I HAD NO IDEA IF RISS HAD HEARD ME. IF THE LADY HAD gotten through to her.
Even if she hadn’t, we couldn’t do nothing. Herron was still coming, and now both Mara’s coven and Jasna’s were preparing for battle.
I’d fight with them—without my sister. Like Mara, I had to set aside all that grief for now.
In the middle of her vineyard, Jasna kept a wide circle clear of grapevines, its boundary defined by inlaid stones. Another flat-topped stone stood at the center as an altar, covered with a red linen cloth and the tools of Jasna’s craft.
Red and white taper candles flickered on either side of a bouquet, bloodflowers and carnations bound with scarlet thread next to a polished antler rack. A dish of water and one of salt sat in front of them, a glazed clay chalice of red wine to the left. In the center, a smoking censer wafted dragon’s blood and myrrh. Eleven blades with handles hewn from different kinds of wood were arranged around the altar.
It was strange to see magic that relied on tools for purpose instead of beauty, and for a moment I wished everything wasn’t so dire. The idea that I might never learn their use filled me with yet another, more wistful harmony of sadness.
If we lost tonight, we’d lose so much.
Ten men and women had come at Jasna’s call to stand with us. They wore crimson robes belted at the waist, while those of us who belonged to Mara were in flowing white.
Niko and Luka both stood with Jasna’s coven, Niko shooting anxious glances at me over her shoulder. She hadn’t wanted to be away from me—what if I needed her? But she would be safer there, and for once I refused to rely on her like I always did.
Jasna stepped into the clearing first, carrying the bristly broom from above her fireplace. The besom, I’d heard her call it. Her graying hair was loose, undone from its braid and rippling down her back. A bronze circlet sat on her brow, two crescent moons pressed back-to-back. She walked slowly around the circle, sweeping the broom back and forth, humming something wordless and lilting.
A song that pulled at my marrow, one to which I almost knew the words.
Once she made a full turn and knelt to face the altar, her coven formed a circle around her, each of them drawing the knives. Led by Mara, we followed like Jasna had asked us to do—ringing them in until we formed three concentric circles.
Jasna lowered her blade into the salt and then the water, murmuring an invocation under her breath. She sprinkled some of the crystals into the water bowl, stirring it with the point of her blade. Two of the others came up beside her, and she passed them the salted water and the smoking censer. Together the three walked around the circle, stopping at each cardinal direction.
Greeting them with elements.
We all turned like compass needles toward a magnetic lode, following their progression. But even if we were just visitors compared to them, I could hear the churning swell of power rise around us like some ancient song. It sounded loamy and dark, redolent of earth. It was potent enough that when the sky above us darkened, I actually thought clouds had come, gathering in response.
It wasn’t clouds, but the shadows of flying things.
Herron had brought hell with him. And then he broke it loose.
The first screeching devil that descended on us looked like a bat sewn from the jellied skins of snakes. It landed with a rake of talons, trumpeting fury and lashing its whiplike tail. Somehow, it had a human head, and even a stringy, Medusa approximation of hair. Behind the viscous features of its face I could see a suspended skull. As if whatever animated it had engulfed a human skeleton like a massive leech.
I’d known I’d be afraid, but I couldn’t have anticipated the breadth of the terror. As its roving, empty eyes settled on me, my voice nearly abandoned me.
Dunja appeared beside me, gripping my hand hard enough to make me gasp. “Come on, baby witch,” she whispered fiercely, giving my hand a shake. “Be our warrior songbird one more time, now that you know how. This nasty thing can’t even hope to touch you while I’m here. And don’t worry for your princess, not this time. She’s safe where she is. As safe as she can be, out here.”
Throwing a desperate glance behind me, I saw that Jasna and her coven had linked hands, Niko and Luka among them. They whirled around the altar, hair and robes flying. The rest of us faced outward, like their shield.
They’d feed us their own power while we fought, girding us with their will.
If they could do that for us, the least I could do was my part.
And we needed every gout of strength that I could muster for us. More and more of the devils landed in our midst, crashing through the grapes. Their chimera bodies made no sense, beyond equipping them to mutilate. Some had merged into hydras, while others waved crab pincers or gnashed insectile jaws.
And all of them trailed oily streamers of that slick darkness around them, so much deeper than the night.
No wonder he called them the lightless. Our world didn’t know this kind of dark.
