“Now,” Amaros rasped as his lids began to flutter closed.
Jack turned, capturing Mary in his arms, and her wide, pained eyes looked up at him. If Mary did not kill Jack she would die in agony for disobeying her master.
“Do what you must,” he whispered, holding her steady as her heart clicked away at a frantic pace. He could see her struggling to disobey and the wash of pain that accompanied her defiance. “Do it, angel.”
But she shook her head abruptly. “Kill me,” she managed in a gasp. The length of metal she’d been holding found its way into his hand, and he realized it was the electric prod that had stopped her heart before. “Hurry.”
No! “I will not.”
She touched his cheek, and her fingers curled as if she wanted to rake his flesh. Mary gritted her teeth. “Trust me, Jack. I will end this.”
His throat tightened, the pain in his chest branching out along with a sick sense of dread. “I cannot.”
Her body twitched, her mouth growing tight and pained. “This is the only way. Jack…” She shuddered, her hands coming up and around his neck as if to choke him. “Please.”
“Mary, love, I can’t.”
With a gasp of pain, she grabbed his wrist and forced the prod upward, determination making her stronger than he. His vision blurred. He could not hurt her, take her life. What if she didn’t come back? He couldn’t live.
Beneath them Amaros was stirring, trying to rise, his mouth moving as if to speak. Another order from him and Mary would likely break. Sweat dotted her brow, and her body convulsed. “Together, Jack,” she whispered, “we are stronger than you know.”
Trust. He had to believe in it. In her. Stifling a sob, he held her tight. Tight enough that his arms would never forget the feel of her body. “I love you,” he whispered. Come back to me. And then he pressed the button.
Electricity surged through Mary’s body with razor-sharp pain. Her heart slammed to a halt, and she fell to the floor just as Jack roared. Free. She was finally free of Amaros’s bond and command. All her focus went to him. Being both GIM and fallen, he could see her clearly. His eyes widened as she rushed toward him. Finally she had him where she wanted him.
“You may have owned my body,” she said. “But I own your spirit.”
He heard every word and scrambled back on the floor.
The creator giveth life, and the creator taketh away.
She reached for him. Amaros’s soul was black and yellow, a muddy slime. Horrid and foul. And it was bound to her immediately. Blackness and terror surrounded her, Amaros’s soul tainting hers with each moment they were connected. And then she tugged the fallen into hell.
The moment Jack saw Mary’s spirit merge with Amaros’s, he understood perfect terror. Her clean, bright soul was turning black, becoming diseased with the fallen’s evil. Above him Amaros’s soul thrashed, desperate to return to his body. And yet she stayed connected. For them.
She mouthed the words “I love you” and then, as if a light had been doused, Amaros’s spirit simply vanished. And so did Mary’s.
“Mary!”
But she was gone, disappeared as though she’d never been. She’d taken Amaros’s soul, which meant Jack could destroy his body without fear of being cursed.
With all his strength Jack lunged, his claws slicing through Amaros’s neck in one swipe. Jack ripped the fallen’s remaining wing off with one pull, just as the severed head toppled to the floor.
Cursing, he leapt over Amaros’s body and ran toward her prone form. “Mary!”
She’d return now. She had to. But her body was cold when Jack gathered her up. “Merrily. God. Come back.” Tears blurred his vision as he stroked a hand over her cheek. Her wide golden eyes were open and void of life. Viciously he ripped open her bodice and went for her key. But it was gone.
“Shit!” He eased her down and scrambled back to Amaros’s body. He had to have taken Mary’s key.
Already the fallen’s blood was disintegrating. Foul clumps of flesh stuck to Jack’s fingers and he tore about, trying to find the key. His vision blurred, his movements too frantic.
“Shit, shit, shit.” Taking a breath, he forced himself to think, to go slowly. “He’d have worn it or risked losing it,” Jack muttered to himself. Jack reached for the stump of the fallen’s neck, and his pulse leapt. Dangling from a black cord lay the key to Mary’s heart.
Too much time was wasted reaching her again, inserting the key, and turning it. Sweating and shaking, Jack sat back as the heart began to start, and her body closed. But nothing else happened.