A Crack in Everything (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-Six

The Death Howl

J
inx had never known pain like it. Not like this. Sure, he’d felt the knife when he’d been stabbed before and she had healed him, but this time … oh, ancestors, this time
she’d
stabbed him. Her face, her tears, her trembling hand and the blood that covered it, his blood, her blood. Pain danced in front of his eyes and all through his body, the poison of iron eating away inside him. The silver he wore was bad enough, but iron … Iron was like boiling water poured on ice. Iron inside him, in his blood, travelling through his body destroying it from the inside out.

And he’d done it to save Holly.

From Izzy and her angel.

The sickening horror of it clawed at the edges of his brain and by turns made him want to laugh and scream. Old instincts got the better of him and he couldn’t help it. He’d saved Holly
when he should have let her die. He should have let her die a thousand times.

Izzy bent over him, shaking him, shouting, but through the high-pitched whine in his mind he couldn’t hear her. It was the death howl, and though he knew the Cú Sídhe legend he’d only heard it once before. When one of his kin died … his father. He’d been too young to understand it then. And the others, Blythe’s pack, had gathered around him. They’d all heard it – Blythe and her kin, the pack he should have been a member of if Holly hadn’t demanded him. Like they’d all hear it now. They’d all know. They’d hear of his failure, his disgrace. They would hear his death. He only hoped they’d mourn him. Just a little.

He could only hope.

Izzy shook him hard, bringing his attention back to her again. He could see her saying his name, saw the shape it formed on her lips, almost a smile, but partly a grimace. She bore the pain and grief in a way worthy of her bloodlines. Bore it, but fought it and raged against it. He loved her rage, her refusal to accept the inevitable. Loved her stubborn, giving heart and the way she never seemed willing to accept her lot. She fought. He loved when she fought.

She was a mistake, a flaw like him. A crack in the order of the world.

Dying wasn’t so difficult after all. He’d always imagined he’d fight. But now, he slid softly towards the darkness, grateful for the peace.

‘No!’ Izzy said, her voice finally reaching him across the abyss like a song. ‘Come back to me. You have to. You can’t die. I won’t let you. Don’t leave me.’

So sweet to hear her say it. She even sounded like she meant it. He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t order him about anymore. Not now. She’d gained that power by pulling the iron out of his body. By putting it back in, she’d broken the spell somehow. He didn’t know how it worked. But it did. He was free. Free of Izzy and free of Holly.

Finally free, for the first time he could remember.

Maybe dying was worth it after all.

Then he heard howls, a chorus of howls.

Something spoke to his hound-self from the recesses of his mind. It howled.

Blythe.

He opened his eyes to light. Light so bright it was like the end of the world. Or the end of his life.

And again, not very far away, he heard howls. Not in his mind this time. But all around him. So many howls.

Izzy jerked alert at the sound. Howls came from everywhere, all over the Market, and Holly screamed for her guards. Izzy didn’t care. It didn’t matter anymore. Sorath might be here to kill Holly, or she might just have taken the opportunity as it presented itself. None of it mattered. Not now.

Panic engulfed the Market and Holly retreated. ‘This isn’t over! This will never be over, Sorath.’

‘Cousin’, she’d called the angel. The Sídhe had been angels once, wasn’t that the story? Family feuds really could last for eternity. So why did Izzy have to get caught up in it. Why did Jinx? It wasn’t fair.

She pulled him closer, but he was limp in her arms. He was bleeding, bleeding far too much and she was still holding the knife that stabbed him. She couldn’t help him.

‘Sorath,’ she yelled. ‘Help me. Please, now. You’ve got to help me. How do I heal him? How do I—?’

‘Let me help you. Let me take care of it. I know what to do. Please, all you have to do is ask. Ask me in. Let go of your control, Isabel.’

Holly’s guards circled her, weapons at the ready. It didn’t matter. Only Jinx mattered right now. Jinx and Dad. If she could help them …

‘All right. Help him and promise to help my dad. That’s all I want. Please.’

‘Done,’
said the angel and it sounded like a thunderclap.

Light flooded the place, light so bright Izzy had to close her eyes. She bent over Jinx’s body, cradled him against her and prayed.

With a thud, a Cú Sídhe landed between them and the approaching guards. Its tail lashed back and forth and it snarled, hackles rising like spines all down its massive back. Another flanked her, and then one on the other side, surrounding her, cutting her off.

Protecting her. Protecting them both.

Izzy felt the angel inside her growing in power, taking control, like sunrise inside her, burning her own will away like morning dew. She – or Sorath, it was hard to tell anymore – lifted her hand and pressed it to the wound. Power rose in her and it wasn’t like the time she’d pulled out the knife before. This was like a wave, crashing over her.

Jinx jolted up in her arms as if electrocuted. He sucked in a breath and his back arched, every muscle turning to steel. His hand closed on her arm, fingers digging into her like bolts. She sobbed in relief and pain, but clung to him, unable to let him go. Not now. Not ever.

