The light began to flicker and I paused, tilting my head upward. The sun came out from behind the storm clouds, but the shapes flying in front of it made the rays go dark-light, dark-light.
I’d seen this once before. When the Grigori had flown free of Tartarus they had made patterns across the full white moon. Now, they were returning at their master’s call—at my call—making the same shadows across the brilliant flare of the sun.
Command them.
I glanced at Sawyer, still hanging on the pole, heartless. I guess he hadn’t been too damned to be innocent after all.
I dropped the fairy, and she crumpled to the ground; then I tossed the steel through the front window of the house. The resulting crash of glass made me laugh, and the laughter was that of the demon inside.
“Kill her,” I ordered, and the Grigori—chaos spirits that glimmered like misshapen bats and crows and vultures—swooped down.
That’s it, the familiar voice crooned. Command them and you are the Prince; then all you have to do is let me in. No more pain, no more fear, no more death. Anything you’ve ever wanted will be yours.
Sounded reasonable to me. I opened my mouth to agree, and the catch on my collar clicked closed. Like air running out of a punctured balloon, the evil flowed away, leaving behind only a whisper.
“Call them off.” Jimmy grabbed my elbow so hard my bones seemed to grate together. “Now, before they kill her.”
The dark, whirling cloud of evil spirits had gathered above the fairy. The way they slithered and danced, the scent of them—burned rubber garnished with rotten eggs—their voices, part screech, part insane murmur, repelled me.
“Stop,” I ordered, and they did.
Feel the power. Wouldn’t you like more? Wouldn’t you like it all?
The Grigori began to murmur again, their voices just like his, promising impossible things, guaranteeing all. I fell to the ground, covered my ears with my hands, but I could still hear, because the voice inside of me had only gotten louder.
The temptation was overwhelming. No more pain. No more fear. No more death.
Let me in. Let me in. Let me in.
The words pulsed to the beat of my heart. I thought I might go mad if they didn’t stop. So I sat up, and I shouted to the sky, “Go to hell!”
And they did.
CHAPTER 35
The Grigori were pulled shrieking from the earth, their voices inhuman with fury, their screams full of pain. I watched, stunned, as the flickering shadows lengthened, seeming to cling to the rays of the sun. My ears ached; my skin prickled with gooseflesh, my muscles so tense they threatened to cramp. Then, the Grigori were gone, their howls fading along with their misshapen black bodies, as the sun brightened.
The silence after so much noise was overwhelming. I sat on the ground stunned as everything I’d said and done rushed in; the scents and sights, the words and the feelings, the temptations I’d accepted and rejected, bombarded me.
I waited for Jimmy to touch me, to whisper that everything was all right, that I’d had to do all that I’d done. Instead, he stepped around me and went to the fairy.
“You okay?” He touched her shoulder, took her into his arms as she cried.
I was so shocked I just stared at the two of them, blinking in the sudden sunlight—the storm had disappeared as if it had never even been—expecting the scene before me to fade, a hallucination, a vision, anything but the truth, except it didn’t.
Neither did the one behind them, a scene that would haunt me for the rest of my days.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Sawyer’s dead.”
I didn’t want to touch him, wasn’t sure what I’d see. But I couldn’t leave him hanging there like some kind of sacrifice.
“Jesus,” I muttered, and dragged myself to my feet as all that had happened became clear.
Sawyer had been the sacrifice that allowed me to command the demons. He’d been wrong. He wasn’t too damned to be innocent. Perhaps he was just damned enough. At any rate, his death had allowed me to send the Grigori and, from the welcome silence in my brain, Satan back to Tartarus.
Because the only way Sawyer could die was if he wanted to and therefore he’d given his life freely. A sacrifice.
Jimmy and Summer didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t offer to help. I had to stop looking at them, or I might do something I’d regret.
I stumbled across the dusty ground. Sawyer’s head hung limp. The gaping hole in his chest had not healed; the blood that washed over his tattooed skin had just begun to dry.
His heart lay at his feet where I’d dropped it when the magic took me. A strange thought trickled through my numb brain. What if I put it back?
I was a sorcerer. I could command a storm, control lightning. I could raise a ghost. Hell, I’d just sent demons back to hell. Maybe if I combined every power I had, I could raise him like I’d killed her.