“Genevieve,” he said, all pearly whites and sparkling blue eyes. “My sweet. You actually came.”
Stunned by the fact he seemed to be expecting me, I stepped down into the arena pit, strode closer and stood between him and Jude. I didn’t dare drop my gaze to Jude, knowing I might crumble at the bloody sight of him. I kept my body alert and ready for attack, wishing with all my might that I could sift out of here. But I’d been told on more than one occasion that sifting out of the realm of the soul collectors was impossible. Sifting within the walls was apparently allowed, but sifting out of here was a different matter. At present, I needed to focus on the obstacle standing in front of me.
On closer inspection, I saw the irregular stitching around his neck was a gruesome, Frankenstein-style job, purplish wounds swollen and seeping around each stitch.
He stepped toward me in his confident, slow gait, charming smile in place, though the scar I’d given him pulled tight on one side. Before he was within three feet of me, I whipped up my arm, sword pointed at his chest. He stopped only when his skin met the blade.
“Now, my sweet. We aren’t going to do this dance again, are we? I thought we’d skip the foreplay and go straight to the bedroom. I have one prepared in the tower, though I spend most of my time down here. Playing with my new toy.”
His gaze drifted down my body, then jerked to Jude on the floor behind me, his mouth twitching on one side.
“Are you absolutely insane?” was all I could manage. I vibrated with rage.
“No, darling. I knew you’d come, so I made sure the former object of your affection was rendered useless. And as you can see”—he gestured his whip-free hand to Jude—“his body is worthless to you now. His mind was already gone when I found him. There’s nothing left.”
“
No.
” I shook my head, hot tears spilling down my cheeks despite my determination to show only strength, not weakness. Had Lethe wiped his mind completely? I couldn’t believe it.
Wouldn’t
believe it.
“Oh yes,” Danté whispered, low and intimate. “He is gone. But I am here, as I’ve always been. Waiting for you.”
My hand trembled, the blade point scraping the surface of Danté’s chest. A streak of black blood oozed. He didn’t seem to care.
“Danté.”
“Yes, my sweet.”
“Even if this were true, there is nothing in this world or the next that would ever make me succumb to a twisted bastard like you.”
With a swift move, I lunged forward, thrusting with my blade. In a frighteningly fast spin, he swiveled out of the way to my right.
He laughed deep in his throat, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. His followers hissed with laughter in the stands, apparently enjoying this entertainment as much as the last.
“Actually, I’d kind of hoped you’d want to play rough. We have some unfinished business between us.”
With a sharp snap of his arm, the whip’s tail sailed out and cut my wrist, the force knocking my sword from my grip. Before the blade clanged to the stone floor, the whip flared out again and snaked around my waist, constricting like a serpent. I grabbed the rope, but it slithered of its own accord beneath my fingers. This weapon held the essence of Danté, his own personal spawn-infected torture device. He tugged me toward him.
“Come closer, darling. We’ve been parted far too long.”
Legs apart, I dug in my heels and pulled on the slithering rope. It writhed in my hands, but I kept a tight grip.
“I’m not the same woman you knew before, Danté.”
“No?”
“No.”
Pulling my power of Light forward, I shed my cast of illusion. My skin beamed star bright, shining a white halo in the dingy dungeon. Dozens of demons hissed; some skittered out of the stands, unable to withstand the touch of my light, fanning outward in the dome. Danté’s shoulders grew taut with strain as he gripped the handle of the whip with both hands. His eyes bled blue to red, the beast in him rising to the surface.
Gripping the rope tighter, I stared into the crimson eyes of the demon who was once my captor, my possessor, and now my love’s abuser. Fueling my power into a tight orb of pulsating force inside my chest, I said to him, my voice a reverberating echo, “I don’t need weapons anymore.”
He bared fanged teeth, transforming into the beast that he was, and yanked on his evil-infused whip, which slithered more tightly around my waist.