‘Let go,’
said the angel.
‘It’s time now. Let go.’
She tried to hold on. But she couldn’t. Control was slipping away fast. The angel was too strong.
‘We had a deal, Isabel.’

Silver stepped up onto the dais, her bare feet silent, her movements elegant and beautiful. She glowed with energy, with light and power. The air trembled around her.

‘Silver, what do you think you’re doing?’ Holly snarled, advancing on her daughter, but retreated when the Cú Sídhe snapped at her.

‘What I should have done a long time ago, mother. You killed Belladonna, as surely as if you’d taken her life yourself. I swallowed that down, but I never forgave you. You killed her when you killed Jinx’s father, when you took Jinx. I’m setting him free. For her.’

‘You have no right.’

The ground trembled. ‘No right? I’m your first daughter. That gives me every right. All the times I bowed to your will instead of my conscience.’

‘This isn’t possible. I broke you when I broke your tree.’

Silver smiled, as chilling a smile as her mother’s. ‘Yes. Just like this.’

She reached out her hand to the column of crystal rising from the ground to the ceiling, the crystal that captured all the light stolen from the mortal world and bounced down here. Holly’s crystal, Izzy realised. As powerful as Silver’s tree had been. Perhaps even more so.

Silver touched a single fingertip to it and Holly screamed.

For a moment nothing happened, just the scream that went on and on, drowning the noise of the rapidly evacuating Market, the stampede of fae-folk up the tunnel to the outside. And then the crack appeared, a hairline fracture deep inside the quartz, reaching for Silver’s finger with a sound like the demise of an iceberg. It spread, speeding through the crystal, branching out until it looked like skeletal leaves, racing through the stone.

Holly choked and her voice died in her throat. Silver opened her mouth and a pure high note rang out. It rebounded off the bronze walls and ceiling far away, echoed back in abstract harmonies and the crystal trembled. When Silver stopped singing, the voice went on, amplified to dangerous proportions.

‘I found another source,’ Silver went on, ‘one more potent than any of us could have imagined. Will you?’

The crystal shattered. Shards rained down on them like hailstones. Holly gave a sob and fell back, into the arms of her guards. Surrounded, safe, but broken, as surely as her crystal was broken.

Silver shook her hand as if ridding it of something unpleasant. ‘Now we’re leaving. And you’ll let us go, or I’ll give Brí’s hounds leave to do as they will.’

‘Brí’s hounds?
You
brought Brí’s hounds here?’

The nearest one shook its head and slid to Sídhe-form. Blythe stood there. ‘We came ourselves. We followed our brother and saw what you’ve done to him. Now we’ll take him home.’

‘Izzy?’ Jinx whispered, his voice wretched, his eyes searching her face. ‘Izzy, are you okay?’

But she couldn’t answer him. She was just a spectator now. Sorath wasn’t finished with her. And she’d given her word to allow it. Her struggle to resist the inevitable, this delay, had only made the angel furious. But she couldn’t help it. She had to know Jinx was all right. She had to know that he was safe. Even as the flames boiled through her again, she kissed him. Kissed him and felt him kiss back, indulged in the wonder of that sensation, and felt herself bleed away, into the light, swallowed up by the being inside her.

Her last thought was that at least she had felt that final kiss. At least she knew he lived. And that Silver and Blythe would make him free.

That was enough. She could do no more. The angel took her.

Dylan lurched against the wall as he tried to stand and struggled for breath. The rough stone dragged at his jacket and his stomach roiled inside him, cramps shaking him like a terrier with a rat. Sweat stood out on his forehead, pinpricks of ice.

‘Careful now, lad,’ said Mistle, his harsh voice grating against Dylan’s ears. ‘Don’t want to do yourself an injury now, do you?’ Laughter hung beneath the words like a stench. Unpleasant, mocking laughter, the kind that made him cringe inside, the kind that sapped the will to do anything more than curl up in the corner and die.

What had Silver done to him?

He tried again, pitching himself forwards so his legs had no choice but to keep up or let the rest of him fall. The edge of the cell door gave way to smooth bronze and he slid more comfortably now, his vision blurred and indistinct.

Mistle’s hand came in to support him. ‘Steady. You don’t want to break the connection, not if she’s facing off against old Holly right now. She needs you calm. Think of the music, the songs you want to make up. Let it fill you.’

And there is was – music. All around him, flowing through him, music that shivered across his skin and twined itself around each heartbeat. Music, the thought of which brought tears to his eyes and a smile to his lips. It had colours, shades and textures, layer upon layer of harmonies combined in a
wondrous whole. He could feel each instrument, the way the angles and plains interlocked, the colours and shades merging in the glorious whole.

His body ached for this music. He needed to capture it. He needed to cup it in his shaking hands and share it, let others know its wonder as he did. He needed—

This was her promise, he realised as he forced himself onwards. And if he allowed it, he knew it would swallow him whole. Hearing this –
feeling
this – he’d never be the same. This was her promise and her curse, the reason one didn’t seek out a Leanán Sídhe and the same reason to think not twice but three times before kissing one. Before accepting any deals.