And you can bet, first thing after she’s destroyed Nomvula, Sydney’s going to take Brie Montblanc as her slave to make her haute couture dresses. Demigoddesses do not buy off the rack.
Sydney ditches the lighter in favor of drawing a flame from the palm of her hand. A whole gang of brooders become a polyester bonfire. They go up in flames faster than her 450th birthday cake had when she’d actually bothered to put up all the candles. She then forms another flame as she looks for suitable fodder. She spots them, a couple of Riya wannabes in their thigh-high striped socks, silver mesh skirts, and see-through tops. Sydney aims the fireball, but when she goes to release, her hand doesn’t follow. It’s stuck, held there by an invisible force. The same force sinks into her neck like a pronged dog collar.
“I won’t allow you to hurt anyone else,” comes a voice from behind her.
Sydney staggers around to face him and is surprised to see it’s the boy from the rugby field—and he’s not looking so well. Sydney smiles. He’s strong, though. This is what she’s been waiting for, a worthy adversary. He’s too bullheaded to be afraid right now, but soon he’ll be trembling at her feet, begging for mercy, and his fear will fill her to the brim. She concentrates, forces her arm down to her side so that he’ll know what he’s up against.
“Well, looks like someone’s gotten in touch with his inner demigod,” Sydney says with a sneer. “I’m going to enjoy the sound your insides make as they spill onto the ground almost as much as I enjoyed Riya’s singing. And by the way, I never properly thanked you for the concert tickets. Great seats.”
“I like my guts right where they are, thank you.” Muzi raises his hand. “Show me what you really are,” he commands.
The grip tightens around Sydney’s neck, and she grasps for fingers that aren’t there. Against her will, Sydney’s wings slice through the back of her pretty gown, ruined, but its beauty pales in comparison to that of the thick, sleek blades her wings have blossomed into, such a deep red, they’re nearly black. It’s been centuries since her wings have been this impressive. Two meters in each direction, she dares anyone not to piss their pants as she flexes them. Talons burst from the flesh of her fingertips, which she’d had the foresight to paint a charming shade of pink, though honestly, she’d picked it for its name: Apocalyptic Cotton Candy. It’d taken two and a half bottles per hand, but, oh, was it worth it.
On her tiptoes, she gives a flap, and the world falls from beneath her as she rises into the arena’s rafters. “You can’t control me, boy!” she bellows to the vermin below. “I’ve had bunions with more power than you.”
“You won’t hurt anyone else, ever. Do you hear me?” Muzi calls up to her. His words penetrate to the heart, or the frozen thing she’s called a heart all these centuries. He’s stronger than she’d anticipated. That’ll make disemboweling him all the more delectable. Sydney grits her teeth and dives, straining against the mind-grip choking at her throat as she swoops up two victims with her talons. A quick scissor action severs their spinal columns. She then drops them from the rafters like the rubbish they are.
Fear crashes into her, shooting up like cannons. Now’s the time.
Sydney homes in on Nomvula, pulling against the boy’s mind tether like a bulldog on the end of a flimsy leash. And then all at once she’s free of Muzi’s meddling. She swarms, cutting Nomvula off midstride.
“Dear, Nomvula, come give your big sister a hug,” Sydney says with a sly grin.
“I want nothing to do with you,” says Nomvula.
“Nomvula, don’t!” comes Muzi’s voice, the crowd parting out of his way. “She’s dangerous.”
Nomvula turns to face Muzi. “Stay away. She’ll hurt you.”
“I can handle her,” Muzi replies, eyes red like someone had beaten them to a pulp. They aim right in Sydney’s direction. “Sleep,” he commands, voice dropped an octave. His brow bends nearly into a ninety-degree angle. “Sleep, now.”
Drowsiness rains down on Sydney. So this is what it’s come to? The boy hasn’t even known his true self for a full week, and yet he has the strength to defeat her? It’s all she can do to will her eyes open. Muzi’s shaking, bleeding from his ears now, but he’s got her tied up, paralyzed. She can’t breathe. The weight on her neck and chest is too great. Darkness envelops her, and then somewhere deep in her mind, among five hundred years of life experience, a single memory slips back through the connection Muzi’s got on her, like backwash into a soda bottle. Muzi groans as it connects . . . that nice memory of when she’d slaughtered the inhabitants of a small village: men, women, and children. His grip on her weakens ever so slightly.
Sydney digs up a few memories of her own and lobs them over their mind connection like grenades, each grislier and more inhumane than the last. She laughs on the inside until his hold on her loosens enough for her to laugh on the outside as well.
When she regains complete control, Muzi’s a shuddering mess on the ground in an impressive pool of his own vomit, doing his best to sever their connection, but now she wants them linked—she’s got him by the balls now. She forces it all inside his wretched mind, every innocent she’d killed, every person she’d maimed, every life she’d extinguished without the slightest bit of remorse.
Nomvula approaches the near corpse of Muzi like a cowering dog, then bends over it, eyes shedding tears. The alphie joins her.
“You could save him, sister,” Sydney says in a singsong voice. “But then you’d have no power to fight me!”
“I’m not going to fight you,” Nomvula mews, laying her hands against Muzi’s forehead, eyes closed as if she’s about to draw.
Sydney raises an arm and thrusts Nomvula away. The girl tumbles to the ground and is slow to gather herself up. Once she does, she only cringes.
“What? I go through all this trouble, and now you won’t even put up a fight?” Sydney spits.
“I’m nothing like you. You’re not my sister.”
“Tsk, tsk. I know thirty-seven thousand lost souls that might say otherwise. Now show these people your pretty wings. Show them how you destroyed that township.”
“I’m not that girl anymore. I don’t have to let my ire control me.”
“Fine.” Sydney glowers, taking a step toward Nomvula. “Have it your way.” She raises her hand, ready to give the deathblow, but the alphie in the pink coat puts its body between them. With a flick of her wrist, Sydney brushes it off to the side, but it swarms back in a split second. Only now there are two of them.