* * *
Before Osh could react, I was on him. I lifted him off the sofa, threw him against a wall, and wrapped one hand around his throat.
He didn’t even fight me. He just looked down at me, his face the picture of confusion. He still trusted me so much, he didn’t fight back.
That would be his undoing.
“What the fuck?” he asked.
“You’re going to do what you do best,” I said. “You’re going to ingest my soul. You’re going to swallow my light so I can find the god and trap him in the glass while he’s walking around in human form. It’s the only time it can be done. The process requires blood, and gods don’t have that unless they’ve hijacked a human body. I can’t let this opportunity slip by. I’m sorry.”
He finally started to fight me, but there are few things more lethal than a mother whose child has been threatened. Also, I was a god. He wouldn’t have won. He must’ve known that because he stopped struggling almost the very second he began. Giving in. Sacrificing himself. The muscles in my chest contracted, tightened around my heart.
“It won’t work,” he said, panting with exertion and apprehension.
“I’m willing to take that chance.”
“You don’t understand.” He lifted a hand to my face. Ran a thumb over my chin. “I could live off your soul until the stars burn out. I can’t take you in one sitting. It doesn’t work that way.”
I tightened my grip on his throat, mostly for show. “Then make it work that way. I have to do this, Osh. It will never expect me if it can’t see my light.”
He bit back a curse. “You could’ve just asked.”
“Not likely.”
He closed his eyes a long moment, then nodded. “It’ll kill me.”
I moved my hand to his sculpted jaw. Pressed into him. Closed the distance between us until my mouth hovered just under his. “I know.”
Then I put my lips on his, but in a surprising show of strength, he reversed our positions. He grabbed my throat, twisted me around, thrust me against the wall, slammed my head into it—twice—then lowered his mouth onto mine.
And he swallowed me. Siphoned the energy out of my body, the act painful and erotic at the same time. For both of us. He cupped my face with his free hand. Tilted his head. Deepened what boiled down to a kiss. Instead of slowing down, he sped up. Kissed harder. Pressed into me, wanting more and more of what I was offering.
His fingers dived into my hair, trapping it in his fist as he gorged on my soul. The act tapped something deep inside me. It curled inside me and then sprang taut. I dug my nails into the wall at my back. Pushed into him as it got closer and closer. Sharper and sharper. Until it exploded inside me.
I threw my head back, taking in air I’d never tasted before. Feeling drained and exhilarated like the atoms in my body had found a new playground.
Osh moaned. Fell against me. Buried his face in my hair a microsecond before he dropped to his knees. He clutched at his throat and curled into himself. His muscles contracted to the density of marble as he tried to hold all of me in. But he cracked. His skin splintered and broke, and the light that I’d carried around my whole life—a light that I have never seen—began to seep out of him.
He twisted around, his face a study in pain as he tried to hold in my essence. I kneeled over him.
“Hurry,” he said, his voice hoarse. His fingers curled and his back arched, and more fissures cracked over his body, light shooting out of them.
I didn’t have much time. My essence was too powerful for him to hold. It was like trying to contain a nuclear blast inside a lightbulb. It would explode sooner than later, shattering him as it did. He thrust his head back as another spasm of pain shot through him.
It would kill him. I knew that. I’d known it before I began. But it wouldn’t kill him immediately. I had time. I could find the god, trap him, and be back before it ate him completely.
“What the fuck?” Garrett asked.
I rose from the floor, having no idea when time had bounced back.
“If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, call Reyes. Tell him what I did. Tell him to help Osh, but do not, under any circumstances, tell him where I am.”
“What did you do?” he asked, staring at Osh in horror.
“No time. Give me fifteen minutes.”
Then I closed my eyes and left this plane entirely.
* * *
I spotted the god instantly and zeroed in, materializing behind him in a matter of seconds. He was made of light, too, only his was grayer than mine. Murkier. And he was walking in a sea of people with lights flashing and music blaring and teens laughing and screaming.
I stopped and looked around to get my bearings. To my left was a giant red roller coaster. To my right was the ocean. And underneath me were wood planks.
A boardwalk? We were on a boardwalk?
Yes. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, to be exact, according to the sign by the roller coaster. I wondered why the god would be here of all places. Osh had said the North. New England? Since I had no idea where they’d moved her, I had no idea if he was closing in or not, but I was certain of one thing. He was enjoying the hunt.
Still a little astonished I could do it, I picked a spot in an out-of-the-way corner just beyond his line of sight and let my body take shape around me. Like a veil parting. Like a cloak settling around my shoulders and pooling at my feet. I materialized slowly, watching his every move and the moves of the people around me.
Homing in on the strange light, I followed it past the arcade to stop at a cotton candy stand. The human it had taken, the one it had hijacked, was a woman. According to Osh, she died the moment it entered her. Her arms were already discolored with yellow and purple bruises. She was painfully thin with long auburn hair that hung in messy strands down her back. Clearly it wasn’t worried about keeping up appearances since it could only last for so long in that body, anyway.
It sensed me and turned, and time slowed to a stop as the world spun around me. I shook my head, speechless, and almost fell to my knees. A cry of surprise leaped from my throat, and I covered my mouth with both hands. Huge green eyes gazed at me in curiosity. A once pretty mouth, now covered in sores on one side, opened slightly as her head tilted to the side.
I feared I would crumple to the ground. I feared my mortal heart would stop and forget to restart. I feared for the world around me, because once Reyes found out this god had ripped his sister’s soul out of her body so that he could inhabit it, the world would be a dangerous place to be.