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“To think I wasted all my time on you,” he says with an ugly sneer. “Perhaps I should have done the world a favor and killed you along with your parents.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I manage to say, each word broken. “I would have just come back.”
The blade starts to shake in my hand from the strain, poised just above his heart. My instincts tell me exactly where to plunge it and I’m grunting, gasping for just one single push of strength to come through.
“I’m starting to think that I didn’t just come back for Valtu,” I go on with a growl. “I also came back to kill you.”
Then with the memories of my parents in my heart, the ones that he killed and the ones that he stole from, I scream and drive the blade ofmordernesright into his heart.
The blade sinks in with a snap of cartilage and I watch as Bellamy’s face contorts from the pain, his power wavering slightly. I don’t know what it’s going to do, if anything, and from the intensely curious expression on his face, I can tell he doesn’t either. But the knife is all the way in and blue lightning is radiating outward like electric veins, coursing through his body and limbs.
“You fool,” he says to me. “Do you know what you have done?”
“I did exactly what you taught me to do,” I answer.
Then I let go of the blade, all my energy spent and drained, and just when I start to feel my world go black and cold, everything springs back to life with a WHOOSH.
I’m suddenly bombarded with sounds and movement again, everyone back in motion like they’d never been frozen at all. Valtu is choking Atlas, only to have Atlas disappear into thin air, Solon is biting a hunk out of a witch’s neck. The shopkeeper who helped me up is looking around wildly for me, and people are still screaming and shouting and running, clouds of yellow and orange spice rising up in the air.
And at my feet lies Bellamy.
On his back with the blade sticking right out of his chest, his mouth open, face bent in horror, the only thing in the market frozen in place.
He’s dead.
I bend over him to make sure but his eyes are empty and I can smell death on him like he’s wearing cologne.
“Fuck you,” I say and then spit right on his forehead. “That’s for Leif.”
The thought of my brother’s name makes me wonder where he is. He’s not here in the market with the others, so maybe he’s back in the industrial area. God, I hope so, I hope my parents were able to find him—not only find him but save him. What if Bellamy was right and Leif won’t go with them willingly?
But my thoughts about Leif are cut short because a child next to me starts to scream and point at Bellamy and I realize that I look like a good old-fashioned murderer.
I’m about to yell at the others to suggest we get the fuck out of here before the cops show up when suddenly I feel someone at my back and my neck is burning and I reach up to find barbed wire placed around me like a noose.
“Help!” I try to scream but the noose tightens, the spikes piercing my skin, warm blood trickling down my neck, and I hear Atlas at my ear.
“Should have known you’d steal my blade,” he seethes, his voice ragged and wild. “You’re going to suffer for what you’ve done, bloodsucker.”
Atlas yanks at the wire and I scream, blood spilling down my neck as the spikes go in a few more inches, through muscle and bone and if he pulls again I’m—
With a deafening roar, Valtu appears just in time for Atlas to let go of the wire in surprise. Valtu slams into him, knocking Atlas back, and they go flying onto the ground. I stagger backward, my fingers at my neck, hating the feeling of pulling these spikes out of my skin, scared to know the damage it created.
Valtu is in full-on rage mode now. He’s bellowing like an animal on top of Atlas, both of them coated in a layer of sumac powder, like a dusting of blood. I expect him to start bunching him or biting but Valtu just lets out a primal scream and places his hands on Atlas’s head.
He twists Atlas’ head back and forth and then with an insane amount of power, Valtu rips his head right off the body.
I gasp, forgetting about my neck for the moment. People scream.
Valtu staggers to his feet, looking like a beast, holding the witch’s head by a fistful of hair. Blood and gore spill to the ground, the shattered vertebrae trailing out the end. He nearly ripped his whole damn spine out.
“How did you know how to kill him?” I ask, wide-eyed and breathless. Despite the violence I’ve seen, nothing prepares you for seeing your lover physically tear someone’s head off their neck as easily a flower off a stem.
Valtu frowns as if it’s a dumb question and gestures to the head in his hands. “Who wouldn’t this kill?”
He’s got a point. Still, holyshit.
“Little help,” Solon manages to say, and we look over to see him still being attacked.
