meaningless life, but I can’t bring myself to destroy them.” He didn’t speak like I suspected an elf would. He had no practiced cadence or high-brow inflections. He spoke like any other person on the street.
“What are they for?”
“You were but one cog in this grandly designed wheel, Evangeline. You and Truman both, necessary parts to play, but not the only ones that mattered. I needed proper vessels.”
“Is that what’s in those cages? Vessels?” I wasn’t going to bother trying to puzzle that one out. Both my deductive reasoning skills and my patience had been left aboveground. Down here, I wanted fast and simple answers, so I could kill him and get it done.
Tovin nodded. “The perfect vessels for hosting the Tainted.”
Rather than walking, he seemed to float past me, along the curved line of the room, toward the nearest crate. He yanked off the black sheet. Inside, crouched on its haunches, was a man-sized version of the hound. Its snout was less pronounced, but its razor teeth just as plentiful. It looked able to stand and run on two legs, instead of four.
“We were missing the human element,” Tovin said, as if discussing a beloved child. “The vampire and goblin hybrids weren’t enough, even with the added canine traits. We had to mix in the right amount of human DNA. The result was startlingly perfect, as you can see.”
And startlingly ugly. “Perfect for demon possession?”
“You can’t possibly comprehend what will possess them.”
The final puzzle pieces came crashing into position. Our theory was correct: the freewill deal was meant to get Wyatt under his control. With a controlled mind, Tovin had the perfect vessel for his Tainted One, and a being of unbelievable power would be at his command. He had his hound-hybrids caged and ready to accept their own demons—probably lesser in power and controllable by the first. The only X-factor in this fucked-up situation was Tovin’s next move now that Wyatt was dead. And I had one last question to ask before we danced—a final confirmation.
“So this was all you?” I asked. “Every single moment, from the murders of my teammates to my kidnapping to Wyatt and the resurrection? You did this?”
“Yes. Humans are so malleable when it comes to their emotions. So many of my Fey brethren desire your range of emotional imbalances, but I’ve never seen the appeal. Love will always be your kind’s greatest flaw. It makes you do truly stupid things.”
“Like this?” I whipped out the gun and fired at his head. As before, time slowed and, after an eternity of anticipation, stopped completely. Just like on the balcony, he plucked the bullet out of the air.
With nothing to lose and no more tricks to try, I started squeezing the trigger a second time. An invisible hand yanked the gun from my fingers and pitched it across the room. My body was flung backward, and the sudden stop against the rough-hewn walls took my breath away. A thick root dug into the small of my back. I couldn’t move, held there by some invisible force, feet dangling two feet from the ground.
Tovin stepped closer to the black pool, sparing me a pitying look before gazing down. The mirrored water began to ripple and, as I watched, came to a rolling boil. “These events have been in motion for some time, Evangeline,” he said, his voice difficult to hear over the roar of the pool. “I can no more stop it than I can change the color of the sky. This Tainted requires a vessel more controllable than the soldiers I’ve created. With my puppet Truman gone …”
He cast a contemptuous glare at me, and I swore I saw uncertainty hiding just below the surface. “My soldiers do not possess a human’s free will to choose. It’s something your people stupidly take for granted as you live your meager lives. I can’t manufacture it, but I can steal it and bind this Tainted with it.”
I finally got it. Amalie had said the Tainted were beings of pure emotion and instinct, unable to make moral choices. They simply acted. Humans, on the other hand, had been making moral choices ever since Eve supposedly bit into that damned apple. Free will was Tovin’s apple, and owning Wyatt’s was his guarantee of control. So how —?
“You won’t be as easy to manipulate as one whose free will I own,” Tovin continued, turning back to his bubbling pool, “but the Tainted’s crossing cannot be stopped, and your body will have to do.”
My stomach knotted.
The boiling water began to swirl, until its entire surface was a maddening whirlpool. Energy snapped and spit in our underground dungeon. The candle flames flickered, but the air remained completely still. Tovin recited words in a language I didn’t know. He was doing it—bringing a Tainted across the Break. Turning a demon loose on me and the rest of the unsuspecting world.
Blackness rose up from the center of the whirling vortex, like a jet of ink through water. It hovered several feet above, a shapeless web of pitch no larger than a volleyball. Tovin’s mouth kept moving, speaking words unheard above the screaming in my head. He swept his hand out, indicating me. The black blob shuddered, and I swear it looked right at me. Then it floated forward.
I reached for the threads of the Break, so faint behind the wall of magic holding me down. I caught it and pulled, fixated quickly on loss and loneliness, and then I was moving. Every fiber of my existence felt pulled part, vibrated, stretched to the point of shattering. I shrieked, hoping only for a destination far from here and the demon intent on possessing me.
My face hit dirt first, and I tumbled to the ground in a shuddering heap. Tovin snarled, an angry sound more befitting a wild dog than a revered—and slightly insane—elf mystic. I rolled onto my left side in time to see the black blob slam into Tovin’s midsection and disappear. He froze in place, his aged face a contortion of anger and confusion. And pain.
I sat up and blinked hard in the dim light, positive he had grown a few inches in the last five seconds. It didn’t seem possible, but it was happening.
To the tune of strangely melodic screaming, his entire body expanded to the bulk of a professional wrestler —height and weight and expanse of muscle. The short, white hair that had crowned his head fell out, revealing bald, oily skin. His complexion darkened to a slick violet, not quite dark enough to be purple. Fingernails grew and sharpened. Incisors dropped down over his lower lip. Anything once elvin about him was gone, save his eyes.
Something else leered at me from across the half-moon room. Something evil.
“What the hell are you?” I asked, standing with caution, fear choking the words.
“The thing you mistakenly call a demon, girl.” Its voice was impossibly deep and completely inhuman. “We are older than the Earth, part of Her long before your wretched kind crawled from Her womb.”
“The Tainted.”
His laughter was a thunderclap. It vibrated the floor and sent bits of the ceiling trickling down. “We have many names. We are Legion. We are the Horsemen. We are the Titans. We are the Maladies. We are myth and legend and story. We are Hell, girl, and we’re coming home.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Your dead body is what this elf once desired, but his plans to control us are as lifeless as he. This body suits me. I taste freedom for the first time in millennia, and I will not leave my family imprisoned on the other side of the Break—not when life on Earth is so much sweeter.”
A crazy noble idea coming from a … well, whatever he was. It was time for this demon, Old One, Titan, or just plain Crazy Ugly Thing to go back across the Break to Hell. For me, for Wyatt, for Alex, and for everyone else who’d died along the way.
“I have to admit, demon, that Tovin had a good plan.” My fingers flexed around the knife’s hilt. I didn’t have to reach far to feel the Break’s power and grasp it. “But he didn’t count on one thing.”
His bushy eyebrows arched. “And what is that, girl?”
“Me.”
The teleport destination was so close that the blur, ache, and swish seemed to happen instantaneously— from across the room to right in front of him in a blink. I plunged the knife into his chest—given his great height, it was nearly his abdomen—and twisted. He roared and the thunderous sound shook the room.
I was flying through the air and hit the opposite wall before I registered the blow. My head cracked against the rough dirt. I tumbled to the floor, bright stars of color bursting in my vision, and came to rest on my side, too
