Chapter Fifty-four
Helena swallowed against her dry throat. She couldn’t really comprehend what she was seeing at first. Enough details made it through her mind to tell her what kind of monster it was, but the much more important aspect of its identity took a little longer for her to digest.
Against all reason, the Terror remained right where he was, hands in the pockets of his jeans, and let her take him in. It was as though he wanted her to recognize him. He wanted her to remember.
And after several long moments, she had no choice but to admit to herself that she did.
But it was impossible. He was supposed to be dead. She’d watched her father kill him! Her father had died killing him, damn it!
“No,” she shook her head. No. “You’re dead.”
“Really?” he teased, glancing down at himself. “Could have fooled me.” He dared to appear to her in human form. Same black hair and sapphire eyes because it was night.
“But…” She stammered like an idiot, doubting everything now. “I remember.”
He smiled a fanged smile and said, “I remember you too, little girl.”
All around Helena, the chaos of the massive battle grew to a steady crescendo. The shield dome Kat had erected over the battleground took countless blasts of magic, suffered a tirade of blunt force trauma from body after body slamming into it, and yet it held. The outside world would know nothing of the war going on beneath it.
But she was alone in that tumultuous mess. The other Queens were locked in their own chaotic struggles. Even William was toe-to-toe and neck-and-neck with Ahriman, the Nomad. And Helena could not bear to glance in his direction… just in case the Nomad had the upper hand.
The Terror’s grin broadened. “I’m flattered that you remember me, by the way.” He looked her up and down. “You know, your mother tasted so damn good when my vampire puppet drank from her, I have to admit,” he chuckled, “I got a little addicted.” Then he said matter-of-factly, “She was the reason I let you live when I killed your father. She was the reason I allowed you to believe he’d won.”
He tried to step toward her, but she lifted the gun in her now shaking hand and cocked it. Her heart was beating rapid-fire in her chest, despite the fact that it was in the process of breaking all over again.
She had four bullets left. He wouldn’t know it, not likely, but she would only have to use one of them to take him down. She wouldn’t miss.
The Terror stopped and glanced down the barrel of the gun, then slowly slid his gaze back to hers. “You sure you want to do that, Helena?”
Helena blinked. He’d called her by her name. How could he do that? How could he know her name? Or remember it after all this time?
“That’s right,” he told her. “I know a lot about you, Angel.” He used her mother’s nickname for her, and somehow she just knew he was doing it because it was her mother’s nickname for her. “I know everything your mother ever told me.” Now he did move forward, and damn it all to hell she let him. Because he had something of hers. He had memories of her mother that she didn’t have. He had a piece of her – and she wanted it back.
“Would you like me to share them with you, Helena? The stories your lovely mother confessed to me when she was too tired to lie?”
Yes.
“Go to hell,” she told him fiercely. But her heart wasn’t in it. Instead, her heart was in two throbbing pieces, and barely keeping her alive. And she knew she was screwed when she realized she was lowering her weapon.
The Terror watched her for a moment, noting the lowered gun, and failed to hide his victorious smile. He then glanced at the field around them. “Looks like I’m already here,” he said. The dome-covered battleground was littered with bodies, painted with blood, and scorched black, purple, and green with everything from fire to poison.
He turned back to her. “But I know you don’t mean that anyway. So I’ll just do you a solid and tell you a few of your mom’s secrets. If…” He glanced at her neck, where she’d been attacked by Cain but no longer bore his marks. Then his gaze slid down the length of her body again. “…you let me have just one more sweet, sweet taste.”
Suddenly Helena realized what was happening. It hit her like a slap to the face.
Just like that, her warden training kicked in and she somehow recalled that the single-most dangerous thing about a Terror was its ability to get close to its victim. Really close. Because up close and personal was where it hurt most.
“Fuck you,” she said. Then she raised her gun arm, took quick aim, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet left the chamber, drilled through the Terror’s forehead, and exploded out the other side of his skull.
Helena watched the monster stand there before her, stunned and silent as blood trickled in a thin line from the fresh wound. And then she watched him fall. Finally she stepped over his body, aimed her gun a second time and emptied one more round into him just to be sure. After all, she’d thought he was dead once already and she’d been wrong. When she finished, she stepped back and felt strange.
“Tell me something, Time Queen,” said someone behind her. Helena spun, raising her weapon instinctively.
Amunet the Nomad watched her with absolutely zero fear. And rightly so.
Helena wasn’t certain how she knew this, staring the other woman down, but the information came to her as if she’d possessed it all along. It’s because I’m the Time Queen, she thought. Time was the record keeper of everything that happened. And hence… she would come to know everything too. But she was learning it in stages, thank the gods. Or she’d probably go mad.
The gun was special, but even this particular gun and its bullets couldn’t harm Amunet. Not really. Mortal wounds had ended her in the past, but she’d almost always allowed them to do so, just so she could come back in another form. And right now the Nomad was amped up, fortified by layers of furious, vengeful magic. Those layers slipped and slid off her in a torrent of nearly suffocating wrongness.
Even if Helena did manage to kill her, Amunet would just come back again. Like the Promised One. They had something in common.
Helena couldn’t kill her on her own. As Amunet had said, that much had been foreseen. It would take all Thirteen of the Queens.
So Helena just swallowed hard and kept her gun where it was, her mind spinning. The Nomad cocked her head to the side and regarded her with equal parts curiosity and hatred. “What does it feel like to finally have closure?”