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Chapter22
“I’m feeling truly energetic, Neo. Do you really want to kill my buzz?”
Neo becomes the Warhammer.
Aroused by the blood moon careening through the trees, Neo puts me on the ground. Though I know he can command these Fallen away, Neo is a beast off his leash. He’s going to pick a fight and willingly put himself in danger. Supercilious ass! I recognize what Neo is doing. This is how he runs away. How he takes to flight and returns to what is familiar, what he knows: Destruction.
“No, Neo,” I whimper as he shoves me behind him.
“For once in your life, stay down!” he thunders, pushing me back and vaulting out his wings. Not the Dragon ones but the vampire ones because it’s all he needs to conquer the Fallen, all he needs when it’s not yet the harvest moon.
He’s a fool if he thinks I’m going to stay down. I am his equal counterpart. His militant warrioress of light. Even when he’s acting like a damned fool, I will stand beside him.
The wizened demons crouch, encroaching closer to my husband, their sinister and thin, sword-like claws ready to shred right through his wings. So, when he hurls himself into the shadowy mass with a mighty roar, breaking their bones as easily as snapping twigs, I unleash my golden stakes and attack.
Two Fallen hem me in, fiery eyes marking mine, crimson waterfalls of blood dripping down their chest cavities and macabre rib cages. Springing as high as I can, I plunge my stakes into their eye sockets, digging deep so the blood stains my front. It bubbles up, frothing its mouth as its shriek is cut short. Mine begins! I scream, I scream, I scream to the claws that have found my back.
Elysia!Neo’s frenzied snarl roars in my head.
I swing around in a ferocious arc and stake the damned fallen, forming a sword out of my Halo to hack at those claws until they clatter to the earth. Blood still oozes from the wounds in my back from shards of claws embedded in my flesh.
“Neo!” I scream when he flies toward me because it’s not just Fallen now. Now, it’s dozens of ghouls rushing along with the remaining fire-eyed creatures.
Just before his arms can seize me, before he can capture me, I do as he wanted in the first place. I get down, tuck, and roll until I emerge on the other side with him behind me. I call upon the heavenly hosts inside me, arch my pained back, and unleash a hundred gold stakes to find their marks in every Fallen and ghoul until they crash to the ground. Neo grabs my waist and hauls me from the tumbling hoards, rising above them and soaring beyond the canopy. I whimper when he touches my back, the sting from those shards that pierces my flesh.
“What the fuck am I—ugh!” Neo bellows a groan and hauls me closer into his arms.
“Where are you taking me?” I gasp against his chest, lips finding that ring brand and kissing it.
“Somewhere secret.”
I pass out in his arms.
* * *
When I wake,it’s from cold water on my skin. I bite back a shriek at the liquid lashing my wounds. Sharp aches. All around me are nothing but sparkling embers from what remains of my gown…warm glitter fabric smithereens. He’s destroyed it.
Neo’s hands stroke my back, and I shiver when he pours another cupful of water. When I throw my head back so my curls drape over one shoulder, I open my mouth, but Neo raises a finger and reaches inside the Soul Pool. He’s brought me to the grotto just as he’d said he would. All the spirits skim away to his destructive energy, except tonight, he’s destroyed for me. He destroyed the claws in my back.
After another cupful of water, Neo growls, cursing under his breath. “Not enough. Fallen blood got in your wounds, infected them.Elysia, I don’t, I…” Neo suddenly drags a keen fang across his wrist, and I gasp when he sluices a cupful of blood onto my flesh, then strokes it into the wounds.
“Neo!” I cry out and slam my head down into the dirt, snapping my teeth and sucking air through their cracks.
“I can bite you, give you venom,” my husband offers, but I refuse, shaking my head back and forth, resolving to feel the fabric of my skin renewing itself. It feels like birth! Like my skin rebirthing, stitching itself back together to Neo’s blood power that destroys the Fallen blood, destroys the infection.
I collapse against the ground, biting back a scream, but it rages through my throat as the wounds close up, flesh resealing itself due to his silver blood.
Suddenly, Neo hauls me into his arms and wades into the very water of the Soul Pool. Though the souls around him disappear, he surrenders me to the water but bears just enough of my underweight, so I float on the flat of my back—as if he’s presenting me like an offering to the spirits. An offering they chase and cover in a silvery, shimmering mantle. Hundreds of them twirl all over my skin, sinking as if granting me a healing kiss and rousing my Halo current to become gold, mirrored wisps.
It’s a dream within a dream. A second chance. Hope. Especially when Neo shares this moment when he’s brought me here. Am I granting him a new heart?
Once the pain ebbs, I gasp, sobbing a little against Neo’s chest as he carries my naked body out of the water and lays me on the gray moss before the very heart of the Soul Pool. I sense the light of those spirits, still drawn to my presence. Above me, Neo shifts me to the side to trail a hand down my spine to check my back, but there’s no pain. The wounds are gone.
“Those claws went deep,” he informs me and sweeps aside the curls from my eyes. “I almost…” He rubs a hand down his face, groaning frustration through his nostrils, neck muscles hardening before he leans in, hovering above my ear to reprimand me, “I told you to stay down. Why didn’t you stay down?”
I muster a shrug against the gray moss beneath me. “I’m down now.” I giggle, remembering when I’d presented myself like a photograph for him to capture on our honeymoon. All Neo does is deadpan, the corners of his mouth curved low into a glower. With a little wave, I add, “Right, right, what the fuck are you going to do with me?” I echo his earlier words, but Neo grips my hand, raising it, anchoring it against that moss, and I refrain from gasping. Something in his subconscious registers this image from that night. He’d memorized that moment in time before he’d traced his breath around the outline of my body.
Curling my fingers up to perfect that image, I tremble as his eyes sail across every inch of me, studying as if memorizing a new moment in eternity. Those pupils intensify just as they did on our wedding, on that honeymoon, while his shades trim my body’s outline. How much does he remember?
