The bottle grew ice cold in my hand, numbing as Nina’s soul coalesced from creation energy. Far, far older than the Goddess, it emerged, pushed by the waves of sound from the drums into a form that had no shape, a thought that came from no idea man had ever witnessed.
I paced forward as the cold crept up my arms, paining my elbows as I finished one spiral and began another. Within me, the first hints of a low chant echoed against the drums. They twined together, making a new sound to beat upon the soul seeping into me, forcing it into a pattern and shape that it once knew. It was a sound that hadn’t been heard for a thousand years. Tears pricked as I realized how much both species had lost in their war. Wild magic.
I struggled to keep my breathing even when a cold wash came spilling down my sides. The bottle was empty, and it fell from my numb hands as I gave myself up to the drums, knowing it was the only thing that kept Nina’s soul bound to the earth—and the soul rebelled, breathing the cold of death into me. My world was a glowing spiral, but as my will began to falter, threads long left fallow began to glow within my own soul, urging me to pick them up and begin anew. But to do so would be my end.
Dizzy, I began the third spiral. Ivy waited, eyes pinched and hand held out, reaching. I pushed one foot before the other, the heat-stealing soul seeping deeper, making my steps a flagging hesitancy. The seeping cold reached my soul, icing the edges, making me forget until it was only the memory of drums and the whispers of ancient elders that moved me forward. Ivy waited. Ivy waited for me. Ivy believed in me, pinned her life to me, not knowing that it would come to this . . . as I brought peace to her. If I could just move one more step. Wild magic.
“Help me,” I whispered as Nina’s soul sent cold daggers of teeth into me to tear and rend, and Ivy reached, pulling me to her.
Fire exploded in me at her touch and I gasped. Head jerking back, I sagged in Ivy’s arms, the drums thundering and the chant winding high through us, through our minds as the soul slipped from me and filled Ivy. We fell to the floor as Nina’s soul abandoned me for more delicious prey, prey that wanted to be taken.
“No! Stay back!” I heard Al shout, and a small scuffle. “The curse isn’t sealed. Touch them now, and the soul will slip from them both and be gone forever.”
“Ivy!” I called as the world rushed back and I was sitting at the center of a pixy-dust spiral, Ivy cold in my arms. I hadn’t exploded into flame; it had been the sudden absence of Nina’s soul. It was in Ivy, and it was struggling to take Ivy’s soul with it.
“Seal it, Rachel,” Al demanded. “Now, before it escapes!”
Wild magic whispered through my mind, and with a desperate need to believe happy endings existed among the pain, I gave up and opened myself to the thousand eyes. Wild magic was mine.
“Ta na shay!” I shouted as the drums thundered, energy clean and deep coursing into me with the sound of folding wings. “Ta na shay!” See me!
My eyes opened wide and for an instant I saw everything from everywhere. My heart made a pained beat, and I choked. “Ta na shay. Cooms da ney,” I wept, and I watched with eyes not mine—eyes not of any world—as Nina’s soul eased to slumber, dropping the threads that would pull Ivy and Nina both from this world to whatever lay beyond. My throat closed from the sheer beauty, and I forgot to breathe. I thought I’d done it.
“Ivy?” I whispered, and her eyes opened. Their solid blackness shifted, becoming purple as she blinked and wings covered her soul. I could hear the sound of feathers, and my skin tingled with remembered pain.
Panicked, I turned to Al and Trent, but it was Bis whose gaze caught mine. He was awake, his red eyes whirling as his wings opened in fear.
“She found you,” he rasped, and both Trent and Al spun to him.
“You’re awake!” Trent called in shock before he looked back at me. “Did it work?”
“Ah, guys?” Jenks squeaked in distress as he hovered, spilling a hot dust. “I don’t think that’s a good thing. I think I’m going to explode here!”
Trent’s expression flashed to fear. He looked at his hands, hazed with gold as his aura resonated from the building energy. His eyes met mine, panicked.
“Mother pus bucket . . . ,” Al whispered, and then he lunged at me. “Rachel!”
But it was too late, and I cowered as a flash of brilliant light lit the church, burning with an icy intensity. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see! Falling back, I squinted, picking out a darker shadow standing in the middle of the church, swarmed by glowing mystics.
