The Brightest Embers, Page 27

  “Now the spearhead,” I heard Demetrius say, unbridled joy in his tone. “Don’t merely dip the end of it in the bowl. Drop the entire spearhead into it.”

  No wonder the bowl was so big. That was the only way the spearhead could fit inside. And couldn’t I at least die before witnessing Demetrius’s greatest triumph? Damn that bowl. From my vantage point on the ground, its huge, shiny surface filled much of the space past Adrian’s arm, which my head was currently lolled upon. I’d tell Adrian to move himself or his shadows so that he blocked it, but I didn’t have the strength to speak.

  Besides, Move a little to the right would hardly be a good choice for my last words.

  Costa picked up the bundle of royal-colored cloths and unwrapped it. With that, I finally saw the ancient relic I’d first tried so hard to find, then tried to convince myself not to find and then finally tried to find again.

  It didn’t look like the most sought-after weapon in the world. It looked like an extended metal arrow with a triangle point at the tip. It was wider at its base where the pilum would connect and thus triple its overall length. Of course, Demetrius was waiting to reassemble the weapon until after he’d cursed this part of it, too.

  “Is that blood?” Costa said, tilting the spearhead.

  My vision was dimming too much to tell, but Demetrius didn’t have a problem seeing it. He let out a derisive sound.

  “So the rumors are true—the blood can’t be washed off. Discovering that scared Longinus into abandoning the Roman army after his role in the execution, or so they say.”

  I silently willed Costa to throw the spearhead at Demetrius instead of putting it in the bowl. Even if Costa didn’t impale him with it, maybe getting brushed by the spearhead would kill Demetrius. But Costa didn’t, and Adrian didn’t break his word by interfering, either. He only kissed my face again.

  “I love you, Ivy,” he whispered.

  I love you, too, I thought as Costa went over and held the spearhead over the golden bowl. Then I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t want to see Demetrius’s face when the spearhead was dropped into the bowl. I didn’t want to see what the spearhead looked like after the silvery-colored iron had turned black. Or see Demetrius hold up what had once been the world’s most hallowed relic yet was now the world’s most evil. I didn’t—

  An explosion went off. My eyes flew open, yet I didn’t see the walls crumbling, the furniture overturning or anything else that would account for the enormity of the shockwave that had just hit me. More confusing, no one else seemed to notice that anything had happened.

  Demetrius peered over the edge of the bowl, which hadn’t even shifted despite the concussive force that had blasted into me. “Why is nothing happening?”

  “How should I know?” Costa said curtly.

  How could they think nothing was happening? If they hadn’t felt that incredible expulsion of power a moment ago, couldn’t they feel its equally thunderous intake now, as if the entire island had suddenly sucked in its breath?

  “Bury it completely beneath the grains,” Demetrius ordered Costa. “Do it!”

  Costa said something I didn’t catch, but I assume he pushed the spearhead all the way beneath the ground-up remains of the cursed tree, because Demetrius’s frown cleared.

  “That should do it,” the demon muttered. “Now, one of—”

  Demetrius didn’t get to finish his sentence because the room exploded again. This time, everyone felt it.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  LIGHT SHOT FROM the bowl, a hundred times brighter than Zach at his most dazzling. The bowl shattered and the ceiling disintegrated the moment the light touched it. Then that light widened and Adrian flung himself over me. Now I couldn’t see anything except his chest and part of his shadows, which looked like they tried to cover me, too. But before my gaze, they burned away, until nothing was left of the ones that I could see.

  My ears were ringing from the blast, so I didn’t hear it at first. Moments later, I realized the other high-pitched sounds partially deafening me were screams coming from every direction, none louder than the one with the voice I most hated.

  “No!” Demetrius’s shout cut through all the others. “NO!”

  I couldn’t see what had him howling in despair, and I really regretted that. Whatever it was, I loved it.

