Page 75 of These Unhallowed Halls
The knife was lodged in her stomach beneath the wooden beam, her arm still outstretched.She blinked at me, and then her wrist dropped.I screamed out, eyeing the tracking to the shield around the people still chained in the center of the ring.That bubble of iridescence faded, and even Pastor Paine noticed it, his red eyes gleaming.
I bolted forward, rushing toward the ring so that I could get to those people and at least break their fucking chains.The remaining trapeze artist swung out at me as I moved to dash past, her fingers in claws as she foamed at the mouth, her eyes bleeding.
“Die, witch!”
“Lizzie!”I rolled under her attack, landing on my hip in the ring.The ground was hard beneath the dust and hay, and pain zinged through my bones.“Shit!Help!”
I could hear her steps before I saw her, rushing up toward the stark-raving woman, sent into this broken reality by Lizzie’s gifts.She slashed at her, producing a knife from somewhere just like her buddy had.Lizzie kicked at her hand, grabbing a hold of her head as I ran past to the sacrifices, Paine steadily closing in on them.
Swiping my hand through the air, I sent a gust of force toward the Ring Leader, shoving him back a few steps.Cerberus growled as he tried to turn himself around, still slowed by Paine’s attack.I needed to disrupt his concentration.
A head shot.
“Aaaaiiieeee!!”I shot my eyes to Lizzie, her fingers stuck into the woman’s temples.
The performer’s skin turned more and more red, stretching around her eyes like an expanding balloon, and with an ear-piercing, wet pop, her skull detonated, crimson chunks flying out everywhere.
“Oh my gods, oh my gods…” Lizzie turned to me, her stare horrified and wide.“I…Fuck!Temps!”
She pointed with a blood-stained finger toward the center of the ring, where Father Paine raised his hand over one of the people chained at his feet.They shrieked in muffled pleas, begging for a mercy they weren’t going to get from someone like Paine.
He couldn’t kill them.He couldn’t start this.We’d never make it out of here if the fucking demiurge were summoned entirely.
“Wren, help!”I threw out my arm, and from the ground around the sacrifices, a wall of ice shot up out of the ground, closing around them like a cave.
Looking down at my fingers in shock, the tips were coated in a thin layer of ice, melting on my skin as I stood there.
Well, holy shit.That’s not—
“Blasphemous whores!”Paine smashed his fists down onto the frozen barrier.“I’ll fucking peel your skin off your bones!Fill your corpses with my seed and make you the hosts for His Beasts!”
In a flash, Lizzie was at my side, grabbing my hand.I swallowed down the fear as I looked at her, nodding toward Cerberus.
“We need him up.Help me.”
She furrowed her brow, the unsure flicker in her eyes as noticeable as her shaking.“I…Temps, I’m not you.I don’t have some crazy line to call on.”
“You’re a morrighan.You see and touch death like no one else can.Make him feel it.We just need a second, one moment for Cerberus to break free.He’ll tear through him.You can do this.”
She looked from me to Paine, who hammered down on the ice in front of him, chips of it flying off as he clawed at it relentlessly.
“Shit.”Reaching out her other hand, Lizzie focused on Paine, and I watched as her eyes turned black, smoke appearing around her fingers.
I squeezed, anchoring myself to her presence, and shifted my focus from bolstering the ice to Paine.He was still mostly mortal.He could break.I focused on the cells, the little bits of emptiness between them, and the bonds that held him together.I remembered how an alchemical solution could break those bonds to create something new, and I pictured his blood filled with that solution.
He faltered, snarling at us as his eyes began to bleed.“He will eat you whole!Nothing will stop His arrival!Nothing!”
“Mom,” Lizzie whispered, her body thrumming next to me, “Wren.Queen of Cauldron.Queen of the Shadowed Summer Sun.Those gone, walking the paths of the next world.I have a wayward soul for you to claim.I mark him in your names!”
A brand flared to life across Paine’s chest, the earth cracking beneath his feet, and he screamed.“Nooo!”
I felt something snap in the ether around us, the shadows lengthening around Paine.And then I saw him, towering behind the Ring Leader, an Angel of Death.
“Say hello to your father.”
Claws jutted through Paine’s abdomen, the finger and arm following as Cerberus speared his hand through the fucker’s middle.Gore dripped from the werewolf-like forearm, and the glowing red of Paine’s eyes faded into nothing.The rune rumbled, a roar from somewhere I couldn’t fathom ricocheting through the ring, but then it stopped, the cracks sealing up.
Yanking his hand free, Cerberus let Paine’s body flop to the ground, and I dropped to my knees, exhausted as Lizzie gasped.
