Chapter 27
Void openedinside a bank of low clouds some three thousand feet above New York.
Black magic boiled inside Vedran’s veins as he studied the city spread out below his feet through the wispy billows. The once bright metropolis looked dull and dank under the mantle of darkness shrouding it.
It’s been a while since I was last here.
His cold gaze found the queues of traffic moving at a snail’s pace on the bridges connecting Manhattan to the mainland.
“Look at them,” he muttered. “Like insects begging to be killed.”
Oscar stayed silent, his face pale and his eyes bright with fear; the sorcerer avoided meeting his eyes.
Vedran could understand his son’s reticence. Even the macabre army lurking silently behind them kept their distance from the power making the air tremble around him. The magic surging from his core was so brutal it shook his bones and rattled his teeth.
He took a deep breath and smiled savagely when he tasted the terror in the air.
Davor Lazar’s soul was everything he had hoped it would be and more. Dark, twisted, and full of a hunger that matched his own greed. He knew he would now be able to achieve his long-held dream with the first Sorcerer King’s spirit inside him.
This is it. This is the day I shall become a god!
Pain stabbed through his belly. He clenched his jaw as Balkin clawed at his insides, his dead familiar’s rage a fire that seared his flesh where the creature had slipped through the chains that had bound his soul for hundreds of years. Vedran fisted his hands and reinforced the shackles, his brow furrowing in an almighty scowl.
Curse that witch!
He’d known, ever since retreating inside Void after his last battle with the Witch Queen, that her spells had done something to the prison that sealed Balkin’s soul. A prison located in the very center of his core and that was now clashing with the other powerful soul that inhabited it.
This wasn’t the first time he’d felt Balkin reach through his cage in the short hours since he’d found the Book of Shadows and absorbed Davor’s spiritual remains. Regret tightened his chest.
It seems I won’t be able to hold on to both Balkin and Davor’s souls.
Vedran was a little shocked at how conflicted that realization left him. Logic dictated that he abandon Balkin, since the first Sorcerer King would grant him powers beyond those his familiar was capable of. Yet, he found himself strangely unwilling to do so.
A mirthless chuckle left him. Maybe my heart isn’t as dead as I thought it was.
Balkin snarled inside him, the sound growing faint as he succumbed to the dark fetters binding him.
A flicker below captured Vedran’s gaze. The air around the Empire State Building looked different to that in the rest of the city. It was brighter, clearer. As if?—
Vedran cursed, detecting the spell emanating from the skyscraper. He realized then that something crucial was missing from the scenario he was observing. He could not discern the screams he’d expected to hear as panic spread throughout New York.
Fury burned his veins, powering up his magic. The spell left his lips like a death sentence.
“Rot.”
For a moment, nothing happened.
Black magic detonated silently around the base of the skyscraper and raced up its walls, consuming everything in its path. Inky clouds shrouded the giant structure as it imploded.
Vedran narrowed his eyes when the dark billows faded. Where the uppermost observatory once stood was a shimmering, golden bubble. Floating within it were two witches, a sorcerer, and a man with a blazing broadsword.
Oscar drew a sharp breath at the sight of the blonde with the Harpy Eagle. Vedran cursed.
Blue flames brightened Anya Mendes’s eyes and those of her familiar.
She must be the reason the city is so quiet!
It was a moment before he recovered his composure.
“It doesn’t matter.” Power seared his blood. “Disperse!”
Black magic swarmed the golden sphere protecting the witch. It shivered but held.
Rage sent blood roaring in Vedran’s ears.
“What is that power?!” he snarled.
Oscar flinched.
Vedran cut his eyes to his son. “You know what it is, don’t you?”
Oscar swallowed at his dark stare. Regret darkened the sorcerer’s gaze for a moment. Then he did something Vedran never expected him to do.
He stepped out of Void and plummeted toward the city.
“No!”
Vedran lunged forward, arm outstretched. His fingers closed on empty space. He scowled and unleashed a net of black magic. The thick threads streamed from his fingers and snaked through the air, wrapping around Oscar’s ankle in seconds.
The sorcerer cast Disperse, cutting the ties. He fell silently, nary a scream leaving his lips as he plunged through the air.
Vedran stiffened at the glimpse of a glittering object in Oscar’s hand. It was the Book of Light.
When did he take that?!
He hesitated. He had no further use for the artifact now that he had obtained the Book of Shadows and Davor’s soul. Still, it rankled him that Oscar had stolen the compass.
He’s a pawn that might still come in handy in the days ahead. Besides, I did not give him permission to leave my side.
“Go after him and bring him back,” Vedran ordered a regiment of the monstrous troops silently awaiting his command. His eyes shrank to slits. “You can hurt him if he resists, but don’t kill him.”
The Sorcerer King turned his attention to the city below.
The Hellfire Magic that bloomed around his fingers sent a thrill through him at the same time it made the main body of his army recoil, the sheer power of the flames causing the air to shimmer in a fifty-foot-wide radius around him.
Vedran aimed the devastating spell he had invoked at the bridges spanning the Hudson River. “Obliterate.”
A dark smile stretched his mouth.
Hellfire Magic engulfed the overpasses and the vehicles jamming their lanes. Tiny shapes leapt from the structures a moment later, the humans trapped there desperately trying to escape their fate. The flames found them and charred their bodies to black shells before they struck the water.
* * *
Bile burnedthe back of Violet’s throat as she watched the burning figures splashing into the river from where she floated above where the Empire State Building once stood.
“Fuck!” Jared snarled.
“Focus!” Violet snapped when the Immortal’s concentration wavered for a split second.
Jared swallowed, his knuckles whitening on the handle of his sword. The divine power pouring out of the weapon augmented the barrier she and Miles had erected to protect Anya.
A muffled sob reached Violet’s ears.
Sorrow made her belly clench. She looked over her shoulder and saw the tears streaming down Anya’s face. The witch could feel the pain of all the people dying at the Sorcerer King’s hands.
“Anya,” Miles whispered, his tone full of misery.
The witch wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve and took a shaky breath. The magic in her eyes brightened as her face set in hard lines. Sable made an angry sound on her shoulder.
“I want you to tell me where you think his spells are about to strike next,” she ground out. “I’ll try and get as many people away from there as I can.”
Jared’s scowling stare stayed locked on the dark portal flickering through the clouds above them. “And if you can’t?”
They could just about glimpse Vedran’s figure inside Void.
Anya’s tone grew steely. “Then I will make sure they do not suffer when they die.”
Movement in the sky had Violet’s head jerking up. Miles sucked in air.
Jared paled. “What the hell are those?!”
Violet’s mouth went dry at the sight of the gruesome army descending upon the city from the Sorcerer King’s portal. It wasn’t just demons, devils, ghouls, and hellbeasts she detected amidst the swarming mass sinking out of the clouds on a wave of black magic.
Outnumbering the fiends were grotesque monsters she couldn’t take her eyes off. They looked deformed and disproportioned, as if they had been stitched haphazardly together from mismatched body parts.
Miles gagged. “Oh God!”
Ice filled Violet’s veins as she finally made out the details of the creatures. They were the amalgamation of several species that had been mutilated almost beyond recognition and fused together. The upper body of a witch. The trunk of a hellboar. The tail of a devil. The legs of a sorcerer. A ghoul with the head of a hellbear.
Black magic throbbed along the coarse stitches holding the chimeras together, the Sorcerer King’s vile power the only thing keeping them alive.
Violet swallowed past the lump in her throat. Alive is a questionable term!
Fear knotted her insides as she watched the dreadful army separate into distinct troops that began making their way to locations in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Queens.