The bond opened again. Leviathan shoved an image into his mind, a vision of Cullen bursting through the darkness before it reached its destination, escaping the involuntary pull of his shadows. Cullen focused, holding his breath, and now he realized that, though it was dark in the shadows, he could see images here and there. Snippets of land and sky and buildings.
He focused, waiting until his shadows had nearly reached their destination–and then threw himself against the wall of them, smashing through it with a cry of pain. The shadows–his shadows–clawed at his back, trying to pull him with them, but he forced them away, forced them to throw him out–
He landed hard on unforgiving stones, shocks shooting through his hands and knees, and when he looked up he saw the familiar buildings of the academy. The courtyard, filled with people, Leviathan mere feet away.
Though he was turned away from him, his head bowed and his eyes shut tight, as if he were expecting pain. Cullenopened his mouth to call out to him, but broke off when he saw the shimmer of golden light around him. The light of the heavens.
A pentagram.
They had him trapped.
But how had they summoned him? They’d tried for months before Cullen had been taken, but without something that belonged to the demon being summoned, it was impossible…
He opened his mouth to ask, to demand to know what was going on–and a flash of light swept through the golden shimmer of the pentagram, a sliver of black inside of it. It hit Leviathan square in the chest–and he fell.
Something snapped in Cullen’s mind, in his chest, and he screamed. Screamed because the bond was gone. As if somebody had reached into his skull with a knife and carved it out. He stumbled forward, his body moving on its own. His foot brushed through the blood that had been sprinkled on the ground, smearing it enough that the pentagram broke, that shimmer of light vanishing as Cullen passed through it.
He fell to Leviathan’s side, pulled him onto his back.
A soft whimper of horror left him when he saw the blade buried in his chest, the black blood that spurted slowly around it.
“Levi?”
He didn’t move.
“Hey…” He pressed his hands to his chest, but quickly moved them away again when he didn’t feel his strong heartbeat. “Levi!” He smacked him and pushed him before screaming his name again. “Wake up!” He cried. “Leviathan!”
Nothing. He waited another heartbeat, expecting him to sit up with a smirk and announce that this had all been somekind of cruel joke. But he was silent. Still. Everything was silent and still. Empty. He was empty, his chest hollow, his heart silent. The bond was gone and Leviathan…
“Cullen.”
He twitched, his eyes shooting to Leviathan’s face. But it was not him that had spoken.
“Cullen.” Walker whispered again, his voice gentle. “Look at me.”
Slowly, very slowly, as if he were moving through sludge, Cullen raised his head, his gaze falling on Walker, where he stood with a bandaged hand and a grief stricken face. Dom was just inches behind him, his lips pinched into a tight line, his face set in a determined way he recognized well.
Something began to grow tight in Cullen’s chest, a dull ache starting. His heart thumped–and then missed a beat, as if the pain had been too great for it to keep up its rhythm. He could hardly feel it, but he thought he knew what it meant.
Leviathan had said the soul bond would make it so if one of them died, then they both would die. But it hadn’t taken him when it should have. Not instantly, as he would have expected, but it seemed to be draining his soul, little by little. When the magic finally ran its course…
He sucked in a breath at the realization of what would happen, of whatwashappening. Leviathan may have already been gone, but Cullen, whether it was fate or some strange divine intervention, had been gifted a few more minutes of life.
He knew exactly how he meant to spend them.
“Why?” He whispered, forcing the word out through that horrible hollowness in his chest. “Why would you do this to him?”
“You know why, Cullen.” He whispered. Light flared and flickered around his fingers. Cullen did not even glance at it. He stumbled slowly to his feet, his hand curling tight around the bone blade in Leviathan’s chest. It slid free with a shocking and disturbing ease. He didn’t let himself think too hard about it as he turned and faced his old friends.
“Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to you?” He whispered.
Walker opened his mouth, but light had already flared from every direction, aiming straight for Cullen.
His rage burst out of him, his body shifting into that massive form with its scaly gray skin, his shadows launching out of him with a shriek of rage.
They absorbed every burst of heaven’s light, absorbed it and stretched out, dozens of them racing off into the darkness until they met the bodies of the Diviners. They slashed into their bodies, shredding skin and bone like paper. The scent of blood burst through the air but, for the first time since he’d become a demon, it didn’t phase him in the least as he strode forward, his shadows whipping around him in a deadly frenzy.
Dom moved to face him, stepping closer and bracing his feet as a long trident of electricity formed in his hand. And Walker…Walker stumbled away, his face pale with terror. Cullen walked straight for both of them, letting his shadows take care of the others as they began to fight pointlessly against the attacks.
