Page 149 of Lourdes & the Mafia
Where is Ramiel?
The question dies in my throat as his claws reach for me, nails digging into the skin at my temples. Like knives tearing into my skull…
I scream, my hands grasping at his bony wrists. His grip is adamant, brutal, and a pulse of magic fries down through my brain. My head reels and my vision blanks entirely before that dreadful vision pushes into my mind.
“Make it happen!” Thuriel snarls. “Give it to me!” He reaches into the recesses of my mind and yanks himself towards that future. And my magic, the tiger too long caged, responds of its own volition, sinking teeth and claws into a future and pulling it towards the present. His wings knit together, tufts of feathers rebirthed against bloody flesh. “Yes!” he cries, his screams echoing through the night.
Distantly, I hear the commotion of fighting stop as the ground rumbles. A cataclysm shaking us on our feet as his desires come into being.
I thrash, my limbs striking out. Distantly, I hear my name being called.
By Naomi.
Lorenzo.
Kane.
Ramiel.
But they can’t reach me.
Why can’t they reach me? Why can’t they help me?
“H-help.” My voice is nothing more than a hoarse croak through the dead night.
But no one comes. I’m alone in a void of visions, swirling around me at warp speed. I cannot stop them, detain them. I can do nothing but hold on as he forces his way into my mind and pulls out what he wants.
I am helpless.
Going under.
I can do nothing…
“Lourdes!”
The sound of my name being screamed breaks through the barrier of unrelenting despair. It’s one voice, and it’s also many, encouraging, loud, an awakening. My eyes flick open, staring at the cruel, unrelenting gaze of Thuriel and the madness as he pulls a vision into being. His eyes flash yellow-white in triumph as his body begins to reconstruct itself. It consumes him, the process. So much so that he starts to drown in it. He can’t see anything or anyone else outside of this moment.
My hands clasp around his wrists, holding him tightly, keeping him tethered against me. I thought I couldn’t, but only because he was drowning me in his magic. Because he was making me suffer the consequences of rising against him.
But I can do this. I know I can. I’ve always had the magic within me. I’ve always been what I’ve set out to be and just never realized the true strength I held until this very moment.
“You want power?” I don’t know how the words are pulled out of me, all I can do is feel them, buzzing through my throat, beneath my skin. “I’ll show you power.”
I scream as I force the caged beast of my own magic into a vision. One of my own making this time. Something Thuriel never could have seen coming. I tread back, all the way back in time to the moment of his creation. He sees it flashing through his own mind, and I feel his panic settle in like a heavy stone. I force him to watch as I take control of my own vision, giving it something he never saw coming.
His own doom.
“Goodbye, Thuriel…” I say just as I cut the thread of his existence from my vision, making it so he was never created in the first place. It changes the course of things, and the moment I will it into being, Thuriel screams, a deadly sound that all but shatters my ear drums.
“You bitch!” He lashes out at me, even as his body begins to fade from existence. It doesn’t stop him from vengeance, though. It fuels it. I feel the pain rather than see it. It pierces through my dress and my flesh. The warmth of blood coats my body, and he pulls away.
That’s when the pain hits. He smiles, a terrifying smile just before he vanishes from the world forever, and I feel my suspended body—when was I ever in the sky?—begin to fall.
And death’s threattryingto consume me before I even hit the ground.
Ramiel
Everythinghappenssofast.Too fast for even me to really capture what’s happening. One moment I’m fighting with Thuriel, airborne and away from the others. Within moments, my wings snap from behind me. Though they’re a phantom of the glory they once were, it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
