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“Better than what you planned,” Lizzie said. “She’s crazy,” she told me. “I didn’t know it for sure until we shared body space. But thoughts leak over—”
“I’m not crazy!” Jo snapped. “I thought you of all people would understand. Look how you were treated—”
“Which makes me hate my family, not want to blow up the timeline!” Lizzie snapped back. She looked at me, and her face subtly changed. And her voice, when she spoke, was softer. “Shards, if misused, will destroy everything. She basically took pieces of the timeline and threw them at another piece of the timeline. It’s all unraveling.”
“I know.”
“So you have a plan?”
“I have . . . kind of a plan.”
“Good. That’s more than I do,” she said. And stabbed Jo.
It shocked me, because that wasn’t what I’d meant at all. It looked like it shocked Jo, too, because everybody was right: she was a lousy dueler. Specifically, she’d forgotten Gertie’s rule about not disdaining plain old human weapons.
They can surprise you.
Jo looked damned surprised.
For a split second, that is, before the pretty face went slack and she rose up out of the dying woman, a column of silver-gold energy as bright as the sun and as tall as an office building. She boiled right through Lizzie, turning her to ash in an instant, before I could even scream. Before whirling around again, this time toward me.
And then it got worse.
Because another familiar voice rang out, down the empty street. One that had my heart seizing in my chest. Hilde, I thought. You didn’t.
But she must have, because a section of
the wall of bodies was suddenly blown out. And in the smoking remains, among the charred and burning flesh, stood a slender figure in a white lace dress. “Touch her and die.”
“Rhea!” I screamed. “No!”
But it was too late. Jo turned on a dime, either because of the anguish in my voice or because, from her perspective, I was all but done for anyway, just awaiting the coup de grace. But she didn’t know what this new threat was, what she could do.
But I did, and it wouldn’t be enough.
Jo surged back down the street and I threw out a hand, desperately trying to throw a spell I knew I didn’t have the power for.
And I was right.
But someone else did. Someone who must have gotten Billy’s message after all, and cast a spell he shouldn’t have known, because it had been outlawed for five hundred years. But he was Pritkin, so of course he did.
Nodo D’Amore, I thought, as a huge pulse of power slammed into me, enough to knock me off my feet. Because I might not have the power to drain Jo, but the Prince of the Incubi certainly did. And right now, his power was mine.
I tightened my grip, and power surged up my arm. It felt the way it had once in the ghost realm known as the Badlands, when I’d been reclaiming some of my strength from a bunch of thieving ghosts. That had been my power; this was not. But this would do.
I got back to my feet and pulled.
Jo hadn’t noticed the first little sip, which had barely been a drop in the vast ocean of her power, but she noticed that one. The great head turned around again, with a horrible sound that shuddered through my body and vibrated the road underneath my feet. And then she came flying back at me.
And, suddenly, I understood how mother had fought all those demons. The coil of power around my left arm fed me, while leaving my right free to throw spell after spell, draining Jo of her power even while attacking her. I also understood why mother had enjoyed it.
Euphoria spilled through me from the rush of more power than I’d ever felt in my life. The pretty facade of a nearby house crumbled into a pile of ancient bricks as a huge patch of road churned and broke and cracked down the middle, as a hundred leaping bodies disintegrated into a cloud of powder and a rattle of falling bones. And I laughed and laughed and laughed, understanding at last how all those dark mages got addicted. This was the best feeling ever!
And, unlike the mages, I wouldn’t pay a price for it, because Pritkin was made to absorb multiple forms of energy. Incubi were the universal solvent! I could do this all night!
But the world couldn’t, I realized, as reality shivered around us. And while I could fight Jo now, I couldn’t beat her. I didn’t have any place to store all that power. I could use it, letting it flow through me, expending it on spell after spell as soon as I got it. But I couldn’t drain her, not in time.
And it wouldn’t do any good to duel until time itself fell apart!
