Page 91 of Peacemaker

The elders were hurting me.

“I’m coming,” I screamed, as the pressure, red and bursting, became nearly unbearable. My head pounded sickeningly and my stomach tossed with the pain of it, threatening to spew its contents all over my lap.

I passed wolves sprinting toward the city; huge, shaggy wolves that would likely not survive the encounter. If they did, and if I did, I would get to know the Bay Town pack. I would get to know all the supernaturals. I would thank them.

It couldn’t be too late for that.

I drove on.

I needed to raise the vampires, but I also needed to open the way station to the elders. I tried to let them in as I drove. It wasn’t possible. I was too far from the house. I needed to be inside.

“Elders first,” I muttered, my knuckles white as I squeezed the steering wheel. “Then vampires.”

I’d never felt so alone.

When I finally reached the way station and jumped from the car, Jin was waiting on the porch, holding open the door.

I raced by him and into the kitchen, and almost before I shot through the doorway, I crumbled the metaphysical walls, and I let the elders in.

Not only elders poured into the kitchen, but I couldn’t worry about that.

“Feed the earth,” one ancient vampire screamed. “Raise the army!” His long, white hair was wrapped around his bony body like coarse mummy bandages and his eyes were tiny dry raisins. His bloodless skin looked like nearly translucent leather, and I felt him, for a few seconds.

I felt the vast horror that lived inside him, and I felt what it’d been like for him to live for so long trapped in the ether, and I clawed at my head, trying to get him out, because I could not bear it. Not even for those few seconds.

His sacrifice had been great, and he was as full of joy as the rifters that it was over.

He was free.

They all were.

If the rifters were contained again, it would not be by the elders.

Then Jin shoved me through the open kitchen doorway and into the backyard, and Amias was there.

“Oh God. Amias.” I threw myself against him, desperate for something—someone—familiar.

“There’s no time, my love.” But his voice was gentle.

We rushed into Willow-Wisp and I turned to him, unsure. “What do I do?”

“You remember that Himself told you to trust me.”

There was a look in his eyes that made me want to run screaming from the graveyard. A look that told me I was going to die, maybe, or worse.

“I remember.”

“That’s what you need to do.”

“I’m ready,” I whispered.

But I wasn’t ready.

He struck, a blur of movement, and ripped open my throat. Artery, or vein, or both, I didn’t know. I just knew that the world tilted, I began to gush blood.

Amias had just killed me. Himself had ordered my death to raise the vampires and save the world from rifters.

That’s what I believed.