When I tried to hide inside the alchemy, the malachim snatched at me and forced me to keep going. Fearful that my soul would snap, I struggled.
Sophie, a crackling Caribbean accent admonished. Stubbornness doesn’t become you.
The command in that voice had me complying. I let go of everything and allowed the alchemy to take control. It filtered through the malachim’s essence, drawing away the darkness, separating light from evil.
Screams echoed through the night. For some reason, they came from below me. When I opened my eyes, I was levitating in the air facing Charles. The being inside my head was everywhere and nowhere at once. When I reached out my hand to touch Charles’s face, it was glowing in white light.
This time, when I opened my mouth and spoke the words of light, they blasted through the Reserve like a storm over a tugboat. Charles’s head snapped back, and he screamed. But the malachim that had invaded his body rushed out in a wave of black that exploded in the night air.
Agatha’s wards crumbled in Max’s hands. The moment they broke, he went for her. Leaping into the air, Max used the malachim around her as stepladders. He was on her so quickly she didn’t have time to finish her spell.
Without Apollyon’s backing, she could only rely on her own strength. She was a sorceress. Magic was her strength, and Max was impervious to it. He snatched her from the air as purple blossomed around him. They tumbled to earth the way a crocodile grabbed its prey and rolled into water. It would take more than a fall from a high place to kill Max. I couldn’t say the same for Agatha. They slammed into the ground with her on the bottom. If she hadn’t died from the impact, she certainly did when Max crushed her skull.
The supernaturals charged in once the wards came down. They prepared to meet the malachim and the demons.
“Shamayin,” I said. Rest. With my borrowed strength, the word of light obliterated every scrap of demonic energy in the Reserve. It created a backlash of magic so bright I could see nothing besides white everywhere I looked. It also obliterated every scrap of normal magic in the vicinity. I fell to the ground hard as my kitchen magic and my alchemy disintegrated.
And then, so did the blood barrier.
As soon as the smallest sliver of space was created, the mating link busted out and snapped taut. A lion roared in my ears. The world exploded in a rainbow of colour and bliss. The smiling face of something so beautiful looked down on me.
Thank you, the malachim said before I passed out.
41
Max
I crouched down in the bathroom adjacent to Charles’s bedroom and waited. Dani knelt in front of me, her tiny body shaking with anticipation. “Now, Maxy?”
Curling my hand around her shoulder, I said, “Just a bit longer, baby.”
Tiny. She was so tiny. Her utter relief and joy when we retrieved her from under the dwarf mountain still ate at me inside. The mating link flared with a bright white that shoved those dark thoughts away. A reminder that this world wasn’t all about darkness and despair. You did what you had to do, a logical part of my mind whispered. Logic. I was more than a little relieved to have some of it back.
I held on tighter to Dani, feeling her rub her cheek on my thumb in the shifter way of giving comfort even though she had no ability to shift.
Outside, I heard the distinct sound of Charles clomping his way up the front path like a herd of oxen. The scent of wood smoke and cedar, as well as spring rain and amber that lingered around him told me Luther and Cassie were with him.
The front door opened. “Mum!” Charles yelled. This kid was like a foghorn. My parents were in the pool house doing god knows what. The thought made my stomach turn. “Mum!”
“Whatever it is,” Dad shouted back at him, his voice strained with something disgusting. “Do it yourself.”
Dani pressed her lips against my arm. Her body shook with anticipation.
“Bloody gross,” Charles muttered. Footsteps came up the stairs. Just a little more.
“I think it’s sweet,” Cassie said.
“Well, you should get your head checked.”
The pattern of their steps filtered through to my senses in vibrations. Charles’s steps were bungling ripples. Cassie trailed after him, her steps barely audible and only because she wasn’t trying to hide. And at the rear, Luther walked calmly, his steps measured. Before they reached the top of the staircase, Luther paused. He must have grabbed Cassie’s arm because she stopped walking too.
Only my bull-in-a-china-shop brother charged forwards. “Now,” I whispered to Dani.
Charles reached his bedroom door. Dani’s chubby little hands clapped together, golden pink light glowing around her. A corresponding boom rocked the hallway.
Charles yelled out. I bolted to the door in time to watch him go flying over the banister. His legs and arms pin-wheeled, his face screwing up when he realised there was nothing to hold on to. The drop wasn’t far, and his reflexes would ensure that he landed on two feet. It was what he landed in that made Luther burst out laughing at the same time I did.
A growl rattled the hallway. “You childish bastard!”
He sat in the vat of green basilisk spit that I had taught Dani to glamour so he couldn’t see it was there. She poked her head between the railing and waved at him.
“Charlie!” she cooed. His eyes were already drooping from the sedative in the spit.
Mum
