“If that cross can cure a supernatural, how come your brother didn’t use it on you? Why use my sister to get blood?” Tyler growled as he joined the conversation. He had calmed down, but not by much.
Naomi turned to Tyler and addressed him directly. “There is a caveat to having ownership of the cross. Once it is yours, it will not work against you, nor will it aid you. The spell is dead to me, though the silver still leaves a mark on my flesh. Selene paid a great deal for its creation, to use against powerful enemies, and had the insurance policy built in that the cross would never be able to harm her. But the crafters of this trinket were very powerful in their own rights, and they played a little game. If the trinket was lost, whoever found it became its rightful owner. Once out of her hands and claimed by another, it could work against her. So in essence she had crafted the only means in the world to render her own powers useless.”
“I’m sure whoever crafted it didn’t advertise their prank and risk her wrath, so how did you find out?” I asked. “Whoever did this played a dangerous game with a very powerful goddess.”
Naomi shrugged. “I didn’t know until I pierced it into her flesh. It worked. Of course, I had a feeling, as I often do with such things, but nothing more.”
“You engaged a goddess on a feeling.”
Naomi started to pace along the tree line. Eamon was still angry, but he held himself silent while she talked. It was clear he didn’t have the power to stop her, or he would’ve used it by now. “Our lives were no longer worth living,” she stated evenly. “I had reached a breaking point and had made peace with a true death. At that point I would’ve been happy to die.”
“But you still have the cross?” I asked, confused. “And Selene’s still alive. How did you get it back once you pierced her? She had to have been pissed off. You had her cross and you stabbed her with it. It must have been Clash of the Titans when she went after you.”
Naomi stopped. “She did not have time to attack. After the cross absorbed her powers, I beheaded her.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed on a low breath. I hadn’t been expecting that.
Danny whistled and Tyler exhaled loudly.
“How could she survive a beheading and still be alive now?” I asked. Beheading was the one thing that could kill a supe, even a powerful one. No head meant no communication with the vital parts that kept you alive.
“She is a goddess.” Naomi shrugged. “I learned too late that in order to kill such a being you have to kill the immortality in her blood, along with the body. I left her to rot, but it was not enough.” She sighed.
“How do you kill immortality?” I asked. I’d never even heard of such a thing, but I was young. The amount of things I didn’t know would fill an ocean. I had some serious catching up to do. I guess that was the hundred-million-dollar question. Not being able to kill Selene in any of the normal ways was going to complicate things to an incredible degree—possibly even make it impossible to give her a true death.
Naomi shrugged again. “I know not how. I have the capability of stripping her of power with this. That is all.” She patted her pocket. “The killing of the immortality will be up to you.”
Now it was my turn to sigh. “I thought Rourke was the only one who had bested her and lived.” And I hoped he was doing it again right now. My heart gave an involuntary clench. He was alive. I knew it. But he didn’t have a lot of time left. We had to keep moving. “That’s what your Queen told me anyway. She said nothing about there being another who had escaped her wrath. Why would she lie about that?”
“Our Queen has always been very skeptical of us after all those years spent with Selene,” Naomi replied. “She still wanted our talents, but distrusted our reasons for coming back to her. I divulged what had happened and showed her the cross, begging her for her protection. She demanded I turn it over to her. But she’d made a grave mistake. We had not yet pledged ourselves to her. I was not yet hers to control. A vampire needs to swear fealty and exchange blood with their master before they can manage them. I threatened to leave and she swore an oath that she would never take it from me while I lived. Eamon and I were desperate to belong to a powerful Coven, one that would protect us from the Goddess if she ever rose again, so we accepted.”
“And Selene lived. She knew you took the cross with you. When she woke up… or grew her head back or whatever she did, why didn’t she come after you?” I asked. Revenge would be logical. “That’s a powerful weapon for her to walk away from.”
“She did come and the Queen lied to her and said it was now in her possession, which it was, through me. But to pacify Selene, she agreed to never reveal its existence or what had happened between us. If the power of the cross became known, others would seek to steal it, and in turn it could wind up being used against Selene once again. She has many enemies, so she backed off.”
“How long ago was all this?”
“Three hundred and fifty years ago.”
“And you’ve waited patiently all this time for a chance to give her a true death?” I concluded. Revenge was high on the bucket list for supernaturals. When you lived an eternity, no slight was too small.
“Oui.” Naomi smiled. “I’ve yearned for it.”
“That’s a long time to wait.” I walked toward the tree where Tyler had staked the winged devil. “Now all we have to do is figure out how to get past these evil things. If Selene knows you’re leading us, which she undoubtedly does”—every Sect had well-placed spies, and if Selene knew the Queen had her trinket, she would have people she bribed on the inside—“she will anticipate you’ve brought her prized possession and she will be awaiting her own revenge. It could have been her motivation to sell part of her soul for more protection and increase her boundary line, which will cost her in both energy and power reserves. She wants what you have.”
Naomi followed me to the tree, while Eamon stayed rooted where he was, still glowering. “This place in the mountains is new to us,” she said. “We have never visited here before. But her habits will be hard ones to break. We will expect some of her favorite defenses. Her mind is twisted, but she has likely convinced herself you are not stronger than she is, yet she is betting you will succeed in making it to her lair. She is always at war with herself. Killing your mate, however, will not be as satisfactory if you are not there to witness it.”
I gave Naomi an appraising look. “Cocky, deranged, overly self-assured, and masochistic all make her weak, and give us a definite advantage. But there’s no way we can get to her if we don’t get rid of these little freaks.” I peered at the squirming devil. Tyler had pinned it by the wings. It struggled sluggishly, its beady eyes glowing like a banked fire. But the worst was its gaping snout, filled with hundreds of needlelike teeth, which were currently dripping yellow goo all over the ground. Very slowly it lifted its talons and flexed them at me. It had one long thumb and one larger appendage, like the last three fingers of a hand, only melded together. Each of the fingery things boasted long nasty-looking blades. Like Eamon had said, they resembled thin razors for easy slicing. “How did Eamon know they had razor blades for fingers?”
“Selene has always coveted them,” Naomi answered. “She had statues and carvings of them adorning her walls. She called them her pets, all while lamenting the cost of ownership was too high. She vowed she would own them someday.”
“No pet I know costs a chunk of your soul.”
“True,” Naomi said. “But when you are as powerful as she, one covets what they can’t have. Selene convinced herself if she could raise an army of them, she would rule the supernatural world. There are not many things that can bring us down as easily or as quickly as these.” She shuddered, rubbing her arms. “They are vile creatures.”
“They multiplied,” Tyler said, coming over to join us. His tone was even, the fight gone. “When Danny killed a few, more popped up in their place.” I smiled at my brother as he ran a tired hand over his face. I knew it took a lot for him to back off, and I was grateful he was willing.
Naomi nodded gamely. “Only the amount negotiated can be summoned from the Underworld at one time. When one is killed in this world, another materializes to take its place. It goes back to the Underworld to regenerate. They cannot find true death on this plane.”