Selene rushed forward, sliding in beside her husband on the dusty stone floor. Juba was shaking, as if he were having a seizure. His eyes were wide and bloodshot. In his hands he still held the Palladium close to the Aegis. Energy continued to cascade off him, forming a thrashing cloud that once more spun around the temple, whipping leaves and branches from the trees, and sparking with spirals of lightning. It was weaker now, though whether it was losing power or storing it up she did not know.
But she knew its potential. She knew its danger. When she had used the Shard in Cantabria she had felt the yawning darkness threaten to overwhelm her. She had contested it. She had controlled it.
And if she was going to save Juba’s life, she would need to do it again.
Pulling what deep breath she could from the tortured air, ready for the worst, Selene grabbed hold of the Palladium.
What rose up against her was not the wave of power that she had felt before. It was a deep emptiness, an aching hollow of the power that had been, a feeble echo of what had surged about them less than a minute earlier. Whatever Juba had done, wherever these creatures had come from—and she was certain she knew—the gate he had opened had sapped the Palladium’s power.
It was spent, but as she held it, joined to her husband through it, she felt its power slowly rising once more. And she realized—in each beat of his Aegis-sustained heart, in each pulse of her own—the trickling rejuvenation that was giving the Shard new life was them. It was using them. The Shard was them. All the Shards were. They were born of God’s powers, the same powers that He’d forsaken in giving true freedom, true life, to His creation. The Shards needed the spark of life to be used. They fed on it. They consumed it.
If it wasn’t for the life-sustaining power of the Aegis keeping him alive, Juba would almost certainly be dead.
With a grunt, Selene wrested the Palladium from her husband’s tensed hands. She enfolded it within her dress. What was left of the storm swirling around the temple of Ba’al Hammon dissipated and hushed away with a sigh. Juba groaned and slid back toward the earth as if falling into dreams.
Selene rolled around to crouch behind her husband, trying to pull him upright. He was so much bigger than her, so much heavier. And he was unconscious. Only the ragged rise and fall of his chest showed that her love still had life. She managed to get him into a sitting position, but she could do little more. Looking up, she saw that the three demons had stopped reaching back down into the pit. They were still kneeling beside it, but they were all looking back toward her. The horrible wailing had ceased. Their black eyes were dead, like black beads of glass.
“Thrasyllus!” she yelled toward the stricken scholar. “Help me!”
The scholar was still curled up on the ground. He had uncovered his ears when the noise stopped, but he was staring at the demons with wide, paralyzed eyes.
Selene tugged at Juba, moving him inches away from the danger. “Come on,” she urged him. “Wake up, my love. Please.”
One of the demons, the first one who had risen from the pit, stood. She felt its stare piercing her flesh and bones, gauging her, studying her.
Selene tugged again, and this time Juba’s weight shifted and he collapsed over onto his side again. “Oh, God. Move. Please.”
The demon opened its mouth. Its teeth were perfectly formed, white, but the color of dried bones. Like so much else about the creatures, they were still wrong, still not quite human. The demon spoke, and the words moved in a wave like music, like an elegant song. Its voice swelled through the air, riding its own wind, touching and caressing the stones and the trees and the earth. It was, Selene thought, perhaps the most beautiful sound she had ever heard, the most beautiful sound she ever could hear. She did not know the demon’s words, but she knew its meaning. As if it spoke to her very soul, she knew what it was saying.
The Shards. It was telling the others to get the Shards.
The other two demons stood. They opened their mouths in their perfect but unnatural smiles. Then all three turned and walked toward the charred corpse of Isidora, sliding with the grace of slow-moving dancers across the old stones of the temple.
“Come on,” Selene whispered, gripping the straps of the Aegis and dragging Juba with them. When she could only move him a few feet farther away, she began to cry. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. All my fault.”
God had died to give them all the freedom to choose. Right or wrong, good or evil, she’d always had a choice. No one had forced her to sneak away from the palace so many years ago, to make her way to the Great Library, where she’d first learned about the Shards of Heaven. No one had forced her to confront Caesar. No one had forced her to bring the asp to her mother. No one had forced her to swear to avenge the death of her parents, or even the rape she had suffered at the hands of the vile Tiberius. No one had forced her to convince Juba to come here, to reach for greater power than she’d already been blessed to receive.
She’d had a choice. She’d always had a choice. That was what God’s sacrifice had given her. That was His gift.
Yet she’d chosen vengeance. God had given her true life, and at every turn she’d chosen death.
No more. Weeping, she looked up at the great expanse of the heavens above her. The clouds and storm were gone. The stars shone down. God wasn’t there. Even the heaven where He’d once existed wasn’t there. Not truly. But it still felt right to pray upward, to direct her plea for forgiveness into that silent canopy of night.
And then she swore, to whatever memory was left of God, that she was done with vengeance. If somehow they survived, she was through with dreams of death. She would live in peace, no matter the cost.
Just let us live, she prayed. And if not me, then my husband. A good man. Let him live.
The demon who had spoken—the leader, Selene decided—had reached Isidora’s body. It looked at it with disinterest for a moment, as if studying a foreign thing. Then the other two came, and they reached down with their perfect hands, each of them grabbing a Shard. Isidora’s blackened fingers cracked and crumbled as they effortlessly lifted the artifacts away. Little was left of the Lance of Olyndicus, and even the metal housing of the Trident had been twisted and deformed by the energies that had consumed the young girl, but the two Shards were still there. They were untouched. They still gleamed, blacker-than-black stones, as hauntingly beautiful as the demons who held them. The leader kicked at the corpse, sliding parts of it across the weathered stones toward the black pit of death.
As if obeying some unheard call, the two beings wrapped their hands around the stones. Selene held her breath.
But there was no arc of fire. There was no rush of storm. Nothing happened.
The two demons looked up at one another. Then at the leader. As one, all three turned to stare at Selene.
No, she realized. Not her. They were looking at Juba. They were looking at the Aegis. They needed life. They needed the spark of God.
“Thrasyllus!” she screamed, plunged into sudden panic and pulling desperately at her husband. “Help me! Please!”
The demons were moving in perfect steps. They were smiling. “Thrass-lus,” the leader said, smiling as it mimicked her words. “Please.”
Then Thrasyllus was there, his hands by hers, and he was tugging and dragging Juba away. Her husband groaned, beginning to awaken, but he hadn’t the strength to move.
The demons were very close now. They did not hurry. They moved with a steady and unrelenting pace, as if they had all the time in the world.
With the astrologer’s help Selene had dragged Juba past the line of torches, close to the shattered gate of the temple. But it wasn’t far enough. It would never be far enough.