Empowers me. I am those things.
I take another step forward. I am seething now, my breath slow hisses. Reverend Jenkins’s slitted eyes dart between me, Pax, and William, trying to calculate how to release Nirav and contain me instead. The air is electrified, as though lightning is about to strike. Elizabeth rushes forward, reaches to grab my wrist.
Asomoday is there instead. She cannot see what I see: She has grabbed the hoof of this beast. It roars at her, the air in this room pulsing, compressing, ripping our eardrums.
She wails in pain and withdraws her hand. Her palm is raw, blistered. “Witch!” she wails, falling to her knees. I am both amused and sickened, this touch like fire. Itwasn’tmine, was it? A glass decanter nearby explodes from my wrath. The Dark Legion’s wrath?
I cannot tell where one ends and the next begins.
Nirav—my sweet, lovely, silent Nirav—screams. Screams! He has never made as much as a single squeak in my presence. To hear him scream wrenches my heart in two. I growl and the candles lining the mantel melt, drooping in seconds as though in an oven. Their light disappears into smoke.
I control none of this. Elizabeth’s burn, the exploding glass, the melting candles—this is the Dark Legion, and I’m both terrified and empowered. The Trio laughs a throaty rumble, and the remaining lights flicker, extinguish. The fire in the fireplace flares. My eyesight floods; I squint through hot, red anguish. Sweat drips in my eyes.
Reverend Jenkins panics, realizing he cannot simply drag a woman made of fire and flame from this house. He flicks his knife in anger, and it slices Nirav clean to his collarbone.
I see Nirav’s blood, and rage consumes me. I couldn’t save Daisy, but I can save Nirav. My vision darkens, darkens…
Pax bellows and tackles Jenkins.
They tussle.
The knife slides directly at my feet, almost as if a dark force pushed it right to me.
I snatch it up.
I seethe.
Red.
Pain.
Strength.
When my eyesight clears, I see I have Jenkins pushed against the leather-paneled wall, my arm on his windpipe, his knife blade at his gut.
The Dark Trio looms behind me, and they surge power and disgust through me.You can do this, Stella.
I heave.
You have the strength and the power to end this man’s life.
I seethe.
You can gut him.
I froth.
He hurt your loved one. He hurt Nirav. End him!
There is nothing here but me, this knife, and my hunger.
My ears pulse with my heartbeat.
I inhale, readying myself to plunge this knife into flesh.
I smell urine. Reverend Jenkins has pissed himself.
I didn’t kill Blanck when I could’ve. I didn’t kill him, and then I discovered he profited from Daisy’s death. Look at what that sonofabitch got away with. I should’ve killed him. Icankill Jenkins.
