She might lose a mother. Maybe her life.
Or Kim.
Stephanie whipped around, listening to the familiar tone of his voice, so smooth and charismatic. Just as it had in her bedroom, the world darkened around her, the single light left to her centering on Angela. The scar-covered freak was touching Kim’s face, leaning in to kiss him.
“You . . .”
It was all she could say. It summarized everything.
In the end, this was all Angela’s fault. Until she’d arrived at the Academy, everything had been so clear, so right. Then that irritating bitch had to taint Luz with her own cursed existence. Her dreams and failed suicides had somehow ruined all of Stephanie’s happiness in one merciless stroke, but even so, Stephanie was far from ready to make it easy for her.
Kim was expendable in the long run, but there was no way she would let go of a toy without a fight.
“You . . .”
The first to catch sight of her, Kim struggled to tell Angela only to meet with more silence for his efforts. The angel must have stopped him from speaking.
Stephanie dodged falling bits of plaster, barely aware of more rock crashing to the ground behind her. The world was like a blur, faded, buzzing with the strangest sounds. Her legs didn’t even feel like her own anymore, and by the time Sophia stepped out of the shadows to stop her, it was too late. Stephanie bit her lip, but screamed from the pain anyway, tearing the tattoo off herself as Naamah had done. She could feel the blood like a raw, red river along her arm. It was agony, enough to nearly faint.
“You greedy bitch,” she heard herself saying. “I can’t stand you.”
Everything after that was fast, and completely beyond her.
Israfel. The angel was preparing to swoop down and kill her. He swept around Angela, a perfect terror that no longer looked so dazzling to Stephanie’s eyes. What a relic he was. Like an ancient statue that had lost all its luster, more paint than substance. She noted the way his large eyes narrowed at her knowingly, angry at himself for not cutting her down sooner.
There was no anger in her though.
Just a callous, emotionless spite that took pleasure in his pain.
The shield erupted in a second. Less blood than energy, it took all of Stephanie’s soul to throw it at him, a red wall that blocked his progress. Israfel fell back, pained by its contact. Kim crumpled onto the floor, grasping to pull himself out of Israfel’s reach. The angel’s reaction was far from human.
Rage. Never had she seen it expressed so purely in the eyes of any creature.
Then she whispered the fateful invocation, and the blood sword formed, and she leaped for Angela, swinging the weapon wildly.
Angela shouted, dodging by a hairsbreadth.
It wasn’t enough to take her out of harm’s way.
Stephanie followed her with a twist of the foot, swinging in the opposite direction. She cut through air, but seconds later a chandelier snapped from the ceiling and smashed in front of her, forcing them both to throw themselves to the ground. She tumbled amid the glass and stone, still in agony, but fueled by such a mysterious energy that it no longer mattered. Stephanie clasped the sword tight, nearly losing her grip from the liquefied blood on her hands, breathing in shuddering gasps.
“Come on, you useless witch.” Her throat was hoarse from screaming. “Come on. Come on!”
There. Behind her.
Stephanie pivoted to her right, slicing cleanly through a chunk of wood Angela had grabbed as a shield. Angela shouted at her, but the words no longer held any meaning for Stephanie. Nothing mattered now besides Angela’s head, rolling like the archbishop’s had rolled, and the more she thought that, the more she hacked at her, again and again, fended off every time by her escape, or another makeshift shield.
Then Angela ran out of them.
She tried to run one last time, but Stephanie snagged her blouse, tearing it open near the neck.
An Eye hid underneath.
It was unlike any other. Green with life, but piercing, terrible, unfathomable.
Stephanie understood instinctively that she should look away, but she grabbed for the pendant anyway, insanely possessive, hardly astonished when its chain snapped with a violent tug of her hand and Angela fell against a mound of rubble.
The force shoved Stephanie backward.
The Eye on its chain hung, suspended, in the air.
A brilliant flash of white light raced in on her. Naamah shrieked, sounding to be in as much agony as her daughter, and Stephanie forgot all else, turning to the single person who could understand the abyss she had seen and could never forget.
Troy shut her eyes tightly, hissing away the pain.
The light was blinding, excruciating. She collapsed shortly before her toes could brush the tile, curling into a ball, her spine contorting from the impact on her nerves. Naamah shrieked in the background, obviously wounded.