Chapter 33
The initial spray of fluid hit Gwen like warm, horrifyingly viscous rain. She instinctively jerked away from the noxious splatter, out of Josiah’s failing grasp, even as his body tore and contorted into grotesque, unnatural configurations worthy of Picasso’s Guernica.
She gagged at the stench. At the slick coppery salt of his blood in her mouth.
An eyeblink later, his flesh made an awful ripping squelch sound that would forever haunt her nightmares, and the mangled form of what had once been Josiah fell to the marble floor with an unsettling squish.
However improbably, his heart was still steadily beating. Outside his actual body.
As advertised, very little could kill a fae, and apparently that included being turned inside out. A major healing spell would probably have him looking good as new.
But that misshapen asshole was the least of her concerns, because Hugh had collapsed at the same moment as his mentor. And his body might have been intact, and his eyes might have remained open, but he wasn’t moving. At all.
Not even to breathe.
Do you believe she truly would have turned them inside out? Gwen had once asked about Eloise’s final, fatal confrontation with her client and his fixer.
If so, she never intended to survive the encounter, Hugh had told her. For half-demons, the enormous outlay of power would kill us on the spot.
The wet marble hampered her sprint, but she staggered and skidded her way to his side before dropping with a jarring thud to her knees.
Sobbing even as she dry-heaved, she ducked down, planted the side of her head on his motionless chest, and listened for the familiar thud-thud of his huge demon’s heart.
Hovered her shaking palm a millimeter above his mouth, desperate to feel the hot puff of his exhalation.
She heard nothing. Felt nothing. Through the soft weave of his sweater, his body was unnaturally cool against her damp cheek.
Rearing up on her knees again, she began performing CPR. Two-handed chest compressions. Rescue breaths that smeared Josiah’s blood all over Hugh’s mouth too. Because the demon she loved couldn’t be gone so quickly, and maybe she could somehow—
Movement out of the corner of her eye. As Gwen continued chest compressions, she stole a frantic look over at Hugh’s sister, who was running toward Josiah’s unrecognizable body.
With a banshee scream, Eloise leapt atop Josiah and—in one swift, furious stab of her stolen kitchen knife—skewered him directly in his malevolent, unprotected heart.
Its steady beat faltered, then stilled entirely.
“Dead.” Eloise spat on the fae’s corpse. “Good riddance.”
She rose and stumbled to her brother’s side, her chest hitching with silent tears. And although she didn’t interfere with Gwen’s efforts, she didn’t participate either.
“Gwennie…” Her ragged, hiccupping words were very gentle. “He’s gone. Please stop.”
“I—” Gwen’s voice broke, and she bowed her head. Pushed harder. “I c-can’t.”
Then she had to squint against a radiant burst of light, an illumination so bright that she had to blink away spots before she could see anything else. Heartbroken and bewildered, she kept performing chest compressions as she gaped up at the judges’ dais…
Where, to her numb disbelief, the flesh-and-blood version of the Sexy Satan statue had suddenly appeared. Flanked by his trio of Fates, shirtless and aggrieved, Death surveyed the blood and bodies littering his courtroom floor and clicked his tongue disapprovingly.
“I’m surprised to find the councilor in such a sorry state.” His gaze lingered on Hugh’s lifeless form. “I suppose his gesture was nobly intended, but it was also remarkably impulsive. I can’t say that I approve.”
“You don’t approve? My brother died to save his girlfriend and maybe the entire fucking world, and you don’t approve?
” Her pretty face red and twisted with furious grief, Eloise clambered to her feet and thrust a finger in Death’s direction.
“You can take your approval, motherfucker, and shove it where—”
He gave a casual flick of his hand, and Eloise’s diatribe was no longer audible even though her mouth was still moving. “I appreciate your defense of your twin, guardian Blacke. Much like your brother’s sacrifice, however, it was overly hasty and entirely unnecessary.”
His neck twisted, and he met the eyes of the nearest Fate, a wizened crone in oversized glasses. The two of them appeared to communicate without a sound before he returned his attention to an outraged, bereft, crying, silently yelling Eloise.
“Don’t weep, little one.” His voice had softened. “Your brother voted to increase funding for the Realm’s afterlife-record digitization project during SERC’s latest session. I suppose I owe him a favor.”
