He’d told me already, practically the moment he had come to Chicago, that he would do anything if it meant damaging the Red Court. He would have shot me in the back. He would have betrayed Maggie’s existence, practically handing her to the murderous bastards. He would betray the Fellowship to its enemies.
He would destroy Susan.
And he would die, himself.
Everything he had done, I realized, he had done for one reason: to be sure that I was standing here when it happened. To give me a chance to change everything.
Susan rode him to the stone floor, berserk with terror and rage, and tore out his throat, ripping mouthful after mouthful of flesh from his neck with supernatural speed.
Martin died.
Susan began to turn.
And that was my moment.
I flung myself against the wills of the Lords of Outer Night with everything in my body, my heart, my mind. I hurled my fear and my loneliness, my love and my respect, my rage and my pain. I made of my thoughts a hammer, infused with the fires of creation and tempered in the icy power of the darkest guardian the earth had ever known. I raised my arms with a scream of defiance, bringing as much of the armor as I could between my head and theirs, and wished for a fleeting second that I had just worn the stupid hat.
And I threw it all at the second Lord from the left—the one whose will seemed the least concrete. He staggered and made a sound that I’d once heard from a boxer who’d taken an uppercut to the nuts.
With that, the last Lord of Outer Night to enter the temple—the one wearing the mask I had seen once before, when Murphy had sliced it from its owner’s head—raised her hands and sent ribbons of green and amethyst power scything through her apparent compatriots.
The blast killed two of them outright, with spectacular violence, tearing their bodies to god-awful shreds and spattering the inside of the temple with black blood. All of the remaining Lords staggered, screaming in surprise and pain, their true forms beginning to claw their way free of the flesh that contained them.
My godmother, too, discarded her disguise, flinging the gold mask at the nearest Lord as she allowed the illusion that concealed her true form to fade away, taking with it the clothes and trappings that had let her insinuate herself among the enemy. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. Bloodlust and an eager, nearly sexual desire to destroy radiated from her like heat from a fire. She howled her glee and began hurling streaks and bolts and webworks of energy at the stunned Lords of Outer Night, spinning power from her flickering fingertips even as they brought the force of their wills and their own sorcery to bear upon her.
Not one of the Lords of Outer Night remembered to keep me down.
I was suddenly free.
I hurled myself at the Red King’s back with a scream, and saw him spin to face me, knife in hand. His dark eyes suddenly widened, and the awful power of his will descended upon me like a dozen leaded blankets.
I staggered, but I did not stop. I was hysterical. I was not well. I was invincible. My armor and my grandfather’s staff and the sight of my frightened child and the cold power flowing through my limbs allowed me to push forward one step, and another, and another, until I stood nearly toe-to-toe with him.
The Red King’s restored right hand snapped forward to bury the obsidian knife in my throat.
My left hand dropped the staff and intercepted his wrist. I stopped the knife an inch from my throat, and his eyes widened as he felt my strength.
His left hand shot out to clench my throat with crushing power.
I formed the thumb and forefinger of my right hand into a C-shape, ice crackling as it spread over them, rigid and crystal clear.
I plunged them into both of his black, black eyes.
And then I sent my will coursing down my arm, along with all the soulfire I could find as I screamed, “Fuego!”
Fire seared and split and cooked and steamed, and the king of the Red Court, the most ancient vampire of their kind, the father and creator of their race, screamed in anguish. The sound was so loud that it blew out my left eardrum, a novel new agony for my collection.
And when the Red King screamed, every single member of his Court screamed with him.
This close to him I could almost feel it, feel the power of his will calling them, drawing vampires to him with a summoning beyond self-interest, beyond reason. But even if I hadn’t been there touching him, the sudden storm of cries from outside would have told me the same story.
The vampires were coming toward us in a swarm, a storm, and nothing on earth would stop them from going to their king’s aid. His grip on my throat faltered, and he staggered back and away from me. My fingers came free of his head, and I grabbed his knife hand at the wrist with both hands. Then, screaming in rage, coating his arm with frost, I snapped his forearm in half—and caught the dagger before it could fall to the floor.
Freed, the Red King staggered away, and even blinded and in sanity-destroying pain, he was dangerous. His will, unleashed at random, blew holes in the stone walls. Sorcery lashed out, the scarlet lightning that seemed to be a motif around here raking over one of his own Lords and cutting the struggling vampire in half.
The eldest vampire of the Red Court screamed in his agony as a tide of his creatures came to obliterate us.
And the youngest vampire of the Red Court knelt on the ground over Martin, staring at her hands.
I watched for a second as the skin around her fingers seemed to burst at the tips. Then I saw her fingers begin to lengthen, nails growing into claws, muscle tissue tearing free of skin with audible, obvious torment. Susan stared at them with her all-black eyes, shaking her head, her face a mask of blood. She was moaning, shuddering.
“Susan,” I said, kneeling down in front of her. The howl of sorcerous energies filled the temple with a symphony of destruction. I took her face in my hands.
She looked up at me, terrified and tortured, despair written over her face.
“They’re coming,” she rasped. “I can feel them. Inside. Outside. They’re coming. Oh, God.”
“Susan!” I shouted. “Remember Maggie!”
Her eyes seemed to focus on me.
“They wanted Maggie because she was the youngest,” I said, my voice cold. “Because her death would have taken us all with her.”
She contorted around her stomach, which was twisting and flexing and swelling obscenely, but she kept her eyes on my face.
“Now you’re the youngest,” I hissed at her, my voice fierce. “The youngest vampire in the entire and literally damned Court. You can kill them all.”
She shuddered and moaned, and I saw the conflicting desires at war within her. But her eyes turned to Maggie and she clenched her jaw. “I . . . I don’t think I can do it. I can’t feel my hands.”
“Harry!” screamed Murphy desperately, from somewhere nearby. “They’re coming!”
Lightning split the air outside with thunder that would register on the Richter scale.
There was a sudden, random lull in the cacophony of sorcerous war, no more than a couple of seconds long.
Susan looked back at me, her eyes streaming her last tears. “Harry, help me,” she whispered. “Save her. Please.”
Everything in me screamed no. That this was not fair. That I should not have to do this. That no one should ever have to do this.
But . . . I had no choice.
I found myself picking Susan up with one hand. The little girl was curled into a ball with her eyes closed, and there was no time. I pushed her from the altar as gently as I could and let her fall to the floor, where she might be a little safer from the wild energies surging through the temple.
I put Susan on the altar and said, “She’ll be safe. I promise.”