“Because we’re supposed to stick together as supernaturals. It’s kind of crappy that you just played us with your fake personality when you knew what was up all along. A little bit shitty, honestly. Technically, the Everetts want you dead, too. We’re all in this together.”
He nodded, no longer so incensed. “That’s fair. But maybe we can save the heart to heart for later.” He rapped his knuckles on the barrier. “We’ve almost cracked this thing open.”
“Agreed.”
From inside her bell jar, Olivia glowered. I knew she could hear us, and if our bickering was a distraction, then that was even better. It was almost comical, watching her lips move with practiced discipline all while she gave us the dirtiest side-eye in all of recorded history.
I drew my sword back, and Thor did the same with Mjollnir, winding up for one final smash. Somehow Olivia knew it’d be the last strike, too. The journal fell from her grasp as her hands flew to cover her face.
Blade and hammer struck the black barrier again. The sound of shattering glass splintered the clearing. The energy of the demon shield fell around us like tinkling shards, then vanished, dissipating into nothing.
“Hell yeah,” Thor shouted, his blood surging with adrenaline, and maybe lots of electricity, too. I pointed my sword at Olivia, saying nothing, but sending her a warning message with my glare. We’d cracked the shell, and now we just had to deal with the nut waiting inside.
We forgot that the nut was still driven by demonic power.
She raised both her hands, blasting both me and Thor off our feet with a surge of black energy. The air rushed out of my lungs, my ribs screaming with agony. It felt like being punched with huge, invisible fists.
She spun in a circle, more of the eerie black smoke rising in a funnel around her, reforming the barrier. I retrieved my sword, then clambered to my feet, my teeth clenched in anger. Thor did the same, gripping his hammer at his side. We were scraped and bruised, but the fight was far from over.
“Not this shit again,” I grumbled. “How many times are we supposed to break the barrier down?”
“As many times as we have to,” Thor answered, lifting his hammer. It crackled to life, wreathed in lightning.
“You will not harm Olivia Everett!”
I turned to the sound of Uriah’s voice, taken aback by the sight of him. His two halves, spirit and corpse, had melded into a horrible caricature of unlife, the decaying flesh glowing with ghostly light. His voice was changed as well, the words intoned out of long-rotten lungs and a windpipe unused to channeling breath. They came ragged and hoarse, at fi
rst, but built back into something that sounded almost human again.
“You will not harm the Everett bloodline.”
“That change in his voice,” I said. “His corpse is revivifying from the inside.”
“And from the outside, as well,” Thor said.
To say that the sight was disgusting was an understatement. The garland of gore had draped itself along Uriah’s body, the faces fraying, their skin coming apart in horrible threads. Like worms, like flesh-colored tendrils, they expanded and stretched, weaving in crisscrosses over Uriah’s corpse, infusing him with new life.
Imps fluttered and flitted around him the whole time, playing their infernal music. Hot breath emanated from the pit below, straight out of Glasya-Labolas’s unseen maw. Beneath the drums and the flutes, I thought I heard canine laughter. I grimaced, unable to look away even as the rot of Uriah’s muscle reversed, turning red with fresh blooms of blood before being enrobed in supple new skin.
“Uriah Everett wears many faces,” I muttered. “Holy shit. It was in his journal all along, and right on his tombstone.”
Thor swept his hair up and out of his face. “Kind of tough to interpret it like that, if you ask me. The question is, how do we kill him?”
“It’s too late,” said Olivia’s voice. This time she was shrouded behind a barrier so thick and dark that I couldn’t even see her silhouette through it. “He lives once more.”
She was right. Uriah Everett hovered above the pit, restored in all his earthly glory, his hair and beard tousled by the hellish breath of his demonic patron. Floating before him was the Filigreed Masque, levitating far out of reach like some tempting prize. Uriah leered at us, at me, as if he somehow knew how much I coveted the relic. Worse, he was completely naked.
“Have some decency,” I grumbled, scoping out the rest of the clearing.
Asher was helping Bastion limp towards the sinkhole. Was he even ready to fight yet? Foolish, but brave, just like Bastion. Gil’s skin was ashen and scorched in places from squaring off with his quota of imps, and Tabitha was still launching spells from a distance. Between us, there had to be some way to defeat Uriah Everett. But everyone was scattered and preoccupied. How were we supposed to coordinate our plan of attack?
Thor reared his head back and yelled. “Let’s fuck him up!”
Oh. That was how. I followed his charge, shaking my head, but quietly a little impressed by his bravado. Tactically, he and I weren’t exactly all that different.
Tabitha answered the battle cry by sending forth plumes of smoke. I could guess her game plan immediately: choke out Uriah from the inside, now that he had both a human body and human vulnerabilities again. But Glasya-Labolas had other plans.
An ear-piercing howl issued from the sinkhole, bringing with it an invisible torrent of searing wind. Trees shook, imps went flying, and Tabitha’s smoke magic went up like – well. You can probably guess. There was no doubting the power behind the magic of the Bridges witches, but I never thought that a brisk wind could counter it so effectively.