The thoughts were swirling in my head. Henry had me alone, Sam was knocked out, and I didn’t know if some of the people outside were still fighting, or if everyone was dead. Either way, there was nobody coming to save me.
But, if the coalescence was a wedding, it seemed like the light came out of Talina’s chest. As if the power Zeke gained wasn’t summoned from the Gods, but came from her.
The blood loss must have been getting to me, because I kept seeing that dream, where I couldn’t reach Sam on my own, so all of my ancestors came, one after the other, and gave me what I needed to get there. The Sam from the dream had told me that they would come if I needed help, but dream-Beth said I already had everything I needed. If it wasn’t all in my imagination, then maybe the magic was already somewhere inside me, flowing through the blood of my ancestors that I just needed to unlock.
Everything for Kiara’s Cure was in my bag in the car, but the guys insisted my magic was about intent, and I didn’t need an object to channel the magic as long as I was strong enough to channel it on my own. Which they seemed to think I was.
Henry was still talking about Annabelle, but I closed my eyes and focused on each Bearer before me. I focused on the moments they shared with me; Cassie being shot and jumping off the cliff to save her daughter, Beth being burned alive, Rosie’s heart breaking when Gabriel turned her down, Annabelle seeing Gabriel with that woman, Judith waiting for a Henry who never showed up, Talina’s joy on her wedding day… I focused on all of their emotions and pleaded for their help. I asked for the powers of my ancestors to defeat the man who took so much from so many of us...
It wasn’t a burst of light so much as a ball of warmth that formed in my chest, radiating through my entire body. I could feel it building, filling me up, but it wasn’t until Gabriel and Embry barged into the office that I realized I could move again.
Henry tried to send them against the wall like he had Sam, but my hands shot up and Henry was knocked backwards instead, as if something bumped into his shoulder.
“I thought I made you stay put,” Henry turned to face me, sending shivers down my spine. I could feel the magic trying to hold me in place as he turned back to the guys, but this wasn’t because he forgot to immobilize me, it was me fighting back.
Embry and Gabriel both stood in front of me, putting a barrier between Henry and I.
“How cute. Ready for another round?” Henry asked, cocky in the knowledge that they had never won against him.
Embry took his sword and rushed at Henry, but he was thrown up in the air before he could get close. I saw Henry bring his hands down as if to smash Embry into the ground, and put my hands out to slow his fall.
Gabriel looked to me, shocked by what I did and by the dagger in my chest, but I was oddly calm. Henry wasn’t panicking, so I must look normal, but every one of my nerve endings was firing with warmth and electricity.
“What did you do?” Henry asked me, his smile fading as he realized I was no longer the weak teenager he was up against earlier.
“Asked for a little help,” I put my hands in front of me, ready for him to throw something at me, but he looked like he was calculating his next move.
“I still have the True Cross, you can’t have completed the ritual,” he warned.
“The ritual only gives you access to my birthright,” I pointed out.
“I guess I’m a few cuts away from sharing it then,” he said with a confidence I didn’t buy.
“If you prove yourself worthy, which I don’t think is likely,” I argued.
“It’s my birthright,” he was getting angry, which made him look like a child.
“It was. A long time ago. But I think we both know you’re not that boy anymore.”
He looked at me like I was crazy before creating a great big ball of energy between his hands. His smile, though much less confident, was back. He rightfully guessed that although I was suddenly more powerful than him, he’d had centuries to figure out how to use his powers, and I barely had a summer.
I stood there and waited for Henry to strike, grateful that the guys each took a step back so I wouldn’t have to worry about them being in the crossfires. Henry split the great ball of energy into three smaller ones and shot them at me, one after another. I could deflect them with my force shield, which was clearly much stronger than it was when I threw Gabriel against the tree. Henry’s power balls shot through the house and landed in the gazebo out back. I could only tell because the fire was visible from the window.
Eventually, Henry used his mind instead of his skills and shot his energy balls at the three guys I would give my life for. I deflected them all, but wasn’t quick enough to stop the one he shot at me. It caught me in the stomach and I doubled over; the wind knocked out of me. I took a second, looked at Henry with all the hatred I was feeling, and released a devastating gust of wind that knocked him off his feet.
Apparently, even without practice, my ancestors gave me the skills I needed to kick Henry’s butt. We went back and forth with the powerful air strikes, before Henry switched to lightning. It was a horrible idea because anything he did; I did so much better. Unlike the air, that seemed to be a temporary inconvenience, the lightning I shot sent Henry fifty feet into the air, before he landed with a horrible crunch of breaking bones.
“If you kill me now, they die too,” Henry warned as I walked over, about to strike him with some more lightning.
I finally felt like I had the upper hand, but his words stopped me. His smile was gone, and he resorted to pleading for his life, but the words struck me to my core.
“Protecting you from me was the only thing keeping the two of them alive,” he said, making me turn to Embry. He nodded like a goodbye, resigned to dying. I knew their deaths were the most likely outcome after defeating Henry, but to be honest, I never thought we would get this far.
“As long as you can never hurt her again, I’m okay with that,” Gabriel locked eyes with me, giving me permission to do what I needed to do. I held on a few moments, then took a deep breath and released some kind of laser-like energy that made Henry glow for a few seconds before the light turned into fire and he erupted into flames. It was a brilliant spectacle until all that remained was a pile of ash.
I stared at it, having trouble believing it was really over, not ready to look over to the guys, terrified they would drift away like the old man on the boat.
I had been ignoring the wound in my chest, but it hurt so much now that I wasn’t fighting for my life. My bleeding had slowed while I was under Henry’s control, but the fight exacerbated it. The blood loss was getting to me, making me so woozy that I fell to the ground. I was vaguely aware of the guys rushing to me, but I felt like my death was a decent price for the world to be rid of Henry.
“Lucy!” Embry said frantically, lifting my head into his lap while trying to put pressure on my wound. “Gabriel went to get the Cure, you’ll be okay,” he assured me, but I felt myself drifting away, and knew they didn’t have much time.
Gabriel came back into the room with the backpack and set up everything for Kiara’s Cure. “It will be okay,” he told me, but the fear I was starting to no longer feel was in every word he said.
They followed all the steps, the two of them getting so blurry that I could hardly tell them apart anymore. I could tell from the tone of their voices that it wasn’t working, but they kept rereading the paper and trying again.
“It’s okay,” I told them.
“We are not letting you die, Lucy. We will find a way,” Gabriel told me.
“Take my heart,” I told him, having so much trouble swallowing.
“What?” he asked, visibly shocked.
“There,” I said, lifting my arm so I could point to Embry’s paper, which he figured out even though my hand dropped almost as soon as it went up.
“We can’t…”
“Take my heart,” I told Gabriel, as authoritative as I could manage.
“We need to complete the ritual,” I could hear the reluctance in Embry’s voice.
“I can’t…”
“Gabriel…” I said, pleading with my eyes because I couldn’t find my words. I saw tears in his black eyes as he looked back at me, but I couldn’t really keep mine open anymore.
“I love you,” Gabriel whispered, or it seemed like he was whispering, because it came from so far away.
“We will bring you back,” Embry assured me, though I could barely hear anything at that point. I felt light as a feather, and warm when my eyes finally closed. I knew that unless they completed the ritual and the spell, my eyes would never open again. I thought it would terrify me, that I would be screaming about not being ready to die, but the warmer and lighter I felt, the less I worried about being too young or all of the things I hadn’t done.