Through our bond, Tarja showed me the power coursing through the lab. Not the room itself, but the magic of everything. It was like suddenly seeing in infrared. Every supernatural signature blazed to life in my mind's eye. Our auras pulsed bright and steady despite our exhaustion. The Thessmark circled us in cold, hungry streaks of gray-green energy. They were like wolves closing in on wounded prey.
Taverner burned near the altar. Her signature was a sick, oily purple that made my skin crawl. Parker stood at her side. His brand of magic was a shimmer of silver-blue that was growing brighter by the second.
Then there were the doors at his back. Those were invisible to me before. Like this, I could see them starting to pulse. "Ohhell,no," I muttered, watching the dimensional energy gather and twist. "They're manipulating the dimensional magic and opening portals."
Even as the words left my mouth, three rifts tore open in the air around the lab. They were jagged wounds in reality that made my power recoil. They weren’t traditional portals. Very few beings could open those. These were a bastardization of what they were using to make the room exist in the first place. These doorways stabilized. Parker was the one holding them open. More Thessmark began pouring through. Fresh reinforcements to replace the ones we'd managed to take down.
Crap on a cracker. We were already running on fumes. Now we were outnumbered three to one.
"Jean-Marc!" I shouted into my earbud, ducking under a clawed swipe that would've scalped me. "We need backupNOW!"
"I've been reaching out through Stella’s network!" My son's voice crackled with tension. "Every witch and paranormal within fifty miles has received the coordinates. I told them it was urgent!"
Thank the gods he’d already reached out. I’d done something right with him. "How long until they get here?"
"Ten minutes, maybe less if they're closer. But Mom—" His voice tightened. "The lockdown protocols Taverner activated are blocking the building's access points. They can't get through the doors. When I can see them gathering outside, I will take down the mundane protocols, but that leaves the magical ones."
Ducking another set of claws, I pulled my dagger from its sheath and sliced across the flesh of its forearm. "Can you destabilize it and force the doors open?"
"I'm trying to reroute through their backup servers now. It’s going to take time."
A Thessmark's claws raked across my shoulder, shredding through the enchanted jacket and cutting through layers of skin and muscle. Pain exploded white-hot through my arm. My fire guttered out completely. It was snuffed like a candle in a windstorm. My magical core was empty. It was running on nothing but fumes and the kind of desperation that made people do stupid, reckless things.
"We don't have two minutes," Aidon said, his powers barely managing to keep three Thessmark at bay. They pressed closer with every second, testing his defenses, learning his patterns.
There was a good chance that we would die in that hellhole because Aidon was right. We didn’t have time. Taverner was moving toward the Scythe now. She’d used the magic she had ingested to finish making the relic. I couldn’t tell if it was ready. Chances were good that it was close. Orange light bled from her fingertips as more of the stolen essence she'd consumed earlier flowed into the artifact on the altar. It pulsed, making my heart race.
"She's going to activate it," Tarja warned.
“She finished it?” I asked.
"Yes, though it’s unsteady. The magic has had time to properly fuse. Even unstable, it'll work long enough to harvest all of you."
"How do I stop her?" I gasped, pressing my hand against my bleeding shoulder.
"You can't. Not directly. But the primordial fire?—"
My hand flew to my jacket pocket. The last vial was there, wrapped in a protective cloth and three protective enchantments. Mom's creation that could burn through anything and reduce it to nothing.
"If I use it, it'll destroy everything in the blast radius," I sent back.
"Including you," Tarja confirmed. "Unless you can get it directly on the Scythe itself. The artifact is designed to attract and contain magical energy. It might hold the initial explosion long enough for you to get clear."
A knot twisted in my stomach. "That's a huge 'might.'"
"It's the only option you have." I’d never heard remorse from her like that. It made the knot quadruple in size.
I hated that it came down to throwing a magical nuke at an unstable artifact and hoping it contained the blast long enough that we didn't all get vaporized. But what choice did we have? There was no way I was going to risk her being able to take my children’s power, killing them.
Taverner's hands were inches from the Scythe now. The corrupted wood was already beginning to glow brighter in response to her proximity. We had less than a minute before she was going to use it against us.
"Aidon," I said, pulling the vial from my pocket. "I need you to trust me."
I felt his instant agreement before he even looked over at me. There was no hesitation, no questions, and no demands for explanation. Just absolute faith that whatever I was about to dowas necessary. That was courtesy of the deep love we had built between us. He trusted me completely.
When he finally looked at me, his eyes widened. “I’ll grab Nana,” he promised.
Nodding, I moved closer to my best friend. “Be ready, Stella.”
