Iniquitous (The Marked #3)(92)

I had to do something to stop this, but what? No one had ever bothered to mention how to thwart the prophecy once it started. No one ever told me it was going to rain fire balls!

Panicked, I tried to plot my next move, but everything in my head was spinning; jumbling itself into a maze that had no exit. Was I supposed to run? Was I supposed to stay and fight him? Fight him how? Run where?

I didn’t even know who or what I was up against.

Glancing back at the horizon, I could see something dark brewing over the lake. The black water was twisting and swirling as though the earth were splitting apart under the waves, readying itself to unleash something that was never supposed to see the light of day again.

My body kept screaming at me to run while my eyes remained transfixed as thick black smoke twisted up through the water and billowed in the air like a cloud of Death. And I knew it was Him—the bringer of the end of days.

“He’s coming,” bellowed Arianna, her voice vibrating through the burning rain that continued to pour down on us. “I can feel him in my bones!”

Their maniacal laughter snapped me out of my trance. There was no more time to think, to wonder, to second-guess myself. I needed to get my friends out of here before it was too late. I may have accidently set off the apocalypse but I wasn’t about to sit around with the Hellraiser sisters and welcome Lucifer back to earth.

If I had any chance of righting this wrong, of putting Lucifer back in his tomb where he belonged, I was going to need time to do it. Time. Reinforcements. Trace. All I had to do was get him to a safe place, some place far away from here, and then I’d bring him back and we could figure this out together. Just like we always did. Just like we were always meant to do. With him by my side, there was always hope. Come rain or high water, or Hell on earth.

I threw myself down on the ground before him. “Trace! Come on, wake up! Please,” I cried, shaking his body in desperation. “I need you to hear me right now. We have to get out of here.”

I looked back at the water as bolts of lightning flashed through the black smoke. I could feel the darkness swelling, growing, taunting us as it sucked in our energy like a vortex.

“Trace!” His eyes were open but there was no response. Throwing my arms around his waist, I tried to lift him from the ground. If I could just get him on his feet, I could pull him away from here. “Please, baby, I need you to stand up!”

“Give it up already,” said Annabelle. “He’s not going anywhere.”

“He doesn’t have anything to do with this!” I snapped at her, but I knew stomping my feet at them wasn’t going to change a damn thing. “Please,” I begged, my voice so small and shattered that it no longer sounded like my own. “Please let him go. He isn’t a part of this.”

“Of course, he is.” Annabelle’s face twisted with joy. “He’s the best part.”

Dread punched through my gut like a bomb exploding. The wind howled unnaturally, vociferously, as it kicked up sand and pebbles from the beach and whipped them against my skin. I wanted to cover up, to protect myself from the pain of it all, but I refused to let go of Trace.

“What are you talking about? What does that mean!” My nails were pushing down into Trace’s skin.

“Isn’t it obvious?” answered Annabelle and then turned to her sisters with a disappointed look on her face. “Are we going to have to spell the whole damn thing out for her?”

“Yes!” I shouted back. “Spell it out for me! SPELL. IT. OUT!”

Her menacing hazel eyes narrowed as she took a healthy step towards me, bravely breaking formation from her sisters. “Well, we needed a body, see—one that was strong enough to contain His energy. So, we put our pretty little heads together and it sort of just came to us,” she said with an innocent shrug as the cloud of darkness thundered over the lake. “Who better than the Slayer’s very own boyfriend?”

Everything inside of me stopped. Froze. Died. “You’d wouldn’t…”

“You obviously don’t know us very well.”

Bile crept up my throat as fear permeated my bloodstream like a poison. I covered my mouth with my hand to keep from vomiting. It was too much to take, too much to process. The light inside me, the thing that kept my heart from falling to pieces, clicked off. I let go off Trace and pounced on her with everything I had.

I wasn’t sure how much time had gone by or how many punches I’d managed to get in before my body was ripped off of her by a force that could only be described as magic.

“You stupid bitch!” shouted Annabelle, still laying on the ground where I’d left her, her sisters flanking each side like bodyguards. “You broke my nose!”

I could see blood oozing through her fingers as she covered her face with her hands, and while it gave me satisfaction to know I’d inflicted some kind of pain on her, it paled in comparison to the payback I was going to wreak on them.

Not today though.

Today, we were getting the hell out of here. All of us, including Trace. If they wanted him, they were going to have to pry him out of my cold, dead arms.

I looked back at the sooty cloud just as it started to push its way towards the shore and I kicked off the ground. Sprinting towards Trace, I barreled through broiling fire and rain and hopelessness as I tried to make it back to him before the smoke did. I wasn’t sure what I intended to do short of throwing him over my shoulder and carrying him out of here on my back, but I had to try something. I’d be damned if I was leaving him out here.