FOR A SHORT, pudgy guy wearing big boots, the Protector was remarkably fast. Apparently, seeing his henchman disintegrate in front of him had given him an incentive to get the lead out.
Also, he didn’t have far to run: his goal was clearly the door that once, when this was still a church, would have led to the vestry and now presumably gave access to his private chambers since that was the way Tabitha had gone.
Shouting, “Guards! Guards!” at the top of his voice wasn’t slowing him down, either. He was going to get through that door before I could catch him . . .
But then, from my left, came a silver-black streak, Piotr in wolf form. He leaped and bore the Protector to the ground. The Protector screamed, an almost girlish sound, and rolled over onto his back, arms across his face, as Piotr stood over him and slavered, lips drawn back from his fangs, growls rumbling deep in his chest.
I resisted the urge to say, “Good boy,” and approached, ready to reach out and take the Protector’s hokhmah . . .
. . . only to be knocked down in my turn by Father Thomas. He sat astride me, holding my arms pinned. I struggled, but I couldn’t break free. I tried to Shape him, but Abrahm’s blasted shouldn’t-even-exist Shaping remained firm, since I didn’t have his hokhmah.
“What should I do, Protector?” Father Thomas called, but Abrahm was too busy fending off Piotr’s snapping jaws—I knew Piotr was only keeping him in place, not really planning to devour him, but presumably, the Protector didn’t—to answer.
For the moment, both Abrahm and I were pinned to the floor like butterflies in a museum display . . . but only for a moment. Now Karl hit Father Thomas from the side, driving him off me. Took you long enough, I thought. Ordinarily, I would have needled him out loud, but there wasn’t time. As he and Father Thomas wrestled and Piotr growled and I got back to my feet, Abrahm’s guards finally responded—but not in human form.
The rogue the pack had found feasting on the farm family had looked like a regular vampire, but maybe that was partly appearance-changing glamor, because the two rogues that now exploded up from the crypt stairwell clearly showed their mixed vampire/werewolf heritage. Winged like vampires, but with the snarling canine visages of wolves, they were bigger than any vampire I’d seen, and dove at me with murder in their blazing red eyes, howling.
I gasped, turned, ran, and, as the first came literally screaming out of the air, flung myself on the floor like a baseball player sliding into home . . .
. . . except, I slid into Abrahm.
Jaws snapped so close above my neck that spittle sprayed me. A blast of hot, fetid air swirled around me, extinguishing the nearby candles, as the rogue pulled up and swung around for another pass. The second one was diving in now and wouldn’t miss . . .
. . . but I had touched Abrahm, and I had stripped the hokhmah from him in an instant—stripped it and, I knew with sudden certainty, taken all of it. I did not share it, as the Adversary had been forced to share mine after he had touched me in the Human Bean, as I knew I shared the hokhmah of Patricia and Stephanie, though they no longer had sufficient power to use it to Shape their world. I had stripped it from him, ripped it from him as though I were ripping down an offensive poster from a wall, an ability I had not known I had until that moment—an ability Karl had not even hinted at.
Abrahm’s hokhmah exploded into me like a Molotov cocktail, set alight, perhaps, by the burning rage I had suppressed, but never extinguished, as I tried to sweet-talk my way close to him. Shaping power flooded me. I reacted instinctively to the diving threat. The rogue exploded into red mist, gobbets of flesh, and splinters of bone, which sprayed the onetime chancel with gore and extinguished the remaining candles. The other rogue grabbed air with his wings, shock readable even on his monstrous features. I reached out and made him change—not into an ordinary human, but into the movie-style werewolf Thaddeus had turned into just before I killed him. Then I put the rogue to sleep. He crashed to the tile floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut. I did not think the fall would have killed him, while he was changed. I did hope it hurt like hell.
That done, I got to my feet, sticky and stinking, my fury now fully unleashed. Father Thomas and Karl, painted as red as I by the blood that was everywhere, had stopped struggling. The priest looked confused, Karl . . .
Karl looked grim. He watched me as I stepped toward the two of them. I didn’t say anything, but I reached out and touched Father Thomas’ head. It took only a tiny application of Shaping to return his mind to the way it had been. He gasped and jerked away from me, then his eyes widened in horror as he remembered what had happened to him. “I’m sorry . . .” he said, but I had already turned my back on him as I faced Abrahm, wolf-Piotr still crouched over his supine body.
The Protector looked shocked. Undone. He must have sensed the loss of his power, and his bewilderment showed on his face. He really was a young man, younger than me, and his slight pudginess and small stature made him look almost childlike in that moment.
I didn’t care. I didn’t care at all.
“Let him up,” I told Piotr.
Piotr gave me a look I interpreted as questioning, even though it was delivered by a wolf with glowing red eyes.
“Let him up,” I repeated.
Piotr stepped back.
The Protector got to his feet. The spray of blood and meat and bone from his messily deceased guard had turned his sparkling white clothing mottled pink, flecked with darker bits. “Go on,” I said. “Run to your sanctuary.” I pointed to the door into the vestry. “Go!”
