This is how he will do it, she realized. Then she spun to face her companions. “You have to do something! You have to stop him!”
“I think I can fix the bridge,” said Dannai. She moved forward, taking a backpack off her shoulder, and dropping it at her feet. “But it’ll take me a few minutes.”
Addie nodded at her. “Thank you.” But then she looked up at the Vampire King. “Is there anything you can do?”
“I could fly you across individually, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s the Entity we’re talking about. For all we know, we could hit something halfway and go tumbling into the nothing.” He looked at her long and hard. “You know as well as I do that Nicholas was allowed across for a reason.”
Addie swallowed hard. Her throat felt very tight. Her chest ached. “What about the bridge?” she asked. “Can you help Danny fix it?”
He shook his head. “Warlocks are unfortunately far better at tearing things apart than putting them back together.”
Andros and Minnaea looked at Adelaide, and the expressions on their faces were tight to the point of being terrified. Addie racked her brain.
“Why can’t I transform like him?” she asked.
Minnaea shook her head. “You’ll change when the time is right,” she said softly. “Now must not be that time.”
Addie screamed in frustration – and it came out louder than usual. The walls shook. Everyone looked up. Addie heard herself breathing. Her breaths were coming quick and short. She was panting, on the verge of an all-out panic attack.
Andros moved toward her, but when she held up her hand palm-out and narrowed her gaze at him, he stopped and lowered his head. “My queen, we will figure this out. I promise.” He looked stricken, even more frightened than she felt. Which was impossible.
Wasn’t it?
Wait. It makes sense, she told herself. Nicholas is his king. He’s the man that Andros was created to protect, and he isn’t doing so.
No, there’s more to it, she thought even as her heart hammered and her head spun and she simultaneously tried to figure out how to force herself to grow fucking wings so she could fly to Nicholas and keep him from doing what he wanted to do. That crazy, crazy thing he fully planned on doing.
There’s more. She looked from Andros to Minnaea, who had started to very slowly walk toward Adelaide. There’s more – and it has to do with them. It wasn’t just that they must protect Nicholas. It was that when this fight was over… they would cease to exist.
Minnaea stopped in her tracks and bit her lip. Andros turned to regard his wife. Minnaea looked from Addie to her husband, and her forehead creased with hard resignation. Her eyes filled with all of the sad endings of history. This confrontation would mean the end of them, and yet they were driven by the fates that made them to make certain that it happened.
Except… Addie shook her head. “No,” she said, speaking to Minnaea. “Not this time.”
It wouldn’t end for them this time because Nicholas didn’t plan to kill Nero. Addie felt it in her gut. No, she felt it in her soul. It was that thing that was wrapping around and squeezing tight and sending her heart into a frenzy.
He planned to kill himself instead. And take the Entity out with him.
A fantastic rush of pain flooded Adelaide, and suddenly she looked down to find that she was several feet off the ground. Shock moved through her, hot on the pain’s heels. She heard something beating steadily. Was it her heart? No, it was too slow. She glanced to the left and saw a wing hit the air, a wing filled with soft brown and blonde feathers, an enormous wing, strong and beautiful. She looked to her right. Another wing.
They were hers.
She didn’t look back to see the stunned but proud expressions of her Preceptors – her Preceptors – because she had only one goal in mind. It was what made her change in the first place.
Save Nicholas. Nothing else mattered.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Nero saw his brother coming, his enormous bat-like wings carrying him across the vast chasm so fast he nearly blurred. A cloud of black magic encircled him, wispy and terrifying. He was a beautiful and terrible site to behold.
My brother?
The term echoed strangely in his mind. It was followed by an odd, confused silence. He was left mind-boggled as he struggled with the Entity for control of his own body. At the moment, they stood invisible atop the sarcophagus, silently waiting for the king and queen to come rushing to the child’s rescue.
The king pulled a fast one, however. The Entity sneered at the man’s rash but brave act. Apparently the king planned to take him on alone. He found this amusing.
Nero was not quite so amused, but he was admittedly baffled by this as well. Why would Nicholas choose to leave behind a woman like Adelaide? He’d seen her soul; he knew who and what she was and all she could be. Her kind of selflessness was beyond rare.
So much confusion played about his head, like snowflakes fluttering on a mad breeze, but overriding his questions, overriding the chaos, was his desperate need to regain control. The Entity was drained; he could feel it. The son-of-a-bitch was like a chain with a weak link. If he could simply find that link and push against it with all his might, he stood a chance at taking the reins once again.
So he searched frantically. He railed at the bastard who would use a child the way he was planning to. He was planning to kill Mimi Tanniym. Outright. He was going to kill her just to stun the queen long enough to slice Adelaide open. Her bloodletting was a necessary component in the spell meant to awaken the sleeping goddess.
It was all convoluted and insane. As far as Nero was concerned, this plan was nothing more than the dangerous ravings of a mad man. That’s what the Entity was. A man – thing – driven cuckoo by hatred. So much hatred.
He knew the whole story.
