“Seal it, Rachel,” Al demanded. “Now, before it escapes!”
Wild magic whispered through my mind, and with a desperate need to believe happy endings existed among the pain, I gave up and opened myself to the thousand eyes. Wild magic was mine.
“Ta na shay!” I shouted as the drums thundered, energy clean and deep coursing into me with the sound of folding wings. “Ta na shay!” See me!
My eyes opened wide and for an instant I saw everything from everywhere. My heart made a pained beat, and I choked. “Ta na shay. Cooms da ney,” I wept, and I watched with eyes not mine—eyes not of any world—as Nina’s soul eased to slumber, dropping the threads that would pull Ivy and Nina both from this world to whatever lay beyond. My throat closed from the sheer beauty, and I forgot to breathe. I thought I’d done it.
“Ivy?” I whispered, and her eyes opened. Their solid blackness shifted, becoming purple as she blinked and wings covered her soul. I could hear the sound of feathers, and my skin tingled with remembered pain.
Panicked, I turned to Al and Trent, but it was Bis whose gaze caught mine. He was awake, his red eyes whirling as his wings opened in fear.
“She found you,” he rasped, and both Trent and Al spun to him.
“You’re awake!” Trent called in shock before he looked back at me. “Did it work?”
“Ah, guys?” Jenks squeaked in distress as he hovered, spilling a hot dust. “I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think I’m going to explode here!”
Trent’s expression flashed to fear. He looked at his hands, hazed with gold as his aura resonated from the building energy. His eyes met mine, panicked.
“Mother pus bucket . . . ,” Al whispered, and then he lunged at me. “Rachel!”
But it was too late, and I cowered as a flash of brilliant light lit the church, burning with an icy intensity. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see! Falling back, I squinted, picking out a darker shadow standing in the middle of the church, swarmed by glowing mystics.
“You!” a voice exclaimed, the hatred echoing in my head as if she’d spoken in my mind. “Your singular thoughts will be ended!”
It was the Goddess. She’d found me. “No, wait!” I cried, one hand propped up on the cold wooden floor as I slid between her and Ivy—and then I screamed as a white-hot knife of anger dove in my thoughts, driving to my core to rip out my soul.
“I will not become!” the figure shouted as I writhed, struggling to escape. “I will not be ended!”
But I couldn’t even breathe without taking in her mystics—and I floundered, burning from the inside out. Ivy. Ivy was beside me—unconscious.
“Rachel!” Trent cried, and then I heard a sodden thump.
Fear galvanized me, and I pulled my head up. Trent was picking himself up off the floor beside my desk, a spot of cool darkness in the fiery glow. Mystics were everywhere. I got a breath in, then another as my mystics coated me in a protective haze, buffering me and Ivy both. But it wasn’t Ivy the Goddess wanted to destroy.
Struggling to sit up, I blinked, trying to find the Goddess in the glow. Mystics coated her so heavily that the body she was in was slowly charring, sending the rank smell of burnt amber to coat my lungs.
“There will not even be a memory of you!” she howled, and I screamed as she flung out a flaming hand. A stream of living magic hit me and I fell, sliding across the smooth oak floor and hitting the wall. My head felt as if it was going to explode from her hatred as the Goddess’s strength wiggled deeper.
“Oh God, stop!” I pleaded, shaking as I collapsed. But I was only a singular thought that held many—not many thoughts making one, and she had me outnumbered. The mystics in me were trying, but it was all they could do to keep my lungs clear and my mind my own.
“You can’t help her!” Al shouted, and I pulled my head up, shaking as I saw the demon holding Trent back. Jenks and Bis were with him, both frightened. Nina had broken her bonds and was creeping to Ivy with the singular intent of not being noticed. As frightening as she looked, I knew Ivy would be safer with Nina than with me. It had always been so.
“She needs help, you coward!” Trent said, and Al yelped, letting him go.
Trent lunged for me, yanked back as the Goddess shot a bolt of living energy at him, exploding the floor in a shower of splinters—right where Trent would have been.
He fell back, face pale. I managed a clean breath at the brief respite. For all her strength, she couldn’t think of more than one thing at a time. I met Al’s eyes, knowing this was the end. At least the demons would survive, I thought, and then I blinked. The demons . . .
Maybe . . . The Goddess was here with all her mystics. I’d need them to reopen the lines. But I couldn’t do it alone. I needed the demons. I needed Al.
With a savage howl, the Goddess turned her attention back to me, and I jerked as great chunks of my memory went numb, connections to it sliced cleanly by the Goddess. “Al . . . ,” I groaned, hand outstretched, then clenched into myself as the Goddess laughed, her head thrown back as her mystics beat at me, burning me from the inside out.
“I will not become!” she howled, eyes glowing. “You cannot stop me!”
“You can’t help her!” Al thundered, shoving Trent behind him.
“Then you do something!” Trent raged. “Or have you learned nothing?”
“Fine!” Al shouted, and I gaped, unbelieving, as Al picked Trent up and threw him right at the Goddess.
The Goddess shrieked. A burst of light blinded me as Trent struck her, and then I screamed as the cold of death touched me.
“No! No!” I exclaimed, frantically trying to push away, but it was Al, and I took a grateful sob of air in as he pulled me from the floor and into his arms. He’d reached me. Bis was with him, and a tiny part of me marveled at the glowing glints of gold in his eyes. He was growing up.
“Stay down,” Al muttered. “She’ll just knock us over again. Trent is fine. Beneath her notice. You, though . . .”
“You both die!” the Goddess shrilled, and I jerked, head spinning. Shit, she was headed right for us, her pace leaving flaming steps of rubber behind her as her shoes burned away.
“Hang on. This might be tricky,” Al warned. “I’m not used to this elf slime.”
I made a gasping hiccup as his masculine energy dipped into me, using me like a living ley line. “Hurry up!” I shouted as a brighter glow blossomed between her hands and her eyes seemed to shoot fire. “Al!” Holy crap, she was going to freaking kill us!