A Shield of Glass (A Shade of Vampire #49)(21)

“Of course you can lie!” Azazel snarled, reaching his boiling point. I held my breath as he pulled his snake pendant up, its little ruby eyes sparkling as it moved slowly in its loops. “You are lying, because I cannot be killed! This here, this will not allow me to die, little Oracle! This here keeps me strong and grants me eternal life! This here, my darling, cannot be broken, nor can its will be bent!”

In his fit of rage, Azazel actually confirmed what I’d already suspected from my visions. That pendant had something to do with his power, and, most importantly, with his defeat.

“I’m not lying,” I insisted, keeping my chin high. “You. Will. Die.”

Azazel roared, rearing back, and shot his fist through a wall. The stone cracked from the impact, dust and broken chunks of limestone falling on the floor. He’d lost his temper, and as terrifying as it was to watch, it gave me some insight into his personality. This version of him was so enraged, so vitriolic, it was nothing like the scheming manipulator I’d known up to this point, the one who pretended to be the forgiving type just to get me to cooperate. This seemed like someone else entirely, his eyes burning green as the snake trembled in its movement.

He looked up, breathing heavily as he straightened his back.

“You,” he said, pointing a finger at me. “You’re going to be confined to this room on a permanent basis. I was ready to overlook your little slipup with the Lamia, but I cannot forgive your lying. The leg shackle stays on as well. You have one more chance before you end up in a glass bubble, Vita. Next time I come asking for the truth, you had better give me the truth. The whole truth!”

He slithered toward the door.

“I am telling the truth!” I shot back. “You’re just too stubborn to accept it! I saw your pendant in people’s hands; they were passing it around and cheering! I saw them talking about how you were vanquished and dead! You will die, Azazel!”

“Lies!”

True, that last part had been a lie, but his death wasn’t. I stuck to it and kept my chin up high. He shook his head furiously, and deliberately bumped into Damion on his way out.

“She doesn’t leave the room!” he shouted over his shoulder as he disappeared into the hallway.

Silence fell as Damion and I glanced at each other. He frowned, then looked away and left, locking the double doors behind him. I let myself fall backward onto the bed, welcoming the relief. It didn’t matter that the shackle was still on. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t leave the room, either. Bijarki would be here soon, and I’d be reunited with my family and friends.

I’d dealt a heavy blow to Azazel with my visions. I hoped it would keep him busy for the next couple of days, giving me enough time to properly process everything I’d seen of the future. My stomach knotted itself up in painful twists as I thought of Draven and Serena, Jovi and Aida, Bijarki, Anjani, Phoenix, and the Daughter, everyone we had gotten close to.

Whichever way we took things, we still seemed to end up at the same bloody outcome. We would all die. We would lose it all.

Tears came up and made their way down my burning cheeks. I let them flow, afraid I would explode if I held it all in any longer.

The future used to show us Azazel winning. We’d tried our best to change it, but our best seemed to lead us to Draven defeating Azazel and losing his soul in the process, killing the people I loved, the people he’d called his friends and allies.

It was going to take me a while to put all this in perspective and treat it as just another potential future. I had such a hard time getting over the notion of Bijarki and Anjani getting married to unite their people—that thought alone drove daggers into my heart, one after another, relentlessly tearing me apart as I rolled over to one side and cried for hours.

I cried for myself. I cried for Bijarki. I cried for all of us.

When my tears dried out, however, I breathed in and sat up with a new plan coming into focus. While the future was clearly not my friend, I couldn’t let it be my enemy, either. My best chance at preventing that catastrophe was to first understand what that snake pendant was, and what it meant to Azazel and his powers.

Damion, I thought to myself.

I would probe Damion for more information as soon as I saw him again. He had to know something about that necklace.





Jovi





Time passed incredibly slowly in the archive hall. I didn’t have much patience to begin with, and I was obsessively worried about Aida, Anjani, Field, and the others still out there – not to mention Vita, locked up in Azazel’s castle. There was just too much going on beyond Stonewall for me to focus on where the young Druids had last been seen.

Jax and I had been assigned with tracking the young Druids, after Serena reshuffled the tasks so she and Draven could focus on finding concealment spells for the Oracles. I flipped through hundreds of pages, yellow with time, the black ink cracking and the names in those registries forgotten.

I counted the minutes until I’d see Anjani again. Until I’d hold my sister close and keep her safe. Until I’d see my friends again. I could only theorize as to what Phoenix was going through. I tried thinking about what it would be like to lose Anjani, but my heart went into a painful frenzy and I set the notion aside. It hurt too much.

I looked up from yet another registry, letting a long sigh leave my chest as my eyes met Serena’s. She had a half-smile on her face, the kind that expressed sympathy toward my obvious boredom and gratefulness to have me there, and tried to assure me that everything would be okay, somehow.