Page 52

I know what’s going to happen, but I can’t stop it.

For a moment the two men struggle pointlessly in midair—and then the red-haired one yields, relaxing his body. He leans in and kisses the other man, fangs and all.

“Don’t give up, Nick,” shouts the black-haired one, still writhing and bucking—but the redhead gasps brokenly, “Cody. Cody, it’s all right.”

Then something snaps inside him, and his eyes go vacant, startled. Cody gives a yell of anguish, but his cry is choked off by another snap as his own spine breaks.

Cernunnos isn’t satisfied. He smashes them against the pews over and over. Wood splinters, more bones crack, and there’s a wet sound of flesh being pounded into pulp.

Heathcliff yells, charges toward me, toward Cernunnos. I can see the god reaching four clawed hands, can feel his intent to shred Heathcliff’s flesh from his bones. And I can’t stop it in time.

But Dorian gets there first. Throws himself in front of Heathcliff.

All the claws of those four arms sink into Dorian’s body. His face goes perfectly still, and in that instant, he looks innocently, pitifully young. Blood trickles from his mouth.

Heathcliff seizes two of the god-arms, rips them in half before they can whip outward and tear Dorian apart. With a scream of defiance, I struggle to control the other two limbs, but they’re not part of me. They’re shadow-limbs of Cernunnos, and I’m not fully in control of him yet.

Blood jets across the pews as the other two arms jerk out of Dorian’s body, slashing him in the process. He falls out of my sight line, shrouded in shadows.

Heathcliff is left standing, his hands and robes dripping red. He is Baz’s last defense.

She hasn’t taken her eyes from her drawing, but her shoulders are shaking, and a broken sob echoes through the church, which has fallen suddenly, strangely quiet.

“It’s over,” says Cernunnos aloud. Wings of shadow expand from his shoulders and curve along the sides of the church, blotting out the light from the narrow windows, covering the lamps.

The only illumination streams in pale, translucent rays from the doorway of the sanctuary, lancing around Heathcliff and turning him into a dark silhouette.

“You tried to expel me, Catherine,” Cernunnos says in a voice like black ice. “I consider our bargain broken, and for that, your lover will die.”

Countless hands rise from the floor of the church.

They rise on long arms veined with ridges, studded with thorns and blinking eyes.

Heathcliff makes a sound I’ve never heard from him—the desperate growl of a cornered animal.

And though there’s a way of escape right behind him, he will not run. He will not leave me.

He loves me like no one ever has, and I hate that he is standing alone in this. I hate that I’m not quite strong enough to save him.

But before the hands can seize Heathcliff, Daisy rises from her knees, her eyes shot through with white, pale claws extruding from her fingers, her yellow hair stained crimson at the tips.

Her voice vibrates against my consciousness, but she isn’t speaking to me now.

She’s speaking to the god—to Death himself.

“You,” she says, low and lethal. “You will leave this girl’s body, and you will go into the new one Baz has created for you. This is the will of the Leannán Sídhe and our sister, the banshee. In this world, we are the new gods. And you are nothing.”

Her power slams against Cernunnos, penetrates his spirit. At the same moment, Baz yells out, and I feel her power too, yanking Cernunnos free, snapping the tethers he formed within me.

A defiant scream builds inside me, roars up my throat, tears across my tongue, and sears the air of the church. It rises to an earsplitting, keening shriek that bursts every window in the building into splinters, and on the crest of that shriek, the god’s spirit is ejected violently from my body.

Baz leaps up, holding out the tablet, the portrait she made.

The image on the screen is draining away, and as it leaves the screen, it begins to take shape in the far aisle, by the north wall of the church.

The figure is a tall, slim man with handsome features and short, wavy black hair.

But as the right side of his face is forming, Baz takes her stylus and rakes it viciously across the screen several times.

There’s a rush of wind and smoke as the god is sucked into his new body—a body perfectly formed, except for the right side of his face, which is striated with red wounds.

Cernunnos stares at himself, seeming disoriented. Before he can recover, Daisy moves inhumanly fast, takes his face between her hands, and looks into his eyes, speaking quickly, quietly, intensely.

She keeps talking, on and on, but I have no idea what she’s saying because I’m…sinking. Shrinking. All the pieces that were Cernunnos and not me are dissipating into smoke and vanishing into the sunlight that floods the church.

My body is wrong. Parts of me were severed by the god’s magic, yet they’re still linked together by tenuous, straining threads.

