Chapter Thirty-One
Aed’s words filled me with such self-loathing that bile rose in my throat and I retched into the mud. She had confirmed what I’d somehow known since I first opened the portal. Known but refused to accept. Craos had been calling to his own blood. No wonder I had felt the urge to answer.
I had convinced myself that I was a dark Druid, that the darkness within me was different but normal. There was nothing normal about me. I wasn’t even fully human.
Aed raised a bony hand, and I heard screaming and the sound of more glass breaking as Owen, Jace, and Shae flew through the car windows.
They landed in the mud beside me. Jace groaned in pain, but his face no longer had a blank look.
Shae was silent and unmoving. I immediately tried reaching for Owen, who was closest to me. I needed to touch him. Comfort him.
My one finger twitched.
“Owen, I’m so sorry,” I gasped through my heaving sobs.
Blood from the wounds on his head streamed down his face, and he seemed paralyzed like me, but his eyes were filled with love when they met mine. There was no judgment. No hate. No doubt. Just Owen and his promise to love me. Always.
“Stay strong, Kira. We’re going to get through this.” Despite his obvious pain, his voice was steel and held the promise of retribution.
I loved him more than ever. How had it been only a few hours since we had held each other?
My gaze returned to Aed. I would kill her for this.
“What do you want from me?”
The Rootstone and Waterstone were wrenched from Jace’s pocket at the same time the dagger was ripped from Owen’s.
All three hummed and glowed as they floated in Aed’s direction.
In midair, the bone handle of the dagger disintegrated, and the stones moved toward one another until their edges were almost touching. A red light shone through the cracks.
And then they drifted toward me.
“You are more than our descendant, Kira. With your death, you will become the gateway through which Craos will return. And then he will free me at last.”
Owen’s eyes widened with horror, his panic reflecting mine.
“How?” I managed to ask.
“When the seal was originally created by the three Druids, it held Craos back.” Aed’s voice hissed from somewhere above me. Todd pushed my hair aside, and Owen made an inhuman sound.
“But when Craos broke the seal, he changed it, ensuring that when it fused with the blood of a living descendant, it would become a gateway instead.” Aed cackled.
“None of the Guardians knew this. For thousands of years, they thought the three stones would defeat Craos when, in reality, they will set him—us—free.”
I could feel the heat of the seal hovering over the bare skin of my back. I panted, frantic to move. To do anything.
“Kira,” Owen pleaded, “look at me. Just look at me, Kira. I’m here.” I stared into his beautiful blue eyes. If I was going to die, then I wanted to look at the face of my best friend.
“Craos needs a tether made with his blood to enter this world. He will use your body as his vessel. Something I could never do for him, although I have been tied to him for eons.”
The seal slammed into the middle of my back, and I screamed in agony as it burned into my flesh, branding me, fusing and connecting to the darkness within. Owen roared my name, but his gaze never left mine, and I clung to it, using it as a lifeline amid the pain and terror.
A fissure split the night air between us, and a portal appeared, pulsing with molten-red light, its edges flickering and licking like flames. And from it, a black claw emerged, testing and then tearing at the edge of the opening.
Kira. That oily voice wrapped around my mind and hissed my name. At last.
Another claw appeared, pulling and widening the fissure. I tried not to look, but the horror of it dragged my eyes from Owen’s face. Through the fissure’s opening and past the monstrous form of Craos, I saw a second fissure leading to a land consumed by chaos and fire.
“Craos has been trapped between his world, the Fire Realm, and this one for eons. But when you touched the stones, Granddaughter, you allowed the two worlds to connect at last.”
I stared in horror at Craos’s world. What once must have been a vast woodland was now a forest of blackened trunks that clawed at the sky with skeletal fingers.
Tributaries of lava trickled and flowed across the cracked and blistering ground.
The air was acrid and heavy with ash, and through the hazy, bloodred sky, demonic shapes flew shrieking, twisted by flame and fury.
Shadowbane.
A black claw reached for me, and as my vision darkened, my eyes darted back to Owen. I committed to memory the tiny flecks of teal in his storm-blue eyes, the laugh lines around his mouth, the way he looked at me like I was still the woman he knew and loved.
“Kira, no,” Owen breathed, his voice raw.
“I love you,” I whispered, and the world went dark.
I woke up screaming.
Not with my body because my mouth, throat, and voice were gone. But from somewhere deep within.
