Lucille #2
I gritted my teeth and crafted a sword from ice, wrapping it in my Hellfire.
“Only if you’re ready to feel your bowels disintegrate like Lilith’s,” I said loudly enough for Melanie to hear.
Brock chuckled, showing off his yellowing, disgusting teeth.
“Still so ignorant. It’s a wonder you’ve survived this long.”
“Is that what you’re calling killing your queen? Me surviving?”
He tilted his head, the red beads in his beard swaying. Something cunning and cruel curled his lips.
“No. I call that planned.”
Planned?
He saw my frown before I hid it.
“Didn’t think about that, did you? You really believed a seer almost as powerful as Melanie wouldn’t have seen her mother’s death? Honestly, we should be thanking you. All of this”—he spread his arms wide—“wouldn’t have been possible without you killing her.”
My stomach bottomed out.
If she was as powerful as he claimed, then she had to know about—
I glanced over Brock’s shoulder.
Melanie stood right next to the small stone I’d placed to mark the start of the pentagram.
She knew.
I had expected she might.
But I still had to try.
This all couldn’t be for nothing.
Brock and I charged at the same time.
Taking a page out of his book, I halted him by freezing his feet to the ground. My ice crawled up his body as I stabbed forward, unable to raise my arm properly.
Unlike everyone else I’d frozen solid, Brock easily shattered my attack and blocked my blade.
Excruciating pain shot through my arm, weakening my hold.
I luscelered out of the way of his slashing sword and tried to freeze him again. But my glaciation powers only stopped him for a second. His body vibrated and broke through my brittle hold with lusceler.
He came at me again, and all I could do was move. Raising my sword was impossible.
I tried to throw a Hellfire ball and screamed with the pain, Brock easily dodging.
Fuck.
Next, I pulled on the undulating sounds of the Hallucination Circle, but the fortress around his mind would take too much time to destroy.
Then I tried the whooshing sounds of suffocation, but the purple cloud that normally whispered through the air wasn’t there.
He was holding his breath.
Melanie saw this.
I danced around his attacks, on the defensive. Each time I inched my way closer to Melanie, he pushed me back.
But I still gained ground.
I was so close.
All I needed was one moment.
One opening.
He jabbed forward.
I twisted out of the way, seething through my teeth as I lifted my blade and brought it down on his wrist.
He screamed.
I stole the air from his lungs, and he fell to his knees, his mouth open on a silent cry.
Brock stared at the black flames slowly eating his flesh. They wouldn’t stop, unless I commanded them to. Even then, as they eagerly devoured his muscle and bone, I doubt they’d listen to me. Not after all his abuse.
Smug satisfaction twisted my features.
I stepped forward.
Then I luscelered.
I pulled Ronen’s feather from my uniform, carved the Unmaking Rune into my wrist, and tackled my father over the stone and into the pentagram, ripping Tsal-mawet from his belt.
The move cost me.
My vision whited out.
When it cleared, he lay sprawled in the mud. My father’s body shook, vibrating with some unknown power.
Ice shards shot through the air. I ducked, and they struck Melanie’s infected and anyone near the pentagram before sputtering out.
I frowned and slowly crawled toward her, Tsal-mawet clenched in my hand.
Her infected didn’t come to her rescue, stopped by the boundary or by the lethal squad at my back.
He continued to jerk as if possessed.
I kneeled over my father’s body, lifting Tsal-mawet as much as I could.
I brought the dagger down—and froze mid-motion, ice thickening around my body.
He sat up, grinning.
“You really think that’d work? You’re not a blood-witch.”
He ripped Tsal-mawet from my grasp.
I couldn’t even scream as the hilt peeled skin from my fingers, my face frozen.
I called to my Glory, releasing just enough to glow beneath the ice and melt the first layer.
Melanie, expecting this, refroze everything I melted.
But I continued my efforts, murmuring words beneath the frigid cage that led me to a home I’d always wanted.
Pity shone in her eyes as she placed Tsal-mawet against my chest.
“I’m not my mother. So I won’t bore you with a monologue of my exploits.
Just know your kingdom and all the souls inside it are mine now.
And no matter how many infected your friends burn, they’ll recycle right back here.
In fact, I bet Valcor has already ushered them into the next round of Spinewalkers. ”
I knew without a doubt Valcor had to be the blond who’d bitten Lucifer.
Melanie didn’t do this all on her own.
She had help.
And I imagined that help came from the Immolation Circle, where the portal had been.
Brock must’ve gotten through before we destroyed it, hiding until his debut.
Melanie let the ice melt from my face.
And I smiled through my pain.
My father glared.
“Seeing as you need a healthy dose of reality, let me remind you there will be no redeeming. After I kill the rest of the blood-banded, every soul will be mine to do with as I see fit. Including yours. And very soon, your father’s.”
He wasn’t dead yet?
The thought gave me hope that when this was over, he might not be lost forever.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t bore me with a monologue of your exploits?”
Melanie, wearing my father’s face, lowered her brows.
She was too prideful for her own good.
Like mother, like daughter.
“I’m not a blood-witch,” I said. “I’m the key.”
My Glory erupted from my body, melting her ice, and with every shred of will I had left, I drove myself onto the dagger.
Ronen
I whirled across the battlefield, decapitating souls left and right.
Alexei and MJ were at my sides, their lightning and flame flashing in my periphery.
I gutted one infected, turned, and split through the stomach of another.
MJ cleaned up the messes I left behind and sent flames toward the Spinewalkers.
Alexei struck them with his lightning, their bark burning and portals closing.
As a team, we recycled an unnamable number of infected. We downed at least ten Spinewalkers.
But it was never enough.
The infected kept spilling from the Spinewalkers, and my reserves were fading.
Come on, Hellion, I begged silently.
Swinging toward my next kill, a sharp pain split my collarbone, and I missed. Warmth that shouldn’t have been there dripped into my uniform from a wound that hadn’t come from my surroundings.
My consequence to bear.
An infected swiped its claws across my chest, grazing off my leathers, only for another to stab me in the arm. Alexei’s lightning speared through them, and they collapsed into the mud.
“Are you almost drained?” he shouted over the melee.
“Not yet,” I snarled, unleashing another surge of shadows and stripping them of any chance to survive.
A thousand fell in the hellion’s wake before my power thinned, dispersing into pale wisps that vanished, unable to remain outside my body for long.
I’d only be able to do that a couple more times.
Alexei and MJ shot me sharp looks.
“Lucille,” I barked, wrath fuming through my veins and dulling our pain as I luscelered down the path I’d carved, singular in my focus on reaching her.
Then the swarm closed again.
“After the next wave, lightning, then fire,” I ordered, pointing toward the tree line.
If I could reach her, get close enough to her position, my shadows might stretch far enough to matter.