Chapter XXXI #2
“You’re just like your mother. You know she was a whore, right?
She fucked both of them. Shepherd and Mann.
At the same time. Well—” He shot a cruel smile down at Vic.
“Not at the exact same time, I don’t think.
But you know what I mean. And you’ll do the same, I can tell.
You think I don’t see the way Max looks at you?
That’s the only reason he let this go on so long.
He put us all in this predicament because he never got over Meredith. And look, here comes her replacement!”
Aren and Max and Meredith. It all came back to them.
Anger shot to the surface of Vic’s muddled mind.
Nathaniel threw the past at her like it meant a goddamn thing.
He’d tried to kill her, at least once, and he thought the sexual habits of a long-dead woman worth mentioning in the aftermath?
He thought it mattered somehow, who fucked whom, when there was blood on the line.
He was going to try to kill her again, and he had convinced himself it was warranted because of his own delusions about Vic’s interest in middle-aged men. How dare he. How dare he.
The blade in Vic’s hand shot forward, and she went with it.
It registered, dimly, that she had not moved.
The knife had moved her, and she didn’t understand.
The blow was clumsy. It struck into Nathaniel’s shoulder, and blood poured forth, coating Vic’s palm and gushing between her fingers.
The dagger slipped from her soaking hands as she pulled it free of his flesh, and Vic watched it clang to the floor.
Nathaniel released her as he shrieked and clawed at the wound, before he twisted and hit Vic across the face.
Her body swung backward at the force of the impact, but anger reigned inside of her. Here was the reason for her suffering. In the castle. In the woods. Everything that had happened—all the pain she felt as her body was torn apart—was this man’s fault.
Vic hit him, on purpose this time, with a closed fist. She felt the crunch of his orbital bone as it broke, felt the eggy texture of his eye against her knuckles. He screamed again, and she might have broken her hand, if the throbbing pain there was any indication, but Vic did not stop.
She scrambled for the knife, intent for the first time in her life on killing someone. Not taking him down, not protecting herself. She wanted to tear him apart.
She was out of control. Manic rage spread through her like a fire, heating every piece of her, a wild animal twisting and snapping at the bars of its cage. Vic couldn’t think past pure fury.
You’re a vicious little creature, aren’t you? came Aren’s voice in the back of her mind. That’s okay—so am I.
The sound hit Vic harder than a fist. That one, most unwanted part of her remained unchanged.
Aren still hid inside her mind, waiting for a moment to speak.
Her hand extended forward for the knife, and Vic saw it for the first time—the mark on her wrist. Dark as a tattoo and identical to the mark she’d drawn with her blood when she unknowingly created it.
Vic’s distraction lasted an instant, but it was enough. Nathaniel kicked her, and she went to her knees—hard. Before Vic had a chance to think, he kicked her again between her shoulder blades. Vic fell forward and hit the stone steps, sliding down the incline on her side.
The dagger clattered against the stone when she lost her grip on it again.
Sorry, pet.
Fuck you! Vic shouted at the voice in her mind as she tumbled.
She shuddered to a stop halfway down and panted, unable to catch her breath.
With her face against the steps, Vic struggled to pull herself up.
Where her palms met the stone, it fractured.
Splits in the rock spread from Vic’s hands like veins.
Her gaze met Nathaniel’s when he followed the sound of breaking stone, and shock flared across his face.
“He did it. He actually fucking did it.”
Nathaniel started to laugh. Cruel joy bounded off the stone, harsh and unhinged and with no humor at all. He shook his head in disbelief.
“Oh, well,” he announced with a crazed shrug. “I’ve already broken the rules. Might as well add witch-killing to the list.”
Nathaniel pulled a rod from the pocket of his slacks, longer than Vic’s dagger and cast iron. He pointed the conduit at her, and Vic froze.
“Do you remember what lives under the castle, Ms. Wood?”
Vic remembered very well. She remembered the laetite breaking free of its cage. She remembered rows of razor-sharp teeth aimed at Henry and the fear that coursed through her at the sight.
There were Orcans under the castle. Lots of them.
Nathaniel smiled at the dawning horror on Vic’s face.
“You do.”
But they weren’t near the lift. No, Nathaniel had brought Vic to the Arena. And if Nathaniel did not intend to take Vic down to the cages, then he must mean to bring their occupants up.
Nathaniel was going to set the Orcans loose inside the castle.
Vic scrambled for the knife, but she was hurt and slow.
The metal in Nathaniel’s hand glowed red a second before she felt the impact.
