Devil's Eye (Mirus 1.2)
Page 24
“That’s good. Come on, a little more. Just like gymnastics when we were kids. You can do it!” Sophie shouted. Her heart was lodged in her throat. This was risky. So risky. If Liza swung the wrong way, she’d hit the saw.
She looked for Mick, hearing the general crash of the fight in the far corner, but she couldn’t actually see anything. They were still moving. That had to mean Mick was holding his own.
Her mind was split between prayers of safety for Mick and shouts of encouragement to her sister who swung two feet. Four.
“Keep kicking!”
A horrible scream of metal ripped through the warehouse.
The roof! Oh gods the storm is on top of us!
The roof peeled back as if by the hands of an enraged Titan and the howl of wind battered her senses. Above her some of the pulleys broke loose, crashing in pieces toward the ground. All around her, wood and scaffolding began to slide and tumble in the gale. She dove flat on the walkway, narrowly avoiding a wooden crate as it pinwheeled above her. Glass shattered. On the cable Liza was buffeted, swinging now in a circular motion instead of back and forth, closer and closer to the saw.
“No!”
Sophie looked around frantically for a rope, a chain, anything she could toss out to try and snag Liza. But there was nothing.
From across the warehouse came another deafening crash.
“Insolent dog!” snarled Cassius. His hand wrapped tightly around Mick’s throat, shoving him against the brick wall. Another few inches and his neck was going to snap.
“Mick!” she screamed.
Desperate, enraged, Sophie drew herself up in the center of the chaos and lifted her face to the hellish sky. Immediately she felt it—the pull of the wind, the lashing rain, the pulsing heart of power at the center of the hurricane. It was hers to command.
She was the eye of the storm.
The building shuddered as she drew down the wind. With one part of her mind, she shut her sister away from the storm, the blue energy field glowing bright and bold. The rest of her focus was on Mick.
Sophie pulled the storm around her like a cloak, everything in the warehouse spinning faster and faster. Wind. Water. Debris. The vampire’s grip loosened on Mick’s throat as he stared back, confusion replacing the fury etched on his pale face.
She reached out one hand and a giant fist of water knocked Cassius aside. He stumbled, trying to right himself, but she hit him again with another tidal punch. Then Sophie caught him in the wind. Sucked him up until he was swirling, whirling around her. Faster, faster. Sophie felt her control on the storm starting to slip. She pivoted, eyes searching for a way to end him once and for all. Finding her target, she brought everything to a slamming halt that sent the splintered end of a wooden support joist straight through Cassius’s chest.
In the sudden silence, he made a burbling groan. Blood dribbled out of his mouth, black and viscous like ichor. The noise he made might have been a laugh. “You have been holding out.”
Cassius tried to pull himself forward, and Sophie shuddered at the wet, sucking noise.
As Mick’s hand settled on her shoulder, she said, “I protect what’s mine.”
“This…round to…you,” Cassius coughed. The breath he drew in whistled out of the hole in his chest. “But war is still coming. Best choose your side.”
With that dramatic pronouncement, Cassius slumped, head lolling, eyes blank.
Sophie exhaled a long breath. It was over.
Chapter 8
“You okay, petite?” Mick asked.
The storm had fully dissipated. Sophie had apparently used all its energy in her fight with Cassius. She looked a little glassy-eyed and shell-shocked now as she stared at the vampire’s body.
“I . . . didn’t know I could do that,” she said finally. She turned, looking up at him with a mixture of wonder and pain. “He was going to kill you.”
Mick brushed a thumb over some dirt on her cheek. “Desperation makes us learn all kinds of stuff about ourselves. C’mon. Let’s get Liza down.”
The mention of her sister seemed to shake Sophie out of the shock. “If I can get the chain loose, can you catch her?”
“Sure.”