Page 45 of A Bloodline Redeemed

Andy’sfearandpainripped through our life bond, nearly bringing me to my knees.I was already running across the square, heedless of any danger, my feet moving before my brain really registered what I was seeing.There, at the edge of the fighting.I pushed myself with supernatural speed, calling on all the power Sunny had to offer my corpse-like frame, but still, it was far, far too late.

Red energy, limned in blackness, struck Andy and crawled over her skin, flaring bright and bloody before disappearing in a flash, the red not dissipating, butabsorbinginto her as the blackness lingered, a dark shadow over her rapidly dwindling aura.

She fell, and I wasn’t there to catch her.

All around the battlefield, I could feel the others moving toward her.Their bonds with our witch weren’t quite as strong as my lifebond, but they had to have felt her distress.Her agony.And the completelackof feeling that followed, as she fell to the ground.

She didn’t twitch or writhe, the way Bella had.The way someone hit with a painful, but otherwise harmless spell might.She didn’t go rigid the way a person might if they were merely stunned.She fell boneless and limp as the dead.

The O’Leary bitch stood several paces away from Andy’s body.But she had a shield erected before the deadly spell I launched her way had time to connect.Flames erupted around her, jinn fire hot enough to melt the pavers.And yet, she remained untouched.

Black magic.Blood magic.Even darker things, perhaps.The magic that had felled Andy, and which kept that cunt safe, was not even remotely natural.It made evenmyskin crawl in response.

I slid to a halt at Andy’s side, the others falling in around us.With a flick of my fingers, I threw up a hasty, but powerful, shield of my own.My minions felt my call and made their way to me, creating a circle of animated corpses outside our shield, insulation against whatever those outside might throw at us.

I should be watching the enemy for further surprises.Razing the place with my own dark magic.But Sunny was a wild, churning black storm of rage inside me, and all we could focus on was Andy, lying lifeless on the ground.

The cult leader cackled in mad glee while the angels, rebels, and cult forces continued to fight all around us.None of it mattered.Nothing mattered but Andy.

I reached for her energy, her soul-spark, that thing that animated all living things, desperate to find it.To keep it here, with me.

Niamh hit her knees beside me.I didn’t remember falling to the ground.“Is she dead?”the fae asked, her voice even, but tight with restrained emotion, her hunter training allowing her to force back the fury I could see in her eyes.Her hands hovered over Andy’s body, afraid to touch her and have the dark spell leap from one body to the next.“I can’t sense her heartbeat.Or her aura.”

I shook my head, feeling the darkness swirl inside me.Sunny pushed forward, demanding that wedosomething.Andy’s soul was fading, suffocated or eaten away by the magic.Her life spark was so dim it barely registered.I put a shaking hand on her cold cheek.Her skin had gone ghostly pale, the green bled out of her hair, leaving it so dark it was nearly black.The only color that remained was the unnatural red of her lips.

“There’s nothing you can do, abomination,” the bitch behind me called, her voice haughty and full of smug superiority.She too ignored the battle still raging around us, probably secure in the belief that she had won.Without our group to aid them, the angels and the rebels were struggling under a horde of cultists, slaves, and undead SA agents.It wouldn’t be long before they were slaughtered.

That was probably her plan all along.Eliminate Bella so the rebels had no figurehead or direction.Eliminate Andy so her powerful pack of lovers were rendered paralyzed by loss.I almost admired the cultist’s head for strategy.But it was a head that wouldn’t remain attached to her body much longer, if I had anything to say about it.

“Step out from behind your little bubble, you worthless waste of oxygen,” Aahil’s sultry voice purred from somewhere behind me.“You’ll see exactly what we can do.”

He was radiating deadly heat.I could feel it from where I crouched, several feet away.The little jinn was about to go supernova.It would certainly solve our cult problem.But we probably wouldn’t live to do a victory dance.He would burn everyone alive with his rage—friend and foe alike.

But I couldn’t really bring myself to care at the moment.“Andy,” I whispered furiously.“Oleander Lovell, I will not let you justdieon us!”

I sent out my magic, letting it uncoil between us, down the lifebond, over her unmoving body.Her chest didn’t rise and fall.She wasn’t breathing.Panic washed over me as I tried, and failed, to grab onto that last little bit of her soul.My magic was wrong for this.I created the illusion of life from death.I could read souls, use the leftover traces of energy they left behind, but soul magic wasn’t really my purview.

“Elijah!”I barked, my voice cracking.

The angel was already there, kneeling across from me, the glowing branches of his wings spread as if they could shield Andy from harm.“I’m here, Dyre,” he whispered.“I’m here.But I can’t reach her through the dark.”

It was only then that I really registered that his angelic magic was also swirling around Andy, assessing, grasping, trying as I had to grab onto whatever was left of our witch.

“Hair as dark as coal, skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood,” the O’Leary bitch called in a sing-song voice.“We call it the Snow White Curse.Fitting don’t you think?”

I growled, lurching to my feet and spinning to face her.River’s deadly jaguar form paced just inside the shield I had erected, a rumbling growl pouring from him.Zhong stood to the side, massive wings spread and every muscle in his large body tensed to spring.Aahil stood nearby, literallyglowingwith the force of the power inside him.Ambrose was a smoky darkness hovering above them.The second the shields were down, the cult leader would meet a very painful, terrifying, and violent end.

It would be too good a death for her.I would raise her corpse and kill her again, over and over, for eternity.

“Free her,” I demanded.“And you might die a clean death.You have no idea the horrors that wait for you, woman.”

She just smirked at me.“It’s funny how you think you are in any place to make demands, foulblood.There’s nothing a disgrace to witch kind like you could ever do to touch me.I have the power of the bloodlines behind me.”She shrugged.“And besides, there’s no reversing that curse, even if Iwantedto.The last O’Leary traitor will remain stuck in a state of perpetual half-death, a living corpse while what is left of her soul rots inside her like carrion, aware, but unable to leave its fleshy prison.”

Every animated corpse around us turned to face her, orienting on their target with an intensity that I knew must be eerie and unsettling to anyone but me.

“Dyre,” Elijah’s deep, warm voice was tight with urgency.“We have to do something.She’s fading.”

I whirled away from the O’Leary bitch to return to Andy’s side.He was right.She was almost gone.Maybe the curse wasn’t working quite like it was intended to and would kill her outright.Or maybe the progression would stop only when there was barely the least hint of her left.A fragment of a soul trapped for eternity in a flesh coffin.

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