Chapter Twenty-Eight
Angie
EJ lay limp near Walter. The air roared with darkness and the stench of brimstone and death. A wind colder than the reaches of hell.
Walter was still sitting cross-legged, Willim’s head on the floor in front of him. Sprites and a larger демон в коробке poured into the room, toward my staff.
Nyoka, eyes fully orange and green, began to scream, her sword rising in jerky motions high over her former lover’s head. Screaming. Screaming. Fighting the compulsion to kill.
Shiloh threw her own body at the witch. Tackled her to the floor. Grappled with her on the flash-burned concrete. Cousin Wacko screamed a wyrd of power, syllables I couldn’t remember once they were spoken. Nyoka’s body stiffened and toppled. Quivered with what flashed like lightning.
I rolled over my brother. Tightened my grip on the trigger stone of my staff, my dead-as-dirt finger too numb to feel. I wrapped my right hand around my left to keep my grip. I was totally vulnerable to any mundane weapon, but I had to protect EJ.
I could see the blackness of the tunnel with my magic. It was rotating, the speed increasing, tightening, like a net in shallow water, gathering the dark in the room into itself.
The EEBs released outside spiraled back into the room, moving like tattered, glowing fog, stinking of open sewers, burned bones, and charnel pits.
Two. Three. More. Too many. Chorts and sprites. Incubi and succubi. Powerful and wily. All whipped toward me on the winter wind. Foul colors and the stench of death and burning bones filled me when I breathed. I had thought it was over.
It’s never over…
Wicked thought. Not my own.
An icy, frigid wind of the arctic in perpetual winter hit me. The room spun. I trembled at the deep chill. Darkness pounded at my eyes, into my exposed skin.
I’m going to die.
Except Shiloh was suddenly there again, her outstretched hands wrapped around mine.
EJ reached out a hand and touched my foot, his fingers warm. He may have been humming a protective tune beneath the noise of battle.
Our humans nearby curled together for warmth. Hands over their ears against the blaring high-pitched shrieks of the EEBs. Breath blowing white in the unnatural cold and the darkness. Inhaling burned my lungs, froze my lungs.
Time passed.
I tucked my head against Shiloh.
Cousin Wacko shifted position to give me more protection from the blistering wind, even as her own body temperature dropped. If not for the vampire’s strength, I’d have lost my grip.
And still more demons came.
But…after forever, the winds slowed.
Died.
There were no more dark things.
An outer door banged with an echoing clatter.
I could hear breathless sobbing. It came from me.
My breath blew white clouds.
Shiloh peeled her hands away. Swore too softly to hear, and gently began to pull my right hand free from where it covered my left.
As she did, I released the trigger, closing the black tunnel leading to the nothingness of the empty universe.
The ley line had twined around the staff, a hairlike tendril touching the small piece of The Glob beneath the blue tigereye.
The ley line powers unraveled and withdrew, back into me, pristine and clean and untouched by the powers of darkness.
The staff hadn’t tried to take any humans this time, nothing physical. Maybe it got its fill on the dark energies. I croaked a laugh at the thought of interdimensional indigestion. A cough racked me. I was sitting on the floor, uncertain when I landed there.
The last of the lights and the darkness and the stench of filth had vanished.
False warmth trickled against my frozen flesh.
Shiloh was no longer holding my hands. My cousin met my gaze, blinked, and collapsed to the floor, landing in an ungainly sprawl.
EJ groaned and rolled to his back. He looked dead, but was taking in huge lungfuls of air, each sounding pained.
I wavered. The staff clattered to the cement floor.
“Fuuuuck,” Shiloh muttered. “Kons…Kons…Ne’r mind. I’ll take care of ’em.”
A lot had happened in the seconds—hours?—I had been chasing ley line energies and sucking demons. I laughed at that too, but it was little more than a pained rasp.
Powered by the might of the Earth’s ley lines, my precog slammed into me. I knew…things. The maths of all the magics in the room were clear, easy as addition and subtraction.
EJ’s energies, his own personal maths, said he was concussed, but coming to.
Konstantin was down, full of holes, but not true-dead.
Shiloh, holding a bloody sword, dragged herself to him and cackled.
“Money, money, money. Show me the money.” Cousin Wacko cut down with a single strike and picked up his head by the hair, twirled it, blood flying.
Nothing tried to get out and possess anyone.
Karson was beheaded.
Willim was beheaded, a sealed containment vessel on his bloody chest, propped against the blade still inside his rib cage.
