Chapter Forty-one
Helena looked on in stunned, immobile silence as Will’s form dissolved into green light. That green light shot into Liam so fast, she barely witnessed it. And then the world was exploding and she was being thrown. When she made it to her knees and shoved her damn hair out of her face, it was only to find him watching her with hard, determined, and infinitely sad eyes.
He was William again. She knew him now, in that moment. But then he raised her gun, put the barrel to his head, and she knew what he planned. He was going to take himself out of the game, and Cain along with him.
She cried out and reached for her power to stop time. But her reach came up empty. It was no longer there. It was just gone. There were other things there instead. She recognized some of it as the same power to manipulate space the way she had when she’d brought them here to Lapis. But her control over time was gone.
He’d taken it.
It was the worst realization in the world. The absolute worst.
She couldn’t stop him from ending his life. She could not stop this runaway train.
For that brief moment of undiluted misery, Helena felt like Fate was exacting upon her a kind of revenge. She felt as if this utter helplessness and impending loss was due her. Had she earned it somehow? Had she caused this kind of anguish to someone else?
She couldn’t remember. And really, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was in hell.
She watched his finger tense and the trigger begin to give beneath its pressure. And then the strangest thing happened. The mark on his arm, the same one she possessed on hers, began to glow a bright, fiery red. William froze and closed his eyes, gritting his teeth. Almost at once, he dropped to his knees in obvious agony, and the gun fell to the ground along with him.
William clutched at himself as though he were trying to hold his body together, and before her eyes, his strong form split into different pieces. They weren’t equal. Only one was solid, and that was William’s form, tall and whole and beyond beautiful.
But peeling apart from him like the film on a sticker was Cain. He was also tall and beautiful; his form was however transparent, like a slide in an old projector.
In a eureka moment, Helena realized what she was seeing. Maelstrom’s mark was ejecting Cain from William’s body! Ha! she thought triumphantly, even as lightning began to strike the earth like a barrage of heavenly green and the ground beneath her shook once more. He forgot about that, didn’t he?
Helena had never felt such joy at something potentially evil in her whole life. If Cain broke free, he would still be alive to wreak havoc. But at the same time, William would have no need to destroy himself. She was more than willing to make that particular trade.
She rolled when she hit the ground again, and had to keep herself from dumping headlong into a crack in the crystal-covered plain as it yawned open and threatened to swallow her. She maneuvered to the side, got her feet beneath her, and stumbled to the nearest stone, the one William had been sitting on earlier. She fell onto it when the ground bucked, and held on for dear life.
By the time she half stabilized herself, she figured she would be deaf forever. The thunder was immense. Her ears had both started and stopped ringing already. Now there was just silence. But damn it all, she barely cared.
When she finally felt steady enough to look back up at William, she saw the oddest thing. It was not only Cain’s form that was separating from William’s in that moment. There was another. A second form that was pulling away, wispy and see-through like Cain’s but also recognizable.
William didn’t notice this second form. His head was bent, his teeth clenched in agony, his hands clutched at his chest. But she saw it. This one was a touch shorter than William and Cain, had shorter hair, and was built thick and strong. Liam, she thought in confused wonder. What the….
But the sky split open with the dark of clouds that made it look as if an actual tear was forming in the fabric of space above them. Sound again broke through Helena’s awareness, a deep, hard, terrifying sound that restored her hearing and then threatened it once more.
Helena gripped that rock and stared wide-eyed at the sky, then wide-eyed at William. He was still bent, absolutely trapped in the grip of Maelstrom’s spell – and never had Helena felt the man was more aptly named than in that moment. Maelstrom, indeed.
Green lightning struck all around William in absolute chaos. He was the centerfold in a magazine of magic and might. But it wasn’t just him. It wasn’t just the spell. Helena had the sense that something vital was happening to their world.
She had the sense that it was ending.
Within seconds, both of the spirits pulling away from him were completely separate from William, and just like that, they were swallowed up by the flashing emerald and gathering dark of the unnatural rip-in-the-sky storm. She lost sight of them and returned her attention to William, wishing she could just make it to him without being picked up and blown away or sucked through the ever-widening hole above or struck by lightning or swallowed up by the splitting ground. She tried to stay where she was, breathless and numb, and waited for world to finish ending.
The turbulence grew more unsteady, more violent, and she was eventually knocked to her side. She couldn’t help the exclamation of pain as she landed on her ribs.
Just like that, she felt William’s eyes on her.
She rolled over and met his gaze. His head had snapped up, but between them was another tear of gathering dark.
William gritted his white teeth, shoved himself to his feet, and ran toward her, against all odds managing to balance despite the wayward bucking of the realm beneath them. He slid into first beside her, wrapped his arms around her waist, and pulled her close just as the gale became so incredible, both of them were lifted from the ground. Dust and debris slammed into them from all sides, but Helena’s face was spared damage where it was safely tucked against William’s chest.
I won’t have any hair left when this is over, she thought unwittingly. It would be yanked right out of her skull, she was sure of it. But this was one of those thoughts that floats hysterically around a person in the midst of possible if not probable death. Like the woman in the car accident who is trapped by the door embedded in her side but only wants to know where her shoes went when they flew off her feet.
Everything was crazy.
It remained that way for some time, too. And then finally, she felt William tense further around her, and she knew something different was happening and he was preparing for impact. She followed suit, gripping him tighter than she thought she could, tucking her head in further, and making sure her teeth were already clamped together so they wouldn’t slam shut and break.
The impact came a half a second sooner than she thought it would, but it didn’t matter. They hit thick wild grasses and soft earth. They struck the ground and rolled, and when they stopped and Helena pulled away enough to look up, she found that it wasn’t just the surface that had protected them. William’s green protective cocoon of magic was wrapped around them again, a dual armor that held damage at bay as they’d made contact with their new destination.
It took a moment for them to gain their bearings. Helena didn’t want to move. She was afraid of what she would find, of what it all meant, and her mind was a mess.
But his voice sliced through the fog of her haphazard thoughts. It was deep and crisp and his words were accented by something ancient and from everywhere. “Are you okay, Helena?”
He pulled away a bit more, and his magic dissipated around them. He looked down at her. She peered up and nodded out of reflex even though she had no idea whether or not she was okay.
She tried to feel her feet. They were both there and they were both functioning. Then she felt her fingers. They were there too. And she’d heard him talk to her. So she hadn’t gone deaf after all. That made no sense, but she was happy about it.
She remained wrapped in the safety blanket of his arms as a new reality gradually made itself known to her.
And then Helena Bonaventure Dawn remembered.