Echo took the steps two at a time, white marble flying beneath her feet, heedless of the aching burn in her lungs and the protestations of her sore muscles. Her heart pounded high in her throat, a throbbing litany of fear and desperation that propelled her forward. Sparks cascaded from her fingertips. Power boiled in her veins, eager to be unleashed with the full force of her fury behind it.
“Echo, wait!”
Caius’s voice rang up the steps after her, his words reverberating around the empty corridors.
Echo barreled through the entrance to one of the library’s staff-only wings and then through a nondescript door that led to the stairs.
She didn’t slow down. She didn’t look back. Caius’s footsteps sounded behind her as he followed her, boots pounding against stone, but waiting was not an option. A fresh shower of sparks singed a wooden plaque mounted on the wall as she passed. She could picture the knife scoring its way across Ivy’s pale flesh. How red her blood would be against all that white. Echo put on an extra burst of speed as she climbed up the last flight of stairs to the roof.
The door had already been kicked open. The remains of the padlock that had held it shut – which Echo had picked hundreds of times – hung from the mangled backplate. Burned into the rusted metal of the door was a handprint. Tanith’s, Echo assumed. Rubber marks lined the floor, the kind sneakers left on waxed floors. Maybe Ivy had struggled as Tanith had dragged her, throwing the weight of her body back with all her might, her strength nothing compared with Tanith’s, refusing to be led like a lamb to the slaughter.
Echo flung the door open and stepped onto the roof. Wind whipped the loose strands of her hair around her face. Smells assaulted her once she was out in the open. Acrid smoke, throat-clogging ash, and the electric charge of the in-between, distinct and powerful even in the chaos of the battle raging below. Another scent cut through the olfactory clutter: the sharp, coppery tang of blood, freshly spilled. A gray haze crowded the edges of Echo’s vision. If Ivy was dead, if she was too late …
“Echo, so glad you could join us.”
Tanith emerged from behind a large air-conditioning unit, its sloping aluminum vent incongruous next to the battered gleam of her golden armor. Blackened veins branched across the angular beauty of her face. She looked worse than the psychic projection she had left in the Drakharin temple. The kuçedra was devouring her, slowly but surely. Echo understood with sickening clarity the emaciated corpses, the poor souls drained dry of life and magic. Stolen vitality was the only thing keeping Tanith alive. She held Ivy in front of her, one arm around Ivy’s waist and arms, while her other hand held the knife to Ivy’s throat at an angle that forced her head up and back, cruelly exposing the soft skin of her neck. Ivy’s black eyes were wide with fear, and tears had made tracks through the dirt on her face, but she was alive. She was alive.
The door banged against the wall behind Echo as Caius finally caught up to her. He was panting, each breath accompanied by a wet rattling sound. It had been one fight after another, and he hadn’t had the time to properly heal. Magic could only do so much for him when it was magic that had caused him so much pain.
“Oh, and you brought company,” Tanith said, forcing Ivy to inch ahead in front of her. “Hello, Brother. Miss me already?”
The gash in the sky seemed even larger from this higher vantage point. There weren’t any towering buildings to block Echo’s view of it. It was bared to her in all its great and terrible glory.
“Let her go,” Echo said. “You want to fight, we’ll fight. But first you have to let her go.”
Tanith let out a harsh, broken laugh. “I have to let her go?” She tightened her hold on Ivy, who gave a whimper of pain. Even without the kuçedra to aid her, Tanith was strong enough to break bones with her bare hands if she wanted. “I do not have to do anything. Such arrogance to make demands. I have always found that to be an especially odious hallmark of your species. And one of the many, many reasons I am going to take this world back from those who do not deserve it. I shall cleanse the world of those who have shown, time and again, that they do not appreciate what they have.” She gesticulated with the knife, waving it at the New York skyline. “I will bring about a new era where my people can know peace – true peace – and prosper. All I seek to give them is a place where they can be proud. Where they do not have to live like rats hiding in the walls. We never should have let your kind have this world. Your fear became our shame, and I will bear it no longer.”
“Save the supervillain speech for someone who cares,” Echo said. “And let Ivy go.”
Tanith paused, as if the interruption had been unexpected. And she thought Echo was arrogant. “No.”
Echo made to lunge forward, to force the knife from Ivy’s throat, but a hand on her forearm stopped her. Caius pulled her back. “Tanith, if any part of you is still in there, please, listen to me. You can fight this. This monster isn’t you.”
“Monster?” Tanith blinked owlishly at him. Her once-red eyes were awash with black as deep and dark as the abyss slicing through the sky above. “I am not so monstrous.” The blade at Ivy’s throat caressed her skin with deceptive gentleness. “I wanted to give the firebird a chance to say goodbye. Your pain will be such exquisite agony.”
The pressure of the knife eased enough to allow Ivy to speak. “Echo, no matter what happens to me, fight her. Don’t —” The knife returned, pressing deep enough to draw a thin rivulet of blood, red as the darkest rose against the snowy whiteness of Ivy’s skin.
