I needed to keep thinking positively. I had the Sword of Caelum, and although it had failed me last time, this time my faith would see us through. Somehow, we’d find a way to win. Gora-don couldn’t be invincible. Because that meant we’d already lost. And that was a result I simply couldn’t accept.
“Fools!” the demon hissed. One wing lifted to the sky.
“Now, my children. End this now.”
The demons who’d been moving slowly now speeded up, surrounding us, moving in for the kill.
“Gora-don,” I said. “We have to go after him. Kill the maker and we’ll kill all of these guys.”
“You’re sure?”
I remembered what Father Corletti had told me. About how David and I were connected now. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”
“Easier said than done,” David said. “Especially as rumor has it he’s invincible.”
“There has to be a way,” I said, tossing my now-empty water gun aside, then lunging forward. I nailed a demon through the eye with my splinted finger even as I kicked backwards to loose the one who’d grabbed hold of my ankle. “Got any tricks up your sleeve this time?”
“Fresh out of cardinal fire,” he said, as we both kicked and chopped and slashed our way through our seemingly endless horde of attackers. “Sorry.”
“And it would have been so perfect,” I quipped.
“This time, I think it would have its downside,” he said, then shoved the point of his cane through the eye of an old lady barreling down on him.
I grimaced as the throng in front of me parted, making way for one single demon rushing toward me, the sound of Gora-don’s cackle lifting all the way up to heaven. I gasped, stunned by what I saw.
Eric.
Fresh from the grave, his body restored courtesy of the Lazarus Bones.
“No!” I cried, my eyes on Eric’s body even as Gora-don swooped through the sky, landing in front of David with wings spread.
“What’s the matter, Katie?” Eric’s body said. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“Kill him, Katie,” David shouted, but I hesitated. So help me, I hesitated, and in that split second of indecision, he grabbed me, yanking me toward him and catching me around the neck. Fifteen yards away, David was holding his own against Gora-don, and no help to me. If I was going to survive this, I was going to do it on my own.
“Time to die, sweetheart,” Eric said, the words ending in a howl, low and guttural as a stream of holy water hit him in the face.
“Get your hands off her, you filthy swine,” Stuart called—his voice filling me with both joy and relief.
I twisted out of the Eric-demon’s reach, then saw Stuart and Eddie rushing forward, armed with super-squirters, knives, and crossbows.
“Easier than arguing with him,” Eddie said. “And you sounded like you needed the help.”
“You will all die now,” Eric said, standing back up and rushing toward Stuart.
Eddie got him with another blast of holy water, then screamed at me to go help David. “I’ll watch this one,” he said with a nod toward Stuart, who was actually managing to hold his own. “You take that sword and put it to good use.”
Since that was an idea I was more than happy to get behind, I raced toward where David and Gora-don sparred, David lunging with the saber from his cane even as the demon seemed to effortlessly parry.
“Weakling,” it hissed. “Do you really think you can win against me? You cannot. Do not even try. Join me instead. Join me, and serve at my right hand.”
“I’m thinking no,” David said, even as I rushed forward to thrust the Sword of Caelum right where the demon’s heart would be.
Gora-don only laughed. “You see?” he said. “Thank you, Kate darling, for participating in my little demonstration. I am invincible, and even though Goramesh resides within, he is no more himself. The prophecy,” he said, spreading his wings and lifting himself tall to the sky, “is no more.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “There has to be a way.”
“Fool,” the demon hissed. “Little fool.”
“Kate!” Stuart called. “
Kate
.”
I turned, then blanched as I saw Stuart barely fending off three demons in full attack mode. Eddie was nearby, trying to fight his way toward my husband, but he wasn’t managing; the crush of demons was too thick, and it was all he could do to defend himself.
“Hang on, Stuart! I’m coming!” I turned to race that way, but a swarm of demons blocked my path as well, and though I cut them down with the sword, they just kept coming.
No
, I screamed in my head. This couldn’t be the end. We couldn’t die here. Evil could not be allowed to win.
But it
was
winning. Even as I held the sword that could supposedly bring us victory, we were losing.
We had failed. The sword had failed us.
Or had it?
I shivered, my thoughts turning dark.
Perhaps the sword hadn’t failed at all. Perhaps we’d been wrong about who was prophesized to wield it.
I whipped around, slicing a demon in two at the waist as I did so. Behind me, Gora-don still toyed with David, now battered and bleeding from fending off the demon’s claws.
It was, I realized, a game to the demon now. He believed himself to be invincible, and he was going to play with David and me in turn, tormenting us until he’d achieved his revenge, then tossing us aside to die.
I gritted my teeth. Not if I had anything to say about it.
Stuart’s cries ripped through the air, and I knew we were almost out of time.
“David!” I called, then hurled the sword toward him. He watched, perplexed, as it spun hilt over handle through the sky. “Use it. Use it
now
.”
“What are you—?”
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, simply steeled his face and lunged forward, planting the sword up to the hilt in Gora-don’s gut.
At first, nothing happened. Then a flood of purple light seemed to consume the demon, whose disbelieving expression was almost comical.
“What?” the demon cried. “How?”
But he never got an answer. The purple light consumed him, and the demon disappeared in a puff. And as he did, the army of demons dropped to the ground, the demonic essence sucked out of each of their bodies.
I looked around at the cemetery, now looking much like a battlefield, and had to wonder what the authorities were going to think.
“What happened?” Stuart called from where he lay on the ground, his voice soft but strong.
“We won,” I said, drawing in deep breaths of sweet air.
“Damn straight we did,” Eddie said.
Only David said nothing. He simply looked at me, asking
how
without speaking a word.
“I wasn’t the one in the prophecy,” I said, simply. That was the short version of the answer. The long version was how I realized. So many hints and clues coming together. Eric’s bloody palm opening Abaddon’s chamber so many years ago. His temper. The blackness in his eyes. Abaddon’s cryptic comments here and earlier with Ben, references to cardinal fire and the breaking down of walls.
The prophecy didn’t refer to my giving birth to a child who would grow up to be a Demon Hunter.
It referred to Eric, in whose soul was brought forth a new kind of Hunter. A demonic Hunter, once trapped, but set free by the very cardinal fire that had once saved us from Abaddon’s wrath.
I didn’t know how. I didn’t know why.
But Gora-don’s death proved out that I was right.
Eric was part demon . . . and he’d been fighting his nature for years.
“Kate—” he said, and I realized that he understood. More than that, he knew about this secret inside of him.
“It’s okay,” I said, brushing my hand over his cheek, touching the face of a man I’d thought I knew so well, and was only beginning to understand that I didn’t really know him at all.
“Kate,” he said. “I love you. It’s not what you—”
I held up a hand, stopping him. “I love you, too,” I said. “I don’t think anything could change that.” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, realizing exactly how broad a category
anything
was. But I’d spoken the truth and I wasn’t inclined to take back the words.
“I don’t understand everything,” I continued. “But I trust you, David. I trust you to explain everything to me in time.” I took a breath, then kissed him on the cheek. “Right now, though, I have to go check on my husband.”
“Kate,” Stuart said as I knelt down beside him. “Exciting life you lead.”
“It has its moments,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“A little shaky, but I’m alive.”
“So am I,” I said. “Thanks for saving me back there. I think I owe you big time.”
“I know what I want my reward to be.”
“You do?” I asked, amused.
“You,” he said simply, his eyes cutting to David. “There’s more going on here than I realize. More between you and David than I understand. But I’m going to fight for you,” he said, his voice strong.
He looked at me, his eyes filled with both love and determination.
“And Kate,” he added, his words cutting deep into my soul, “I’m not going to lose.”