A ball of fire blasted into the air and dissipated, Romira’s concentration slipping as the vines pulled her to the ground. She was down for the count, too. I couldn’t make out if Carver and Bastion were still okay. My feet fell from under me as vines snaked out of the bushes, lassoing me by the ankles. The air rushed out of my lungs as I hit the earth with a thud.
I groaned, my head pounding. At least I knew I hadn’t hit it against a rock, but there was no time to check. The vines were dragging me – where to, I couldn’t tell – but the faint cackle I heard coming from Deirdre’s general direction told me that nothing fun was in store for any of us.
Shouts rang out across the gardens, maybe from Bastion, maybe from Carver. All I could really see was the sky above me, the stars, and a bunched-up tangle of thorny vines, twisted into a huge, elongated spike. Like a battering ram made of brambles it shot straight for Asher and Enrietta.
No. If Enrietta wasn’t healed, the deal with Dionysus was off. It would be over for Asher, over for me. I arched my back, struggling to see, but the vines pulled harder. Was the shield that Carver cast still up? Did it matter?
“Vanitas,” I shouted. “Stop her.”
It happened all at once. In a blur of green and gold, sword and scabbard disengaged from their Viridian victims, one to hack and slash at the twisting fusion of vine and bramble, the other hurtling at breakneck speed towards Deirdre Calloway’s upraised hand.
To say that her screams were horrific would be an understatement. The crack that whipped through the gardens told me enough about what happened to her hand. Her wand tumbled through the air, its needle and the facets of its pinecone tip glinting in the moonlight. Wait. It wasn’t any old wand after all, but a thyrsus, one of Dionysus’s artifacts. The Viridian Dawn had found ways to acquire more than just one divine relic. It landed somewhere in the grass, forgotten.
“Done,” Vanitas pulsed in some corner of my mind. The vines around my feet loosened just as he hovered towards me, sword returning to scabbard. With a soft thunk, he came to rest in the grass. I sat up, massaging the blood back into my legs.
I tucked Vanitas back into my bag, hobbling over to Prudence. She wasn’t so lucky. She groaned as she tried to point her foot. A broken ankle, maybe. Gil prodded her foot gingerly, his talons now retracted, but his fingers still bloody. It was weird seeing them in such close proximity without one wanting to punch the other’s head off, but hey – people change.
“Ouch,” Prudence hissed. “Damn it. Yeah, it’s busted.”
“I can stick around,” Gil said.
Prudence looked up at him warily. Maybe her cheeks colored a little, but she said nothing.
“Bastion?” I said. “Carver? Everything okay? Did they finish what needed to be done?”
Carver, it seemed, hadn’t been affected by the vines at all, still unruffled, his suit uncreased. Bastion, on the other hand, was struggling in the grass, furiously slicing his hand through the air, every motion cleaving more of the vines away from his legs.
“Fine,” Carver said, smoothing his hair back. “All fine.” He turned away from the statue, heading towards Deirdre. “I’ll just go and – restrain our guest.”
“Like hell you will,” Bastion said, tripping over himself and the last segments of vine still wound around his legs. He trailed and stumbled after Carver, as if capturing Deirdre Calloway was just another thing he couldn’t give up to his newfound and, unbeknown to him, wildly overqualified rival.
“Almost done,” Asher said. Enrietta was standing on her own now, her skin fully colored, though from her returned vitality or in the excitement over the Viridian Dawn’s attack, who could really say?
“You’ve done so much,” Enrietta said, patting Asher on the cheek. “I couldn’t thank you enough. You’ve given me so much of yourself.”
Arnaud, supporting her with one hand pressed against the small of her back, the other clutching her upper arm, bent closer to speak.
“He’s given too much, perhaps.”
That voice. I knew the sound of it. That wasn’t Arnaud’s voice. But I recognized it too late.
Gore spurted from Enrietta Boules’s abdomen as huge, incandescent spikes burst out of her stomach in a steaming geyser of blood and broken organs. Her face twisted with pain, confusion, betrayal, and she turned her head.
“Arnaud?” Enrietta croaked. “Why?”
But it wasn’t Arnaud. Not anymore. The air wavered, and there she stood: a woman. Her hair was once blonde, but it had changed, now resembling wiry tendrils. Her eyes were black as pitch, and her skin glowed as if lit from within, an ethereal, unearthly firefly. In place of clothes her body was clad in plates that might have been armor, smooth and white, like an insect’s chitin. And at the ends of her fingers were massive talons sculpted out of solid light.
“Arnaud has been dead for weeks, Mrs. Boules.”
The woman smiled, then twisted her hand at the socket. What life was left in Enrietta Boules came rushing out through the hole puncturing her from back to stomach. The pulsating green energy that flowed from Asher to the dead dryad’s body reversed, running back to his fingers, climbing up his arms, sinking into his skin. He stared at his hands in horror, his cheeks painted with dark specks of cooling blood, like a boy flecked in warpaint, unprepared for battle.
Asher stammered, his knees buckling, feet too frozen in fear to truly move away. “Why? What – who are you?”
“Thea,” the woman said. “My name is Thea Morgana.”
Chapter 23
Thea wrested Asher’s wrist, hard enough that he cried out in pain. There was blood on his arm. If it belonged to him or Enrietta, I couldn’t clearly tell.