Page 42 of These Unhallowed Halls (Equinox Seasons Duet #2)

Twenty-Seven- And Beneath The Waning Moon, The Being Of Darkness Shall Rise

Temps

A s quietly as we could, the three of us slipped out from under the stands, walking closer to the open section that led down to the front row.

Pastor Paine stood in the ring, his arms up high as he waxed on, the threads of his strange working shuttering through the air.

He wasn’t a witch. This wasn’t innate talent or a deity that was giving him the power to conjure up change.

It was the demiurge, and everything about the working reeked like rotten meat and burnt hair.

“Blessed are His children, who shape the earth in His Will!” Paine kept his arms aloft as he looked down at the sacrifices, their muted cries muffled around gags I couldn’t see.

“Do not heed His will and be made a meal for the God That Devours! All you fucking heathens, foolish sheep being herded to the slaughter, you will see in Him the face of your destruction!”

The rune on the floor began to glow, the red lighting flaring at the bottom of Paine’s face, making him look like the demonic terror he was. A bass thrum rumbled through the ground, and from the lines drawn into the floor, the earth began to crack.

He’s close. Wait for the moment he lets go .

Lizzie split off from her place next to me, moving toward the opposite stand and crouching slightly as she slipped forward.

I did the same, trying to make myself small as Cerberus stalked forward.

The wavering light around the people the circus stole flickered, that red infecting the bottom.

I turned back to look at Dean Owens. She was clearly struggling, her hand outstretched over the wooden beam, fingers shaking.

“I welcome You into me, God of All! Take hold of your child and raise me up so that I might carry out Your will!”

Paine’s eyes rolled back, and he began to hover off the ground ever so slightly.

Now!

Cerberus rushed forward, speeding across the tent until he could make the leap for Paine.

Lizzie popped out from behind the wooden cover, her hands shooting forward as she screamed a primal call.

The trapeze performers noticed Cerberus and then, growling as they sank down into the haunches.

One took off for Cerberus as the other rushed for Lizzie.

I could feel the pull of her powers; this compulsion was sent to the trapeze performer’s head.

She gripped her skull, screaming. Lizzie forced the weight of shame to the surface, making the woman double over, her eyes going bloodshot and feral.

I had to take care of the other one going for Cerberus.

A spell is desire made manifest.

Sucking in a deep breath, I found that reservoir of power within me, this gentle hum to it that I remember feeling when I’d first woken up after being stabbed.

I’d sensed them there—Cerberus’ family, the ancient elders of Winter and Spring, Summer, and Autumn.

I could feel the woman whose line was a part of my own, and I called for them, demanded my desire be made real.

“Stop him.” The snarling man, his costume coming undone as his body contorted into a grotesque version of muscular, too bulbous and veiny, leaped for Cerberus and then dropped as my power seized him. “Keep him down. Don’t let him up. Let Cerberus get to Paine.”

He thrashed on the ground, this way and that, and I had to fight against his strength, breaking out in a sweat as I forced him to stay planted on the earth.

But it worked.

Cerberus sprinted past, not stopped by the man, and he smashed into Paine, sending him flying as Cerberus tumbled purposefully and came to a skidding stop just in front of him, growling.

Paine shot up from the floor, his body broken and bent at odd angles.

He snapped himself back into position, wrenching his head back to the front.

What the hell? Is he dead?

“Fucking mutt! You will not stop His ascension! My God will rise! My line of Paine and suffering will be whole and everlasting!”

Paine reached through he air, taking hold of Cerberus the way I had his minion. Cerberus dug his claws into the ground, refusing to be moved. He fought through the hold, crawling across the dusty ground toward Paine.

“Arrgh!”

Shit. The man I held surged forward, getting his arms beneath him. I tried to press down again, but my arms shook. He reached back for something, and I twisted my hold, flipping him onto his back as I sucked in a breath. Whatever he was doing, I had to stop it.

But the power inside him wasn’t backing down. I could feel the change in the air, the way it smelled off. The demiurge was coming, and the cracks beneath Cerberus and Paine stretched wider.

“Lizzie!” I shouted over, chancing a glance at her and how she was maintaining the other one. “He’s too strong. I need you to get her down!”

“I’m fucking trying!” She stepped forward, her hands twisting in the air as she increased the volume. The woman screamed louder, but she still wasn’t out, not enough that Lizzie could help me.

Dammit! Think, Temps!

A blade soared through the air, and I just dodged it, snapping my attention back to the man I held down. With a quick jerk, I focused every ounce of my magic on his neck, yanking to the side. A snap echoed around the ring, and he went still.

“Oh, thank gods.”

“Temps!” Lizzie gestured behind me as I looked over, and I followed the line of sight to Dean Owens.

The knife was lodged in her stomach beneath the wooden beam, her arm still outstretched.

She blinked at me, and then her wrist dropped.

I screamed out, eyeing the tracking to the shield around the people still chained in the center of the ring.

That bubble of iridescence faded, and even Pastor Paine noticed it, his red eyes gleaming.

I bolted forward, rushing toward the ring so that I could get to those people and at least break their fucking chains. The remaining trapeze artist swung out at me as I moved to dash past, her fingers in claws as she foamed at the mouth, her eyes bleeding.

“Die, witch!”

