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Revenge was not bitter It was glorious, the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted, and all she wanted was more
Chapter 10
SHE COULD PLUNGE INTO THAT FAULT LINE, KILL THE other three Follow the trail to Asht to hi this to him In the Underworld, they were corporeal So it would work there She just had to find her way to hi her focus She snarled at hiainst brute physical strength However, he’d shoved her to her stomach, had a knee in her back as he knelt over her
"Obliterate" The thundered co her face up, she saw all those little pieces of de and slither back in, like garbage collected and throay
"Now," Derek shouted The energy from the circle swept over thenatures, and now Derek’s added to it The purity of itin raounds They covered the fault line like bricklaying, Christine and Linda laying the stone while Derek provided the then them Witchcraft used women’s arts; sorcery apparently used men’s Build, nail, ha dirt into a sinkhole, trying to fill up so as Asmodeus, soul-eaters and the whole foul ar thee
"Lethim Since his booted foot was at her shoulder, she haed, yanking her up by the arh it jarred her shoulder "Help," he co no disobedience He wasn’t her lover right now, but a much more powerful sorcerer ould kick her ass into next week if she didn’t do her job But she couldn’t Those two forces warred within her She was furious at hi her finish it Da her from what she needed to do Darkness swirled around her, thick and choking as the soul-eaters’ smoke When he shoved her toward the circle, she whirled on hiertips
It was a lucky strike, for he hadn’t expected a hit froh her when she knocked hier over it She ran back toward that weak rift point She’d stand on top of it, send that barbed energy down like fishing line, get the blood she craved Go in after it if needed She wasn’t afraid to go into the Underworld She belonged there
It was like being hit by a battering raround, she tasted dirt, but that wasn’t what made bitter bile in her throat Derek had the flat of the sword against her, and she screa it into the nored her weak snarls of defiance, keeping his attention on the job of reinforcing the rift The Light energy streah hiainst her neck, the knee he had in her back It flooded her, made the Darkness recoil, made other parts of her writhe in pain, just like that fourth soul-eater That was the key to it, why her barbed , you had to know its pain The key to destroying evil was stepping into its soul and blowing it up from the inside
She’d sacrificed parts of her soul for that kind of knowledge So now the Light energy co acid She shrieked, clutching at the ground The fire of it was unbearable She cursed and fought, aware of nothing but that her blood appeared to be boiling inside her body
She didn’t kno long it went on, but she was vaguely aware of the rift being sealed, of Linda’s and Christine’s energy levels depleting and Derek taking ht that told her she was co back to herself That, and the fact the extraordinary pain was ebbing, one last rinse froain But in a fragile way, like a glass figurine sitting too close to the edge of a shelf
Things got quieter, the roar of the power flow dying The worst of the hurricane had passed, down to a few lingering gusts, puffs of rando, additional stitching It was the spell she’d started, now reinforced by their Light and Derek’s as they sealed that rift hole But she could already tell sealing wasn’t enough It was like placing a piece of plywood on top of a hole It wouldn’t change the fact that below that rift point was an e out, had weakened the fault line, the energy there no longer dense as it needed to be
The solidity could be restored only by a powerful infusion of Light, so comparable to a nuclear bo it fros that also needed it The usual way to restore a fault line was to restore it a little at a ti on the necessary power in increht have been a test run for attack, they ht not have that kind of ti back in the interi rebuilt was to instill terror of ould happen to them if they tried it She’d had that capability, and Derek had stopped her