Straight into the Badlands.
A fact that he seemed to recall quite vividly.
“Pythia,” he hissed.
And then that foot was coming down on me.
Chapter Fifty-five
Somebody screamed, but I didn’t think it was me. Because I was experiencing the sensation of being squashed flat as a pancake. And I was experiencing it, since spirits don’t have the same issues as humans with broken bones and rent flesh.
They do have other problems, though.
I felt the power loss, immediate and deadly. And realized that Apollo was trying to do to me what Daisy had done to all those faded ghosts, and steal whatever remained of my energy. But I wasn’t a remnant, and it hadn’t worked entirely.
But it had come close.
By the time he lifted up his foot, I was too weak to fight, or even to peel myself off the ground. I just lay there, watching Billy circle around, trying to reach me. But he was being given no opportunity. I’d killed Apollo, and he was determined to return the favor.
But he was going to tell me about it first.
“A lifetime,” he hissed, bending down. “That’s what it has felt like. Subsisting off these tattered dregs, watching the world I couldn’t enter, watching you, and waiting. And now you’re here.”
It was a hand this time, smashing down on whatever was left of me, pulling my remaining energy away. And worse than anything, even worse than dying, was knowing what he was going to do with it. “You’re going back,” I whispered.
“Ironic, isn’t it?” he asked, in faux sympathy. “Draining you will give me life again, and the Pythian power will do the rest. Who knew that the small piece of myself I carved out all those centuries ago would be my salvation? But with it, I can hunt. With it, I can feed. Before long, I’ll be as strong as I ever was. My only regret is that you won’t be here to see what I’m going to do to your friends, to your world, in your name. But I assure you, it will be—”
He cut off, I didn’t know why. I could hardly breathe, barely think. Everything was a panic of pain, horror, and hopelessness.
But I could still see.
Enough to make out the light that had just appeared in the distance, shining so brightly it hurt. If I could have moved, I’d have shaded my eyes. Instead, I just lay there, looking at what appeared to be a small star fallen to earth. Or an angel. Or . . .
A god.
A real one, a living one.
Because Caedmon suddenly didn’t look like himself at all. I’d thought him beautiful before, with features so perfect they didn’t seem real. But I could barely see them now, so eclipsed were they by the radiance of his power. Did you miss one, Mother? I wondered vaguely. Did you miss . . . ?
But she couldn’t have; the spell couldn’t have. But it could have missed a demigod. One not half human but half fey.
And I guessed that made all the difference.
Next to Caedmon’s brilliance, I was dim, powerless, uninteresting. Next to him, I was barely visible, just a shadow on the darkness. Next to him, I almost didn’t exist at all.
And Apollo must have thought so, too. Because he suddenly took off, drawn, like every other ghost I’d ever met, to the biggest source of power around. Leaving me to die in the darkness alone.
Or with Billy, who was doing something.
Instead of enveloping me as he had done on the drag, he was pushing and pulling and heaving and yanking. I didn’t understand why until I noticed that the number of sparkles in the air had increased. And that the pitch-blackness had lightened. And that there were ghosts zooming around now, zooming around everywhere, like hunters circling wounded prey.
Billy couldn’t carry me and fight them at the same time, so he was taking turns. But the closer to the barrier we came, the thicker they became, until they felt like a smothering cloud. Until I could barely see the darkness anymore. Until Billy was forced to drop me, standing over me with his usual pleasant, round face contorted into something unrecognizable, and a dreadful screech emanating from his lips: the tearing-metal sound of a ghostly challenge.
Many of the smaller spirits fled, not willing to take the risk. But the larger ones stuck around, deciding that a feast was worth a fight. And that was bad—that was very bad—because there were a lot of them and only one of Billy, and he couldn’t fight them all.
“Billy,” I whispered.
“We’re going to make it!”
“Billy—”
“Shut up, Cass!”
“I won’t shut up.” Because we weren’t going to make it; there were too many. And while none of them wanted to be first, as soon as one attacked, they’d all be on us. I knew that because I knew ghosts—and so did he. “If you stay, you’ll just die, too. But if you run—”
“Shut up!” He turned that horrifying visage on me, but it didn’t work. Because it didn’t look terrible to me. It looked like a friend. One I was suddenly desperately afraid for.
“—they’ll let you go,” I sobbed. “Please, Billy, they don’t want you—”
“Too bad, because they’re going to get me!” he snarled. “Next one who tries it never tries anything again. How bad you want it, huh?” He stared around at the all-enveloping cloud. “How bad?”
That last was a scream, echoing through the air. It was pretty intimidating, even to me, and it might have worked— on humans. But these weren’t. And while some had enough sanity left to understand the threat, plenty didn’t. They didn’t understand anything anymore—except hunger.
“Billy!” I screamed, glimpsing something coming this way. But it was too late, because it was too fast and too strong and—
And ours.
I stared as the colonel swooped down, colliding with two ghosts that had been sneaking up behind us. The trio turned into a whirlwind of flashing lights and screeching voices, while another ghost, this one huge, shot past them and jumped Billy Joe. The two immediately became embroiled in a fight so furious it was impossible to tell where one started and the other stopped.
