The Witch With No Name (The Hollows #13)(121)
Author: Kim Harrison

Hey! I exclaimed, and the Goddess’s emotion imploded on itself, boiling down to a thought of recognition and hatred.

You! the Goddess snarled, and I opened my thoughts to her, inviting attack. The binding curse was created with the Goddess’s strength, and it would take that to break it.

I will kill you! the Goddess screamed into my mind, ribbons of her bright intent coursing through me to snuff out my awareness.

The last ley line lay glittering, overloaded and humming. It would fall soon of its own accord without the Goddess’s will, and I wanted to weep for the stupidity of it all. The ever-after was going to fall. I couldn’t stop it. I could only keep the demons from falling with it.

You want to kill me? I thought at her. Try, I thought, willing the mystics to me, bringing them home, accepting them.

The Goddess screamed as she felt herself disintegrate. I could hear the dewar shaking with her outrage. And in that bare instant before she turned her thoughts to crush me, I wrenched control of the mystics from her.

Power sang through me, a million voices turned to one intent.

No! the Goddess cried, panicked. Give them back! But she was helpless as I bent my will to the elves’ ancient binding curse.

End this, I said to them, and with no more than my will, the curse that bound the demons to the fate of the ever-after simply . . . ceased to be.

A perfect moment of understanding and purity chimed through the demon collective. It resonated from me, blending into the demons and beyond. I felt them all, their awe, their bewilderment of grace bestowed. The wave washed out from them to leave a shocked silence.

And then the last line between reality and the ever-after broke.

They are mine! the Goddess howled at me, and suddenly I was scrambling to save myself as the Goddess dug at me, reclaiming what was hers.

Fire burned as the mystics rose up, two forces of the same beginning now poised to swamp each other until one was supreme, the other dead. But I didn’t want the job.

Al! I called, floundering. Al, help me! I cried, knowing he alone could pull me free—if he loved me enough to forgive me for what I’d done. Yes, I had saved them, but I’d used elven magic to do it. I was polluted, a pariah, unclean and reviled.

Please, I whispered as the Goddess dug to my soul, and a sudden smack on my face jolted me to reality.

My eyes sprang open. I was looking at a broken ceiling. Trent was holding me, my head in his lap. Al knelt beside him. The scent of ozone was thick in the air, and my throat hurt. “You’re here,” I said, voice raspy.

The instant of relief in the demon flashed to nothing, and he pulled back. “Why did you do it?” he said darkly. “Everyone knows you’ve got mystics in you now.”

“You treacherous demon bitch!” Landon screamed, and I gasped as Trent stood, dumping me in his effort to get between me and Landon.

“You will not!” Trent shouted as he stood over me, gesturing.

Landon howled, red faced, as he did the same. But nothing happened. Blinking, he looked at his hands.

Trent became white faced, and Al laughed. “You broke the lines, little man,” the demon said, and Landon backed up as Al strode forward, white-gloved hand reaching. “Guess what? I’m bigger than you.”

The lines were dead. Jenks . . . Where’s Jenks?

Landon made a dash for the door, robes unfurling as his soft slippers scuffed.

“Excuse me,” Al said, striding out after him.

“Jenks!” I called, sitting up in panic, and then opened my fist, remembering that I’d been holding him. “Oh God! Are you okay?” I asked, seeing him peering up at me with his wings hardly glowing and his narrow face pinched.

“I don’t feel so good,” the pixy said as he rubbed his shoulder. “Did we win?”

The lines were dead. The ever-after was going to vanish. But the demons would not go with it. “I don’t know,” I whispered, beginning to shake.

Trent sat down beside me, exhausted. “The hospitals are going to be full. I’m taking you home to get that leg looked at.”

My attention darted to my thigh. It was throbbing like the devil, but at least the bleeding had stopped. “Where’s Ivy? Nina?”

“About five minutes ahead of us,” Trent said as he looked at Jenks sitting on my palm, trembling from the cold and shock.

“Lucy?” I asked as he stood.

“With Ellasbeth,” he said shortly as he lifted me to my feet.

The blood rushed from my head and I stood for a moment, wavering. I could hear noise in the street. The lines were gone. Magic was dead. We’d be lucky to get out of Cincinnati before midnight. “You think giving her to Ellasbeth was a good idea?”

Trent tucked a shoulder under mine. “I think you were right about her and I was wrong. Can you walk?”

Jaw clenched, I took a hobbling step to the door. “I might have broke something.”

“I think so, too. We should get out of here.”

Nauseated and holding Jenks close, I limped to the door. The demons were safe, but I’d killed the source of magic to do it. That probably wasn’t going to go over very well.

Chapter 27

I leaned hard against Trent as the elevator lurched and settled. My leg throbbed, and I cupped a depressed pixy tight to me. I knew Jenks was thinking about his kids, scattered over the city, and Jumoke and Izzy at Trent’s estate. If he couldn’t fly, then they couldn’t either. There were no predators in Trent’s gardens, but that wasn’t what Jenks would be worried about. It was the natural magic from free-ranging mystics that gave pixies flight, and there wasn’t enough of them around anymore. The Goddess was pissed, having gathered her untold thousands of eyes to her and gone brooding somewhere, plotting to kill me.

Or at least most of them, I thought as a tingle passed between Trent and me as the ornate doors slid apart. Noise spilled in, and what little zest I had left for the day vanished as I saw the FIB hats and I.S. vests in the lobby. “What happened?” I asked as Jenks perked up, a faint dust hazing him.

“Looks like someone made a call.” Trent scooped me up and carried me out when I balked. There were too many people, and I was sure more than one of them wanted to talk to me in ugly, accusing voices. My bleeding leg was obvious, and Trent started for the front desk. Both an I.S. and an FIB cop were interviewing a tearful hotel employee, and the restaurant to the left was full of sullen Weres. One of them caught sight of me, jiggling his buddy’s elbow before grinning and giving me a bunny-eared kiss-kiss.