Finale

Before I could retract my sword, Dante swung at me. I cleared his sword, but in doing so, had to leave my own buried in his leg. The emptiness in my hands suddenly felt very real, and I swallowed down panic.

“Forgot something,” Dante jeered, clenching his teeth as he pulled the blade out of his leg. He hurled my sword onto the mausoleum’s roof.

I dashed away, knowing his leg wound would slow him—until it healed. I hadn’t made it far before agonizing heat ripped into my left shoulder blade and spread down my arm. I stumbled to my knees with a cry. I glanced back, just able to see Pepper’s pearly-white dagger deeply lodged in my shoulder. Marcie must have given it to Dante last night. He limped up behind me.

The whites of his eyes sizzled blue with devilcraft. Blue sweat popped from his brow. Devilcraft trickled from his wound. The prototypes he’d stolen from Blakely were inside him. He’d consumed them all, and somehow had transformed his body into a devilcraft factory. A brilliant plan, except for one small detail. If I could kill him, every prototype on Earth would go with him.

If I could kill him.

“Your fat archangel friend confessed to enchanting that dagger specifically to kill me,” he said. “He failed, and Patch did too.” His lips curled in a nasty smile.

I ripped a marble headstone from the earth and hurled it at him, but he batted it away as though I’d flung a baseball.

I inched backward, relying on my good arm to drag me. Too slow.

I attempted a hurried mind-trick. Drop the sword and freeze! I shouted into Dante’s subconscious.

Pain splintered across my cheekbone. The blunt edge of his sword had lashed out so hard, I tasted blood.

“You’d dare mind-trick me?” Before I could recoil, he lifted me by the scruff of my neck and flung me savagely against a tree. The impact cast a fog over my vision and stole my breath. I tried to balance on my knees, but the ground rocked.

“Let her go.”

Scott’s voice. What was he doing here? My dazed apprehension lastehension d only a moment. I saw the sword in his hands, and sheer anxiety shot to every corner of my body.

“Scott,” I warned. “Get out of here now.”

His steady hands encircled the hilt. “I swore an oath to your father to protect you,” he said, never lowering his evaluating gaze from Dante.

Dante tipped his head back, laughing. “An oath to a dead man? How does that work?”

“If you touch Nora again, you’re as good as dead. That’s my oath to you.”

“Step aside, Scott,” Dante barked. “This isn’t about you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Scott charged at Dante, the two battling in a blur of rapid strokes. Scott relaxed his shoulders, relying on his powerful build and athletic grace to make up for Dante’s experience and devilcraft-enhanced skill. Scott held the offense, while Dante skirted agilely to the side. A brutal arc from Scott’s sword severed the lower half of Dante’s left arm. Scott skewered the limb and held it up. “As many pieces as it takes.”

Dante cursed, sloppily slashing his sword at Scott with his usable arm. The ringing collision of their blades cracked the morning air, seeming to deafen me. Dante forced Scott back toward a towering stone cross, and I shouted my warning in mind-speak.

Headstone directly behind!

Scott skipped sideways, easily avoiding a fall while simultaneously blocking an attack. Dante’s pores leaked blue sweat, but if he noticed, he didn’t show it. He shook his damp hair from his eyes and continued to hack and chop, his good arm visibly tiring. His thrashing strokes turned desperate. I saw my chance to circle behind him, trapping him between Scott and me, where one of us could finish him off.

A grunted cry stopped me in my tracks. I turned just as Scott slipped on wet grass, falling onto one knee. His legs spread awkwardly as he tried to regain his stance. He rolled safely away from Dante’s plunged sword, but he didn’t have time to climb to his feet before Dante pounced again, this time driving the sword deeply into Scott’s chest.

Scott’s hands curled weakly around Dante’s sword, impaled in his heart, trying unsuccessfully to dislodge it. Fiery blue devilcraft pumped from the sword into his body; his skin darkened to a ghastly blue. He feebly croaked my name. Nora?

I screamed. Paralyzed by shock and grief, I watched as Dante finished his attack with a clean twist of the blade, cleaving Scott’s heart.

I shifted my full attention to Dante, trembling with a hatred like I’d never known before. A wave of violent loathing rippled through me. Poison filled my veins. My hands curled into fists of rock, and a voice of fury and vengeance screamed in my head.

Fueled by this deep, abiding anger, I drew on my inner power. Not halfheartedly or hurried, or with a lack of confidence. I summoned every drop of courage and determination I possessed and unleashed it at him. I would not let him win. Not this way. Not with devilcraft. Not by killing Scott.

With all the strength of my mental conviction, I invaded his mind ded his and shredded the impulses firing to and from his brain. Just as quickly, I plugged in an unyielding command: Drop the sword. Drop the sword, you worthless, cunning, twisted man.

I heard the chink of steel on marble.

I glared nails at Dante. His dazed expression stared into distant space, as though he was looking for something lost.

“Ironic, isn’t it, that it was you who pointed out my greatest strength?” I said, every word dripping abhorrence.

I’d sworn I would never use devilcraft again, but this was one circumstance where I’d gladly bend the rules. If I killed Dante, devilcraft went too.

The temptation to steal devilcraft for my own flickered across my mind, but I flushed the idea away. I was stronger than Hank, stronger than Dante. Stronger, even, than devilcraft. I would send it back to hell for Scott, who’d given his life to save mine. I’d just picked up Dante’s sword when his leg bucked up, kicking it from my hands.

Dante catapulted himself on top of me, his hands vising my neck. I raked my fingernails at his eyes. I clawed his face.

I opened my mouth. No air.

His cold stare gleamed with triumph.

My jaw opened and closed uselessly. Dante’s ruthless face turned grainy, like an old TV picture. Over his shoulder, a stone angel watched me with interest.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. So this was what it meant to die. To give in.

I didn’t want to give in.

Dante pinched my airway with his knee, stretching sideways to pick up his sword. The tip centered over my heart.

Possess him, the stone angel seemed to calmly command me. Possess him and kill him.

Patch? I wondered almost dreamily.

Clinging to the strength that came from believing Patch was near, watching over me, I stopped resisting Dante. I lowered my scratching fingers and relaxed my legs. I succumbed to him, even though it felt like a cowardly, conceding thing. I focused my thoughts on gravitating toward him.

A foreign coldness rippled over my body.

I blinked, staring at the world through Dante’s eyes. I looked down. His sword was in my hands. Somewhere buried inside me, I knew Dante was grinding his teeth, uttering blood-chilling noises, howling like a miserable animal.

I turned the sword to face me. I pointed it at my heart. And then I did a surprising thing.

I fell on the blade.