Page 24 of Soulmarked (Hellbound and Hollow #1)

23

SACRIFICE PLAY

“ I s this all the marked one can muster?” Asmodeus taunted, his borrowed form rippling like oil on water as he flowed around my attacks. “Such potential, wasted on hesitation.”

I struck again, letting him think each blow was born of frustration rather than calculation. The prince moved like smoke and shadow, beautiful and terrible in his fluid grace. My mind raced, analyzing each movement, looking for the pattern in his attacks while I maintained my facade of desperation.

“Fuck you,” I managed through gritted teeth, blood trailing from my nose as power built between us. The air itself felt thick, like trying to breathe underwater, reality bending around our clash.

Behind the barrier I'd created, Sean struggled against Juno's grip. “Cade, stop!” His voice carried that same protective urgency I'd come to rely on, the sound of someone who cared too much to let go.

“Let him fight,” Juno cut in, though I heard the strain in her voice. “He knows what he's doing.”

Did I? The plan had seemed so clear when I thought of it.

Another explosion of force as Asmodeus and I collided, sending lesser demons skittering back into the twisted shadows of what used to be Central Park. Trees writhed unnaturally, their branches reaching like grasping hands toward a sky that continued to tear itself apart. The pentagram's symbols blazed brighter with each surge of power, hungry for more.

“You feel it, don't you?” the Prince purred. “The pull of what waits beyond. Its power, calling to what was planted in you that night.” His perfect features twisted into something crueler. “Your parents died for nothing, you know. They never understood what they were really protecting.”

Asmodeus struck instantly, darkness coalescing into claws that raked across my chest. Pain blazed white-hot, but I forced myself to stumble back, letting him think he'd scored a real hit. It was working. He was taking the bait.

“Cade!” Sean's voice carried raw anguish. I wanted to look at him, to memorize his face one last time, but I couldn't risk breaking concentration now. His fear cut deeper than Asmodeus's claws ever could.

“Your father's weapon grows weaker,” Asmodeus continued, gesturing at Heaven's Lash where it hung untouched at my hip. “Your marked power flares wild and unfocused. Even your hunter watches with such delicious despair, knowing he's about to lose another partner to forces beyond his comprehension.”

I spat blood onto the writhing ground, letting my breath come in ragged gasps. “You talk too much.”

There was only one way this could end, but I needed to make him believe he was winning.

The Prince's laugh rasped like stone grinding against metal. “Perhaps. But soon, very soon, talk will be unnecessary.” He spread his arms wide, shadows flowing from his borrowed form like ink in water. “The walls between worlds grow thinner with each passing moment. Can you feel it?”

He wasn't wrong. The very air seemed to vibrate now, colors bleeding into frequencies that human eyes weren't meant to process. Each pulse of power making the tear in reality above us grow wider. My mind cataloged every change, every shift in the energy patterns around us.

Through that tear, I caught glimpses of something vast and hungry, countless eyes and impossible geometries, a being so ancient it made Asmodeus seem young.

Just a little more.

I launched myself at the Prince again, putting everything I had into the attack. Power blazed through my mark like liquid nitrogen in my veins. Asmodeus met my charge with terrible joy, his perfect form dissolving into pure darkness as we clashed.

“Yes!” he exulted as power exploded between us, feeding directly into the ritual. “Give in to it! Let the walls fall!”

The pentagram's symbols flared blindingly bright, their ancient patterns beginning to lift off the ground like burning brands. Above us, the tear in reality grew wide enough to swallow a building, and through it came whispers that made my bones ache, promises of power and knowledge and terrible, wonderful truths.

“Cade, please!” Sean's voice cracked with desperation. “Don't do this! There's another way, there's always another way!”

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, though he couldn't hear me over the rising chaos.

This was the only solution with any chance of success, even if success meant my own destruction.

Understanding dawned in Asmodeus's perfect features a moment too late. “What...”

I moved before he could finish, but not toward him. Instead, I sprinted for the pentagram's center, where the symbols burned brightest. Power pulled at me like gravity gone wrong, trying to draw me in and tear me apart simultaneously.

I plunged my hands into the pentagram's swirling energy, but instead of letting it tear me apart, I pulled. The mark responded instantly, becoming a channel not out, but in. All that gathered power, all that stolen life force, instead of breaking reality apart, it began to fold inward, drawn into my body like water down a drain.

