C
HAPTER
31
S
eeking warmth, Mina closed her arms around herself. Broken glass lay over the thick Persian rug in Jonathon's bedroom. The shattered window in the room allowed the frigid winter air to flood the house, leaving her shaking in fear and in shock. She crossed the room, the glass crunching under her shoes, and knelt by the stove.
Uncertain of how to stoke the dying fire, her hand hovered over the cast-iron poker. Many times she had seen the maids do this. It usually involved poking.
Carefully, she folded her hand over the brass handle and lifted the heavy tool. A tentative jab at the black, skeletal wood and the poker clattered onto the floor. Mina shrieked a little and toppled over onto her rear.
The shards of glass pressed into her hands as she struggled to stand. Little drops of blood welled from the small wounds.
Mina lifted her hand to her throat. She would not cry. Just because Jonathon had disappeared, obviously kidnapped by Thuggees, and her father had left her alone in the house were not reasons enough to cry.
Shaking, she reached to the bed where her husband had last been seen and dragged the mink comforter to herself. Her knees weakened, leaving her sitting on the floor, her back against the bed. Slowly, too slowly, the fur warmed her. Her courage returned as she warmed.
Her father, her husband could be lying out there, bleeding or dying from the attackers. She had to help.
Mina shuffled from Jonathon's bedroom, the mink still wrapped around her shoulders. She followed soft whispers in the fog until she wandered into the middle of Hyde Park. Jonathon and another man wrestled in the mud, while another man slung a strange bag onto his back. Mina gasped. Something about that standing man repelled her.
His face was familiar: the high cheekbones, the dark hair, the soft-looking lips. Even the faint odor of rosemary teased her memory, bringing up a feeling, a ghost of a memory that said her wants and pleasures were unimportant.
As she took another step forward, a light flashed. The two attackers and her husband disappeared into a glowing, frightening hole in the ground.
Mina dropped the blanket and ran through the cold. Jonathon was in danger!
The man with the bag was the last to step into the hellish light, giving Mina a peep at his face. Dirt smeared under his nose gave him a flamboyant mustache. High cheekbones. Full lips. Dark hair, slicked back. He disappeared through the opening.
Mina screamed as hundreds of years of memories poured into her mind.
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“Mina!” Maxwell ran from the park into the streets, following her maddening howls. “Mina! Where are you?”
She had to be carefully evacuated in order to prevent her mind from cracking. He and Mina were supposed to exit through Lance's portal so they could die gently. They had very little time left.
Out of the mist, a gruesome image emerged. Mina's normally carefully coiffed hair flew around her head in wispy rattails. Her delicate skin showed red scratches where she had clawed at her eyes. A mink blanket dragged behind her, ruined with wet earth.
“Daughter.” Maxwell ripped off his overcoat as he ran to her. He wrapped her in the heavy gray wool and clasped her shoulders. Futilely, he tried to calm her. “Mina. You are safe now.”
She hissed.
Her spittle flew through the air to land on Maxwell's coat. She broke his grasp with the strength of the mentally broken and slashed at his face with jagged, sharp nails. He jerked his head back, but her middle finger caught the tip of his nose. The skin tore. Blood dripped onto his waistcoat and ate away the fibers.
“Find him!”
Maxwell staggered against the compulsion of her words. The powers of the thrice-bitten were indeed formidable. His knees locked in protest. Unwillingly, Maxwell walked to the portal, shuffling like a primitive wooden doll.
“Kill him!” Mina's command filled the air.
She fisted her hands in the hair at the crown of her head. At her cry, a giant snake materialized from the ether and opened its venom-laden mouth.
Mina pointed at the deadly throat. “Go!”
Maxwell's oxford shoes skidded against the snake's tongue as he resisted her mental coercion. If he died now while under her spell, he'd not go home. He'd end up back in Hell.
Save me
, he begged anyone who might be listening.
C
HAPTER
32
“
O
h, yes, darlings,” a ravaged voice mimicked. “Let's go home.”
Valerie slapped leather and drew her pistol, pointing it in the direction of the threat. The impound lot was lit by powerful streetlights, but the maze of cars and trucks created pools of darkness.
“Who's there?” she challenged.
“I'm crushed you don't recognize me. Husband.” In the silence that followed that statement, Mina, splattered with mud, limped through the impound yard. Her white dress was torn and smeared with the bilious green of her snake-portal's venom. The acid of the poison ate through her face until her nose was destroyed and her lips nonexistent. She no longer smelled of lavender; bile and hatred coagulated over the harsh odors of asphalt and metal.
