Levi hisses, his fangs flashing. “Choose!” he yells, all patience gone.
“You will die,” I tell him, my voice frosty. “For what you’ve done to that man when I was small. For what you’ve done to people. You will die.”
I suddenly wish I knew the man I’d given the message to. What his name was and whether or not he had a family. Maybe it’s better he stays unknown to me, but there is power in knowing a name. A power that lets people put things to rest, and I want to put him to rest. I need to put him to rest.
“You will die,” I promise.
Levi’s eyes glow. “You would have been magnificent.”
Fangs dripping, he lunges for me.
I fall into another dream.
I am inside a tent. Other than a circle of lit candles, an athame, and a snake—a large dark boa constrictor—there is nothing in the space except a cloaked elderly woman sitting cross-legged in the center of the candles. The snake slithers around her, easing his body through her legs and over her clothes. Squeezing her. Loving her.
Long, stringy silver hair surrounds a face as craggy as a mountain. The woman’s eyes are closed.
It’s hot inside the space, the air so thick and heavy, it’s hard to breathe. I catch a whiff of stagnant mud and sulfur.
A rustling at the tent’s entrance draws my attention.
Two figures duck inside.
I gasp. My parents.
The woman’s eyes pop open. “Why have you come to me?”
My mother—a woman I’ve only seen in pictures—steps forward. Her stomach is swollen, her long brown hair pulled protectively around her shoulders, her green eyes glowing. She looks too young to be my mother. She looks like me. I look like her.
My dad is a study in opposites. Auburn hair. Brown eyes. Slender and athletic. A pair of glasses sits perched on his nose, the spectacles softening a face that would otherwise be rugged.
“We need help,” my mother pleads.
The woman waves at her candle-lit circle, and my parents join her. Heads bent, they whisper frantic words I’m not meant to hear.
“Stop!” I beg them. “She’s going to hurt you.”
I am nothing and no one.
The elderly woman lifts the athame, pulls the ceremonial knife free from its sheath, and places it against my mother’s stomach.
I can’t look.
I can’t look away.
Lifting my mother’s shirt, the woman grins, baring rotten teeth and gums glistening with spittle.
“Don’t!” I beg.
She plunges the athame into my mother’s pregnant belly.
If she screams, it’s lost to me.
“Help me,” I cry.
Chapter 13
“You’ve got to quit thrashing, Harper,” Lucas murmurs.
I wake inside of his arms on top of the mountains, a waxing crescent moon hanging among a backdrop of tiny sequins. Air puffs from my lungs into a dark sky, the world below white and brilliant.
“What happened?” I am cold. So very, very cold.
Setting me down, Lucas pulls my coat tighter, his body supporting mine when I stumble, my legs weak. “Gillian did a ritual on the mountain.”
“Gillian?”
He frowns. “That’s the name of the demoness your parents approached. She moves fast. By the time the Court realized she was here and Saundra got to us, she was already in a trance and drawing blood. She needed your energy to pull Levi from the Infernum.” He lifts my shirt, and even though I don’t see any claw marks, I know they were there. I felt the pain inside my aunt’s apartment.
“Did the Court send someone to stop her?”
“A few shifters came, mainly to keep an eye on her. We didn’t want to stop her. We needed her to finish it. Levi needs to be destroyed before he can cause any more danger here or anywhere.” Slipping his arm around my waist, he assists me through the snow and up onto a ridge. Pine trees look like looming monsters in the night, their angry shadows prowling on wind and frozen ground.
There, sitting comfortably among the white powder, is a young woman. Midnight hair flows down her back, the strands framing a pale face, red lips, and eyes as black as her hair. She’s covered in dark leather, from the pants encasing her slender legs to the crop top wrapping her chest. Evidently, the cold doesn’t bother her.
Glancing up, she grins, her eyes taking on a red hue. “It’s about time you joined me,” she greets.
“You’re not her,” I say.
Gillian looks nothing like the woman I saw in the dream. She looks nothing like the woman who plunged a dagger through my mother’s pregnant belly.
“Glamours are beautiful things,” she replies. “I was a lot more repugnant when I stole you from your parents.”
Anger writhes like a flame inside of me. She senses it, her gaze lifting to mine.
“Oh my, you are precious.” Standing, the demon saunters toward us, confidence lending an exaggerated sway to her hips. “Do you know how long I’ve waited to see how you would turn out?”
Pausing a short distance away, she studies me. “I’m not disappointed. What a beautiful creation I’ve made.” She glances at Lucas. “You’re too late. I’ve already summoned him.”
“No,” Lucas replies, surprising her. “I am just in time.” He steps toward her. “You see, I don’t play games. I was flying with angels and fighting with demons long before you ever blinked into existence.” Lucas’s gaze searches the ridge. “Come to me, Levi. You called. This time, I won’t send you back to the Infernum. I will destroy you.”
From the edge of the woods, the massive silver serpent from my dream slithers into view, his scales flashing as he moves. The only thing human about him are two arms protruding from his reptilian frame.
His forked tongue tastes the air, his red eyes finding me. “It’s a pity you wouldn’t offer me your soul.”
“What did you do to me?” I ask, and I don’t mean the ritual Gillian performed or the dreams I had because of it. We’ve known since the first mark appeared on my skin that Levi planned to use my psychic energy to manifest into the mortal world.
I mean other things. I mean dark things. I mean plunging a knife into my mother’s belly kind of things.
Levi lunges for me, fangs glistening, so fast I don’t have any time to react.
Lucas blurs past me, his hand catching the beast by the neck, his body suddenly glowing, a golden light surrounding him. Massive wings spill out of his back. Six of them altogether. All of them on fire. His pupils lighten, his angry eyes going colorless, white and terrifying.
“This is between you and me, demon,” Lucas growls.
He throws Levi. The serpent rolls in the snow, his body coiling.
Hissing, Levi rights himself, his snake-like form growing in the night. Fire shoots out of his mouth. “The audacity you have is astounding. You have friends among my kind, and yet you felt the need to lock me away. You will pay for that.”
“I could have killed you, Levi. I showed too much mercy by letting you live.” From somewhere I can’t see, Lucas produces a long, flaming sword, a feral grin spreading across his face. “Let’s dance.”
An object whizzes past me, and I barely have time to sidestep it when Desi appears, the mace slamming into Gillian’s surprised face.