Indigo(99)

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.