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Chapter 19
My feet tangled as Bastion, Prudence, and I ran for the exit. HQ was in chaos, the entirety of the building blaring with the end-song of invisible klaxons. Thea was nowhere to be found, but her shattered office windows gave us a good guess. That’s why we were headed for the streets.
Everything was a whirl. The woman I thought to trust the most was the one who had literally stabbed me through my heart. I felt at my cheek, at the crusted gore drying against the cut Thea had left there. All this while she had played me with her opal, biding her time with casting a circle over the entirety of the city. What kind of madness had driven her to this, and wh
at kind of madness had she brought down on Valero? I clenched my fists, dreading those very answers as I rushed out onto the street with the rest of the Lorica.
The city had transformed into a terrifying mockery of the day, enormous pillars of light illuminating Valero with a frigid, horrible white, the absence of color so bleak against the urban landscape, an ivory inferno.
Fuck the underground, am I right? Forget the Veil. People were pouring out into the streets, panicking – normals, most of them, pointing at the light beaming into the clouds. They clapped their hands over their ears at the horrible keening noise that sounded like distant laughter, or screaming, laced with the awful, discordant music that seemed to echo from the very sky itself. And all around us the wind lashed, thunder rumbling, the warped aftershocks of the storm god’s passing. Was it the end of the world? Was that what Thea had triggered?
“Get everyone to safety,” Prudence shouted over the din, directing what little staff we had on hand to usher the normals out and away from Central Square. Hands, Hounds, Wings alike rushed to help, and still I had a sinking feeling. What could the Lorica do for them? I saw Scions mixed in among the crowd, some muttering to themselves, preparing spells, and others barking orders. But again: to what avail?
People stood at the doors and balconies of their apartments, children clutched at their waists. Far down the streets sirens blared, though not loud enough to truly be heard over the alien song of the circle. Lights that should have flashed red and blue pulsed as emergency vehicles rushed in all directions, but their colors were washed over by the all-encompassing white.
Then the droves began, a mass exodus of people streaming out of the square, out of restaurants, out of hotels and homes, cars choking the streets as the normals headed – where, exactly? Movement went in all directions, but there was no clear sign of haven, of any sort of safety. Six massive pillars encircled the city. Who knew if they formed a barrier between Valero and the world outside?
Chaos. That was what Thea had initiated, and if that was all she wanted, she had it. But I knew it wasn’t the end of things. Valero had been twisted into a nightmarish alabaster hellscape, yet it was only the setting of the stage. This was just the beginning.
Worse, still, was what Thea had become.
She was suspended, somehow, far above the power lines, rotating slowly, as if she were surveying the city, watching her handiwork. There was a different quality to her, the luminosity glowing from inside her skin as if she had become a living lamp, a pale firefly. She stretched out her arms, her hands reaching to either side of her, the rings on her fingers now grown into orbs of spectacular luminescence, each gemstone glowing like a sphere of light.
Thea threw her head back, as if breathing in the night air, savoring her newfound form and power. She turned to face us, her meditation complete. Her eyes, in contrast to her body, were pits of total darkness, deep and devoid of emotion, apart from glee. When she smiled, more light poured out of her mouth. Looking upon her was painful, like staring into the sun. She was beautiful, radiant, terrible.
“Hang back,” Bastion said from somewhere beside me. “Let her make the first move.”
Like I needed to be told. I stood with the others, some thirty of us who had poured out of the Lorica, all of us unsure of what we were meant to do. Odessa was with us, her expression flat, her body deathly still. Even the Scions were playing things cautiously.
But someone broke away from our pack. One of the Hands, a man I didn’t know all too well. Jonas, I think. He went straight for Thea, his hand cupped around a wad of fire, running blindly for her in some foolish, brazen attempt to be a hero.
“Jonas,” someone shouted. “Don’t!”
It was hard to tell where Thea was looking, or if she was looking at all, but it happened so seamlessly. She reached one hand to her side, calling glimmers of light to gather in her palm and between her fingers. I knew what was coming. Thea had used her power on me, once, to create arcane grenades made of explosive radiance, testing my talent by bombarding me with spheres of light as deadly as fireballs. I recognized the shapes she was forming this time. I should have known.
The light in her hand gathered and solidified into a lance even taller than she was. Then another spear manifested, and another, until six of them hovered in the air around her. Another shout of warning rang across the square, but Jonas kept charging. He thrust his hand upward, lobbing the ball of flame. The corner of Thea’s mouth quirked. She opened her hand, fingers outstretched, and all six spears launched in concert, sailing unerringly for the ground.
The spears met the fireball in midair, snuffing it out through sheer force, then kept flying. All six impaled Jonas at once, slamming with enough force to crater the asphalt in a burst of blood and broken gravel. His body went rigid, then all at once limp, supported only by the spears.
Thea clenched her fist, and the spears disappeared. Jonas slumped to the ground, bleeding from six massive holes – just like the Pruitts, like Resheph. Someone screamed.
“Everyone stay back,” Bastion roared. No one needed to be told this time.
“You should listen to him,” Thea said. Her speech had a different quality, like it was coming from a place far away, threaded over and under with echoes that might have been copies of her own voice, or the sound of something entirely other, alien. She looked over her shoulder, spinning on her invisible axis again, admiring the pillars of light. “Let the circle do its work.”
I looked back, watching for the Scions, noting that several of them were still mouthing words, weaving their spells. Complex, destructive ones, I hoped, spells that could end this horror quickly. Maybe that was how I could help, I thought. Buy them time. Be the diversion.
“Why did you do all this, Thea?” I shouted. “Killing the Pruitts, the god murders. Killing me. Why?”
Thea swiveled again, her black eyes settling on me. “Terrible, wasn’t it?” She hovered lower, closer. The shuffle of activity around me told me that the others were clearing off in fear, that perhaps I should as well. But I had a job to do. “I do apologize.”
“For what?” My teeth ground into each other so much it hurt. “For everything you’ve done? For all the lives you’ve taken?”
Thea tilted her head, thinking. “I suppose. And for deceiving you, and the Lorica. I needed time, you know, to get everything in order, to lay my plans out. It was so simple, too. Who would ever suspect anything so serious from rats? If I had slain a greater entity, there would have been more cause to question and investigate. As I expected, no one was too concerned with the death of a minor deity.”
“That’s what you wanted everyone to think,” Prudence said. She seemed to have the same idea: let Thea gloat like the big damn villain she thought she was. The difference was that I really did want answers.
“But the rats. Oh, the rats. Such simple creatures. It didn’t take much out of me, you know, to control them, to get their claws to leave little marks across the city. Make enough marks – ”
