Vincent.
His face was as red as Loretta’s dress, his neck muscles bulging through his collar. As he stalked toward me, his toupee slid off his head and skidded across the floor, revealing a liver-spotted egg covered with a few tufts of grey hair.
Behind me, Trey choked. A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. Laughter bubbled up inside me and I couldn’t control it, so I let it roll over me, enjoying the shock on Vincent’s face as he staggered toward me on one good leg.
Vincent let out an animalian growl and lunged at me. Trey stepped in front of me, shoving his dad in the chest. Vincent staggered back, crashing into the drum kit.
“The time has come, Vincent.” Ms. West snapped her fingers. From stage left, Derek and Barclay wheeled out a chair, upon which was tied a gagged Gloria Haynes. Ms. West stood behind Gloria and drew a silver knife from between her breasts, pressing the blade against Gloria’s exposed neck. “You will break the sigilsnowand allow all of us our freedom, or I spill Gloria’s blood right here. Her fortune and her influence will be lost to you, right when you need it most.”
Vincent just stared at her.
“Come on, time’s a ticking.” Ms. West pressed the knife so hard a thin line of blood appeared on Gloria’s throat. Gloria thrashed and wailed behind her gag, but no one paid her any heed. “Unlike me and your kid, she’s not immortal—”
“You’re right, she’s not immortal.” With a wild glint in his eye, Vincent whipped out a gun and shot Gloria Haynes in the face.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Her head snapped back. Blood arced up the fairytale backdrop, splattering leaves and vines with dappled crimson.
“What the fuck did you do!” Courtney shrieked. I’d prepared her for this possibility, but even if you hated your parents, nothing prepared you for seeing them shot in the face. Courtney rushed onto the stage and barreled into Vincent, knocking him to the ground and leaping on top of him. She hammered his face with her fists. Blood spurted from his nose, splattering across her dress before Ayaz grabbed her and dragged her off.
In the audience, parents whimpered. Vincent staggered to his feet, lunging for his gun. Courtney wrestled herself from Ayaz’s grasp and hurtled toward him just as his fingers closed around the grip.
BANG.
Courtney screamed. She staggered back, clutching her chest, where a circle of red bloomed on her dress.
“You shot me,” she growled, her eyes narrowing as she stepped toward him again. “You shot my mother. That was a mistake.”
Vincent aimed again, but Courtney grabbed him first. She didn’t even slow down. She was Edimmu running on righteous anger. She couldn’t be stopped.
She twisted the gun from Vincent’s hands and whipped it across his face. He dropped to his knees, frantically swiping blood from his eyes. With a wicked grin, Courtney twisted a stiletto into his crotch. He curled into a ball. Not one Eldritch Club member came to his aid.
“Go, Courtney!” I yelled. Trey left my side. I thought he’d try to pull her off. Instead, he slammed his fist into Vincent’s face, dragging him up by his collar until father and son were nose-to-nose. Vincent opened his mouth, but only blood gurgled out.
“You want to say something, Father?” Trey growled. “You want to berate me for not being good enough? For being weak? You want to say something about my girlfriend? Go on, I can’t hear you.”
Vincent spat blood into Trey’s face. “We don’t need Gloria. Not when we have the god in all his glory. Now!”
As one, the Eldritch Club members rose to their feet. From purses and suit pockets they whipped out small devices that looked like garage door openers. They held them up, staring at their children with triumph.
“We’ve planted explosives in our cars,” Vincent declared, his words gurgling with fresh blood. “A single move from any of you, and we’ll send this whole place up in smoke. I don’t think even an immortal being will survive being disintegrated into a thousand pieces. A mortal gutter whore certainly won’t.”
“I don’t believe you,” I shot back. “You love yourself too much to want to blow yourself up.”
“Is that so?” Vincent tapped his breast pocket. “Or is it that I know a sacrifice that large would free the god at last and that he would reward me with eternal life? Even as my body disintegrates, my soul will be complete, and that’s what’s important in the end. Hermia’s experiments proved that out.”
Double fuck.
I didn’t need to ask the god if that was true, because I knew he had no desire to reward his jailers. But it didn’t matter, because Vincent believed it. That arrogant ass actually thought the first thing the god would do when he was free was bringhimback to life.
They are not truth-tellers,the god rumbled from his prison, his screams growing louder as his outrage grew.
Dude, you don’t have to tell me.
If they blew us all up, there would be no exchange. I couldn’t raise the pillar if I was scattered in a million pieces on the wind. The god’s children would eventually become whole again, but they would never be free. The god would not be able to go home. It would all beover.
Trey and Quinn moved closer to me, squeezing me behind them. Ayaz had Courtney in his arms. He’d torn off his shirt and jacket, wrapping them around her to staunch the bleeding.
