Bloodrose (36 page)

“The better to kill you with,” Connor said. Beside him, Ethan raised his crossbow and Sabine growled.

Bosque glanced at the two Searchers. “Oh my, toy soldiers as well.” He flicked his wrist and the men went flying. They crashed into the far wall, books tumbling down around them. Sabine yelped and tore across the room.

Go!
I didn’t want to leave Shay, but Bryn could help the others. Without hesitation, Bryn bounded after Sabine.

“No!” Adne shouted, running toward the mess of wood, pages, and limbs where Sabine had already begun digging in an attempt to reach the bodies of Ethan and Connor.

“What a lovely young thing.” Bosque watched Adne move, running his tongue over his lips as if tasting the air. “And with such power. You’ve been playing with my garden, dear. Without permission.”

He twisted his fingers and Adne stumbled. “Please stay awhile. I think you could be quite useful to me.”

She rolled over, clawing at the rug beneath her feet, which had begun to unravel. Its loose threads wound together into thick ropes that wrapped around her ankles and continued to snake their way up her body.

“Logan, do it!” she screamed. “Do it now! Finish the ritual!”

Logan cowered, his eyes rolling up at Bosque, full of fear. My father ran to Adne’s side. More ropes appeared to bind her even as he chewed through the first cords that had sprung out of the rug.

He stared at me and then at Bosque, who was laughing as my father struggled to free her.

“Let her go!” Shay advanced on Bosque. The blades of the Cross moved with such speed I couldn’t make out either weapon. It appeared as though Shay was walking with a fiery tornado clearing his path.

Bosque laughed. “You can’t touch me, boy. Put those down before you hurt yourself.”

“Stop talking,” Shay snarled. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.”

“Whyever not?” Bosque said. “I still have room in my heart to forgive you.”

Shay shook his head, lunging at him. Bosque raised his hand. Shay wasn’t thrown backward as Connor and Ethan had been, but the swords were blocked as if Bosque had thrown up a shield.

Shay snarled and swung the swords again, but he couldn’t pierce whatever force Bosque held up against the attack. Bosque’s human shell was protecting him. We had to strip it from him.

I heard groans and was relieved to see Ethan and Connor struggling out from under the rubble as Sabine and Bryn clawed through broken shelves and mounds of books.

“You coward!” Shay gritted his teeth, holding the swords low. “Fight me!”

“But the fight isn’t happening here, is it?” Bosque closed his eyes and smiled. “It seems we have quite the gathering happening just outside.” He lifted his arms. “I believe I’ll invite a few more guests.”

The sound sent chills up and down my limbs. I barked a warning to Connor and Ethan as a hundred tormented sighs swelled in the air around us.

“It’s the Fallen!” Ethan shouted.

The sighs became moans, but more noises layered on top of the Fallen’s cries. Shrieks and hisses followed the cracking of stone. Rowan Estate’s statues were coming to life.

“Not just the Fallen,” Connor yelled. “Here they come!”

“Block the door!” Adne shouted, still futilely twisting against the ropes around her. She shook her head at my father. “Go help them. You can’t get me out of these!”

Bosque was laughing. The sound made my chest tighten, stirring me out of regret and self-pity, making the tension in the room crackle like electricity in my fur. The joyful gleam in his inhuman silver eyes set my blood boiling. I’d already lost too much today. I would not lose anything more.

Snarling, I bolted across the room to the spot where Logan crouched. He rolled his eyes up at me.

“Just leave me alone,” he whimpered. “Run for your life, Calla. Get out of here.”

I barked at him, baring my teeth close to his neck so he could feel my breath. He jerked back at the sight of my fangs but shook his head. “I won’t do it. He’ll kill me.”

Shifting forms, I laced my fingers around his throat.

“It’s too late,” he said hoarsely.

“It is never too late,” I said. “The ritual. Now.”

