She screamed. I wasn’t sure if it was from shock or pain.
Blood spurted from her wrist and splattered my face where I was bent over. A hand clamped on my shoulder as the Evil Three screamed in sympathetic pain.
“You little bitch!” Giselle snarled in my ear, but the look on my face said I would take no shit right now. My eyes were already half closed as I drew the blood circle in front of me and in my thoughts. And then, Giselle shoved her own wrist in front of my face. Reluctantly, so did the Evil Three. Matilda’s bleeding wrist laid out in front of me, her teeth gritting in pain.
She is so ridiculously human, I heard Lex spit in my head.
Tears pricked my eyes as I glanced inward. My soul was already beginning to discolour. Pushing all of it aside, I trickled Lex’s blood onto the circle and set the alchemy free. It whipped out with unrepentant glee, a sickening happiness, as though a darker side of it had been let off a leash. In my mind, I heard a lion growl in distaste. Against the blinking golden thread of the mating link, my soul felt stained and dirty. For the first time, I realised how much I hated the blood alchemy. It gave me strength, but at the same time, it sullied my soul.
Don’t let them make you forget who you are. I heard Max’s deep voice in my ear telling me that I was strong for all of the ways that had nothing to do with this corrupt power.
As the alchemy ate up the essence leaking out of Matilda and lapped at Lex’s blood, I knew I was done. If we got out of this, I was done with blood and death.
But that seemed to be all that was in front of me at the moment.
Cutting deeper into my palm with the knife, I gathered all of that magic up into a spear of pink so dense, the Evil Three staggered backward.
Overhead, I heard an unnatural thing bellow. “Now!” Giselle shouted. “He’s noticed what you’re doing.”
He could notice all he wanted. When I pulled the Ley sight around me, Kai was an orb of darkness encasing a white light that was shooting straight for me. The necromancers raised their arms. The members of the Sisterhood who weren’t bleeding out shoved the last of their strength into the circle.
And I breathed out the word of light. Takhalah: Remove. I threw the blood spear at Kai. It sliced through the soul circle and sailed through the air. The spear itself was just a physical manifestation of my power. My intent was locked on the malachim inside Kai’s body. The inevitable impact was always going to happen.
A part of me was grateful that Apollyon wasn’t the one inhabiting Kai at the moment. He would have been much harder to exorcise. The moment the alchemic spear collided with Kai, his trajectory came to an abrupt halt.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved the magic deeper into Kai’s chest. Around the site of the wound, I felt the Sisterhood latch on to the malachim soul with their own bone magic.
“Now!” Giselle shouted again. As one, we yanked. With a sickening splitting sound like skin tearing, the malachim came away from Kai’s body.
“Let go!” I screamed at the Sisterhood. They withdrew at once. Pain laced black tendrils around my mind. It shot through the back of my eyes. Somebody braced my body up, but it was in my soul where the true damage was being done. Knowing that I didn’t have much time, I tossed the malachim against the horde of undead. The blast of magic being released rocked the courtyard.
Somebody threw themself over me as I crumbled onto the ground and covered my head with my hands. Over and over again the ground shook with the residue of the malachim being destroyed. I tasted blood at the back of my throat.
My sight was a wash of pink and reds once more. The threads around my soul were unbinding. I was down to four, three, two...Too much. That small drop of blood from Lex coupled with the essence of another human soul was too much.
I was unravelling.
The mating link kicked in. It grabbed at the last thread of my soul and attempted to hold it in place. My whole body felt like it was disintegrating.
As the shaking of the ground began to ease, the Sisterhood noticed that I wasn’t moving. “What’s wrong with her?” Winnie asked.
“Her soul!” Matilda shouted. Her voice was laced with her own pain, but all of a sudden, I felt the five powerful forces thumping me in the chest. Invisible hands the colour of pearls latched onto where my soul tether was unbinding and dragged them back.
“Hold it,” Matilda gasped. Before my very Ley sight, I watched with both horror and awe as the Sisterhood funnelled their magic into me and attempted to stitch my soul back into place. No, it wasn’t just an attempt. They were fusing their essences with mine, using it like a soul transfusion. A hiccup escaped me, and I wanted to weep because of the purity of their magic. Where mine destroyed souls, theirs pieced them back together.
When it was done, my eyes peeled open to a world glistening in white gold. Inside, my soul was now intact. The mating link hummed along it, smoothing over any of the frayed edges.
“Shit!” Giselle gasped. She tumbled onto her back. Matilda lay passed out while Harlow and Alison tried to staunch her bleeding. Winnie was throwing up at the edge of the circle.
“Thank you,” I told them.
“That was a one-time deal,” Harlow said. Just as she uttered the words, the soul circle flickered.
Giselle swore again. She forced herself into a sitting position. Her eyes were two cut pieces of glass. “I hate this world!” She pointed at the blood circle I’d made. “Can you keep this up?”
I
