Daughter of Gods and Shadows (34 page)

Prophet's agonizing cries snapped Eden out of her desperation.

“No!” Eden couldn't let this happen. To hell with the third Omen. She couldn't let Sakarabru kill Prophet. She ran back toward the wreckage.

Her mind was racing. To beat the Demon she needed the third Omen! But Andromeda was the third Omen, and she was nowhere near. They didn't have time for her to make the bond. Prophet's life was on the line.

Eden had doubled back and kept out of sight of the Demon, making her way to find the only weapon she had in the wreckage of the SUV. She kept low and watched as Sakarabru impaled Prophet through his chest with his horn, raised him off the ground, and slung him through the air.

She watched in horror as the Demon stumbled back. The Guardian lay motionless a hundred yards away. She heard the Demon laugh all of a sudden.

“Welcome back, little Redeemer!” he called out, turning around in circles looking for her. His gaze finally rested on the wrecked car. Eden crouched low and dug through pieces of metal and broken glass until she found it. She hadn't used it since she was attacked by the Brood after she'd made the second bond. Prophet called it a
kpinga,
and even now, it felt like a natural extension of her.

“There you are.” His tone grated against her skin.

Think, Eden! He was coming toward her. The air pressed in on her with each step he took. Sometimes she could make things happen by thinking about them. Eden had to concentrate.
Quicksand! Thick. Deep. Step. Step. Thick.
She saw his next step, saw him sink deep into the ground, thick like molasses, holding him there. She saw him struggling to pull his leg free, but there were hands in the quicksand, holding on to him, grabbing him, and trying to pull him deeper into the growing hole.

“You're going to have to do better than that, sweetheart,” he threatened, forcing himself free and still coming toward her.

She only had two Omens. There was no way she could defeat with just two. They'd told her that. Everyone knew that she couldn't beat him with just two.

Eden saw his head spin around. She forced it to turn until she could hear the snapping of bone.

The Demon laughed. “That fuckin' hurt.”

“Come on,” she murmured. “Kill him, Eden! Think!” She envisioned a tree branch flying through the air like a spear aimed at his head. She saw it pierce his skull and come out on the other side. Sakarabru stumbled again, glanced at the branch lying on the ground on the other side of him, spat blood, and kept coming.

If she couldn't kill him then she had to focus on making herself stronger. His mind was her mind. She knew what he was going to do, but maybe he knew what she was going to do too. Eden stayed low and crept back away from the wreckage. He was so close. He saw her traps as soon as she did. But even if he didn't see them coming, he knew how to break free of them. Eden concentrated on herself and saw herself stronger than she ever thought possible. She saw herself faster than the Human Torch from
The Avengers.
She wasn't afraid. She saw her fist filled with the power of lightning, and she saw herself charge him, without fear or hesitation, slicing him across the neck with the blade of her weapon, slicing open his throat, decapitating him and finally putting an end to all this.

“You can't do it, reborn,” he said catching her in midair, dangling her above ground by her throat. He had her! The Demon finally had her! Sakarabru held her suspended in the air. Intense emerald eyes burned into hers. Terror filled Eden at her core. She couldn't scream! She couldn't fight! She was frozen with fear.
Wake up, Eden! Please, wake the hell up!
But this was no nightmare and he was no bogeyman! He was the Demon of Theia and of this world! “My little Redeemer,” he said almost admiringly.

One by one, Eden felt the vertebrae along the base of her neck snapping and popping. Her arms and legs dangled helplessly at her sides. Her
kpinga
lay at her feet, and tears slid down her cheeks. He would be the last thing she ever saw of this world. Her last memory.

“Now Eden!” she heard someone call out to her—

“Now! Make the bond! Make the bond! He's the third Omen!”

It was Kifo's voice.

The Demon. He was the third Omen! Sakarabru is the Omen and not Andromeda?

“She tricked us, Eden!” Kifo shouted. “Andromeda tricked all of us!”

Eden grabbed hold of his wrist with both hands. She stopped fighting him. He was the third Omen. Yes! She knew it. She could feel it. The nature of Sakarabru. The heart of the Demon surged through her body like a bolt of lightning.

