Eli had more faith in us than I did. I had seen a lot in the droplet visions, but so much was different now, so much was missing. And every one of my wrong moves meant disaster.
The I/we of Beast and Eli are joined. Are now best hunter. We are one.
Holy crap.She was right. With this strange connection, we were one. The Rule of Three. That fact slammed into me. We three were the Rule of Three.
Sabina/Gramma was holding the crystal athame. Gently, she cut Lachish, tracing the rune made by Mainet, but only deep enough to bleed, not deep enough to do damage to the muscle and organs beneath her blade. That didn’tmake it hurt any less, however. Lachish twitched. Tears ran down her face. Her breathing sped. I wanted to dart in and save her, but if I did, we would all die and Lachish wouldn’t survive either. The witch gasped. Her pain meant nothing to a skinwalker who had gone into the darkness of her own desires. Suffering meant nothing tou’tlun’ta, who began that part of the life cycle by eating a living human. I would jump off a cliff before I went that route.
I/we would shed mass and become bird,Beast thought,and fly away, losing self in flight. Or shift to ugly dog, good nose, and become lost in scent. Would not becomeu’tlun’ta. Jane should not fear. We will kill Mainet. The angel will be free.
Mainet lowered his hands over Lachish. Placed something on her cleaved belly. The vamp heart.
Eli muttered a curse that disappeared beneath the drumming.
Kill Mainet!Beast demanded.
But I didn’t know how. In the visions, if I tried to stop Mainet now, before the demon and Hayyel manifested in the flesh, before Mainet was fully occupied by the ceremony, we all died, and the ceremony went on as Mainet planned. In the same images of the possibilities, I had seen the probability of Molly dying and Bruiser dead, which was why I’d made sure they were both safe, outside thedeath hedge.
But I’d had to study the futures fast, and I had searched only for outcomes where the people I loved survived, and where Eli walked out under his own power, and where Imighthave survived. I hadn’t noticed, hadn’t studied, what Mainet was doing in between, only the steps I needed to take. I should have studied the potential futures better. Lachish was suffering unbearably. And the demon and the angel were not flesh yet.
Mainet leaned away from Lachish. The heart was larger than it had been. It was now heart and part of both lungs and aorta and pulmonary vessels... It had grown. It twitched with its own regenerative power, power it had stolen from its bloodline. From Leo... Right. But also from Mainet. I had to remember that the Heir was onlythe Heir for as long as the Heart of Darkness survived. He wasn’t full of power. Not yet.
In an eyeblink, the vessels lengthened and pressed into Lachish’s sliced body. Everything I was, everything I had ever been, pushed me to step in now, to save Lachish. But if I moved too soon, she would die even more horribly, and so would all of my people, and the ceremony would be fulfilled. And the world would belong to the Heir. I had to wait until just the right moment.
My lips pulled back from my fangs in a silent snarl as Lachish struggled, awful sounds coming from her throat. The vessels expanded and filled with her blood. And the heart began to beat.
Lachish struggled, her body arching and bowing against the altar table. Her throat gurgled in pain. That sound of agony was too much.
I pushed off with my toes, stepping through the doorway and the concealing shadows, into the light.
Eli yanked me back. Wrapped one arm around my waist to hold me in place. When I struggled, he whispered, “Look at the walls.”
Draped down one wall, his form flickering in the light from the brazier, the image of an angel writhed in the reflection of the flames. “Help me, Lord of the Most High,” Hayyel sang, his voice like bells and woodwinds and a distant harp. “Do not abandon me to the Dark of the Pit. Do not, I pray Thee, leave me as prey to the Darkness.”
Hayyel was manifesting here. In the flesh.
On the opposite wall, a shadow grew, murky, malevolent, vibrating in time with the fast-beating drum and the fast-beating heart. Even though I couldn’t bring its unsteady outlines into focus, there was something inherently wrong about the form, something that repelled, repulsed. Something that should not be. I tried to look away and the attempt sent arrows of pain through my head.
The demon shadow took on dimension and mass, growing from trails of smoke. I forced my eyes to follow the smoke and found my gaze on the fire in the brazier. My eyes were dry and I blinked to clear them. The fire wasn’tall one thing like fire usually was: composed of a source or sustenance, flame, and smoke. This fire was burning cedar kindling and rosemary but the rest of it was in two parts, the smoke drifting toward the demon, the flames leaning to Hayyel.
I remembered the odd thought about the fire of ceremony, back in Aggie’s sweathouse. That image, that metaphor, fit here too: the different potentials of mass and energy—versions of the same thing in the same place, here to bring beings from two different dimensions into this one.
The fire was bringing both entities closer to this realm. Both were growing more solid, like a fire burning in reverse. Hayyel was winged and feathered, his skin black as a moonless night, shining with pinpricks of light. Around his waist was a silver chain, delicate as the chain on a baby’s first necklace. This part. This I had seen.
And Lachish was still alive. I could save her yet.
“When the time comes,” Eli whispered, “I have holy water. Six vials.”
I looked at the demon, lampblack smoke, wisps of brimstone stink. We knew holy water harmed fire demons encased in mud. Would they work on this thing? This monstrously powerful demon? Unknown.
The demon spoke in a language I didn’t understand, and as he breathed in, the smoke coalesced into his chest. His body grew more dense. His left hand and shoulder separated from the shadows and extended out of the wall, into the room. He held out that hand to Sabina and pricked his finger on her athame. “Take. Eat,” he said.
“Holy crap,” I tried to say, but there was no breath in my lungs. My lips moved, like sandpaper against each other. I hadn’t seen this. Not in any of the droplets.
Sabina/Gramma lifted the demon’s finger to her mouth. She sucked. Bit down. Began to chew. Smoke billowed out between her lips and out her nose with each exhalation. The stink of brimstone rose in the room.U’tlun’ta, eating demon flesh.
I looked from the blasphemous feast to Hayyel. Tears like rainbows of sunlight ran down his ebony face, lids closing over golden eyes. His shoulders curled forwardand his feathers rustled with fear. The thin silver chain tightened on his waist, cutting into him, the links growing thicker, stronger, catching all the light in the room, gleaming like moonbeams.
The drum beat, beat, beat, a fast heartbeat of rhythm overlaid with the echoes.
