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An outcry reached my ears–the sound of pure suffering and pain. At first, I thought it’d come from Jericho, but the pressure against my head eased, and I opened my eyes. I turned, curling my legs up to see Vaszhago holding Claudius suspended in the air in a state of paralysis, his body twisted up with blood pouring profusely out of his groin. Lowering my gaze showed his severed penis lying on the floor beside me. I kicked it away and, with a hand set to the wounds on my stomach, scooted myself to the wall, shaking as I stared down at the blood on my gown. My mind scrambled to piece together what had happened to me. The lack of pain between my thighs told me he hadn’t penetrated me, and yet, my body turned cold and numb, every cell shaking. Reeling.
Sounds died to a muted silence in my head. I held my hands up, staring at the blood which had pooled beneath me with Vaszhago’s attack against Claudius.
“Farryn! Get out of here!” Vaszhago shouted over the din of my thoughts, his voice affected by whatever effort it must have taken to keep Claudius suspended.
I turned to see Jericho, hanging limp from his chains. Shaking. Broken.
So broken.
On unsteady hands and knees, I stumbled toward him, my stomach in so much pain, I could scarcely breathe. A vague awareness of throbbing in my shoulder told me I’d taken a powerful hit against the wall, but the sensation was smothered beneath the intensity of my ruined flesh.
As I neared Jericho, my hand mindlessly brushed over the blade Claudius had tossed away, and I paused, my head still lost in that dark space as I lifted it from the floor, momentarily mesmerized by it. I caught sight of my reflection in the steel. The tears. Blood. The darkness behind my eyes.
Anger roiled and twisted in my stomach in a toxic fury.
A foot stepped in my periphery, the sway of a black robe brushing over top of it, and I followed the length of the robe to find Barchiel standing over me.
“Farryn!” Vaszhago shouted again, but all sound was lost to the fuming rage burning inside of me, until at last, Barchiel bent forward.
“I told you, Miss Ravenshaw, that if you returned, I would hunt you for eternity.” He tipped his head in a pathetic show of fake sympathy that shook my muscles. “I can’t wait to find that little boy of yours and acquaint myself with him.”
The rage spilled over inside of me. On a scream, I held the blade with both hands and stabbed it into his groin.
Barchiel’s outcry bounced off the walls as he bent forward cupping himself, and I pushed to my knees until my lips met his ear, and whispered in an unsteady voice, “You won’t fucking touch him now.” Laughter, crazed and hysterical burst forth from my chest, needling my wounds.
As he fell to his knees, I pushed to my feet and limped toward Jericho. Pain burned across my belly, tears streaming down my cheeks.
He didn’t lift his head to look at me as I approached. Only a pained sound rose up from his throat.
With jerky movements, I reached out to touch him, and his muscles flinched. A sob punched at my throat, and I circled him to find his back completely torn apart. At the stumps where his wings had been mutilated to the bone, skin had been literally shredded, hanging off him in nauseating tatters. The retching of my stomach was the only warning before acids shot up my throat, and I fell to my knees on a flare of pain, expelling black fluids. Another round sent a dark torrent firing past my lips, and I coughed, gagging on the lingering stickiness at the back of my throat. With the back of my hand, I wiped the stringy spit away, breathing hard through my nose to catch my breath. Angry with myself, I ignored the pain across my belly and pushed to unsteady feet.
Hands still covered in Claudius’s blood, I held them out in front of me, not knowing where to touch him. There was no part of his flesh that hadn’t been serrated. Tears welled in my eyes, as I pressed my chest to his back and ran my hands around him, embracing him. Our trembles mingled together.
Another agonized sound escaped him, and as the tears streamed down my cheeks, I held onto him. I lifted my lips to his ear and whispered the words from my dreams. The same ones I’d whispered to the bird when I was a child. The ones Lustina had whispered for the baby growing inside of her.
The words of the Omni. The most powerful words in the heavens.
Nothing happened.
Dread pulsed through me as I released him and stepped back. Had I said them wrong? Had I forgotten them?
I caught sight of his wounds again, which remained as horrific as moments ago, and shook my head. No. It had to work. Something in this fucking hell had to work!
A beam of impossibly bright light beat down from the ceiling, knocking me backward. My wounds screamed in protest, the burn of my stomach leaving me curled in a ball on the floor.
I lifted my arm, shielding my eyes against the brightness speckled in diamond glints that wrapped around Jericho, lifting him up, as if pulling his chest toward the ceiling. A blast of lightning struck his chest, and I let out a gasp.
Fear strangled my throat, as I looked for any sign of movement, wondering if the bolt had killed him. Another bolt struck his chest, this one beating straight through him, where it danced across the floor like a downed wire. The chains binding him melted into silver steam. From his back, enormous black wings unfurled, and I held my hands to my face, awed by their magnificence, as they stretched to either side of him.
The wounds on his abdomen sealed to fresh skin, and the tattoos that covered him glowed a bright silver as the darkness of his skin faded to his natural color.
“Farryn!” Vaszhago called to me from across the room, his arms shaking as if growing weak from holding Claudius. “Run!”
Jericho tipped forward. Light from within his eye turned it a bright silvery glow. Mesmerizing and terrifying at the same time, I couldn’t look away.
It wasn’t until I heard Vaszhago’s outcry that I swung my attention back that way, watching Claudius throw him backward into the wall, where he shot right through the barrier, as if it was transparent.
Claudius scrambled toward me, and as I turned, my movements limited by the pain at my stomach, one of his tentacles captured my ankle. A blistering agony ripped over my wounds, and I let out a scream as he hauled me backward. A cold hand slid over my lips, muffling my voice.