I smiled. None of it would be enough. I whispered the words of destruction. “
Mors liberabit vos
.”
Death will free you.
Like a bullet from a gun, I shot a ball of flaming light, channeling it from my chest down the whip, incinerating it into ash as my power zipped up the line to the demon prince. Danté opened his fanged mouth in a bellowing yell, howling like a desperate animal. The explosive impact of the orb hit his chest. The blast fried him into charred bits. The echo of my power rippled in white light across the room and sent the rest of the demons scuttling through the archway, clambering over one another to escape. My light filled the entire cavity of the domed arena.
I stood, chest heaving, till the light dissipated and there was no sound but the distant din of screaming demons and Danté’s hissing remains that littered the blood-smeared stone floor. For the first time, I was truly happy to be a Vessel of Light, to have the innate will and power to wield death against an evil entity of darkness. If any creature deserved to be wiped from existence, it was Danté. And now he’d never haunt my days or nights. He’d never hurt anyone again, damned souls or free. He was good and truly gone.
I spun toward Jude and fell to my knees. His battered cheek rested on the stone where he’d been positioned for beating and torture. One eye had swollen shut. His lips were wrinkled and cracked from lack of moisture, his body drained of so much blood. The tears streamed hot again, scalding my cheeks. His body was lean from abuse and lack of nourishment.
“Jude.”
His one good eye rolled wide, full black and seeing nothing, before closing again. I reached out and put two shaking fingers on the pulse point on his neck. A faint beat, but it was there. After unlocking the wrist shackles, I tried to lift him around the waist, my hands sliding on his blood-slicked skin. He was dead weight. His body slid off the bench and flipped onto his back. He gasped in pain when his skin hit stone, but his eyes never opened. He slipped back into silence, fists clenched tight.
I gasped, covering my mouth with my hands. The razor-sharp whip had scored him hundreds of times, cutting long slashes into his skin. The Celtic cross tattoo that adorned his chest was indiscernible under the torn flesh and blood. Bruises and gashes covered his legs, probably from being dragged from one torture station to the next. I bent over him, gently lifting his head.
“Jude,” I whispered. “Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Not a flutter of eyelashes, not a twitch of his hand. I pressed my lips to his forehead—one of the few places unmarred—and wept for the pain inflicted upon him. I wondered how he could possibly recover from such brutal suffering. Seething hatred welled up inside me till I could see nothing but red. I wished Danté were alive so I could kill him again. And again.
Swiping my tears away with the back of my hand, I inhaled a deep breath. “Get it together.” I set his head gently down and stood to pick up my katana and returned it to its sheath.
A shriek overhead. But one that made my heart soar with relief.
“Mira!”
She swooped down onto the bloody bench that had held Jude a moment before.
“I’m so glad to see you.” Her mere presence made my heart lift a little.
I squatted beside Jude and pulled his upper body into a sitting position. He groaned in pain but never roused. I strained under his weight. To lift him was utterly impossible.
“Damn it. I need you to stand up, Jude.”
No response. I could sift with him to get back across the realm, but there was no way I could lift him. Killing Danté had drained my strength. How was I possibly going to do this?
Mira chirped and fluttered closer to me till she perched on his opposite shoulder.
“No,
don’t
. He’s hurt.”
She clicked her beak in defiance. She was gentle with her talons, barely pinching his skin. A glow emanated from her chest, brightening into a silvery orb, the same as the bright light that burned out of my chest the day she came to me. She shot me a sharp-eyed glare with her fiery gaze over Jude’s shoulder. She willed me to understand. I tried again to lift him. This time, he was much lighter. Mira tottered as I slowly got him to his feet, with my neck beneath his arm for support, gripping his waist and the arm I’d draped over my shoulder.
“What other secrets are you hiding?” I asked.
She chirped twice as if to fuss at me for stalling.
“Okay. I need you to go to the entrance where we came in. See if it’s safe.”