But this time, I did know how to sing my full will for my kin.
Forcing breath into the bellows of my lungs, I plunged backward into my sharp-toothed cavern and began to sing my stony will. Singing the world toward what I wanted it to be.
“RISE UP, RISE UP, DEFEND YOUR BLOOD!
LET LOOSE YOUR GLEAMS PROTECT YOUR KIN!”
Seleni’s shadow army burst into life, like papier-mâché mannequins growing velvety flesh and blood. I could barely see them as they rushed by me, but under their smooth skin they felt like solid slabs of muscle. They followed her puppet-master lead, scaling one of the beasts and bringing it down in a tangle of wire, vines, and leaves. And Kisuna’s winged swarms buzzed all around in a sinister hum.
I couldn’t keep track of everything, with my every last cell straining to sustain the song. But I could see Izkara and Naisha wreaking havoc in the forms they’d taken on: one a roaring gryphon with a leathery hide, and the other a winged, feathered snake like some Mayan goddess.
Someone else had turned their gleam into a barrage of magnified crystals. They fell like lacy snowflakes, but ripped and shredded whatever they touched.
And ribbons of Amaya’s gold-and-blue flame streaked all around us, setting the beasts in the vineyard on fierce, bright fire.
Meanwhile, Dunja seemed everywhere at once, a vicious, pale blaze that felled whatever it struck. I saw her snatch one of the devils by its gelatinous head and grind the ballast skull inside to dust with the force of her grip. She didn’t stop until she’d torn the rest of it into quivering black gobs, which dissipated into smoke and then vanished. Every now and then the ground quaked under me, and I knew it had to be the aftershock of her stomp as she brought them down around her like axed trees.
I couldn’t focus on anything for too long, as I stood with hands clenched and head lifted to the sky. Calling on the choral force of my gleam with everything I had, my veins throbbing from the strain.
And in the middle of the fray, I saw Herron find Mara.
He was just a man, she had said, a man who had swallowed demons. Maybe she had meant that he’d once been a man. But now he was something far past that. He rose above the ground, aloft on writhing black. It held him up like a whirlwind, or a spectral exoskeleton. He flung out almost teasing tendrils of it at Mara—but each of the blows that landed cut so deep I could hear her stifled shrieks.
Her roses thrashed around her, drenched and backlit by the blinding light she was shedding from within. But even brilliantly alight with the gleam, nothing she did seemed enough to fend him off.
“What now, my sun?” he taunted her, flinging out a segmented spear of black like a spider leg. It struck her across the face, snapping back her head. The actual spoken words were guttural, coarse pebbles in his throat. But the echoing black around him thundered their meaning clear. “Is it not time for you to set? This world is not yours but mine and theirs, to suck dry of light like an egg. And I would begin by dousing its second sun.”
She shrieked something back in that same harsh language, as she lashed out at him with roses flung like javelins. Only to be batted down as if she hadn’t even moved. I had the sense of seeing only snippets of their battle, that most of it was happening faster than my eye could follow.
Then Mama appeared from the fray, and I saw that her roses were turning brittle. Petals flaked off her like shelled husks.
“Sorai, it’s not enough!” she called out to Mara. “Use me instead. Use all of me!”
Mara glanced back at her, torn—and again, Herron stole the chance to whip her across the face.
“Please, sorai!” Mama dropped to her knees with hands clenched and reaching out. “Let me be of help this time. Let me atone. It’s—it’s what I want.”
Mara nodded once, mouthing something that looked like silent thanks.
Then she began to grow.
Her roses coalesced, took on shape around her like battle armor. As she pulled them like a length of coiled rope from where Mama knelt, they wound around her legs and up her arms. Interlocked and webbing, they grew her floral claws and talons, tapering to points.
And buckling tight like a corset around Mara’s torso, they knit themselves into a thorned and leafy set of wings.
Somehow, with all the wonders that I’d seen, nothing compared to this. My far-mother launching into the star-scattered sky like a goshawk, her hair whipping around her while she beat petal-feathered wings.
I came from her. I came from this. Maybe she wasn’t really born of fallen angels, but she looked like she could have been.
Even Herron seemed briefly awestruck. For an instant I saw just a shadow of the old love he must have felt for her flicker across his face, before everything but malice slid away from it.
Then they dashed into each other like colliding storms, black falling into black.