Pain.
Inside, outside, it didn’t matter. Her body hurt. Her heart hurt. Her soul hurt, an aching, sucking wound where the shadows should have been. She had been their prison and their prisoner for so long, so long, and now—
Now they were loose, running wild and rampant, and there was so much blood, so many broken bodies, and Selene was dead and everything was lost and the child—the child—
The children were still alive. She had done this, she had opened this terrible wound, unleashed this impossible beast upon the world, for the sake of the children. This was her fault. This was her crime, her sin, her unforgivable transgression, and unless she found a way to make it worthwhile—unless she saved the children—she might as well have let the slaughter nuns have her. She might as well have died on that first altar, the dagger to her heart, because she’d done what the men who’d killed the children had wanted all along, she had unleashed the end of days, she had broken the world, and for what? For what?
For the children. Without them, she had done it all for nothing, and so she had done it for them.
Pain singing hosannas to every twitch, every thought, Nora pulled herself to her feet. It took … forever. It took no time at all. Dully, through the agony of her own body, she heard the roars of Damastes. He was doing what he did best: he was making murder. In his hands—claws—in his grasp, it was an art form, like a painting, or a song played on an impossible instrument. The Phonoi assassins weren’t having a great day.
No one was having a great day. Great days were no longer on the menu.
Fuck the menu, said a small voice at the back of her mind, sharp and sardonic and a little sweet, as if it understood what she was going through, even though it couldn’t help. I’m going to order à la carte. Who’s with me?
Shelby wasn’t real. Shelby had never been real. But that meant Shelby was the better part of Nora, maybe the best part of her. The girl she would have been if she hadn’t had a murderer for a mother and a cultist for a father, if she hadn’t been promised to a murder god, if she had been allowed to grow up, instead of just getting older one day and one death at a time.
If she couldn’t do this for herself, she could do it for Anastasia Edwards. She could do it for Andel Edwards. She could do it for Shelby.
“Fuck the menu,” Nora agreed, in a voice that was virtually a sigh, and broke into a run.
The pain stayed behind, in the place where hero had become human. Everything was running. Everything was screaming. There was no time, there was no time to stop and see who was screaming, there was no time for anything but running as if her life depended on it. Because it did. Her life, and Anastasia’s life, and everyone’s life, they all depended on how quickly she could run.
Nora understood running. Indigo’s powers came from Damastes, fueled by shadow and demonic magic, but the physicality behind those powers had always come from Nora. When she punched, her knuckles were the ones that got bruised. When she kicked, her toes were the ones that got broken. And when she ran, when she leaped across the rooftops of the city like the comic-book chimera Damastes had worked so hard to turn her into, her legs were the ones powering the whole thing.
She might not have shadow powers or magic or a giant-ass sword—she would really have appreciated a giant-ass sword right about then—but she could run.
She ran straight for the altar, where Anastasia was struggling against her remaining bonds, tears running down her face and snot hanging in ropy strings from her nose. The girl looked so young, because she was so young, and she should never have been forced into this position. She should have been thinking middle-school thoughts, not wondering whether her brother was going to slice out her heart and offer it to a murder god.
A murder god who, while he would happily have bathed in the blood of the world, had no interest in the blood of this particular girl. He didn’t want to be bound to the Phonoi. He didn’t want to be bound to—
“Forget something?” taunted Rafe, positioning himself so that he was between Anastasia and the running Nora. He was scarcely on the other side of his wards, a twisted delight in his eyes. Damastes was still cutting an unstoppable swath through the guards, rending and slicing without hesitation. Rafe didn’t seem to care. He was safe inside his own protections.
That was how he had always been, Nora realized, her heartbeat speeding up from the mixture of adrenaline and rage. Her pain had been entirely forgotten, replaced by the need to justify her choices, to make the things she had done for the sake of her soul worthwhile. Rafe, and the people like him, had always been willing to let the world drown in a sea of its own blood as long as he could be sure of being safe.
“This is for my father,” Nora snarled, and threw a hard right hook through his magical barrier. His nose broke against her fingers with a satisfyingly squishy sensation. It was one of the best things she had ever felt. She hauled back to do it again.
Rafe staggered backward, out of her reach, and grabbed for Andel again, getting the boy into a headlock. “Do it!” he howled at Graham Edwards, voice thick with blood and agony. “Kill the little bitch! Do it now!”
Graham Edwards looked between the struggling Andel and the terrified Anastasia, and at the knife lying forgotten on the altar. Slowly, as if against his will, he bent and reached for the handle.