I was not dead, but I wanted to be.
Something was inside me. I could feel it press against the edges of who I used to be like a hand inside a tight glove. It didn’t fit. It was too ancient, too otherworldly. The pressure made my thoughts blur, as if I was trying to remember pieces of a dream.
You are still here, little flame, a voice hissed. How odd.
It didn’t sound angry or cruel. It sounded…curious. Like it had cracked open a toy and found a second toy inside.
I tried pushing against it, pushing it out, but it was immoveable. All I could do was watch helplessly as my—its—gaze landed on a man lying in the mud, rain battering him, his horrified gaze trained on me.
Owen.
I screamed again and pounded at the intruder in my body, in my mind, but it brushed me aside. With every moment that passed, I could feel it sink deeper into me, weaving itself into my nerves and the very marrow of my bones.
I was ceasing to exist.
But I wasn’t dead yet, and I wouldn’t give up. Not while Owen was still alive and in danger. Somewhere in this vast darkness, I still held on to the last pieces of me. My memories. My stories.
Warm hands on my face. Kisses in the kitchen, Owen’s lips tasting like wine and rosemary.
Leaves falling around us in crimson and golden hues.
A gentle caress against my back. Laughter and a twinkle of mischief in his eyes when he teased me.
Rain pattering on an umbrella, a curtain of water around us that sheltered us from the outside world.
Speaking to a room full of people, but only one had my full attention.
Letters on wooden tiles. Safety. Happiness. Love.
What is this? the voice hissed. It recoiled then surged against me, slamming against my memories over and over.
But my memories held.
It tried again. Black tendrils wrapped around a memory, but the memory was too bright, and the tendrils dissipated like smoke in the wind.
And then my memories of Owen yielded others.
My father hugging me when I fell off my bike. Me helping him make breakfast while his rock music filled the kitchen. Learning to swim, knowing he would be there to catch me when I jumped.
My mother humming lullabies while she braided my hair. Her graceful fingers on piano keys while she taught me to play. Wrapping me in a blanket while she read me stories.
Shopping for dresses with Shae. Laughing as we got ready for the gala. Eating cookies together. Knowing I could call her whenever I needed a friend.
Jace sitting beside me in a park, telling me Owen’s story so that I would run toward him at last.
Charles teaching me to play chess. Listening to my thesis ideas as we watched the sun set.
These memories were mine and they were untouchable.
Stop! the voice commanded, so I welcomed more memories, letting them pour forth like waves on a vast ocean, one after another. An ocean could douse a fire.
“You don’t belong here,” I whispered, and I pushed back, each memory of love and happiness throwing light against the darkness trying to drag me under.
I could feel my body convulsing, the seal on my back beginning to peel from my skin. The voice no longer hissed. It howled and lashed at me, its essence tearing from my soul in ragged tendrils of shadow, each one burning away into ash as the light of a memory disintegrated it.
But it no longer controlled me.
Impossible! How?
Its gaze fell on Owen, and Aed’s eyes widened in disbelief as she realized what, or who, gave me the strength to resist Craos.
“Kill him!” she screamed, and Todd stepped forward, aiming a gun at Owen’s head.
Time slowed, and I reached with my mind, my power growing ever stronger within me. It may have originated with Craos, but it was mine to control.
The roots under my skin, already covering my chest and shoulders, extended farther, covering my whole body. My vision darkened.
If Aed could control people, then so could I.
And if I was descended from Craos, then I was stronger than her.
I felt the familiar tingle rushing through my fingers. I sent it through the ground, past my shredded fingernails and the smears of blood and fallen tears. Through the gravel and pebbles and dirt. Past the soles of Todd’s shoes and up his legs.
Sweat dripped into the mud, and I shook from the effort, but I continued reaching out with my power.
It travelled into the arm that pointed the gun at Owen and the finger that pressed the trigger. Up through Todd’s black heart and into his mind. That sick, snaky mind.
I almost retched at the wrongness of penetrating another person’s thoughts and memories. I recoiled from it, but Owen needed me.
He would not die tonight.
I ignored everything except the one thought of Todd’s that mattered—kill Owen—and came up against a wall of onyx.
Aed.
I blasted through her barrier and sent her stumbling where she stood. Then I ripped the thought from Todd’s mind and replaced it with my own.
Stop.
He froze, his finger half pressing the trigger.
