that will turn on you the first chance it gets. Even you can’t be foolish enough to still believe you’re human.”
“I am myself,” Nico snapped.
“Well, good for you,” the demon snapped back. “But let’s play a game, shall we? Let’s say you win. Let’s say I vanish, the shell is mended, the demons are pushed back, and everything comes up daffodils for you and your swordsman. What happens then?”
Before Nico could answer, the demon’s mouth opened in an enormous grin. “I’ll tell you,” he crooned, reaching down to caress the Dead Mountain’s slope. “You’ll end up here, right where I was. Because no matter how well you may think you control yourself, you’re not a spirit of creation anymore. You’re like me, like all of us. You’ll never die, even if you long to. You’ll never be able to rest, never be able to drop your guard. I’m impressed you’ve been able to keep your hunger at bay this long, but how much longer can you do it, Nico? A century? A millennia?”
The demon shook its head. “No one’s will holds forever, my child. The hunger will win in the end, and then you’ll be everything they already think you are—a monster, a predator, a devourer of spirits. Something to be stomped on and pinned at all costs.”
As he finished, Nico realized with horror that his throat was nearly mended. Her eyes widened. How? They were on the Dead Mountain. There should be nothing to eat. Then she saw that one of his long legs was arched backward, his biggest claw just touching the valley beyond the Dead Mountain’s border. Where it touched, the once-snowy valley was now as black and dry as the Dead Mountain’s own slopes.
The sight of it made her snarl, and she pulled herself to her full height, her broken wing hanging painfully from her shoulder. Nico ignored it. She stood on the mountain’s peak, glaring down at the demon. In her mind, Nivel’s warning was playing over and over. Don’t listen. He always lies, don’t listen. But he wasn’t lying, not this time, though Nico wished he were. A lie would be nicer than this ugly truth. But ugly as it was, hateful as it was, the truth was there, hanging between them, and she could not ignore it. Though she no longer needed air, Nico took a deep breath and raised her eyes to the sky, steeling herself to see the world break.
The breath caught in her throat. Above them, three of the six hands had vanished. For a second, she felt nothing but panic. If they were gone, what more would come through? But even as the thought slid through her like an icy spike, a flash of white blazed in the sky. For a moment, the whole, battered arc was illuminated, and then, with a demon’s jagged scream, one of the three remaining hands began to fall, dissolving to dust before it could hit the ground.
The second flash came a moment later, slicing the next arm through. She saw it better this time—a curved white blade biting through the darkness beyond the sphere, singing with pure, bloody joy as it sliced the demon flesh. By the time the final arm was cut, the shell itself was shaking, and the dome of the sky began to groan. Overhead, the cracks flashed and ground against one another, the shattered sections popping back into place like puzzle pieces.
As the edges came together, they began to melt into one another, the cracks fraying before weaving back together as though they’d never broken. It was beautiful to watch, more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen. So beautiful that Nico couldn’t tear her eyes away from the world as it put itself back together, and that was her fatal mistake.
She felt the Demon of the Dead Mountain right before his claws closed on her throat. She roared and began to fight his grip, but he loomed over her, his strength infinite.
“You never could learn to pay attention to your surroundings, darling daughter,” the demon purred in her ear, his jagged teeth tearing the flesh on the side of her head. “Looks like your thief won his gambit. They’re repairing the shell as we speak. So it’s time for you to go.”
Nico’s feet kicked in the air as he lifted her. Holding her at arm’s length, the demon turned and raised his other arm, the one she had injured, and dragged his curved, black claws across the air. For a second, nothing happened, and then, with a horrible, unnatural ripping, the veil began to tear.
“The Weaver is too busy to stop a little hole like this,” the demon told her, his jagged teeth blacker than midnight in the pure white light that spilled through the hole in the air. “It pains me to treat you this way, my child, but if you won’t stand with me, then you leave me no choice. After all”—the black grin widened—“I can’t kill you.”
Nico lashed at him with her claws, but his long arms held her well out of reach. With a sickening lurch, the demon hopped up through the sundered veil, taking her into a world of blinding white. The moment they were inside, the demon raised her up and slammed her against a wall she hadn’t even seen.
The impact sent an explosion of pain through her body, and Nico screamed as the wall cracked behind her, bowing out with the force of the demon’s blow. When he pulled her back, her body was too limp to fight him, too stunned even to struggle as he dug his claws into the white floor and slammed her a second time. This time, the wall shattered.
Nico’s body shrank as freezing cold, colder even than the world inside the shadows, surrounded her. The demon had broken the shell with her body. Even as Nico realized what had happened, she felt the demon’s claws leave her throat, and then she began to fall.
She couldn’t even flap her wings anymore. The hole in the shell shrank above her, the light growing farther and dimmer, leaving only endless, hungry blackness. For one long breath, Nico fell into the dark, and then, with a deafening cry, the hands grabbed her.
They wrapped around her body, large and small, clawed and spindly, all pulling her into the dark. Black mouths bit down on her flesh only to roar in impotent fury when they realized she was not food. She was like them.
After that, they thrust her aside, trampling her as they scrambled madly for the hole the demon had punched in the shell of the world with her body. Far, far overhead, Nico could still see the outline of the demon against the light, his grotesque face split in an enormous smile. And with that, rage took over where strength could not.
With a roar that made the hands on her snatch away, Nico surged forward. She could not let it end like this, could not let him win. She tore through the other demons, ripping them to shreds as she clawed her way up. Starving and mad, they barely noticed, moving their limbs out of her way only when she took a piece off. Ahead of her, the hole in the shell was closing, cutting off the light. Nico screamed and climbed faster, clawing her way up the endless demons until, at last, her hand closed on the hole’s jagged edge.
The Demon of the Dead Mountain’s claws were on her at once, prying her grip free. Nico slammed her other hand up in answer, her claws biting deep into the Demon of the Dead Mountain’s arm. As he screamed in pain, Nico yanked herself forward, tearing her other hand off the shell’s edge only to plant it in the demon’s chest. Her claws cut through the shiny, protective carapace and dug into his core, locking in place. At the same time, she brought her head forward, jaws flung wide as she latched herself onto his shoulder.
“You’re right,” she hissed against his flesh while he flailed beneath her, screaming in pain. “There’s no place for our kind here.” And with that, she pushed off the shell, using her weight as an anchor to drag them both into the dark.
The demon’s roar rattled her teeth, but Nico didn’t let go. As he locked his limbs against the closing shell, she clung to him like a lead weight. If they had been inside the shell, it never would have worked. He was too large now, and she too small. But here, on the edge, things were different. Nico’s body buffeted as the demon hands shot past her, scrambling for purchase on the shell’s broken edge. They grabbed the Demon of the Dead Mountain as well, pulling him down in their rush to clear the hole and get inside, using his bulk as leverage to pull themselves up.
The demon screamed again, and this time there was real fear in his roar. He tore at Nico with his claws, digging into the shell with his feet as he tried to free himself. But the broken shell was too fragile to hold him, the thousands of hands too much even for his strength. Even so, he might have worked himself free had Nico not been latched to him, her weight an anchor on his own, dragging him inch by painful inch into the dark. When he finally toppled, Nico went with him, her claws and teeth buried in his flesh as the hands dragged them both into the dark.
It was a good end, she thought as they started to fall. Even if she lived forever out here in the dark, she was still herself, and she had used the last of her strength to take the Demon of the Dead Mountain with her. For a creature who could no longer die, she’d earned herself a death to be proud of. A warrior’s death. She smiled against the Demon of the Dead Mountain’s flesh, still straining under her teeth. She only wished Josef could have