With another graceful flick of his hand, the world as Gwen knew it went…wonky.
Time abruptly slowed, as if she were moving through a corridor of molasses. Paused while she stared, helplessly frozen, at the motionless tableau before her.
Then it reversed itself.
Chest compression. Hand flick. Death’s silent conversation with a Fate. Chest compression. Eloise’s forefinger aimed at the Realm Below’s supervisor. An empty dais. Eloise’s stolen knife plunging into Josiah’s heart. A rescue breath blown into Hugh’s mouth.
Gwen skidded away from Hugh’s fallen form and toward her kidnapper. The crust of fluid over her skin vanished as the fae’s body sealed itself back together and rose to stand once more. His hand grasped her throat.
And thank all the gods and goddesses, Hugh rose like a phoenix in a cloud of smoke.
Then everything and everyone went still once more, with one exception: Death, who reappeared on the judges’ raised dais and looked them over at his leisure, apparently unaffected by his own manipulation of time.
“On the whole, villains would more frequently emerge unscathed from their crimes if they didn’t indulge in lengthy behold-my-evil-genius monologues.” He shook his head at Josiah with weary condescension. “And this particular setting should have highlighted the finite nature of usable time. Alas.”
He sighed as an oversized, steaming Starbucks mug appeared in his hand. “I suppose everyone should take a seat and tell me what you’re doing here.”
With his next wrist flick, time resumed its forward momentum.
When they’d first lived this moment, Hugh had raised his fists a split second later to turn his former mentor inside out—and extinguished himself in the process.
Thankfully, everything was different this go-round.
Before Hugh could sacrifice himself, an unseen hand plucked Gwen from Josiah’s grip and unceremoniously plopped her on a wooden chair that faced the judges’ dais, behind a large, gleaming table.
Eloise and Hugh landed in chairs on either side of her.
Yet another chair scooped up Josiah and planted him behind a matching table to Gwen’s right, across the courtroom’s central aisle.
For a full minute afterward, Gwen sat gaping and speechless, too shaken to move. Beside her, Hugh and Eloise remained equally motionless and silent.
Josiah didn’t utter a peep either. Not even when the Fates suddenly reappeared at the judges’ curved table and lowered themselves into intricately carved chairs on either side of Death, silent and stone-faced.
“I forget how long they stay like this after a rewind.” Death turned to the nearest Fate, whose mahogany skin gleamed in the courtroom’s bright lights. “Remind me?”
She patted away a yawn. “Too long for my limited patience.”
Among the poleaxed group, Hugh’s sister managed to gather her wits and her composure the fastest.
“What the…” Eloise gaped at Death, who’d now donned an unbuttoned shirt. “You can freaking reverse time?”
His lips curved slightly. “So it seems, guardian Blacke.”
The most elderly among the trio of Fates caught Gwen’s stare, her eyes huge and distorted behind the thick lenses of her glasses, and tipped her head slightly to the side.
Toward Hugh.
The subtle gesture broke the spell of utter bewilderment keeping Gwen frozen in place, and suddenly she could think. She could move. She could rejoice.
Sobbing once more, this time in relief, she lurched out of her chair and flung herself at Hugh.
He jerked back to life too and caught her with open arms, and his own chair promptly tipped over.
Only to right itself before hitting the floor, thanks to some subtle, arcane hand movement from the same Fate who’d met Gwen’s eyes.
Hugh didn’t even seem to notice the near accident. Frantic, his own shoulders shaking with helpless tears of reaction, he hauled her into his lap and buried his face in her neck.
“Oh, gods, Gwen,” he choked out. “I couldn’t free you, couldn’t find any way to save either of us, but then I saw Eloise’s knife and realized…it hadn’t even occurred to me…if I could somehow muster enough power to turn him inside out…”
He trailed off, but Gwen could mentally fill in the rest: Eloise could get to Josiah’s heart—and I could ensure your survival and end his machinations through my death.
“I know.” Huddling into his hard, hot embrace, she clutched at his arms, his back, his flanks. Any living part of him within reach. “I know why you did it, but H-Hugh, you were g-gone.”
His muffled voice was apologetic. “I did ask you to forgive me. Ahead of time, even.”
