Strokes of freakish luck.
He howled with disbelief. Before he could launch another javelin, Zara engaged a second machine gun, firing both at him and Kentarch. They had nowhere to run, only a sheer drop-off.
Kentarch clamped Joules's arm and attempted to teleport, but they didn't budge. Zara unleashed a torrent of bullets at them. Just before the first wave hit, Kentarch went intangible, ghosting him and Joules.
One second passed. Another. How long could he keep that up?
Click, click, click. She'd run out of ammo!
But the last bullet ricocheted rock. Kentarch wavered; the rock caught him right at that instant.
He yelled, and they tumbled over the crater's edge, out of sight. Would they survive the drop?
I turned back to Richter, threats dying on my tongue. He'd slithered closer during Zara's attack.
Waves of dizziness hit me. Sweat stung my eyes. I begged for the red witch to stir. "Jack . . ." He squeezed my hand as hellfire surrounded us. Stay conscious, stay conscious.
This monster had taken Jack from me once before. Was I about to let him again?
"Now, where were we?" Richter said. "Oh, yeah, I was telling you how every Emperor gets an Empress. Which means your ass is mine."
I expected Jack to tell me that this wasn't the end. That we'd somehow prevail. Instead, he reached for his bowie knife and murmured in French, "I won't let him take you alive."
23
"Time to lose the dead weight." As Richter faced off against Jack, he made a mistake.
The Emperor . . . laughed.
I jolted upright, staying Jack's hand. That hateful sound had pervaded my nightmares. It was a trigger, activating something dark and primal within me.
Rage unfurled like a blossom, soon as towering as an oak. My vision blurred. My glyphs blazed. The red witch awakened. Embrace my viciousness, Gran?
Acid laced my veins.
I called out to those ancient seeds, my body shaking with readiness. New petals tumbled from my reddened hair.
Keep laughing. When the red witch bayed for blood, I fueled the legions of seeds from within me, power on tap as it hadn't been since I'd made Jack's gravestone.
Recognition hit me. The tourniquet around my heart hadn't been muting my rage and pain; it'd been damming them up.
As my legions grew and began to force their way to the surface, a deep rumble shook the ground, as if the earth had growled. A quake of my own. "Come, Richter." My voice turned breathy. "Touch--"
I never finished the sentence, because I caught a glimpse of something so horrifying that my lungs seized up.
The true depths of my power.
A yawning black hole of rage existed inside me. An endless well of wrath.
Another quake hit. Mine.
Richter's laughter faltered as he shifted to keep his balance. His eyes briefly widened, then narrowed on me, as if to ask, Was that you?
Jack muttered, "Evie?"
Power is my burden. It overflows a bottomless pit.
If I ever came close to tapping into that well, would I leave collateral damage all around--like Richter with his firestorms? Would I curse the world like Demeter?
A show of power always took a toll on an Arcana. If I unleashed the full measure of my abilities, would my body give out?
Like Tess's?
Richter shook his head, as if he'd just imagined those quakes. After all, I was only a weak little girl. That force couldn't have originated from inside me. "Come peacefully with us, Empress, and live for a time."
Just as I had a well of rage, so did Richter. Those seeds had been entombed beneath rock; maybe the Emperor and I had already played out this battle centuries ago, or the gods we represented had.
If I ever matched Richter rage for rage . . . we're the nuclear option. No one wins.
In all of my battles, I'd never been more terrified than now. Not for Richter.
I fear myself.
I'd just recoiled from my connection to those seeds when something skittered up my spine. Hissing sounded, like a giant serpent.
Had Richter's attention skewed behind us? His sleazy smile faded as he craned his head up. And up.
A drop of scalding water hit my neck. I glanced over my shoulder at the rising wall of water. "Circe."
Jack cursed under his breath.
"No, she'll protect us." I hoped.
Richter's fireball hovered above his palm. "You want some of this, water bitch?"