Long, long ago, there were three celestial beings. Brother gods, and the one woman they both loved, the goddess. The brothers were Amun and Kamun, also spelled Amon and Kamon. They were day and night. Amun was the night, cool and calm, the breeze that eased the sunburn, the brilliant stars, the song of the River Nile as it churned its steady way across the land. But he was also the shelter taken by criminals, and the darkness that hid evil deeds.
Kamun was the day, harsh and deadly. Demanding and vain. He was the sun and the heat and the endless burning sand. But he was also the light that made crops grow, and allowed scribes to tell their stories.
Amunet was married to Amun. But she was neither day nor night. She was the sunrise and the sunset, the twilight between them. And because she ushered them both in when it was time, they each loved her. Amun, also known as Amun Re, was proud of his beautiful wife and the power she wielded over them both. Kamun was silently jealous, but steadfast. And the three deities ruled side by side for eons.
But Amunet, being the difference between night and day, the space between light and dark, saw the extremes of both of the brother gods. And because she was kind, because she cared, she saw the bad more than the good.
In the harsh light of day, she saw the drought of summer. She saw men and women kill each other for food. She heard the shaking whimpers and moans of children dying of thirst or heat stroke.
She saw the murders in the night. She heard the screams of victims and the tears of the loved ones they left behind.
And her heart bled.
Over the centuries, it bled dry. Over the millennia, it turned hard as stone.
Until one day, Amunet waited for the day to end, but did not usher in the night. Instead, she moved alone in twilight over the land, gathering up the hatred she felt for all things evil and unleashing it as a plague across the world.
The oceans rose. Water swallowed cities. Insects devoured crops. Diseases swept across populations, wiping them from the planet.
And yet her hatred was not sated. Her foul fury for the depraved depths humanity could plumb was only a fire stoked by wrath. It grew stronger.
Her husband pleaded with her
from the black of his night time shroud, but she would not listen. She could not. Hatred, pure and real and red, drove her on. Her only desire was to wipe humanity from the face of the Earth. And start anew.
So Amun closed his eyes. The stars went out. Clouds covered the world as he cried. And with his tears, he cast the spell that would place his beloved bride in a forever sleep.
He placed her in a sacred sarcophagus and laid her to rest in the Land of the Dead. To watch over her, he assigned several guardians, each in the form of a cat. These cats would watch her sleep, making certain the Wrathful Goddess never again awoke.
However, Amun Re’s love for her was strong, and over the years, he continued to visit her in her place of rest… as did her brother.
The feud between the two gods was petty, and according to the Entity, it continued even today. Kamun schemed, attempting to find a way to bring Amunet back to the world of the living so that they may rule together, side by side. Amun simply played defense.
The Entity had at one point considered using Kamun’s desires to his own advantage. But in the end, he’d realized the brother gods simply had no idea what they were dealing with. Not really. Not entirely.
Amunet was not a sleeping goddess. She was resting wrath. She was hatred, pure and clean.
“An endless font from which a soul like mine can drink,” the Entity had told Nero. “She is a wellspring of righteous fury borne of every foul dead ever committed by mankind. She is the result. She is what remains when all is said and done, and humanity is left wondering why.”
Neither of the gods deserved her, as far as the Entity was concerned. Neither knew what to do with her. But he did.
Oh, he had plans.
With the Entity’s help, Amunet would become a weapon. She was a vessel accustomed to containing animosity. As such, she knew how to absorb it, allow it to grow, and then refocus it in an act of terrible destruction.
If Amunet was awoken, the hatred on the planet would find a home within her. Religious, racial, and sexual intolerance, war, terrorism, rape, random acts of insane violence would give birth to abhorrence and loathing. This loathing would then coalesce within Amunet, swirling and building. The Entity would feed. And feed.
And when he was full, he would help her release what was left over, leveling the land and all of the petty creatures upon it. What he’d told Evangeline was true. The violence would end. It would end because humanity would be no more. Anyone with half a brain knew that this was the only real way to create peace on earth.
The problem was that it took a power nearly as strong as Amunet’s to nullify Amun Re’s sleep spell and bring the Wrathful Goddess back to the world of the living. That power, the Entity had learned, was housed inside each of the Thirteen Queens. Once they fully became queens and took their places a the Table of the Thirteen, they were nearly untouchable to the Entity. Each time he tried, he was defeated. And every defeat made him weaker.
Dealing with them at full power would be his undoing. So he’d learned to attack immediately after he discovered who they were. There was a brief space of time between a queen’s “realization” and their claiming of the crown. He had to get to them during that time, or any hope of using them was lost. Thus far, he’d failed consistently.
It was beginning to take a very real toll on him. Nero knew this. The Entity knew this. He didn’t have many tries left, not only because he was weak, but because math was what it was, and the numbers were running out. This was queen number eleven.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Nero tensed up inside as his brother landed on the platform.
Brother? There it was again.
He tried calling out to him, warning him. He wasn’t even sure why. He only knew that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go down. The Entity couldn’t be allowed to win. Amunet could not be allowed to wake up. Battles were one thing, wars another, but complete planetary annihilation was another ball field altogether.
The Entity had done something to the area above the platform, filling it with a magic-draining energy. And Nero had the other Sleeper. The odds were stacked against Nicholas.