And as the magic recedes, the pieces of me are snapping back into place, reconnecting.

Arranging themselves like they’re supposed to be, until I’m standing in the center aisle, my right size and shape.

But I’m not quite right after all, because a second later, I fall backward. Agony lacerates my flesh like whips of fire. When I manage to raise my head and look down at myself, I nearly vomit.

I’ve been put back together, and I’m alive—but there are angry red seams along the edges of the chunks that had to be reattached. I look like a jigsaw puzzle, like a patchwork quilt, like a rag doll. Like something horrible that shouldn’t exist.

The agony is fading, and the redness is calming as well…but the scars are still there, ridged and unmistakable.

The scars shouldn’t bother me. I’m alive .

That’s all I should care about. Alive and whole and myself.

Most of the people who came to help me might be dead, and I’m sad about my fucking skin ?

What the hell is wrong with me? At least I’m not in chunks all over the sanctuary.

At least I’m breathing. At least my heart is beating…

Tears spill over, and I choke out a sob.

Heathcliff rushes to me, claws me against himself. “Cathy. Cathy, Cathy, Cathy.” He’s sobbing, too, horrible heavy sobs jerked straight out of his heart. He’s kissing me, kissing all over my wet face. Feeling my body, pressing its new seams. “You’re all right. You’re okay.”

“But…them.” I point to the slumped figure of Gatsby. To Dorian’s body. To the place where I saw the other two vampires fall.

“Shit,” he says. “I’ve got to… I’ll be right back.”

I nod. “Try to help them.”

He goes to Dorian first. Gets there a second before Baz does.

Dorian’s not a vampire like the others. I don’t know what he is, but there’s no way he could have survived that—

He sits up. Fucking sits up, covered in blood, and he’s gory but he looks…whole.

“Well, shit,” says Heathcliff blankly.

“Thank goddess.” Baz runs her fingers through Dorian’s hair, strokes his cheek. Then she glances over at me. “Girl, we gotta get you some clothes. Here.” She pulls off her jacket and tosses it to me. I drape it along the front of my body and hold it in place with both arms.

“Nick and Cody,” Dorian says, his voice threaded with worry.

“They’ll need blood,” says Baz. “So will Gatsby, if he’s…if he isn’t…” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I think that punch took out a couple major organs. Might take him a while to heal. He’ll need more blood than the others.”

“Happy to donate.” Dorian climbs to his feet and walks over to Gatsby. He sits cross-legged on the floor, pulls Gatsby’s head into his lap, and rakes his arm along the vampire’s fangs, opening a shallow cut. “Drink up, you self-righteous bastard. Can’t have you dying on us, can we?”

From behind me, on the church platform, a shaky voice says, “Can someone cut me loose?”

I twist around, still holding the jacket in place. “Oh shit…Edgar.” I totally forgot he was there.

“Who’s that?” Baz asks. Quickly I explain Edgar’s role in everything, and she gives him a stern look.

“Maybe he’s not completely useless,” she mutters. “Heathcliff, help me get him over to the boys. They could use some blood.”

“What?” exclaims Edgar. He’s trembling, and there’s a wet spot on his pants where he must have pissed himself. “Nobody’s taking my blood. Haven’t I been through enough?”

Heathcliff strides up onto the platform, grabs the roll of duct tape from the floor where he left it, and rips off a piece. He places it firmly across Edgar’s mouth. “Asshole. Least you can do is help the people who had to fix the problem you caused.”

I lean against the end of a pew, too tired to do anything but watch as Heathcliff carries Edgar to where Nick and Cody fell. He and Baz hunker down over the bodies. I can’t see what they’re doing, but after a few minutes, I hear slurping sounds and Edgar’s muffled screams.

“We don’t want him dead,” Baz says to Heathcliff. “We’ll have to stop them in a few minutes and find another source. Dorian can give a lot, but too much puts him out of commission for a while. We need somebody else. Human, not vampire.”

“I can do it,” Heathcliff offers, but I can tell he’s reluctant. Honestly I don’t blame him…but I don’t think we have much choice.

Then an idea pops into my head. It’s vengeful and wicked, but after what I’ve endured, I don’t fucking care.

“Edgar’s phone,” I murmur. “Should be on the pulpit. Text Robert Earnshaw from Edgar’s phone and ask him to come to the church.

Ask him to bring Nellie Earnshaw, too. Tell them it’s an emergency. ”