A burst of energy hit her shoulder like an electric pulse.
Her teeth rattled and she grunted in pain.
Above her, one of the arching windows shattered.
Bits of broken glass fell around her like wedding rice.
Vic was getting tired of being knocked around.
That’s it, Aren said. Get back up.
Vic stuck her hand out farther. She heard the warning hiss this time as Nathaniel prepared the spell.
But she couldn’t move her hand—another few inches and she’d have the knife.
This time the pain hit her forearm as she stretched.
She convulsed, but it didn’t hurt as bad as the first strike.
The blade slid toward her of its own accord.
Her hand closed around the slippery handle as she heard one of the Arena doors crash open.
She didn’t look to see if anyone entered.
“You had to make this difficult, didn’t you? We’ll see how your belligerence serves you now. I doubt they will have much patience for backtalk.”
Vic rose on unsteady feet, clutching the dagger as she stared at the man intent on killing her.
When she met Nathaniel’s mud-brown eyes, so full of loathing, something strange happened. His irises flared like living lights, like glowworms writhed within his corneas. The Lumen, Elder Thompson had called it, which distinguished witches from the rest of the world.
Vic wondered what her eyes looked like now.
“You’ve broken your oath, Nathaniel.”
Xan.
Vic found him on the opposite side of the Arena and felt a rush of relief.
She’d thought she’d never see him again, she realized.
As she fell in the forest, Vic had thought she’d never see this man again.
But here he was. And he looked murderous.
His voice was calm, but dangerous. Low and menacing, like he was expending the barest amount of energy to speak and saving all the rest of it to rip Nathaniel apart.
Surprise crossed Nathaniel’s face before he composed himself.
“The more the merrier.” He attempted bravado, but Vic could tell Xan’s arrival had shaken him. “It’s a shame Shepherd isn’t here.”
“How long have you been working with Aren Mann?” Xan asked as he approached. He didn’t seem panicked, only measured. Cool and calm, like Vic would have expected. When Nathaniel said nothing, Xan continued, “It’s obvious Mann lured us out of the castle, but why—”
“He’s going to open the cages,” Vic shouted.
Fear flashed in Xan’s face for an instant. And Vic felt it then, too. If Xan was scared, Vic was terrified.
The rod in Nathaniel’s hands glowed white this time, and he pointed it at Vic in warning. Xan approached with hands open. A plea for peace or preparing for a fight, it could have gone either way.
“You don’t have to do this,” Xan said.
“You gave me no choice,” Nathaniel spat.
“I’ve worked for the Order longer than either of you has been alive.
My family has served for centuries, and I’m supposed to sit back and watch Shepherd destroy it?
I tried to stop this where it all started.
A Made on the Council? I tell you. It was always a ridiculous proposition.
It was only ever going to lead to ruin.”
Xan grew closer, but he was too far. Twenty, thirty feet away. Why wasn’t he hurrying?
“This will give the Order a chance to rebuild. To reinvent itself the way it used to be, the way it ought to be. The beasts won’t touch the archives, they’re warded.
Only the present will end. It’s a cleansing, and it’s past due.
Those of us loyal to the true Order can rebuild it. Mann promised me that much.”
“You can’t control him,” Xan warned.
No one can, Aren whispered in Vic’s ear. You know that. Don’t you, Victoria?
Nathaniel shifted the conduit in his hands away from Vic, and Xan took the opportunity to pounce. He turned to shadow in a blink, and a cloud of darkness sped toward Nathaniel.
But Nathaniel was ready for that, and a beam like a streak of lightning hit Xan’s darkened form.
Vic screamed, and Xan was a man again, like he’d fallen out of shadow at the strike.
He knelt on the stone floor, forced back into solidity, and there was blood.
All Vic saw was the blood, and a red haze filled her vision.
Rage like nothing she’d felt before flooded her mind, her thoughts, her everything.
She turned to Nathaniel as he fixed the heated wand on the powder lining the room.
“We have to start over,” he said, panic in his voice. “The Order will destroy itself if I don’t.”
But his words fell off in a garble as the skin of his throat split.
Lengthwise, beginning below his jaw, the column of his neck opened like he’d swallowed a piece of glass and it was tearing its way out from the inside.
Down to his sternum, opening Nathaniel like a zipper, and hot red blood streamed from the wound as he fell to his knees, gasping around broken skin.
A gutted fish still screaming for water.
Nathaniel was dead before his face hit the floor.
But it was too late.
A wall of fire shot from the conduit as he fell, and it hit its mark.
All around Vic, the powder ignited.