Kathan and his legions remained in Halo. They regrouped at the mansion that had been our prison. The fallen angels prepared to defend their territory from the human army, while waiting out our destruction.
Kathan wasn’t afraid of us. We were inextricably linked to his mind and could feel his thoughts. He could taste victory. He was certain that we would destroy the Creator, and that he would rise to power on the ashes and muddy water of the world.
Tough
The only sounds in the front room of the tattoo parlor were gritting teeth, groaning, and gauze and med tape unrolling. The primals and humans who hadn’t gone on the attack were helping treat injuries, but no one was talking.
Clarion had taken another count on the way inside. Out of thirty humans, forty-one coyotes, and twenty-six crows, only seven humans, thirty-three coyotes, and twelve crows had made it back. Lonely headed back out right away to do a flyover and look for any survivors that we’d missed in our retreat, but no one thought he was going to find any.
Sometime tonight I was going to have to take Scout’s body to Harper. Then I needed to stop by Owen’s and tell him I’d gotten Dodge and Willow killed. And when Lonely got back, ask him what the hell had happened with keeping Willow away from the Dark Mansion.
But for now, we just sat.
I ground the heels of my hands into my eyes and made myself breathe. Breathe and think. It took time to kill a crow. Time and work. You had to pin it to the ground with some kind of wood, cut out its split tongue, cut off its wings, and then burn it. Coyotes were about the same—behead, cut out the tongue and heart, weigh it all down with stone, and throw it into the deepest part of a river or creek. Primals didn’t die easy. Whatever that huge explosion had been, it’d killed fourteen crows and eight coyotes in a matter of seconds.
Apparently, somebody else was thinking along the same lines as I was, because Clarion’s girlfriend finally asked, “What was it?”
We all looked at her, but nobody asked what she meant.
“The Destroyer,” Bailey said from over in the corner.
“Destroyer?”
Bailey stood up. “I don’t have Jax here anymore. He could give you the word-for-word on the prophecy. What it amounts to is this—a being capable of destroying the world has been unleashed. It’s the beginning of the end. The last battle has begun. Now she’s out there, destroying the world.”
“She?” Drake asked. “It’s a girl?”
“In this case,” Bailey said. “There have been others before—male, female, hermaphrodite, various races. This one—” She nodded at me. “—happens to be your girlfriend and her identical twin, bound as one, unleashing ultimate destruction upon the Earth. I believe Kathan was trying to bind her to him. If he succeeded, he’ll have a shot at killing God and ruling the universe in His place.”
“Killing God?” Clarion’s girlfriend said at the same time as a crow-boy asked, “How can there have been others? The world still exists.”
“The others were stopped before they destroyed the whole planet,” Bailey said. “And like anything else, they possessed varying levels of power and they were directed at different targets. Atlantis, Pangaea, Easter Island, outer worlds, peoples and races of NPs we have no name for because they were wiped from the face of the Earth before recorded history.”
“How do we stop it—her?” Clarion asked. “How do we stop her?”
“That is a good question.” Bailey shrugged. “If this one is the final Destroyer, the Godkiller, as Kathan believes her to be, then we can’t. Not without the Sword of Judgment.”
“How do we know if Kathan’s right and she is the Godkiller?”
Bailey gave him a wry smile. “I’ll let you know after she kills God and ends the world.”
A couple of the crows laughed.
“So, what do we do now?” Drake asked.
“We wait for backup,” Clarion said.
This horseshit again. I stood up.
Clarion eyed me, but didn’t stop talking “The messengers should be back tomorrow night or the night after. If they’re bringing any reinforcements, we can…”
He trailed off when I went to Scout’s body. I’d laid her out on the glass piercing counter and washed her face off as good as I could when we got there. The piece of black stained glass was still sticking out of her chest. I hadn’t been able to pull it out without breaking it, so I’d left it.
I picked her up. Her skin was as cold as mine. It was going to be a long walk to Harper’s house. But that was fine. It was fine. I could carry her. I was a vampire. I was strong enough to carry her twice that distance, no problem. I’d carry the girl who had been like a little sister to me ever since I could remember back to my last living friend and show Harper how I’d killed the only thing she had left in the world.
No way Scout would grow up to be like me now. Maybe that was a good thing.
Jim held the door open for me and I nodded thanks at him.
I swallowed. Scout not getting the chance to grow up wasn’t a good thing. Anything else in the world was better than that. Anything else in the world would be better than carrying the seventeen-and-three-quarters-year-old who I’d gotten killed back to her big sister.
But I had to do it. So I did.
Colt
“You’re different,” Tiffani said once.
I couldn’t carry her and talk at the same time, so I just nodded.
“Whole,” she said.
