“What the devil are you?” Lilith asked, her expression shifting between curiosity and the strain of holding her away. “Where did Gideon find you? Or did Bashir make you? Did he make you to be a weapon just to kill me?”
“No one made me,” Asha said quietly as she pressed harder and harder on Lilith’s fist, her ruby claws edging ever closer to the woman’s throat. “And Gideon didn’t find me. I found him. He’s not the one who came here to kill you. I am.”
“Oh, I see.” For a brief instant, Lilith’s grimace became a playful smile. “I see. You’re a goddess, like me, and he’s your little toy. Oh, how delicious. How wonderful to find a kindred spirit!”
Asha slammed her claws forward but the woman ducked and Asha’s golden fist crashed into the wall, crumbling the stone into dust and pebbles.
Lilith shoved her back and strode across the room. “I know just what to do with someone like you. Maybe I can kill you, and maybe I can’t. But I can definitely take away your toys.”
“Get away from him!” Asha leapt again and drove her shoulder into Lilith’s back, knocking her down to all fours. She circled around the woman in blue and stood over Gideon, her ruby claws raised to meet the next assault. Lilith stood and strode forward again, a look of black hate in her eyes.
“Stop! Please, both of you, stop.” Omar stood up, one hand pressed to his ribs where he had collided with the edge of the table. He placed one hand on Asha’s arm and gently but firmly moved her back to the other side of Gideon so that he now stood between the soldier and the beast.
“No,” Asha said. “I didn’t come here to talk, or even to punish her for her crimes. She’s a cancer, and I’ve come to remove her from the world.”
“I know you did.” Omar tried to smile at her, but could only wince. “But I can’t let you kill someone, even her, because of what I set in motion all those years ago in my arrogance and stupidity. Because if you do, then I’ll have turned one more healer into one more killer. And I can’t have that. I can’t watch that happen. Not again. So please, don’t.”
Asha stepped back from him, wondering at the endless pain in his eyes. She nodded.
Omar turned to the beast in the blue dress, and held out his empty hands. “Lilith, come here, please.”
She was only a few paces away, and she swept up to stand before him, face to face, and she stared down at him with a cruel smile. In a husky, mocking voice, she said, “What now, old man? I’m as immortal as you, and stronger, and faster, and smarter. Are you going to try to convince me to live like you? To spend eternity serving others instead of myself? Are you going to appeal to my heart, to my true nature?”
“Yes, I am.” He reached up slowly with both hands and cupped her face, and then gently leaned forward and kissed her, pressing his lips to hers, moving his lips and tongue slowly at first and then more vigorously.
Her scaled hands rose, one slipping around the man’s waist and the other around the back of his head. She moaned softly.
Asha stared at them.
What the hell is he doing?
By tiny degrees, Omar arched his back. He moved one hand around to the small of Lilith’s back and pulled her close, pressing her belly to his, pressing her hips to his. And he continued to lean back, pulling her chest onto his as he tasted her mouth. She closed her eyes, and moaned again. And then Omar leaned back a bit more and fell, and Lilith fell with him, her eyes opening for a fraction of a moment as they plummeted toward the floor, arms wrapped around each other, mouths pressed tightly together.
In that brief moment, Asha saw Lilith’s eyes open and flash with fear.
Fear, and lust.
Omar’s back fell squarely on the flat side of Gideon’s sword and his flesh vanished in a flash of flames and cinders, leaving Lilith to crashed through his charred bones onto the blade, and disintegrate in a brief roar of fire. And then they were gone.
Asha blinked.
She looked around the room as though waiting for something else to happen, for another creature to appear, for another disaster to erupt. But there was nothing. Dust and ash and cinders swirled lazily through the air, and all was silence except for the crackling and growling of the seireiken. On the floor, two tiny specks of charred sun-steel shone on the stone like oil stains.
Their pendants. So much for immortality.
Asha reached down and cleared away the heavy stones from Gideon’s back and legs, and a few moments later the soldier awoke and healed and was himself again. Asha sent the dragon away, and stood beside Gideon in the dancing light of the torches, looking down at the two skeletons still entwined like lovers on the floor.
Gideon sighed. “I guess it was what he wanted.”
“It’s not what I wanted,” Asha said. “He shouldn’t have had to die.”
“Maybe not,” Gideon said gently. “But he did, and it was his choice, and I can respect that. We should honor his sacrifice, not question his decision. It’s over.”
Asha nodded. “It is over. But too many people had to die to end it.”
I came here to save him. And instead, he died to save me. He didn’t have to. I wasn’t in danger. I was stronger than her, I know I was.
So then, why? My soul wasn’t his to save.
Asha cast one last look around the chamber and listened one last time with her dragon’s ear. She heard nothing. “Come on. There’s nothing left here now.”
He managed a wry smile and turned to leave. “Time to celebrate?”
She looked up at him.
How can he just smile like that? Two people he’s known for thousands of years have just died. He could have died himself.
She tried to smile back, and after a moment she succeeded. With that one gesture, she felt some of the pain and darkness of the last few days begin to fade. The memories were still there, the pain was still there, but she too was still there. Still alive, with a life before her. “Celebrate? No, no time for that. We still have work to do.”
Chapter 30
Asha and Gideon climbed out of the pyramid and back down to the road where they found Taziri and Wren talking and laughing quietly in the shadows.
Asha paused in the middle of the road and looked back up at the pyramid, a dark pile of stone in a dark cavern that the entire world had forgotten.
“What’s wrong?” Gideon asked.
“I don’t know,” Asha said. “After all this madness, it doesn’t feel quite real to think that’s really over, just like that.”
He nodded. “I know what you-”
The feathered beast lying in the road behind him snorted and shuddered. Its beak scraped the stone road and its huge legs bent and kicked, and it lurched up onto its feet. The huge predator lifted its blood-painted face and roared at the blackness above them.
Gideon grabbed his gauntlet and his seireiken illuminated the giant bird of war. Asha hesitated, and then a strange smile spread across her face. She ran past Gideon toward the monster as the dragon came alive within her. It did not hunger in her belly or rage in her heart. It simply slipped over her skin like a soft blanket, wrapping her in scales and claws that shone and glittered in the bright white light.
Asha leapt into the air with a song in her heart and a light in her eyes, and she drove her fist into the side of the monster’s head. The feathered titan’s skull snapped up and back, and the beast was lifted off its feet as it fell backward, and then it crashed down onto the road. The earth groaned and the dust rose, and Asha landed lightly on the belly of the predator. She listened, and heard nothing at all from the body beneath her.
When she dropped back down to the road, Gideon stood there gaping at her. “That was reckless,” he said.
“I know.” Asha exhaled, washing the dragon away with that simple breath.
“It was childish and dangerous.”
“I know. You’re absolutely right.” She patted him on the shoulder as she walked past him toward the shadows where Taziri and Wren waited. “But now it feels like it’s over.”