CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE #3
Panic blazed through me. I needed to reach her right now, I needed to help, but there was another demon between the three of us, and it was blundering toward me.
I let out a snarl of my own and attacked the black-eyed giant with renewed, desperate ferocity, tearing through its oversized, dull mind while I dodged and danced around its skull-crushing swings.
I found its fear within seconds—this massive thing was terrified of bajang, a small pest in Hell.
My lip curled as I made them appear all around the demon.
The second my illusion made the giant go still, its club falling from limp fingers, I spun toward Lucifer and Viessa again.
My eyes met Lucifer’s first. He stood perfectly still, and he held the edge of his sword across Viessa’s throat.
He’d been waiting for me to finish off the demon so I could watch whatever came next, I realized dimly.
Viessa knelt in front of him, bleeding from a wound in her abdomen.
Pain and defiance shone in her wintry eyes.
In that moment, I didn’t care about my pride or how much I hated him. For her, I would beg, plead, and bargain. I would do anything.
Please, don’t, I mouthed to Lucifer. Please.
He made sure that our eye contact never broke. Then he pulled his sword back, looking as if he barely made any effort, and Viessa’s head fell to the ground in a spray of blood.
My scream echoed across the battlefield.
The need for vengeance burned through my veins. I killed another demon without sparing it a glance, keeping my eyes on Lucifer as we closed the distance between us again. When we reached each other, both of us came to a halt, just as we had at the start of the night.
I knew this would be the fight of my life.
Apprehension flitted through my stomach, but only for a moment.
I leaned into my instincts, knowing I just had to trust myself.
I’d trained for this. I put my right hand at the top end of the grip and the other at the bottom, closer to the pommel, just as Adam had taught me.
I bent my elbows and put them close to my body.
Then I looked at Lucifer with cold contempt, which was all I had left in my heart for him.
“Time to see if the devil bleeds,” I said through my teeth.
He just gazed back at me with a bemused look on his face, as if I were a child with a wooden sword. “Your move, my lady,” Lucifer replied.
I didn’t hesitate, because I knew that hesitation would get me killed.
I immediately began with a feint, but Lucifer didn’t fall for it.
I went at him again. He blocked my assault as if he knew my every thought.
I recovered quickly—with a circle parry, I caught the tip of Lucifer’s sword and deflected it.
“Good, very good,” he praised. He didn’t even sound winded. “I see my brother left you a gift.”
“That’s not all he left me.” I did a counter cut, stepping back and striking at his arm instead of his sword. Lucifer let out a hiss, but there was no pain in the sound. It was excitement. He couldn’t help it.
“Oh?” he said. “How interesting. What else was there?”
I lifted my boot, aiming for his groin, but Lucifer swung out of reach. My breathing was only slightly uneven as I replied, “You’ll see. Or maybe you won’t, because you’ll be fucking dead.”
“Confident words for a fledgling.” The look Lucifer gave me was almost pitying. “While my brother’s power may have given you some advantages, you have existed but a blink, my lady. There is still much you have to learn.”
Then he did a maneuver that I’d never seen before, faster than even my eyes could track.
Our swords slid together and there was a hard tug I wasn’t ready for.
I blinked and suddenly Lucifer held both in his hands, the blades crossed at the center.
In another blink, he pulled his arms back.
The edges of the swords sliced through my sides.
I couldn’t hold back a scream of agony as I crashed to my knees.
A ripple of awareness moved through the bonds of my Court—they knew I’d been hurt.
I knelt in a puddle of my own blood, breathing hard.
My head was already spinning, the world tilting back and forth like a seesaw, but I fought to keep one eye on Lucifer.
It wasn’t over yet. There was still work to do.
Lucifer took two steps closer, and I prayed he’d come near enough for me to ram a dagger into his heart. Unfortunately, the devil was no fool. He stopped just short of my reach and lifted the swords, putting those crossed tips on either side of my neck.
“Will you yield?” Lucifer asked. His voice was low and intimate, as if his bedroom walls were around us instead of violence and death.
My lip curled. I tipped my head back to give him better access and said, “Never.”
Another ripple went through the bonds inside me.