“That’s enough, little dove.” Tanith spoke to Ivy, but her eyes were for Echo. A vicious grin slashed across her face. “Say your farewells, Firebird.”
Echo screamed as Tanith began to slowly pull the blade across Ivy’s throat. She lunged, and Caius didn’t try to hold her back.
The knife never finished its journey. A roar so loud the air vibrated with the force of it sent Echo crashing to her knees, her hands clapped over her ears. Tanith started, her hold on Ivy loosening just enough to allow the girl to slither out of Tanith’s grasp. Caius pushed Echo flat to the ground, shielding her with his body.
The gust of wind slammed into them before the cause of it came into view.
Two large pearlescent eyes gazed down at the rooftop as wings lifted the beast aloft, its long neck angled toward Caius in greeting. Even Tanith was momentarily stymied by its sudden appearance.
The dragon.
The dragon had followed them – followed Caius – to New York. As it approached the roof, a purr rolled from behind its closed jaws, sounding for all the world like the rumbling meow cats made when greeting their humans. It nudged Caius’s shoulder with its snout, hard enough to knock him onto his rear. Caius placed a hand on its muzzle.
Echo had asked Caius once about all those stories of dragons and their hoards. Caius had smiled that soft half smile of his and told her, Dragons are very possessive.
No shit, Echo thought.
The gateway to the in-between hadn’t closed behind them. And it had been large enough for a sizable group to pass through it all at once. Large enough for a dragon, if that dragon was crafty enough to take advantage of all the holes Tanith’s madness had torn into the world.
“Hello,” Caius said to the dragon in a perfectly modulated voice, as if it weren’t odd that a dragon was hovering with great flaps of its massive wings in the center of New York City. As if every camera in the vicinity weren’t capturing that moment.
A body collided with Echo’s side and she brought her hand up to strike before she realized it was Ivy. She curled her fingers into a fist before the sparks in her hand could blossom into a full fire. Ivy wrapped Echo in a fierce hug that lasted only a second or two before she pulled away.
“Are you okay?” Echo asked, trying to keep both Ivy and Tanith within her field of vision.
“Yeah,” Ivy said. “I’m fine.” She was trying very hard to make it look like she wasn’t attempting to hide behind Echo and Caius. Echo spared her the indignation of having to make that choice for herself and yanked Ivy behind her. If Tanith wanted a piece of the Avicen, she was going to have to go through Echo.
Tanith glanced from the dragon to Caius as it came to rest beside him, its talons sinking into the roof’s masonry as easily as if it were sand. Echo sincerely hoped the roof was strong enough to accommodate its weight; otherwise, they were all in for a great deal of pain.
“I see it’s taken a liking to you,” said Tanith. She brushed off her armor as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “No accounting for taste, I suppose.”
“Jealous?” Caius asked, one hand gripping a knife Echo hadn’t seen him draw, the other resting protectively on the side of the dragon’s neck.
Tanith scoffed and waved a dismissive hand, conjuring an undulating mass of black shadows. They grew larger with each lazy flick of her wrist, taking shapes that resembled smaller versions of the dragon. “I will not lie, it would have been grand to go into battle with a true dragon by my side, but I can make do with what’s on hand just fine.”
The shadow creatures expanded and solidified, landing a few yards away with audible thuds. They had weight and substance, even more so than the ones Echo had seen on the streets below.
Echo pushed Ivy toward the door. “Go,” she said. “Get downstairs.”
Ivy shook her head, her black eyes wide but certain. “Echo, I’m not leav —”
“There are wounded below. They need your help.”
It was the only thing Echo could have possibly said to dissuade Ivy from throwing away her life to fight at Echo’s side. She watched conflicts war in Ivy’s expression, her brow pinching, her eyes sliding to the door, then back to Tanith.
“Ivy,” Echo said. “Please. I can’t fight her and protect you, too. Dorian and Jasper are down there. There are people who need you. Find them.”
After a painful moment, Ivy finally – finally – nodded, her eyes bright and shiny with tears. “Don’t let her win,” she said, edging back toward the door, her gaze locked on Tanith.
Tanith smiled and waved a mocking goodbye. “Always a pleasure, little dove. But right now you are far more trouble than you’re worth. More than one way to skin a cat and all.”
As much as Echo wanted to watch Ivy’s retreat, to make sure she reached the door and descended into the relative safety of the library – if any place in all of Manhattan could be said to be safe – she didn’t. She kept her eyes on Tanith. But still, she made her promise to Ivy. “She won’t. She’ll have to kill me first.”
Echo realized what a poor choice of words it had been the second they escaped her lips. Caius shot her a look that his dragon seemed to mirror.
“Oh, my sweet firebird,” said Tanith, her voice oozing across the rooftop like an oil slick. “That can be arranged.”
And then she and her shadow beasts attacked.