  Suddenly, Adrian was gone and I was back on the floor. I looked up to see Adrian wrestling Demetrius away from me. The demon’s eyes were wild from rage, and dark rivulets ran from them, his ears and his nose.

  “She did this!” Demetrius howled. “She stopped the spearhead from turning into a cursed object. It has to be her!”

  It absolutely wasn’t. I couldn’t even scoot out of the way to avoid them, let alone stop a hallowed object from turning dark. Then Demetrius spun Adrian around, and I got my first look at Adrian’s back since that light had exploded from the golden bowl. If I’d had enough breath left in me, I would have gasped.

  His shadows were completely gone. All that was left to show that they had ever been there were scorch marks on his now-bare back. When the light had burned them away, it had burned them to the point where they’d caught his shirt on fire, too.

  It left Adrian with nothing but his strength to fight Demetrius, and the demon was stronger. But he’d expelled a lot of his power earlier, plus been injured by the light explosion, judging from him bleeding out of every hole in his face. Demetrius couldn’t summon his minions to help him, either. If the demon looked to be in bad shape, his minions were in far worse.

  They were on their knees, that same inky substance shooting from eyes, ears, noses and mouths, but in far greater quantities. It looked as if their bodies were convulsively purging out all the evil that Demetrius had given them when he tethered his soul to theirs and turned them into minions. I wasn’t surprised when they started turning into ashes, their bodies unable to handle the effects of the supernatural assault.

  “Let go of me, Adrian!” Demetrius shouted. “I tried to spare her for you, but the spearhead didn’t transform. It has to be her fault! Can’t you see that she must die now and stay dead in order for this to succeed?”

  “If she dies forever, then so do you,” Adrian snarled, spinning Demetrius around so that the demon was farther away from me. “Costa!” Adrian yelled. “Connect the pilum to the spearhead!”

  “No!” Demetrius screamed. “Don’t! I’ll kill you!”

  Costa, who appeared to be the only one uninjured from the massive explosion of light, ran over to the remains of the golden bowl. The only reason he almost fell was because the ground started shaking. Then Costa plunged his hand into the pile of sawdust and withdrew the spearhead. Grains from the cursed tree still fell from it when Costa shoved it onto the top of the pilum.

  Another shockwave blasted into me that no one else seemed to feel. It brought back all the pain that had previously dimmed, until my body felt like it was being scalded within and without. The agony was so intense, it cleared the haze from my mind and even brought my vision back to momentary clarity. That was how I was able to see the pilum go from deepest ebony back to its normal brown shade. Attaching the spearhead to the pilum had somehow cleansed it from being a cursed object. Now the pilum was hallowed again, and the fully reassembled, supercharged weapon was only a short distance away.

  “Give it to me, Costa!” I shouted, reaching out with the only hand I had left.

  I don’t know how I had the strength for those words when I couldn’t speak before, but I did, and my voice rang out with all the hopeful desperation in me. I even managed to twist myself into a sitting position. I must be siphoning energy from the rejoined hallowed weapon. That was the only explanation.

  “No!”

  Demetrius’s assault became so frenzied that it pushed Adrian back toward Costa. Then he shoved Adrian so hard that Adr
ian lost his grip on him. But he tangled his feet in Demetrius’s at the last second, and both of them ended up tumbling to the floor.

  Costa looked at the tangle of bodies in a life-and-death struggle in front of him. They blocked his way to me, and the fighting was so fierce, it could overtake him at any moment.

  Costa muttered something in Greek. Then he hurled the reassembled spear at me while yelling, “Catch!”

  Who throws a spear at a one-armed dying woman? I thought incredulously. But, as if that single word activated a muscle-memory reaction in me, my left hand shot up and I caught the wooden part of the spear as if I’d been snatching spears out of the air my entire life.

  Demetrius met my eyes at that exact moment, and I saw something in his that I had never seen before.

  Fear.

