Chapter 4
Nyssa
It sounds like a fucked-up nursery rhyme.
The heat sears through the soles of my boots, a constant, nagging reminder that one wrong step means a long drop into nothing.
I focus on the glowing lines, a chaotic map leading us out of this collapsing hellhole.
My hand is clamped around the useless snake-crown, its dead weight an insult after everything we’ve just been through. Died for, in my case.
“You’re favouring your left side,” Dreven’s voice is a low rumble right behind me, too close for comfort.
“Got resurrected a few minutes ago,” I murmur, hopping over a widening gap to another glowing seam. “Bit stiff. Sue me.”
“I’d rather just carry you,” he offers. The possessiveness in his tone makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
“You’d rather tie me to a bedpost,” I shoot back. “Not happening.”
A low chuckle from Dastian echoes from up ahead. “She’s got you there, Dre.”
The ground shudders again, a deep, guttural groan that vibrates up through my legs. The golden cracks flicker, and for a terrifying second, they dim. My heart lurches. If Dastian’s magic fails, we’re just standing on fragile rock over an abyss. I can’t die again. Once was enough for now.
“Hurry up,” I snap, my voice sharp. The pull of the mortal world is a desperate ache in my chest. I need to get back. I need to fix this.
Ahead, the exit shimmers with the golden tear we came through. It looks a mile away, and it’s shrinking.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter. “It’s trying to trap us.”
“Trying to trap you,” Dreven states.
“Story of my life,” I say, tightening my grip on the snake. “Join the queue.”
The tear narrows like a pissed-off eye. The cracked field bucks. I jump to the next glowing seam and almost misjudge it. Dreven’s shadow snaps around my waist and holds me steady. I grunt. “Stop manhandling me.”
“Stop giving me reasons to,” he bites out.
Dastian’s magic flares. The gold brightens, the seams thickening. “Bridge incoming. Try not to fall into the existential abyss; it stains.”
Voren moves to my flank, calm in the chaos. “It’s watching her, not us. Stay in my wake.” He sweeps a hand, and a ribbon of silver frost lies across the glowing web. The heat and cold fight, and the result is a tightrope of solid, steaming light. “Walk.”
I walk. There’s no other option. The tear is shrinking. The realm groans again.
“This isn’t like it was,” I say through my teeth. “It’s not just the room. The whole place wants me.”
“It’s tasted you,” Voren says. “It likes you.”
“Join the queue,” Dastian throws my earlier words back at me.
The path fractures ahead. Dreven is already moving, shadows flinging outward, stitching a corridor through the air to the tear. The darkness goes from smoke to wall. “Go.”
I run. I am breath and blade and a pounding heart that refuses to quit for a second time today.
The crown is cold against my palm, colder than Voren, colder than death.
It’s not humming, but it feels heavier the closer I get to the exit.
Like it knows I’m about to remove it from its lovely mausoleum, and it’s sulking.
Halfway there, the gold guttering stutters. Something under the surface shifts. A hairline split zips towards me, fast as lightning.
“Nyssa!” Dastian hurls a bolt that fuses the crack shut a heartbeat before my foot lands. The impact rattles my bones. I keep moving.
The tear is the size of a dinner plate now. “That’ll fit my foot,” I mutter.
“Make it bigger,” Dreven orders.
“On it.” I skid to a stop at the edge, drag my blade across my palm again, and slap my bloody hand to the stone. The runes on the steel flare and the split answers, widening with a choked, reluctant shriek.
Without waiting another second, I jump through the tear.
Cold, damp, real air slams into me. The crypt.
The rank stink of old stone and damp earth never smelled so magnificent.
I stagger as the momentum carries me forward.
The crown bites my palm. I glance down. For a second, the etched scales ripple like a snake deciding whether to hiss. Then it goes dead again.
Figures.
Dreven steps through behind me. Dastian tumbles out sideways, laughs breathlessly, and gives the crypt a jaunty salute. Voren steps through last, and Dreven throws his weight behind sealing the fissure with a temporary patch.
It seals with a groan like the earth grinding its teeth. Dreven’s shadows stitch the split shut and hold, ugly and effective. I don’t ask how long it will last. I don’t want the answer.
Dreven’s gaze flicks to the crown clenched in my fist, and his jaw tightens.
Voren is quiet. Too quiet. His eyes are glacial and everywhere, cataloguing threats, cataloguing me. He reaches without asking, takes my wrist, and presses two fingers to my pulse. The cold licks up my arm. The beat’s erratic and a fraction too fast. I yank my hand back.
