Chapter 31 Eryx
ERYX
I crept around the perimeter of Oleander Cottage in the pouring rain, keeping out of sight as much as I could.
In the distance, the sound of shouting sent me sliding into the shadows.
Right now, I had the advantage of surprise to help Ares and our people.
Monsoon season in Orphium was a bitch, but at least it provided good cover.
The harness I’d taken from Myrine fit a little too snugly around my chest, but the guns belonged with a necromancer. I readjusted as well as I could, giving myself a bit more breathing room. I’d known, of course, that Myrine liked to steal things. After all, she’d stolen the Maere’s swords.
But how she’d gotten a hold of a pair of spirit pistols, I didn’t know. The Authority had confiscated them all two hundred years ago. But there was a time when nearly all Roman’s people had them. If I was correct, these were my father’s.
I was fortunate they’d come properly loaded with bullets that would send even the most malefic of spirits into oblivion. The guns wouldn’t destroy them the way Ares could, but they would send them to the depths of the netherrealm.
I didn’t feel the slightest bit bad about having taken them from Myrine.
She was fast asleep at Hemlock House, knocked out by some fell draught that Serafine had brewed up for her.
The guns belonged to me or Ares, regardless of whether the Admiral was awake or asleep, and I would likely need them before the day was done.
There was too much going on now for me to indulge in the multitudes of questions I had about how Myrine came to have Roman’s spirit pistols.
When the time came, she was going to answer to me.
The group chat had gone eerily quiet just after Rhiannon left, and I’d used the geo-tracking app Ares had installed on both my and Avaline’s phones to find them.
They were, as I’d suspected, in the street in front of the cottage—or at least their phones were.
Neither of them had answered me, so I stopped messaging.
As I moved towards the front gate, I felt the reason they’d gone silent, rather than seeing or hearing it. Even through the torrential downpour, the air was taut with the electric deadlock between Ares and Magnus Necroline’s malefic spirit.
I hated to be right, but here we were. Magnus was wreaking his revenge on Ares for killing him, as well as fulfilling his deepest wish in life: to feed off the energy of the dead’s release from the underworld. Only now, if he got his way, it would make his spirit a monster.
As I reached the gate, I found my brother with his arms flexed tight, wrapped up in Magnus’ toxic aura.
Ares wore an expression of unmistakable determination, one I’d seen my entire life.
He’d given up so much to protect others, and now his efforts were a losing prospect.
The street in front of the cottage had caved in, leaving a yawning hole that glowed with a sickly green light.
Despair nearly immobilized me as I watched spirits clawing their way out of the hole, and they weren’t peaceful souls. Magnus had breached the barriers between the living and the malefic dead, the condemned. All of their attention was locked onto Magnus, and the struggle between him and Ares.
My mind struggled to process the chaos, to determine where to insert myself best. I was tempted to rush in, but reminded myself of one of our father’s most salient lessons about battle, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So I took a deep breath and reassessed.
The spirits emerging now came by the hundreds. Still breathing, slow and even, I moved to get a better view of the breach. What had to be thousands of malefic spirits teemed in the bottomless pit that yawned open on Eighth Ave. My stomach turned at the magnitude of our problem.
No emergency vehicles rushed towards us.
If the Authority had any clue what was going on, they had no immediate solution.
This was why the Consulate should have made better moves—done more negotiating than capitulating.
The entire city was in danger now—and if we couldn’t contain the breach, it wouldn’t just be Orphium.
The breach would swallow us all whole. All because the Authority believed we were an abomination of humanity.
Movement across the street caught my eye. Avaline and the new members of the Phoenix team, the Necroline Dynasty’s special operations unit, channeled peaceful spirits, creating a barrier around the breach between realms, but it was no use. The malefics were pushing back, overpowering them.
And then the screaming began. I fell to my knees, uselessly covering my ears against the eldritch noise.
The sound wasn’t simply aural, it was subaural, coming from the underworld itself, and as a clairsentient, it was nearly overwhelming.
Hot liquid squeezed out of my eyes and nose.
I touched it, and my fingers came away bloody.
Across the street, Av and the Phoenixes strained against the subaural sound, but none were affected the way I was. I was fucking useless. I couldn’t help Rhiannon, and now I couldn’t help my brother or Avaline either. My clairsentience was a hindrance, rather than a help right now.
My mouth opened in an impotent scream, but no sound came out. And then the pain in my ears, my head, receded a little. It felt as though cool waters soothed over the burning pain of the malefics.
Son. A familiar voice spoke in my head. I am with you. Will you let me help?
Roman. Dad?
Yes. Let me help you help Ares.
The cooling sensation seeped through me as I submitted to Roman’s spirit, letting him block out the screams of the dead. He had not possessed me—not fully, as I could still move of my own accord, and think clearly. But something was different. My hands sparked with the same power Ares wielded.
The power to touch spiritual aura. To control spirits.
Roman’s power.
I have searched for Magnus since my death, but he’s never dared return to Orphium until now, my father said from within me. This is the only way to atone for the mistakes I’ve made. You must use all of the power I have left and close the breach so that Ares can destroy him.
I took a sharp breath inward, shocked by his words. Did he mean what I thought he did? If I do that, you could cease to exist.
We didn’t know what happened to spirits whose energy was completely extinguished, but the prevalent, and most sense-making theory, was that there was nothing left of them to return to the underworld.
Inside my head, Roman sounded peaceful. Calm. Perhaps that is what I deserve. Before I could argue that no one deserved that, he continued. Eryx, my brother has always been out of control, and in life I failed to do what was needed. Let my last act be one you can be proud of.
His reasoning was hard to argue against. If these were his last wishes, necromancer tradition said it was my duty to honor them. “You are sure?”
I am, my father replied.
“This is honorable,” I murmured.
Roman didn’t respond, but the warmth I felt in return told me all I needed to know. He was doing this for me, and for Ares, and the mess he’d left my brother when Magnus killed him.
Can you get around the back of the breach? Roman asked as I shifted positions to get a better look at our situation. If you can, then we can hold Magnus while Ares banishes him.
“Yes,” I agreed, grateful for his centuries of battle experience. “I’ll get there; you tell him what we’re planning.”
The feeling of being occupied dissipated immediately. Roman had gone. I moved quickly, thankful yet again for the rain as the wind changed direction as I ducked behind a parked car in the street.
All of the neon signs in the area, set on sensors to turn on when it got dark enough, buzzed to life as the storm worsened.
In my sensitive state of heightened clairsentience, I heard each and every one.
As I skirted the breach, trying to reach a place where I could get a good visual on the malefic without being seen, I saw that he’d given the last of his sentience over to keeping the breach open.
He no longer emitted the kind of energy that suggested nuanced reasoning or discernment.
He was nothing more than pure hatred now, and he’d directed all that energy at my brother. Ares’ expression of concentration flickered for a moment—probably as Roman told him what we planned. I found a spot behind a rusting olive-green van to crouch down.
Avaline stood at just the right angle to see me. She pushed a hand through her sopping wet hair to keep it out of her mouth, nodding once. Her guides were keeping her abreast of our movements. Her hand went to her walkie and the new Phoenix team tightened their formation around the breach.
Ares was plotting then, and I saw the lines of his logic as his plan moved into motion. Av and the Phoenixes would hold back the dead, while Ares and I made one last attempt to destroy Magnus.