JOVIENNE KNEW ANDREI’S worst fears were coming true. In spite of it all, he held his ground and fought even as they surrounded him. It wrenched her heart. He was doing this for her. She had to do something. Finish the Hellgate! She pulled the dagger blade into her chest.
The pain dropped her to her knees, but she caught a handful of blood as the dagger ejected itself. The look of the blood mesmerized her. It sparkled like burning glitter mixed with the purple-red fluid.
The drum beat changed.
The cinders attacking Andrei stopped. They dropped him and scurried away, rushing to gather in the far corner. Many converged to commence their blurry work while others lay down in a circle, climbing atop one another and weaving their spindly bodies together, building a circle like a high barrier of dead bodies.
Andrei had his feet under him and hurried toward Jovienne. “What are they doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“It can’t be good. End this. Now,” Andrei pleaded as he neared the circle, “while they’re distracted.”
“I can’t. You need to go.”
He eyed the blood cupped in her hand. “Jovienne—”
His desire to save her from what he thought was evil would endanger them both. Her temper flared. “I want my life! I won’t be a slave anymore! I won’t be a pawn.”
“Everyone on Earth is a pawn.”
Following her pedagogue’s surprised gaze, Jovienne looked to the stigmatic. His cruel tone set her off.
Stomping close, she thrust her bloody hand into his face and snarled, “You want a taste of mine this time? Let’s see what the darkblood in me does to you!” The fingers of her free hand raked into his hair, finding clots from his representation of the Crown of Thorns. She felt very satisfied that the Spiritus Sanctus actually struggled to keep Nathan’s face away from her bloody hand.
“Jovienne!” Andrei shouted.
She realized he’d shouted her name several times. Keeping her grip on the stigmatic’s scalp, she turned.
“What’s darkblood?”
She struggled with what to say. This would have to be a last straw. He would see her, her ‘witchcraft,’ her bat wings, and her demon blood as wretched and unable to be saved.
“An ancient demon bled into her. She absorbed it,” the stigmatic answered.
She glared at the Sanctus Spiritus, and then faced Andrei squarely, prepared for the worst. “That’s why my feathers are gone.”
“Will doing this undo that?” he asked.
“No.” The Sanctus Spiritus said the word so harshly it didn’t seem like a human voice at all.
She released his hair and drew the golden sword from her belt, and then laid the flat of the blade on his stomach. He screamed.
“Jovienne! That’s the Holy Spirit of God!”
She pulled the sword away, bringing skin with it. “I know,” she said over her shoulder, keeping her glare trained on Nathan’s all-white eyes. “He’s also the reason I have the quintanumin! While I was in a coma after the wreck, this jerk force-fed his stigmata run-off into me. Someone like him did the same to you. It’s how we are given the quintanumin.”
Andrei said nothing.
“He’s the reason,” Jovienne continued, voice shaking between clamped teeth, “that people like you and me are transformed against our will, forced into hidden lives and an eternity of murder and pain.”
Though the drums had quieted, they rumbled loudly again, this time as a militant march meant to keep steps synchronized. Jovienne watched Andrei to see if he noticed a change in his cringe. From his expression, he did. They both looked to the cinders. Many had left. Only the ones incorporated into the barrier or working within it remained.
“They’re calling a demon.”
The circle shielded her from the sense of evil they were calling up, but she could gauge it by Andrei’s posture. His shoulders tensed, tight and weighted. “There’s no time, Andrei. Leave. Now.”
He faced her. The noise of the drums kept her from hearing him, but she could read his lips: Not without you. A red light burst up from the midst of the cinders.
Inside the circle, Jovienne was protected from whatever terror was coming, but Andrei wasn’t. Her eyes scoured him in an instant. “You’re unarmed.” The cinders had stripped him of his sword.
ACHING FROM THE weight of the evil, Andrei’s knees threatened to buckle. If asked, he’d have sworn his skin was melting off of him, but he stood firm amid his terror for what was coming.
“My, my, my.” A sultry voice resonated, amplified amid the cinder-tower. The red light faded and the woven tower of bodies unraveled in a flurry of limbs. A woman strode the aisle that the creatures parted to create for her. Her skin was alabaster and her body was covered with what looked like an irregular pattern of red lace. She had no hair, but artistic scarlet lines trailed over her head and face. Behind her fanned featherless scarlet wings.