“You!” a voice exclaimed, the hatred echoing in my head as if she’d spoken in my mind. “Your singular thoughts will be ended!”
It was the Goddess. She’d found me. “No, wait!” I cried, one hand propped up on the cold wooden floor as I slid between her and Ivy—and then I screamed as a white-hot knife of anger dove in my thoughts, driving to my core to rip out my soul.
“I will not become!” the figure shouted as I writhed, struggling to escape. “I will not be ended!”
But I couldn’t even breathe without taking in her mystics—and I floundered, burning from the inside out. Ivy. Ivy was beside me—unconscious.
“Rachel!” Trent cried, and then I heard a sodden thump.
Fear galvanized me, and I pulled my head up. Trent was picking himself up off the floor beside my desk, a spot of cool darkness in the fiery glow. Mystics were everywhere. I got a breath in, then another as my mystics coated me in a protective haze, buffering me and Ivy both. But it wasn’t Ivy the Goddess wanted to destroy.
Struggling to sit up, I blinked, trying to find the Goddess in the glow. Mystics coated her so heavily that the body she was in was slowly charring, sending the rank smell of burnt amber to coat my lungs.
“There will not even be a memory of you!” she howled, and I screamed as she flung out a flaming hand. A stream of living magic hit me and I fell, sliding across the smooth oak floor and hitting the wall. My head felt as if it was going to explode from her hatred as the Goddess’s strength wiggled deeper.
“Oh God, stop!” I pleaded, shaking as I collapsed. But I was only a singular thought that held many—not many thoughts making one, and she had me outnumbered. The mystics in me were trying, but it was all they could do to keep my lungs clear and my mind my own.
“You can’t help her!” Al shouted, and I pulled my head up, shaking as I saw the demon holding Trent back. Jenks and Bis were with him, both frightened. Nina had broken her bonds and was creeping to Ivy with the singular intent of not being noticed. As frightening as she looked, I knew Ivy would be safer with Nina than with me. It had always been so.
“She needs help, you coward!” Trent said, and Al yelped, letting him go.
Trent lunged for me, yanked back as the Goddess shot a bolt of living energy at him, exploding the floor in a shower of splinters—right where Trent would have been.
He fell back, face pale. I managed a clean breath at the brief respite. For all her strength, she couldn’t think of more than one thing at a time. I met Al’s eyes, knowing this was the end. At least the demons would survive, I thought, and then I blinked. The demons . . .
Maybe . . . The Goddess was here with all her mystics. I’d need them to reopen the lines. But I couldn’t do it alone. I needed the demons. I needed Al.
With a savage howl, the Goddess turned her attention back to me, and I jerked as great chunks of my memory went numb, connections to it sliced cleanly by the Goddess. “Al . . . ,” I groaned, hand outstretched, then clenched into myself as the Goddess laughed, her head thrown back as her mystics beat at me, burning me from the inside out.
“I will not become!” she howled, eyes glowing. “You cannot stop me!”
“You can’t help her!” Al thundered, shoving Trent behind him.
“Then you do something!” Trent raged. “Or have you learned nothing?”
“Fine!” Al shouted, and I gaped, unbelieving, as Al picked Trent up and threw him right at the Goddess.
The Goddess shrieked.
A burst of light blinded me as Trent struck her, and then I screamed as the cold of death touched me.
“No! No!” I exclaimed, frantically trying to push away, but it was Al, and I took a grateful sob of air in as he pulled me from the floor and into his arms. He’d reached me. Bis was with him, and a tiny part of me marveled at the glowing glints of gold in his eyes. He was growing up.
“Stay down,” Al muttered. “She’ll just knock us over again. Trent is fine. Beneath her notice. You, though . . .”
“You both die!” the Goddess shrilled, and I jerked, head spinning. Shit, she was headed right for us, her pace leaving flaming steps of rubber behind her as her shoes burned away.
“Hang on. This might be tricky,” Al warned. “I’m not used to this elf slime.”
I made a gasping hiccup as his masculine energy dipped into me, using me like a living ley line. “Hurry up!” I shouted as a brighter glow blossomed between her hands and her eyes seemed to shoot fire. “Al!” Holy crap, she was going to freaking kill us!