He gulped air, turned, and ran. Even as he did so, I was Shaping . . . not him, but the room beyond the door. He would find it unchanged, except for two things. One, it no longer had a second door, leading to his quarters, through which Tabitha had gone. Two, the one door it did have, the one he would enter by, could no longer be opened from the inside.
He reached that door, jerked it open, passed through it. It closed behind him.
He was trapped.
“Shawna,” Karl said quietly, “what are you doing?”
I ignored him. My anger still burned inside me, unquenchable. I walked over to the sleeping rogue. I touched his forehead. I Shaped. I healed.
I woke him.
He blinked up at me, then got to his feet. “You have done well,” I said.
“Thank you, Protector,” he said.
I heard Karl’s sharp intake of breath, but I ignored it.
“Are you hungry?” I said.
He grinned, showing wolflike teeth, though his face was nearly human. “Very, Protector.”
“I have food for you,” I said. I pointed to the vestry door. “In there.”
He licked his lips, eyes glowing an even brighter red in anticipation.
“Go on,” I said. “Enjoy.”
He needed no further encouragement. He dashed to the vestry, threw the door open.
“Shawna!” Karl snapped. “What are you—”
“Shut up, Karl,” I said.
The door closed behind the rogue. Abrahm shouted frantically though I couldn’t make out the words. There weren’t any words after the first few seconds, anyway. There was only screaming—high-pitched, agonized screaming. It went on a surprisingly long time.
Only when it was done did I reach inside myself for the full and compete hokhmah of that moonlit world.
Stephanie and Patricia had carefully crafted a world populated by monsters that did not kill. Abrahm, however he had come by his power, had corrupted it. His Shaping of it was like a cancer, eating away at the healthy tissue of the world. And so I excised it.
Shaping power exploded out of me, so much that I dropped to my knees, and then to my hands, breathing hard. I’d reached my limit . . .
. . . but it was enough. I knew it had been enough. I could feel it.
Every rogue, every evil vampire/werewolf monster Abrahm had Shaped, every vile monster preying on humans and Stephanie and Patricia’s subjects alike, ceased to exist in that moment. They could no longer exist in this world, under its natural laws, any more than Samuel could exist in the world beyond the Portal, and so, they were undone.
Including, I knew, Tabitha, Emma’s sister. I did not spare her, for one simple reason: in the hokhmah I had taken from Abrahm I discovered a terrible truth, that every rogue, upon being changed and without fail, devoured a human, willingly, eagerly . . . and worse, Abrahm had decreed that human must be someone they knew, to prove they had left their humanity behind forever.
Had Emma been changed, she would have fed on one of the Chosen who had come with her to the end of the Sacred Vale . . . as Tabitha must have fed on one of her companions.
I could not bring her back to her humanity after that. I did not want to.
In the same moment the rogues vanished, all of the Shaped within the Sacred Vale returned to themselves, the selves they had been before Abrahm seized control.
The churches would be rebuilt. The villages would be repopulated. Peace and prosperity would reestablish themselves. Stephanie and Patricia’s vision was restored.
But the dead were still dead. The murdered stayed murdered. The devoured remained devoured. I could not return them to life, any more than I’d been able to bring Aesha back from the dead when she vanished from my world.
My reaction, after all that was done, surprised me. I burst into tears. Curled up like a baby on the cold tile floor of what would once again be Mother Church, I wept.
I heard footsteps approach, booted ones, and the click of canine nails on a hard surface. I tried to regain my composure, but it was several minutes before I could pull myself together enough to sit up. I swiped my sleeve across my face. “It’s done,” I said, to Karl, Father Thomas, and Piotr, who sometime in the last few seconds had turned back into a naked boy. “The world is back to what it was meant to be.”
Karl looked grim. “What did you do?”
“I undid Abrahm’s handiwork,” I said.
“After having him horribly murdered,” Karl said.
“Are you saying he didn’t deserve it?” I snapped.
“No,” Karl said. “But it is not him I am worried about.”
“I don’t have the strength to argue with you right now,” I said. “You can tell me what a horrible mistake I made later. In the next world, maybe.” I glanced into the apse. Through the open golden doors I could still see the dark, rainswept alley. It gave no hint of what kind of world it belonged to, other than the electric-light glow in the clouds.
“The next world,” Piotr repeated, following my gaze. “You’ll be leaving soon, then?”
“Not right this minute,” I said. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m exhausted. And I think we need to go back to the main valley and tell Stephanie and Patricia what’s happened.” I smiled at him. “Your mother will be proud of you.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I guess you’ll find out.”
“I guess . . .” I said. And then, “Wait. I’ll find . . . ?”
Piotr was already changing. In an instant, he was a wolf, streaking across the floor toward the open Portal.
In horror, I scrambled to my feet. “Piotr, no! You can’t—”
He leaped through the Portal, into the rainswept alley—and kept going, charging to its end and around the corner, out of sight.
He hadn’t disintegrated.
“We have to go after him,” I said. I turned to Karl. I stopped, but weirdly, the Great Hall didn’t. It whirled around me. “We have to . . .”
Everything faded away. I dimly felt arms catching me as I toppled, and then I felt nothing at all.