The pain of Jagger’s blood chased away the gashes, the blisters, the bruises. It sealed the slit across my throat. It filled my lungs with air.
The heat gripped me, and it was so hot it felt like the burn of ice.
My ears were bombarded with the roar of the wind. People often say a tornado sounds like the ominous rumble of a freight train approaching. The terrifying white noise of a train shaking its tracks. Then, silence, and finally, death.
But the fire tornado didn’t sound like a freight train. It sounded like shoving your head into a lion’s mouth as it roared. The terror, the might, the crashing violence of it, shook my insides and vibrated my eardrums.
The wind’s roar was a wrath-filled, grief-stricken, wild torrent of sound. The howl ripped at me and tore its teeth into me. Then, just as suddenly, the fire tornado veered away and tore across the darkness, back toward the Bards.
I gasped, sucking in the bitter, acrid air. The snap of fire and the heat of the horror battled for dominance. Beyond the horror’s darkness, I could hear Ragnor and Celia’s voices twining together, and on top of them, a jackaltooth’s howl.
Had Luvic turned?
I couldn’t see them anymore. The horror had expanded so rapidly its black, bulging form was blocking them from view.
Jagger’s creatures had all fled. The Smiths were cut off from us. Last and Primus were trapped between her hill and the horror’s wall.
Finn was coming for me. I knew this like I knew the sun rose and figments never knew you were there.
I gasped, shoving myself up onto my hands and knees, then I shakily stood.
We were swamped with darkness. It was all around me. I felt like it was all inside me.
Jagger gripped Justice’s torn shirt and dragged him upright. He’d left Justice for so long his face had turned gray, and his lips were tinged blue. His gray eyes had taken on a fractured edge. The specter of death gripped him, and I saw the twisting pain of its claws ripping at his spirit. Then, right before it snatched him and dragged him away, Jagger slammed a shock of blood down Justice’s throat and ripped him back from the horror that awaited him.
He gasped, choking on the blood. It ripped through him, ruthlessly mending his wounds. He gripped his abdomen and dragged in pained gulps of air.
Jagger shoved him to the ground while he spasmed and hit him with a burst of pain. Jagger was healing him, but at the same time, he was torturing his blood. The pain must have been agony.
Justice writhed on the ground.
“Stop,” I said.
Jagger tilted his head and continued to punch Justice with his power. “What did you say?”
“Stop. Stop torturing him.”
Jagger’s rockslide laugh crashed over us. “Look at you, Mari. Look at you fighting for him. And what for? He’s a true monster now. Do you know why he always did what I asked? No? He did it for you. Every time he chipped away a part of his soul, he was doing it for you. Each terrible deed broke away a bit more. Until—there’s nothing left, is there? He’s just a hollow bucket I can pour hate into. He broke himself apart for you. Isn’t that nice? You might think he tried to kill me because there’s good in him, but no. I can taste him. There’s no good. There’s only hate. He did it, because he hates.”
Justice shuddered and then opened his eyes. The swollen eye had been healed, along with every other bruise and gash.
“Mari,” he whispered.
I smiled, the corner of my mouth barely lifting.
“He can die,” Justice said, his deep voice a pained scrape. “He lies. He can die. Mari?—”
Jagger laughed and shoved more torture through Justice’s blood. He spasmed from the pain.
Then Justice stilled and lay silent, gasping as he stared at the black clouds pressing over us and the horror approaching.
The air reverberated with the clash of thunder and the roar of fire. There was a battle going on in the darkness. We were blinded to it, separated by a wall of darkness so thick that light was a distant imagining.
“Get up,” Jagger said.
Justice yanked himself to his feet, a marionette pulled by his strings.
At the edge of the darkness, Winnie stepped forward. She held another knife in her hand. It was one of Justice’s curved blades.
