Out of the corner of her eye she saw a black blur dart across the grass. Callis rammed Spider and clamped his teeth on his right forearm, adding his hundred pounds to Sophie’s weight. Spider groaned. His fingers opened, releasing her throat. She fell and landed into a crouch, gasping for air. She needed to move, but her body refused to do anything but breathe, wasting precious seconds.
Callis snarled, pulling at Spider, trying to yank him off his feet. With his left hand, Spider jerked a blade from the sheath at his waist and bashed the dog over the head. Callis growled. Spider sank his blade into the dark fur of Callis’s back, and it came out crimson.
No! You don’t get to kill my dog! Her legs finally obeyed. She sprang up, sword raised, and slashed across his ribs. Why in the world wasn’t he dead? What if he couldn’t die?
He kicked Callis aside. The dog dropped to the ground with a vicious snarl and tried to lunge.
“No! Mine,” she told him.
Spider laughed. “Let’s see what you’re capable off.” He struck. He was fast, so fast; he might have been almost as fast as Richard.
She parried and slashed at his shoulder, cutting a gash in his doublet. Blood swelled. Not deep enough. Her sword was too short. He sliced at her in a vicious, horizontal cut. She had no way to dodge to the side, so she bent back. Pain seared her just under the collarbone. The tip of his blade had cut across the exposed top of her chest. Blood poured onto her gown. As he finished the strike, she grasped his wrist with her left hand and sliced across his chest. The flash-sharpened blade cut through his ribs.
Spider snarled. He was still standing.
“Not good enough, Sophie Mar.”
“Good enough for you. You don’t get to take anything else from me.”
He laughed.
“Die.” She cut him again. “Die, die, die!”
He stumbled back and kept laughing.
She slashed at him again and again, becoming a whirlwind, her blade an extension of her, bound to her by her magic. She cut him again and again, oblivious to the wounds she took.
Finally, he fell to his knees.
She stopped. Her breath was coming in ragged gasps. Callis whined at her feet.
“Not bad,” Spider said, his mouth dripping blood. “Look behind me. What will you do now, my dear?”
Sophie raised her head.
Monsters were climbing over the brick wall into the garden.
* * *
CHARLOTTE ran down the stairs. She’d lost track of things for a moment, watching Richard win, and when she turned around, both Sophie and Spider were gone.
The hallway ended in an arched entrance, flooded with sunlight. She dashed through it. A large garden spread before her. In the middle of it, Sophie stood in a gown scarlet with blood, holding a small sword. The big dog stood shivering next to her. Sophie’s gaze was fixed on the far wall. Charlotte looked up.
People were climbing over the wall, dropping into the flowers one by one. Some were human, some were a grotesque collection of animal parts grafted onto human bodies. Their magic splashed her like a wave of sewage. The Hand. They must be Spider’s people. Sophie stood alone against two dozen trained killers, and she was holding an oversized knife.
Charlotte ran. The time slowed to a crawl. She saw everything with crystalline clarity—the monsters in the flowers; Sophie’s pale face as she turned to glance at her; the desperation of knowing she was outmatched in the child’s eyes . . .
The magic tore out of Charlotte, the dark currents streaming like black dragons to find their victims. They stung the first agent, biting his muscular body. He snarled, an inhuman sound, and kept coming. The regeneration, Charlotte realized. His enhanced body was healing the damage she inflicted with her diseases as fast as she could hurt him. She would have to give it more power.
She snapped some of her inner chains. The magic shot out of her, its black streams luminescent with red sparks, carrying death. The magic sped toward the Hand’s agent, brushing against the wolfripper in passing. The dog howled, spun, and fled past her to the safety of the castle. The darkness stung the agent again. He went down on his knees. A bloody red lesion split open the skin on his back. Charlotte struggled to keep the wound open, feeling his body fighting her. He healed with unnatural speed. How was this possible?
Sophie dashed through the garden to her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. It just happened. Spider was walking away . . .”
Charlotte thrust herself between the child and the monsters. “Stay near me.”
She gave the magic more of herself and pushed. Her dark current snapped and struck, biting deep into the approaching fighters. They still kept coming. There had to be fifty of them in the gardens. They were circling them, closing in a ring. In moments, the two of them would be surrounded.
This was a death stand. If Charlotte didn’t start feeding on them to fuel her own magic, the Hand would rip her and Sophie apart. But even if she then managed to kill them all, it would destroy who she was and she’d take Sophie’s life without even thinking about it.
