“I told you to stay away, old man,” I said. My voice came out broken. Tears blurred my sight. “I told you. You stubborn bastard.”
My thumb brushed his brow. My chest ached so bad I could barely breathe. The ritual lay shattered behind me. Seraphine staggered under the backlash. The demon watched us with Grace’s eyes.
Bael smiled. “You break so easily,” he said. “You gather stray souls, you call them family, and I take them away. You keep giving me such pretty toys.”
Something in me tore. The grief twisted into something else. Rage.
I lowered Virgil’s head gently to the floor and stood. My vision narrowed to Grace and the thing inside her.
“You wanted my anger,” I said. “You wanted my desperation. You got it.”
The mark on Grace’s skin pulsed harder. Blackness moved under her eyes, spreading in thin lines. The air shook around her.
“Come then,” Bael said. “Show me your power, exorcist. Show me why they whisper your name in the lower halls.”
I stepped back into the circle, right through the burned line of salt, and stood in front of her.
I wiped my own blood from my palm across my chest in a rough sigil. I spoke words I had never said out loud anywhere but in my head. Old promises. Old bargains. The first time I had stood in a room with a demon and decided not to run.
Heat rose off my skin and the wards in the circle flared, reacting to the new current.
I slammed my hand against Grace’s sternum, right over the mark.
Power surged through my arm hitting Bael like a charge.
“Time to go to hell, fucker.”
HELLSING
Grace’s body arched. Her mouth opened on a sound that split every hair on my arms. Smoke rolled off the sigil on her skin and the black in her eyes broke, peeling away at the edges.
“You ain’t keepin’ her, Bael. You ain’t wearin’ her skin, you ain’t touchin’ what’s mine. I watched you kill her daddy right in front o’ me. You really think I’m lettin’ that slide? Naw. I’m comin’ for you now, demon. Not in this room. Not through her. I’m comin’ to your pit, to your throne. You wanted me alone? Fine. You got me. Just you… and me.”
He snarled. “You cannot reach me,” he said.
“You dip your fingers in shallow waters, but you have never walked the depth. You’re too scared to meet my maker. Too weak.”
“Watch me,” I said.
I turned to the bowl. Most of the water had spilled, but enough remained to work. Seraphine understood before I had to tell her. She moved, fast and shaking. She pulled a larger copper basin from behind the counter and filled it with water, spilling the rest of the holy water I carried in the flask in my bag. She hauled the basin into the circle adding fresh herbs, salt, and ash.
Ashes to ashes.
“You step in there, you may not come back,” she said. “You know that.”
“He just killed the only person who believed in me, right in front of me, I said. “He is sitting in the body of the woman I love. I am not letting that stand. You hold this circle. You hold her. You anchor me. You pull when you feel the tug.”
Seraphine swallowed hard and nodded. “How do you get there?” she asked.
I stripped off my coat and shirt. The air hit my bare chest. My skin burned where the sigil sat. I climbed into the basin and stood barefoot in the cold water. It rose past my ankles, past my calves.
“Through his mark,” I said. “Through mine. Through the path we already opened when I invited him in the first time. I am tired of waitin’ on him to show. I am going to get him.”
I held out my hand. Seraphine took Grace’s hand and wrapped it around mine, then laid her own over both.
“Three points,” she said. “Witch. Exorcist. Witch. It will hold.”
Bael hissed through Grace’s lips.