“Someone do something!” Bis exclaimed, wings opening in alarm.
“Rhombus!” Al exclaimed, using my word to make a circle, and the world went dark. Panicked, I wiggled. “Al!”
“Don’t move, or you’re going to break it!” Bis shrilled, and I froze.
I took a breath, then another. We were in a circle. I saw it now. I hadn’t gone blind. It was Al’s smut, coating the molecule-thin barrier. “Trent . . .” Oh God, Al had thrown him at her.
“He’s fine,” Al said, and all three of us jumped as the Goddess hammered atop the bubble. I could see her now, looking wraithlike as she burned the body she was in, holding it together by sheer willpower. Al’s smut acted like sunglasses, and I spotted Nina huddled under Ivy’s baby grand, protecting Ivy with her body. Trent didn’t look much better, dazed as he sat against one of the piano’s legs with Jenks on his shoulder. They were all forgotten as the Goddess focused on me. I prayed that Trent would stay where he was. He looked okay.
My mystics were gathering inside the bubble. I could feel them freely passing in and out, making Al wiggle and squirm even as Bis basked in their warmth. “Al,” I whispered, feeling a possible hope. I probably wasn’t going to make it out of this circle alive—not with the Goddess standing and waiting to pummel me—but if she was here, and the mystics were here . . . I might as well try. “Al, we can reopen the lines.”
“Are you moonstruck!” he bellowed, then winced as the Goddess blew a hole in the ceiling in frustration. Thick beams bounced and rolled, and Nina pulled Ivy deeper under the piano as Trent and Jenks danced back out of the way. “Rachel, we’re going to be lucky to get out of this with our lives! The Goddess knows my aura signature now, too.”
“Like you really think we’re going to make it out of here alive?” I protested.
“And whose fault is that!”
“Help me up,” I said, wiggling to get out of his arms. “I want to see if we can give as well as take.”
“Rachel, we’re trapped!” Al exclaimed. And then someone’s foot hit the edge of the bubble, and it fell.
Light burst over us. I gasped as the Goddess howled in victory, then cowered as a blast of white-hot intent washed over us . . . and fell away. Al grunted in surprise, and I looked up.
Astonishment wreathed the Goddess, looking wrong on her glowing face as shock evolved into understanding. “You cloak yourself in your disharmony,” she whispered, the body she was in staggering back a step.
“Disharmony?” I echoed, looking at Bis, his feet clamped onto Al’s shoulder. There could be no disharmony without lines.
“You’re coated in the cost of perverting my will!” the Goddess said, her expression shifting to a hot anger, and Al began to chuckle. “It will not save you. I will burn it away, and you both will die!”
“Yeah? How much you got, bitch?” Al said boldly, standing up and dragging me with him. “I have a lot of smut.”
“It’s the smut!” Bis said, red eyes wide. “Rachel, it’s smut. She can’t get through it.”
Grimacing, the Goddess cried out, her wails becoming fierce as her fire raced over me and died. Al and I shared an aura—his smut insulated me. His smut?
“Get the rest,” I demanded, hope a bright goad. “Bis, go get the rest. We can do this!”
“Got it,” Bis said, launching himself out the hole the Goddess had made, pinwheeling to avoid her haphazard strikes.
“Al, don’t let her burn me,” I said, going still at a memory. Peter had once asked me to not let him burn. But I wasn’t committing suicide. There was a chance here. Wasn’t there?
“What?” Al said, looking from the Goddess for a brief second before throwing out a hand and blocking her desperate attack. “Rachel?”
“I’m going to need all the mystics she has,” I said, pulse quickening. “I’m going to let her in. See how many I can convert.”
Yes . . . the mystics in me hummed, eager to make a becoming.
“No!” Al shouted, horrified as he understood. “Rachel, it will kill you!”
But there was no other way, and with a deep breath, I dropped the gates to my mind.
She wasn’t expecting it, and I felt the Goddess stumble as I flooded her with myself, setting seeds of my thoughts within her even as I swung out again.
You will be ended! I will not become! echoed in me, and I sent more mystics, knowing they’d be crushed but needing to distract her from the growing cancer I’d set festering within.
