River screamed as her back arched off the seal. Power crackled over my skin, my markings all shifting to point toward her. The orange light faded to the golden-white color River had emitted before traveling so close to Hell.
The vast power of my ancestors had forged these seals. The symbols etched into the surface of the wall were a power all their own. River had reacted strongly to the seals before, drawing on their energy to help me keep a seal up. When the wraiths were here, they’d kept her from latching onto the power of the seals. It had bottled up inside her, and once the wraiths fled, her ability had unleashed to feed on the seals.
More than that, Lucifer had made her a part of the seal by using her blood to crack it. Her blood seeped deeper into the seal at the same time the power of the seals spread throughout her. Lucifer’s hand wrapped around her throat, flooding her with his life force. He bowed his head against the increasing intensity of the light emanating from her.
I blinked as my retinas were seared by the aura burning brighter around her. River’s scream grew until the sounds of the battle were drowned out, or perhaps they had all ceased fighting to watch.
An eon seemed to pass as it all unfolded in slow motion, but only seconds elapsed. I ran toward her, my way clear now that the angels continued to stagger away from her.
Lucifer spun toward me, swinging out with a wing. Seizing the wing, I propelled him back and pinned him against the seal, but he didn’t release her. River’s eyes were the deepest shade of purple I’d ever seen when they met mine. Pain filled their brilliant depths to the point where I didn’t know if she saw me before her. I reached to pull her free of the seal.
“No! Don’t touch her!” someone shouted as my hand fell on her arm.
The second I touched River, her back bowed further out and a volatile rush of blinding white light exploded from her. It tore through my chest as it lifted me off my feet and flung me backward.
***
River
I’d never felt anything like the power coursing through me. It crackled over my skin and sounded like a million bees swarming me as it hummed in my ears. It saturated my cells and thawed parts of me that had been frozen solid only seconds before. I was pinned to the seal like some sort of sacrifice, but I didn’t feel like a sacrifice when every part of me was alive in a way it never had been before.
At first, I welcomed the warmth, but it swiftly became too much. I struggled to see anything past the golden-white glow as I became certain my heart would tear out of my chest. I tried to shut it down, tried to withdraw from the source of all the power, but I was pinned to that source, and it was consuming me.
Screams resonated in my head. I didn’t know if I released those screams or not. I didn’t know anything beyond needing it to stop before it destroyed me. I thrashed against the spikes, but whatever they were made of had melted and forged into the seal, making it impossible for me to break free.
Lucifer was knocked aside, but his hand continued to grip my throat. Kobal’s face swam before me, and then my body was flooded with more energy. Pushed beyond what I was capable of handling, power exploded from me and nothing existed anymore.
CHAPTER 25
River
I’m dead.
That was the only explanation that made any sense. I’d died. And someone had judged me worthy of going to Heaven.
This had to be Heaven as unicorns couldn’t possibly exist in Hell.
Unicorns were loving, magical beings that danced over rainbows or some such nonsense. Although there were leg-munching leprechauns, or leporcháins, in Hell, there were no rainbows for them to slide over.
I almost laughed out loud, but death wasn’t funny, and I so badly didn’t want to be dead. I would give anything to kiss Kobal again and hold my brothers close, but I didn’t want to be Lucifer’s pincushion either, so death could be preferable. And apparently, unicorns came to visit the dead. Maybe I hadn’t made it to Heaven and the unicorns had come to guide me there, or maybe they would decide I didn’t deserve Heaven.
I didn’t know how it worked, and I hurt too bad to figure it out.
If I was dead, then why did it feel as if every muscle in my body had been stomped on like grapes for wine? Why did I feel as if it would take far more energy than I had to draw my next breath? And why could I feel the warmth of my blood trickling from my palms? I would no longer have a body if I was dead, so I wouldn’t be able to experience all those things, or would I?
I glimpsed one of my hands. Whatever Lucifer had used to pin me to the seal was gone, and I could see the floor of the seal through the hole in the center of my palm.
The unicorn stopped before me. Its nostrils flared and it snorted. With a black coat instead of a white one, it wasn’t entirely what I’d envisioned a unicorn to be, but it resembled a horse, and the golden horn protruding from its head could only belong to one creature.
A large hare hopped into view and sat beside the unicorn. I could almost believe I was in an enchanted forest or some such thing, but the hare was far from enchanting. Fangs protruded from its upper jaw and jutted over its bottom lip. The four-inch claws attached to its paws could eviscerate a person in a single blow. When the hare turned its head, four sets of red eyes met mine fromboththe heads on its shoulders.
Nope, if I was dead, this definitely wasnotHeaven.
Horror coiled within me, but I was so battered I couldn’t move as the two-foot-tall hare hopped closer to me. Its claws clicking against the smooth surface ticked away the last seconds of my life. A sound to the right caused its head to turn in that direction, and it hopped away with a screeching clatter.
The unicorn’s head swiveled toward me, and its blue eyes met mine. Exquisite in its beauty, there was still something unnerving about the creature as it snorted again. Its hooves clattered against the seal when it walked over to something else lying on the ground.
Bowing its head, it stabbed its horn into whatever had caught its attention. The striking gold of its horn became red in color. Nausea turned in my stomach when I realized it used its horn to drain the blood from its victim.