“Lizzie!” I rolled under her attack, landing on my hip in the ring. The ground was hard beneath the dust and hay, and pain zinged through my bones. “Shit! Help!”

I could hear her steps before I saw her, rushing up toward the stark-raving woman, sent into this broken reality by Lizzie’s gifts.

She slashed at her, producing a knife from somewhere just like her buddy had.

Lizzie kicked at her hand, grabbing a hold of her head as I ran past to the sacrifices, Paine steadily closing in on them.

Swiping my hand through the air, I sent a gust of force toward the Ring Leader, shoving him back a few steps. Cerberus growled as he tried to turn himself around, still slowed by Paine’s attack. I needed to disrupt his concentration.

A head shot.

“Aaaaiiieeee!!” I shot my eyes to Lizzie, her fingers stuck into the woman’s temples.

The performer’s skin turned more and more red, stretching around her eyes like an expanding balloon, and with an ear-piercing, wet pop, her skull detonated, crimson chunks flying out everywhere.

“Oh my gods, oh my gods…” Lizzie turned to me, her stare horrified and wide. “I…Fuck! Temps!”

She pointed with a blood-stained finger toward the center of the ring, where Father Paine raised his hand over one of the people chained at his feet. They shrieked in muffled pleas, begging for a mercy they weren’t going to get from someone like Paine.

He couldn’t kill them. He couldn’t start this. We’d never make it out of here if the fucking demiurge were summoned entirely.

“Wren, help!” I threw out my arm, and from the ground around the sacrifices, a wall of ice shot up out of the ground, closing around them like a cave.

Looking down at my fingers in shock, the tips were coated in a thin layer of ice, melting on my skin as I stood there.

Well, holy shit. That’s not—

“Blasphemous whores!” Paine smashed his fists down onto the frozen barrier. “I’ll fucking peel your skin off your bones! Fill your corpses with my seed and make you the hosts for His Beasts!”

In a flash, Lizzie was at my side, grabbing my hand. I swallowed down the fear as I looked at her, nodding toward Cerberus.

“We need him up. Help me.”

She furrowed her brow, the unsure flicker in her eyes as noticeable as her shaking. “I…Temps, I’m not you. I don’t have some crazy line to call on.”

“You’re a morrighan. You see and touch death like no one else can. Make him feel it. We just need a second, one moment for Cerberus to break free. He’ll tear through him. You can do this.”

She looked from me to Paine, who hammered down on the ice in front of him, chips of it flying off as he clawed at it relentlessly.

“Shit.” Reaching out her other hand, Lizzie focused on Paine, and I watched as her eyes turned black, smoke appearing around her fingers.

I squeezed, anchoring myself to her presence, and shifted my focus from bolstering the ice to Paine.

He was still mostly mortal. He could break.

I focused on the cells, the little bits of emptiness between them, and the bonds that held him together.

I remembered how an alchemical solution could break those bonds to create something new, and I pictured his blood filled with that solution.

He faltered, snarling at us as his eyes began to bleed. “He will eat you whole! Nothing will stop His arrival! Nothing!”

“Mom,” Lizzie whispered, her body thrumming next to me, “Wren. Queen of Cauldron. Queen of the Shadowed Summer Sun. Those gone, walking the paths of the next world. I have a wayward soul for you to claim. I mark him in your names!”

A brand flared to life across Paine’s chest, the earth cracking beneath his feet, and he screamed. “Nooo!”

I felt something snap in the ether around us, the shadows lengthening around Paine. And then I saw him, towering behind the Ring Leader, an Angel of Death.

“ Say hello to your father. ”

Claws jutted through Paine’s abdomen, the finger and arm following as Cerberus speared his hand through the fucker’s middle.

Gore dripped from the werewolf-like forearm, and the glowing red of Paine’s eyes faded into nothing.

The rune rumbled, a roar from somewhere I couldn’t fathom ricocheting through the ring, but then it stopped, the cracks sealing up.

Yanking his hand free, Cerberus let Paine’s body flop to the ground, and I dropped to my knees, exhausted as Lizzie gasped.

“It’s…done?” Cerberus met my stare as my question hung, nodding. “Oh my gods.”

Lizzie’s arms were around me, and then I released my hold on the ice. The world moved around me as Cerberus rushed to the sacrifices, tearing through their chains before touching each of their foreheads. They passed out unharmed, and I had a feeling he’d wiped them. That was…a lot to see.

“ We need to go ,” he said, sprinting up to us, shifting back into Caleb. “He could hear sirens.”

The cops were not going to understand this, so I nodded, letting Lizzie pull me up. My attention went to the stands where I knew the dean was still lying.

“I don’t want to leave her here.” Caleb shot a glance that way, and in a blink, Dean Owens was lying on the ground in front of me.

“She tried, you know. She tried in the end.” I knelt down, taking her hand. “Get us out—Oh my gods!”

Dean Owens squeezed my hand as the sound of sirens got loud enough for all of us to hear. She was alive somehow.

“Rebecca?” Caleb grabbed her other hand. “Fucking hell, hold on. We’ll get you out of here and to—”

“The school board,” she croaked out, blood coating the inside of her mouth. “They’ll..help.”

“Right.” Nodding, Caleb took all of our hands as best he could, his eyes closing. “Buddy, get us out of here.”

The world was shifting again, and I felt that tug on my body just as red and blue lights began to light up the outside of the tent.