A Beautiful Evil

Page 31

I released my focus and looked down, breathing heavily. The metal had become stone. My heart beat wildly. I still needed to do the chains attached to my ankles. My gaze caught on Menai. She stared at the stone. Then she looked purposefully away.
Athena remained intent on negotiations, on how to exchange the jar, the condition it must be in, the condition Sebastian must be in. They left nothing to chance.
Suddenly the hairs on the back on my neck stood. Some of the on the outer edges of the lines glanced around warily. I peered into the darkness, knowing they were out there, the creatures of the ruins. The revenants, turnskins, loups-garous, and whatever the hell else lurked in this war zone.
The scent of live flesh and blood drew them here.
Menai notched an arrow, pointing downward; she was wary as her head turned toward the buildings. Bran’s sword was out of its sheath. But he, too, held his weapon down, hands curled around the hilt, the tip of the blade stuck into the pavement.
And then the shit hit the fan.
Twenty-Six
A SUDDEN RUSH OF WIND BLEW OVER THE PROCESSION. Everyone near the float ducked in reaction as Mapsaura plucked Athena’s helmet off her head. The harpy lifted her prize and dipped her head to put it on. As soon as the helmet touched down, Mapsaura disappeared.
Within a second of the theft Bran was on the float swinging his great sword down toward Athena’s head. She had little time to react, her blade barely making it up in time to stop Bran’s sword from severing her head. The attack set off a chain reaction, triggering the kill instincts in the creatures of the ruins. They fell on the and the Novem on three sides.
Shouts and fighting and power filled the street. The float lurched wildly as a turnskin leaped onto the back of one of the white bulls and bit. Red flowed over white. Athena and Bran lost their balance. Michel was fighting his way to the float.
A gigantic loup-garou tore through Athena’s minions like they were nothing, heading in my direction.
Shit. I pulled the chain at one wrist taut and then stomped down, breaking the stone in half. The loup-garou closed in. Now my arm was free, but still manacled and still with several stone links attached. Frantic, I broke the other chain as the werewolflike creature leaped onto the float.
My ankles still chained, I swung my arms around, using the stone links as weapons. The chains swung around and cracked him in the side of the face. His skull dented in, and he went flying off the float along with a few busted links.
“Ari!”
I turned at the sound of my father’s shout. He’d gotten sucked out away from the float. He withdrew his blade, flipped it hilt first, and then lobbed it like a football toward me.
“Menai!” Athena shouted, her attention on the blade arcing through the air.
In less than a second Menai strung another arrow and aimed it at the blade. She was going to knock it off course. Athena was right there. Menai wouldn’t openly disobey her like this.
“NO!” I jerked at the manacles on my ankles.
She let the arrow fly. It soared through the air, lightning fast, knocking my father’s blood-forged blade from its perfect arc toward me. Athena shouted more commands as she fought against Bran.
One of Athena’s harpies dove for the blade. She caught it in her talons and then pushed higher into the air.
My hopes sank. Until the harpy flew sideways and rolled in midair, hit by something unseen. Mapsaura? I could hear the flapping of leathery wings, but I saw nothing as the harpy screeched and fought, and—oh God—dropped the blade.
I screamed, pulling so hard on the chains that the manacles cut into my ankles. I had to get that blade, and I’d never do that stuck on the float. A hawk zoomed past me so quick and close, my hair puffed. His red tail flashed past my vision.
Henri. He plucked the blade from the air, banked, came arcing back toward the float, and dropped the blade. I caught it by the hilt. Power hummed in my hand. My thoughts and memories and emotions warped inward to form a single-minded purpose.
The blood forged into the metal ran through my veins. The blade was my conduit, my weapon, an extension of myself. I understood now what my father meant.
“Athena!” I shouted, my voice sounding far away as I lifted the blade behind my head with both hands.
All the energy and power I had, I forced upward into the blade, giving it my will and finally connecting and accepting the monster in my subconscious. Using all the strength in my body, I threw the blade as Athena spun around. It made four rotations before it slammed into the goddess, piercing her armor and sinking deep in her chest. The force knocked her back several steps. For a few seconds she seemed frozen, but then her eyes locked on me like two heat-seeking missiles.
She advanced, pulling out the blade. Her other hand grabbed my throat. Before she could speak, I forced out, “That blade is my father’s, forged with his blood, the same blood that runs though my veins. You know what it’s designed to do. You’re so smart, you figure it out.”
I watched with satisfaction as the realization dawned on her. I’d delivered my power without ever having to touch her, and even now it was spreading out from her wound, turning the blood and armor to stone.