“I’m fine.”
“You are stitched together with willpower and profanity,” he says calmly. “It’s working. For now.”
“Then let’s keep moving before the realm changes its mind.” I tuck the snake under my arm like a handbag I’d cheerfully beat someone to death with and turn towards the door.
The crypt spits us out into rain and darkness.
“Home,” I mumble as I sway on my feet. This day has taken its toll. Dying has taken its toll.
“Hey, sis,” Rynna’s voice says from behind me. “Where the hell have you just crawled out from?”
I turn and stare at her. Her dark hair is piled up in a messy bun, her eyes flashing wickedly as she takes in the three gods surrounding me and my bedraggled state.
“Ryn,” I sob and fling my arms around her.
Startled, she hesitates to hug me back, but then she embraces me awkwardly, patting me on the back. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, shaking my head as I pull back. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“What happened?” she asks slowly, eyeing up the guys with a different predatory gaze now. Less hello, boys and more if you hurt my sister, I’ll slay you where you stand.
I stare into her eyes when she looks back at me, waiting for an explanation.
I don’t see any difference. I check her over, scanning for the confidence that I felt when becoming the slayer, when the not-quite-mortal, not-quite-supernatural strength flooded my veins, and I became the first line of defence against the creatures of darkness.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She purses her lips and crosses her arms. “Been better. Thanks to you going AWOL, fucking Cormac called me in to deal with a newly arisen vampire.”
“And did you?” I ask, all business.
“Of course,” she says with a shrug. “Arsehole had it coming.”
“Was it easier this time?” I venture as the gods behind me get impatient.
“Easier than what? Last time I staked a vamp?” She shrugs. “Nah, not really. Same old, you know.”
“Same old,” I echo faintly, scanning her again, searching for something. Nothing. She’s just… Rynna. Reckless, gorgeous, dangerous in the human way.
Relief hits so hard I sway. Dreven’s hand lands on my hip to steady me. I don’t look at him. If I do, I’ll cry, and we don’t have time for my feelings.
“Who are your friends?” Rynna asks, eyeing them like a bouncer at closing time. “And why do you all look like you just crawled out of a heavy metal album?”
“Dreven, Voren and Dastian,” I say, giving her names, not occupations. Although I don’t think being a god is exactly a job. “Guys, this is my sister, Rynna.”
I half-wonder why she can see them this time, but maybe they weren’t quick enough on the draw to fade from sight before Rynna showed up.
Or…
Or Rynna is the slayer, or a slayer now, despite outward appearances suggesting otherwise.
“Charmed,” she drawls. “Well, I gotta get back to my life now you’re back to deal with the big bads. See ya around, losers.” She turns on her heel, shoving the stake in the back pocket of her jeans and stalks off with a backward wave.
“Loser?” Dastian chokes on the word. “Fucking hell. She is feisty.”
“She isn’t the slayer,” I say, my voice flat.
“You expected her to be?” Dreven gives me an intense stare.
“I died,” I hiss.
“Yeah,” Dastian says softly, for once not taking the piss. “You did.”
“But your line didn’t pass,” Voren says, studying me. “Not properly.”
“How do you know?” I demand.
“Because if it had, you’d feel hollow where the bond sits.” His fingers hover near my sternum, not touching, sensing. “It’s frayed. Not severed.”
“So the spirits were wrong?” I ask. “She wasn’t called. She has no idea I… died.”
“They weren’t wrong,” Voren replies. “They were premature. Calling is a process. You crossed, yes. But I hauled you back before the mantle moved. It tries again if the body stays dead. You didn’t.”
I blink. “So I’m still the slayer, and she isn’t.”
“Yes,” Dreven says, clipped. “Which means your sister remains a very mouthy pre-slayer. We keep it that way.”
Relief empties my lungs in a rush that makes me sway. Dreven’s hand stays on my hip like he doesn’t trust gravity to behave around me anymore. Fair.
“Good,” I say, and my voice scrapes. “One apocalypse at a time.”
Dastian eyes the curl of metal tucked under my arm. “And our charming paperweight?”
“It’s dead,” I snap. “You were there.”
He shrugs. “So were you.”
“Ouch,” I snarl.
He shrugs. “Too soon?”
Ignoring him, I march off, taking the same path Rynna did to lead out of the cemetery. The gods rush to catch up with me, swirling around me like a protective circle. “I need to go home, sleep and figure this out tomorrow,” I mumble as exhaustion sweeps over me.
“That’s fair,” Voren says, snaking a hand around my wrist and taking me back to my house in a wisp of wraith smoke.