Valerie's stomach froze at the rage in her former wife's voice. Ilona used to have a nasty temper, sure, but this was the final madness of the thrice-bitten. Her damaged brain now had near-angelic levels of powers.
Maxwell, his body fighting with every move, followed as though he were a zombie.
“Mina,” she said. “Let Maxwell go.”
“Oh, no.
Husband.
” She dragged out the endearment as though it were a razor in Valerie's flesh. “I think I'll keep him. After all, he wants to die. What better way to finish him off than fighting for me?”
John casually reached into the Shelby's still-open trunk and cradled a fully automatic HP MP7.
His movement caught Mina's remaining eye. “You. Deceiver!” she snarled, toxic saliva landing on the parking lot and eating holes in the surface. Hot asphalt added to the repulsive brew of odors in the air.
“You knew the truth, Mina,” John spoke clearly, sounding nearly robotic after Mina's garbled words. “I told you I was not your husband.”
At her step forward, Lance drew his sword. The obsidian blade absorbed the yellowish sodium light in the air and vibrated with power. He rotated his wrist and swung the sword in a vertical circle in front of him. He spread his wings and spoke with power. “Mina. Face me.”
While she was distracted, John leaned into Valerie's ear. “The baby,” he whispered. “Valerie, get inside.”
“The baby is fine,”
it answered in all their brains.
“You three fight. I'll take care of the intelligence.”
Mina wagged her finger at Lance. “I don't think so. I see into your minds and I know your fears. I have a little surprise for each of you.” When she grinned, two of her teeth fell and bounced on the pavement. “Maxwell, destroy the angel. I will take care of my husband, Vlad. And as for you, you liar . . .”
The parking lot crackled and buckled. With the roar of angry earth, an enormous mound of honeysuckle, at least eight feet high, rose out of the parking lot's surface. The flowers were hot fuchsia, a disturbingly human shade of pink. The mass heaved once and rolled like a wave over the ground towards the Guide.
Fear cramped John's bowels. That thing had robbed him of his youth and nearly killed him when he was eighteen.
“How about a little blast from your past, as well?”
The baby snapped directions, countering Mina's attack.
“Lance-Dad, bless our weapons, then take to the air. Get Maxwell away from her. Your sword should do the rest. John-Dad, fire at will. Guns won't kill it, but it'll slow down. Mom, aim for Mina's head. Finish this for once and for all.”
Fast and easy, John crouched behind the Shelby and opened fire. Lance went aerial, grabbing Maxwell by the collar and flinging him into the air. Valerie dove into the confusing darkness, Mina giving chase.
John's blessed MP7 sprayed the hillock like weed killer. The relentless honeysuckle reeled closer and closer even as his bullets gnawed away at it until it shrunk to less than four feet tall.
The flowers sighed, a never-forgotten sound that haunted his nightmares. With an unfelt breeze, the flowers ruffled together, morphing into the beautiful woman who had attempted to eat him. Only now, thanks to Lance's blessing, the formerly seductive form hung open, revealing the worm-infested interior of its truth.
Click.
Click.
Click.
The automatic was empty, leaving John with no weapons other than his fists and wits. He retreated until he was backed against the chain-link fence.
“We defeated you once before,” he threatened.
“They will abandon you again,” she tormented him. “The vampire is using you. The angel is no better.”
The loneliness of his lost years drained his hope. All that friendless time due to Lance's cowardice. Valerie's careless past that put them in this situation. Despair flooded him, weakened his knees, washed away the strength of his arms.
He lay huddled on the dirt, helpless against honeysuckle woman's relentless voice. Her football-sized mouth closed in on his face.
“It won't hurt this time, I promise,” she breathed seductively in his ear.
“Lucifer's hairy testicles, John, she's a liar!”
Valerie shouted.
Valerie's voice laid a soothing barrier between the trap of despair and John's true self. A sense of being wrapped in rosemary and cloves loosened his muscles, allowing him to think freely.
The dirt beneath him was covered in a soft, cold moss. Tiny white starlike flowers spangled the tender green. His sweat decorated the flowers with a watery shine. Despite the trampling it had received, the moss's tendrils slowly sprang back into shape.
The joy of life was as persistent and unrelenting as the pain.
John thanked the plant. He snapped back from his reverie in time to slap his enemy's teeth away from his face. The plant woman fell to the ground. The moss shrieked when her chaos came into contact with its orderly energy. John felt the moss's anger at her intrusion. Decades ago, flowers had run together to form the woman that had nearly destroyed him. Today, the moss poured over that corrupt body, wrapping her in the relentless, unstoppable waterfall of life's creativity. Mere seconds passed, and his tormentor was a squirming, huddled lump under an unbreakable layer of vegetation.
