The Dark Calling (The Arcana Chronicles #5)(52)

The chopper dusted off in a hurry. In a blaze of muzzle flashes, one of Zara’s machine guns spat bullets, eating the stone in a path to Kentarch and Joules.

They had no choice but to run. As they fled, Joules flung four javelins at her. They sped through the air.

She banked, but she could never avoid a direct hit—

Lightning bolts shot down from the sky, striking the javelins, sending each one off course. The Tower’s weapons flew harmlessly past her chopper.

Strokes of freakish luck.

He howled with disbelief. Before he could launch another javelin, Zara engaged a second machine gun, firing both at him and Kentarch. They had nowhere to run, only a sheer drop-off.

Kentarch clamped Joules’s arm and attempted to teleport, but they didn’t budge. Zara unleashed a torrent of bullets at them. Just before the first wave hit, Kentarch went intangible, ghosting him and Joules.

One second passed. Another. How long could he keep that up?

Click, click, click. She’d run out of ammo!

But the last bullet ricocheted rock. Kentarch wavered; the rock caught him right at that instant.

He yelled, and they tumbled over the crater’s edge, out of sight. Would they survive the drop?

I turned back to Richter, threats dying on my tongue. He’d slithered closer during Zara’s attack.

Waves of dizziness hit me. Sweat stung my eyes. I begged for the red witch to stir. “Jack . . .” He squeezed my hand as hellfire surrounded us. Stay conscious, stay conscious.

This monster had taken Jack from me once before. Was I about to let him again?

“Now, where were we?” Richter said. “Oh, yeah, I was telling you how every Emperor gets an Empress. Which means your ass is mine.”

I expected Jack to tell me that this wasn’t the end. That we’d somehow prevail. Instead, he reached for his bowie knife and murmured in French, “I won’t let him take you alive.”





23





“Time to lose the dead weight.” As Richter faced off against Jack, he made a mistake.

The Emperor . . . laughed.

I jolted upright, staying Jack’s hand. That hateful sound had pervaded my nightmares. It was a trigger, activating something dark and primal within me.

Rage unfurled like a blossom, soon as towering as an oak. My vision blurred. My glyphs blazed. The red witch awakened. Embrace my viciousness, Gran?

Acid laced my veins.

I called out to those ancient seeds, my body shaking with readiness. New petals tumbled from my reddened hair.

Keep laughing. When the red witch bayed for blood, I fueled the legions of seeds from within me, power on tap as it hadn’t been since I’d made Jack’s gravestone.

Recognition hit me. The tourniquet around my heart hadn’t been muting my rage and pain; it’d been damming them up.

As my legions grew and began to force their way to the surface, a deep rumble shook the ground, as if the earth had growled. A quake of my own. “Come, Richter.” My voice turned breathy. “Touch—”

I never finished the sentence, because I caught a glimpse of something so horrifying that my lungs seized up.

The true depths of my power.

A yawning black hole of rage existed inside me. An endless well of wrath.

Another quake hit. Mine.

Richter’s laughter faltered as he shifted to keep his balance. His eyes briefly widened, then narrowed on me, as if to ask, Was that you?

Jack muttered, “Evie?”

Power is my burden. It overflows a bottomless pit.

If I ever came close to tapping into that well, would I leave collateral damage all around—like Richter with his firestorms? Would I curse the world like Demeter?

A show of power always took a toll on an Arcana. If I unleashed the full measure of my abilities, would my body give out?

Like Tess’s?

Richter shook his head, as if he’d just imagined those quakes. After all, I was only a weak little girl. That force couldn’t have originated from inside me. “Come peacefully with us, Empress, and live for a time.”

Just as I had a well of rage, so did Richter. Those seeds had been entombed beneath rock; maybe the Emperor and I had already played out this battle centuries ago, or the gods we represented had.

If I ever matched Richter rage for rage . . . we’re the nuclear option. No one wins.

In all of my battles, I’d never been more terrified than now. Not for Richter.

I fear myself.

I’d just recoiled from my connection to those seeds when something skittered up my spine. Hissing sounded, like a giant serpent.

Had Richter’s attention skewed behind us? His sleazy smile faded as he craned his head up. And up.

A drop of scalding water hit my neck. I glanced over my shoulder at the rising wall of water. “Circe.”

Jack cursed under his breath.

“No, she’ll protect us.” I hoped.

Richter’s fireball hovered above his palm. “You want some of this, water bitch?”

Circe’s voice sounded from the wave: “That’s Ms. Water Bitch to you.” Her tone would sound coolly mocking to others, but I could detect her fatigue. “Run along now, fire starter. I’m in no mood for your infantile antics tonight.”

“You don’t wanna tangle with me? Too scared to?”

She gave a bored sigh. “Hmm. I probably should drown you. But then, my fun would be cut short. You start your fires for enjoyment—I delight in extinguishing them. Just as I did when you slaughtered that army.”