The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (24 page)

It had all happened so fast — the power of the shin-buto had made Jovian like a blur, and the rephaim had moved just as quickly. Angelica barely had time to react and draw her blade before Jovian went down and didn’t show any signs of getting back up.

But now that her blade was in hand, the power of the wyrd sang through her, and she blasted out with a torrent of lightning. Purple lightning sang outward, lighting the ground with its fire and burning the air, throwing the smell of sulfur around the courtyard.

The rephaim stopped mid-stride and turned to Angelica. His face was still stained with Maeven’s blood, but if she thought about that now, she would lose her edge. The rephaim came for her, apparently oblivious to her wyrded storm.

She added fire to the mix, lashing out with a blaze that mingled with the lightning. The rephaim paused, blasted back by the force of her attack, and where the purple lightning touched, feathers and skin began to smolder.

She needed help, but Shelara and Caldamron were still out of it, under the thrall of the verax-acis, and Joya was already working her way toward the deplorable mind-sucker.

The rephaim screamed, an unholy sound that shivered the snow in the air and made the mountains quake as they tossed back his call.

Angelica eased her way toward him, shin-buto in one hand, wyrd blazing out of the other. She was starting to tire, and she knew that the sword was as well. But she had to do this. She directed her inferno toward the wings, and they burst into flame like the driest of tinder, kindling under the raging heat of a forest fire.

Twin bonfires bloomed out of the rephaim’s back, melting feather and sinew. Membranous liquid sloughed off the bone of its wings as the fallen screamed.

Angelica was nearly on him when he stood and shrugged off the blaze in a ripple of power that reverberated through the city, extinguishing Angelica’s wyrded storm in a whisper of violet light. She stumbled back, breathless from the exchange, and that was when the rephaim acted.

He grabbed her around the throat with a meaty hand and lifted her flailing body clear off the ground. He looked her in the eyes, and those black pools seemed to drink in all hope and fight she had left in her.

With a powerful blow, he slammed his fist into her gut, and Angelica crashed against one of the buildings.

She stood, her feet unsteady under her, her head swimming with stars, and lifted her hand. Lightning fizzled across her palms, but wouldn’t obey her. She was too tired, and her brain too addled by the attack.

“Pitiful mortal,” the fallen taunted, his voice impossibly deep. “Not even with your wings yet. You will never make it to the tower.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Angelica said. “Your master wants me alive, so you had better hope you didn’t kill my brother.”

The rephaim faltered, looked behind him at where Jovian lay unconscious on the ground. The fallen shrugged.

“He’s still in there,” he said, turning back to Angelica. His wings were still smoldering, and she couldn’t imagine what kind of pain he was in. Maybe he was feeding off it? “He wants you alive, he never said anything about undamaged.”

While he talked Angelica got her bearings and raised her sword. “Well, you’re out of luck.”

He laughed, a deep throaty laugh that Angelica could feel tumbling through her body, shaking the ground beneath her feet. “You are without your power, human.”

“Without my wyrd, not without power. This shin-buto belongs to Pharoh LaFaye,” Angelica hoped that struck fear into his heart, but all it did was make him laugh harder.

“
Once
belonged to her; it has since been reassigned to you. It holds no more power than you do, despite its previous owner.” He stepped closer, and Angelica had to fight the urge to retreat. She was out of options. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but she had to do something. There was no one to help her, no one to distract the rephaim.

He came close enough that she could feel his breath along her skin, and before he could say another word, she drove the shin-buto straight up through his stomach and into his chest. There it struck something that wasn’t organ or bone, but something harder.

The steel of Jovian’s shin-buto reverberated with the power held captive within Angelica’s sword. She felt her blade sing with power, joining with the power of his sword. An answering vibration came through the pommel, and the rephaim stumbled back.

Angelica lost contact with the sword. She darted forward, trying to grab the pommel, but the rephaim turned, stumbling further away. He clawed at the blade, trying to wrench it free, but it wouldn’t budge.

He collapsed to his knees and arched his back. He opened his mouth to scream, and out of his gaping maw sprung forth a powerful white light. Now that Angelica watched, she could see fissures and creases opening up along his skin, splitting him like weathered stone. Light poured out of his being, refracting off the falling snow, illuminating the area with blinding white light.

And then the light was gone, and so was the rephaim. The shin-buto blades fell to the ground where he had once been.

Relieved, Angelica sagged to the ground, allowing herself a moment to catch her breath before gathering her sword and checking on Jovian.

Even as the snowfall began to thicken, Joya didn’t lose sight of the verax-acis. She raced through the distance, waiting to get a better sight of him, her wyrd humming through her body. And then, just as she was about to release it, the verax-acis turned and fixed her with its dead eyes.

All the memories of what she’d endured came back to her: all of the fear, the torture, the feeling of bugs in her brain. On the snow she could smell the burning wood and flesh of the plantation from her most recent vision as the power of the verax-acis threatened to drown her once more.

