Vespertine (Vespertine #1)(16)

“Behind you. Wait—cover your eyes!”

Just as the revenant shouted its warning, the fury’s wail intensified to a deafening shriek. I flung a protective arm in front of my face as the chapel’s windows shattered inward, filling the air with glinting shards of colored glass. A bright line of pain sliced across my neck; another scored my ankle below the hem of my robes. When the wail cut off with a final wretched sob, someone was screaming.

I recognized the voice. Sister Iris.

The fury looked hungrily toward the altar. In a flash it plunged away, swooping up the nave. I pursued it, broken glass crunching beneath my shoes. Wind-lashed rain gusted across the aisle, clearing the air of incense smoke. Mother Katherine had collapsed beside the altar, and Sister Iris held her, frantically touching her face.

“My reliquary,” the revenant hissed.

The reliquary lay on the floor, unguarded. That was the fury’s target. But all around it sisters were fighting for their lives. Some had already fallen, nursing blighted wounds, as others defended them from multiple spirits simultaneously.

The revenant didn’t see any of this, I sensed—its attention was locked on the reliquary as though nothing else existed. Nausea clenched my gut at the writhing turmoil of its emotions. Saint Eugenia’s relic was at once its ancient, hated prison and its only fragile protection against oblivion.

I flung myself into the fray. My sword felled one spirit after another, but there were too many. I couldn’t reach the fury, now circling above the altar, covetously eyeing an injured girl who lay curled on the floor below, her chestnut hair spilled across the carpet. Marguerite. Weakened, she had become an ideal target for possession.

In my head the revenant spat, frantic: “The moment the fury possesses that girl, it will use her body to destroy my relic.”

I cut down a feverling in my path. Through clenched teeth, I said, “Then don’t give it a chance. Force it from her body, like you did before.” Nearby a sister cried out, mobbed by several spirits at once.

“It will resist. We’ve lost the advantage of surprise—this time it will sink in its claws.” Panic scrabbled at my ribs. I couldn’t tell the revenant’s rising desperation apart from my own. “Give me more control, nun. Let me end this. I have the power; you only need to let me use it.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Sophia swing her candlestick at a hovering spirit. The metal wasn’t consecrated and had no effect except to draw the spirit’s attention. It was a frostfain, icicles hanging like a beard from its rime-encrusted face.

If I unleashed the revenant, I wasn’t sure I could subdue it again afterward. But I was out of time. I had no choice. Above my head, the fury was gathering itself to pounce. The frostfain was reaching for Sophia.

“Do it,” I said, and threw aside my sword.

The revenant’s elation tore through me like an inferno. Silver hazed my vision. I felt a spreading at my back, the lifting and unfurling of a great pair of wings. Every face, spirit and human, turned and beheld me with fear.

Ghostly flames licked over my body. There came a pulse like a wingbeat, and the silver fire roared forth, blazing across the floor, over the pews, up the walls, dancing cold across the beams of the vaulted ceiling. The sisters cried out and shrank back as every spirit flared bright, like scraps of paper igniting in a pyre. And then they snuffed out, consumed, as the revenant howled and howled.

It wasn’t finished. The flames licked higher. I felt the ghost-fire spill out the broken windows, across the convent’s grounds. I felt it tearing through the crypt, through the winding tunnels of the catacombs, devouring every lingering shade in its path. I felt all those things as though the fire had become an extension of my own body.

And I felt life. The grass, the trees as the flames swept outward, the soldiers unconscious on the floor, the nuns cowering in front of me. Even the worms and beetles that crawled unseen beneath the soil. Hunger yawned inside my chest. I could consume them all.

No. That was what the revenant wanted, not me. “No,” I said out loud.

The ghost-fire vanished. In the darkness that followed, I dropped to the floor in agony. The revenant thrashed inside my body like an animal in a cage. My fingers tore at my own skin, at the carpet, at the broken glass surrounding me. I surrendered control of my left hand to focus on my right and reached down to draw my dagger. I gripped it with all my strength.

“I won’t go back,” the revenant hissed, its spiteful voice laced with venom. “Do you know what it’s like, being trapped in a relic for hundreds of years? I’ll kill every wretched nun in this place before I let them put me back! I’ll make them regret the day they imprisoned me.”

Inch by agonizing inch, I pulled the dagger to my breast. I felt the revenant’s awareness latch on to the weapon. Scornful, it laughed.

“That won’t work again, nun. This body is mine. All you can do now is delay me, and whatever you try, it will hurt you as much as it hurts me—”

The dagger pressed against my skin, a bright, chill point. The revenant froze.

“You won’t,” it said.

I pushed. Blood trickled wet down my stomach.

“You’re bluffing.”

I had studied anatomy under the Gray Sisters’ tutelage, and knew exactly how to angle the blade to drive it up between my ribs and into my heart.

“Stop that,” the revenant snapped, exerting itself on my arm to no avail. “I said stop!”