Around us, the six dead bodies of the students begin to stir. Not the mangled one in the center atrium display. But all the others.
The students whose bodies were arranged around the rune circle’s perimeter. There’s been so much going on, I’ve barely given them thought in all the chaos, but now I see them. Six bodies, positioned at precise intervals.
They don’t stand up. Instead, something rises from them. Translucent forms, shimmering and insubstantial. The spirits of the murdered students, pulled back from wherever they’ve been trapped.
They look confused at first, disoriented. Then their eyes find my father, and their expressions shift to something terrible. Recognition. Understanding. Rage.
“We didn’t choose this,” one of them says. Her voice echoes strangely, like it’s coming from very far away. “Butthis, we choose.”
They move toward my father in perfect unison. They aren’t walking—they have no feet. They simply drift, like smoke on a current of air.
My father actually takes a step back. I’ve never seen him retreat from anything in my entire existence.
“This won’t work,” he says, but his voice has lost its confidence. “I’m eternal. You can’t?—”
“We can try,” another student’s spirit says.
They circle him now, and I can see something forming between them. A glowing blue-white net, woven from their combined essence. It’s beautiful and terrible at the same time.
“Fools!” my father cries, waving his hand toward us.
Except that whatever he intended to happen clearly doesn’t, because frowning doesn’t even begin to describe the fury that takes over his face.
“What did you do to me?” he screams.
Did he just try to use his Devourer’s Fire on us? Clearly Phoenix or Sabra orsomethingstopped it. It sure as hell wasn’t me.
“Your son’s blood protects us,” Sabra calls to my father, voice triumphant as she clings to Ammit, who she just calledMom.
I have no idea what the hell is going on, but maybe Sabra is on our side after all?
Maybe she reallywasfreed from Vlad’s compulsion as soon as my father killed him.
Stupid move on his part, to let his pride get the better of him and forget that a mere human witch might have any power to make countermoves. But he always did underestimate the humans. And pride was the sin that always did him in with each power grasp in the past.
Phoenix looks at me, and the trust in her eyes makes my chest ache. “Your father was right. I’m the crack in the barrier. I’m the way through. But I can feel it now. I’m not just the crack. I can channel it, too.”
Understanding slowly dawns. Father created the circumstances to finish what we couldn’t last time we tried this. Or maybe Phoenix has finally just fully come into her own. Though I suspect being the conduit will mean opening herself up to that dark realm again. And her worst fear. Because there’s a very real possibility she’ll be pulled through herself.
No. I won’t let it happen. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her.
She looks at the circle, then at Sabra, then at my father who is starting to realize what we’re planning. He tries to back away, but he’s caught in the glowing net of the fallen students, who drag him, screaming, past the runes, into the dark circle of his own creation.
TWENTY-FIVE
LAYDEN
“Layden,”Phoenix says. Her voice is strained. Tight with pain or effort. “I need your power now.”
I don’t ask questions or hesitate. I just summon my runes. But not the usual ones I use for simple magic. I match Phoenix’s, calling the darkest runes. The symbols of my true nature as Famine. As one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As the creature my father made me to be.
I’ve spent so long trying not to be this. Trying to be anything other than the monster he shaped from stolen light.
But right now, Phoenix needs the Horseman.
So I give it to her. All of it.
Runes appear in the air around us. Glowing blue-white so intense it hurts to look directly at them. They are symbols of deprivation. Of want. Of endless hunger that can never be satisfied. They represent every moment I spent buried and starving for connection. Every century I walked as a weapon while craving love.
