Court of Nightfall (The Nightfall Chronicles #1)(9)

I tried to sit up, to stop her, to tell her we would leave together, but a wave of dizziness and pain sent my mind tumbling into the past.

Another time. Another place. A hot pipe falling toward me. I was little, just a girl. My mother pushed me out of the way and the pipe hit her instead. She carried the scar to this day. She called it the scar of a mother's love.

And now my mother would sacrifice her life to save me.

Just as my father had.

My mother ran toward the Nephilim. I waited in horror to see her cut down by that bloody sword, her petite frame impaled upon it.

But something changed. She changed. Her body began to… bend, break, shift. As tears of blood ran down my face, I watched her, the woman who'd raised me my whole life, turn from a woman into something else. Fur formed on her once smooth skin, dark and thick. Her hands elongated into deadly claws. She shifted into a Lycan, something I'd thought only those under the authority of the Catholic Church and the Inquisition could do.

I had no time for shock. Disbelief. Questions. All of that would come later. For now I knew that she would lose the fight if I didn't help. As a Lycan—a werewolf—she had strength. Power. Speed. She fought the Nephilim, and I fought my pain and dizziness, willing myself to stand, to search around me for a weapon.

My eyes fell on a dead solider clutching his otherworldly gun. I stood, legs shaky, everything on my body hurting so much the pain almost took on a new form, as if I had become one ball of pain and nothing more. I embraced it, let it fuel me as I took a step, then two, faster, until I was stumble-running toward the gun.

I grabbed it with my torn and shredded hands. It slipped from them, the blood giving me no grip. Using my shirt, I wiped my hands, flinching as tissue pushed out of the cuts in my flesh, as my bones poked out. I picked up the gun again, trying to determine if it had a safety. When I discovered nothing, I aimed the muzzle at the Nephilim, ready to fire. I pulled the trigger.

Nothing. I flipped my e-Glass over my eye. "Evie, can you identify this gun?"

She scanned it, and the image of a red X appeared. "I'm sorry, Scarlett, but nothing like this exists."

Well, obviously that wasn't true, since I was holding the thing in my hands.

The Nephilim roared with a sound that shook the heavens and grabbed my mother, smashing her wolf head against the truck. A loud crack rang through the air and her body fell limply to the ground as she turned back into her human form.

She didn't move.

There was no rise and fall of her chest.

I shook the gun, my rage consuming me as I willed it to work. I aimed and fired again. It spit out fire and something else, a bullet that blazed into the Nephilim, knocking it to the ground.

The creature looked into the sky and a new whirlpool formed, bringing down new soldiers.

Would this never end? "Evie, search all databases for Nephilim weaknesses."

"As you wish," she said.

I knew Nephilim were born of human and Angel blood, though no Angel had been seen on earth in many hundreds of years. Since biblical times, really. They were almost myth. If not for the Nephilim, and the Angel technology we'd acquired through them, I'm not sure anyone would still believe in Angels.

A stream of information flickered in my e-Glass, none of it helpful to me in that moment.

Gun in broken hands, I limped to the truck, knowing I had only one chance of living through this night and killing these monsters.

My mom's body lay on the ground, so still, so pale. I couldn't look at her, couldn't process the loss of her just yet. I had to act. Had to keep my head.

Because I'd been wrong. I wasn't out of moves. Wasn't out of pieces to play. I had one last move, and I had to use it now.

The crystalized weapon was still in the truck. I ran my hand over it, trying to find some way of opening it, using it. I found nothing.

The soldiers moved closer to me. They would be here in moments, and I would be dead.

Out of all ideas, I held my gun up and aimed it at the crystal case.

I fired once.

The crystal cracked, one small line that ran its blemish through the beautiful carvings.

I waited.

Nothing else happened.

The soldiers reached me. They aimed their guns and fired before I could even turn around.

I thought I couldn't feel more pain. That I'd maxed out the human capacity to endure.

I was wrong.

The bullet of fire entered my body and moved through me, leaving a trail of burning agony in its wake.

I slumped over the crystal box, my blood seeping out of me, staining the opaque quartz.

Red. Scarlet. Evie whispered the color of my own name into my ear as I slowly died.

My last vision was of scarlet blood—still just grey to me—spreading into the cracks, into the intricate carvings that decorated the encasement. It almost seemed to glow, and I smiled and closed my eyes as the crystal shattered and darkness took me.





Chapter 5


Token of Strife


I should be dead.

That was my first thought as consciousness forced itself onto me.

I knew I wasn't dead because of the smell. I smelled like blood and sweat and fear. Surely the afterlife didn't smell so very human.

I peeled my eyes open and was relieved to find that my head didn't explode in pain. Relieved and confused. I looked at my hands. Though not completely healed, I could no longer see bone. My body was healing itself at an alarming rate, unusual even for me, and I'd always healed fast.