  Then power crashed into me with the same force that had burned away Adrian’s shadows, killed the minions and severely injured Demetrius. I felt it killing me, too, but I felt something else, and it made the indescribable agony of all my blood vessels suddenly bursting worth it.

  I felt light blast into every demon realm, blowing them open as easily as that other light had blown the roof off this building. Felt the legions of minions they contained being struck by the same violent, deadly convulsions I’d seen here, and felt the demons recoiling in crippling pain, too. I also felt where those new passageways of light led to: the Archon realms, reminding me that Zach had said every time demons made a new realm, Archons struck back by making one of their own.

  More important, like a whisper across my soul, I felt the same emotion from the countless trapped humans who were finally seeing light after too many years of darkness.

  Hope.

  Demetrius had often taunted me that I never stood a chance. Too many times, I’d believed that. But the last thing I felt was the knowledge that the power behind the unstoppable third hallowed weapon had never been in danger of being used by demons. Demetrius had been right about one thing: all of this had been planned long in advance. It was he and the other demons who had been doomed from the start.

  With that final, satisfying thought, I died.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  I’D HEARD PEOPLE describe post-death, out-of-body experiences. They talked about floating above a surgical room after their hearts stopped during an operation, or seeing their prone bodies following a car accident. All the ones I’d heard featured people saying they didn’t feel any particular attachment to what they were looking at, as if all their normal emotions were too petty once they were outside their bodies.

  I didn’t have that kind of blasé attitude.

  For one, I could have cheered myself hoarse when I saw Adrian take advantage of Demetrius staring at me in fear after I grabbed the spear. While I was being blasted apart internally, Adrian grabbed Demetrius’s throat and ripped his heart out of it. Then, while his father’s body was still falling to the ground, he flipped Demetrius in an MMA-worthy move that ended with the demon on his back and Adrian’s leg around his neck. Adrian then used all his incredible strength to rip Demetrius’s head right off.

  Cue me doing cartwheels of joy despite not having a body.

  Adrian didn’t stop there. He also grabbed the biggest piece of the shattered golden bowl, spilling out the remains of the cursed tree that hadn’t been enough to overcome the power behind the spearhead. Then Adrian used that piece to beat Demetrius’s decapitated head in. Afterward, Adrian started bashing Demetrius’s body to a pulp with that heavy golden remnant. Costa finally stepped in and pulled Adrian off Demetrius, which I understood, although after everything Demetrius had done, I could’ve stood to see Adrian wail on his crumpled body a little longer.

  Adrian’s shoulders slumped as he dropped the now heavily dented piece and looked across the room. My body was there, and wow, did I look terrible. It looked like I’d showered in blood. I hadn’t, of course, but at some point, I must have rolled around in the puddle my wounds had made, because you couldn’t tell what color my hair was anymore. The only thing more jarring was seeing the stump at the end of my right elbow. It looked even more ragged with my new bird’s-eye view.

  Adrian ignored all of that grossness when he went over, threw his arms around the bloody, mangled mess that was my body and cried. It hurt to watch and not be able to do anything to comfort him. I wanted to tell him it was okay, that we’d done what we’d hoped to do and I wasn’t in pain or afraid anymore, but of course, I couldn’t say any of that.

  Costa knelt next to him. I was touched when I saw his shoulders heave with sobs, too. Then someone appeared behind them, although neither of them noticed.

  Zach. He stared at them, his expression showing more empathy than I’d ever seen from the Archon. Wow, he was capable of feeling deep emotion after all. Go figure.

  Zach suddenly looked straight up and one eyebrow rose in his usual, challenging way as if to say, Oh, really? If I still had eyes, they would have widened in shock. Could he hear me?

  Zach! I tried screaming, but he only tilted his head down and looked at Adrian and Costa again. That was when Adrian finally noticed him, and he swung around so fast, he was holding on to the hem of Zach’s hoodie before Zach could take a step backward.

