Page 55 of Ignited Spirits (Haunted Magic #3)
Understanding dawns on me when I watch her walk into the Styx, the source of cura magic and enhancer of their power.
We knew it was a risk that she’d decide to juice up in the river at some point, but this was the only place here that was out of her reach.
And the Styx powers us up, too, so it was a calculated risk.
“Everybody, brace yourselves!” Hades bellows as his mother turns back to us, standing ankle-deep in the river.
Lua laughs maniacally, like Hades just cracked the funniest joke. It’s like a light switch flips and she sobers instantly. Then she sends an even stronger blast of her multicolored stolen magic at us.
Even though I know it’s going to happen, I still flinch when the shield shatters like a delicate glass figurine dropped on an unforgiving stone floor.
Since the dome was powered by so many different curae , most of them remain conscious. A few of them collapse onto the rocky ground and are quickly whisked away to safety by their fellow curae .
With a smug smile, Lua looks me dead in the eye before screaming, “Come to me, pieces of my soul!”
I wonder what in the fuck she’s going on about when I see extremely messed-up spirits popping into existence next to her. My eyes widen as more and more materialize until she has an army of deeply traumatized spirits at her side, large enough to rival ours.
Well, that’s not good.
How did she get all those souls to her? And what exactly does she think she’s going to do with them?
I’m not too fazed by it until Hades says, “Oh, shit.”
I turn my wide eyes to him. “What’s wrong?”
I’m really, really hoping he tells me nothing. I’m hoping that we don’t have anything to worry about with Lua’s army of the dead.
I know I’m not that lucky when Hades turns his glowing gaze filled with panic on me.
“Oh, nothing other than Mommy Dearest just pulled all the many, many, many people she’s drained over the years to her.
Since she has pieces of their soul and their magic, they are hers to command.
And in Infernus , spirits can touch, interact with, and even kill the living. So, in other news, we’re fucked.”
Groaning, I scrub a hand over my face because this is so not what we needed. Lua was already almost impossible to defeat on her own. Now she has her very own undead attack force.
Fantastic.
Even though this is unexpected, I still don’t think it changes our original plan. “Well, I think we should still go to our second phase of the plan. I guess this gives the shifters something they can do while we try to tire out Lua.”
“Your optimism is annoying me, earthling,” Hades grumbles but doesn’t provide any other plan.
“I agree with Izzy. We need to go ahead as we planned and just direct the shifters to deal with the ghosts,” Seph chimes in. I’m kind of surprised Hades allowed his mate to be here but also not really surprised. Seph is a force of nature.
I look around for any objections. When my eyes lock with Bishop’s, he steps up and wraps his arms around me. “We’re going to make it through this, sweetheart. I swear it,” he murmurs into my hair. Squeezing me tight once more, he reluctantly releases me, not waiting for me to respond.
Looking back at my mates, I briefly debate saying anything, not wanting to sound sappy.
Then I realize it doesn’t matter how I sound.
What matters is that they know how much they mean to me.
“I love you guys. And I swear to God that if any of you get yourselves killed, I will bring you back only to murder you myself. Understood?”
A chorus of snorts and surprised laughs sound from my mates before they each repeat it back to me. This exchange feels weirdly heartfelt and choked up for the middle of a raging battle.
Blowing out a breath, I get ready to tell everyone to run at Lua and her army of messed-up souls when I remember something. I turn to Mateo and Rhys behind me. “Don’t let your shifters or mages touch the river. It’ll kill them.”
When I get a nod from them, I suck in a breath and shout, “Charge her!”
I take off after issuing that order, running at full speed down the cliff, wanting to be on the front lines of attacking Lua.
Whether my scream was really necessary is debatable because they all knew what the plan was when the shield was eventually taken down. But it sure is cool to yell “charge” at an army I’m heading.
Leading an army is no pressure or anything. I just have to keep roughly a thousand people alive and well as we try our best to defeat an undefeatable cura .
Even before my feet touch the rocky banks of the river, Lua is slinging magic at us like she’s an infinite power machine. Hell, for all I know, she could be. I throw up a shield around me, trying to protect those I can from her hits.
But not everyone is so lucky. Shifters, mages, and curae alike are going down around me with hoarse shouts, pained screams, and whimpered pleas.
I grit my teeth and force myself not to stop to tend to them.
As much as I desperately want to help the injured, I know the best way I can help them is by stopping Lua once and for all.
Her army of souls floats toward us without any urgency. It’s kind of spooky watching them float slowly, their dead eyes unseeing and uncaring. I think all of us are waiting with bated breath to see what they’ll do.
What I’m not expecting is for the seemingly docile souls to rip into the first person they come across.
The souls somehow have wicked sharp fangs and claws and tear apart the cura who is the unlucky one to encounter them first. Bloodstained rocks and lumps of flesh are the only things left of the cura after the group of three or four souls tear into him.
I’m gaping at the scene when a jaguar leaps at one of the souls.
His sharp teeth puncture the soul, and he’s able to tear chunks out of it.
The jaguar does the same thing to the soul that it did to the cura .
The spirit makes the bloodcurdling shrieks as it’s torn apart until it completely fades away.
I guess we know one way to kill the ghosts. One down, only a thousand more to go.
Shaking my head to clear it, I focus on my main job here. Taking down Lua. With her out of the equation, her souls will cease to be a problem. I can’t afford to get distracted with fighting individual ghosts, because I’ll wear out before I’m even close to Lua.
When I reach the bank of the Styx, I wade in to get closer to Lua.
As soon as I touch the water, the whispering I always hear from the river increases until it sounds like someone is shouting at me. I slap my hands over my ears as I try to make what sounds like millions of voices whisper-screaming at me in unison stop.
Unfortunately, that does nothing to stop it. I drop to my knees as I try to figure out what to do. Instead of landing on the shallow riverbed, I’m dragged down until I’m fully submerged.
I fight with everything I have to free myself of whatever is pulling me deeper and deeper into the waters, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t get myself free.
The longer I’m down there, the tighter my chest feels and the more desperate for air I get. Whereas the light above was easy to see near the surface, now it’s barely a pinprick in the murky darkness of the river that’s way deeper than I thought it was.
Part of me wants to scream at the absolute irony of this. I thought I would die battling Lua, but instead, I’m getting murdered by the river that I have the power to send souls to.
I contemplate giving up and just letting the water take me, but then I remember all the people I care so much about.
I can’t leave them to face Lua alone, so I start thrashing about, renewing my efforts to get free of whatever is taking me deeper into the river. It doesn’t make any difference, other than to wear me out and deplete what little oxygen I have left.
“Just breathe,” a melodic female voice instructs me, her words somehow able to be heard past the whispered screams. “We will never hurt you, steward of the souls. We are here for you to command.”
I’m not sure that lady understands what hurting means, because trying to drown someone is definitely harming them. I want to scream at her to let me go, but I know that will only waste the precious little oxygen I have.
Out of options, I suck in a desperate breath and prepare myself to drown. Instead of drowning, it feels like I breathe in pure magic that makes me feel more alive and powerful than I’ve ever felt.
Before I can ask anything about why I can breathe underwater now and why she called me “steward of the souls,” I’m violently thrown upward.
I break through the surface of the water with a surprised scream, and I’m woefully unprepared for the carnage I find when I look around.