“We’re all dead if I don’t do this, princess,” he said in a voice like lead. Anastasia whimpered and struggled to the limits of her bonds, shying away from him as best she could. “I’m so sorry. Daddy tried so hard to save you. Daddy did everything he could.”
“Liar!” shrieked Anastasia.
Rafe was watching the pair now, a grin painting his face, terrible through the veil of his own blood. Andel was struggling, but he was a ten-year-old boy, scrawny and held captive by a man three times his size. He was never going to break free.
The wards had been designed to keep Indigo out. They would hold against Damastes for a time. Maybe even forever. Rafe clearly thought he’d come too close to the edge, that Nora had been lucky, or he wouldn’t have been standing there so exposed, so vulnerable.
Nora lunged.
Her shoulder impacted with his side, knocking him off-balance and loosening his grip on Andel. Rafe snarled. Andel yelped, the sound high and sharp and somehow carrying over the sounds of the one-sided battle that raged outside. Some of the Children of Phonos had realized that they couldn’t possibly win against the monster of their own making. They were running, scattering like leaves in a stiff wind, and Damastes was more than happy to pursue, gleeful as a cat disemboweling mice. They were junior members, the tattered survivors of a dying cult.
“Run, you stupid boy!” snarled Nora, and jabbed her stiffened fingers into the hollow of Rafe’s throat.
He howled. He loosed his grip.
Andel ran.
Save your sister, Nora thought—but there was no time to voice it. Rafe squirmed against her, directing a quick, sharp punch at her face. Nora twisted to the side, letting his hand whish harmlessly past her. Then she turned, slamming her forehead into his so hard that stars blossomed inside her skull like fireworks, bright and beautiful and transitory.
Rafe squealed.
“This is for Shelby!” she howled, and punched him in the nose again.
Rafe raised his hands, not to hit, but to move his fingers in a complicated pattern that only made fucking sense if he was trying to speak ASL or trying to cast a spell on her. Since she doubted he had suddenly discovered a passion for silent communication, the latter seemed more likely. Nora abandoned her punching strategy and slammed her elbow into the hollow of his throat, bringing her knee up to his groin at the same time.
Rafe’s hands stopped moving. He made a small, choked sound and fell, collapsing unconscious to the ground. She felt a sizzling sensation, as if she had brushed against the edge of an electric fence, and her skin drew tight in terrified goose bumps as Damastes laughed again, this time in sheer, unbridled delight.
The wards were down.
Nora spun to see the nightmare Adonis bearing down on her. Edwards shouted and flung the knife aside, supplicating himself to the murder god he had worked so long and so hard to subjugate. It was too little, too late—if there had ever been a chance Damastes would see the Children of Phonos as a useful tool, it had ended when Rafe Bogdani became their guiding hand.
And now Rafe Bogdani ended, as Damastes smashed a heavy heel down on Rafe’s skull, pulping the sorcerer’s face with a hideous crunch. The murder god never slowed as he powered forward and fell upon Edwards, tearing the man limb from limb in an explosion of entrails and unspeakable fluids that showered the scene in a rainbow of gore. Anastasia screamed, high and shrill. The girl’s mind would have been shattered forever, of that there was no question, had Xanthe not suddenly appeared between her and the body of her father. Xanthe used her thin frame to shield the girl from the bulk of that terrible tide.
Damastes snarled and batted Xanthe aside, much as he had Selene—but this slaughter nun received far less of his attention: his claws were sheathed, reserved for a better target. Anastasia, still screaming. Anastasia, whose death would complete the ritual, not to bind him, but to free him completely into the world. Without Nora. Without the guiding hand of justice. Without anything to hamper him.
“I’ve won!” he howled, delighted malice in his voice. He glanced over his shoulder to the woman who had been his home for so many years, eyes narrowed and calculating. “When you’re dead, I’m going to fuck your corpse until it screams.”
Trite, snapped the voice of Shelby.
Nora, frantic, cast around. Weapons were useless, she knew that, but it was better to die with a knife in her hand than with nothing but the blood that coated her fingers. At least then she could say she’d tri—
Damastes was moving, Damastes was bringing his claws down toward Anastasia’s throat, and the girl wasn’t screaming anymore, the girl was frozen in her fear at her impending death, the girl was a rabbit ripe for the slaughter, and this could not happen this could not happen this could not happen.
“No!” howled Nora in a voice that could have rivaled Damastes’s own.
The murder god froze.
Trite and stupid, murmured the Shelby side of her.
“What?” Nora’s voice was a whisper or a broken scream.
You made him. You shaped him. You own him. Shelby’s voice was matter-of-fact, and so real that Nora could have wept. He let you do exactly what he feared because he wanted so badly to be free. He’s your Heykeli. He’s your puppet now.