“You did?” She thought back, then gasped in realization. “I thought that was an apology for your failed rescue attempt and our mutual imminent deaths!”
“No.” His hands gentled, stroking up and down her spine. “Just my own death.”
Their entwined bodies—and Hugh’s beleaguered chair—swayed under the impact as Eloise abandoned her lively discussion with Death and tackled her brother and Gwen in a fierce embrace of her own.
“Bro, what the hell?” She sniffled and planted a kiss on her twin’s head. “Between the two of us, I can’t believe you’re the one who freaked out and peeled that asshole like a banana! I’m so proud of you!”
“Really?” Hugh raised his face from Gwen’s neck, a faint smile lightening his solemn features. “I wasn’t certain you’d—”
“Excuse me.” At long last, Josiah had also apparently emerged from his stasis. “I’d like to lodge an official objection. Death, you have no dominion over me. I’m alive once more and thus should be free to go.”
Gwen loosened her grip on Hugh and turned to gape at the fae, aghast at his temerity. For months, Josiah had been trespassing on Death’s ancestral territory despite every ancient warning and actual written law forbidding outside intrusion, and he now thought he should be free to go?
Was this the bravado of a male who knew he was doomed? Or simple, sheer arrogance?
Death looked from one Fate to another with the intent expression of someone actively listening, even though none of them spoke a single word aloud.
Reunion time was clearly over, and legal proceedings had begun. And since Gwen didn’t intend to disrespect Death in his own courtroom—unlike Josiah or even Eloise—she should really stop cuddling with Hugh and take her assigned seat.
As the judges continued to silently confer, Gwen sighed and wiped away a few stray tears before rising to her shaky feet. Hugh supported her as she stood, tenderly eased her into her chair, and—in his usual gentlemanly fashion—pushed in his sister’s chair too.
At the table to their right, Josiah was eyeing the foursome on the dais with obvious impatience. And after another minute passed without a verbal response to his objection, he slapped his hands on the table and attempted to stand.
Before he’d risen more than a few inches, however, an unseen force shoved him back into his seat with an audible thump. All four judges directed unfriendly stares his way, and Gwen hoped like fuck Death and the Fates never looked at her with so much disfavor.
Josiah tried to stand again. Failed. Grunted and strained and thrashed, wings whipping rapidly, as he attempted to loose himself from the confines of his chair.
“Forgive my inattention, Councilor Goodling.” Death graced the fae with a charming smile. “You make an excellent point: As a living being, you’re not subject to my authority.”
His smile widened—and for all its white-toothed brilliance, the expression made Gwen’s skin prickle into goose bumps.
He glanced at the bespectacled Fate to his right. “Let us rectify that omission, shall we?”
The Fate’s chair screeched as she pushed it back. Slowly, leaning on a cane, she made her way down the steps from the dais and toward Josiah.
“You can’t—” Josiah managed to protest before Death rendered his speech soundless.
The fae’s struggle to rise, to flee, turned frantic, but all his writhing remained fruitless. When the elderly Fate’s faltering steps finally reached him, he still sat exactly where he’d been placed. And as her hand reached toward him, even his futile wriggling abruptly ceased.
He stared straight ahead, immobile, as her slightly trembling fingers spread apart the jagged rent Eloise had created in his crisp white shirt.
The metallic shine of his armor caught the light, the material glimmering and pristine.
The Fate lightly traced a blunt fingernail down that armor’s textured surface, and it gaped wide everywhere she touched, revealing the glowing, naked flesh beneath.
Without a word, Eloise held out the stolen knife to the Fate, handle first.
“My thanks to you, sweet girl,” the Fate murmured, and accepted the offering.
In her palsied grip, the chef’s knife seemed to melt, then boil and reshape itself. A breath later, she gripped dully gleaming iron scissors, the handles engraved with drooping flowers. Overblown, showy roses, now hanging limp on their bent stems.
“Be you nigh or far, Fate takes her due.” Her voice crackled with age and power. “Tarry not, lest she take from you.”
As the rest of them bore silent witness, the Fate’s scissors pierced his flesh and sank into his heart, handles deep. He shuddered once, violently, then crumpled into his chair like a marionette with snipped strings.
His fatal wound didn’t bleed. It smoked.
And then it entirely disappeared.