But nothing Nero did worked. He couldn’t make a sound. The Entity was determined, now more than ever. Nero felt his body quietly changing, switching to Nightmare form just as his brother passed by, heading for the young dragon. Nero’s Nightmare form was even more frightening than Nick’s, a little larger, a little sharper, a little darker. His wings spanned great distances on either side, his eyes became the very fires of hell, crackling yellow, orange, and red like an angry bonfire.
But Nicholas saw none of it. The Nightmare King approached the dragon girl. She held up her hands and said, “No, it’s a trap! He’s here somewhere, invisible! He has a dagger!”
Nick stopped – and spun, just as Nero attacked.
The Sleeper’s twin dagger came down in a clean, directed arc, but Nick’s arms came up in plenty of time to stop it. They clashed like lightning, creating a shockwave that knocked Mimi Tanniym off her feet. Fortunately, she hit the sarcophagus. It stopped her progress, otherwise she would have flown directly off the platform and into the nothingness below.
Nero couldn’t focus much on the child, however. The Entity had control of his body and he was attacking with an all-out fury. Roars of rage shook the platform beneath their feet, forcing the rather stunned young dragon to slide close to the sarcophagus altar and press her body nervously against it.
Nero swung the dagger with cold determination, grabbing Nicholas by the throat and taking him once more into the air. But Nick spun, knocked his claws away from his neck, and grasped Nero’s weapon arm, squeezing his wrist.
Yes, thought Nero. Fight!
Nicholas looked him in the eyes where they hovered above the endless chasm – and for just a moment, his red eyes flashed silver. Some kind of comprehension dawned on his otherworldly features. It was as if, just for a split second, he’d seen Nero inside, and not the Entity.
Nero tried to tell him everything then and there, sending the information as nothing but a hard burst of warning.
Nicholas wouldn’t be able to use his magic out here. The Entity had seen to that. This would be a battle of brawn, not brains. Sheer will, pure force, unaided power is what it would take to win this day and return to the land of the living. And Nicholas had to win. It was imperative.
The Entity could not be allowed to go any further.
Nick’s aura changed, his determination redoubled. Nero could feel it. He’d understood.
Nicholas grinned, fangs flashing, red eyes beaming like searchlights in the night. He spun with Nero, their forms a dark whirlwind in the strange cavernous chamber. Then he dove, taking Nero with him.
Nero felt his wings bat wildly against the air, attempting to find purchase. Despite the fact that they were larger than his brother’s, Nick had the advantage. He’d had the training. He was the king, and right now, he knew just what to do.
They hit the platform with an immense, explosive impact. Nero took the full brunt of the collision, and he had never in his many, short lives, felt such pain. He tried to roar, but the Entity was already doing so, filling the space around them with crackling, negative energy.
There was another scream, higher pitched and innocent, and Nero found himself searching through the haze of redness around him, knowing it was young Mimi. The platform was now collapsing beneath them. She couldn’t transform. She couldn’t grow wings. She would plummet into nonexistence if one of them didn’t help her.
“Mimi, I have you!” came a new cry, familiar but not quite.
Nero looked through his bloody haze of pain over Nick’s broad shoulder and just past his wings to find an angel descending toward them. Wings like an eagle’s spanned out to fantastic lengths on either side of her, shimmering curls graced her shoulders and cascaded down her back A glow emitted from her body as if she were lit from within.
He’s killed me, he thought. The impact was so great, Nero was dying again. He ha
d to be. It certainly hurt enough for that. But this time was different. Because… there were angels?
No, that’s not an angel, he realized with his own soft smile. That’s a Nightmare. A female Nightmare. A beautiful, transcendent, impossible and more precious than life Queen of the Nightmares.
It was Adelaide.
She swooped down like a miracle toward the platform, her stunning wings beating the air as if she’d done it for centuries. Mimi ran to the edge to meet her, and Addie wrapped her arms around the girl. Mimi grasped onto her like a baby monkey. She knew her life depended on it.
Adelaide rose once more, those wings taking her right back up and over the chasm to the outcropping on the other side, where it looked as though someone was magically trying to reconstruct the destroyed bridge.
Nero closed his eyes. He felt something hiccup inside him. The Entity’s attention was on the queen now. She’d fully become. It was too late. The Entity was too late.
And he was furious.
Nero’s body was temporarily broken. He would heal, if he were allowed to remain on Earth, but he knew he wouldn’t be. And at the moment, he could feel one of his wings had given out in the impact. He lacked the will to fight.
So the Entity tore himself away from his form, and that pain was even worse than the pain of the impact.
Nero roared again, throwing back his head as the Entity seared himself free, and his soul bled from the heartless tear. He forced his eyes to open back up and stay open, though. He wanted to see the son-of-a-bitch bastard leave his body. He wanted to know it was happening. And he wasn’t disappointed.
A shadow grew from his chest, rising up into the atmosphere. It was deep and twisted and wrong, and somewhere in its hollowness, there was a set of equally hollow eyes and a yawning mouth.
Nicholas ripped the dagger free from Nero’s loosening grip and rose to his feet. He stepped back on the platform that was now rocking dangerously back and forth.