“Release me!” snarled Damastes, struggling to move.
“No,” said Nora again, more softly this time. “No.”
“I’ll spare you if you release me!”
“No.”
“The world—the universe—you could be a queen! You could have your revenge on everyone who ever wronged you!”
“No.”
“I’ll kill you. I’ll rip your entrails out through your crotch and swallow them like spaghetti. I’ll—”
“No,” said Nora again, soft and steady. The pain was back, arcing through her like ice. She welcomed it. She welcomed the darkness it represented.
He’s been yours since you said hello, whispered Shelby, and Nora knew it was true. More, she knew that if it was true, then everything that belonged to him was hers as well, from the greatest atrocity to the smallest transgression.
Everything.
Calmly she stepped past the frozen, snarling demon and picked up the ombrikos. The void surged within it, and the void within her answered. She could send him back. She could banish him back to whatever it was that waited for murder gods whose time was finished.
“Do it,” hissed a familiar voice. Nora glanced to the side, startled, to behold Selene staggering toward the altar, one hand clasped over the wound at her ribs. “Kill the bastard.”
Nora nodded, not quite capable of speech, and began, through the void, to pull the power away.
Damastes howled. The sound was rage and pain and fury, and Nora quaked to hear it. She kept pulling, letting the shadows spool back into the core of her, letting them wrap tight around her heart.
You can’t send him back to the void, whispered Shelby.
Why not? Nora demanded silently, of no one but herself.
He’s too big. Put him back and another cult will free him. His sister is already banished, and she’ll be looking for some payback. If you banish him, he’ll be on her side.
As much as murder gods had sides, beyond “drown the world in blood.” Nora kept pulling, feeling the strength and confidence—the Indigo-ness—fill her lungs.
But we’ll have time.
No. Shelby’s silent voice was soft, almost apologetic. We won’t.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—
I don’t mean me.
Nora hesitated, the shadow strands nearly slipping through her fingers.
She knew.
She’d known.
She’d known since she saw the video, saw her own teenage body bound and struggling, seen the trauma and the shock. People didn’t walk away from something like that. They didn’t survive it. They didn’t live and thrive and become superheroes.
She’d been dead since the ritual that bound her to the demon she was now struggling to control. She couldn’t banish him without killing herself—and that might have been worth it if she’d been sure the banishment would take. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t be. Ripping him out of her entirely would wrest the ombrikos from her control, and Damastes would be free despite everything. It was the last trap.
There had to be another way.
He roared. She yanked as much power as she could, wrapping herself in shadows, and was Indigo once more, even as he broke free.
“Foolish child!” he howled, and lunged for her.
Damastes was the source of her power: he was the coal that burned in the furnace of her heart. But the engine was not the machine and never had been. His claws closed on empty air as she shoved the ombrikos into her pocket and leaped, lithe and swift and unstoppable. She yanked again, pulling more of the power out of him, into her.
“Mortal fool!” he shouted.
“The fight doesn’t go to the one who yells the loudest!” she replied, and slammed both feet into his temple, knocking him sideways. For a moment, he staggered, reeling, subject to the limitations of his mortal form. He snarled. He grabbed for her.
She was gone.
The shadows spat her out behind him. She grabbed for his power again, pulling harder and harder, until he began to dwindle, borrowed body warping toward the familiar, beloved shape of a woman who had never existed. He shouted in horror as his claws melted into Shelby’s soft, clever fingers, as his fangs retracted.
“No!” he snarled. “I won’t be stopped! I won’t be contained! I wo—”
His words cut out as his mouth vanished, covered by a shell of hardening flesh. Nora had a momentary glimpse of his eyes, widened in something that looked almost like respect, before he folded in on himself like a puzzle box, becoming small and square and almost inconsequential.
I’ll be back, whispered a voice that was neither hers nor Shelby’s, and the box fell to the ground, landing with a soft splash in a puddle of blood.
“I know,” Nora said, releasing Indigo and staggering forward under her own power to scoop it off the ground.
It seemed so small. It was the largest thing in the world.
“What did you—?” asked Xanthe.
“He’s mine. He made that clear when he let me build him a body. You own what you build.” Nora’s hand involuntarily tightened around the box. “He’s not going to hurt anyone for a long fucking time.”
“And you get to stay a superhero,” said Xanthe.
“It’s a decent consolation prize, since it seems I don’t get to be a human anymore.” Nora wrapped herself in shadows again, making the box disappear into a place where no one else would ever even dream of finding it. Her smile was a knife slashed across the throat of the world, and for a moment—just a moment—Xanthe looked afraid.
“All right,” said Indigo. “Let’s mop this shit up.”