Chapter 55 #2
Pluto finally responded. “I need a soul. As payment for crossing into the underworld.”
“Look at me, Bridger. Look at me,” Vega sobbed.
If he did, he knew what he’d see. Vega’s heartbreak.
It took everything inside him to drag his gaze down to hers. Vega’s eyes were bluer than he’d ever seen them, glowing like her lightning against the shadows interlocking with the electric shield.
“You can’t leave me. You can’t. You said no more goodbyes.” Her sobs hurt him, physically twisting his heart into a knot.
“I have to, baby,” he whispered, feeling her heart shatter along with his words. His hand fell from the shield.
“Why hide in the underworld when I have an offering who’d let us go anywhere?” Bridger asked down the newest bond crowding his head.
Death reached for Halo, sliding around Bridger’s thigh, and pouring off his boot. Its shiver of approval electrified Bridger’s senses like a zap from Vega’s own touch.
“It is done,” Summer murmured, drawing Vega’s attention for only a second. “He accepts.”
“You,” a voice growled before coming into full view. Marlena, with fresh blood stains dripping from her ears, stepped out of a cloud of smoke.
She charged Vega, no, charged him.
Marlena never made it, getting wrapped up in a vision of Arlet’s making—no, no, it wasn’t Arlet’s power. It was the shadows.
Everything blended together. The murkiness in his head clouded all the details.
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Bridger! You’ll damn us all!” Marlena screamed, getting turned around inside the maze of shadows keeping her from getting to anyone.
“I just got you back. You can’t leave me.” Vega let out another sob. “I need you. I love you.”
Her words pulled the thread around Bridger’s heart, locking it in place.
I love you.
“You said it,” he marveled.
Death slipped through her electric field, sliding along Vega’s cheek like the caress of Bridger’s hand.
Vega’s mouth parted with a gasp.
He’d wanted to do it, wanted to reach through and touch her beautiful face one more time. Just in case.
Instead, Death acted as an extension of his wishes.
“Tell me something real.” Vega fell to her knees, losing to the quivering muscles in her legs. “Don’t leave me with nothing.” She knew it was over—knew Bridger wasn’t going to change his mind.
Pluto’s shadows tugged at Bridger’s ankles, beckoning him down. “It is time,” he summoned.
Bridger crouched down, his boots grinding against the dirt and stones.
The shadows lifted her chin delicately, raising her gaze to his.
“I will never stop fighting for you. Not in this life or any that follow. My love for you is stronger than any darkness this realm can create. Me and you, forever.” They were the same words he’d spoken to her the day he’d given her the ring shimmering on her finger.
“Not even the underworld can keep me from you.”
Bridger stood, staring down at Vega, whose tears started to turn into sniffles of acceptance. “You’re needed here. Do what you set out to do, and don’t lose sight of it. I’ll be back for you, my Goddess of Death.”
It was his promise.
He would save Vega.
Emerald lightning flashed, traveling across an unseen current. Its crack of power shifted the ground underneath them, debris from the mine’s ceiling raining down.
Vega sat on her knees, eyes void of the happiness he’d seen returning in pieces. In its place, black, soulless eyes stared up at him.
Vega’s veins pumped Death into her bloodstream, inking her with what looked like black lightning spidering up her arms.
Bridger took a step back, centering himself in the middle of the circle out of necessity and pure shock.
Death had touched Bridger… but it belonged to Vega. Its presence no longer lingered inside his mind.
Bridger looked over his shoulder, checking on Halo.
He stared, eyes wide with fear, frantic for an answer. “I’m your sacrifice.” It wasn’t a question, so Bridger said nothing and watched as the shadows traveled up Halo’s shoulder and whispered a confirmation into his ear.
Bridger turned back in time to catch Summer’s laugh, the sound too happy for what was unfolding. “Will I have a new god to worship? Or will I fight beside you when he takes over every world?”
No one heard her question, not over the sound of Marlena’s fizzling electricity traveling towards Vega, no longer trapped.
Bridger opened his mouth to warn her, but Pluto’s shadows shot down his throat, filling his lungs with the taste of the dead. It seeped through his insides, into his bloodstream, tying itself to his soul.
Vega’s lightning consumed Marlena’s, mixing from her bright blue to a turquoise before making its way back to Vega in her natural color.
The gut-wrenching scream ripping from Marlena’s chest got caught in her throat as Vega rose from the ground.
My Vega.
If she can rise from the ashes of her curse, I can face the embers of the underworld for her.
“Come to me,” the voice of his future called.
The shadows returned his dagger, placing it inside his right hand with the exact placement he would have chosen for himself.
These shadows were not Death… They were something else entirely.
Vega’s tearstained face transformed as she ripped another god from Marlena without laying a finger on her. She sank deeper into the depths of her internal hell, sacrificing another piece of herself.
There was no more time to waste. He lifted his arm and spun around. “Jump.”
Bridger’s dagger sank into Halo’s heart at the same time they became one with the shadows.