“No!” she heard him yell.

He released his grip around her neck, but she didn't let go of him. He shook his hand, trying to fling her off of him, but Eden held on, letting the surge coming from him fill her to capacity. Eden closed her eyes and saw his beauty. Sakarabru had stared back at her in a stance of entitlement and privilege. He was breathtaking and proud. He was ego.

“You do not deserve me,” he said, smugly. “You are not good enough.”

His ego was the third Omen and it taunted her, but it was no fighter. She watched in fascination as he tugged at the cuffs of his sleeves, swept his hair from his face, doted on all of the beautiful things about himself.

Eden walked over to him and stopped. He looked down his nose at her, and laughed. She drew back her arm and slapped him hard across the face. He raised his chin, adjusted his collar, and licked at the trickle of blood pulled in the corner of his mouth.

“You do not deserve me,” he said defiantly.

But she did deserve him.

“Three for three. Bring me. Redeem me. Or die the lamb.”

Eden had earned the right to him. She had fought, and died, and lived. She had survived because she was the Redeemer and to destroy him was her destiny.

Eden slapped him again, and then grabbed him by hair, and pulled his face to hers until they were close enough to kiss. “Bitch,” she said, gritting her teeth, “I own you!” She let him go when she was ready. Eden dropped to her feet and stood facing him.

Agonizing and torturous pain starting at the soles of his feet crept up his ankles, his legs.

His life was hers for the taking. His pain was hers to give. His suffering would be her pleasure.

“I didn't finish it the last time, Demon.” Eden stepped toward him.

She knew him. Sakarabru couldn't have a thought without her knowing what it was. She anticipated every move he made and countered his blows with slices across his face, neck, and arms. She stabbed him in his midsection, moving too fast for him to see. Eden gouged his eyes and ears. Sakarabru screamed in agony. She had made and survived all three bonds with all three Omens. Eden was a different kind of monster. He had no idea who he was fuckin' with.

Blood dripped down his face where horns had been and pooled in his eye sockets. “You are nothing to me,” she said, stalking circles around him. A memory. History. A remnant, she never felt so whole and full and endless—without boundaries.

In her mind, Eden saw Khale, embedded and held in place in the bark of a tree. The Shifter struggled to free herself, but only Eden could free her.

The ground beneath Eden's feet began to rumble. The Earth split in a circle around the perimeter of the clearing and across the highway. Dark and menacing storm clouds quickly formed in the sky, shooting lightning into the air all around them.

“Eden! No!” She heard Khale's voice, but it sounded so far away.

The Demon had been cut down to his knees, mottled flesh and blood pooled all around him. A desperate and powerful rage burst from his mouth, shooting flames toward her. Eden yelled at the top of her lungs, forcing the blaze back toward him and down his throat, burning him from the inside out.

A fire began to rage through the forests surrounding them. She watched the demon writhing in pain, and she relished it. Is this what freedom felt like? She was complete in and of herself. Eden needed no one and nothing.

“Eden! Eden!”

Prophet was standing, but barely. He held out his arms to her. “Stop,” he warned. “Eden! Listen to me! You've got to stop!”

Stop? No. She didn't want to stop. She was finally liberated. The excitement of the Demon twisting and turning as she wrenched his life from his body gave her such joy.

The Demon cursed her in the Ancient tongue, as more and more of him dissolved into the ground. She should stop! No. No. Not yet. Not now. And why should she stop? Why should she ever fuckin' stop?

“Too much,” Prophet yelled. “He's done, Eden!” He stumbled toward her.

Eden couldn't stop. She didn't want to. It needed to be over. She was ready for it to end. Eden never saw Khale. She never heard her cry out to her, warning her that she was going too far, reminding her of what happened to Mkombozi when she went too far. She didn't hear Khale begin chanting the spell that sent Mkombozi to the afterlife on Ara.

