I can heal that too! I will heal him. I will! I’ll heal everything…
And then Bacchus stole her every thought with the terror of his presence.
More bestial than human, more dead than alive, Bacchus appeared as the embodiment of the Shadow face’s dark magic. He emanated cold the way most living things did heat, and as he reached down to grip her by the tunic just as Ilior had a moment before, Selena’s panic-stricken mind recalled Celestine’s words.
He’s very powerful.
Selena choked out a laugh that sounded like a sob as Bacchus pulled her close. She saw nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing but him.
“Cunt,” he said. “I smell the ice in you.”
He exhaled rank cold air, and Selena’s vision wavered, broke apart, and came together again. She stood atop a high square platform, garbed in black and red. A crescent-shaped hole was cut out of her fine velvet doublet so that her wound was visible to all, breathing free and terrible to behold. Throngs of fearful knelt before her, trembling, and she smote one supplicant with ice and fire; a silver ribbon and one of red, burning and freezing the man until his skin was blackened and hard…
“Illuria,” she breathed, and the vision dispelled, as did some of the terror that wracked her with as much ferocity as the cold.
Bacchus clamped his hand over her mouth. In the dark of the chamber, his eyes were huge dead things, boring into her.
“The old mother taught you a trick or two, Aluren, but mostly she lied to you. The one you call Skye—a goddess to your kind whose word is stronger than truth—she has lied to you. I will not lie to you.” He stroked her hair with his enormous hand and she quailed, her mouth still clamped tight under the other. “There will be pain, I promise this. I will tear you open and plunge myself into your wound where the Shadow face lives. But when it is over, you shall have your freedom. With me, you will reside in the shadows of the new moon where our god wants you.” He pulled her closer, like a lover to kiss. “Why else would it mark you so?”
His hand still clamped to her mouth, holding her by the jaw until she thought her bones would snap, he tore her tunic open with his other hand, ripping the stiff wool of her overtunic as if it were gossamer, laying the wound bare.
The sight of it awed him. Bacchus’ hand slipped from her mouth and he staggered backward, his eyes locked onto the horrid black hole bored into her. Behind him, Selena saw Accora crumpled on the ground near the darkpool. She struggled to raise her head and watched through long strings of silver hair. Just beyond Bacchus, Ilior lay shuddering, his remaining wing a tangle of broken bone and leathery membrane. The horror of it arrested Selena until she realized the moon had come out from behind the clouds, illuminating the room enough for her to see more than shadows and Bacchus. She raised her uninjured hand.
“Luxari!”
A ribbon of light lanced at Bacchus’s head, striking his cheek. He staggered backward as her magic eviscerated his flesh and melted his left eye with an audible pop. His hair went up in a foul-smelling inferno on his head before being snuffed by his own icy magic, leaving a blistered red scalp. His scream of rage and pain promised a long, slow death.
So it begins, Selena thought.
The light was fading again. Without taking her eyes off of him, she bent down and retrieved the cutlass. Her courage wavered as the Shadow Reverent faced her. Half of his face was boiling, and she watched with grisly fascination as a curl of flesh dropped from his chin. Where his left eye had been was only a burnt socket that leaked blood and pus. He peered at her with one dark eye framed by one thick eyebrow—the only hair left to him. He removed his immense sword from a scabbard Selena was sure hewn from human skin.
“Ours would have been an unstoppable union,” he said. “Now I will violate you as I crush your throat. I’ll piss on your corpse and feed it to the merkind. But not yet…”
He twisted his sword in his hand so that it was pommel first, intending to knock Selena senseless. She dodged easily; his size made him slow and therein was her only advantage.
Selena sent a tongue of light to lash his side, and danced out of the cut of his sword. If he felt pain he didn’t show it. Or perhaps he absorbed it, used as fuel the way she used her healing. He must, she thought, for he gripped his sword in both hands over his head and brought it down as if he meant to cleave the island in two. She parried the blow, twisting her wrist and planting her sword tip into the ground to help bolster the block. The force of his strike reverberated up her arm and broke her sword cleanly in two.
Bacchus’s shadow fell over her, and he tossed his own sword away.
“The wound,” he said, his eyes trying to find it among the torn shreds of her tunic. “Give it to me.”
He lunged for her and then a shriek of fury came from behind. Accora’s arms upraised, icy darts shooting from her fingertips. Bacchus turned to face her and they struck his chest like pebbles bouncing off a boulder. Selena sagged against the far wall and summoned her light quickly, but the chamber was too dim. Bacchus hoisted the old woman off the ground, shook her like a dog worrying a rabbit, and threw her against the temple wall that shivered and cracked with the impact. Accora cracked too; bones snapped and she emitted a small sound like a broken flute, and then lay still and silent.
The priest turned to Selena. “Now you.”
Snakes writhed on the floor. Thousands of them, they coiled around her ankles and slithered up her boot, hissing and baring fangs that dripped poison. False, Selena thought, and looked up in time to see Bacchus’s hand reach for her.
She rolled to the side, whispered Illuria. The snakes vanished as the healing flooded her. She rolled a second time as Bacchus closed and then opened his fist. The cold blade struck her back, stabbing her with a chill that stole her breath. The agony was almost as strong as that of her wound when it was new. She slipped on a patch of ice and fell hard, her shoulder jarring so that she thought she would retch.
Bacchus was over her, arms raised. Her shoulder screamed as she thrust both hands forward.
“Luxari!”
Twin streams of light lanced into his midsection. The smell of burnt flesh permeated the air and Bacchus stuttered backward, growling like a feral dog.
The rippling muscles of his torso were charred black. He regarded her with his one eye.
“You don’t know what you have,” he said. “Give it to me, Aluren, for you are not worthy to bear such a gift.”
“You are…an abomination,” Selena gasped. “And it is my duty to rid Lunos of one such as you.”