Page 165 of Dead Beat

She could hear the chanting of the crowd, human and demon, living and dead. Were they cheering for her or screaming for her fall?

“Darlington,” she pleaded. “Danny.”

But the monster before her did not understand, or if he did, he no longer cared. His first vow had been to serve in hell. It was how he had survived.

He snarled, stalking toward her, his head lowered, his curved horns gleaming. She had seen him crush a body with those horns, felt the prick of his claws sink into her hips.

She had believed she was ready to die. She had been ready to fight to the end, to pass from this world into the next knowing she had finally done something right, that she could save him, save the city he loved. But she had never been meant for a hero’s end. I should have called out to you. I should have believed you could save me. Instead she had doomed them both.

He charged and she lashed out with a string of hellfire. It snapped around his neck then dissolved.

There was nowhere to run, but she tried anyway, dodging left.

He lowered his head and she felt the full force of his horns ram into her ribs, snapping them. She was off her feet, tossed into the air.

Alex came down hard on the black earth. Before she could roll onto her side, Darlington was towering over her. He slashed out with his claws, tearing open her chest, the pain instant and astonishing. She could feel warm blood pooling around her. She tried to breathe and the pain spread like water from a burst dam, overwhelming her thoughts. This was the wound she would not recover from. The killing blow.

The world had become blue fire. She was at the center of the Wheel and she saw each blazing spoke connected to the nexuses. She saw Darlington before her, a black shape, untouched by flame. She saw the souls of New Haven, a galaxy of stars, the living and the dead. She felt the threads of fire that didn’t just connect her to Darlington but to Dawes and Turner too, the scholar and the priest who had once walked with her through hell, and even the little fragment that was still Tripp Helmuth.

They were on High Street and they were surrounded by Reiter’s familiars. That wasn’t supposed to happen either. She was supposed to be the sacrifice.

She could see the streetlamps, the salt knots, Reiter hanging from the tower.

One last moment. One last chance. Even if she couldn’t save Darlington, even if she couldn’t keep Turner and Dawes from Golgarot and the nightmare he promised, she could buy them a little time.

Alex had carried Dawes’s soul inside her before, when they’d escaped hell the second time. She remembered how that had felt, cool and dark as the halls of a library. She closed her eyes and let herself unspool, a thread of blue fire unraveling, down, down, past the spikes of the Harkness roof, the bells, the figures of the four soldiers, down to the street and the Library Walk. She crashed into Dawes’s consciousness, her panic.

A thousand memories crowded in. Her bedroom in Westport, white and pink and ruffled. The pale taste of the wafer at her first Communion. Sitting with Darlington in the parlor of Il Bastone, his interest in her thesis, her distrust. Handsome men were rarely kind. Alex in the entryway to Lethe, a jagged shard of a girl who was sure to cut them. Singing in the kitchen with Tripp. Flour and water and salt and yeast in her hands. Rosemary beneath her knife. The heat of the oven. The surety of transformation. The peace of the armory, each drawer set to rights, each label placed carefully, a universe of order and understanding. Her body like a bruise that the world kept touching when all she wanted was just to be left alone.

Dawes opened her eyes and they gasped together, the scene before them bright with terrible detail.

62

“The repulsion spells are unraveling,” Dawes said. “There’s too much magic. It can’t all hold.”

She felt dizzy and sick, her thoughts a tangled mess. But Reiter’s familiars were approaching. There had to be at least twenty of them. She glimpsed an aluminum bat in one girl’s hand, an older woman with coiffed blond hair holding a hammer, and a man who might be a professor gripping a shotgun. There was Nell, the girl from St. Elmo’s who had taken Alex to Savin Rock, wielding a field hockey stick. Dawes wasn’t sure what they were actually prepared to do. Had they come to threaten, or were they willing to kill for Reiter?

“Fire a warning shot or something,” Tripp said.

“Like hell,” Turner said. “I am not drawing my weapon on this crowd.”

Dawes pointed up to the tower, a fresh wave of fear overtaking her. “We have a much bigger problem.”

High above, Reiter was shaking loose the salt chains. When he got free, none of them would be able to stop him. There was no way to climb the tower in time, and even if they somehow could, how were they supposed to face Reiter?

“Wait,” said Tripp. “I know what to do.”

Oh no, thought Dawes. But then Tripp licked his knuckles. The salt guardian. His albatross.

Its vast wings unfurled, its bright white head. It released a long, shrill cry and shot into the air, sailing high over the towers of Old Campus and then soaring directly at the balcony where Reiter had balanced, trying to rid himself of the chains. It descended on him, beating at his head and shoulders, beak pecking and jabbing.

Reiter thrashed and stumbled, shouting his rage.

He waved his arms furiously, covering his head and trying to drive off the great bird. In the next moment he was tottering over the edge of the balcony.

“Seabird!” shouted Tripp.

Reiter fell.