“Rhenoranian, help me!” Daryl said, coughing as she got to her knees, undeterred.
Expression pinched, Ivy strode forward, but Daryl groaned, kneeling as she shoved the air at her with both hands.
“Watch out!” Bis cried as Ivy was flung back to land in the flower bed beside Sylvan’s statue as if having been pulled by a string. Frustrated, Jenks lowered his next arrow, not yet lit.
“Let me be your strength, Rhenoranian!” Daryl said, staggering to her feet. “Let me be your vessel!” She turned to Jenks, and his wings went cold. “Let me be your vengeance!”
Worried, Jenks darted up, then down. He couldn’t see the ley line she was pulling on, but the force of it made his wings tingle. Daryl pointed at him with a new confidence, and then Ivy’s scream echoed against the dark windows across the street. Motions blurring, the battle began again. Twelve feet up, Jenks watched, useless bow in hand and knowing he wouldn’t be able to shoot until Ivy downed the nymph. Daryl kept pushing Ivy back to the statue.
Moving faster than seemed possible, Daryl ducked Ivy’s crescent kick, only to fall when Ivy continued the spin and knocked her feet out from under her.
The nymph hit the ground, coughing. Ivy jumped into the air, elbow poised and clearly ready to slam it into Daryl’s throat as she fell to hit the dirt beside her.
Daryl saw it coming and pulled her sword up to protect her throat. Ivy screamed, knowing she couldn’t move enough to avoid being cut. The blade nicked Daryl’s face, too, upon impact, but it protected her throat. Ivy was hurt more.
The small success seemed to galvanize the nymph, who staggered to her feet when Ivy rolled away holding her numb elbow. Swinging her blade in a wide arc, she waited—grimacing.
Like a mad thing, Ivy rushed her, plowing her foot right into her solar plexus between the gaps of the blade.
Daryl bent, and Ivy lashed out with a front kick, snapping the nymph’s head back.
And still the woman wouldn’t go down, falling back as she tried to find her breath.
“Now, Jenks!” Ivy called out, and Jenks dropped down to the rock and the firepot.
One hand to her middle, Daryl groaned, staggering to a stand. “Help me, Rhenoranian!” she screamed, shaking hand outstretched.
The wind came from everywhere. The black roared. It beat at the trees. Jenks tumbled, fighting it.
“Stop!” Ivy shouted, and when Jenks squinted, he saw she had yanked the nymph up and was pinning her to the tree across from her statue. “Stop, or I will fucking kill you!”
“Let me go, or I will pierce your liver,” the nymph said, her teeth gritted.
“Oh, shit,” Jenks whispered, seeing the glint of metal at Ivy’s side.
Screaming down from the hills, the wind circled them like wolves. A small spot of stillness grew, surrounded by a wall of gray and black fury. The lights of Cincinnati vanished as if behind water. Even the ever-present thumps of industry were gone, overpowered by the chugging of the wind.
But here, in Daryl’s sacred grove, the moon shone down in perfect stillness.
Jenks glanced to Jumoke peeping up from behind the rock as the torn leaves drifted down, gesturing for him to stay. Vi had stopped struggling. Her breath rasped like oven air, and her wings were starting to smolder by the acrid smell now pinching his nose.
Ivy still pinned Daryl to the tree, her arm against her throat. One in white, one in black, one in silk, the other in leather, both unmoving apart from their lungs heaving.
Slowly Jenks started to drop toward the firepot.
“Why do you stand against me?” Daryl whispered. “It’s honor that gives your limbs the strength to best me.” She took a careful breath. “It glows in you, and you hurt from it.”
Ivy flinched when Daryl touched her jaw. “I’m not hurt,” she said quickly.
“Sylvan went against the gods’ law,” the nymph was saying, her cracked lip starting to bleed. “Taught himself to exist in cold stone, then used the knowledge not to live, but to kill for enjoyment. Why do you free him? I don’t understand.”
“She lies!” Vi shouted, elbowing Vincet. “She’s touched! Break the statue! Now!”
Sylvan was in jail? Not imprisoned by a jealous lover? Jenks hesitated, his wings going cold as Vincet struggled to hold her wildly struggling body. Had they had almost let him free? A murderer?
“The demons imprisoned him in stone,” Daryl said, her fingers opening. The knife dropped to the grass, and Ivy flinched. “His heart remains as cold, even now when the fire of the demon’s blood burns through him. I begged for the honor to guard him as it was my sisters he murdered. I fought for the right, learned to kill, to be heartless, only to fail here when it counts. If you free Sylvan, kill me as well, for I’m too cowardly to live when honorable people give such filth freedom.”
Around them, the wind died to let the clamor from the townhouses and city beat upon them once more. The lights were on again, and people were talking loudly. “You’re not a coward,” Ivy said softly, and Daryl’s eyes met hers, widening at something only the nymph could see.
Abruptly Ivy let go of her and stepped back, frightened. Holding her arms to herself, she looked for Jenks, now hovering right over the rock, Jumoke below him with the firepot. “We need to reassess this,” she said, white-faced.
“No!” Vi exclaimed, exploding into motion and hitting her father right between the legs.
“Ooooh,” Jenks said with a wince, then yelped when she scrambled up the rock as if she didn’t have wings, snatching his bow and yanking an arrow from his quiver.
“Jumoke!” Bis shouted as the little girl jumped at the boy, screaming wildly. Jenks’s son took to the air, frightened, but she crashed right into him. The coal pot hit the grass. The lid popped off and coals scattered, flashing orange with the new breath of air.
Screaming in victory, Vi ran for them, burying the tip of an arrow against one. It flared to life even as she pulled the bow back, arrow notched.
“Get her!” Jenks shouted as he tackled her about the knees.
He hit her hard, and they slid across the grass, his arms scraping. Taking a breath, he looked up to see the flaming arrow was arching true to its target.
“Drop!” he shouted, trying to cover Vi from the coming blast. Panic iced his wings as he saw Jumoke still hovering in midair, shocked into immobility. He’d never reach him in time.
Then Bis raised his hand, cupping it before him.
The night turned white and orange, and an explosion pulsed against his ears and echoed up through the ground into him. Hunching down, Jenks tried to bury himself in the grass, feeling the blast push the blood from his wings for an instant. Jumoke fell to the ground in front of him.
“Why didn’t you drop!” Jenks shouted, his own voice sounding muffled from his stunned ears as he got off Vi and went to his son, bewildered on the ground. “Jumoke, are you okay?”
Panicking, he pulled his son up. Frantic, he felt Jumoke’s face, then ran his hands down his wings, looking for tears. Jumoke yelped, wiggling to get out from under Jenks’s hands.
“Oh, that was everlastingly cool,” the boy said, grinning from under his dark hair.
Jenks smacked his shoulder in relief. He was okay. “What’s wrong with you!” he shouted, glad his hearing was coming back. “I told you to drop!”
Bis’s thick skin on his brow was furrowed in worry, but Jenks didn’t think it was from the cut he was looking at on the back of his hand. In the distance, a car alarm was going off. “Um, Jenks?” he said in question.
A quick glance told him Vincet was okay. Vi was in his arms looking stunned but herself. Sylvan no longer possessed her, which meant he was probably free. Great, just freaking great. He only wanted to help, and he freed a murderer. Rachel and Ivy were not going to be happy.