Abby fell to her knees. She’d been shaking before but now she really shook. Her teeth chattered, arms trembled, and her stomach bobbed. It took everything in her not to keel over and vomit at that very moment.
Her stomach gave a vicious roll again, this one even harder as the smell of burning flesh filled her nose, and Abby couldn’t hold it any longer. She doubled over and wretched as her entire body convulsed. Burning acid coated her tongue and stung her throat. After three heaves, she simply knelt there gasping like a fish out of water.
She’d done it. She’d done something so appallingly immoral. She’d really killed another person. Her stomach lurched again, but she tightened her throat to keep any more bile from rising. The action might have kept her stomach slightly in control but it did nothing to ease the pain around her neck from where she’d been choked.
Slowly she caught her breath and sat back.
Several things seemed to happen all at once.
What she saw sent an all new wave of fear through her while in the distance she heard mighty roars. Not a roar she’d heard before, but a different one. She heard not just Alrik’s voice but also others.
Had Aidan and his men come? She could almost sigh with relief at the thought. They could help him fight back the horde of idummi. Yes, that had to be what she heard. Those were not the war cries of the idummi and certainly not of her Alrik. The rogues had come to help.
Then none of those sounds of war taking place atop and beyond the slope really registered in her mind. They were all thoughts rushed to the back of her mind.
She couldn’t think of it any more.
Because in that moment, the queen was climbing out of the fire pit on her stomach. Her body moved at a twitchy, irregular pace. Her skin was charred black, her clothes burnt to ashen tatters across her enflamed body. Her hair...had been burnt off leaving a bloodied and darkened scalp where the flames had destroyed it. Yet she moved placing one elbow into the grass and tugging her body along as her legs dragged behind her as if she couldn’t move them.
She alternated elbows until her entire body was out of the pit. Smoke clung to her body and drifted up from her like a smoking corpse. Yet she wasn’t a corpse.
“Siradu shika gh’daburem!”
The demonic words registered in her mind. Abby didn’t have time to try to understand the words because just then the demonic spell entered her body like a bomb and tore her insides to shreds.
“AAAH!” Her piercing screams tore through the night.
The spell...whatever it was...the queen had put something evil inside her. Agony engulfed her. She clenched her gut as she fell to the side curling into the fetal position. Right before she squeezed her eyes shut she saw the queen ever so slowly crawling towards her, one unsteady tug at a time.
The pain was the most intense feeling she’d ever felt. Like hot acid being poured inside of her. It kept filling her chest cavity and when that wasn’t enough, she felt the molten-hot sensation pour into one leg then another. She just knew that if she sliced open her thigh right now some awful black tar substance would pour out.
Something was happening to her. She couldn’t control herself anymore. Her body shook in violent seizures. No matter how many times she told herself to keep her eyes open and do something—she couldn’t. Pain overtook her. She couldn’t move, not even to save her life.
That rib-crushing, skin-squeezing pain covered her everywhere spreading like lava until it enveloped her in darkness.
She stopped being aware of much of anything then.
She could no longer hear the sounds of war taking place with Alrik. Was he dead? Were they all dead? Maybe that’s why she couldn’t hear anything.
No, that couldn’t be right because she couldn’t hear the crackling of the fire either or her own breathing. As she strained to hear, a soft high-pitched ringing started in her left ear. Her head twitched at the sound or at least she thought it did.
Were her eyes open? All she saw was black. Black nothingness.
Maybe this was death. Maybe she’d finally died.
No!
Her body jolted, this time she knew she’d actually jerked because she felt her heart jump too.
She needed to find Alrik. He needed her help. She had to finish this.
She struggled to become aware, to come back to consciousness. She felt her body swimming as if floating listlessly beneath the surface. She swam towards that surface, each swipe of her arm through the murky area around her like trying to move through molasses. Finally something gave. Like a bubble bursting. She broke through.
Then, her eyes opened.
A gnarled creature glared in her face.
No, not a creature. The queen. Or, what was left of her.
Her face, colored in black ash and rosy burns grinned like a wild beast above her. Only the whites of her eyes and teeth could be seen among the fleshy red welts of the burns. In some places along her skull where there’d once been glorious hair, skin had melted to reveal the hot red layers of fresh skin beneath.
The queen held Abby by her shirt.
Abby screamed at the sight. Then she reacted and sent her fist fly up. She caught the queen’s chin with a satisfying crunch of bone.
The queen fell off her and Abby moved. The spell the queen had casted on her hadn’t lingered any longer. The intense pain had faded but she still felt weak as a kitten and feeble. Each motion felt sloppy. Even her punch felt like she couldn’t have hurt a baby. Nevertheless, this was her last chance and Abby wouldn’t fail. Not for her Alrik.
She and the queen rolled. Abby landed another punch square across her jaw. The queen’s skin was still hot and the warm, gooey texture of her flesh made her skin crawl.
The queen’s hand, now nothing more than skeletal bones and raw tendons, climbed over Abby’s face. The warm sticky feeling nearly made her vomit but she held her gut in check.
Still the queen managed to grab a fistful of her hair and pull—hard. Abby grunted through the hair-tearing pain as she reached up to dislodge the hand.
She grabbed hold of the queen’s burned, gnarled hand and yanked her fingers backward, hard. The queen exhaled a garbled shout of pain.
Abby heard a sound so lovely then she could have wept tears of joy.
“Abbigail!”
Never would she have thought that hearing him yell her name could make her smile.
She looked to the side and saw such a beautiful sight she lost sight of what she was doing.
Alrik came rapidly down the slope, Aidan and the rogue demons following behind him. He looked battle worn, but so strong and stunning.
I love you, she thought.
She made a mistake. One she didn’t realize for all of the three seconds it’d taken her to turn her head and look up at him. That’s okay it was worth it.
A blade slid into her chest so near to her heart. Her eyes, still locked on Alrik’s face, flared in surprise. His dark eyes flashed then he roared and charged forward.
Abby looked down to see a knife sticking out from her chest. Blood oozed from the wound. Why was she so slow to act? She should be moving, acting now. Doing something. But what?
The queen’s distorted face smiled up at her. “I win,” she hissed.
Abby jerked at her words. Pain started numbing her like icy water filling her veins. “No you don’t.”
Abby pulled the blade from her own chest. It took her two tries for her strength was fading fast, and the skin of her chest caught the blade as if it didn’t want to let it go. Finally, it came free. She palmed it in two blood-covered hands and stared into the evil eyes of the person who’d started this all.
“He wins,” Abby said.
Then she slammed the blade into the queen’s neck. The amount of blood that spurted from the wound almost seemed fake like something you’d seen in a horror movie. But this wasn’t a movie and she’d really just shoved a dagger into another person’s neck. Well, she’d also nearly burned the demon bitch too, so. Whatever.