“You know what’s funny, Athena? You created us both, the gorgons and the Sons of Perseus. And now you’ll die by our power. You will harden from the inside out, and I hope it fucking hurts.”
The inner gleam in her green eyes didn’t dim, but instead grew brighter. Laughter bubbled to her throat and burst through her mouth with a strangled sound. “You’re so . . . naive and . . . small-minded,” she gasped through pain and humor.
“I’m not the one about to take her last breath.”
“And I could crush your windpipe right now, stupid girl.” Something shifted in her gaze, something that revealed a depth of emotion far greater than I’d ever imagined.
“But you won’t,” I said. “I know what you want from me.”
Her eyes filled with pain. She sneered. “You know nothing. And you will always be an insignificant nothing.” She shoved my father’s blade into my side. Hot pain sliced through me as her lips kissed my cheek. “This isn’t over. For either one of us. Enjoy your wound as I shall enjoy mine.”
Athena yanked the blade out. I staggered back as my power slowly worked through her system.
My hand went to my wound. My vision wavered, from the shock and pain. She shouted something to her army, the last of her words clipped as her throat hardened.
And then she blinked out.
Gone.
Most of her army disappeared with her, leaving the Novem to fend off the creatures of the ruins.
The float lurched again as one of the bulls broke from the harness and fled into the fray, jumping over the minions that were left behind and the Novem, crushing anything beneath its giant hooves.
The sounds of screams and explosions became muted by the fear thundering through me. The pain in my side soured my stomach, and a cold sweat broke out on my skin. I had to stay lucid. My survival depended on it.
The strength I found to lift my arms and start swinging the stone chains was one of those things fueled by survival adrenaline. I hit a revenant off the float and then a turnskin, but more were coming. The float rocked again. I stumbled. My father leaped onto the float, followed by Bran. They met back-to-back, fending off attacks. The hood slid off my father’s head, revealing savage, puckered scars and missing hair and skin. He was weak, still healing, and I wanted to shout at him to go, but I didn’t want to distract him and get him killed.
My arms burned as I swung the chains around and around, hitting anything that approached. Time seemed to stretch on forever. And all I could think about was getting them off the float so I could reach Sebastian before they toppled him to the hard pavement below.
I hit two more creatures. A third. I dropped my arms, and then my knees hit the floor, my lungs on fire, heart hammering. I was unable to continue. A hand slid across the surface of the float—a leathery gray hand that tossed a key toward me.
Shocked, I glanced up and saw a , an old one. He had a scar over the corner of his eye, pulling down his eyelid. And then it hit me. It was the same one caught by the Novem heirs in the Saenger Theatre. Our eyes met for a fraction of a second before he ducked down and out of sight.
I lunged for the key, grabbing it and forcing my exhausted arm muscles to stop shaking long enough to put the key into the manacle lock at my ankle. It slid in and clicked. Thank God! The second manacle came off and I ran, scrambling onto the raised platform and pulling myself up until I was standing between Sebastian’s knees and throwing my arms around him, holding on and trying desperately to do to him what Id done to that child back in the stone garden.
Wake! Oh God! Please wake up!
Something hit me from behind and latched on with sharp claws, which dug into my hips, piercing the flesh and pushing down. I screamed as I felt the weight and bites of several creatures as they attacked me like a pack of wild dogs.
Their weight pressed me down. I couldn’t turn to fight. Claws clamped around my shoulders. I held on to Sebastian tighter. Teeth tore into my bicep, tugging back and forth in a frenzy.
I screamed, loud and raw and from a place inside me I didn’t know existed.
I heard shouts behind me. I grasped Sebastian tighter. I was losing strength in the arm that was being torn to shreds, and the wound at my side weakened my consciousness. They were pulling me down. And it was all happening so fast. I cried against stone skin, wetting it with my tears. “Please, wake up. Sebastian . . . please . . . I’m sorry . . . wake up.”
A claw sliced my scalp. The hold on my foot grew so strong, my leg was pulled straight. Something had my hair and jerked hard. A hand grabbed mine—a revenant had crawled up the back of the throne.
No, no, no, no . . .
From a far distance I heard my father and Bran. I thought I heard Michel shouting, but it didn’t matter. It was too late for me. My arms were giving way.
A dark door opened inside me: a secret place, the place where I’d retreat to as a child when things got too overwhelming for me to handle. It was peaceful and silent. No one could reach me there. The bites and ripping flesh—that was happening to someone else now, not me. Not me.