“No...” Asmodeus's confidence cracked for the first time. “No, that's not possible. You can't...”

“Can't what?” I managed through gritted teeth as more power poured into me. “Can't contain it? Can't use what was done to me for something other than destruction?” A bitter laugh escaped me, half pain and half triumph. “This was always my choice to make, not yours.”

Asmodeus moved to stop me, darkness coalescing into something terrible, but it was too late. The pentagram's power had found its true purpose. Around us, the suspended hunters fell from their energy columns, free but unconscious. The tear in reality shuddered, its edges beginning to curl inward instead of out.

“I will destroy you for this,” Asmodeus snarled, his perfect features cracking to reveal something darker beneath. “You cannot hope to contain such power. It will burn through you like paper, unmake you atom by atom...”

“Probably,” I agreed, even as more energy poured into me through the mark. The pain was unbearable, but I focused on the task despite my body beginning to fail.

“Cade!” Sean's voice carried something beyond fear now, understanding, maybe, of what I was really doing. What this would cost. “Don't you dare! We'll find another way! We always do!”

The mark burned colder than deep space as more power poured in, making my vision white out at the edges. This was what it had been made for, not to break reality apart, but to hold it together. To contain what should never have been freed.

Asmodeus struck at me with desperate fury, but his darkness simply folded into the vortex I'd become. Above us, the tear in reality began to close, those countless ancient eyes blinking out one by one.

“You think this is victory?” Asmodeus demanded, his borrowed form beginning to crack and peel. “This power will hollow you out! Leave nothing but an empty shell, a prison of flesh and bone!”

“Maybe.” The word came out wet with blood. I could feel vessels bursting in my eyes, my nose, but I couldn't stop now. “But at least I chose this. This is my choice. Not yours, mine.”

“Cade, stop!” Sean's voice cracked as he slammed his fists against the barrier. “You don't know what it'll do to you!”

“I know exactly what it'll do,” I managed, each word tasting like copper and frost. “And I know it has to be me. There's no other option.”

Asmodeus's scream of fury shattered windows for blocks around. His perfect human disguise began to peel away in layers of black fire, revealing something ancient and terrible beneath. Bones like polished obsidian shifted between realities, moving in a pattern that defied comprehension.

“You dare?” the Prince's voice carried harmonics that made reality shudder. “You insignificant speck of flesh and bone, you dare defy what was written before your kind learned to speak?”

The Prince lunged at me, claws that could tear through dimensions slicing toward my throat. But the power flowing through me had changed something fundamental. I wasn't entirely here anymore, wasn't entirely anywhere.

“Impossible,” Asmodeus snarled.

“Guess you should have done more homework,” I replied, a small part of me taking satisfaction in out-thinking an ancient being of supposed infinite wisdom.

More power cascaded through the sigils, turning my bones to something between matter and memory. The pentagram's symbols began to pulse and contract, their ancient magic threading into my flesh like burning roots.

Sean slammed his hands against the barrier again, and the raw anguish in his voice made something in my chest crack. “Don't do this. Please.”

“I'm sorry,” I managed, feeling tears cut trails through the blood on my face. “But this was always coming. From the moment I said yes in that alley, this was where it would end.”

Power surged through me again, cutting him off as reality buckled. The tear above us began to close, those ancient hungry eyes blinking out one by one as Asmodeus realized what was happening. Its rage hit like a physical wave, making the very air crystallize with cold.

“You think this is victory?” Asmodeus's skeletal form began to fracture, cracks spreading through bone and shadow. “You'll be conscious for every moment! Feel yourself become nothing but a prison of flesh and...”

“Shut up,” I gritted out, pushing more power through the mark. The Prince's form wavered like a bad transmission, his connection to our reality weakening.

Sean's voice cut through the chaos, straight to my heart: “Cade, please. Not like this. Not alone.”

He was the best thing I'd found in this mess, and leaving him would hurt worse than what was about to happen to my body. Our connection had started as necessity but had grown into something I never expected to find in this life.

“I'll find you,” I said softly, letting the words carry all the weight of choices made and futures lost. “Remember that. Whatever happens next, remember what we had was real.”

