The Lord of Storms ignored them completely. He sheathed his sword and strode forward, white eyes locked on Eli. “Where is she?”
The hatred in his voice was like a knife against Eli’s ear, and he didn’t have to ask who the Lord of Storms meant. “She’s fighting the Weaver,” he answered. “And you’d better hurry.”
The Lord of Storms nodded and lifted his arm to make a portal through the veil. This time, though, instead of forming the usual neat, white line, the Lord of Storms took a handful of air and ripped it sideways. The veil tore open with a sound that made Eli wince, but the Lord of Storms paid it no mind. He kept tearing, splitting the veil until he’d made a hole large enough for him to step through.
“Wait!” Miranda cried.
The Lord of Storms froze and turned on the Spiritualist with a look that would have killed anyone else. Miranda just glared back. “What about them?” she snapped, pointing up at the remaining three defenders. “They need you.”
The Lord of Storms’ white lips split into a blinding grin. When I’m done, there won’t be anything left for them to fight.
Eli closed his eyes. The voice was still the Lord of Storms’, but it filled his mind with that strange echo he now recognized as the hallmark of a Power. Miranda must have recognized it, too, because her face went almost gray. The Lord of Storms only smiled wider.
Come on, both of you, he said, marching through the hole in the veil. We have unfinished business.
Eli and Miranda exchanged a look and silently followed the Lord of Storms into the Between. Gin tried to go, too, but Miranda shook her head, motioning for the dog to stay as they walked into the blank nothing. The ghosthound watched them until an unseen curve of the Between hid him from view. It was only then that Eli realized with a cold, creeping dread that the veil had not closed behind them.
Nico closed her claws around the demon’s enormous wrist and twisted. The creature screamed as she sliced through the hard tendons, and she smiled beneath her mask as the black hand retreated. She followed it, twisting again, cutting again, until the hand pulled back through the hole completely.
A new one took its place immediately, shooting past Nico toward the ground. She fell after it, but Josef got there first, severing two of the six fingers with one strike. Nico smiled at him, but Josef didn’t see. How could he? Her face was hidden beneath the mask of glowing eyes and sharp teeth.
At that thought, Nico felt the hunger rising in her again, the black water bubbling from her depths. She snarled and crushed it back down. She’d won that battle already, and she had no intention of fighting two fronts at once. The grasping hands from the sky were almost too much to handle as it was. She closed her eyes and fought the black water of her demon nature back down until her mind was once again a calm, dry field. Only when the absolute control filled her body did she resume her attack.
The most recent black hand was still flailing from the Heart’s attack. Nico folded her wings and dove toward the lashing claws. She’d take it out at the elbow this time, she decided. That was, if the second of the three hinge joints could even be called an elbow.
Honestly, she wasn’t sure if the long limbs were arms or legs. The demons looked nothing like anything she’d ever seen, even herself. They were huge, true, far larger than she, but so thin they made her form look healthy by comparison. Next to their dull, wasted blackness, the Demon of the Dead Mountain positively shone as he took down the limb to her left, breaking the thin appendage with a snap of his enormous jaw.
Even if the Weaver hadn’t told her these demons were starving, Nico would have known. They tore at the sky without intelligence or guile. Any cunning they might have possessed had been eaten long ago, along with everything else. Now they cared only for getting in, and as each scrambled to be first, they inadvertently blocked their only entrance. Had they not been so hungry, they would already be inside.
Of course, it was only a matter of time.
Nico looked up. She had no human eyes now. Spirit sight was her only sight, and through it she could see why the world below shook with panic. The sky, usually full of the enormous, weaving trails of the winds, was now empty, its blue arch a sickening, bruised purple where the pressure of the demons’ hunger had crushed it in. But worse still were the cracks. They were everywhere now, white, jagged lines running from horizon to horizon. They creaked and groaned under the demons’ assault, sending cascades of dust down with each new impact.
The sight of them filled Nico with hopelessness. With the shell so broken, it was only a matter of minutes before another hole opened and more hands thrust out of the impenetrable dark on the other side. They could barely keep the three they had under control as it was. One more, one tip of the balance, and everything would fall.
“Daydreaming, my daughter?”
She bared her teeth at the hateful voice and turned to see the Demon of the Dead Mountain hovering nearly on top of her, his enormous fanged mouth open in a wide grin.
“Go back to your work,” she hissed, digging her lower claws into the demon hand below her. The monster screamed and yanked back, but the Demon of the Dead Mountain didn’t move.
“Is it not natural for a father to show concern for his child’s well-being?” he said, that deep, smooth voice as sweet as honey, just like always.
Nico ignored him, kicking off the now-writhing arm to finish the one the demon had been working on before he’d decided to come and chat. The cold at her back told her he was following, but she kept her eyes ahead, forcing her body down until she was as calm and cold as one of Josef’s blades, even when she felt the demon’s teeth brush her wings.
Horrible as he looked, Nico actually preferred the Demon of the Dead Mountain in this form. Anything was better than the face he’d worn when he walked off the broken seal. It was similar to the one he’d worn before when he’d met her in the dark of her mind, during the fight at Izo’s. Just like then, his features were a handsome melding of Josef and Eli; only now Tesset’s firmness was in there, too.
Looking at that combination, she couldn’t help wanting to trust him, even though she knew better. That face was dangerous. It messed with her control. Every time she thought she knew it, the demon’s face would shift, now looking like Josef that first morning she met him, now looking closer to Eli when she’d woken up on the beach at Osera.
The changes came so fast, so effortlessly that Nico was beginning to suspect the demon didn’t have a true face at all. His human form was nothing but a reflection of the desires of those who saw him. A shifting trap that used remembered trust as its bait. Nico bared her teeth, grabbing hold of the enormous grasping arm and pulling the black skin apart. Nivel was right. The demon could never, ever be trusted.
“You’re thinking awful things about me, aren’t you?”
Nico didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, she fixed her yellow eyes on Josef as she pulled the demon arm straight, giving him a clean shot.
“Of course you are,” the Demon of the Dead Mountain purred, closing in. “I can see it on your face.”
“You can’t see my face,” Nico said, stretching the arm farther.
“I don’t need to,” he answered. “I’m part of you, Nico. I always will be. You’re far more demon than human now, and that’s why I’m going to ask you one last time—”
“No,” Nico snapped, bracing as the Heart of War’s blow sliced the arm she held in half.
“You didn’t even hear my offer.” The demon sounded hurt.
“I don’t have to,” Nico said, tossing the disintegrating arm to the ground. “Unless you’re offering me your life, I want nothing of yours. We are done, demon.”
She turned and glared at him then, baring her black teeth instinctively to drive the point home, but the Demon of the Dead Mountain didn’t return the threat. Still grinning, he jumped backward, putting a hundred feet of empty air between them, and began to plummet toward the storm-shrouded ground.
Nico was about to abandon him to the Lord of Storms when a flash of white blinded her. She froze, yellow eyes rolling as she fought to get her vision back. Slowly, the white faded and the world came back into focus, and as it did, she realized that the lightning-dense clouds that had protected the ground were gone. There was nothing to stand in the demon’s way as the Master of the Dead Mountain landed on a foothill of the now-unprotected Sleeping Mountains and, slamming his enormous claws into the stone slope, began to devour the stone whole.
“No!” she screamed, shooting toward him. But before she’d gone more than fifty feet, a writhing black arm struck her across the back. The blow knocked her off course, slamming her into a valley several mountains away.
