Chapter 26 #3
I thought I could hear scuffling behind me, and I just begged the universe to keep Eva and Zale safe, to keep them out of this waking nightmare.
Abaddon did not seem to hear what I was hearing.
His lamplike eyes were locked on me, probing in ways that felt predatory.
Everything inside me shrank away from him, and yet I couldn’t move even a muscle.
I was still holding on to Ostara’s lifeless body, like it would protect me even though it couldn’t protect her.
“You are what he wants now,” Abaddon said, and I could hear a note of incredulity in his tone.
“How… interesting. There is power in you, but I sense no corruption. How does he mean to turn you to his purpose? Unformed, yes. But not rotted. Will he rot you, too, young one? Will you allow his rot to seep in? To transform you?”
“No!” I gasped, because my brain had finally caught up to what he was talking about, and the very idea of it repulsed me, even more than the creature speaking it into the night air.
Utterly unexpected, an anger rose in me, a spark that caught and flamed, and refused to be dampened.
How dare this incarnate of evil question who I was?
How dare he assume that I would fall the way others had fallen?
The anger burned away my self-doubt as well, until I was able to stare back at this monster defiantly.
I may still fear Abaddon, but I did not fear myself. Not anymore.
“She has fire, this one. Determination. But I dare say those are the most amusing to break. The satisfaction when they finally submit. Sublime.”
A hundred curses rolled around inside my head, but I didn’t utter any of them.
I couldn’t allow myself to be baited any further by this creature.
I had to focus on how to get rid of him.
But even as I thought this, panic set in.
I had revealed myself to a demon, and had no means to banish it or control it.
How would I get out of this? It was madness, emerging from the trees where he could see me, but I couldn’t leave Ostara here, even if there was nothing I could do to save her.
My brain was still fighting the idea that there was a dead woman still cradled in my arms. It was as though I thought, if I could just get out of this, I could somehow fix it all—just wipe it clean like a slate.
But the creature staring at me seemed to know everything I was thinking, and knew, too, just how impossible my hopes were.
“All these years, and he still seeks the very thing he sought when he summoned me that first night. He has flouted every warning, scoffed at every limit. And now he thinks you are the answer to that which has no answer in the mortal world. You.”
His voice was full of incredulity that should have been insulting, if it hadn’t been the embodiment of what I’d felt down deep in my bones from the moment I’d arrived in Sedgwick Cove.
I hated that I felt that way, hated that I agreed with this monster, but it was true.
Every doubt, every insecurity, laughed back at me from those merciless eyes.
“Shall we delay his gratification a little longer, young one? Shall we remind him that what he seeks is an impossibility? How many more years would he have to wait if you were not here? A hundred? A thousand? A blink of an eye to one such as I, but an eternity to him. Shall we punish him for such an eternity?”
All I could do was shake my head spasmodically. Every piece of magic I’d ever learned, every spell, every connection, the elements fled my body. I was just a girl, a girl shivering in the forest, terrified and alone.
“I think we must,” Abaddon whispered, slinking closer, his whole body rippling with the anticipation of another kill.
I wanted to hide my head, but there was a stubborn something in me that wouldn’t allow it.
I might not be able to stop this, to defend myself, but that didn’t mean I had to die cowering with my eyes shut tight. I looked at Abaddon. Looked past him…
Past him to a figure standing on the edge of the clearing. A figure I knew. A figure now running full speed at Abaddon from behind with a fury burning in his eyes.
It was Ambrose. And he looked like an avenging angel.
Before Abaddon could react, Ambrose slammed into him, sending the demon toppling to the ground.
The force was not only physical, but magical, sending a shower of colorful sparks into the sky, and causing the very air in the clearing to shimmer with furious energy as the two beings collided.
Flames erupted and consumed them as they locked together in a battle, slashing and tearing and roaring at each other even as their forms shifted and mutated, so that it was impossible to tell the true nature of either.
Lightning forked down from the sky, and as the thunder met its fury with an earsplitting boom, the edge of the clearing was illuminated again.
A shouted incantation. A jagged splitting of the ground beneath me.
I scrambled backward, dragging Ostara with me, as the earth prepared to swallow us.
But instead, it was the writhing, shrieking form of Abaddon I watched tumble into the chasm, and disappear into the belly of the earth, which began to knit itself back together with a deafening, crunching groan, sealing the creature inside.
I swayed where I sat. I caught a fleeting glimpse of Ambrose, darting away from the clearing and into the forest again. A hand caught my arm, and I looked up into the stark white face of my Aunt Persi.
“Wren. WREN. Are you okay? Did it hurt you?” she was asking me, in a voice from very far away.
The edges of my vision were dimming. I spoke the only thought I could pluck from the confusion, the one thing I knew to be true.
“He saved me. The Darkness.”
And then I knew nothing at all.