Rituals (Cainsville 5)

"Then they will. Your lovers. I'll kill them and take their souls."

"Again, same issue. There isn't even a loophole you can exploit with us. We might not be the nicest people around, but we've done nothing that can make us one of the unforgiven."

I moved up onto the balcony, wiggling across it.

She strode into my path. "I can still kill them."

"For revenge? Sure, but once you do, the fae and the Hunt will exact their revenge. They'll join forces to do whatever they can to you, and maybe it won't be much, but will it be worth the few moments of vengeance against me? A dead woman, who'll never know what you've done?"

"Do you really think I'll let you jump?"

I looked up at her, towering over me. "Does it matter? I can find a way to do it. You have no power over me. Take my cure. Take my Arawn. Take my Gwynn. That only means I would never, ever stop trying to do this, and that you will be left with nothing."

"She's right," said a voice as steps crossed the belfry floor. "She's won, heb edifeirwch. In giving up, she wins. That's the hardest thing to do, but it's the one thing you can't fight."

Ida stepped into the moonlight.

"So you're suggesting we cut our losses?" the sluagh said.

"No," Ida said. "I'm insisting on it."

The sluagh laughed. Ida's aged form disappeared, as she struck the sluagh in a flash of light that doubled me over, hands to my eyes. I heard them fighting, and I tried to get to them, pulling myself along, blinded, using the snarls and yowls and curses of their battle to find them.

As I moved, I caught pulses of light, felt the air rippling, smelled a stink as fetid as the grave. But I saw nothing. Then the thumps and grunts of battle stopped for a moment, and the sluagh said, "You know you can't survive this fight, old one."

"True, but neither can you."

More sounds of battle, and as the air vibrated anew, I felt the beating of melltithiwyd wings, and I pulled myself along faster, swatting and grabbing at the ones that passed, trying to fling them away from Ida, but soon I could see enough to realize the melltithiwyd were circling. Not attacking. Just circling.

The thumps of battle stopped, and I squinted hard against the light until I could make out two figures on the floor.

"Do you want to live?" Ida said.

The sluagh snarled.

"I have you," Ida said. "I can destroy you. I will destroy you. But I can set you free, too. Just do the same for her. For Matilda. For Olivia. Return her cure."

More snarling, the sound not even vaguely human now, and when I drew up alongside them, the thing that had been Imogen Seale had blackened and twisted, not unlike the corpses pulled from the burning house.

Ida had her hands around the sluagh's neck, and light pulsed from her fingers, each flash weakening the sluagh.

"Fix her," Ida said.

One black and wizened arm rose and then fell, and the pain in my back evaporated. I rose, tentatively, my vision still blurred.

"I suppose you want me to promise to leave her alone, too," the sluagh said, its voice thick, garbled.

"No, that won't be necessary." Ida began whispering under her breath, her hands still around the sluagh's neck.

The creature began to fight, wildly, rasping, "You promised!"

"I'm fae," Ida said. "We lie."

Ida lit up, her entire body, a live wire that whipped through the air, her hands squeezing the sluagh's neck as it screamed and the melltithiwyd screamed, and I dove out of the way of that lashing rope of energy, feeling it ignite the very air.

The melltithiwyd flapped, frantic, and the sluagh screamed, thrashing itself into a frenzy of shadow, the stench of the long-dead filling the air. The sluagh bucked up under Ida's hands. And then it exploded in sizzling ash.

I ran over to Ida. She crouched on all fours, light pulsing under her translucent skin, the light beginning to fade as she panted for breath, dark hair hanging over her face.