But the dam had burst now, the attack giving the hovering spirits a chance to descend in force. Hard nips, painful gashes, and biting wounds seeped what remained of my power out into the air of this place, like a haze of blood. I screamed and fought, even knowing it wouldn’t do any good, because they were literally eating me alive.
And then a ghostly screech, louder than any I’d heard so far, louder than any I’d ever heard, shivered through the space around me. It was deafening, a piercing din that cut through my head like a stake to the brain, making me cry out. And momentarily stopped the attack when the ghosts, most of which were too nebulous to have faces, nonetheless gave the impression of looking up—
Just in time to be swallowed whole, like a school of fish by a diving whale. Only the whale was an old woman in a neon-lit housecoat, so bright she seared the eyes, and so solid she might as well have been human. Daisy roared, I stared, and she took off, chasing after the remains of the fleeing mob.
I looked around but couldn’t see the colonel. But I caught a glimpse of Billy off to my left. And it looked like he was winning, too, the smear of his red ruffled shirt slowly eclipsing the blue of his assailant’s. Unfortunately, the ghost had drawn him off, leaving me open to be savaged by the smaller spirits Billy had frightened away, who flew back at the first sign of an advantage.
What felt like a dozen wasps stung me all at once. And each tiny bite, each bit of stolen power, left me more vulnerable the next time. From within my body, they wouldn’t have been able to hurt me much, but without it—
I wasn’t going to last long without it.
But Billy had gotten me close enough to the barrier that it spilled a haze of light all around me. I could see it. I could even see through it a little, although what I could see didn’t make sense. Just an empty room, swirling with snow light, with not even my acolytes remainin
g.
But I didn’t care about that now; I only cared about getting back—into time, into my body, into some kind of protection—for all of us.
My friends wouldn’t leave without me, so I had to get out.
I had to.
I started crawling, the ghosts coming with me, still feeding. I lashed out when I had the strength, ignored them when I didn’t, and crawled as fast as I could. Until the light got stronger, flooding the area around me, while the screams and screeches and muffled roars from behind grew fainter.
But not the ones that had come with me.
They even sounded like insects, I thought, a constant buzzing in my ears. But increasingly, they didn’t feel like them. The spirits weren’t biting now so much as leeching on to me, a dozen, maybe two, hanging off my sides, my back, my thighs, while more circulated, trying to find an open spot. I could feel my remaining strength going into them—not as fast as in Apollo’s attack, but fast enough.
They were bleeding me dry.
My hands finally found the skin of time, and scraped across it, desperate, shaking. No, I thought, watching the ceiling slide by in fits and starts, as someone dragged my body across the floor. No, I’m not dead yet; no, please help! But they couldn’t hear; they didn’t come.
And I was running out of time.
I got to my knees, pounding against the barrier with my fists, but there was no way in. And then a spirit darted in from the crowd, bigger than the others, brighter, stronger, and latched on to my throat. It felt exactly like an animal bite, fangs sinking deep, causing me to scream in agony. And to rip it off, blind with pain and with the shimmering energy that the move released.
The discharge of power caused something like a feeding frenzy, the cloud of spirits suddenly so big and bright that I couldn’t even see the barrier anymore. I couldn’t see anything, except for pulsing brilliance. And, increasingly, I couldn’t feel, my body becoming lighter and fainter, and dimmer, as my own light began to fade.
* * *
“Immortals don’t know how to die, do they?”
It was Roger, back in the cottage, talking to me while Jonas waited outside. The place was so pretty, a doll’s house of a home. And cozy. Made even more so by the faint rain falling past the windows. It was a strange counterpoint to his words.
I looked back at him. “Don’t they?”
“No, I don’t think so. Just as most humans would not do very well as immortals, the gods do not handle it well when confronted by death. They don’t have our peace with it.”
“I don’t have any peace with it,” I said bitterly.
“Compared to them? Yes, you do. We humans have an instinctive knowledge of death. We are born, knowing that, one day, we will die. It gives us certain advantages.”
“I don’t see any.”
“Don’t you? Each day is more precious when you know you don’t have an infinite number of them. Each experience more savored, each friend more valued. We may live shorter lives, but in a way, we live fuller ones.”
“Is that what Mother wanted? To live fuller?”
He paused and pushed the ridiculous glasses up his long nose. They reflected the light of the weakened spells, making them run with rainbows, like some novelty item out of a souvenir store. They should have made him look ridiculous.
They didn’t.
“She told me recently that she felt like she’d only really begun to understand life as she reached the end of it. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think, at the root of it all, that was the problem with the gods. Always fighting, always striving to outdo each other, to leave a mark, because, ultimately, nothing they did seemed to matter. They knew the centuries would wash it all away. And they were right, weren’t they?”
“The same is true for us,” I pointed out. “Someday no one will remember us, either.”