“Damnzel,” Jovienne said.
“You were given that sword for one purpose, sweetie. And I’m here to make sure you complete the task. If you don’t…I get to kill your hot teacher.” She laughed a bird-like titter of giggles. “Damned if you do…damned if you don’t. Your situation hasn’t improved for all of your conniving.”
They gave Jovienne a sword. She’s in a circle prepared to use it, but Damnzel’s threatening her. So Jovienne must be rebelling against the original plan.
She’s defying both.
Andrei assessed Damnzel again. Whatever demonic power now imbibed within her was a greater match for his basic quintanumin. She was a bigger threat than the creatures who remained, but there were far more of them falling into ranks behind her.
He checked Jovienne. Her eyes shone, brimming with all her fears. If she didn’t slay the Sanctus Spiritus, Damnzel would kill him. But if Jovienne did what they wanted her to do, neither of them was likely to survive anyway.
No wonder she had wanted him to leave. Him being here weakened her position.
He knew what he had to do.
If I win, Jovienne will have nothing to fear. And if I don’t, she has nothing left to lose. Their threats will be empty.
“It was my honor to teach you. You always do what needs done. Be true to your heart. Face your enemies and roar like the lioness you are inside.”
He charged at Damnzel.
Cinders blocked him.
Andrei kicked one back, punched another. Their brittle fingertips touched him, partially disintegrating against his shirt. They grabbed at him with dry bones. He jerked to the right and quickly back to the left. He would escape one, and another would replace it. The creatures ripped his shirt away. Stinging welts rose on his back.
“Are you afraid of me, Damnzel?”
“Hardly, but watching you in action is making me hot. It’d be a shame to kill you before I’m satisfied.”
While she spoke, he cracked two of the dried heads together, crushing them, and removed one’s arm at the elbow with a jerk. He pulled femurs from the fallen and spun, using them to force the ring around him to widen. “How can I satisfy you when you’re so far away?”
“If you want me, sweetie, come and get me.”
He was making headway, but it was time to utilize some help. By using his ghost hands, he felt for movements behind him. With his bone weapons crossed before him, he called for the quickening and blasted forward, smashing dried flesh as he passed. He nearly stumbled as he stepped on the fallen creatures, but he managed to maintain his balance and continue his charge until he arrived only a few yards from Damnzel.
There, the things accelerated into their busy modes and darted in, scratching and biting him before he could react. Rivulets of blood trickled from the injuries.
The creatures converged around him. He panicked. Over a creature’s shoulder, he saw Jovienne’s chin drop.
I won’t fail her again.
He spun, kicked out, and released the shout building within him. His heel knocked three down. The remaining ones dived at him. He kicked another away. The rest wrapped their dead arms around him like a determined nightmare.
He shouted and twisted, primal panic renewed, fueling his need to escape, disposing of logic and tactic in the process. That burdensome weight slithered around him and made anvils of his shoulders. The terrible weariness coming over him threatened his ability to fight.
“Enough!” The creatures halted at Damnzel’s order. “You can go,” she told them as she stepped toward Andrei. The cinders departed.
As she drew closer, he realized he’d been wrong before, about the lace. He could tell exactly where her limbs had been ripped off, and what currently held them on were arteries used as thread. Her skin was lacerated all over. What he’d mistaken for decorative fabric was thousands of surgically precise cuts. Her intimate areas, which he’d thought were covered, had been skinned.
“Enticing, isn’t it?” she asked. “Believe me, it gives a whole new meaning to the word rawhide.”
Playing fair wouldn’t win this one.
Andrei quickened forward and swung the bones together. Damnzel raised her arm in defense. The broken hipbone protrusion tore into the stitching that held her arm on. The severed limb disintegrated like embers falling off a log.
With a scream of rage, she swung her other arm and knocked him off his feet.
A slick, wet sound erupted at her shoulder and the flesh stretched down, growing, replacing the lost arm with a sleek, black reptilian claw.
“Ooo…” she whispered, looking at it. “I think this one’s better than the old one. Longer, stronger, sharper.” She clacked the nails together.
Andrei got his feet under him and shook his head to clear away the pinpoints of light.
“Let’s do it,” Damnzel said.