I will not become. I will not! she screamed, and I turned my thoughts to where the lines used to hum in my mind like great gates. If I could flood them with energy, just one, the way would be open and I could pull on the flow of energy to open the rest.
Bis, I called, finding his presence riding the chaos, his mind dipping and swooping freely in mine. Where are they?
They won’t come! he thought, his mood chancy as he rose up on the sudden swipe of emotion from the Goddess.
And in my doubt, the Goddess found a small hole in my defenses. I will not become, I will not! the Goddess thought. The other could not make me become, and I will see you gone!
She attacked with savagery, and I writhed in soundless pain as great chunks of myself were dissolved, taken in and swamped by the Goddess. She was eating me alive and I groaned, grasping at anything as memories slipped away, diminishing me.
You will be nothing! she howled, the sound of wings beating at me as she rolled me into nothing. I will remain! I am all. They are mine. All of them!
Fire licked my soul where she tore great chunks of me away. Ice dove deep to fracture what was left and let more fire in. I panicked, feeling myself eaten away, smaller and smaller as I cowered, trying to protect what was left. There was no attack. She had everything. She had it all. I was a fool’s thought, a failure, and she coated me in acid, eating me alive.
“Get off her, you self-absorbed bitch!”
I screamed, the sound real as it echoed in my church. The clean breath of nothing cascaded over me, astringent and biting. I was stripped bare, and I huddled in Al’s arms as the Goddess shouted and fumbled. Her mind had been ripped from mine and was now fighting great swaths of organized thought that had been strengthened beyond reason by insanity.
I blinked, realizing I was actually seeing two figures in my church, swaying back and forth, locked in a glittering sheath of white that rose through the broken roof to the stars.
“Newt?” I whispered, and Al’s arms around me tightened.
“She was the only one who wasn’t afraid,” Bis said, his leathery tail wrapping about me as he sat on Al’s shoulder.
“I know you!” the Goddess exclaimed, her bitterness harsh as a broken knife. “You’re slow with disharmony. Your smut will bring you down, and I will feast on your thoughts and make them mine again!”
There was a burst of light, and with a gasping groan, Newt fell backward, staring up at the Goddess from the floor. Panting, she wiped the blood from her mouth. “You’
re right,” she said, her eyes taking on a dangerous glint. “Rachel, hold this for me.”
Hold what? I thought, then stiffened when the weight of her five thousand years of imbalance and smut fell on me. I floundered, struggling to keep my heart beating. It was everything and everywhere. Dizzy, I couldn’t get enough air as Bis took flight in one panicked swoop. Newt had dumped her smut on me, and I could hardly think.
“Newt!” Al shouted, and I cried out as the sudden vertigo became me hitting the floor. The shock struck through me, and I blearily looked through the hissing glare and darting mystics. Al was gone, really gone! I couldn’t tell who was winning. Newt and the Goddess looked the same, blurring together, becoming one.
But no one was looking at me. Suddenly I realized this was my chance. I could hardly string two thoughts together, but if I could reopen the lines . . .
Think bigger! Newt’s thought echoed in my brain as she saw my intent. The lines are dead. The ever-after is dying. Use what’s left to make a new one! Use the smut and make a new one! How do you think we did it the first time?
A new ever-after? I thought, feeling Bis’s thoughts join mine. From the ashes of the old?
Snarling, Newt fell upon the Goddess, eating through her thoughts even as the Goddess spun about and did the same. They were locked in a spiral like yin and yang, snake eating snake, the balance of becoming held in check as the worlds collided. Flat on my ass, I watched, stunned as the Goddess fought with hatred, and Newt balanced it with a savage confidence, then whipped her thoughts in a dizzying spiral to send the Goddess quailing back until her fear shot spikes of doubt into Newt. Newt patted them out with a dizzying memory of stars and acorns.
No wonder Newt was insane.
“Rachel?”
It was Bis, and I touched his feet as he landed on my shoulder. I could hardly move under Newt’s smut, but my mystics gathered, cleaving to me, hazing my thoughts and expanding my reach. As they fought, I took in the forgotten, the wounded, bolstering them with my energy until the mystics hummed with life and brimmed with need.