I felt myself calming, and sensed the new power inside me growing calmer, too. A moment later, the white fire in my eyes, nose, and mouth sputtered and died out.
“Now,” Bethany said, putting her hands on her hips, “are you going to stop this and come down from there, or am I going to have to pull you down myself?”
The threads around me started to vanish, but a split second before my vision returned to normal, the world seemed to break open, and I saw what lay behind its mask. I saw seven titanic figures, seven pairs of eyes watching, always watching, and an empty space where an eighth figure should have been. Then it was gone, and everything took on solid shapes again. Unable to stay afloat, and unsure how I’d managed it in the first place, I fell out of the air and onto the ground at Bethany’s feet.
She knelt beside me and helped me up. I stumbled on weak legs, and she steadied me. “I’ve got you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t think I could have stopped if you hadn’t…” I trailed off, words failing me again.
Bethany gave me a wry smile. “See what happens? I leave you alone for five minutes and you almost destroy the world.”
I smiled back, but it was halfhearted. Inside, I felt unstable and unsure of myself. Was my self-loathing so strong that I’d nearly taken the world apart because of it?
“Is it gone now?” she asked.
I shook my head. The power was still with me, I could feel it burning inside me like a low flame, but I couldn’t reach it, couldn’t make it do what it did before. It was as if the power had gone dormant. “It’s still in me, but it’s under control.”
“Be careful,” she said. “I’m serious. There’s a reason no mortal has ever tried to carry Ancient magic. It’s volatile. Dangerous.”
I nodded to let her know I understood. She went to make sure Isaac, Gabrielle, and Philip were all right. I was going to have some apologizing to do to the team. Again. At this point, it was practically a pastime.
My boot kicked something that tinkled along the ground. I looked down and saw the thin, delicate ammonite shell lying shattered on the ground where it had fallen. I knelt and sifted through the tiny pieces, but there were too many of them for the amulet to be salvaged. Damn. I hadn’t had a choice, taking it off had been the only way to stop Stryge, but Bethany’s little charm had changed everything, even if only for a moment. Losing it stung. We hadn’t even had the chance to come up with a name for it. I sighed, and was about to stand up again when the sound of something cutting rapidly through the air caught my attention. Before I could react, an arrow embedded itself in the dirt right in front of me.
I jumped to my feet. Melanthius stood on a mound of broken Cloisters stones, an archer’s bow in his hands. He pulled another arrow from the quiver strapped to his back, notched it into the bowstring, and sent it flying at Bethany. She jumped aside, but the arrow tore the sleeve of her shirt and drew a line of blood across her shoulder. She gasped, but it was only a flesh wound. She ran for cover behind one of the big, jagged stones sticking up from the crevasse.
Either Melanthius was a bad shot or he was trying to get our attention. I figured it was the latter. Well, now he had it.
He reached for another arrow, but before he could pull it out, a dark blur rushed out of nowhere and slammed into him. Philip ripped the bow from Melanthius’s hands and punched him across the golden skull mask. Melanthius stumbled backward and almost fell, but Philip grabbed him by the front of his cloak and pulled him back up. While Melanthius was still dazed, Philip took a piece of rope out of his pocket, the same rope his own hands had been tied with earlier, and used it to tie Melanthius’s hands behind his back. It struck me as a fitting irony.
The rest of us gathered by Stryge’s body as Philip approached with his captive. Melanthius’s golden skull mask regarded me stoically, emotionlessly.
“This isn’t over,” he hissed.
“Wanna bet?” I asked.
“As a matter of fact,” Melanthius said, “I do.”
On the ground between us, Stryge sat up suddenly. I jumped back.
Stryge’s eyes opened, and where they had once blazed with white fire, they now glowed red with Reve Azrael’s necromancy. The thirty-foot-tall revenant rose to its feet, towering over us.
“My God,” Isaac breathed.
“Stay back, all of you!” I shouted. They backed away. Melanthius chuckled inside his mask.
Reve Azrael looked down at me through Stryge’s eyes. She spoke through the Ancient’s wide, tusked mouth. “I owe you a debt of gratitude, little fly. My plan would never have worked without the one weapon that could kill an Ancient. You.”
“You knew what I would do to stop him,” I said, fuming. “You used me.”
“You
“Why don’t you come and get him?” Philip snarled back.
Bethany, still holding my gun, lifted it and squeezed off two shots. The bullets bounced off Stryge’s withered skin.
Reve Azrael laughed. “Tiny, foolish thing. You think because this body is dead its hide is any more vulnerable? It is still the body of an Ancient. It contains vast, inexhaustible power. There is no limit to what I can do.” She started toward Bethany. Bethany backed up, but Reve Azrael stopped suddenly. She looked down at her host body. “Wait. Something is wrong. This body is nothing but an empty shell. What has become of Stryge’s power? Where is it?”
I looked up at her. “Take a guess.”
She turned her glowing red eyes to me. There was so much anger in them, so much rage, that they glowed all the brighter for it.
“You thought you had the perfect plan, but there’s one thing you forgot to take into account,” I said. “Ancients aren’t like the rest of us. Their magic is different from ours.” She stared at me, still not comprehending. “Ancients were the first living creatures in the world, right? They’re millions of years old. Magic alone couldn’t have kept them alive all this time. It’s the strength of their life force; it’s part of what they are. Their life force
“Of course,” she sneered. “That is what you do, isn’t it? Absorb their life forces for yourself? Steal what rightfully belongs to others? You are a thief, little fly, in more ways than one.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But what does that make you? Just another talking corpse.”
Reve Azrael bellowed in rage, furious that she’d been denied Stryge’s power. Her anger distracted her, and Isaac took advantage of it. He pushed out his hand. Crackling arcs of electricity flared from his palms and hit Reve Azrael in the back. She roared louder and turned to face the mage. He hit her with the spell again. This time it knocked her backward. Arms spinning wildly, she fell onto one of the huge, sharp stone fragments. The weight of her body coupled with the unyielding strength of the stone drove it into her back and out through her chest.
She struggled and squirmed to pull herself off the sharp stone, but she couldn’t. She was stuck. Good. I wanted her to suffer the way she’d made others suffer. I wanted her to hurt. But this was only a host body, not the real thing. I had no idea if she could even feel pain through a revenant.
She stared at me angrily. “You have Stryge’s power, so why do you not use it? Why hesitate? You could unmake me in a heartbeat, break me apart into dust!”
As tempting as that sounded, it wasn’t an option. I couldn’t control the power inside me. But she didn’t have to know that.
“Because you have something I want,” I replied. “No more games. No more evading the question. Tell me the truth. What do you know about me?” She didn’t answer. I tried again. “Who am I?”
“Trent, just end this,” Isaac said, coming forward.
“Wait,” I barked at him. He stopped where he was, but he didn’t retreat. “We found your homunculus, Reve Azrael. I know that’s how you kept tabs on me, but it doesn’t explain everything. The only time you could have hidden it on me was when you came to the house in Bennett’s body, but that doesn’t make sense. You wouldn’t have come to the house unless you already knew I was there. How did you know?”
