Lincoln must’ve told him.
I closed my eyes briefly.
There is still more to do.
I stepped towards Phoenix and the world around me came back into focus. Phoenix shook with pain as I crossed the border between reality and other. Around us, exiles began to scramble.
The combination of chaos combined with their vindictive natures made the exiles as furious with one another as they were with me. And now that Lilith was gone and Phoenix down it appeared the timeless rivalry between light and dark had been reinstated.
Helicopter blades sounded overhead, along with an explosion nearby. I heard voices yelling out commands from outside the ballroom. The exiles started to turn towards the new threat.
The cavalry had arrived.
My eyes sought out Evelyn, bracing for the worst. But there she was, alive, struggling against her restraints, while Spence helped her.
I fell to the ground beside Phoenix.
He was barely breathing. The sword he had used on Lilith had not been a full Grigori blade, so when she’d turned it back on him it hadn’t killed him instantly. Still, I was amazed he was managing to hang on.
I grabbed his hand. It was cold, like mine.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ I said, coughing up some blood, registering the pain in my side and wrist. ‘After all of this, we’re just going to die.’
He squeezed my hand.
‘You won’t die,’ he said, each word an effort.
I didn’t bother arguing. ‘Just one more thing to do first.’
With the last of whatever strength Phoenix had, he pulled me roughly towards him. ‘I need to tell you something,’ he pleaded, pulling me close.
He whispered.
I listened.
And trembled with his words.
‘It’s too late!’ I cried.
‘I thought that once, too. But it’s never too late. You taught me that. Love can make us eternal.’ Phoenix’s eyes closed, haunted to the end. ‘I’m sorry,’ were his last words.
‘I forgive you,’ I sobbed, gripping onto him desperately. ‘I forgive you.’
It was too late.
All. Too. Late.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘Angel, my little angel … I am small, you make me big, I am weak, you make me strong …’
Orthodox children’s prayer
The double doors to the ballroom exploded in a mass of flying debris and smoke, black-clad troops armed with Grigori blades storming the hall to be met by a throng of waiting exiles.
I kept staring at Phoenix’s inert body.
Why hasn’t he disappeared?
It took me a while to realise it was because he was part-human, too. Unlike other exiles, this was his true body. Perhaps that was why it had taken longer for him to die.
Within seconds of his last breath, all of the emotions from which he’d spared me rushed back into me. It took everything I had to endure the onslaught, but I couldn’t let myself succumb to them yet.
I cried as I crawled over and retrieved my katanas, still lying where Lilith had dropped them. I struggled to my feet just as I saw a pair of exiles coming towards me.
Spence appeared from nowhere, leaping in front of me and taking the exiles’ attention. While he took care of them, I pushed my power out one more time as more Grigori entered the fray, to hold back as many exiles as I could.
Digging deep, I found something new tucked well within my power. It was part of Phoenix that had come to me in his essence. While the rest of me was dominated by my soul’s pain, burning with an icy coldness, in this new part of me, there was … nothing.
I travelled down a long dark corridor in my mind, searching for its meaning. When I reached the end, an understanding dawned on me. Phoenix had had the abilities of an empath and could both give and take emotions, but when he’d transferred his essence to me, it had mutated.
I could neither feel the emotions of others, nor give them away.
Instead, I could lock everything – every emotion – down. All of them. It was as simple as flicking a switch.
And so I did.
Everything melted away.
Numbness spread through me quickly. I could think more clearly, move more easily. The pain in my soul was still there, lurking, but it was no longer attacking me. I was … nothing.
I started to move again, controlling as many exiles as I could, even as I headed away from them towards the basement.
This will not all have been in vain.
I was weak. I staggered and lost my hold on the exiles.
The Grigori will have to deal with them now.
I looked back at Spence. He was in the middle of the battlefield.
‘Spence!’ I screamed.
He turned. I must have looked a sight – covered in blood and no emotion to show for it.
Spence screamed back at me even as he fought off oncoming exiles. He pushed one down and when another Grigori jumped in to take the next off his hands he started to run towards me, pulling out something from his waist.
He’d done it.
He had the Grigori Scripture.