My Shadow Court could hear us. They could feel what was happening here, between me and Lucifer …
and a few of them had noticed something else, too.
An image brushed against my mind. Relief and excitement blazed through me.
Following the direction of where my Court was looking, I glanced to the west.
Savannah Simonson stood at the top of the hill.
The sight of her made a faint smile touch my lips.
In one hand, Savannah carried a compound bow, and the other was raised in the air.
Two leather bands crossed her chest and she wore loose pants tucked into laced, leather boots.
Every inch of her exposed skin was covered in whorls and words.
Some of them would be protective markings, I knew.
The same markings she’d put on me and the rest of my Shadow Court.
Apparently no practice was too arcane when it came fighting the devil.
Too bad those markings couldn’t protect me against demon glass, I thought with a wince as Lucifer’s sword bit into the edge of my jaw. Then I watched Savannah kneel, and the pain faded. “Become what you were meant to be,” I whispered.
Lucifer’s eyes narrowed; he knew I wasn’t talking to him.
He may have given me those words, but I’d taken them back and given them to someone else.
It was what I’d said to Savannah at the Unseelie Court last night, after I realized the symbol on the map was a bloodline crest—the bloodline Olorel had sacrificed—and that all the strange drawings scattered across the paper were skulls.
Once I’d seen it, Michael’s parting message was so obvious. He had practically left an instruction manual on how to kick his brother’s ass. He’d intervened. The corner of my mouth tilted up at the thought. Maybe not all angels were heartless. Maybe it was just one.
As Lucifer’s sword cut even deeper, I kept my gaze fixed on that distant figure, and Laurie’s voice whispering through my head. And there it is. Hope.
The woman on the hill wasn’t only a witch, or an apprentice, or a mother. Savannah Simonson was a goddamn necromancer, and a powerful one at that.
In the hours since we’d formed our new plan, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it.
The sequence of events that needed to occur, in perfect order, each one falling like a domino, to put us in this exact moment.
If Jassin hadn’t stumbled upon Damon in his garden and stolen him away, Savannah never would’ve become a necromancer.
If Lucifer hadn’t stolen the Horn and killed Michael, I never would’ve seen the angel’s memories and learned the truth.
Don’t do this, Michael had told Olorel on the day he tried to close the Door. The horror Michael felt during those final moments made sense now. Because he’d realized Olorel was about to use an entire bloodline’s power, killing them in the process.
The bodies were buried under the very field Olorel had been standing upon when he’d tried to close the opening to Hell.
He’d probably never intended for anyone to make use of them again.
But once I made the connection, and figured out what was beneath the Flint Hills, I’d remembered something else Michael had said.
The remains of an angel never decay.
My thoughts cut short when Savannah brought her arms up. Others had seemed to notice her arrival, too, and after she moved, there was a moment of frozen, breathless silence on the battlefield. My heart hammered in my ears. What if the spell hadn’t worked? What if—
A fleshless hand shot out of the ground at Lucifer’s feet.
He shouted and jumped back. Just as an eyeless skull popped into the open, another pair of hands appeared nearby. They were everywhere, I realized, spotting at least a dozen more with a single glance. Within seconds, the screams started. The battlefield erupted into fresh chaos.
I looked around in awe as the dead crawled out of the ground in droves.
The missing bloodline had risen again, every skeletal fighter with all the strength of an angel and none of the limitations.
Magic held them together, brought back to life by Savannah’s curse …
by her gift, I amended. Compared to the zombies that had killed Fred, these ones moved breathingtakingly fast, and they flooded the battle like locusts.
I was still wounded, my sides drenched in blood.
I couldn’t defend myself, and yet, there was no need—the dead didn’t come for me.
The marks made sure of that, just as Savannah said they would.
The devil bore no such marks to protect him, though.
Lucifer had been driven several yards away. He cut three zombies down with a single blow and raised his gaze back to me.
“It doesn’t matter,” he shouted, a vein standing out in his forehead. “Whatever you do to this army, no matter how many of my people or my siblings you turn against me, there will always be more coming through that Gate! You can never close it!”
My nostrils flared. Oh yes I can, I thought.