The mark blazed brighter as the last of the pentagram's power poured into me. Reality bent and folded around my body like paper being crushed into a ball. Through the white-hot agony, I heard Sean screaming my name, felt the barrier finally shatter under the force of his desperation.

But it was too late. The power had reached critical mass, and there was only one way this could end.

I closed my eyes, imagining I could feel Sean's hands through the barrier, the way he would grip my shoulders if he could reach me, trying to anchor me to this world through sheer stubbornness. For a moment, I let myself pretend he could touch me, that the wall of power between us didn't exist. But I could hear him pounding against the barrier, his voice raw with desperation as he tried to reach me.

Then I opened myself completely to what I'd been made for, letting the mark do what it had been designed to do all along.

The void erupted from where the pentagram had been, expanding like a living thing, all darkness and hunger and ancient purpose. I stood at its center, every molecule of my being fighting to contain what should never have been freed. Power coursed through me in waves that made reality itself shudder, the mark burning so cold it felt like my chest might shatter.

The invisible wall between us had finally crumbled, leaving nothing but raw, unfiltered connection. He reached for me, his fingers trembling as they passed through my increasingly insubstantial form.

“I'm not leaving you.” His voice cracked on the last word. “Don't ask me to walk away. Not from this. Not from you.”

I tried to smile, though I wasn't sure my face was still entirely corporeal. “You have to.” My voice echoed strangely, like it was coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. “Someone needs to remember. Someone needs to keep fighting.”

Black smoke poured from the pentagram's remnants, demons trying to escape hell while the barriers were weak. They swirled around us like a hurricane of corruption and hunger, but they couldn't touch me anymore. I wasn't entirely here, wasn't entirely anywhere.

Asmodeus's shriek of fury cut through dimensions as the void began to pull him in. His skeletal form thrashed against inevitability, black wings made of shadow and spite beating uselessly against power older than time. “This means nothing!”

“No.” The word carried weight beyond sound, making reality ripple. “This ends now.”

The Prince lashed out with desperate strength, but I wasn't flesh anymore, I was purpose given form, destiny made manifest. His attack passed through me like smoke through flame, and the void pulled him deeper.

“This isn't possible,” he snarled as his perfect form began to fragment.

“Watch me.” I had spent my life researching, understanding. Now I was putting all that knowledge to use in the only way that mattered.

More power surged through the mark, turning my blood to ice and fire. Demons howled as they were drawn into the void, their smoke-forms dissipating like mist in sunlight. But I could feel something bigger trying to break through.

Sean's hands found what was left of my shoulders, gripping with desperate strength. “Let me help. Let me...”

“You already have.” I managed to say without looking at him. “You showed me I could be more than what they made me for. That choices matter more than destiny.”

“Then choose to stay. Choose...”

“I am choosing.” The words echoed between worlds as more of my body began to fade. “I'm choosing to protect what matters. To use what they did to me for something better than letting these demons destroy everything.”

The void pulled stronger, hungry for the power building inside me. Above us, the gate began to close, but not before I caught glimpses of what waited beyond.

“Sean. Find me.”

His grip tightened, though his fingers passed through me like I was already gone. “Always.” The word held more weight than any vow.

The Prince's final scream cut off as the void consumed him completely, leaving nothing but echoes between dimensions. More demon smoke poured from the closing tear, but it was drawn into my body like iron filings to a magnet. I could feel them inside me, all that ancient hunger and spite, all that power that should never have been freed.

Reality buckled as I gave myself completely to what had to be done. The mark blazed brighter than stars, colder than the space between galaxies.

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn't sure I still had a mouth to form the words. “For everything that comes next.”

Then I let go.

The explosion was silent, absolute, a moment of perfect stillness before the sphere of power collapsed in on itself, taking me with it.

The last thing I felt was Sean's fingertips passing through where my heart should have been.

The last thing I heard was his scream of loss, echoing through dimensions as I became nothing but light and power and purpose.

Then the void closed completely, leaving nothing but empty space where I had stood. The pentagram was destroyed, its ancient symbols burned away to nothing. The tear in reality had sealed, though wisps of demon smoke still curled through the air, the last remnants of what had almost broken through.

The city was safe. Reality remained intact. The walls between worlds held firm.

But I was gone.