Chapter Twenty-Two

Atonement

 

Clayton wasn’t waiting for me when I ran into Willow-Wisp—Amias was. I still hadn’t gotten used to him appearing in the daylight, even if it was only a possibility inside the mystical graveyard.

Relief spread through me when I saw him. I didn’t question it. I barely even thought about it. But it was there.

“Come.” He grabbed my hand and hurried me deeper into the graveyard.

“What happened, Amias?”

“He hoped to atone for his crimes, but he cannot cut away his mind.”

“What crimes?” I cried.

“You knew he was not the same.”

I had. I had known.

“But what happened?” I asked again.

He didn’t answer, just pulled me grimly on.

I heard Angus before I saw him. He lay on the ground as his beast, thrashing weakly, and Leo knelt as close as he dared, his face a mask of horror.

The giant held up his blood-drenched hands when he saw me. “What have I done?” he bellowed. He pointed at the crimson-stained item that lay beside him. “What have I done?”

Clayton stood a few yards away, silent, motionless.

I stepped on a bloody bone saw as I ran toward Angus. I stumbled to a halt, my hand over my mouth, unable to tear my stare away from the grisly tool.

A fucking bone saw.

“He couldn’t have known,” Clayton said, finally walking to me. “When he asked Leo to cut off the discolored halves of his horns, he couldn’t have known what it would do to him.” He met my stare. “Could he?”

“No,” I said, barely able to speak. “No.”

I dropped to my knees, not caring if Angus hurt me while in the throes of his mindless thrashing. His animalistic moans were constant and so very tortured, and I knew he was beyond hearing me.

I spoke anyway. I lay atop his huge, gleaming form and held on tightly, and I told him I loved him. I didn’t know what else to do.

He needed to know I was there.

As I buried my face against the roughness of his neck, Leo knelt beside us and told me what happened.

“He wanted me to cut off the changed horns,” Leo said, loud over Angus’s raw moans. “He planned to use them in the potion. I shouldn’t have agreed. I—”

I lifted my face. “This wasn’t your fault. And right now we just need to help him.” But none of us had a clue about how to do that.

His enormous, shifted body shuddered beneath me, trying to get away from the pain, one horn untouched and perfect—except for the discoloration he’d picked up in prison—and the other, injured one swollen and gushing blood.

It pulsed like a heartbeat, violently red, somehow soft looking, as though I could squeeze it and it would give like clay. Black lines like lightning ran from the base of the horn to streak over the bull’s enormous head, leaving crisped, cracked skin behind.

When I looked into his eyes I saw only endless, blind agony.

At that moment, he was not Angus. His shifter had taken over and he was simply a pitiful, beautiful animal in severe distress.

He moaned.

“You’ll have to put him down,” Amias said. “End his suffering, Trinity.”

“Clayton,” I begged. “Can’t you do something?”

“I can kill this vampire,” Clayton said, his narrowed, angry stare on Amias.

Amias took a quick step back. “That would not benefit the werebull.”

“Don’t advise her to kill him again,” Clayton said, his voice tight.

Angus moaned, and thrashed, and slipped deeper into his world of pain.

Trying to cut off his horn was not like trimming a nail. It meant his life. If we couldn’t help him, he would die an agonizing death.

Somehow, he hadn’t known that.

Had he?

No. He wouldn’t have left us that way, and he wouldn’t have deliberately accepted such suffering. No matter what he’d done. No matter what he’d needed to atone for.

And he wouldn’t have put that on Leo.

“I don’t know what to do,” I cried. I wanted to cover my ears. I wanted to run away. I wanted not to hear what was coming from his mouth. But I stayed there with him, on him, as his movements became slower and weaker, and part of me wished he would die so his torment would end. I stayed there with him.

It was the hardest thing I’d ever done.

And there, into the midst of our vulnerability, the demon came.

He came into Willow-Wisp, stunning me. I hadn’t thought the graveyard would accept him. I’d thought we were safe there.

But he slammed to the ground hard enough to shake the earth, breaking and scattering tombstones when he landed. He had grown even larger since his last defeat and was at least twice the size of Leo.

