Blood Prophecy

CHAPTER 39



Solange


Isabeau’s shields glowed brightly, deflecting the sinister ooze of tainted magic as it tried to slip around us like ropes.

“Isabeau!” Logan shouted. Back on the ground our bodies must be reacting just as our spirits were.

Isabeau closed her eyes and I imagined her pulling energy from the earth and the trees and even the snow drifting slowly down. She used it to form a sword, sharper and more lethal than any forged in the physical world. It glowed like fire. She hacked at the muddy ropes as they tried to drain us. They were insidious and clever. I was exhausted before I’d even realized what they were doing. Everything looked dimmer.

As Isabeau I sliced through them, they fell apart into black smoke, and reformed in the shape of Greyhaven’s face. He smiled at her. I hissed at him, knowing he’d been the one to turn Isabeau into a vampire, leaving her buried in a coffin for hundreds of years.

“Non,” she said as the magic slipped through our barriers. For a moment I saw what she saw and felt what she felt: the weight of the earth over her head, pale roots easing slowly down through the wooden slats of the coffin. The footsteps of mourners passing the graveyard. The smell of the flowers they left to rot under the headstones. The struggle to stave off the madness that licked at her, the hunger burning her into a hollow, papery husk. The blackness when she’d passed out inside the coffin, blessedly cool and numb.

Her spirit body flickered like a candle in a gust of wind.

“Isabeau,” Logan called again, more frantically.

“Non,” she moaned again. The sword in her hand flared.

I knew she wouldn’t break the spell, not yet. Despite the fact that I felt as haggard and gray as she looked, she still needed to do the spell. She wouldn’t let the Host win.

And she certainly wouldn’t let Greyhaven win.

She pushed back, until light shot out of her tattoos, out of her amulets, and finally, out of her aura.

It touched me like rain, washing away the dark magic as if it were mud sticking to my skin.

“Logan once told me to survive Greyhaven,” she said, suddenly sounding like my mother, fierce and deadly. She brought her sword down through Greyhaven’s face and the smoke dissipated, hissing as if it felt pain. The last of the muddy tendrils fell away completely. My spirit cord flared briefly, painfully.

Isabeau lifted the leg bone of what must have been a truly huge dog. It was painted with runes and swirls and hung with crystals. It was an echo of a real talisman, one reserved for Shamankas and their handmaidens; I’d seen something similar when Kala had used magic to help me see the prophecy. It was so deeply imbued with magic that the moment Isabeau snapped it in half, the dried marrow exploded into a cloud of glitter.

“Vérité,” she whispered in her native French tongue. “Vérité,” she said again, shaking the magic off the bone over Hope’s head until it covered her like dandelion pollen. “Vérité,” she repeated for the last time.

Hope frowned suddenly, shaking her head as if an insect had crawled into her ear.

“C’est fini.” Isabeau smiled and drifted away, taking me with her.

“Okay, what just happened?” I asked. “I assume you didn’t do all that just to make her itchy?”

Isabeau didn’t answer. She was too busy scowling down at the Hel-Blar scurrying through the camp, clacking their jaws. One of them stopped to lick the dried blood off the splintered ruins of the post and the chains coiled like dead snakes. I could also see the outcropping jutting over the long feast table where Logan stood over Isabeau’s body with his sword, looking pale. Charlemagne sat behind her head.

“It’s time,” she said, snapping the ribbon of light that bound our wrists. “You must return to your body. Do not linger.”

I shivered, feeling odd. “Don’t worry.” The pull of the silver cord was making me nauseated as it tugged my spirit back home. I followed the trail, passing through pine boughs and branches, to the platform where Kieran was crouched by my side, looking frantic. I reclined into my body, the way Isabeau told me. My eyes snapped open.

Kieran jerked back, slipped, and fell on his butt. I blinked again, feeling the cold boards under my back, the snow seeping into my clothes, the warmth emanating off Kieran’s body.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said hoarsely, as he got to his feet. “Again.” He offered me his hand to help me up and I shot up so quickly I ended up pressed against his chest. The sounds of the bloody battle beneath us receded for one moment. And then one of Lucy’s classmates darted past, jostling us.

“What the hell happened?” Kieran asked, stepping back but not letting go of me completely.

“Magic,” I replied. “Isabeau this time, so I’m okay. And she worked a spell on Hope, so it was worth it.” I finally stepped away from him, feeling the cold wind snake between us. His scent of cedar and mint clung to me. “But there are Hel-Blar down there now. So I should go.”

“We should go,” he corrected me.