Indigo(17)

It happened fast, but it happened loud. Two more victims strayed within easy reach, too stunned to run, too blinded by panic to save themselves.

This time Indigo molded the darkness into a blade, something long enough to touch them and sharp enough to slice them into ribbons. She pivoted, and she whirled. Her shadow sword swung hard. It stabbed deep.

From somewhere, a shot rang out. It missed by a mile, but the cultists were rallying a defense, or at least a hasty retreat.

Indigo drew the gloom around herself for cover, burying herself in its comforting buffer.

Now those who remained could not see her. They could not touch her. Their guns would not help them in the slightest.

Squeezing the murk in her fists, Indigo formed arrowheads with edges like razors … and hurled them with the force of bullets. The arrows pierced everything they hit, bursting through eye sockets and blowing through torsos, leaving gaping wounds and twitching corpses in their wake.

The violence made her want to scream, half in horror and half in relief. Rage burned inside her, fury directed inward, so angry with herself for the innocent lives that had been taken by these people because she had been afraid to destroy them before now. Afraid to unleash the dark and let the shadows have their way.

The remaining Phonoi scrambled blindly in any direction that might save them. More shots rang out, but the clips were soon emptied and the guns went silent. Not so the cultists, who screamed and cried as they searched for a way out.

Any way out.

Indigo cut them off, one exit at a time.

She stretched the darkness harder, farther, rolled it into a terrible tendril and wielded it like a whip. The whip was good for snatching and strangling, but choking took too much time. It was much faster to seize them by the throat and break their necks with a yank, then toss them aside and move on.

She cut them all down in turn—with her deadly whip, a spray of arrows, or the swing of a sword made from blackness as solid as stone. She killed them efficiently, and creatively, and entirely without mercy.

Mercy had never gotten her anywhere. Mercy had gotten several young people tortured and killed, so there was no more room for it. There was only room for Indigo—angel of death, knight of New York City. Guardian. Sentry.

Not a single one of these assholes was leaving alive.

She worked her way around the room, picking up stragglers as they cowered and fumbled for the doors. One man in an Armani suit flung himself through a window. The jagged glass took care of him before Indigo could reach him. He lay in the gravel against the warehouse, one foot hanging on the shattered frame.

Armani Man was not the last. Half a dozen others scuttled weakly, hurt and terrified, away from the inky, deadly vortex.

Indigo rode it like a whirlwind. She picked them off and scanned the space for anyone else—everyone else. Luis would never be safe until they were all wiped out, or if it wasn’t Luis in the box, then whoever the child was—and whoever the next child would be.

The Children of Phonos had to go. Every single one of them. This chapter would only be the beginning.

When the room was finally silent, except for the dribbling bubbles of crushed lungs and spraying arteries, Indigo reined the shadows in—drawing them closer, making herself smaller within the cavernous room with its terrible echoes.

The high priestess had left her lectern, and she’d abandoned the boy in the box. He was now half-covered by the black cloth. It tangled damply around his legs, where his blood had glued it to his skin.

Indigo gazed around the room.

The woman in white was running toward the corridor.

Indigo swallowed her up with the shadows, dragging her back, immobilizing her, paralyzing her with pressure and darkness, but not yet killing her. This dark prison bought Indigo time to check on the boy, who was still breathing, wasn’t he?

Wasn’t he?

She pulled him gently into her sphere, and she gave him plenty of air, plenty of comfort and warmth. He shuddered when she touched him, even as she used the black shroud to swaddle him like a baby in a blanket.

“Hang in there, kid. Hang in there. I’m going to get you out of here.”

The priestess gargled some objection, but Indigo ignored it.

“Luis?” She ran a hand across his forehead. “Can you hear me?”

The boy was dead, from fright or from blood loss, she did not know.

Indigo gulped down a cry and let the boy’s body drop back into the crate, free of the shadow. She turned her attention to the priestess, who was on the brink of death herself. The woman writhed, her white hair and clothing a pale silhouette in the angry gloom, but Indigo had no pity left to waste on her. She loosened her grip enough to let the woman remain alive, and not enough to give her any real relief.

Looming above the struggling priestess, all Indigo’s horror and anger made manifest in the shadows she wore like a halo … she let her grief and her guilt do the talking.

“Why?” she demanded. “Why these children?”

“Because … of … you,” squeaked the priestess.

Indigo snorted and bore down hard—pushing with all the weight of her misery, and hoping that it hurt like hell. “For me? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

The priestess tried to reply, but she was fading.

Indigo withdrew and let her speak.

The priestess gasped and gulped. “You mustn’t hate us…,” she whispered hoarsely. “You … your mother … if it’d happened right the first time…” Her words were sandpaper on stone. Her larynx was crushed, and her time was nearly up. “None of these children … would’ve been necessary.”