Sweat coated Rebekka’s skin as she joined Levi in front of his brother’s cage. Her head pounded as she concentrated on Cyrin, trying to reach him through remembered emotion, love and loyalty and trust, trying to fix the tears in his mind where human and animal instincts had fought one another.
She used her gift as well as her words, her voice joining Levi’s until finally the insanity slid from Cyrin’s eyes and was replaced by recognition.
Levi unlocked his brother’s cage then and the two of them embraced. Tears streamed down Rebekka’s cheeks. If the demon arrived moments from now and killed them, at least they’d had this shining moment of success.
ABIJAH cocked his head as they neared the end of the hallway. Adrenaline surged through Araña when she recognized the sounds coming from outside. The animals were free. She suspected the Weres were, too.
Tir would be coming for her.
She had only an instant at the doorway to access the room. The urn sat on a narrow table against the far wall, directly across from her. Next to it a red candle burned in a shallow blood-filled bowl attached to a platform where a carved deity served as a fetish carrying prayers to the being it represented.
If Anton’s worshipped god had truly been present, she doubted she would have heard the fire whispering its willingness to become her weapon. To kill as it had killed once before, on the day she’d called it to her as hot iron was pressed to her flesh.
She couldn’t see the maze owner, but from the light pouring into the room and the sounds still coming from the maze, she guessed he was standing at the window, watching whatever was taking place there. She couldn’t afford to allow him time to think, or order Abijah outside.
Araña entered the room fast, going straight for the urn.
“Stop her, Abijah! Stop her, Abijah! Stop her, Abijah!”
Three times in rapid succession. Without the conceit of archaic words.
It was a command Araña understood couldn’t be disobeyed, and yet not a thorough enough one to keep Anton safe from her.
Abijah’s talons curled around her arms, halting her before she’d gotten more than half a dozen steps into the room. He lifted her so she dangled above the floor, seemingly defenseless.
Anton laughed. “Clever, clever demon. Now I understand how you managed to avoid killing the intruders outside. What luck for both of us that your plaything returned.”
He glanced through the window. “I fear I’m going to have to let them die in the traps and settle for the woman as a prize. I can’t send you after them and risk touching her myself.”
The spider rested on her brand in a symbolic acknowledgment of the day ten years earlier that had ultimately led to this one. She’d once thought her ability to summon fire was further proof she was destined for Hell. Now she knew otherwise. It was a gift to one reborn, a thread connecting her to the birthplace of the Djinn.
Anton left the window, passing between her and the flame he’d lit to his deity, and the fire came to her call. It filled the room with his scream as it had once filled another room with the screams of the clergyman and the couple she’d believed to be her parents.
It destroyed Anton’s ability to command a Djinn first. Burning away his lips and tongue. Swallowing his throat and filling his lungs with its rage. But unlike before when the fire killed because of her summons, Araña felt no guilt, no remorse. He deserved no mercy.
Abijah disappeared with Anton’s final heartbeat, and Araña skirted the still burning body, going directly to the urn. It was a thing of temptation and horror, but she’d known as soon as she read the stolen journal pages that she would destroy it without trying to use it to force the incantation from Abijah. She grasped it, the blood from the wound painting its side as she brought it down on the edge of the table, willing it to break.
A boom sounded. A wash of power exploded through the room as the urn shattered.
The force of it knocked her to the ground and sent shards of glass from the windows to the yard below. It extinguished both candle flame and Anton’s burning corpse.
Abijah appeared next to her, standing over her as a man and wearing the robes of a desert dweller. When she would have risen, he put his foot on her chest and held her with an easy strength that warned against drawing her knives.
“He’s killed hundreds of our kind and enslaved even more. You risk his life if you free him and he resumes his war on us. I spared him the first time because The Prince demanded it of me. He won’t be spared again.”
“The time for vengeance is past,” Araña said, ignoring the tiny voice reminding her of Tir’s warning not to ask this of him.
“Is it?” Abijah asked. “We will soon see.”
In a blink he became the scorpion. His tail lashing out, stinging her hand—and then he was gone in a swirl of wind that tore paintings from the wall and sent papers and books to the floor.
Pain spread through her with venom not meant to kill. It was like the witch’s strike when she mindlessly attacked—only this agony was the price she paid to gain the incantation.
It flowed into her, segment by segment like a scorpion’s tail.
It burned into her—ancient words she would never have been able to remember or speak if they’d been delivered from his mouth to her ears.
Outside she heard destruction raging, the howl of an unnatural storm tearing down walls and flattening anything in its path. But she was held motionless on the floor, unable to do more than smile slightly when Tir burst into the room and knelt next to her, his face harsh with worry.
He put the machete and knife down to run his hands over her as if searching for the source of her agony. “I’m okay,” she said, the last of the pain fading when the final words of the incantation were in place.
Tir lifted her into his arms and stood. Through the open space of the window the funnel cloud that was Abijah dissipated, leaving utter calm and stark devastation in its wake—and such intense silence Araña’s heartbeat sounded like a bell tolling in her ears.
“Levi and Rebekka?” she asked, delaying her final task.
“Safe. I assume that was the demon making a grand exit. He cut a clear path for them to escape into the woods before circling back to attack the building next door.”
“Farold?”
“Dead.”
Tir glanced around at the chaos of the office, at the smoldering corpse. He set her on her feet, his expression hardening as he met her eyes. “You said the incantation was in Anton’s possession. Where is it?”
Did it occur to you that freeing him completely was never the goal in this game? You risk his life if you free him and he resumes his war on us. The incantation is in parts. Speak some of it and he gains strength and power—enough to believe you’ve done what you can for him.
Tir could live among the outcasts and criminals as she did. The tattoos on his arms would draw little attention, just as the brand on her hand rarely warranted a second glance in the settlements and floating boat cities that were her world.
She reached up, intending to touch the face she had already committed to memory.
He grabbed her wrist. Stopping her.
“Where is it?”
Trust me, she’d asked of him.
I trust you, he’d said.
“Abijah gave it to me before he left.”
She leaned forward until her mouth was only a breath away from his. “Remember I’m not your enemy. Remember I asked you to put aside your dreams of vengeance because the price for gaining it can be too high to pay.”
Tir didn’t stop her from pressing a kiss to his lips. “Remember I love you,” she said, then began speaking the words Abijah had given her.
Power surged into Tir with each syllable. It came with music, indescribable notes transcending reality and calling for his cells to break apart, to become the spectrum of light, part of a greater whole, to be everywhere and nowhere. Infinite. Without measure in form or time.