Instead of flying, she sifted herself away with a tiny crackle. I realized then that sifting rules applied to her as well. Seconds later, she reappeared with three high chirps. All was clear.
I imagined the corridor, the one where the shackled women were being kept. A millisecond later, I stood outside the door, Jude’s body leaning heavily against me. Mira perched on a craggy outcropping, one of many jutting from this disordered heap of stones. The corridor was empty, but I heard the distinct whimpering of women on the other side of the door. One cried out in a high-pitched scream. Dim torchlight from within proved they’d managed to get themselves back in order.
“When I open the door, Mira, do that thing you did before. Okay?”
She clicked her beak and opened her snowy wings at the ready. Using the wall to help me keep Jude upright, I stretched out my left arm, lifted the latch and shoved the door open. I caught the angry grimace of a three-horned demon with a hammer-like weapon in hand. Mira swept inside.
A demon growled, then a flash of blue-white light. Monstrous snarls and female screams filled the room as a burst of white flashed out into the dark corridor a second, third and fourth time. I couldn’t lean forward or I’d lose my grip on Jude, but I heard the clamoring wails, then thunderous footsteps.
Thud, thud, thud
before the gargantuan leader collapsed in the doorway, burned down to a skeleton but still twitching and smoking. I dared one step forward with Jude’s heavy weight leaning precariously against me.
Silence but for a repetitive tinkling sound and sparkle of light. I struggled to keep Jude up as I peered inside to discover the source of the sound. Mira pecked at the chains that bound the women to the wall. They stared wide-eyed at the white bird who’d saved them from eternal torture.
“Come, Mira. They must make it on their own from here.”
One of the women was already up and hauling another skinny girl to her feet. I couldn’t take these poor souls out of hell. They were here for one reason or another, but I was glad to free them from the likes of this place. Better they dwell unmolested in some dark cavern in Lethe’s realm than here.
Mira flapped into the corridor, then sifted away. Seconds later, she was back with a friendly chirp. As before, I’d follow her lead, sifting to the spot I’d used as a target on the way here. Back down the mountain, skipping the ledge where the man-eating demons camped, across the black river into the misty realm of Lethe, through the naked-limbed forest where I’d helped the teenage boy, across the open plain where Lethe’s souls hid in crevices and behind rocks to avoid any contact with another being, and finally to the door where I stood facing Lethe’s veil.
Exhausted, I let Jude slide to the ground, helping him gently onto his back. He made no sound or movement, his body slack except for his balled fists. I checked his pulse again. Faint but beating. I pulled my flask from inside my jacket and unscrewed the top. Lifting his head from my lap, I pressed the rim to his lips. Most of the water seeped into the dusty earth, but, then Jude’s throat worked, and two swallows made their way down before he coughed and spluttered.
“Jude. Jude. Can you hear me?”
No sign of consciousness left me chilled to the bone. A cold mist draped Lethe’s lair. Jude’s naked and beaten form lay there unmoving, his wounds still seeping blood. I feared he would never recover, even if we made it out of here. The reality of what awaited back home fell like a heavy stone to the pit of my stomach.
Those lips, cut and bruised, had whispered a hundred passionate words of love to me. Those hands, scraped to the bone, had touched me countless times, reminding me again and again who owned my heart. This body, torn to shreds by a sadist’s whip, had shown me the power and pleasure a man can give a woman when she succumbs to her desire. Helpless and half-alive, he was no less the man I knew and loved, but the heartbreak of what he suffered crippled me with fear.
Mira chirped and clicked with impatience.
I wiped the dampness from my eyes with my sleeve. “Yes. I
know
. It’s time to get out of here.”
Though I’d been told it was impossible, I lifted Jude’s upper body onto my lap, gripped his biceps and tried to sift. My skin prickled with the sensation of moving toward another dimension. Then nothing. We never budged. Whatever force field blocked the passage from sifting, it was strong and held firm.