Dae #2
I felt a tearing sensation and heard Killian's shout and Judy's chant breaking apart into a swallowed sob. And I roared with the specific and personal hatred of a thing that had been in my mate's body for way too fucking long.
Marcus screamed again, his voice distorted. Golden light bled from Alice's skin, growing brighter as it began to separate, forming a shape beside us. Translucent at first, then slowly solidifying.
"By salt and by fire," the coven chanted in unison. "By the four winds, by the earth and the moon—"
"NO!" Marcus's voice erupted from the forming shape, desperate and furious. "She's MINE!"
Magic surged inside of us one final time, and I felt Talin yank the last thread free just before Marcus's presence ripped away from our bond like skin tearing from flesh.
It burst from Alice in a surge of light, and suddenly he was there, throwing his head back and screaming his rage to the night sky.
"NO!"
The force of his arrival ripped me away from Alice and threw me backward. I slammed into the circle's edge, the wards crackling painfully against my spine. Alice collapsed forward, catching herself on her hands, gasping like she'd surfaced from drowning.
The djinn was beautiful to behold. Hazel eyes gone gold, dark hair, lean and tall and radiating power that made the air itself seem to bend.
Every vampire instinct I had screamed KILL THE THREAT!
"I can't hold him!" Emma screamed.
"My Alice," Marcus breathed, reaching toward her with a hand curled into a claw. "What have they done to us?"
"Get the fuck away from her!" I lunged forward. He was physical. I could fucking kill him myself.
But Jesse was faster. His dark magic detonated around us, blazing white-hot through the circle like it wasn't even there, stopping me right as I reached him. I roared with frustration that he was taking this away from me. She was mine. MY Alice. My mate! Mine to defend!
Marcus recoiled when he felt it, and his gaze snapped to Jesse. Something terrible and sad moved through his translucent face as their gazes collided.
"You," Marcus whispered, his voice filled with hurt. "You dare to try this again—"
"I more than dare." Jesse's voice could have cut glass. "You've been allowed to run amok for entirely too many centuries, father."
Ryan appeared at Jesse's shoulder, her magic rising to mirror her brother's. Twin djinn powers, perfectly balanced.
Faced with this new threat, Marcus's form solidified another degree. His tone was filled with wonder when he said, "Ryan? My child…"
"I am not your anything," she spit at him.
His eyes blazed with golden fire as they locked onto Alice, and then me, then back to his children, rage and obsession twisting his beautiful features into something monstrous. He roared when he tried to move and found he couldn't, held him in the embrace of Jesse and Ryan's magic.
I fell to my knees beside Alice while they had their father under control and gathered her gently against my chest. But before I could do anything to help her, Alice — my Alice, mine — pushed away from me, planted one palm in the dirt and reached for the dagger she'd dropped when she fell.
It flared bright in her hand when she wrapped her fingers around the handle, imbued with the ancient magic of his children's blood. Djinn script crawled up the steel, glowing with Jesse and Ryan's combined blood. His children. The only ones whose blood was strong enough to destroy him.
Marcus roared again when he saw it, and this time the sound shook the ground beneath our feet.
"You would try to destroy me?" His voice pitched higher, desperate. "After everything I've given you? The power you've felt these past weeks, the strength—that was me, Alice! I made you strong! I made you matter!"
My mate stood on unsteady legs, shaking off my offer to help her. Blood ran from her nose, and she staggered where she stood, but her hand didn't shake. "You made me a prisoner."
"You could've been a queen!" Marcus surged toward her, but couldn't break the hold on him. "We could have ruled together! The three of us! We would have been unstoppable!"
Alice raised the dagger.
And drove the blade straight up through his ribs and into Marcus's heart.
Marcus's eyes widened, his mouth stretching open on a silent scream as she stumbled back. And for one suspended heartbeat, everyone was frozen.
Then blood—thick, dark, and reeking of ancient rot—erupted around the hilt in a hot spray that splattered across Alice, Talin, and me. Marcus clawed at the dagger in a panic, trying to pull it free, tearing his shirt open, but it was too late.
Flesh tore as his ribs audibly cracked, one by one, bone shards punching through in jagged white lines.
I watched his heart pulse once, twice, three times before it collapsed in on itself like a deflating balloon.
His spine arched until it snapped, and guts spilled from the widening wound, coils of intestines sliding out in bloody ropes to land in the dirt at his feet.
His body folded in on itself, joints bending in directions they shouldn't, limbs twisting and breaking as centuries of denied death finally caught up with him.
Tendons snapped. Cartilage dissolved. What was left of his torso split open, and I heard Alice gagging beside me at the sight.
But I didn't try to cover her eyes. She needed to see this. We all needed to see this.
The smell was unbearable. Rot and bile and the copper tang of old blood, so thick I could taste it coating the back of my tongue.
Marcus's jaw unhinged, hanging by a single strip of putrefied tissue, and the sound that emerged from his ruined throat was barely human—a rattling, wet gasp that might have been Alice's name.
Then even that stopped.
What remained of the djinn collapsed into a heap of bone fragments and decomposed flesh, steam rising from the pile in the humid night air.
The witches stopped chanting. The wind blew out the candles that surrounded us. And we all stared. Waiting.
Cruthú circled above us, emitting a deep, resonant, gurgling croak.
Jesse stepped over the salt circle to stand near the pile of gore that was once his father.
No emotion showed on his face as he crouched down beside it.
He stayed there for a minute, then stood and set it on fire with a flick of his fingers.
Stepping back from the flames, he watched it burn as Cruthú came to land on his shoulder and Shea moved to stand close to him.
Reaching out, she took his hand without a word.
When there was nothing left, not even a smoking ember, we finally started to move.
No one spoke as the witches gathered up their candles and rune stones and other supplies. Their vampires helped them, knowing they were exhausted.
Alice stood staring down at the djinn's spell book. It felt cold and lifeless now, like with the death of the djinn it was now nothing more than blank pages of paper.
"What are you going to do with that?" I asked her.
Surprise filled her tired eyes when she shrugged. "I don't know."
"If I may offer a suggestion," Jesse said softly from behind us.
We both turned to face him as the others started to make their way slowly from the cemetery. I felt the slightest prickling on my skin that told me sunrise was only a few hours away.
"Destroy it," Jesse told Alice. "Destroy it as soon as you can."
She frowned up at him. "Why didn't you do that when you…" She stopped, clearing her throat uncomfortably.
"Burned my father?" he finished for her without an ounce of emotion. "Because it's not my book, Alice. It's yours."
With a nod in my direction, he turned and started making his way through the tombs to where Shea waited for him with Cruthú.