Thea spread her hands. “Then end it, if you can.”
I screamed as I charged at her, my heart thick with fury, my blood singing for vengeance. Vanitas’s hilt grew warm and slick in my hand. Blood. The Dark Room had come before I’d even thought to summon it. Bursting from the ground, twelve black spears of solid night pierced Thea’s body. She gasped, but did not falter.
“You tried that once before and didn’t kill me, Dustin. End it. End it, you pitiful coward.”
With both hands I raised Vanitas over my shoulder, rearing back with all the strength I needed to puncture Thea’s armor. And with a great roar I thrust the sword forward, watching with berserk relish as the blade pierced her chitin, then sank into her flesh, searching through her chest. When Vanitas met her heart, I felt it beat. I felt it tremble.
Thea gasped, her head thrown back. Black blood trickled from the corner of her mouth. I pushed. Harder, and harder, until I knew that Vanitas had penetrated Thea from stem to stern. The compound eyes of an insect stared at me, passive, yet analytical. I stared back, unable to comprehend the alien insanity of the woman that was once Thea Morgana. The pillar of light above us wavered, then vanished. The shrike attack was finished.
“Your last words, Thea,” I whispered. “Say them now. It’s over.”
Her eyes rolled down to stare me full in the face. “Do you remember,” she croaked, “when I used your blood to commune with the Eldest? When I told you that I needed your blood at its sweetest, the fruit of your talent at its ripest?”
I scowled, then twisted the blade harder. She choked. “What are you talking about?”
“One of our first lessons at the Lorica, Dustin. A communion must always come with an offering.”
Thea’s gaze fell to the ground. The pile of artifacts the homunculi stole. Wasn’t that her offering? But there they were, planted in the earth among the relics and trinkets. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed them before: two gravestones, small ones, that might have belonged to children.
My blood ran cold.
Thea wrapped her hands around Vanitas, her fingers pulling the verdigris sword deeper and deeper into her body. She trembled, grimacing in agony, and she lifted her mouth to the witnessing stars, the blood trickling down her chin.
“I offer myself to the Eldest.”
Chapter 29
Vanitas, the verdigris daggers, the chest of horrors left behind by my mother. All this time Thea was only waiting for her powers to grow, for her connection to the Eldest to mature, to make herself the greatest sacrifice there was. For how better could a priest of the Eldest serve her masters than by surrendering her very existence?
I don’t know when Thea decided to give up on capturing me again and using my blood for her rituals. I don’t know how she discovered that the watered-down blood of my homunculi was rich enough for inscribing the circle, yet not enough to offer as sacrifice. All I knew was that the heavens were screaming, twin beams of light lancing through the stars and the sky, each of them seeking one of the little gravestones on the hill.
Thea released Vanitas, then toppled backwards, the sword slipping out of her torso as she fell. She slumped to the ground, motionless. I felt no triumph, no satisfaction. We’d slain one threat, but all I had truly done was complete her ritual for her.
The shrikes had vanished, but so had the homunculi. The grass was thick with smears of blood, both black and red. Across the hill, Asher was sprawled on all fours, retching from the vast expenditure of his power. From somewhere behind me I could hear Carver calling my name. But above it all, what I really heard was the wailing.
Two voices, screaming, howling, from beneath the earth. Two children. The ground rumbled.
I ran for it.
“Dustin, to my side,” Carver yelled. You can bet I dashed straight for him. Whatever was happening, an entire localized earthquake – and the horrific subterranean shrieking? Not good omens at all. “Steel yourselves. The worst is still to come.”
But I wondered if we even had any fight left between us. Asher was still bent double, drenched in cold sweat. Gil remained in his wolf form, crouched by the edge of the hill, snarling and growling at something the rest of us couldn’t see. And Sterling – God but I know that it’s callous, but it was best for me not to think of what had happened to Sterling just then. We needed everything we had to fight. There was no time for grieving.
The little gravestones tumbl
ed over, and the earth of the hilltop split apart, scarring as the first set of massive white talons burst from out of the ground. Each talon was the size of a human forearm, all of them sprouting from limbs as thick as telephone poles.
My mouth parched, I looked on in horror as more of those limbs erupted from the earth, scattering the soil as they lifted their bearers out of their graves, their bodies bulbous and fleshy, glistening in some awful, slick fluid. Two of these creatures, each the size of a small truck, finally freed themselves from their former homes. Each had the body of a huge, writhing maggot. Each raked its spear-like claws and long, spindly arms at the air.
And each bore the head of a young, long-dead child.
“Her children,” Carver muttered. “She finally did it. She brought them back to life.”
And at what cost? This was exactly as Bastion told me all that time ago, and exactly as Carver predicted. The Eldest have no loyalty, no understanding of mercy or human emotion, and even the wishes granted to their servants would be corrupted, perverted beyond recognition.
The two abominations, one with the head of a boy, the other, a girl, shrieked and wailed, both from their human mouths and from the multitude of tooth-lined gashes ripped into their heaving bodies.
“My babies.”