The groan of heavy furniture scraping along the wood floor filled the room as Connor, Ethan, and my father barricaded the library door. I could already hear bodies slamming against the wood, claws tearing into the barrier.

I tightened my grip. Logan’s eyes widened and he croaked, “Stop, please. I’ll do it.”

“Now,” I hissed.

Logan reached around his back, smearing his hand in the blood that still leaked from the whiplashes. Using the blood as ink, he drew a symbol on the floor and began murmuring in a voice so low I could barely hear.

Bosque’s laughter died instantly. Apparently it didn’t matter how quietly Logan chanted; the Harbinger could sense that the ritual had begun. The stream of Logan’s whispers faltered.

“Don’t you dare stop.” I bared my teeth at him. “Stop and I’ll kill you.”

He continued his fevered whispers, but his eyes were wild as they moved back and forth from me to Bosque.

“This isn’t wise, Logan.” Bosque took a step toward us. But Shay was there, holding the Elemental Cross at the Harbinger’s eye level. Bosque scowled, but he stopped moving.

My heart jumped. The shield worked both ways. Shay couldn’t attack Bosque, but Bosque couldn’t move past the swords either.

Realizing that Bosque’s attempt to reach him had been thwarted, Logan stopped shaking. His voice grew steadier and louder.

The scratching at the library doors had become banging. Slow, heavy thuds signaled that the Fallen had arrived.

“Hurry!” Ethan shouted. “We can’t hold them.”

“No.” Bosque whirled away from Shay. “You can’t.”

He swept his hand through the air and Ethan, Connor, Sabine, and my father were tossed aside. Bosque struck out with his fist and the doors blew open.

“Don’t touch the Fallen.” Connor drew his swords, shouting at Sabine and my father. “Ethan and I will fight them. You take care of the rest.”

The rest appeared as succubi and incubi flew into the room, their shrieks piercing my ears. Ethan took down two with his crossbow before drawing his own swords and advancing on the moaning Fallen. The Searchers began to mow through the slowly advancing mass, which fortunately had formed a bottleneck in the doorway. Thuds began to offset the high-pitched shrieks as Connor and Ethan parted the Fallen’s heads from their bodies. My father, Bryn, and Sabine were dodging the winged creatures’ spears, taunting them to the ground before the wolves wheeled to attack.

Logan was on his feet, shouting. He thrust his hands at Bosque, fingers outstretched.
“Aperio!”

Bosque screamed. His eyes flashed like lightning as he glared at Logan. “You will pay for—”

His words stopped as he screamed again, doubling over and clutching his stomach. When he lifted his face, his silver eyes were widening into disks shaped like footballs and just as large. His pupils gleamed red as they morphed into reptilian slits. His features went slack, then slowly puffed out as if someone were pumping air in the space between his muscle and skin. He continued to expand, his skin ballooning until it began to tear, beginning at the top of his head and following a line down the center of his body.

Bosque’s human shell cracked open like a husk. A gelatinous yellow substance oozed from the crack. An awful scent filled the air, decaying flesh and ammonia that burned my eyes and nose. I fell to my knees, certain I would be sick.

Shay made a retching sound and stumbled backward, trying to stay on his feet.

An appendage covered in bristling spikes emerged from what had been Bosque’s body. Then another. And another. Six segmented limbs pushed skin and gore aside as it struggled to free itself. The thing that shrugged off its human guise stretched to its full height, towering over all of us. Its large silver eyes were set in a quasi-human face that featured Bosque’s aquiline nose and full mouth. A set of pincers sprouted from his cheeks, clicking together as he opened and closed his lips with a hiss. His slicked-back hair had transformed into hard, sharply raised ridges that rippled along the surface of his skull and continued down his spine.

The skin covering its body was a mottled gray and black, dripping with slime. Wings, iridescent like those of a dragonfly and covered in the same thick yellow slime as the rest of his body, protruded from his back. They fluttered at intervals, trying to rid themselves of the sticky liquid.

