Strange and Ever After (Something Strange and Deadly #3)(91)

My hand shot up. Power lanced out. Straight at Marcus’s heart, I poured every ounce of my soul into the assault. And I stumbled closer and closer.

Then from the boulder, lightning exploded. In agonizing slowness, Joseph gathered himself upright. Yet, though his body listed, his hand stayed steady. His electricity stayed true.

Like a thousand spiderwebs, my magic and Joseph’s sizzled over Marcus’s body. Then Oliver’s power unleashed, and Marcus was nothing more than a beacon of blinding light.

Yet no matter how much energy I shoved into my attack, it wasn’t enough. I could feel Marcus pushing back. Even as our souls wrapped around his, he wriggled and writhed free.

My feet carried me, shambling through the sand, toward Joseph. I was draining too fast, and even though I sucked at the world around me, the world had nothing left to give.

Marcus was taking his power from the sand, the wind, the stones.

I needed the power of the crystal clamp. I needed electricity.

I reached the stone, my left hand slung clumsily out toward the lines blazing from Joseph’s fingertips. I laced my fingers through his. . . .

Electricity tore from me. Blistering and trembling, it sliced through my veins and gathered in my heart—then surged from my right wrist. Smoke filled the air. Flames licked up my sleeve. I could barely see, and I certainly couldn’t hear.

But I could feel. Somehow, with the power of electricity, Joseph and I had stabbed into Marcus’s soul. I felt each of his heartbeats. I understood the scale of his power. And even his thoughts trickled around inside me.

And that, more than anything else, terrified me.

For Marcus was amused. Eventually our power would run out, and he simply had to wait until that moment. Then he would crush us. He had two souls to lean on. He had the Black Pullet’s soul too. And he had the very soul of the earth.

We could not stop him, and he found it funny that we even tried.

Horror choked through me, spiraling around the electricity. I looked at Joseph. His eyes shone blue, but there was fear within. We weren’t strong enough.

Crack! More pistol shots, almost lost in the eternal thunder of our electricity.

My eyes crept right. The world swam, and each fragment of a breath was torture. I met Oliver’s gaze, glowing with the pure magic of who he was.

As I watched, the light in his eyes dimmed and dimmed. He was stopping—and I couldn’t blame him. He had already given more than he needed to. He had come back, and my soul would never forget.

Save yourself, I thought, though he could not hear me with our bond broken. I hoped he might see the want in my eyes. Save yourself, Ollie. Please go while you still can.

The slightest tug wound through my gut. Then the flicker of a thought nestled inside my brain. Somehow, despite our broken bond, he still managed to meet my mind with his.

And what he thought was simple: No.

At that moment the sword popped from Marcus’s chest and hit the sand. Then the bullet in his forehead spat out. The bullet from his heart.

And again, the hint of Oliver’s thought flamed inside me.

No.

Oliver’s magic cut off. In two impossibly long strides, he came to me.

He grabbed my wrist.

And his vast demon soul hurtled through me. Instantly, the electricity doubled. Tripled. It grew so hot, I lost all sense of where I was or who I was. My body became a distant, fleeting thing. A vessel much too small for all this raw power gathering inside.

Three spirits laced together as one. Joseph. Oliver. And me. Power boiled in my brain, beneath my ribs, behind my eyes. My clothes burned—my eyelashes, my hair. Everything ignited.

And our power hit Marcus’s attack. For an endless fragment of a second, it was a balanced collision of souls.

But then the scales tipped too far. In a heavy, clicking twist, all the electricity shifted.

And Marcus could not stop it. His eyes widened. His mouth fell open with silent screams. His skin caught fire, melting over sinew and bones.

Elijah’s skin. My brother’s body was crumbling before my eyes.

Oliver felt that loss too—it sang through our shared electricity. A high-pitched shriek of grief for someone whose soul we had already lost . . . and whose body we now lost too.

But we did not stop pushing against Marcus. Skin flayed off his skull. His yellow eyes spun and rolled . . . and then burst. They exploded outward. Blood sprayed.

Then, bit by bit, his lungs and guts scorched and popped. The red muscle ignited . . . and then shaved away.

Until there was nothing left but a skeleton and a pulsing, festered heart.

Joseph’s fingers all furled in, save one, and then he thrust a final whip of electricity at Marcus.

And his heart exploded. Black, oily blood spewed on the sand, on the bones, over us.

And the necromancer Marcus Duval collapsed in a pile of charred bones.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

There was a long silence that seemed to fill the earth after that.

No one moved. No one spoke.

But then screams slithered into my ears. Into my consciousness.

Allison. She sobbed for mercy at our feet, begging us to help her.

“He took my life,” she screamed. “You must get it back! You must get it back!”

I ignored her. I could not even look upon her. She turned to Joseph. To Oliver.

But none of us had any mercy to give. She had dug her own grave, and now she could lie in it.