The air whizzed as the dagger flew between us, carving a quick, shallow crescent and slicing into my cheek. A warm wetness welled up against my skin. The pain was brief, immediate. The betrayal hurt more. Thea watched impassively as she unclenched her hand, leaving me free to stumble away.
“Thea?” I clutched at my cheek, alarmed at the stickiness oozing down my face. “What. Why?”
A powerful force gripped me and pulled me bodily away from her, my heels dragging against the carpet as I went. I turned, ready to fight Bastion off my back, when I realized that he was still at the door, grabbing me with the force of his power.
“Idiot,” he snarled. “You heard me and Prue. We said to get away.”
Thea seemed distracted, staring at the point of the dagger, angling it carefully so that whatever she’d drawn of my blood stayed along its blade, smiling to herself as she balanced the droplet of fluid, so bright red against the dagger’s edge.
“Herald alerted us,” Prudence said. “He said that you’d taken off, and he told Thea you disappeared. By the time Bastion and I made it to HQ, Herald had been taken into the Lorica’s custody.”
“So disobedient,” Thea said absentmindedly, her eyes still focused on the dagger. “So inefficient. I was upset that Herald allowed you to escape, so I had him punished. I’ve been working here forever. My word is gold. The Hands sprang into action and restrained him as soon as I asked. I didn’t need him after all. Just the dagger. And you, Dustin.”
“What have you done to him?” I shouted.
“He’s safe,” Bastion said, tugging on my arm. “She wanted all of HQ distracted so she could grab the dagger and finish what she started.”
“And finish I will. Look how Dustin ran so quickly from his friends, only to come crawling back when he couldn’t find the answers he wanted. Oh, I could have found the dagger myself, truthfully. Or I could have kept it after I stabbed you in the heart.”
My scar ached. “It was you. The cultist in the bronze mask. The one who murdered me.”
“Murdered?” Thea scoffed. I watched as she held her palm under the dagger, to make sure she could catch my blood if it threatened to drip off the blade. I watched the way she handled the dagger with skill, with painful familiarity. “I gave you a new life. Security. Power. I gave you purpose.”
“You planted the Book of Plagues on the Pruitts. You killed Resheph and Lei Kung. It was you.”
“Poor Dustin. Sweet Dustin. About time you figured it out. It took the Hounds forever to find the dagger, too. I had to plant it somewhere, after all, erase all traces of it being tied to me.”
“You pinned this all on Herald,” I said. Something stirred in my stomach. I had blamed him myself.
“In retrospect, it might have been amusing to send you to find the dagger. There would have been something so poetic and bittersweet about setting you to fetch your own murder weapon, like the good little dog that you are.” Her smile grew wider. “It wouldn’t have been hard to convince you, not with that collar around your neck.”
My fingers flew to my pendant. It was cold now, even against my skin. “What?”
She laughed. “I need you to keep wearing that,” she said, and almost immediately a sense of comfort, of warmth washed across my skin. “I need you to trust me.”
The gem was manipulating me, somehow. She was controlling me through it. I gritted my teeth and ripped it off my neck, the leather thong snapping.
“How dare you. I trusted you, Thea.”
Prudence reached for the gem, snatching it out of my fingers. “We all did, Dustin,” she said grimly, clenching her fingers, crushing the opal into powder.
Thea only smiled. “You know what’s curious about my gemstones? They only just work on humans. Slightest suggestions, little nudges, that’s the best I can do. On less intelligent creatures, however, they work wonders.” She stretched out her fingers, admiring her rings, the opals that glistened there. “Rodents, for example.”
“Why, Thea?” Prudence said. I couldn’t tell if she was just buying time, but something in the way that she and Bastion hadn’t advanced told me that we needed to be very, very careful about handling this.
“The thing about rats,” Thea said, “is that they can get around very quickly. Unseen, agile. And they’re everywhere, too. Slaying Resheph gave me dominion over the vermin, but it was my gems that gave me total control. And you know, it’s remarkable what you can do with a horde of rats. Their tiny little claws are perfect for marking things, for scratching things out. A design, for example.” She smiled. “Or a circle.”
Bastion elbowed his way past me. “Fuck,” he muttered, holding out one hand. “She cast a circle. That’s why she needed the rats.”
“Well done, Sebastion.” Thea laughed. “You were never the cleverest, but you certainly are quick in your own way.” She ran her finger along the edge of the dagger, smearing my blood across the blade, muttering softly. My stomach turned.
“No,” I shouted, rushing forward. “Stop. What are you doing?”
Her chanting ended. “Closing the circle.”
Thea fell to one knee and thrust the dagger into the ground. The world exploded into white, a silvery brilliance bursting from lines that radiated in spokes from where the dagger struck. I held my hands up to my eyes as the energy surged its way out of Thea’s office, as massive pillars of blistering light detonated out of the very earth all across the city.
The rats. Valero. Thea had inscribed the entire city into a gargantuan circle.