Nyoka was rising from the floor. She screamed. Eyes filled with orange light. Nyoka was still possessed.
Shiloh moved. Grabbed Nyoka’s arms, throwing her back. Grappled on the floor in the blood and filth.
If Shiloh killed Nyoka, the demon would body-jump and her proximity meant the massive EEB in Nyoka would possess my cousin before the staff’s powers could pull it away. The futures were certain.
EJ tried to roll to his knees and managed to vomit everywhere instead.
I made it to my feet, hands dangling like the dead weights they were, and surveyed the room with my souped-up magic.
Grizz was down, bleeding out.
Raccoon had slumped over Boots, protecting her with his body. Boots was near enough dead that I had no idea how to bring her back without a full trauma team on-site. The futures showed no trauma team nearby.
Pretty Thang was sliding himself across the floor toward Peewee, who was trying to stanch bleeding in multiple deep wounds. The giant woman had a handful of X-stats and Everhart healing amulets. Precog told me the two would be okay.
Walter was down but coming to. His eyes opened, gleaming their human brownish shade, untainted by darkness.
His elixir had worn off. He’d killed Willim.
The position as Master of the City of Chattanooga was his if he wanted it.
That was funny too, in the insane way of a traumatized brain, but my throat now ached too much to laugh.
I focused on Konstantin. There was a sealed vessel beside him. He hadn’t taken in an EEB.
Walter walked toward the fighting women. He bent, hooked a finger through a small circular handle on a containment vessel on the floor. Another. In his other hand, he picked up a sword. Hefted it for balance and weight. Futures shifted. Potentialities went darker.
EJ took a breath. Shoved himself partially upright with one hand. From a pocket, he pulled two sets of palillos. Vision wavering with darkness at the edges, I wondered how many sets of the castanets he’d carried into battle. How many he’d used.
The futures again altered in my mind, improving some outcomes. In others, people I loved died.
The third and final sacrifice on the floor was still alive, his heart fluttering, his breaths shallow and fast. Dying. That would be bad.
Almost idly, I wondered if I could save him.
I was full of power. Power drunk. Maybe I’d kill him instead?
My blue-white tendril of power was blazing, jacked up from the ley line.
I sent it across the room and into the sacrifice’s body.
Pulled all the moisture out of his tissues and into his bloodstream.
Gave his heart a little jolt to remind it to beat.
Sent a stasis working into his wound and clotted the severed artery over.
I had never created a stasis working or a healing working from raw magic, but the maths made sense right now, my mind open and my magic operating inside the ley line, the ley line’s power inside me. The man breathed deeply, and his heart steadied. Interesting. Since that worked…
I directed a hit of a healing working into Boots, a lift to her heart and lungs and kidneys.
Into her brain, not that I thought it would help.
There was too little life left in her. At some point I feared I’d howl at the moon in frustration and grief that I hadn’t saved the woman.
I added in a touch of stasis, to give her more time.
Another spark of stasis went into Raccoon, along with a healing spark.
Walter recovered his shortsword from Willim’s body and turned toward Nyoka.
His face was etched with grief and pain, the holes in his flesh already showing signs of healing.
Whatever had been between them in the past, whatever the woman had done to him, he cared for her.
He stood over her, watching. “Angelina,” he said.
“Do you see the demon still within her?”
EJ said, “I hear it.”
Walter lifted the blade over his head.
“No,” I croaked. “The elixir…” My voice whispered away, unable to speak, unable to tell them that the witches here in the demon circle had been able to dispossess their EEBs and be their own again. Anything they could do, Everharts could do better.
The sword started to fall. It was a clumsy killing stroke.
Pretty Thang lifted a weapon, shot Nyoka three times in the back of her neck, severing her cervical spine. Nyoka’s head rolled at a bizarre angle. Not true-dead, but close—paralyzed. Her eyes blinked.
The sword clanged on the concrete. Missing. Walter sobbed.
I shoved a stasis working into Nyoka. It was easy. So much magic. So much power.
I could keep it. I had handled raw power all the time as a child. Easy, so easy.
But.
Absolute power would destroy me.
EJ tossed Raccoon a set of activated palillos. Raccoon placed the castanets on Nyoka.
Shiloh was standing, her eyes focused to my side.
Ravensport. I hadn’t forgotten. Using hands and knees, I made it to my feet, and turned toward the woman, activating the staff.
A pop of sound and a whoosh of air alerted me that the MOC of New York had left the building.