Chapter Twenty-three

Spar flapped his powerful wings as he flew high above the city of Montreal and coasted out over the river that bordered it. Wynn clung to his neck and waist, muttering something about crashing and dying and about 206 broken bones. He tried to ignore her. She felt wrong in his arms, but she had insisted on joining the coming battle, sprained ankle or no. When Ella had begun arguing on her side, he had given up and agreed to carry her to the ritual site.

Beside him, Kees flew with a similar armful, but he seemed more than content to have his mate wrapped around him as they soared toward the small, unnamed island Wynn had identified. Ella appeared to fit against the other Guardian as if she had been made just for him, and Spar felt the stab of envy straight into his heart. He knew what it felt like to hold his mate that way, and he only hoped he would be fortunate enough to feel that again.

“Look!” Kees shouted to gain his brother’s attention, pointing down to the glow of fire visible from the air though a break in the island’s thick tree cover. “I think we’ve found our nocturnis, brother.”

A growl was Spar’s only reply. He began to spiral his flight path in toward the clearing, grunting when the witch in his arms leaned forward and sank her teeth in his shoulder.

“What in the name of the Light was that for?” he demanded.

“Well, I wasn’t going to let go of you long enough to smack you upside the head,” Wynn shot back. “You can’t just fly in there and give them a clean shot at you, for the Goddess’s sake. Haven’t you ever heard of the element of surprise? We have to sneak up on them.”

“Let Kees and Ella sneak up on them. I think they will be sufficiently surprised when I land on their heads and crush their puny human bodies into jelly.”

“Fine, but if one of them uses a lightning bolt to blow your head off, don’t say I didn’t warn y—Aaaaaaahhhhhh!”

Her words trailed off into a shriek of terror as Spar inverted his body and began a tight death spiral toward the light that glowed from inside the tight ring of trees.

*   *   *

At first, Fil thought she heard the sound of an eagle screaming as it swooped down on its prey. Then she thought it might be Ricky, screaming again as the cardinal inflicted yet another wound to join the dozen or more he’d already given to the helpless reporter. Almost as quickly she realized Ricky’s cries had turned into pleading sobs that begged for mercy his captors didn’t possess, and eagles didn’t normally hunt at night. Something else had to have made that noise, and it sounded like a woman.

“Someone is coming!” barf boy shouted, looking around nervously.

“Who?” one of the others demanded, sounding less than impressed. “The Guardian? Even if he saw through our little impersonation, so what if he comes? There are seven of us here, and once the boss finishes off the reporter, the Master will be wide awake and ready to hear our call. One Guardian against all of us?” He snorted. “I like our chances.”

Fil didn’t, not when a bolt of blue-white light rained down from the sky, swallowing up the braggart and barf boy in a giant magical bubble. Finally, the cavalry had arrived.

The clearing erupted in a mass of confusion, shouting, and general chaos. Into the thick of it sailed not one, but two battle-ready Guardians, each looking like a participant in an Emote the Rage contest. With his spear in hand and feathered wings spread wide, Spar looked like one of God’s avenging angels on the warpath. The figure she assumed had to be Kees appeared more like a demon, but knowing he was on her side made her take his bat-like wings, fangs, and heavy curving horns in stride. Better with her than against her, she figured.

The two of them landed in unison, the solid thunk of their feet hitting the earth the sweetest sound Fil could imagine. Their wings kicked up a small storm of dirt and dried leaves, and even away from the action Fil had to squint against the debris. She could see well enough to make out that the Guardians hadn’t come alone. Wynn and Ella jumped to the ground as well, Ella immediately squaring off against the nocturnis while Wynn scanned the area looking for her. She gave a hoarse shout and nearly sang a chorus of hallelujah when the witch’s eyes locked on her.

“Oh, my God, did you send down the magic bubble?” she demanded when Wynn knelt at her side. “Because that was kind of awesome. I’m going to have to make you teach me that.”

“Nope, that was Ella. And I want to learn it, too.”

Fil quickly turned to present her bound hands. “Can you get me out of these? Quick.”

The witch drew a knife from her bag of tricks, which this time was draped across her front like a sling. “I came prepared.”

Wynn sawed through the ropes, careful not to slice off any more of Fil’s skin than she’d already managed to shed herself. She couldn’t stop herself from tugging impatiently, and even before the last loop sprang free, she was yanking her hands apart and reaching for the ties around her ankles.

“Aaaaaghhhh!”

The pained cry had Fil’s head jerking up and toward the altar. While Kees and Spar battled the nocturnis and Ella cast spells around the clearing like a wild woman, the cardinal had turned back to Ricky and plunged his knife deep into the other man’s belly.

“Shit! Ricky!”

“Here! I’ll go.”

Wynn shoved the knife into Fil’s hand and began limping across the clearing toward the altar.

“Oh, of all the idiotic noble gestures to come up with at a time like this…” Fil trailed off and hacked madly at her final bindings.

In seconds she had herself unbound and darted past Wynn, intent on getting to her friend. She knew Spar would take care of the rest of the cultists, but she couldn’t leave Ricky at the cardinal’s mercy. She had to get him free and see how badly he’d been hurt. If there was a chance to save him, she would take it.

“Fil, stop!”