Bosque’s torso still resembled a man’s, except that the thick carved muscles of his chest sloped down not to a human abdomen, but instead swelled to curving mass where skin transformed into a shiny black exoskeleton. His lower body ended in a needle-sharp, curving spine that glistened, making me suspect its sting was venomous.

The beast stretched its four upper limbs toward the ceiling, shaking its body as if it had just woken from a long slumber. Slime splattered on us and I coughed up bile as I scraped the yellow ooze from my skin. Four of its limbs lashed wildly, clawing at the air in fury. It screamed and the Nether creatures’ shrieks grew louder. They abandoned their attacks on the wolves and Searchers, streaking toward the fireplace to hover above the creature’s head.

“Oh my God.” Connor, tracking the sudden flight of Bosque’s minions, dropped one of his swords when he saw what was standing in front of the Rift.

Ethan shoved him aside, swinging his blade as one of the Fallen groped for Connor. Its head went flying.

“Come on.” Ethan dragged Connor to the center of the room, where Adne was still bound to the floor. Sabine, Bryn, and my father chased after them. They huddled in a tight group around Adne.

The Fallen didn’t pursue them but stayed close to the library doors. Their empty eyes gazed toward the Rift, mouths agape, as they swayed mindlessly, holding their position.

Logan fell backward, gazing up at the creature that had taken Bosque Mar’s place. “Behold, the Harbinger. Master of the Nether and Lord of the Keepers.”

“I WILL HEAR YOU SCREAM
for this treachery, Logan Bane,” Bosque rasped.

The sound of his voice startled me. It was the same as it had been when the Harbinger had been cloaked in a human body. The only change was the repetitive clicking of his pincers meeting each other in front of his lips.

He clawed the air with one of his upper limbs and Logan dropped to the floor, gasping in pain. Blood poured from four deep, symmetrical gashes in his chest.

“No!” Shay rolled to the balls of his feet.

“The Rift!” Adne shouted. “You have to drive him into the Rift with the Cross!”

Bosque shrieked his rage at her, raising his spiny limb once more.

Shay was already moving. The blades of the Elemental Cross whirred through the air, sparks of its power leaping from the swords. I could no longer distinguish his body from the whirlwind of light and sound that built up around him. The column of the elements that enveloped his form was ever changing, sliding from the roar of a firestorm to the crash of a waterfall only to morph again into the scream of a hurricane followed by the shuddering strength of an earthquake.

I knew Shay was there, wielding the blades, only because the limb Bosque had pointed at Logan suddenly went flying. It twitched on the library floor where it landed.

Bosque screamed as black blood leaked from the stump on his torso.

“Defend me, children!”

In a rain of leather wings and sharp talons, the throng of succubi and incubi descended on Shay. The moment they touched the edges of the sphere that surrounded the Scion their bodies dissolved, pouring to the ground in harmless piles of sand.

“No!” Bosque screamed, and there was real fear in his cry. His bulbous silver eyes searched the room in desperation. His frantic gaze settled on me. Laughing wildly, he grinned at Shay, revealing rows of sharp fangs behind his pincers.

“Very well, Scion,” he said. “You’ve claimed your legacy. But continue on this path and you shall lose that which you love the most.”

He stretched his arm out, shrieking an unintelligible order to the surviving Nether creatures. One of the incubi swooped low, dropping its spear. Bosque gripped the weapon, using the spines on his upper left limb like fingers. He turned that terrible smile on me and hurled the spear. I bolted, but not quickly enough.

Bosque’s aim had been true. It was only my scrambling aside that left me with a spear impaling my shoulder and not my heart. Bosque was strong. Very strong. Not only was the spear lodged deep inside me, but it had pierced all the way through my body to lodge in the wall behind me. I was pinned there.

“Calla!” Shay’s voice broke through the torrent of power shielding his body. I knew his advance faltered when the storm of elements surrounding him flickered, its light beginning to fade.