The Sweetest Burn

Maybe that was a good thing, I grimly decided as I swam toward the mine shaft. The only way any of us would survive was if these waters suddenly, miraculously receded, and there was only one item in the world that could cause them to do that. It might kill me to use it, but if I didn’t, we were all dead anyway, and if I was going down, I’d rather go down fighting.

I tightened my grip on Adrian and pushed us toward the doorway to the mine. Right before we crossed it, the entire cavern filled with light.

Zach appeared in the center of the water. Light radiated from the sword in his hand, growing in brightness, until the blade shone like a lightning bolt. He used it with ruthless accuracy, hacking into every minion that the rushing river swept his way. Ashes blackened the water and screams echoed in the mine as the minions tried to fight the current to swim away. They couldn’t. Faster than my eye could follow, Zach hacked them to pieces, somehow not hindered at all by the chest-deep water.

“Ivy, hurry,” Zach ordered me. “They’re right behind you.”

Who? I turned, and then gasped. At least a dozen more demons were crashing through the water in the chamber just beyond this one. From the shouts that echoed behind them, more were on the way. Piotr had blown the elevator to bits, ensuring we couldn’t escape, but a four-hundred-foot drop was probably a fun free-fall for demons that had been waiting centuries or more to claim this staff for themselves. Or kill me, depending on their preference.

“Go!” Zach urged me. “I will hold them off.” Then his teeth flashed in a smile that was nearly dazzling. “It seems I don’t have more important things to do than act as your doorman.”

I would have been stunned by the joke, let alone the smile, but there wasn’t time. I pushed Adrian past Zach through the mine entryway, watching the Archon snatch him up with one hand while slicing a minion in two with that great, shining sword. He didn’t seem hindered at all by holding Adrian above the water while fighting, so, taking a deep breath, I plunged through the mine entryway myself.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

AS SOON AS I passed the warding symbols that had muted my link to the staff, my fear vanished. So did my aches from the multiple items I’d bashed into in the water, let alone the beating I’d taken from the minion who’d tried to drown me. All I could focus on was the staff, and it pulled me forward as if I’d been caught in a tractor beam.

I swam past Jasmine and Costa, not listening to what they said as I went farther into the mine. Something slashed into my leg, an old piece of equipment, perhaps, but not even the pain registered. All I could feel was the staff, and its power sizzled along my nerves from being in its proximity. Closer, it seemed to whisper, urging me forward. Almost there.

A hundred yards ahead, I stopped, facing the wall on my left. It was the same granite-gray color of the rest of the mine, its uneven surface no different than the rest of the rocks around it. Yet when I touched the stone, the power behind it seared my hand, and I would’ve snatched it away at once if I could feel the pain. For the strangest reason, I couldn’t. I was too consumed with freeing the staff from its rocky confines.

I dug around the surface of the rock, knowing that the slab acted as a natural door and my prize was right behind it. My hands and fingers tore and bled from the jagged edges of stone, but that didn’t stop me, either. Neither did the water rising up to my chest as I continued to feel for a good handhold in order to pull the rock away. When I finally reached a spot where my fingers could curl around the stone at both ends, I pulled. The stone gave, but not enough. I increased my efforts, feeling my muscles strain as I heaved and pulled with all of my strength.

The rock slid toward me, and water rushed into the alcove it revealed. I barely noticed the carved stone figure of the old bearded man behind it. My eyes were fixed on the wooden staff in his raised hands. The statue held it in front of itself as if in supplication, and the staff was so long, it extended from the floor to well past the reach of those stone hands.

And the power that vibrated from it made the very air around me crackle with energy.

The slingshot in my arm throbbed, as if recognizing the power that ran through the staff. Without a single concern as to the repercussions, I grabbed it, removing it from the stone hands that were half-curled around it. Using the staff would save everyone. I knew that to my core, unlike the time I found the slingshot and had to keep trying until I mustered up enough faith to wield it.

But as soon as my hands closed around the staff, my mind felt like it emptied of everything that made me Ivy Jenkins. I wasn’t concerned about the water that now swirled to my chin, the screams and howls that echoed down the tunnel from the supernatural death match, my sister, Costa or even Adrian. I didn’t have purpose here. Something else did, and it was so overwhelming, so focused, that nothing else could sway it.

It made me hold the staff vertically, then raise my arms over my head. As soon as I did, power smashed into me with the force of a meteor landing. I would have crumbled beneath it, but that force held my legs as straight as the arms I kept extended over my head. That power grew, building, until it took over everything, even my breath. I was held completely immobile, with no more free will than a power line has over the electricity coursing through it, and as that power reached a crescendo that felt as if it would rip me asunder, I had a moment of complete, out-of-body clarity.

I could see the ruined elevator, the broken exhibit and all the smashed rocks now being pulled back into their original positions. Could feel the water reversing course and returning to the underground lake it had poured out from, then feel the walls of rock beneath it realign into the impenetrable barrier they had been before dynamite had blasted them away.

Then, with another bone-shaking surge of power, I felt that unstoppable, unbelievable energy flare out far beyond the confines of the mine. It expanded and grew, becoming too great for my mind to measure, and through it, I felt the gaps, tears and breaks in the realm walls. Another blast of power shattered my mind, and I felt them all being repaired. But it didn’t stop. It continued to grow, surpassing comparison, until more, then all, the realm wall weaknesses were rebuilt. The gateways slammed shut and were sealed with impenetrable bonds, and though I couldn’t hear them, I felt the screams of countless demons as they realized that they were now trapped within their dark, icy worlds.

Finally, the power began to dissipate, and with its absence, that invisible grip around me loosened. My knees gave way. I would have fallen, except I still had a death grip on the staff. Then it, too, seemed to disappear and I slumped to the stone floor. The water was now gone, but the floor of the mine was wet, and that cold surface seemed to increase the chilliness that had taken residence inside me.

I’d gotten it all wrong, I thought, bemused by the irony. I hadn’t been the one wielding the staff, after all. Instead, the staff had wielded me.

“Ivy!” I heard someone shout, yet the voice sounded so far-off, I didn’t recognize it. Then it said, “Oh God, she isn’t breathing!” and I thought it might have been Jasmine, but I wasn’t sure.

“Do something, she’s dying!” I heard next, and almost smiled. Definitely Jasmine. I’d know that screech anywhere.

“I cannot.” For some reason, Zach’s voice sounded much closer, as if he were speaking right into my ear. “I have been ordered not to heal her or to raise her if she dies.”

Figures, I thought, and would’ve shaken my head if I could move anything. I couldn’t, though, and that revelation was immediately followed by another. I couldn’t feel anything, either. No pain, which was a relief, but the nothingness, the disconnect... Jasmine must be right. I was dying.

I was less depressed by that thought than I would’ve imagined. I mean, I’d spent the past several months worrying that using the staff would kill me, and now that it apparently had, I was oddly okay with it. I’d miss Jasmine, of course. Costa, too, and while my biggest regret was not having more time with Adrian, I felt so lucky, so glad, to have had one perfect, soul-sharing day with him. I love you, Adrian, I thought, slipping further away. Always...

“Bring him here,” Zach said, his voice barely audible now. I thought I heard him say, “Join their hands,” but I couldn’t be sure. I was floating away, and it wasn’t frightening at all. In fact, it felt kind of freeing... ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">