Immediately, he sent a stream of fire at me—and the helpless werebull upon whom I lay.

It wasn’t like the fire he’d immersed me in the last time. That had been a fire of power, and I’d embraced it. I’d absorbed it.

And he’d learned from his mistake.

The fire he sent toward me was simply…fire. Hot flames crawled up my legs, eating away the fabric of my jeans, scorching my flesh.

It caught Angus’s tough shifter hide, burned away his hair and scorched his flesh, but his moans didn’t change. He was too agonized to hurt more than he already did.

I scrambled off him and rolled, smothering the flames crawling up my legs, then beat at the tiny fires caught in Angus’s hair.

Silverlight burst free and I stood in front of Angus, encircling us both in the sword’s silver halo. But the demon was not a vampire. The silver arc might hurt him, but it wouldn’t kill him.

And even as Leo lifted his fist, fell to his knee, and smacked the ground with his killing power, more demons appeared.

Seamus Flynn had brought backup.

I flung Silverlight away from me, having no choice as the demon’s Blacklight streaked toward Clayton.

As Miriam streaked toward him.

I needed to defend Clayton against Blacklight and Angus against the demons, and for a moment, I was overtaken by doubt.

Silverlight fought Blacklight, and though the demon’s new sword was powerful, it was not old. It was not Silverlight.

Then Rhys Graver raced into the graveyard, Shane at his side, and my relief was tempered by my worry. Clayton held guns in both hands. He shot silver into the demons’ brains, and his aim was dead-on, his hands steady, but the threat of Blacklight—of Miriam—was in his eyes.

Seamus glanced at Angus, and I saw the exact second he understood the situation. He would go after Angus, because Angus was my weak spot.

He’d leaped out of the way of Leo’s terrifying power, but three other demons weren’t so quick. Leo’s power cracked the ground and streaked toward them, and when it reached them, it spiraled up their huge bodies, carving them into symmetrical slices, killing them before they’d even realized they were about to die.

The other demons roared, scattering when they saw what Leo could do, and then they regrouped and turned their collective concentration on the giant. He was the biggest threat to them at that moment, and he would be the first one they needed to kill.

Amias attacked the big demon, attacked him with fangs, claws, and speed unlike any I’d ever seen. Seamus yelled and twisted his body and flailed his arms and released wild, uncontrolled fire and power, trying to find the tormenting vampire who was too fast, very nearly, to be seen.

Silverlight sent Blacklight limping back to Seamus, and then she streaked through the air and into my hand. Rhys was there beside me, his stunned stare on Angus.

“He’s dead?” he yelled. “Is he dead?”

Angus lay unmoving, unable even to twitch. His moans may have stopped—I wouldn’t have heard them over the cacophony of the battle—and I screamed his name and dropped to my knees.

He wasn’t dead. I’d have felt that.

But he was close. So very close.

Rhys dropped down beside me as Leo, Shane, and Clayton kept the demons occupied. Amias handled Seamus, and Blacklight attempted to recover from Silverlight’s attack.

I needed to drag Angus from the graveyard. I needed to get him home and call in a supernat doctor. He had come back from bad shit before. He’d come back from this.

But there was no time.

Seamus stomped toward us, and I knew if he reached Angus, he would finish him off. Amias launched himself at Seamus’s back, but he seemed slower. He’d been injured.

The big demon held up his hand, filled it with fire, and prepared to throw it at me.

At Angus.

Rhys pointed at the still-as-death werebull. “Fix him. Fix him now. I’ll buy you a few minutes but you won’t get another chance.”

“I don’t know how!”

“He’s yours. Figure it the fuck out.”

And then he leaped into the air, changing from Rhys into a…a wall. A wall of ice. I felt the cold power from that shield—it slammed into me and I began to shake with cold, cold that made it hard for me to speak, let alone move.

But move I must.

Rhys would weaken fast. He might never regain his power.

He was sacrificing himself for Angus. For us all.

And I’d be damned if I let his sacrifice be in vain.

So while he blocked Angus and me from fire, from power, from wrath, I blanked my mind, led with my heart, and let my gut take over.

I would save Angus, or I would die there with him.

We all would.