Everything paused. Rain drops hung suspended in the air around us. The wind stilled and the trees that, only a second ago, had whipped in the storm stood straight, tall, and completely silent.
Aed narrowed her eyes, and Todd’s finger twitched.
But I would burn the world for Owen.
I let the darkness inside me roar to life. Shadows charged from all sides to surround me, and I heard wingbeats in the air. A strength I had never known filled my entire being. I was raw, uncontrolled power. I was fire and brimstone. I was wrath.
I brushed Aed aside and snapped Todd’s neck like a twig. He fell lifeless to the ground as I slowly stood, finally gaining full control of my body. Steam rose from me as power crackled along my skin.
Aed looked at me in horror and stepped back, her hold on the others subsiding. Our car, which until now had remained suspended over the river, crashed at last into the churning waters and sank beneath its surface.
In front of me a fissure split the night air, a bloodred glow emanating from it. Tendrils of black shadow connected me to it.
I was still Craos’s anchor to this world. There was only one way to stop him.
I could keep locking the door, but it would still exist, and Craos would always be on the other side. Waiting.
The only way to end this was to enter the portal with Aed and destroy the gate from within so that no anchors to Earth remained.
I seized Aed’s mind in my own and forced her to walk into the portal. Her body jerked as she fought me and the flames licked at her as she hovered inside the opening.
I’d promised I would stop running, but was it running if I did it to save the man I loved? If I looked at him, I would never leave. So, I didn’t turn around when I spoke, knowing he would hear me. He was always listening.
“I have to do this. I’m sorry, Owen. I love you.”
I took one step through the gateway, but a hand clasped my own in a vise-like grip, and a foot stepped into the portal with me.
Owen.
Owen stood beside me, one foot planted on the gravel behind us, anchoring me to our world. To him.
“What are you doing?” he shouted. His jaw was locked so tightly that a muscle jumped beneath the skin, and his eyes were filled with fury. But threaded through it all was disbelief, as if his mind refused to accept what he was seeing.
“I’m sorry, Owen. I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “If I stay, Craos will always have access to this world. And you’ll die. I can’t let that happen.”
“There must be another way! Stay and we’ll figure it out. Together.”
“There is no other way. I’m his anchor.”
Owen’s expression shifted from pleading to grim resolve. “Okay. I promised to follow you…” His back foot left the ground.
“Are you crazy?!” I screamed, trying to push him back.
“You’re not going in there without me, Kira.” His face was dark with fury but set with determination. He breathed heavily like the portal’s forces were already wrecking havoc on his body, but his grip was firm. Warm and strong. I looked down at our clasped hands.
Owen had followed me. Just like he had promised.
But I couldn’t let him die for me.
Maybe I was nothing more than my dark magic, because I realized in that moment that I would choose Owen over the world. Every. Damn. Time.
I threw us backwards and away from the portal’s gateway. We landed hard on the riverbank, the breath knocked out of us.
Owen immediately tried to cover me, but I pushed him back and threw my arms out, forcing the last of Craos from my body in a stream of black waves that seemed endless. Craos fired back at me, desperate to keep the fissure open, but I gathered every bit of power and energy I could to fight him.
Almost imperceptibly at first, one claw disappeared and then another, and the fissure began to close.
I fought against that last claw, blood running from my nose, eyes, and ears. Forcing Craos back was killing me, but I would die to protect Owen.
I could feel Owen behind me, his strong arms holding me, keeping me anchored during the maelstrom. Aed screamed as the blast hit her, and she writhed in agony before disappearing.
Craos roared as the gateway closed, his last hiss sounding like a promise. Samhain.
With the last of my power and energy, I closed the fissure until there was a barely perceptible red line in the air before us. Using my mind, I ripped the seal from my back—ignoring the searing pain as my flesh tore and blood gushed from the wound—and slammed the seal into the gate.
Then I collapsed into Owen’s arms. He shouted my name, cradling me, but the sound of his voice faded with every one of my ragged breaths.
I had failed. The portal still existed, and we hadn’t saved Charles. Craos would return at Samhain, the first hour of November, when the Veil between worlds was thinnest. Earth had gained a brief reprieve, but it would eventually burn at the hands of a demon.
I was no Druid, no Veil Walker, certainly no saviour of the world, and definitely not the Chosen One. I was simply a woman in love.
But Owen would live. For now.
When death came for me at last, I slipped easily into its inky darkness.