trying to do here is take over Briar so she can have a corporeal form at last. Vessels are temporary, Ariel said.
What little I know about them is that a being like Vin?a can make hers near invincible. If she wants.
Long enough to channel all her rage and fury into a world she wants to cast into darkness, anyway.
The presence of all the priests in this crater suggests to me that they all want exactly this.
The moon is high above us. We are situated in the center of the crater. I doubt very much that they put this altar here by chance.
This is the moment. It’s now or never.
No one else is close enough to do this. It’s on me.
I see every moment I had with Briar since I met her at the end of September.
It all flashes through my head. Surly mornings in the kitchen.
Her strange, halting invitations. That moment earlier tonight when she looked almost as if I’d actually shown her how to free herself when she took that beanie off her head.
I think about all the things I don’t know about her.
The story of hers I wanted to learn. I want to know it even more now.
How did she end up promising anything to a death goddess?
Why would any fae—who live such long lives and can move in and out of worlds so easily—bother to give a promise when they’re far better at extracting them?
The moon beams down on us. I see the dislocated, discordant body in front of me ripple, nauseatingly. Then stretch in directions that should be impossible, especially all at once.
Time’s up.
I’ll tell the story of Briar, the dark fae who I should have gotten to know better, the way I want to, I suppose. I have to live to do it, however, and there’s only one way that’s going to happen.
I shift as I lunge, and I don’t go for the throat. Instead, I take one clawed paw and punch it into her chest. I go deep. I follow it with my snout, digging deep.
Things are jumbled around and not where they should be, but I know what I’m looking for, and I find it. I sniff. I open my mouth.
Then I rip her heart straight out of her chest.
I know it’s not right by taste alone, clear to me though I’m doing nothing but holding it in my snout. I can see it from Winter’s oracle perspective in my head. Smoking black. A piece of charred meat.
For a moment, everything seems to shake with indecision. Briar is Vin?a again, and the goddess opens her mouth to scream, or maybe devour the world—
But then she drops, like a puppet with its strings cut, straight onto the ground.
And everything stops.