Even as Hunting desperately tried to stay alive, Abraham only seemed interested in trying to kill us. The old Blood Incubus was too strong, and he reached out for Uncle Macon. I knew better than to underestimate him. Even wounded, he wouldn’t give up until he destroyed us all.
An overwhelming sense of panic surged inside me. I concentrated every thought, every cell on Abraham. The earth around him bucked, tearing itself from the ground like a rug being pulled out from under him. Abraham staggered and then turned his attention to me.
He closed his hand around the air in front of him, and an invisible force tightened around my throat. I felt my feet rise off the ground, my Chucks kicking below me.
“Lena!” John shouted. He closed his eyes, concentrating on Abraham, but whatever he was planning, he wasn’t fast enough.
I couldn’t breathe.
“I don’t think so.” Abraham twisted his free hand, bringing John to his knees in seconds.
Link charged Abraham, but another simple flick of the Blood Incubus’ wrist sent him flying. Link’s back hit the jagged stone crypt with a loud crack.
I struggled to stay conscious. Hunting was below me, his hands around Uncle Macon’s neck. But he didn’t seem to have enough strength left to hurt his brother. The color slowly drained from Hunting’s skin, turning his body hauntingly transparent.
I gasped for breath, transfixed, as Hunting’s hands slid from Uncle M’s neck and he started writhing in pain.
“Macon! Stop!” he pleaded.
Uncle Macon focused his energy on his brother. The light held steady as the darkness leached out of Hunting’s body and into the overturned earth.
Hunting seized, and sucked in his last breath. Then his body s
huddered and froze.
“I’m sorry, brother. You left me no choice.” Macon stared down at what was left before Hunting’s corpse disintegrated, as if he had never existed at all.
“One down,” he said grimly.
Abraham shielded his eyes, trying to determine if Hunting was really gone. The color was beginning to seep out of Abraham’s skin now, but it had only made it as far as his wrists. He would kill me long before the sunlight took him out. I had to do something before we all ended up dead.
I closed my eyes, trying to push past the pain. My mind was slipping into numbness.
Thunder rumbled overhead.
“A storm? Is that all you’ve got, my dear?” Abraham said. “Such a waste. Just like your mother.”
Anger and guilt churned inside me. Sarafine was a monster, but she was a monster Abraham had helped create. Abraham had used her weaknesses to lure her into Darkness. And I had watched her die. Maybe we were both monsters.
Maybe we all are.
“I’m nothing like my mother!” Sarafine’s fate was decided for her, and she wasn’t strong enough to fight it. I was.
Lightning tore across the sky and struck a tree behind Abraham. Flames raced down the trunk.
Abraham took off his hat and shook it with one hand, careful to keep the hand tethered to my throat tightly clenched. “I always say it’s not a party until something catches fire.”
My uncle rose to his feet, his black hair messy and his green eyes glowing even brighter than before. “I would have to agree.”
The light in the sky intensified, blazing like a spotlight on Abraham. As we watched, the beam exploded in a blinding flash of white—forming two horizontal beams of pure energy.
Abraham swayed, shielding his eyes. His iron grip retracted, and my body fell to the rotting soil.
Time seemed to stop.
We all stared at the white beams spreading across the sky.
Except one of us.