me and we’ll start over. I promise. All will be forgiven.
“No,” Eli said. “Not this.”
And then his hands shot up and yanked the glowing pearl from her throat.
The second he touched it, several things happened. Benehime’s scream filled his ears, a surprised gasp that turned to an enraged shriek, but Eli was too overwhelmed to pay much attention. As soon as his fingers had wrapped around the Hunter’s seed, blinding white light filled him. At first he felt nothing but shock, and then shock turned to anger as a surge of power ripped through him, nearly tearing him apart.
The Hunter’s rage exploded into his mind. The raw fury at his sister’s betrayal mixed with the bitter anger of regret. It pounded through Eli’s veins, filling him to bursting, pulsing so strongly he couldn’t move even as Benehime’s hands shot forward to snatch the prize back.
Just before she reached him, another burning hand locked on Eli’s shoulder and tore him away. He flew through the white nothing, landing on his back with such force that even the Hunter’s fury fell silent. In the stunned calm, he looked up to see the Weaver. The old Power stood face-to-face with his sister, his gnarled fists clenched as his long, white hair writhed over his body like a nest of snakes.
Go! he shouted.
Eli tried to ask where, but before he could even open his lips, he saw Benehime draw something from the fall of hair at her back. It was long and so black it ate even the Between’s whiteness as she wrapped her hand around it, brandishing it like a dagger at her unarmed brother.
Go! the Weaver shouted again, raising his hand to catch the demonseed as it fell. Now!
Eli didn’t wait to be told again. He scrambled to his feet, hands clenched tight around the Hunter’s burning seed, and ran. As he plunged into the blank whiteness of the Between, he heard a sound so loud it drowned out even the Shepherdess’s enraged scream. It was a great crack, like a thousand panes of glass had all broken at the same time, and the second Eli heard it, he knew. Knew without looking that the sky of the crumpled sphere floating forgotten behind Benehime had cracked at last.
The white Between bucked under his feet, and suddenly Eli could see the walls of Benehime’s endless world at last. They were ripping, the whiteness tearing like rotted cloth as the black shapes so horrible Eli’s mind couldn’t comprehend them began to claw their way through.
As the Between ripped, fear hit Eli like a punch in the gut, mixing with the Hunter’s rage and his own exhilaration until he felt he would fly apart. But he didn’t. He ran. He ran like he had never run before, dodging the black, grasping hands as they reached blindly for him. He ran straight for the place where he had come in, trusting his feet to remember the way back in this world without markers. When he found it, he gripped the Hunter’s white seed and, raising his leg with a furious roar, kicked a hole in the white world.
The veil shattered like glass as he struck it, and Eli began to fall.
Miranda wrapped her arms around herself and burrowed deeper against Gin’s chest. Now that Eli was gone and the white gate had closed, things in the snowy valley were growing… tense. No, tense wasn’t the right word. Tense was how she felt when she had to report bad news to Master Banage. This was a massacre waiting for an excuse.
They’d formed a rough triangle—Josef and Nico stood at the place where Eli had vanished, dividing their glares between the Lord of Storms, who was standing beside Miranda with his arms crossed over his healed chest, and the demon. For his part, the Lord of Storms was locked on the Demon of the Dead Mountain, and it was only Miranda’s death grip on their connection that kept him from attacking. The demon was standing with his hands on his hips and looking far, far too pleased with himself for Miranda’s taste. As his grin widened, Josef’s hand drifted to the hilt of his sword, and Miranda felt she’d better say something before the four of them tore each other to bits.
She was still trying to decide what that something was when a loud sound made everything else insignificant. It was a crack. A sharp squeal like glass breaking, but infinitely larger. As it faded, Miranda could only wonder what in the world was large enough to make a sound that enormous when it broke. And then, with a horrible sinking feeling, her eyes turned up.
The breath fled from her lungs. There, running along the warped and crumpling sky, was a crack. It ran up from the eastern horizon, weaving back and forth in wide jags before finally thinning to nothing just beyond what had been the sky’s zenith. The crack sparkled in the sunlight, its edges gleaming white.
For several seconds the world was silent. The wind didn’t blow, the snow didn’t stir, even the spirit panic seemed to have stopped. Everything was staring at the crack in the sky. And then, with another booming crack, a second fracture split off from the first.
This one grew as Miranda watched, running across the distended sky like lightning toward the western horizon. It stopped just at the edge of the afternoon sun, the tail end of the crack splitting the top of the yellow orb. As the sun cracked, its light skewed, and that was when Miranda began to panic in earnest.
Even though the Weaver and the Shaper Mountain had warned her, even though she knew this was coming, there was something about seeing the world lit from that new, unnatural angle that her mind simply could not wrap itself around. All she could do was raise her shaking hand, catching the broken sunlight with her rings, and wonder if there was a sun at all. Was anything real, or was the world she’d taken for granted her whole life little more than a painted backdrop?
She didn’t realize she was screaming until the Lord of Storms’ hand wrapped around her neck. She heard Gin’s snarl far in the distance, but the ghosthound was drowned out by the thunder that was suddenly pounding through her head. The Lord of Storms lifted her by the throat and leaned in until his pale face and waving black hair were all she could see. The rage behind his flashing eyes overwhelmed her, but when he spoke, the words were low and controlled.
“If you fall apart on me now, Spiritualist, I will take everything you have to give until you die,” he whispered. “Do you understand?”
There was no hatred in the threat, no malice. It was simply a promise to do what must be done, and the calm reality of it snapped Miranda’s jarred mind back into place. She swallowed against his grip and nodded. The Lord of Storms nodded as well and dropped her onto Gin’s back. She scrambled, nearly falling, but Gin’s nose nudged her into place.
“Never do that again,” he snarled once she was seated.
“I do what I need to, pup,” the Lord of Storms said, looking back at the sky. “See you don’t get in my way.”
Gin snapped at the Lord of Storms’ leg before Miranda could stop him. But the hound’s teeth slid harmlessly through his body as his leg dissolved into storms. The dog growled and went for another snap, but Miranda grabbed his ear.
“Let it be,” she commanded. “Now’s not the time.”
Gin bared his teeth one last time, and then turned back to the sky. They were all looking up now, the demons, the humans, everyone. Josef had drawn the Heart, Miranda noticed out of the corner of her eye. What he meant to do with it, she had no idea. Compared to the crack in the sky, even the Heart’s enormous blade looked small and useless. They all did. She bit her lip as the sky began to whine under the pressure. Even if Eli was successful, even if a new Hunter was born, how were they ever to stop this?
“Stand firm,” the Lord of Storms commanded. “Here they come.”
Miranda tangled her fingers in Gin’s shifting fur as the crack splintered and then splintered again, shooting across the sky like branches from a tree. The new cracks spread in long lines, carving the bulging sky into a network of shards until the blue was almost gray from the strain. With each crack, the groaning, glass-on-glass sound of the sky grinding against itself grew worse. And then, just when Miranda was sure she could bear the creaking no longer, the sky shattered.
After the cracks, the actual break was startlingly quiet. At the place where the three largest cracks met, the sky simply fell apart. The blue shards rained down, dissolving to nothing before they hit the ground with a soft sigh. The sound that came next, however, Miranda knew she would never be able to forget no matter how desperately she tried.
As the sky broke, a scream burst into the world. It wasn’t a spirit’s scream, or a human sound, or even the cry of an animal in pain. It wasn’t like anything Miranda had ever heard. The sound was strangely empty, like a chord missing its key note. It was almost like the dissonance of Nico’s voice, but a million times more. And then the fear hit Miranda like a punch in the gut.