“I want it over. I want to end him.” And everything. Everyone. The Demon. The Ancients. Eden could do it. She needed to because who else could put and end to this chaos. Sound caved in on itself as did light. Peace. It was dark and quiet and warm. Arms wrapped around her. A voice? His voice. Prophet's voice. “Then end him,” he told her. “Where you go, I go, Eden. End it, so that it can finally be over, for both of us.”

He would let her do it. Prophet would never leave her. Not again. He would follow her anywhere.

 

HOLDING ON TO YOU

Andromeda had found another dress just like the one she's soiled in Sakarabru's torture room, only this one had pink flowers on it, and she loved it even more.

“You look lovely, Andromeda,” Kifo told her, holding out his arm for her to take.

He had promised to take her for a nice stroll along the River Walk in San Antonio.

“Thank you, Kifo.” She blushed.

She had made up her mind to let him love her if he chose to do so. He seemed interested in a courtship.

It had been a week since the Demon's destruction. This was the first opportunity that the two of them had had to talk about it.

“I was worried that you hadn't paid attention,” she said in earnest.

“It was hard to. I wanted to kill him for hurting you. All I could think about was that I'd given you my word that I wouldn't interfere.”

“I wanted to tell you everything,” she said sincerely. “But I knew that if I did, he'd know. Without meaning to, you'd give him some clue to what I'd done, and everything would've fallen apart.”

“Well, I understand that now,” he said quickly.

The Seer had led Sakarabru to believe that she was the Omen on purpose. She had planted that thought in his mind while he was torturing her. What sounded like anguished babble to Kifo was actually one of Theia's lost languages from before. To Sakarabru it sounded like a confession.

“I—am—the—third—Omen!”

She had planted the words in such a way that he believed he had come up with the conclusion on his own. The truth was, Andromeda had made
him
the third Omen. Kifo had all but missed the exchange, but in the chaos surrounding the confrontation with Sakarabru in that clearing, it came to him. It was so subtle. Kifo had been sick to his stomach watching what the Demon had been doing to Andromeda. She coughed in an instant when Sakarabru had gotten too close. Blood and spit sprayed in his face, and he beat her brutally for it. When he finished, she had looked at Kifo and winked. Winks were the universal language in any world for, “Pay attention or you'll miss something wonderful.”

*   *   *

Eden loved the house in Vermont. Even in the midst of the storm constantly raging inside her, she could find peace here, at least for now. The Guardian, her Guardian, had saved her. He'd stopped typhoon Eden dead in her tracks with something as simple as holding her in his strong arms. It sounded corny, but corny or not, it had worked. Beauty had indeed soothed the savage beast, and she loved him even more because of it.

She watched from the porch as Prophet circled overhead and finally landed, carrying a catch of half a dozen fish up to the porch.

“I'm going to need you to gut and cook this,” he said, holding up dinner.

Eden grimaced and made the universal sign for “gag.”

“Does that mean … no?”

Prophet cleaned and gutted the fish and cooked them outside over an open flame. Eden had hardly said two words in days. She hadn't slept or eaten. She hadn't so much as had a drink of water. She had fulfilled the prophecy. Eden had destroyed the Demon, but she was still bonded to the Omens, which were a part of him. Sakarabru was gone, but not really.

In the back of her mind, she'd sort of hoped that killing him was indicative of a new beginning, and it was, but now she wondered what it was a beginning to. Somehow she'd managed to survive the bonds and live with these things still inside her. The last Omen left its mark, a circle with three smaller circles inside it, in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades.

The Omens together had turned Mkombozi into another kind of creature, one that no one could contain and control. The Ancient had destroyed the Demon and very nearly every single Ancient in their world, had it not been for Khale stepping in at the last minute. So if those damn things had made an Ancient lose herself, what, ultimately, would they do to Eden?

“I cooked,” he said, finishing up his meal. “You do the dishes.”

He treated her the same. Like she was still Eden. It was hard not to love him for that. She wished she were that girl again.

He put his plate down on the deck. “Come here,” he said, holding out his hand to her. Eden put her plate down, too, went to him, and climbed on top of him.

“We have survived a Demon, twice, one and a half world destructions, six bonds with Omens, and about three attempts of Khale trying to kill us.”