How can I save myself if it means hurting Artemis?
“Nina!” Rhys shouts.
I pick up my sword from the catwalk. We have to weigh lives. Can my sister’s life really outbalance the whole world? If this is it—what I’m supposed to do—where are my instincts roaring to life? The coiling, seething darkness that demands I fight and rage against everything around me? I reach for it, wanting to cloak myself in it so I can lose the parts of me that would never let me do what I need to do right now.
I’m desperate for anything to shield me from this pain. To keep me from feeling everything. The pain of what I need to do. The pain of knowing what Artemis chose. The pain of everything in this whole bleeding and broken world. Even if it means surrendering myself to absolute darkness. Anything is better than feeling powerless to avoid what has to be done.
The darkness is waiting. It rises to meet me, ready to wash over me and drag me from the shores of myself, just like it pulled me from Buffy again and again in my dream. I lift the sword.
And I pause. Anything is better than feeling powerless. But to be powerless is to be human. To be vulnerable is to be human. Being more than human doesn’t have to make me less human.
Artemis ran from us; she even ran from herself. She wrapped herself in as much power as she could find. If I do the same, how am I helping anyone?
Artemis raises her arms, and Leo shouts a warning. But she’s holding them toward me as though asking for a hug. She never asks for hugs. She never asks for anything. Gods, she must have spent so much of her life being terrified. My mom was right. Because while we went through all the same things—our father’s death, our mother’s emotional abandonment, the fire, our life of training and then hiding—I did it all with her protection. No one did that for her.
How broken must she have been to decide leaving was her best option? To betray and hurt and try to kill people who had cared about her? To chase down a god in order to feel like she had a purpose again?
I drop my sword. I care about all the wrong and evil she did. Of course I care. But it doesn’t change the fact that she’s my sister, and I’ll always love her, and I’ll always be there for her. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry you felt like you had no other choices.”
“You don’t have to worry anymore. Not about anything.” She takes another step toward me but freezes. She’s trembling. No, not trembling. Vibrating. A low hum accompanies it, and the light begins to build again. I turn and shield my eyes as another pulse hits us, threatening to throw me off the catwalk. I bear the brunt of it. It’s worse than being electrocuted. I feel fuzzy and numb and in pain everywhere.
“Artemis, stop!”
“I can’t,” she gasps. “It burns. I can feel it all—so much. Too much. I can’t hold it.”
I stumble toward her. “You had the book! Tell me how to make it stop! Tell me how to help you!”
The catwalk shakes as someone lands on it. Cillian’s father stands up from his long jump. “She cannot hold the power of a god. It will burn her alive.” He pauses, frowning. “Without a container, it will burst free and burn everyone.”
“Everyone in this room?” I have to get them out and then figure out how to help Artemis.
“Everyone, everywhere.” He shrugs, unconcerned. “The whole world. I am not a benevolent god, and my power is not kind.”
“The whole world?” All my jokes about apocalypses come back to haunt me. This is it. This is our prophecy. Arcturius never saw Eve’s mini hellmouth. He saw this coming, even if I didn’t. Girls of fire / Protector and Hunter / One to mend the world / And one to tear it asunder.
This is how the world breaks.
Cillian’s father stretches a hand toward Artemis, holding his palm up as though offering something. “I will take it from her.”
I look at Artemis. She’s still vibrating. “Will taking it away hurt her?”
He looks confused by the question. “No. It will kill her.”
“Then I need another option!” I have to get between Artemis and him, but there’s no way around her, and I’m afraid to touch her. If hitting the doom triangle with a sword left both my arms numb, I can’t afford to be out of commission now because I brushed up against her.
“She took what is mine. I will take it back.” He steps toward my sister, calm and measured. A flash of shiny hair and black sweater flies through the air and slams into him, tackling him off the catwalk and carrying him all the way to the other end of the cavern. Honora tumbles with him down the side until they hit a ledge. She looks up at me, face bloody and desperate.
“I didn’t know! I didn’t know. She was so sure she needed it. She promised she could handle it. I just wanted her to be happy.” Honora pauses to punch the hellgod as he tries to rise. “I got him. You save her!”
I nod and turn back to Artemis. She falls to her knees, the light building again to almost unbearable levels. I don’t know how many more pulses until it kills us. Until it breaks free from her and kills everyone.
“Leo, can you take it back?” I don’t turn around, keeping my squinted and watering eyes in Artemis’s general direction.
He sounds as worried as I feel. “Maybe. Probably. But the pyramid thing was an amplifier. The power’s so much more than what I put in there. Even if I can hold it, I can’t hold it for long. It’ll have the same effect on me. We need something to transfer it into.”
“We can play hot potato until we figure out where to put it.” I turn and hold my hand out toward him.
“Oh, come on!” Imogen shouts. I look at her, confused. “After everything she did, you’re still trying to help her?”
“Nina!” Rhys is backing away from Imogen, his crossbow raised and trained … on her. He has his phone in his free hand. “My grandma woke up. It wasn’t Artemis.”
“What?”
“Artemis didn’t try to kill her. Imogen did.”
Imogen flicks her wrist, extending her sleek metal baton. She swings it up, catching Rhys under his chin and sending him sailing off the catwalk and down into the cavern.
“No!” Cillian screams. He scrambles back along the catwalk, looking for a way to get to his boyfriend as Rhys tumbles down the side and lands at the bottom near the pile of demon corpses, still and unmoving.
“If you want a prophecy done right,” Imogen growls, turning toward us, “you do it yourself.”
30
IMOGEN PULLS A KNIFE OFF her well-stocked belt and throws it at Leo. He dodges, but she pulls another, bigger blade. She’s between Leo and me, blocking him from getting to Artemis. I want to help him, but that would mean leaving Artemis unprotected.
“I spent my whole bloody life trying to keep their prophecy from coming true. Protecting the world.” Imogen ducks a swing from Leo, dodging nimbly around him. I hope she’ll try to sweep his legs or push him—I know from experience gravity’s claim on him is so intense both are impossible—but she’s been paying attention. She moves faster than him, blades whirling, making sure he can’t get past her. “But you know what? The world sucks.”
Leo rushes her. She twirls away with a dancer’s grace, then, to my horror, grabs his arm and uses his momentum to spin him right off the catwalk. He looks at me as he falls over the edge, his horror mirroring my own.