Circe's voice sounded from the wave: "That's Ms. Water Bitch to you." Her tone would sound coolly mocking to others, but I could detect her fatigue. "Run along now, fire starter. I'm in no mood for your infantile antics tonight."
"You don't wanna tangle with me? Too scared to?"
She gave a bored sigh. "Hmm. I probably should drown you. But then, my fun would be cut short. You start your fires for enjoyment--I delight in extinguishing them. Just as I did when you slaughtered that army."
"I boiled half of your wave away."
"And I turned all of your lava back to rock." The water wall crested over our heads toward him, as if she were getting up in the Emperor's face. "Do you know that I can feel my victims' screams in the deep? They always scream, right before I replace the air in their lungs--with me. Tell me, little boy, who will you scream for?"
His red eyes scanned her wall again, sizing her up. "You'll get what's coming to you, Priestess. My enemies always do." Signaling Zara, he turned to ride away on that lava flow. It undulated snakelike over the ground, leaving a charred scar.
The chopper drifted for a menacing moment before banking to follow Richter's direction.
Over his shoulder, he called, "I'm coming for you, Empress." His laughter echoed. "Soon it'll be your turn!"
Once they'd gone, I cried, "Why didn't you kill him, Circe?"
Her wave drew back, wobbled, then sloshed over the lake bed. A surge of hot backwash slapped me and Jack, toppling us. He had to hang on to me until the water settled.
As he helped me to my feet, I sputtered and cursed. "With allies like these . . ."
Circe sniffed, "You're welcome for saving your lives." A small column of water arose, then shakily morphed into a flat expanse, a window into her temple where she sat on a coral throne.
On the few occasions I'd seen her through the window, she'd always been perfectly coifed and calm. Now her long black hair was tangled, her fawn-colored eyes harried. Her sea-foam garments looked askew, and she held her trident in a trembling hand.
Jack blinked at the sight of her, then said, "You might've saved us tonight, but he's got Evie in his cross
hairs now." If he was shocked by Circe's water window, he got over it. More Arcana insanity he should never have to deal with.
"Well, if it isn't the hunter, General Jackson Deveaux." Her island accent was thicker than usual. "I watched over your fort for some time."
"Not for long enough."
"I was busy avenging your army. Speaking of which--aren't you supposed to be dead among them?"
Tick, tick, tick went his jaw muscle.
"Easy, Jack."
"To answer your question, Evie Greene, I didn't try to kill Richter because I'm weak, which means my control is suffering. I didn't want you to boil or drown. Well, not you, especially. Your baby."
My head whipped around to Jack.
His lips parted. "You're pregnant?"
"He didn't know about my godson?" Circe's titter turned into a cough.
"I-I was about to tell him." I twined my fingers. What to say? "Jack . . ."
Anguish and bafflement warred in his gray eyes.
"You two discuss this later," Circe said. "The Emperor might return, and I only have so long." To Jack, she said, "I'd like to talk with the Empress alone. You should go check on the others anyway."
Jack blinked rapidly, as if regaining his senses. He looked from me to Circe and back. "You safe with her?"
"Relax, hunter," Circe said. "If I wanted the Empress dead, she would be so. For months, I had her trapped within my watery noose, but I never struck."
He peered at my face, then in the direction of my belly. "I'll be back, me."
"Be careful," I called as he started through the pass.
Shock hammered me. We'd just faced Richter--smoke still oozed up from doused lava--and now Jack knew my secret.
But I'd learned about another one: my devastating full potential. I'd been playing host to unlimited wrath this entire time.
Had I actually worried about the lack of sun or Bagger contagion undermining my power? Nothing could undermine it.
Nothing but me. Aric had been right: I'd bottled up my feelings so totally that I'd weakened my abilities.
"Oops," Circe said. "You really ought to have told him."
I was still staring in his direction. "I'm going to get him killed before all is said and done."
"With villains like Richter around, yes. Unless the Emperor weakens as well. Eventually, that little fire starter will run out of fuel."