Because this is the first time I’ve ever blasted hundreds of windowpanes into iridescent dust with my rage.
I lift my hands; I feel the tingle and the burn. Then,poof.
Explosion.
I am a powder keg embodied, and Alfo was stupid enough to bring a match close.
I wish I could see their stupid fucking demon faces as it happens. As I burst in, rip through the writhing puddles of demons churning at Alfo’s feet. His unholy, damned servants.
Unfortunately, my real vision is clouded. It seems like I’ve lost my eyesight in favor of something else. A different sense. All of the energy around me is like fabric. Pliable, malleable, like boiling hot glass. I twist and work it in my favor. There is nothing I can’t do.
I’m a heat-seeking missile, aimed directly at Alfo. My hands find his throat. The fire of my rage turns to actual flames; I smell his rancid flesh burning under my touch. I hear shouting, yells. I feel the chaos buck and thrust at us. It works at my body like the ocean. But right now, there is nothing but me and revenge.
I pull the demon close to me; I tighten my iron grip on his windpipe. I focus every molecule of my body on my memories of the catacomb. The damp air; the packed earth wall. The basin in the center of the room.
I don’t need to give chase. I don’t need to lure him back into the tunnels.
Everything I need is inside of me.
He claws at my face, tears at my grip around his throat. But the goddess inside me has been shaken awake.
The basin’s pedestal. The cold stone beneath my fingers. The chill in the air. The dirt pressing into my knees as I lower myself to the ground.
My entire body tingles. The world is a roar around me, as if a tornado has taken up residence in my brain.Focus.A voice breaks through the chaos of my mind.
I contract the muscles in my body.Stale air. Smooth stone. Packed dirt. Bowen’s voice. Orfeo’s hand on my back?—
We fall through time and space then collapse in a heap on the floor. The smell of damp and decay envelops me and, for a moment, Alfo and I both drag down huge gasps of the smoke-free air as we melee.
His desperate hands scramble to grab at the front of my dress. He rips the fabric away, and I use his inertia to spin out of his arms. I tear my silver knife from the holster on my thigh. He crawls backward, clambering to his feet.
“Beast,” he roars. “You are a beast.”
“I am agoddess.” I lunge for him, plunging my knife forward. He dives sideways and I stumble into the altar, slamming my ribs into the cold stone.
He lets out a vicious laugh. “You fuckingpussy.”
I flip over, lifting off the ground with the force of my kick, and throw myself at his chest. The space is dark, completely lightless. We fall to the ground, a confused bundle of thrashing limbs in the pitch-black, hissing and spitting.
I punch at the open wound on the side of his face, feeling the soft, wet matter of his jaw sinking between my fingers. His hands close around my wrist, tighter and tighter. He squeezes with all his brutish force until I am screaming in agony.
“Why won’t your fucking bones break?!”
“How many ways do I have to tell you?” I spit through gritted teeth. “I am Hades’s daughter, you fuckingfreak.” I lodge my feet under his ribs, roll us over, and then flick him across the room. His heavy, dense body hits the wall with a thunderouscrack.
The room shakes, loose dust and debris raining down on us. One of the sconces flickers to life.
Alfo’s body heaves with the effort of his labored breathing. His clothes are filthy and torn, half of his skull exposed where his fragile skin caught on the wall and tore away. Dark blackblood pours from the wound. His fake human nose is crooked, snapped almost entirely off. He lumbers toward me.
“You are nothing. You are the daughter of a whore. A weak, sick, obsessed whore.”
I ease up from the ground. “No.”
I release another guttural, ancestral scream, lunging for his neck. Alfo catches me around my waist and throws me back against the wall. I hit it with so much force, my neck whips and slams back. I crumple to the ground again.
“See?” He laughs. “Human bitch.”
Focus, a voice whispers in my mind, and I force myself to push through the corporeal pain that has my mind in a chokehold. The world around me pulses in and out, thudding like bass from a broken car radio.