Sophie held her knife, her face bloodless and terrified.
She had to save Sophie. Her years of making quick decisions in a crisis paid off. Fear vanished. Her head was suddenly clear. There was only one way out, Charlotte realized. It was impossible for both of them to get out of this alive, but if she bought Sophie enough time to escape . . . It was just possible the child could survive. It was their only chance.
You will turn into the plaguebringer, a tiny voice warned her.
True—once she went down this road, nothing would prevent that—but the Hand were too many, and they healed too fast. They would overwhelm her before she could move on to the castle and cause damage to innocent people. It was suicide, but it was the best possible option.
The first agent Charlotte had downed, rose, shaking off his injuries like they were mere scratches. Charlotte whipped her magic, and the dark currents clenched the revolting hybrid of human and beast. An exhilarating influx of life force flooded into her. She siphoned off his life and turned it into power.
The dark serpents of her magic smashed into the second agent, draining her dry and dumping her desiccated corpse into the flowers. They stung another and another, stealing more life, feeding it back into her.
Charlotte squeezed Sophie’s shoulder. “Run!”
“I won’t leave you!”
“If you stay, I’ll kill you. I’ll clear the way. Run, sweetheart. Keep Richard away from me. Run!”
Sophie ran. She flew along the path back to the castle like she had wings.
Charlotte opened the floodgates. Her power surged forward, biting deep into the monsters in Sophie’s path. She stole their life force and vomited it back as an all-devouring plague. The Hand’s agents shuddered and fell.
Sophie dashed through the gap between the bodies.
Her magic reaped its grisly harvest. The enhanced agents fought to reach her and fell, cut down, and she fed on their lives, reveling in their taste.
Sophie shot up the stairs and through the arched doors.
Enough. She could pull it back now. Charlotte strained, reeling the magic back. The darkness buckled inside her, fighting to stay unleashed. So strong, so overpowering. Her hold on her power slipped a little, then a little more. It was if she were caught in the current of a violent river that pushed her back, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t force her way against the flow.
She had become an abomination. The magic streamed out of her like a black storm, and she was powerless to stop it. As if in a dream, bodies were falling around her, slowly and softly, like wilted flowers. The dark river inside her rose, the furious current creeping higher and higher.
Oh, Richard . . . It had all gone wrong. It had gone so, so wrong. She was crying, the tears rolling down her cheeks. I’m so sorry, love. I’m so, so sorry. You were all I wanted. You were all I hoped for. I’m sorry.
She shouldn’t have pushed him away last night. She should’ve invited him in, to love and be loved one last time.
The current inside her swelled, and she drowned.
* * *
RICHARD ran through the hallways, the walls a smudged blur. Ahead, Sophie dashed through the arched entrance, her face wet with tears.
“She’s gone!”
“What?”
“Charlotte’s gone, she’s gone!”
He pulled away from her, but she grabbed onto his clothes, dragging him away from the arch. “No, Richard, no! No, you’ll die. No! Don’t go! She said for you not to go!”
He hugged her to him, kissed her hair, and pushed free.
“Richard,” she screamed.
He burst into the sunlight.
Charlotte stood in the middle of the garden. Her magic raged, striking down the Hand’s agents, the black streams boiling, twisting, like a terrifying storm. The Hand’s freaks tried to run, but the magic bit them again and again. Some crawled, other lay unmoving, little more than desiccated husks, and some were decomposing.
Charlotte turned, and he saw her eyes. They were solid black.
The flowers by her feet withered. The blight ran from her, spreading through the garden. Roses died, rotting at the root. The last of the Hand’s monsters swayed and fell.
She had become what she always feared. She had turned into a living death.
He had to get to her. He had to reach her.
The flowers by the stone steps on which he stood withered. He stepped on to their dried corpses and walked across the garden.
The darkness streamed to him. It cloaked him. He felt its deadly cold sting.
“I love you, Charlotte.”
Ten feet separated him from her.
His body buckled. It felt like he was being turned inside out.
Eight feet. The bones of his legs melted into agony.
“I love you. Don’t leave me.”
Three steps.
His heart was beating too fast, each contraction slicing him as if someone were stabbing shards of glass straight into his aorta.
He dropped his sword—his fingers couldn’t hold it—and closed his arms around her. “My love, my light . . . Don’t leave me.”
* * *