“No!” she yelled, flinging out her arms, and a torrent of pink fire consumed the verax-acis, combusting his robes and swirling around him.

But then the vision wavered, and the fire was gone, and Joya was kneeling in the snow at the mercy of the verax-acis, wondering if she had even lashed out with her power or not. She straightened, staring straight into the creature’s eyes. Every inch she rose was like fighting her way out of a grave. He bore down on her with his power, making Joya desire nothing more than to kneel before him, but she fought through it. Sweat bloomed on her lip, and her head began to pound, but through the pain, she rose higher.

This time when she lashed out, it was with lightning, blasting the verax-acis into the air and smashing him into the side of a building with such force that when he began to slide down the surface, he left behind a trail of blood.

Again the vision wavered, and Joya was on her knees, the verax-acis getting closer and closer to her.

And then, out of the darkness to her left came a blinding white flash.

The verax-acis stumbled back, and Joya could almost see them, the ghosts summoned by Cianna to protect them and keep them safe. They converged on the verax-acis, and through her wyrd Joya could hear the hum of their lies, chasing the verax-acis further away from her as he fled. But she wouldn’t let him go. With a twist of her mind, Joya hardened the air around the verax-acis, freezing him in mid-flight.

He was weak now, his focus obscured. It was her chance to strike, and she did. Joya held her hand up and conjured water. The pink liquid formed in her hand like a spear, where the air quickly froze it. And then she released it, the spear flying straight and true, skewering the verax-acis through the chest. Blood slashed across the snow. With another twist of her mind, the ice exploded, showering chunks and bits of the verax-acis around her.

She raced to Cianna’s side as the necromancer started to come to. In the distance Joya could hear Caldamron and Shelara coming back to themselves as well.

“Oh, dear Goddess, Joya, I saw the worst things!” Cianna said, clinging to her cousin, casting terrified eyes at her.

“I know,” Joya said, nodding. “But they were just what the verax-acis wanted you to see, they weren’t real.” She was comforting Cianna, but also trying to soothe her own emotions. No matter the conviction she put in the words to Cianna, Joya couldn’t believe them. They had seemed so real, like she wasn’t actually seeing what the verax-acis wanted her to, and more like she was seeing something that had happened. “They play off our fears,” she said to herself and Cianna. “Whatever you saw wasn’t real.”

“Unless it was,” a menacing voice said from out of the darkness.

Cianna jumped up beside Joya, and peered out into the thickness of night. But they couldn’t see anything. Through the snow a darkness came closer, like a cloud of night moving in on them. Tendrils of blackness snaked out of the distance and through the city, plunging it into night.

Laphrael led Grace down the hall from where she had come, through the altar room, where the moonlight shone through the atrium, painting silver silhouettes on the floor. From there he took the central spoke, behind the chair, down a darkened corridor lit by insubstantial lamplight. After the intense light of the altar room, Grace was nearly blind, but she kept following Laphrael’s back, which almost glowed in the darkness.

As they neared the end of the hall, Grace could hear voices from behind a closed door. She recognized Sara’s voice. Laphrael didn’t wait, nor did he knock. He pushed through the door as if he owned the basilica.

All eyes turned to Grace and Laphrael as the door thundered against the wall.

“I’m sorry,” Grace started to say, apologizing for the intrusion.

“This is who we need to protect — not the High Votary, but the Moonchild,” Laphrael said, cutting through the silence brought on by their entrance. He indicated Grace.

“Well, hello to you too,” Annbell remarked.

“What do you mean, we need to protect Grace?” Atorva asked.

“I told you,” Laphrael said to the High Votary as if he’d already explained this and didn’t want to do it again. “When the Goddess sent me here it was with instructions to protect her body in the realms. I came here thinking that would be you, naturally.”

“And it’s not?” Atorva asked, his weathered face wrinkling with confusion.

“That’s what I’m telling you now,” Laphrael said. Grace blanched at the way the angel was speaking to the High Votary. She had never even heard of a person speaking to the High Votary in such a way, but then again, Laphrael wasn’t a person.

“Sorry for our confusion!” Rowan said, bowing grandiosely. “How foolish we are to
assume
that the chosen body of the Goddess in the realms
isn’t
the actual body of the Goddess in the realms.”

Grace backed away a little. The room was high with attitudes. She was used to being the final voice in most affairs she was concerned in, but here she felt nothing but a child, watching a play of power before her. Apparently Laphrael wasn’t as well-received as she thought he would be.

“Atorva was elected by
humans
,” he said the word scornfully. “Grace is the Moonchild.”

Atorva sat down heavily, but the others gathered within the room didn’t seem to understand what the title meant.

“The Moonchild is real?” Atorva asked.

“I’m lost,” Sara said, massaging the space above her eyebrows. “What, exactly, is the Moonchild?”

“She is the body of the Goddess in the realms,” Atorva said.

“And Grace has
always
been the Moonchild?” Rowan asked.