Emma was gone. Jo was gone.
I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Emma was now the most powerful creature on the planet. Even with the power of the book of Terra, I hadn’t even left a scratch on her.
“Calan? Calan!” Travis shouted in my ear until I pulled my earpiece out.
Gregory was at my side, but I couldn’t bring myself to look him in the face. I’d failed him.
The sound of a phone vibrating came from Gregory. He pulled it out and answered. After a few short words, he laid a hand on my shoulder. “Something has happened.” Though I knew it was Gregory speaking, but I still struggled to recognize his voice through the haze. “Diana is awake.”
* * *
Diana’s ashblonde hair fanned out around her on the pillow, but she was practically sitting up. Gregory stood on the other side of her, his arms folded, face in shadow. I’d waited outside to give them a few minutes on their own to reunite before Gregory called me in.
Diana reached out for me. My hand found hers, and to my surprise, hers was warmer than mine. I felt like ice. I sent Travis home before getting in Gregory’s truck heading with him to the hospital. He had tried to argue, but I’d had none of it. He needed to get back to Tristan, be with his family.
Diana’s gray eyes had been lifeless for months, but Emma’s mother now sharply homed in on me.
She grasped my hand in hers with surprising strength, for a woman who’d been unconscious for nearly six months. “You must stop the sacrifice.”
Gregory and I met gazes.
“Emma faced Othanos and lived,” I said.
Gregory frowned. He was not pleased we had kept so much from him, but Emma said we needed to keep him in the dark until we figured out a little more. Had it even been her? Yet again, I’d deferred to her judgment, though I was surprised at her decision.
Diana’s shook her head, her lips pursed. “Not Emma. The demon. The demon is the sacrifice, a catalyst for the end of all things.” Her words trembled. “We have to stop her. At all costs. Where is she? Why isn’t Emma here?”
I swallowed over what felt like razor blades. Right after she had defeated Othanos I remember Emma saying, “the sacrifice,” to herself as if some new understanding had dawned on her.
Realization came to me too late. The demon was always in range of us when he made an attack. Whenever any of us got close to Othanos he would turn and run. I thought it had been because he wanted to kill Emma, but he didn’t want us to get him before she did.
My gut clenched. Emma, or who I thought had been Emma, told me to stay away from Othanos at all costs. Did she know on some level? Was she protecting me? Or had she been keeping me away from Othanos so I wouldn’t take him out first? More questions swirled around me. Was Emma aware all that evil lie inside her or had it been suppressed, and she’s walked around thinking nothing was wrong? Had she been acting this whole time, a dark entity since the moment she underwent the Reckoning?
No, I couldn’t believe Emma was gone. Her fears about my imminent demise were real. She’d had visions Othanos would kill me. Stab me in the gut. In the end, it had played out that way only slightly different than she saw it. I was certain if she hadn’t absorbed his being, she would still be walking around disconnected from the sleeping evil inside her.
What little color had been in Diana’s face bled away when I failed to explain why Emma wasn’t here. Gregory stepped forward to take Diana’s hand as the heart monitor beeped erratically. I stepped away as they embraced in silent mourning.
Today held more loss than I could bear. I’d already had to call Jo’s mother on the ride over and inform the Order of Terra of Jo’s demise. After I’d delivered the news, I thought she had hung up until I heard Mika cry out. Jo’s mother had collapsed.
As I was about to leave, Diana’s words stopped me. “Did you see it?” Diana said, an urgent tone entered her voice as her eye gleamed with what I might have presumed to be madness in any other circumstance. I found myself in there, trapped in the same mania she was gripped with.
“Yes.” My throat tightened, trying to prevent me from speaking. “It’s not Emma anymore.”
It wasn’t. She couldn’t have killed Jo. She would never hurt him in a million years.
Yet he was dead all the same.
“Is that what you saw?” I asked. “When we came out of the Stygian.”
She licked her chapped lips and nodded. “It’s not Emma who came back with us.” Diana sat up a little straighter, her eyes focused wholly on me.
“No. The Reckoning changed her. The evil she is entwined with is ancient and powerful beyond measure.” Saying the words caused my physical pain.
Diana laid back and closed her eyes. “The moment I saw what she had become, the evil in her grabbed hold of me and froze me in time. I was stuck in those woods for so long I feared I would never come out. But you interrupted her hold and I was able to escape”
“It took you out because you are a threat?”
She shook her head as she suddenly made an expression so similar to Emma’s it felt like a knife in my gut all over again. It was an expression of someone who desperately wanted to help but whose hands were tied.
