Shelby wasn’t real. Shelby had never been real. But that meant Shelby was the better part of Nora, maybe the best part of her. The girl she would have been if she hadn’t had a murderer for a mother and a cultist for a father, if she hadn’t been promised to a murder god, if she had been allowed to grow up, instead of just getting older one day and one death at a time.
If she couldn’t do this for herself, she could do it for Anastasia Edwards. She could do it for Andel Edwards. She could do it for Shelby.
“Fuck the menu,” Nora agreed, in a voice that was virtually a sigh, and broke into a run.
The pain stayed behind, in the place where hero had become human. Everything was running. Everything was screaming. There was no time, there was no time to stop and see who was screaming, there was no time for anything but running as if her life depended on it. Because it did. Her life, and Anastasia’s life, and everyone’s life, they all depended on how quickly she could run.
Nora understood running. Indigo’s powers came from Damastes, fueled by shadow and demonic magic, but the physicality behind those powers had always come from Nora. When she punched, her knuckles were the ones that got bruised. When she kicked, her toes were the ones that got broken. And when she ran, when she leaped across the rooftops of the city like the comic-book chimera Damastes had worked so hard to turn her into, her legs were the ones powering the whole thing.
She might not have shadow powers or magic or a giant-ass sword—she would really have appreciated a giant-ass sword right about then—but she could run.
She ran straight for the altar, where Anastasia was struggling against her remaining bonds, tears running down her face and snot hanging in ropy strings from her nose. The girl looked so young, because she was so young, and she should never have been forced into this position. She should have been thinking middle-school thoughts, not wondering whether her brother was going to slice out her heart and offer it to a murder god.
A murder god who, while he would happily have bathed in the blood of the world, had no interest in the blood of this particular girl. He didn’t want to be bound to the Phonoi. He didn’t want to be bound to—
“Forget something?” taunted Rafe, positioning himself so that he was between Anastasia and the running Nora. He was scarcely on the other side of his wards, a twisted delight in his eyes. Damastes was still cutting an unstoppable swath through the guards, rending and slicing without hesitation. Rafe didn’t seem to care. He was safe inside his own protections.
That was how he had always been, Nora realized, her heartbeat speeding up from the mixture of adrenaline and rage. Her pain had been entirely forgotten, replaced by the need to justify her choices, to make the things she had done for the sake of her soul worthwhile. Rafe, and the people like him, had always been willing to let the world drown in a sea of its own blood as long as he could be sure of being safe.
“This is for my father,” Nora snarled, and threw a hard right hook through his magical barrier. His nose broke against her fingers with a satisfyingly squishy sensation. It was one of the best things she had ever felt. She hauled back to do it again.
Rafe staggered backward, out of her reach, and grabbed for Andel again, getting the boy into a headlock. “Do it!” he howled at Graham Edwards, voice thick with blood and agony. “Kill the little bitch! Do it now!”
Graham Edwards looked between the struggling Andel and the terrified Anastasia, and at the knife lying forgotten on the altar. Slowly, as if against his will, he bent and reached for the handle.
“We’re all dead if I don’t do this, princess,” he said in a voice like lead. Anastasia whimpered and struggled to the limits of her bonds, shying away from him as best she could. “I’m so sorry. Daddy tried so hard to save you. Daddy did everything he could.”
“Liar!” shrieked Anastasia.
Rafe was watching the pair now, a grin painting his face, terrible through the veil of his own blood. Andel was struggling, but he was a ten-year-old boy, scrawny and held captive by a man three times his size. He was never going to break free.
The wards had been designed to keep Indigo out. They would hold against Damastes for a time. Maybe even forever. Rafe clearly thought he’d come too close to the edge, that Nora had been lucky, or he wouldn’t have been standing there so exposed, so vulnerable.
Nora lunged.
Her shoulder impacted with his side, knocking him off-balance and loosening his grip on Andel. Rafe snarled. Andel yelped, the sound high and sharp and somehow carrying over the sounds of the one-sided battle that raged outside. Some of the Children of Phonos had realized that they couldn’t possibly win against the monster of their own making. They were running, scattering like leaves in a stiff wind, and Damastes was more than happy to pursue, gleeful as a cat disemboweling mice. They were junior members, the tattered survivors of a dying cult.
“Run, you stupid boy!” snarled Nora, and jabbed her stiffened fingers into the hollow of Rafe’s throat.
He howled. He loosed his grip.
Andel ran.
Save your sister, Nora thought—but there was no time to voice it. Rafe squirmed against her, directing a quick, sharp punch at her face. Nora twisted to the side, letting his hand whish harmlessly past her. Then she turned, slamming her forehead into his so hard that stars blossomed inside her skull like fireworks, bright and beautiful and transitory.
Rafe squealed.
“This is for Shelby!” she howled, and punched him in the nose again.
Rafe raised his hands, not to hit, but to move his fingers in a complicated pattern that only made fucking sense if he was trying to speak ASL or trying to cast a spell on her. Since she doubted he had suddenly discovered a passion for silent communication, the latter seemed more likely. Nora abandoned her punching strategy and slammed her elbow into the hollow of his throat, bringing her knee up to his groin at the same time.
Rafe’s hands stopped moving. He made a small, choked sound and fell, collapsing unconscious to the ground. She felt a sizzling sensation, as if she had brushed against the edge of an electric fence, and her skin drew tight in terrified goose bumps as Damastes laughed again, this time in sheer, unbridled delight.
The wards were down.
Nora spun to see the nightmare Adonis bearing down on her. Edwards shouted and flung the knife aside, supplicating himself to the murder god he had worked so long and so hard to subjugate. It was too little, too late—if there had ever been a chance Damastes would see the Children of Phonos as a useful tool, it had ended when Rafe Bogdani became their guiding hand.