  “Please,” Adrian said, his sapphire eyes never more vivid. “I don’t care what you were ordered. She did everything you people wanted her to do, even though she was pregnant, and she doesn’t deserve to have it end like this!”

  “As I told you and her many times before, I cannot raise her,” Zach began, only to have Adrian shove him away violently. Then, to my anguish, he grabbed the reassembled spear that had fallen a few feet from my body and hugged the length of the weapon to him.

  But he didn’t drop dead, which was obviously his intention, because he frowned at the weapon, then shook it as if that would make it work. Zach sighed and held out his hand. The spear pulled free of Adrian’s grip and zoomed over to Zach, turning itself spearhead-side up before the pilum landed in his hand.

  “The power it contained has been used as it was intended,” Zach said. “It is now depleted and can do you no harm.”

  “But you can,” Adrian said, and lunged at Zach.

  The Archon sidestepped him with a speed I might not have been able to track before. Then he held up his other hand, and Adrian was suddenly frozen in place.

  “Let me go,” Adrian snarled.

  “I know why you’re filled with more darkness and rage than you’ve ever felt before,” Zach said with his usual annoying calmness. “Your humanity died when Ivy did. The bond that had tethered your souls together dragged it with her into the grave. You are fully demon now.”

  Costa looked as stunned as I felt. Zach had previously assured me that Adrian would survive my death because his humanity was the smallest part of his Judian/demon makeup. But he sure hadn’t told me that it would result in this.

  “Fine.” Adrian was the only one who wasn’t reacting in shock to this news. “And Archons kill demons, especially the Archon general himself, so do your job, Michael.”

  “I could,” Zach agreed coolly. “Or you could use your newfound, fully demon powers to raise her.”

  Now Adrian looked stunned, and I was so blown away, I couldn’t even think straight. “I can do that?” Adrian managed.

  “You can now,” Zach said, his look turning knowing. “Had Ivy not died, your remaining humanity would have blocked your ability to raise her, but as a full demon, there is nothing stopping you.”

  “But you said she was forbidden from being raised.” Adrian sounded confused, as if he was searching for the catch to this.

  Zach’s mouth quirked in a hint of a smile. “No, I said that I was forbidden from raising her.”

  “You sneaky Archon,” Costa breathed, his expression changing from shock to awe. “You knew all along that it would come to this, did
n’t you?”

  “I knew that it could,” Zach said simply. “But only if Ivy fulfilled her destiny while Adrian did not fulfill his.”

  I still found it hard to believe that I could actually come back. Yes, that was what Zach was saying, but it had been so often stressed to me that if I died, that was it—curtains! Finito! Adios!—that I struggled to comprehend that it wasn’t over.

  Adrian appeared just as shell-shocked, yet he went over to my body and knelt next to it. “What do I do?”

  Zach stayed where he was. “You pour out every last drop of your power into her. Hold nothing back, and understand that when it is over, you will still technically be a demon, but you will have no demonic abilities left.”

  “How’s that?” Costa said, echoing my thought. “Demetrius raised people from the dead, and he still had his abilities afterward.”

  “Demetrius was older than this world,” Zach replied. “His powers had untold ages to strengthen and grow. Adrian’s are new, and doing this will deplete all of them.”

  “I don’t need them,” Adrian said, taking my left hand and bowing his head over it. “I only need her.”

  “Then pour your abilities into Ivy,” Zach said softly. “To do that, you must first let yourself feel all the pain you’re trying not to feel now. Hold none of it back. Then turn that pain into power and fill Ivy with it. Give it all to her, until you have nothing left, and then—” Zach looked up, and it felt like he met my eyes even though I didn’t know how that could be possible “—she will return to you.”

  Adrian dropped my hand and gathered me into his lap, holding me the way he had when I was dying. He even began rocking me again. When he pressed kisses onto my face and told me how much he loved me, every tear that slid down his cheeks felt like a tug on a body that I no longer had anymore.