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I was with Finley once—back when I was human—and she stopped at a gas station. I stood outside with her while she filled up the tank, explaining to me how such things worked, given I’d lived my entire life without ever seeing a single car. I remember watching the numbers tick upward in price and gallons as the gas siphoned from the pump into her tank. That’s how it feels to me now—that inevitable waiting to get maximum achievement before I’m willing to turn the key to ignite my powers.
“Now,” Ariman says, and I think he’s talking to me.
But no, his gaze is on Rune and the unthinkable happens. As my powers flare to life within my body, an incandescent beam of light the color of the Crimson River shoots from the Blood Stone and into the center of my chest. It feels as if someone has driven a spike into my sternum and my back arches in pain.
And then I feel my powers slowly rippling through my body, congregating in my core and expelling through my chest. A thin stream of smoky white light travels up the red beam, moving from me into Rune.
“Yes,” Rune whispers as he tips his head back in ecstasy. His mouth slackens as the first wave of my godly powers enters his body.
“No!” I scream, the piercing word ripping out of my throat with such violence, it feels like I swallowed razor blades. I thrash against Rune, but he’s too heavy.
My eyes roll back to look at Ariman, who wears a victorious smile. He senses my stare and returns it with triumph. “Remember when I used to funnel dark magic into you?” he taunts softly, his fingertips gently rubbing at my neck. “Now I’m taking it away from you and I’m not sure which feels better to me.”
A tear slips out of my eye, running over my temple and disappearing into my hair. When I was a child and Ariman performed his rituals, I would sob my heart out because it hurt so much. As I got older, I learned to control my emotions because I knew how he relished hurting me.
I blink hard, refusing to let another tear slip. I’ll not give him that pleasure.
If I die, I’ll do it bravely.
CHAPTER 19
Maddox
Carrick and Finleyhave to lead Amell and me through the veil into Micah’s realm. They’ve been here before… that fateful trip where Lucien lost his life in the Crimson River but Carrick came away with the Blood Stone.
Now he’s here again and the Blood Stone is in play once more. It’s the single-most threatening opponent we’ve ever faced.
I look around the barren wasteland of this alternate dimension, not surprised we don’t see Ariman, Rune, or Zora. Carrick said there was a cave Micah lived in and if they’re here, we assume that’s where they’ll be. It’s dark, cold and without color, nothing but endless black sand that Carrick said used to be an ocean but now extends to the horizon, punctuated with large boulders dotted over the landscape, some the size of buses.
In the distance, the Crimson River flows from the farthest point, over the dead sand sea and right up the side of a craggy stone mountain, in defiance of physics, where it disappears into a crevice.
“That’s where it happened?” I ask, nodding at the molten lava ambling slowly up the mountainside.
Where our brother died?
Carrick lifts a finger and points away from the mountain, at least a hundred yards. “Over there. We fought Micah on the beach.”
I know the finer details and don’t need them repeated. It’s enough that I can see where it happened, trying to imagine where Lucien went under the frothing waves of fire and where his tortured soul might even be now, wailing in agony.
“What’s the plan?” Amell says, rotating his wrist to twirl the spiked mace. I can tell he’s eager to lodge it in either Ariman’s or Rune’s brain, although he’d get more pleasure if it was the priest’s.
“About half a mile down, there’s a cave,” Carrick says. Through the gloom and with only the dull illumination from the glowing river, I can’t make out anything but the shadowy outline of the jagged base of the mountain. “That’s where Micah lived. We didn’t go inside though, as Lucien and I climbed above and dropped down after he was lured out. It wasn’t a big area, so I’m not sure if that’s where they’ll be.”
“If they’re even here,” Amell points out.
“She’s here.” We all turn to face Finley, who grips Cato’s lightning bolt. “I can feel her.”
“Is that a twin thing?” I ask.
“More than a twin thing,” she murmurs, attention fixated down the beach where the cave would be. “When you stick a knife in your sister’s heart—literally and not figuratively—because she begs you to, it creates an even deeper bond. Add in the fact that she breathed new life into me after she became a god and I can tell you… she’s here, and she’s terrified.”
Her last words trigger a feeling inside me that I’ve never felt before. I’m not sure what it is, but if I had to put a name to it, I might call it panic. As a demigod, fear is impossible. I don’t have the capacity to be scared of anything, and yet now I feel like the clock is ticking faster and we’re losing control.
Gripping the spear, I say, “Let’s just fucking go… bend distance to that slight outcropping past the boulder that looks like a camel’s hump.”
Carrick nods. “Surprise attack is going to be the best. Maddox, Amell, and I will go in together. Finley, you stay back and—”
“Not staying back,” she growls.
