Chapter 12 #2
Despite being viciously choked, Reck twists in the Cataclysm’s hold, drops the knife into his free hand, and stabs him in the heart.
His father stumbles, dropping the blood-tipped antler.
Brought into play by my sudden terror, the energy of the intersection point continues to stream around us all, swamping the portal and suffocating that vortex of anti-essence.
The gryphon wrenches himself from the portal’s grasp, falling to the ground.
The portal snuffs out.
The Cataclysm stumbles again, as if losing his connection to the portal is another blow. Holding the blade still pinned at his chest, he flings Reck to the ground at my feet.
Reck gasps for air, hacking through a bruised and bleeding neck. I step over him, closing the distance to the Cataclysm.
The gryphon and the dragon hesitate.
I know I’m now too near to their target for them to strike, but I only have eyes for the antler the Cataclysm dropped and all the damage I know it might do. With my aunt’s history fresh in my mind, it’s my soul-bound mates I fear for the most.
The Cataclysm starts laughing. A horrible hacking, grinding sound that prickles down my spine — in warning. Blackened blood speckles across his lips quicker than the now-steady deluge of rain can wash it away.
Severely injured, my aunt’s rejected soul-bound mate watches me reach for the short spear made from the celestial dragon’s antler. Then, moving in a blur, he latches his hand around the spear as I bend to retrieve it. He holds it against me, as if I have any fear of this weapon of his construction.
I don’t.
More of that blackened blood seeps around the blade still jutting out of his chest.
“Step back, Zaya,” Reck rasps through his only half-healed throat, slowly rolling onto his feet.
I lunge instead, wrapping my hand around the antler even as the Cataclysm tries to stab me with it.
The wickedly sharpened point stops inches from my heart.
The Cataclysm snarls, pressing harder, putting more of his considerable might behind the attempt to stab me through the chest. He doesn’t gain another inch.
“This weapon cannot be used against me,” I say, my words creating pure fact as I utter them. “Or anyone else now.”
Under my hand, all the essence embedded into the hastily hewn spear, all the power the Cataclysm hoped to harness from my blood, crumbles under my touch. Rendering the weapon inert.
The cu-sith takes this moment of distraction to strike. Tearing through Reck’s flesh with barely any warning, the massive beast has his teeth fixed around the Cataclysm’s still-outstretched arm before his father can do more than stumble back and twist into a defensive position.
They go down in a fury of teeth and claws, ripping into each other. Dark blood threaded through with the essence of the cu-sith and the anti-essence of the Cataclysm sprays across the rock. The Cataclysm slips on the wet ground, going down. The bluff actually rumbles with the impact.
The cu-sith goes for his throat. The Cataclysm gets a knee between him and the grim reaper, rolling to the side and almost managing to toss the beast off the cliff. The cu-sith hooks his claws into the craggy rock.
But before the beast can regain his footing, the Cataclysm makes it onto his knees, dramatically yanking the knife free from his chest.
I shout, darting forward.
Stupidly.
Because like he’s anticipated me, the Cataclysm pivots on his knees and slits my throat with the blade. As if that was his plan all along.
The dire weapon — once coated in Disa’s preserved blood, used to murder his soul-bound brother, then twisted to a new purpose by Bellamy and Reck — slices through my skin.
The pain takes longer to register.
The cu-sith shoulders me away from the Cataclysm, shoving me to the side hard enough that I come down on my wrist and feel it snap.
The cu-sith’s momentum carries him directly into the path of his father’s next strike — a direct upward plunge … into the beast’s heart.
The cu-sith hovers there, momentarily suspended, horrifyingly connected to his father.
Then his front legs buckle.
The cu-sith falls.
Cradling my broken wrist to my chest, I wrap my hand around my throat, but the wound there is already healing over.
But my blood …
My blood is on the dire blade … in the cu-sith’s chest.
The Cataclysm remains on his knees, chest heaving, bleeding heavily, and watching as essence writhes and twists over his eldest son.
The cu-sith transforms, shifting into human form in an attempt to heal himself, or maybe simply to dislodge the knife.
Naked and streaked with blood, Reck simply falls back onto the craggy rock, unable to catch himself.
The blade still juts out of his chest.
A blade coated in my blood.
Muta appears before me, clearly using me as an anchor to teleport into the middle of this bloody fucking mess. The death god trapped in the body of a bushmaster strikes at the Cataclysm before I can shout at him, sinking his venomous fangs into the Cataclysm’s exposed neck.