“Ah, but that’s not really the point for us, is it?” The rainbow lenses tilted, the changed position allowing me to see the thoughtful eyes behind them. “Whether someone remembers us or not? We’re not gods, waiting in their temples to be worshipped. We’re part of a dynamic, ongoing world, and we have our own immortality through what we achieve, or through the children we leave behind. She will continue through you, as I will.
“Never forget that, Cassie. You’re my child, too.”
* * *
His child, I thought, fuzzily.
A necromancer’s child.
A necromancer.
Slowly, as if in a dream, I reached out. And grabbed one of the swarming pulses of light. And squeezed.
And watched my hand slowly brighten. It looked like I was wearing a brilliantly colored glove for a moment, next to the dimness of the rest of me. Until another small spirit darted in and began to feed, leeching the light . . .
No, I thought dizzily.
Not the light.
The power.
I closed my hand on it, too, crushing the gnawing thing inside my fist. Like the other, it felt tangible, real. And soft and spongy, like it was oozing up through my fingers for a second.
Before suddenly sinking inside.
My hand brightened again, and I stared at it, mesmerized even with the continued attack. Because it wasn’t only brighter. It was stronger.
I grabbed a small ghost leeching off my breast, and crushed it like the last one. And yes, I felt it, and yes, it was good, and potent, and . . . more. Quickly, before I became too weak to fight back.
Already, it wasn’t easy. The smaller ones were mindless, little more than freed energy, the kind that would turn into sparkles in the air when they degraded a bit more. They hurt in small ways, and gave back in small ways, when I grabbed fistfuls, ripping them off me.
Many of that kind skittered off when I started fighting back, some instinct telling them to flee. But others stayed. Too mindless to know what was happening or too drunk on power to care.
Or too strong to think they’d lose.
And they might be right. Because the ones who didn’t belong here, the hunters, had increased their drain. Trying to finish me off when they realized they had a fight on their hands.
I ripped a huge leech off my side, gasping in pain. It was amorphous, too busy feeding to manifest features, and plump and bright with stolen energy. My energy. I felt it rake me with claws, snarling and thrashing like a wild animal as I fought it, with my back against the wall.
A wall that was suddenly feeling more porous.
A moment ago, it had been hard as glass; now it was more like rubber, giving behind me, but not enough.
The creature in my arms clawed and squirmed, but I was a living spirit, and I was stronger. I hung on, hugged it to me, felt its power begin to seep into mine. Felt life flood back, felt pain, a thousand weeping wounds, felt the barrier give some more, stretching like taffy. But still holding.
I needed more power to break through, but it was a double-edged sword. The more I fed, the brighter I became, attracting attention from the larger fight. A lot of attention.
I stared as a mass of spirits broke away from the main cloud and headed my way. I fought and twisted, knowing it was now or never, and sent a swarm of the smaller things tumbling into the void. A number of the larger ones left of their own accord, sensing that we were about to be overrun. Except for the creature in my arms, which was noticeably dimmer now, having given back much of its stolen energy.
But not so much that it couldn’t grab the fabric of time and rip it open, in a desperate bid to get away.
But not as desperate as I was. I held on, even as it scattered itself, knowing this was my last chance. I felt myself falling, felt my senses return, felt freezing cold. And then I was slamming back into a body writhing in pain, Jonas’ last dose of Tears having been completely stripped away.
The aches and pains of the past, plus a flood of new ones, hit me all at once. I screamed, a so
und that echoed in the vastness of the great hall, almost causing the woman holding me by the arms to drop me. Johanna, I realized. And a second later, I realized something else: one of the reasons my body felt like it was on fire was that it was being dragged across burning ice, straight toward—
I rolled and somehow broke her hold, right on the edge of the great gash running the length of the room. The one she was trying her best to shove me into. I stared over the edge as she got behind me, and I saw our reflections for a second in a flood of cold, dark water.
I didn’t know why she thought it would hurt me; the drop only looked to be a couple stories.
But if she wanted me in there, I didn’t want to go.
“What does it take to kill you?” she snarled, struggling for purchase on the ice-covered floor.
Until I suddenly twisted, flinging her off her feet using one of the moves Pritkin had taught me. And then over my shoulder, grasping and fighting to the last, still trying to take me with her. She might have succeeded—except one of my hands had just frozen to the stones. I hung there, half in the gash and half out, clinging on with deadened flesh—
And realized why she’d wanted me down there.
Because the water wasn’t cold; it was supercooled. Some strange alchemy had kept it in a liquid form, right up until she crashed into it. And instantly turned the water into a field of ice, one that crept over her stunned face, freezing the skin, whitening the hair, and icing over the eyes that were still staring up at me in shock and hatred.
“More than you,” I whispered, and rolled onto my back.
Chapter Fifty-six
I just lay there for a long moment, panting and dizzy, staring upward. The room was strangely beautiful from this angle. I couldn’t see the ruin all around me, the broken mosaics and slashed mural, the overturned tables and muddy boot prints. Just snow, clear and white and dazzling, and highlighted every now and again by lightning flashing beyond the ice dome, sending little spots of light spinning crazily across my body.