He placed his hand on the mound. “Hush now. Ride the Wheel. Be at peace.”
If there was anything that John Janté knew better than anyone else, it was that the Powers Above believed in redemption, creation, and love.
“I am not salvageable.” Her voice came thick and labored from under the moss.
“Lucifer always did know how to sell a lie,” he answered.
Lucifer, the Father of Lies. The first Fallen found the one thing a being could not disprove, the one thing a person felt to be the utter truth of their inner life, and rammed that false story so deep into their consciousness that they could not help but believe it for all time. This was what John had been made to doâtell the truth to those who could not believe in themselves anymore.
The woman heaved a sigh under her green shroud. “What do I do?”
“Think of who you truly are. Let go of any lies you have been told about yourself.”
He could see the slow disintegration of her body, the crumbling of her physical form to ash, just like every other paranormal creature. She had chosen to ride the Wheel.
John listened to his own advice. Who was he truly?
The blood of those who fought for justice ran in his veins. He carried a mission to help the broken. And he was the mate of both a full angel and a vampire. That was not too shabby at all.
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Airstream fog trailing from his wing tips, Lance took to the air. The German landscape spiraled away as he took Maxwell high in the sky.
“Let me die,” the Fallen moaned in the not-yet vacuum of the high atmosphere. “This has been too much.”
“Not until I can get you out of her mind control. Anyone who can spread compassion in Hell deserves to go home.”
Gritting his teeth, Maxwell wrapped his legs around Lance's body and punched him in the face.
It was a terrible punch, glancing off his cheekbone with a soft
thock
sound. Lance spun, but Maxwell reached for the sheath of the obsidian sword.
“I was doing it for myself, asshole. Let me go. I'll kill you,” the Second Revolutionary screamed. “I'm done.”
Lance twisted, trying to keep the other from his dangerous blade. “Stop that. I am not going to let you destroy yourself.”
They wrestled in the dark, until the sheath tumbled off the sword. Maxwell grabbed for the hilt, but instead sliced his fingers on the edge of the blade. His illusions and self-deceits fell away from his body like two-ton weights.
With a scream, he clutched his hand to himself and dropped like hail toward Earth. Lance folded his wings in tight and flung himself after the other man. Only to find Maxwell hovering, thirty miles above Earth, frantically clutching at a now-white garment, flapping enormous hot pink wings with purple tip feathers.
The other angel bounced into the sky.
“What have you done?” Maxwell shrieked like a teenager meeting his favorite sex object.
“You were lost. I have found you.”
At Lance's words, the Host descended and took Maxwell into His arms.
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Valerie led Mina on a blind chase through the rows of cars. Finally, she took cover behind a wrecked blue BMW. Robotlike, Mina advanced, not even pausing as Valerie's bullets slammed first into one shoulder, then the other.
Valerie kicked Mina with all her strength. Her thick boot heel connected with her former wife's gun hand. Her wrist broke and hung strangely at the end of her thin arm. The gun skittered behind the blue BMW.
They traded blows. Mina's good fist threw Valerie against a beige Lexus' windshield. It shattered beneath her.
Valerie grunted and kicked Mina in the kidney. At the moment, the vampire was faster, but she was slowing. She was hungry, tired, pregnant, and this innocent car had been wrecked.
“Cut it out with the nonlethal hits,”
the baby snarled, sounding way too much like her grandfather for Valerie's peace of mind.
Valerie leaned her back against the Lexus. “I can't,” she answered. “I can't kill her again.”
“Oh, but I can kill you, dear husband.” With that, Mina rounded the back of the car and kicked Valerie in the temple. “You liar! You deceived me for centuries, you bastard.”
Valerie's head rocked against the blow, but she refused to fall. “Yes. I did. I can only say that I loved you too much to endanger you,” she answered. She would not deflect blame to Radu. He would have to answer for his own actions, if he still lived.
“Look at what you have wrought.”
Valerie unflinchingly met Mina's maddened gaze. In those lost eyes, she saw Ilona's despair at knowing that her husband lied to her every day. Her fear and revulsion toward Radu who had torn her humanity from her. Her helplessness at being a pawn between the two siblings.
And the hollow knowledge that she would be forever trapped in this shell, never able to die, never able to ride the Wheel to a new oblivion.
Mina grasped the neck of Valerie's black and gold jacket. Valerie did not resist. With the unleashed strength of the possessed, Mina flung Valerie into the air.
The madwoman watched as the vampiress's body soared high into the sky, and landed on the ground next to the Shelby with a terrible crunch.