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Out of the corner of my eye, Nita slowly swings her head to me, smile curling up on one side, impressed. “Elysia…well, well!”
I take one more step toward Lux, one knee bent, solid boot digging into the ground. “You Father-fucking, heart-stealing, harp-thumping harpy!”
Lux gnashes her teeth but does not retort.
Instead, I fix my eyes on her and direct my husband,myhusband, “Neo, crush Mordere’s army. Lux ismine.”
“Elysia—” Neo starts, but Nita interrupts him.
“Let your women protect you for once, brother.”
Bereft of a bond, I use my Halo to sink into his mind and profess over his patriarchal background that haunted us before his new heart:a real woman may be able to do it all by herself, and Neo, arealman knows when to back her the hell up!
“So…” Neo throws his head back and laughs, “I’m back up.”
With my eyes darting from side to side, noting how Lux and her demons have begun to close in, I tread on a little banter. “Don’t worry. You’re not a minstrel.” Rocking forward, I channel my inner Thanatos and tempt Lux, “Bring your pretty wings to me, bogie.”
The Father commences the battle. Neo charges into the air, shadowing over our heads to fly into the bitten vampire masses. As soon as he does, several demons vault into the air, but I surge my Halo whips, flagellating their wings with holy fire and knocking them back to the ground. Nita handles the ones that try to escape via the ground. Neo is the homing beacon in their blood, but Nita and I will be damned if we let one get within an inch of that new heart.
Tunnel vision strikes me, enabling me to focus on Lux and not on anything else. Instead of the whips, I transform them into two flaming golden swords and try not to consider the multitudes of weapons I could conjure!
“I’ll show you arealangel in the streets, and you’ll never be a devil in the sheets again!” I herald the promise to Lux, who snarls, those amber eyes dilating to molten lava.
Dozens of Lux’s demons cross the distance toward me. Whenever one gets close, I stab, I slice, I slash, I hack until the bodies pile up all around me like husks of hellfire embers and amber ash.
Lux pauses because she’s lost too many. Her eyes travel to the vampire battle behind her, to where Neo has already destroyed a thousand soldiers. In the few precious moments I have with Lux distracted, I can’t help but admire him. Mightier than ever and still in his vampire form, with silver blood staining his armor. Countless vampires assault him, their fangs prepared to strike, but they never sink once he steels his muscles and mutilates them to mincemeat. My beautiful Warhammer.Mine!
Nita is far more surgical and precise with her wings, her horns, and her blades. No rage, no bloodthirst, no ferocity, she is a marvel in battle, creating blade after blade to strike at vampire hearts, burying deep. Any foes who attack her from behind meet the same end. A collective Hydra unit operating in one mind—as if she has eyes on all sides of her head. Within minutes, she’s slaughtered a thousand herself, and I get the sense she and Neo have a competition going down. Her razor-sharp focus is still on any Lux demons with laser-bullseye targets for my Neo,ourNeo.
My mother is a wonder with how she battles the Father. How his hell flames bite her lightning, how he knocks her to the ground each time, but she rises and strikes her lightning straight into his heart. A heart that can never stop, one she can never hope to mark or brand. As long as she can create pain, as long as she can unleash a battle of vengeance for the trauma he’s caused her, that’s all that matters to the Phoenix Queen. As long as she can rise from the ashes every damn time.
One split second is all I have before Lux and all her demon clones take to the sky. I curse my grounded body and spin into vampire speed, then wraith-shadowing so I can get as close to Neo as possible. Above my head soars Lux’s amber trademark, and I shoot over a dozen fiery whips to lasso as many of her demons as possible and crush them to the earth. Between Nita and I, we must have gone through half.
As if comprehending, Lux pauses in mid-flight and charges from the sky, pouncing right on my chest, her mouth opening to betray countless demon teeth overlapping one another like a shark’s. My eyes fly open wide right until another body barrels into her. They roll and roll, but multiple serpents lasso Lux’s throat.
“Syn!” I rejoice at the demoness.
She whips her head back for one moment as her serpents constrict around Lux’s throat. “Death sends his regards.” Then, she presses her gorgeous ass down harder, cutting off Lux’s breath and pronouncing, “Rapistsare not just male.”
As soon as Syn’s serpents strangle one more time, breaking the neck, I shut my ears to the shrill demon spawn cry. No…this one wasnotLux. Spinning my head, I gasp because she’s approaching Neo from behind as he’s slaughtering countless more bitten vampires.
“Neo!” I scream in mid-shadow. Too caught up in the blood lust of battle, fueled by my Everblood and the harvest moon, Neo doesn’t hear me, doesn’t turn.
I stop, crouching low when a bitten vampire flies through the air an inch from my head and drops on my other side with a blade in its heart. I nod to Nita, then focus on binding my Halo power to my greater creator power because there isn’t enough time to catch up. Only one thing will buy us time. He needs to turn now.
Closing my eyes, reaching deep into my core to summon my atomic bomb, I slam my hand against the earth, launching the shockwave to roar into the ground and causing every last bitten vampire, whether flying or fighting on the ground, to fall. Every last one…except for Lux and Neo.
That one pause is all I need for Neo to turn and discover Lux a mere few feet from his chest…it’s all I need to scream, “Dragon!”
Before her claws can land at his chest, Neo explodes into his Dragon—all his muscles enlarging and swarming, flesh bulging to those layers of scales of black diamonds, claws as long as his keen bone daggers, and glorious twisting horns the color of his black scythes. He batters Lux with wind from his mighty silver and black wings.
My Warhammer of a Dragon. My Dragon Prince of Destruction. Because it will always be part of his identity that I respect…as long as his heart is all Neo.
It will be far more difficult for Lux to get to that heart now, but I still race across the field as he unleashes his fire on hundreds of bitten vampires, dismissing his “first wife” as if she’s no more than a luna moth. I understand his motivation: he’s preventing Mordere’s army from reaching the tent city, from reaching the humans. Half of the army has been destroyed by his and Nita’s hands, but more try to reach the tent city, to feast on human flesh.
Now, I stop directly beneath that roaring Dragon…and Lux who tries to assault him like a bird swooping in to peck, but she doesn’t get within a foot before one of his enormous wings assails her or before she has to swerve away from his flames. They are a hundred feet in the air. How can I reach them?
For some reason, I remember my ladder! How the humans she’d trapped in her amber pit climbed my inside joke. Now, I will take that stairway. Shaking my head, I conjure the gold rungs and can’t help but laugh while humming the Led Zeppelin tune. I climb up that ladder as fast as my muscles can carry me. Below me, Nita’s blades sing as she cuts down any vampires who try to attack and halt my progress.
