Anna Strong - Retribution Part 26

The howling wind shrieks, filling my head until I think my eardrums will burst. Head and heart pound with the pressure. I want to press my palms against my ears but my arms refuse to move.

The charm around my neck gives the first warning. A fiery blast of white-hot heat. I can't protect myself from it. All I can do is cry out.

Suddenly, there is another sound. A voice. Shrill, furious.

"You are my sister," Belinda Burke's scream rattles the walls and shakes the floor beneath our feet. "If you break this spell, you break the bond."

Her image floats in the air above Culebra's cot. Not the image of Simone Tremaine or the younger Burke Frey and I battled months ago.

This is the true image. An old woman, face contorted in anger, body stooped and bent. Her eyes burn red and focus with mad intensity on her sister.

"Stop. Stop now. You can't win."

But Sophie doesn't stop. The chanting continues. Tears stream down her face, mixing with the blood. She picks up the vial and flings it into the apparition.

h.e.l.l breaks loose.

CHAPTER 48.

THUNDER IS IN THE ROOM WITH US. MORE THAN sound. It takes shape, reverberates off the walls, beats at our ears, shakes the ground. h.e.l.l rides with it, the face of the witch hovering, waiting to draw us down into the darkness. I'm so afraid, my teeth grind together, my flesh puckers and draws tight. My hands rise in an instinctive reflex to shield my face. The spell that bound me to the spot must be broken, but it doesn't matter. I couldn't run if I wanted to. It's all I can do to keep my balance on a floor rearing and rolling beneath my feet.

Frey's chair skitters against the wall. He's flung out of it. The chair breaks apart as if made of balsa wood.

Frey doesn't awaken.

He's lucky.

I glance at Williams. He's been pushed against a table at the back of the room. I can't tell if he's broken free. His thoughts are no longer on his hatred, they center now on his fear. His eyes are on Burke.

She reaches out a skeletal hand to touch Sophie. "Sister."

One word.

But Sophie doesn't waiver. Her voice rises like the perfume of incense-thick, pervasive, somehow comforting. Her hand is again on Culebra's chest. Shielding him. She is not looking at Burke; her eyes are closed.

Burke shrieks and holds out both arms. She scoops them as if to draw Sophie up.

I can't let that happen. I look to Williams for help.

His eyes meet mine, but he refuses to move. He won't help. These are your friends, his expression says, not mine.

I move toward Sophie alone.

Burke turns burning eyes on me, full of fire and rage. She snarls and her right hand becomes a sword. The force of her fury is directed at me. She lashes out with the sword, breathes smoke and flame, blinding me.

I shield my face with my hands, feel the tip of the sword slash both forearms. Pain runs the length of my arms. The charm blazes inside my blouse, the smell of burnt flesh, my own, fills my nostrils. The floor beneath me is buckling, caving downward.

Still, Sophie's voice is there. She does not stop.

But something changes. In the instant that Burke turns her attention to me, the timbre of Sophie's voice swells, grows more powerful. She raises her eyes and arms, and in her hands she holds the goblet. She holds it like a supplication, an offering. She draws her own power inward, summoning the force of the elements whipping around us.

Burke senses the shift. She turns her face away from me, howling.

The thunder no longer answers.

In its place, deathly quiet.

Burke realizes her mistake. I was a decoy.

Sophie's voice drops to a whisper. The goblet trembles in her hand.

Burke blinks, opens her mouth. "No."

Her face contorts. Her body shrinks into itself. She holds up her hands. "Don't."

But Sophie raises the goblet higher.

Burke releases a sigh, a death rattle. An acknowledgment.

She has been tricked. She turns dead eyes on me.

Then she is drawn into the goblet.

Sophie holds it against her chest, shielding it.

It's then I know.

Sophie's eyes find mine. The message she sends is both admission and appeal.

I can't let it go. Too much has happened. Too many deaths.

I reach for the goblet.

She could fight me. She could render me immobile with a thought.

Her breath catches. Her eyes fill. Still, she refuses to move. Gently, softly, I place my fingers over hers. One by one, I remove them from the goblet until her hand falls away.

The goblet falls to the floor.

With a burst of light, it shatters, sending particles as fine as sand through the air.

The only sound now is the ghostly echo of Burke's scream.

CHAPTER 49.

THE SILENCE IS MORE DEAFENING THAN THE thunder.

The candles sputter and extinguish as one.

The charm grows instantly cold.

When I look around, I see for the first time that not only Frey's chair but every bit of furniture in the room has been reduced to shards of broken wood. It's a wonder Williams and I weren't staked by flying debris.

Suddenly, Culebra sits up on the cot. He looks around, his eyes full of questions.

Then he frowns and looks at me.

"What in the h.e.l.l have you done to my bar?"

CHAPTER 50.

IT TAKES A MOMENT TO REGISTER-CULEBRA SITTING up, speaking.

I don't pay attention to what he said. I'm at his side in two seconds, searching his face for rea.s.surance that he's all right and back with us.

He returns my stare with a bewildered frown. "What's going on?"

I touch his cheek. It's warm, color flooding up from his neck at whatever emotion he reads on my face.

"Do you remember?"

A flash in the depths of his eyes. It comes flooding back-a shared memory. The helplessness, the spell, dangling on the edge of death.

He remembers.

A sound from the corner.

Frey.

I'd almost forgotten Frey.

I turn around.

In the pile of rubble that was a chair, Frey struggles to his feet. When he straightens, a rush of relief loosens another knot in my stomach.

His hair and face are morphing back to normal. The white streaks fade, the deep claw marks fill in. He's shaking his head as if to clear it, but I can tell by the way he's moving that he hasn't suffered any permanent physical damage. He meets my eyes and smiles, and I know he's going to be fine.

Two down.

Williams hasn't moved from his place against the back wall. He's watching me, too, trying to figure out if I know the truth-that we were paralyzed by our own fear. It isn't until this moment that I understand Burke's power drew strength from that fear. She cast the spell, but it was our own weakness that forged the chains that bound us. It makes me ashamed. If I had stopped Burke in the restaurant, many lives would have been saved.

I turn away from him. I have my own guilt to deal with. Let him come to the realization on his own.

Now there's only Sophie.

She's slumped on the floor at the foot of Culebra's cot. Her face is drained of color, of emotion, a blank slate from which two dark eyes stare dully at nothing. She looks so young, so fragile. It would be easy to forget that there is a powerful witch concealed in that childlike body.

A witch who just allowed her sister to what-?

I realize that I don't know what happened to Burke. And I need to.

I kneel down beside her.

She raises her eyes to meet mine. Immense sorrow and deep regret are reflected there.

"Where is she?" I ask.

"Gone."

"What does that mean?"

For Christ's sake, Deveraux snarls. Leave her alone, will you?

I ignore him. Take one of Sophie's hands in both of my own. It's cold, colder than mine, and it raises gooseflesh on my arms. "Is she dead?"

"Is that what you want?"

Yes. "I want to know my friends are safe."

"They are."

"Then she's dead?"

This time, I see the shift in Sophie's eyes. Resolve replaces the dull ache of loss. "She can't hurt anyone."

It's not the answer I wanted to hear. "She's still alive." That gets a reaction from Williams. Moving faster than I can stop him, he yanks Sophie to her feet. He looses the vampire with a snarl.

"Where is she?"

This time I recover quickly enough to meet his beast with my own before he can do any real harm. With one hand, I grab the back of his neck and fling him away. Don't touch her.