His eyes glowed golden. “Why did you do that? She was running.”
Sydney licked the blood off the knife, then bit into Kristen’s throat, draining the body before letting it drop. Killing with fangs felt too personal, but once her foe was dead, the call of her powerful magical blood had been too much to resist.
Shame washed over her. All these years she’d lived like a human with an odd diet. It was only now at her full power, confronted with jealousy and mating links and rage, that she’d let the monster out. And for the briefest moment, she’d felt that scary predatory calm and lack of remorse. She brushed past Noah to join the fight in earnest. She needed to do some killing she could more easily justify to paper over the petty murder she’d just committed. But he grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Sydney.”
“Don’t. I don’t know what I am now. I can’t believe I just…” Yeah, Tam had said to leave no survivors, and it was debatable if disobeying that order for one additional person would make a difference. But they both knew that wasn’t why Kristen was a drained corpse at the edge of the woods right now.
Noah pulled Sydney into his arms, and she laid her head against his shoulder. He petted her hair as she sobbed. “You’ve never been tested before. You’ve never had to deal with the consequences of your power before because it’s new.”
“Have you? Had to deal with consequences?”
He was silent, and she knew that it wasn’t the same for him. He hadn’t been damaged by the lives he’d taken.
“She made her choice to come here to fight,” he said.
“Was there something between the two of you?”
Noah’s eyes widened. “Is that why you…? No. She was just nice to me. She was a friend. Or the closest thing I had in there.”
If he thought that would make Sydney feel better, he was wrong. She just cried harder.
“I don’t think we should fight anymore unless they need us. You’re too upset.” He started to lead her away, but she stubbornly refused to go with him.
The fight started to die down, but she ran headlong into it, anyway.
Her father fought and ripped heads off bodies, his face covered in blood like a madman. Was that what she was, too?
Hundreds of bodies littered the landscape. The enemy. Not the preternaturals this time.
Tam, Dayne, and Anna were starting to run out of energy. A powerfully bright ball of fire hurtled toward the group of them. Dayne didn’t see it in time. Before Sydney could call out a warning, Fiona jumped in front of it.
“No!” Sydney shouted as the witch fell. Hadrian and Angeline rushed to try to heal her, but it was too late.
The black panther roared and attacked the magic user who’d thrown the fire. The two of them struggled and fought, the magic user unable to overcome Z’s pure rage and grief. The demons converged on the remaining few humans and killed them quickly.
Z emerged from his fight and struggled to reclaim his human form. He was wounded but alive.
The core group stood over the fallen witch as the demons faded back into the forest, no doubt headed back to Cain’s dimension.
Birds flew over Fiona, circling her, their shrill calls deafening in the forest fogged up from the smoke of too much magic.
Sydney was sure she imagined it, but it sounded like they were saying: “I told you so. I told you so.”
Z let out an agonized cry when he reached her, and the animals fled back into the forest. Even the birds dispersed as he sobbed over her.
Noah gripped Sydney’s hand. She knew he was thinking what if it had been her? It could have just as easily been her. Z held the witch’s limp body in his arms. He was shaking from grief.
A black cat tentatively approached the circle, then Aunt Greta shifted back. For the first time she seemed unconcerned with her nudity. “It’s my fault. I asked her to watch out for Dayne. I had a bad feeling. I didn’t mean for her to get hurt.”
Z didn’t seem to hear her, or else he refused to acknowledge the apology.
“We might not have won without her,” Tam said. “It was an honor to teach her her craft. She came so far from when we first met. Her animal communication gifts expanded and grew stronger. And she was much braver than she ever thought she was.”
But none of these platitudes soothed the angry and distraught panther.
“What was the point? She died, anyway. If she’d left well enough alone with the magic, we could have had decades more together. I didn’t care about the gray hair.” He looked up at Tam, his eyes glittering gold. “Bring her back!”
“I can’t, Z.”
“Bring. Her. Back. It’s your fault. Bring her back. If you’re so fucking powerful, bring her back. Or is your reputation just so much noise? Am I supposed to be impressed by you? I’ll be impressed when you can bring a motherfucking soul back from the grave. So do it!”
“I can’t. I can’t call her back. She’s in heaven now. She can’t come back to this body. It’s done. I can’t defy the laws of magic anymore than a normal human can defy physics.”
“Then send me to her.”
“You know how it is in heaven. You can’t be with her there like you were with her here.”
“The hell I can’t. Let them try and stop us.”
Sydney expected Tam to give the panther some speech about how time healed wounds, how he would recover and get better, how he needed to work through the grief. But she didn’t. She simply nodded grimly and raised her arms above her head. She chanted in Latin as the energy gathered around her into a ball of brilliant light, then she sent it straight into him.
Z slumped over Fiona, and it was done.
Tam turned toward the shaking, skinny guy whose magic had been bound. “You are going back to the hub city. You get to live. You’re welcome. You will tell them that we will not negotiate with them. If we see them near our borders, we will kill them. We have access to all the demons in the demon dimension. We will not be defeated any further. They will leave us alone, and we will leave them alone. They can’t have everything. They can’t have everyone. They most certainly can’t have us. Do you understand?”
“Y-y-yes.” The guy stumbled back when she released the energetic band that held him captive.
It was hard to believe he was a magic user. He seemed new, far too new to have been sent on this mission. He wasn’t foolish enough to try to use his powers now, not while so outnumbered with the bodies of his associates at his feet.
“Do you think he’ll make it back?” Noah asked as the lone survivor scrambled off the way they’d arrived.
“I’ll send Henry to find out later.”
“What about the bodies?” Sydney said. They couldn’t just leave them there. Fiona and Z should be buried properly.
“I’ll take care of it tomorrow after I’ve rested,” Tam said. “We’ll have a memorial service for the witch and the panther.”
“Do you remember them from when you were a pup?” Sydney whispered.
“Bits and pieces,” Noah said. “She made good grilled cheese.” He started to lead Sydney back toward town.
Anthony approached the two of them, wiping blood off his face and trying not to look like a total sociopath while he did it. He side-hugged Sydney and kissed her on the cheek. “Come see your mother tomorrow, okay? I’m sure she’ll be back to normal in a few days, but you should come by.”