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I wasn’t sure who I was communicating with, but I didn’t like whoever it was. The ego was strong, so strong that it felt overpowering. “Until you let go of that power, until you surrender yourself to it and submit yourself to it, you’ll never be strong enough to withstand it. Power over corrupts. Power from within compels and strengthens.”
And again, a shimmer in the vast pool of darkness. I followed the spark, letting it lead me on.
“I do not submit! They told me that I was taking too much for my own. But I will not kneel to another, nor bow, nor supplicate myself.”
I was getting bored of hanging out here. Was the voice right? Was this it? Had I been cast into an amnesiac state and dropped in some realm of limbo? And speaking of “I”…who was I?
“I may not know my name, but I know this. Until you learn to bow to greater power, you will never truly command.” A flare caught my attention and I began to follow it. The voice was growing fainter.
“Come back—you put me here, you owe it to me to stay! Don’t leave me here…” And then the voice vanished, as if snuffed out like a candle flame.
Without warning, a rushing sensation catapulted me out of the blackness.
“Camille? Camille? Wake up! Camille?” A sharp sting on my cheek brought me round as I struggled to sit up. I blinked, aching like a son of a bitch. As I looked around, I saw Gulakah’s body lying there next to me, lifeless. With a groan, I let Smoky lift me into his arms.
Shade was helping hold up Morio, who looked like he’d been through a soot storm. As I glanced down at my hands and feet, I realized I looked just as bad. Roz and Vanzir were sprawled out on their backs on the ground. Scrambling, I pushed against Smoky’s chest.
“Put me down—they’re hurt!”
Smoky grumbled but let me down, and I raced over to them, every bone and muscle in my body aching. As I knelt between them, the smell of their blood filled my nose, and I realized that Vanzir was okay, but Roz looked bad.
“Smoky, you’ve got to get him back to the house. The rest of us need to get into that compound and finish off the demons there. Halcon has one of the spirit seals!” I glanced over at the body of Gulakah. “Should we cut him to pieces or what? I don’t want any of this resurrection or reanimation crap going on.”
“Let me take Roz home, then I’ll be back to fetch you and Morio. Shade, take care of the corpse.” Smoky gently gathered up Roz and vanished.
I helped Vanzir sit up, and, after a moment’s disorientation, he was able to stand on his own. His hands were covered with blood, his palms roughed up, but he looked relatively okay, although his clothing was splattered with gore and I had the feeling most of it was from Gulakah.
“Did we really defeat him?” Vanzir stared at the body in wonder. “I can’t believe we killed a god.”
“It was mostly Camille and Morio,” Shade said. “Camille…at the end, took him out with the spell she and Morio were casting. We thought we’d lost her for a while there. Her body was okay, but her soul went wandering.”
Went wandering…that was one way to put it. I closed my eyes, only to see the dizzying expanse of blackness again, and quickly opened them. The overpowering ego of the god stuck with me. Even at the end, he couldn’t admit that he’d let himself get out of control.
Even the gods can die…Pentangle must have known that he wouldn’t back down, that he wouldn’t change his ways. If he had been able to admit his failings, the Hags of Fate might have let him live, but he’d upset the balance. The Ocean of Anger was too great and was feeding too many ghosts. I wondered how long it would take for the pendulum to swing back to the middle, for the spirits to realize they were free and depart.
And yet…and yet…
“Do you think we were right, to kill a god?” It still seemed overwhelming, and egotistical, even though we’d been charged with the task. Or rather, I had been charged with it.
“We were right to kill someone working for Shadow Wing, who destroyed a lot of innocent people in our city, and who was responsible for enslaving and impoverishing a number of others.” Vanzir shook his head. “Don’t let yourself dwell on it. You did the right thing.”
I looked over at Morio but said nothing more. Something had changed with that spell, like Morio had said. I didn’t know what, just yet; I couldn’t pinpoint the feeling, but something had shifted inside. But Vanzir was correct—we had no choice. Gulakah was a nasty motherfucker, and we had to take him out, god or not. Maybe it was just the thought that we had actually been able to kill him that made me uneasy. Power was potent, and power could corrupt so easily if allowed to get out of hand.
Smoky appeared again, and he took hold of Morio and me, and—leaving Shade to deal with the corpse of the god—we vanished into the Ionyc Seas, back to the mansion, where Halcon Davis waited.
Halcon Davis was waiting for us, all right—or at least his body was. By the looks of things, Menolly had gotten to him, and he was very, very dead. I glanced around. Shamas was leading a group of officers and volunteers from the Supe Community to sort out the people who lived here now. The Fae women were huddled on a sofa, looking worn out but more alert than they had been when Gulakah and I had vanished for the Netherworld.
I walked up to Syringa. “Your husband is waiting for you. He misses you.”
She blinked, looking confused. “How much time…what day…”
“What’s the last thing you remember?” I took her hands in mine, sitting down beside her. She was lovely, ethereal, and her energy sparkled like a beckoning rainbow. I could see how Halcon had picked her out of the pack.
“Thursday? I went to a meeting for the…” She paused as someone wheeled Halcon’s body past us. “Oh. Him…”
I jumped up. “I need to search his body before you take it—”
“No worries. I have it.” Menolly came strolling up from behind. She patted the pocket of her jean jacket. “First thing I did when I took him down was strip it off his weasel-necked body.”
