And at that moment, as if a clock has just chimed, she scrambles away and lunges at Malachai, knocking him onto his back. His cloud of smoke still clings to her wolf body, winding around her paws and muzzle, but Darby is not hindered. Her snapping jaws are just inches from Malachai’s throat.
He is holding her at bay, pressing her neck with his thumbs, trying to keep her jaws from clamping down. I look around for a weapon, something I can use. Anything! But there is nothing. Gabriel and Emily rush to my side. Emily’s light is pulsing stronger than before. The cut Gabriel suffered is worse than I first thought. The wound looks deep, and blood runs down his face in thin rivulets.
“What do we do?” Emily cries. She looks ready to rush in and lay hands on Malachai, but I pull her back. “No! It’s not safe! You could be slashed.”
Slashed, I think. Like me. Not knowing if you will wake up one day with the skin of a wolf.
Yet . . . if Darby is a wolf now, it must mean that I am not infected. If so, I would surely be a wolf too.
Gabriel takes a deep breath, and a low sound comes from his throat. My heart races faster. My hands tighten into fists. A surge of energy pulses through my body. Light flickers at Emily’s fingers and the ends of her hair.
Malachai throws Darby off, and she crumples against the tunnel wall with a sharp whimper.
“Stupid beast!” he shouts, standing up. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and turns to me. His thread of smoke swirls from Darby and streams around my closed mouth. I feel it rising into my nostrils. I can’t breathe!
Bloodcurdling screams ring through the tunnel.
Ghouls with skull-like faces and red eyes appear from the shadows. They are coming to their master’s aid.
“For Bran the Blessed!” Emily shouts, and charges into the oncoming horde. She is dancing between them, her hands a blur of motion, lit up as if aflame, and the ghouls burn like thin parchment at her touch, their corpses dissolving to ash.
“Be at peace, darkling,” Malachai says to me. His smoke is curling into my nostrils. I try to breathe again, but my mouth opens and closes like that of a fish on land.
I reflect on the idea of thought made material. I close my eyes and imagine a snake squeezing its prey.
White mist flows from my head—?a long, bright cord, and at the end of it, five spiked tails fan out, just like my own lash. I reach up . . .
And my hand closes around it. I can feel it. It is solid. It is real.
I do not have time to marvel at it, but only to do one thing.
Within you lies strength yet to be discovered. Like your father . . . and your mother.
I grasp the ethereal whip and strike out.
It curls around Malachai’s neck.
Images immediately flood my mind. There is fire and smoke and pain and death. And rats. Always the rats. I am inside his head.
My breath is returning to me. Malachai’s smoke is faltering, drifting apart in drops that look like blood.
I hear a vicious snarl, and Darby leaps back into the fray, taking down a ghoul as she does so. The creatures scream and howl, bouncing from wall to wall with amazing speed.
My ribbon of smoke is pulsing now with lines of green and red curling around Malachai’s throat. Tighter! I shout inside my head. Tighter!
Every muscle in my body is strained with exertion, pushed to the limit. I feel it in my arms and legs, the back of my neck.
Gabriel breathes in, his chest heaves, and then a shadow ripples behind him. I see a shape, outstretched from either side of his small frame.
My mouth falls open.
He lifts his arms, and I see something that shouldn’t really exist. A great shadow appears behind him.
Wings.
“Seraph!” Malachai hisses, his hands grasping at my ghostly lash.
The ghouls cower in fear.
“Go back, demon,” Gabriel commands. The shadow wings flutter, the edges rippling with fire.
His voice is like rumbling boulders, like trees being wrenched from the very ground. He continues speaking—?the words coming faster, a torrent of sound that bears no resemblance to any human language.
The tunnel is now bright with flashing light. Emily is breathing hard, resting with her back to the wall, entranced by Gabriel. The ceiling cracks. Shards of wood and debris crash to the floor, leaving an open hole above. I tumble and roll off the tracks as a plank falls and barely misses my head. I stand up again. My lash of smoke is still tight around Malachai’s throat.
But then he is revealed for the devil he truly is.
A serpentine tongue shoots from his mouth. It does not wind its way to me, but to Emily. She falls to the ground, grasping it with her small hands, unable to breathe.
“No!” I scream.
“Release me,” he croaks. A slow trickle of black blood oozes from his lips. Red veins appear in his eyes. “Release me, or the girl will die.”
I look to Emily. The serpent tongue is curling tighter. Her hands are white-hot, but they do not seem to burn the long, slithering piece of flesh.
Gabriel is singing now. Or is it the bells? I can’t tell. All I can sense is a pull throughout my body. I feel it in my stomach, deep down, like the tide coming into shore. He is calming me.