She ignored the witch’s shout but dodged out of the way just in time to see a limp, robed body land on the ground she’d stood on a second ago. Another nocturnis down reassured her that the Guardians had things under control, but the cardinal still stood beside the altar, arms raised, bloody dagger clutched in his hand.

As she neared the stone slab, she could make out the sound of his chanting rising above the noise of the battle. She couldn’t make out the words or understand what he was saying. The language definitely wasn’t English, but it didn’t sound like any other language she’d ever heard. Not French or Spanish or even Lithuanian, it had a harsh, guttural, menacing sound that made her skin pucker with goose bumps as she approached.

When she got within ten feet of the altar, Ricky turned his head, and she nearly stumbled as she caught a glimpse of his face. His eyes had swollen shut beneath the crosses carved across the sockets, as if someone hadn’t tried just to blind him, but to X him out of existence. Shallow slices ran bloody trails across his cheeks and into the skin of his forehead: The sick fuck with the knife had carved the same symbol that desecrated her palm. It was horrifying to look upon, and rage and pity warred inside her.

Snarling, she pulled the rage forward and threw herself the last ten feet to the altar. She reached up for the knife, her only thought to rip it out of the cardinal’s hand and see how he liked it buried in his withered black heart, but she hadn’t counted on him being so strong.

He pushed her aside with alarming ease and laughed with maniacal glee. “Stupid girl! You cannot stop the Master and you cannot stop me. We will have our time upon the earth, and the world will grovel at our feet. All hail Uhlthor, the Defiler! Come now, thou fearsome Master, and feast upon that which I have offered you!”

The knife came down again, but Fil screamed in furious denial. She flung herself forward, her only thought to stop that knife from ending her friend’s life once and for all. She hadn’t actually intended to take the blow herself, but her momentum carried her up over the top of the altar and placed her right shoulder in the path of the blade.

Oh, sweet Jesus, the pain!

The knife sank deep, the angle biting into her flesh high in the rear before driving forward and down with brutal force. She felt the shock of the impact and heard the snap as her collarbone fractured from the strain. A scream tore from her throat, one she hadn’t even realized was coming until she heard it high and sharp and vibrating with agony. Beneath her, Ricky groaned, and behind her the cardinal shrieked in fury and disbelief. No one had died upon the altar, not yet anyway, and his Master was going to be missing his breakfast right about now.

Poor baby.

All around them, the air filled with a mighty crash, a sonic boom that shook the ground and left Fil’s ears ringing. As if she hadn’t already checked off enough boxes on the minor traumatic brain injury self-evaluation list. The sound of rock breaking quickly followed, and Fil’s second sight showed tendrils of absolute blackness emerging from new cracks in the stone beside Ricky’s head.

Guess who was coming to dinner?

Fil screamed again as the cardinal yanked the knife out of her back and prepared to stab again. She didn’t think, didn’t plan, didn’t reason; she just reacted. Even before the tip of the blade cleared her skin, she rolled to her back and raised her left hand, catching the blade in her fist as it descended a second time.

Oddly, she felt the sharp edges slice through her skin, felt the blood well up and begin pouring forth to stain the demon’s mark, but she didn’t feel the pain. Instead, she felt heat, white-hot and searing as she braced her arm with all her strength and stared up into the eyes of evil.

“I will hail no demonic filth, you piece of shit, but I will gladly serve you up on your Master’s altar like buttered toast with raspberry fucking jam,” she hissed.

With a jerk and a twist, Fil used her grip on the knife to yank the cardinal off balance and flipped her body, reversing their positions to leave the cardinal draped across the bloody altar atop his intended sacrifice. Scrambling backward, she slid to the earth and watched, both thrilled and horrified, as the tendrils of Darkness closed around the cardinal’s struggling form and began to feast.

Fil’s head spun and throbbed and she clutched her right arm uselessly to her side while blood dripped from the left in a steady trickle. She felt three miles past used up, but she could see Ricky’s foot twitch and she stumbled forward, intent on pulling him free. Then hands closed around her shoulders, and even without pressing down they pinned her in place.

“No, you can’t.” Ella’s familiar voice came to her, firm and steady. “It’s too dangerous.”

“And it’s too late,” Wynn added, urging all of them back from the sacrificial altar. “Your friend is already gone.”

Fil blinked and tried to focus on the shapes among the blackness, but the tendrils had grown, twining together into a throbbing, squirming mass of evil. Nothing could survive that desecration, she realized, and her heart broke at the thought of Ricky, his soul devoured to feed that evil. All because of her. If she hadn’t used him to get information, he never would have gotten mixed up in this, never would have seemed like a useful pawn in the Order’s psychotic game. How was she supposed to live with that?

She trembled as the grief and pain and fatigue threatened to overwhelm her. Her shoulder, thankfully the left one, bumped against Ella as she swayed on her feet. “Oh, my God, how hurt is she? She’s about to pass out!”

“She needs a hospital. Now.”

Wynn’s voice came from a long way away, miles and miles, as Fil’s vision once again began to blur around the edges. This time she saw bright sparks in front of her eyes as consciousness began to fail her.

“What about the demon?”

“That’s not the demon, it’s just feeding tendrils. The demon is somewhere else, probably guarded by the rest of the Order. Spar and Kees will take care of it.”

The ground rushed toward her.

“Holy shit, Fil!”

She knew nothing but blackness.

Damn it, not again.