All at once, I released it.
For a split second, the night was quiet. Then my power blasted against the metal gates, the boom as loud as thunder. With a crack, the gates split apart like overripe fruit, and the enchantment dissolved into the air.
The wicked part of me wanted to revel, but the part that was still human simply passed through. My thoughts were on other things.
Fate. Redemption. Salvation. Controlling this unnatural anger bubbling through my veins.
A good several seconds went by as professors recovered from the shock of seeing their main defense ripped away. Once they recovered, their attention turned to me.
“Don’t.” That was the only word I could bite out against the torrent of anger and bloodlust riding me.
They didn’t listen.
The hits came from several directions. I couldn’t tell who was responsible for each, but it didn’t matter. My fury didn’t have a specific target. It lashed out like some great unseen hand, sweeping them off their feet. I didn’t want to stop there. I wanted to tear and rent and rip—
I forced the rage back and instead pinned the professors to the dewy grass so they wouldn’t follow me.
Just like the main entrance, the doors to the library gave me grief. Briefly. I was thankful that I could focus my unbridled rage on an inanimate object. My energy poured out, ripping the doors and hinges, and stripping the building of its enchantments.
“Well you certainly know how to make an entrance,” Lydia Thyme, better known as the fate Decima, greeted me when I stepped inside. Peel’s head librarian and the middle of the three fates sat on one of the couches scattered throughout the room.
She assessed the doors behind me. “It’s going to take me hours to put those enchantments back in place.”
My limbs were jittery with the need to use my power again, and my skin glowed as the siren stuck close to the surface. Without looking, I forced the broken doors back into place and used my power to seal the entrance shut.
I sat on the seat across from her, and it was an effort to even appear relaxed.
“You want answers,” she said.
“I do.” I need them, badly. “I don’t want to be this way,” I admitted.
“What way?” she asked.
“Dead. Evil. Immortal. His.”
Decima shook her head. “Those are dangerous words. He could be listening even now.”
I sucked in a shaky breath through my nose. “So you know how much I’m risking by being here and telling you these things.”
“Mmmm,” she agreed. “What if I told you that what you want is impossible? What if I told you that there was no way out of your situation?”
“I would find someone else who would tell me something different.”
“Dangerous, dangerous words,” she muttered. And then, in the silence of the library, Decima began reciting the familiar riddle. “Daughter of wheat and grain, betrothed to soil and stain, your lifeblood drips, the scales tip, but will it be in vain?
“Child of penance and pain, dealer of beauty and bane, a coin’s been flipped, the scales tipped, nothing will be the same.”
Hearing the words spoken unnerved me more than they had when I first read them.
“That poem is about you,” she said. She leaned forward in her chair. “You know there is one more stanza, don’t you?” Behind her the candlelight flickered.
I shook my head.
She began to recite once more. “Queen of souls of slain, prisoner of ash and flame, heaven dips, the world rips, the future is yours to claim.”
This time, the back of my neck prickled, like unseen eyes watched me. “So I have a choice after all?” I asked, hoping I interpreted that last bit of the poem correctly.
“You do,” she said. “I am not Nona. I will not steer you away from Pluto. But nor am I Morta, who would steer you towards him. I can give you council, but not much else.”
“Then tell me what I need to do,” I said.
“You already know what you need to do,” she replied.
My anger slipped its muzzle briefly. I wanted to scream. Or throttle her. My fingers started curled inwards.
So, so messed up.
Decima sighed. “You remember Jericho,” she stated.
“I was going to meet with him next.” He’d been the second person I wanted to speak with.
She leaned back against the couch. “Unlike me, he has an agenda.”
Well, that was nothing new. “Everyone has an agenda.”
She smiled. “True.” She studied me for a second. “You know, Nona, Morta, and I made you for him.”
We were no longer talking about Jericho.
“A thousand upon a thousand years ago we crafted you from the threads of time. You were made for him. And he was meant to please you.”
I didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t even bother thinking on it. I knew where I stood on that front.
“As unlikely as it all seems, he was always your intended. The vampire was the mistake.”
“Andre was not a mistake.”
She pinched her lips together but didn’t contradict me.
BOOM!