Bruiser turned us both away. I pressed one ear against Bruiser’s chest and covered the other. A headache lanced through me fromle breloque. It was the pain of my vamps. My vamps, everywhere. In my soul there was an opening, and through it a light pierced, the light where there had been only darkness.
My brain burned. My forehead blistered.
I was screaming. Tears and snot ran down my face.
Bruiser was screaming, bending his body away from the crown, trying to distance himself while holding me safe.
From away, beyond the church grounds, other vamps joined in Leo’s scream. From across the city. Across the world. I felt them through the crown. Heat shot through my brain and out to them like lightning, like a storm of magic and spirit and immense power. After long minutes, the electric energies softened into waves, healing.
The spear of lightning in my brain flashed a last time. Disappeared. It left me in a red haze of darkness, like blood on a moonless night.
I was gasping. Bruiser was weeping.
We were sitting on the floor in a pile of aching limbs and shattered statuary.
The heat ofle breloquebegan to fade, the temperature dropping to warm.
The crown expanded; I caught it, holding it in place with the hand over my ear.
As the pain eased, Bruiser turned toward the angel, and I managed to get my eyes open. Wiped the tears and mucous and blood from my face. Dropped the crown over my arm.
The angel looked at me, his face kind. “The evil of the heart of the Sons of Darkness is ended. The fallen one has been bound into utter darkness. You must place the body and the ashes of the former Heir outside, on the grounds, so the dawn sunlight burns it completely, and then scatter the ashes to the winds.”
I managed, “Finally something easy.”
Bruiser chuckled silently, his chest moving against me.
“The words I speak are from the Most High, a prophecy of truth.” Hayyel raised his arm as if gesturing to the broken ceiling. His tone altered, sang out, ringing as if bells pealed, resonating into the night, “ ‘The power of the Dark Queen will remain within Jane Yellowrock, andle breloqueshall be hers, but her purpose for warfare among the undead is no more.’ ”
My skin pebbled in chills and the hair stood up all over me. There was power, raw, universe-shaking power in the words. The tones made my bones ache.
Hayyel’s face, black as the night sky, glowed with power that was both dark and light, his words sang with both sound and utter silence. His eyes were golden and shining as the sun, and they burned my skin when he looked our way. Bruiser lurched to his feet, took a dozen steps back, and I had to fight not to cringe with him. Hayyel was terrible and beautiful to look upon. I didn’t think it was God himself talking, but the visage of Hayyel when he was restored to the Host. And I was glad of that. I knew I didn’t want to lay eyes on anything with more power than the angel. I might not survive the experience.
“ ‘The drinkers of blood have been transformed,’ ” hecontinued, speaking the words of God. “ ‘The trapped souls of the true dead are freed, to go where I, the Most High, will send them. The souls of those still undead have been restored. The drinkers of blood have choice and free will and redemption, should they choose. The Heir is Mine, thus speaks the Most High. The Heir is and ever shall be an outclan priest, to serve Me and to serve the souls of the undead, to counsel, to judge. The curses of the past are broken.’ ”
The words and the horrible ringing settled, and the deep, bone-deep pain receded enough that I didn’t have to vomit. My throat was dry, my eyes raw, as if I had been sitting in a desert wind. I could feel my own heartbeat, hard against my chest, mine and Eli’s both too fast where Eli still leaned against me.
His voice went back to purely angel tones, and Hayyel said, “Come to me, Jane Yellowrock.”
Bruiser carried me to the wall.
Hayyel put a hand on my head, like a wordless blessing. Warmth flowed through me, sweet as honey, rich as cream, soft as velvet, all the colors of the rainbow, the scent of vanilla and caramel—the sensory equivalent of a parent’s loving blessing. I didn’t really remember my parents, but thought I must have been loved. This, this wonder, this safety, was what it must have felt like.
Bruiser let me slide to my feet. Gingerly, I tested my leg. The bones weren’t brand-spanking new but my leg could bear weight. The angel of my visions, of my soul home, had healed me. Again. That healing flowed into Bruiser. Into Eli. Into my Mithrans out on the lawn.
“It is as I had always hoped,” Hayyel said, “as I have worked toward for so many human lifetimes. The curse laid upon the scions of the sons of Ioudas Issachar for their evil is broken. In the same way, the curse of the soulless is lifted from the drinkers of blood and from the servants and slaves they made their own. The curse laid upon the werewolves is broken. You are free as well,Dalonige’i Digadoli.No longer bound by the past and the blood of others, and no longer able to bind others with your blood, but only by the love they have for you. Thecurse ofu’tlun’tathat Beast made of you when she took your soul is removed from you.”
Jane is no longer killer only,Beast thought.I/we are Beast! Best ambush hunter.
As I watched, the angel began to fade like mist over the Mississippi at dawn, his hand growing lighter, ephemeral, until I could see through it. Hayyel was less than a mist, a dream half remembered upon waking. If he was speaking truth, he had changed our world, forever. I wondered if his actions and words had really been sanctioned by the Almighty and what the Host would think about his actions.
Before I could ask the outclan priest all that, Leo popped away.
My vamps drove off in various SUVs back to safety from the rising sun. I felt them go, not through the crown, not through blood spent, taken, or given, but through the touch of the angel on Leo’s head.
As the sun grayed the skies, Hayyel faded into nothing. He was gone, leaving behind only the chain of his imprisonment stained with Leo’s bloody handprints, freely given.
Aya rose to his feet, uncoiling his legs. “My sister. You are Beloved Woman. War Woman.” He bowed from the waist and stood upright, naked as a jaybird. “I honor you.”
