Megaira pushed past her and raised her blade to catch the downward stroke of a knife that Indigo did not see coming.
“Thanks,” gasped Indigo as she wrenched her own blade free.
The slaughter nun grinned at Indigo, but then she juddered and coughed out a pint of hot red blood. She and Indigo both looked down at Megaira’s chest to see the six inches of blade that stood out from just beneath her sternum.
Megaira said, “I…”
Then the killer behind her tore the blade free and Megaira fell, her eyes rolling high and white. Across the room Xanthe screamed, but she was too far away to do anything but watch her sister die.
The killer, a slender woman with a dancer’s body and a face like a French fashion model, came at Indigo with a series of blindingly fast attacks, wielding a long, thin-bladed straight sword with the disheartening proficiency of a master swordswoman. The attack was blinding and powerful and Indigo was forced to give ground step by step.
On the altar, Rafe slapped Edwards hard across the face, knocking some of the dazed stupidity from it and tearing a cry from young Andel.
“Do what you promised, you piece of shit,” snarled Rafe. “Do it now.”
Andel renewed his efforts to pull away, but his father took a breath and adjusted his grip on his son’s arm. The blade began moving downward toward the heaving chest of the helpless girl.
*
Damastes was now in the shape of some kind of sea creature, with a mass of tentacles sprouting from an amorphous body. The Children of Phonos stabbed at him, and Indigo saw two of the tentacles go flying, but if the wounds hurt the murder god, his cries sounded very much like joyful laughter.
*
Selene dove low, rolling beneath the swing of a staff so that her attacker struck another Phonoi full in the mouth. The victim spun around and fell, and Selene scrambled up and whipped her blade across the staff fighter’s thigh, his arm, his cheek, and his throat. The wooden weapon clattered to the floor and the attacker stumbled sideways, trying to stop the arterial spray. And failing.
*
Indigo whipped her cloak of shadows up and let the Frenchwoman’s blade stab through it, then Indigo jerked her hand down and sideways, wrapping the blade in knots of unreality. The woman tried to cut her way out, but it was the wrong tactic, and Indigo made her pay for it by driving a knee into the woman’s crotch, head-butting her, and then reshaping the shadow knife into a cleaver that crunched into the side of the woman’s neck. The Frenchwoman’s head rolled to the floor.
Gasping for air, Indigo turned toward the altar. Time was running out. Edwards was going to force his son to sacrifice Anastasia. The blade was inches away now, and defeat and even a sick acceptance was in Andel’s young eyes.
So she ran, pulling shadows around her to create armor and intensifying her cloak into a battering ram. Several of the Children of Phonos tried to stop her, but Indigo willed a mass of spikes onto the front of her ram, and the resistance melted away with shrieks and splashes of red.
Rafe turned to her. She expected to see fear blossom in his eyes, but instead he was smiling. No … laughing.
Indigo slammed with full speed and force into …
Nothing.
She hit nothing but it was like hitting a stone wall. Her momentum crushed her into the unseen obstacle, and she rebounded with tremendous force. More force, even, than hitting a wall would have generated. She saw a weird shimmer in the air and realized with a sinking heart that some kind of spell, a ward or protective charm, was in place around the altar, and Rafe had constructed it to stop her. Of that she had absolutely no doubt.
Indigo was on her knees, pain detonating in her chest. Her arms and shoulders and head all felt as if she had been beaten, as if she were broken. All around her the battle raged. Her shadows seemed to collapse around her, hanging like broken things, drooping onto the floor like torn banners on the field of a lost battle. She could not move, could not rise. Her hands twitched open and her shadow weapons fell from her fingers and dissolved into ash. Up on the altar Rafe laughed with triumph.
Indigo looked around for help, but what she saw broke her heart.
Until now Indigo had thought they had a chance, however fleeting, of saving the girl and ending Rafe’s mad plan. But as she knelt there, powerless and defeated, she saw the tide of battle turn.
Xanthe and Selene fought with incredible ferocity, their blades flashing like lightning as bodies piled up around them. However there were more of the Phonoi than Indigo had thought. Many more. Clearly, the only thing keeping the two women alive was that the Phonoi had to climb over the fallen bodies of their own in order to attack. That advantage could not last. Even fighters as skilled as the slaughter nuns were still human. Their bodies were bathed with sweat, and Indigo knew their arms had to be growing heavy, the muscles burning with lactic acid, chests heaving as they fought to breathe.
They’re going to die, thought Indigo, knowing it to be true.
The Nora part of her whispered a darker truth inside her head: We’re all going to die. Rafe is going to win.
Worse still, they both thought, I can’t do this.
The ugliest word was I.
Immediately a dark and awful idea whispered to her through the darkness of her despair.
“No…,” she whispered.
Yes, said the voice inside her. Not Nora’s voice. Not exactly. The voice was part of each of the two aspects of who she was. Nora and Indigo. Human and inhuman. This was the voice of the parts of each that were always connected, always one being. An essential self whispering essential truths.
She cut a look at Damastes, and for a moment the murder god paused, blinking at her in surprise. His flesh still flowed and changed, but his eyes were human enough for her to read his expression. She watched him as he looked from her to the shimmering wall of magic and back. Damastes understood that truth, too.
Rafe’s magic had been created to stop Indigo. To stop the thing she was. These wards combated her shadow self, weakened her into impotency, and in doing so they made her weakness Rafe’s greatest weapon because Selene and Xanthe were never going to cut their way to the altar. And Damastes was not yet powerful enough to break through because he, too, shared the nature of shadow sorcery. Rafe had set a trap, and he laughed because he knew it would work.
Indigo was never going to reach the girl. Never.
Damastes was never going to reach Anastasia.
Never.
Neither of them could.
This was Rafe’s genius, and Indigo’s team had no time to fall back, regroup, and attack with a fresh plan. That moment had burned off.
Her inner voice whispered its secret to her. A chance. A plan. A hope.
But it was so dangerous that Indigo knew she would die. Absolutely. No other chance. This was the end of her.
“Please,” she whispered, begging the universe to offer a different choice, to take that cup of destiny from her.