VEE

I want to curl up and die. Lose the agony from whatever the hell is happening inside me by yielding. Each time I move, the pressure builds, and Order continues to push at me.

The voice inside grew with the pain. The whispers always in the back of my mind grow louder. Give in. Forget. Let Vee go. The world shifts as if I’m looking down the wrong end of a telescope. The hands in front of my eyes aren’t mine. They never were. The blood staining my fingers from wiping my face isn’t mine. I don’t belong in this body.

But around me, the men who love the person I’ve battled to hold on to fight for me. For us. For the world.

The girl behind the hands, consumed by Order, won’t let go. Each time the men I love touch me, with every word they say, I’m dragged back to who she is. To Vee. Every time they’re hurt, they pull me to them. I’m joined to their hearts and feel their anguish. Their fear. Their love. My power from Famine holds me to them. They'll do anything to stop Vee from dying.

Because this is killing me. My heartbeat slows, and my lungs constrict. Strange dread washes over me as I’m pushed towards what my creators want.

Heath and Ewan are dead. Moments ago, Chaos killed Joss.

We can’t split between four anymore.

I crouch beside Xander sickened that he doesn’t move. The angels were right. Order is too powerful. I haven’t killed him, but will he survive? I wipe my shaking hand across his face, drying my bloodied tears on his cheek from when our faces touched. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I tried.”

I stand to face Chaos.

I have nothing left without them.

“They weakened you through the years, Order,” he says, voice carrying as if spoken through an echoing tunnel. “We need each other now. I’ll give you one last chance to make a deal.”

Order seethes inside, but Vee sees Ewan at his feet, and she doubles over, sobbing.

“For fuck’s sake!” Chaos growls. “Are you holding out hope for them?”

Chaos seizes Xander around the throat and lifts him from the ground, squeezing the life from him with one hand. Xander doesn’t struggle, and Chaos frowns, shaking him. Desperate for a response. A fight.

Vee’s already breaking heart shatters as I watch my failure. Chaos drops the last of my Horsemen to the ground.

“No!” I scream the words, and the volume shocks me.

In front of me is the vision I saw. The Four Horsemen at Chaos’s feet. The world behind doesn’t burn. Because the world I saw destroyed in my vision is mine. Without them, my world no longer exists.

“Come with me. We can be strong. Let go of your human form. You’ve already lost Vee. The guys are gone.” He gestures at the bodies around my feet. “They don’t matter. They never mattered.”

Fury blinds and Order takes control. The light around flashes with an intensity that wipes my vision. I scream as if the light tears at me and let go of the torture that’s gripped my body. I can’t hold on anymore. There’s no point. The light around me grows and transforms me the way Chaos took Seth. I see his form and cling to my dying body, but we both know these selves won’t survive.

Order continues to power through me, and Vee retreats further and further until I’m trapped as if in a tiny cell. But Chaos doesn’t understand. Each time he hurts one of them. Each death I witness doesn’t only strengthen Order—it energises Vee.

The energy streams from my hands as it did before but with a ferocity that knocks Chaos far from me. He yells in a wave of anger that rips through the darkness and against my light. Chaos drags himself to his feet and clutches his stomach. We’re both drawn to the centre of his body, where a white patch glows against the black.

Chaos lifts his arms and face to the sky, and the energy I saw hit Joss builds around him again. He throws his hands out with another yell and the dark power streams from his fingers and into me.

I don’t move. Don’t stumble. The light surrounding me absorbs his Chaos.

Worry crosses his face, and his dark eyes shine black when I step forward.

This isn’t Seth’s face I’m looking into, the way I expected at the end. This is the chaos god who finally revealed his power. The body before me is eaten up by the energy streaming from the sky and into him.

Whoever Seth was, his body dies before my eyes.

I throw more power at him, into the existing Order that glows in his chest. He collapses back. Stumbling as he tries to stand, he falls again. Chaos continues to obliterate his human form as the void grows around him. He throws his hands upwards with another yell. The light that hit Joss falls from the sky like shooting stars, bouncing along the ground in sparks.

The dancing energy hits me, and it travels up my legs. The sparks attempt to crawl across my face, but my Order snuffs them like a candle flame.

The power I hit Chaos with spreads across his chest, obliterating the black and I draw in a breath. The remaining human Seth gasps too, and the light continues to creep across his body switching the web on his face from black to luminescent.

And I smile.

Suddenly, my vision changes. I’m weightless. Part of the universe, amongst the stars. I fight against something ripping my creations from around me. Gleeful. Vengeful. A black hole swirls, sucking away his damage. I hit the invisible force, and everything explodes back to reality.

My body is failing. Each beat of my heart slower than the last but Order doesn’t care. Order wants to take Chaos. To end him.

And Chaos wants Order.

He rushes at me and winds his arms around me, the dark fading my vision as the dying Chaos power hits. But he’s stupid. Arrogant. Believes he can win.

“You’re going to take more if you touch me,” I rasp out as my human lungs lose the air.

“Then you end with me.”

A darkness hits the Order inside. Finds the piece of me Logan once saw—the part of Chaos existing inside. And Order battles to keep him out.

“We could have done so much,” he whispers.

I grab his hands, and we lock together with a jolt. Order streams from me, shaking through my body and I wait for the end. Of him. And me.

He sneers. “You don’t have enough power.”

The polarity shifts and Chaos pushes back, skewering my body. I try to let go but can’t.

“Did you waste your energy trying to revive your boys?”

I push back because the only way to end this is to allow Order to lose the human form. Bowing my head, I push away from Vee and to the inevitable.

Strong arms curl around my waist and interrupt my concentration. Someone behind me swears in pain and drags me away from Chaos. Order fights and strikes out as I lose my grip on Chaos.

Chaos falls to his knees, weakened. I fight my way from the grip on me and turn in fury. Heath drags shaking hands through his hair—hands and eyes matching the faint glow I had before—as he watches me warily.

“What the fuck?” asks Seth in a weak voice.

“Stop, Vee,” he says. “Not yet.”

Vee surges back as her relieved heart sees hope. Heath’s alive.

Heath grabs my hand and pulls me forward, and I jerk as if we’ve been connected like a plug in a socket too. “You might be Chaos. But you forget I’m Death. And, apparently, you can’t kill Death.”

Chaos scrambles backwards on his arse, staring up at Heath. He catches sight of something else behind and attempts to stand again. He’s too weak.

Somebody takes my other hand and the energy jolts again. “You tried, and it worked.” I look down at Xander’s hand and to his face. To where his eyes shine with a luminescence to match Heath’s.

War and Death connect with Order. Xander and Heath pull back Vee. “The others?” I ask.

Xander shakes his head.

“I’m not running if that’s what you expect.” Chaos manages to stand, the strange half-dark, half-light creature. “You’ve fucked up. Order can’t win if Vee won’t let go.”

He stands his ground as we step forward. Xander and Heath place a hand on his shoulder, and he sneers back at them.

“No,” whispers Xander as the light covering Seth intensifies. “We won’t let Vee go.”

Chaos’s form burns brightly spreading from his feet to his head as we channel Order. We know we’re safe. That Order can use the guys as a conduit too. Xander and Heath snatch their hands back as Chaos explodes upwards like a firework sparking into thousands of blue stars.

I land heavily on the ground and stare up as a hole opens and sucks Chaos’s remains away. Daylight returns. My aching stomach sickens when I recognise what this is. I saw this on the night in Scotland in Ewan’s room. The black hole sucks me in after Chaos.