The Cataclysm stumbles to his feet, dragging Muta with him.
The mortal wound at his chest weeps blood laced with essence, his body trying to heal the wounds inflicted by the cu-sith’s claws and teeth.
Still unsteady on his feet, he rips Muta from his thick neck, along with a chunk of flesh, flinging him off the side of the bluff.
Energy contracts around the bushmaster as he falls out of sight. Then Muta reappears, settling tightly around my neck. Too tightly, as if trying to protect my own clearly vulnerable throat.
The gryphon hits the Cataclysm from above. I didn’t even feel him take flight again. The strike knocks the Cataclysm directly into the dragon’s maw.
The Cataclysm and the dragon both tumble off the edge of the cliff. The gryphon dives after them.
I should … I should help … I should be trying to seal the dimensional breach, but …
I blink.
All of Reck’s threads, all his life force — all his vibrant and multilayered threads of fate — darken, then begin to crumble into ash around me.
I throw myself forward, heedless of my knees on the rock or my still broken wrist. I grab for those threads. The two most vibrant of them lash around my hand and forearm. The last two threads.
The terrible, soul-deep wound that I thought was healed yawns open in my chest. But I hold fast to those two threads, crawling across the rock toward Reck.
He’s on his back and gazing up at the darkly clouded sky, rain pummeling him. I lean over him, holding those fucking threads tightly as I try to shield his face from the downpour.
Reck meets my gaze, eyes practically bleeding pain. “Maybe in the next lifetime … my love … my Larkspur.”
“Fuck you, Reck,” I snarl. “I’m the Conduit now. There is no next lifetime for me.”
He laughs. He fucking laughs at me.
Then he dies.
Even with all the power I wield, I can’t bring someone back from the dead.
His dark eyes are still open, but they see nothing now.
I’ve lost my mate. I’ve lost him. He was mine, mine to protect, and Disa tried to take him from me. She tried, but even she couldn’t do it. The energy that bound us was too powerful even then, even when we were still so young …
I press my hand to Reck’s chest, the blade between my thumb and forefinger. The wound isn’t bleeding anymore, but …
I can feel him.
I can feel Reck and the cu-sith. Those last two threads still cling to my wrist, like faint echoes.
Only the universe is powerful enough to take my mate from me.
And I fucking command the universe.
Energy explodes from me as I extend all my senses in all directions. I pull all the essence at my command, all the essence of the intersection point, and I direct it into those fading threads, the connection to the cu-sith the thicker of the two.
I fucking hold my soul-bound mate on the edge of the aether. Then I throw my head back and scream …
“Precious!”
Muta disappears from around my neck, as if I’ve commanded him to find the young awry for me. And maybe I have, but all I can focus on is holding … holding fast and pouring all of myself into this tenuous, final connection to Reck.
Time passes oddly — all in a rush and then not at all. I’m aware of an ongoing battle taking place around the bluff, in the water and on the beach, but the life force of the gryphon and the dragon pulses with so much vitality and power that I don’t pay close attention.
I hold onto Reck and the cu-sith’s life force, vaguely aware that I’m defying the universe in doing so … and that there will be ramifications. Ramifications that I might be willing to pay, but that might also lash back against someone else who —
Presh is suddenly beside me, sobbing. Her hands are over mine on Reck’s chest, energy pouring out of her. I’m not certain how long she’s been here. Muta is coiled next to her, using her body as a shelter from the rain and keeping watch.
Then Bellamy is there, snarling something right in my face, but I can’t hear the actual words if there are any.
I just hold. I hold steady and true. She shouts again.
“He’s mine!” I cry. “He’s fucking mine!”
“No one is fighting you,” Bellamy says. “But you have to let us help!”
I blink, clearly losing another chunk of time. Because when the night comes into sharper focus around me, the rain has stopped.
Rought and Rath both stand naked and panting behind me, slightly to the side. Their energy is depleted but still vibrant. Presh is on her knees on the other side of Reck’s supine body. Bellamy kneels by his head.
The former dire awry tips Reck’s head back and carefully pours something down his throat. “I didn’t think these would be for this asshole,” she mutters, though without heat. “We have to remove the knife.”
“But … but …” Presh stutters.
The younger awry is dripping wet, as are we all. So Presh was clearly out with me on the bluff for a while before the rain stopped.
“The knife is impeding Reck’s healing,” Bellamy says, trying to be patient as she dribbles a second brew into his mouth, then massages his bruised throat.