dark, smoky energy, could feel its drain all around me. She had set her curse in motion.
A dagger whistled by my ear and lodged in Mother Morevna’s shoulder. She turned toward us, her eyes alight with cold fire.
“This isn’t your society,” Olivia said, wiping the blood from her mouth. “It’s ours.”
“No, my dear,” Mother Morevna said. She pulled the dagger from her shoulder, waved a tattooed hand over the wound, stopping the blood. “This city has always been mine.”
Blue-black flames began to rise around her, licking at her dress, her sleeves, but not burning her. The flames grew and surrounded her, covering her. The column of flames grew taller. Her arms lengthened, multiplied, until she was a great, eight-armed beast of fire. Her frailty was gone, replaced by a fierce, almost feline fluidity that spoke of unfathomable power. The black teardrop pendant was the only thing that did not blaze as she rose, beautiful and terrible before us. We tried to run, but all around us a glowing circle of flames was rising. We couldn’t move our legs; they stuck fast in the circle as though embedded in concrete. Then I saw the white stones placed around the edges of the roof. One final trapdoor spell.
Asa felt an enormous thrum of power from behind him. Then the sound of hundreds of voices screaming in pain rose from Elysium. Twenty meters down on the battlefield, Mowse and Judith sunk to their knees. “Susanah!” Mowse screamed.
“Mowse! No!” Susanah cried. Then she turned just in time to duck the blow of an oncoming Dust Soldier. “Asa!” she shouted up to the wall. “Take her!”
Without another word, Asa disappeared and reappeared on the battlefield. He ducked a blow from a Sentinel and gathered Mowse in his arms, then flashed back to the wall. Her color was going, draining as though being sucked away by a leech. The red mark on her hand looked bigger and angrier than ever, and Asa understood immediately what it meant, what Mother Morevna was trying to do.
“What’s happening to me?” she whimpered.
Down on the ground, Judith was suffering too but powering through it. Still, her movements were slowed by pain, and her skin was gray as old bones.
“You’re gonna be all right, okay?” Asa said to Mowse. He put her on the flat part inside the lip of the wall.
There was a surge of heat, a smell of sulfur. Asa turned toward the church. There on the roof, Sal and Olivia were fighting an enormous, fiery beast. Mother Morevna, he realized. But why weren’t they moving? His heart seemed to stop beating. Something was wrong. It seemed as though they were stuck there as in the web of a great fiery spider. Asa had to go to them. He had to help.
Then the crack of a magical rifle rang out from somewhere on the ground beneath the church.
Mr. Jameson was standing beneath the church with Lucy Arbor beside him. He hung his rifle at his side and held something in his hand, something small and golden.
“Marike, stop!” Mr. Jameson shouted. “It’s over! I have the stone!”
Asa gasped. No… it couldn’t be. But it was. And looking up at the beast Mother Morevna was, the beast she had always been, he finally recognized her for what she was, and what his true responsibility had always been: Death’s Wildcard. She was the one who had been working against Elysium, unknown even to herself. She was the one who disarmed him by throwing him out of Elysium. She was the one he had been sent to disarm. And there was still time.
“Don’t make me do this, Marike!” Mr. Jameson shouted. “You’ve gotta make this right again!”
“Mowse, I need you to listen to me,” he said. “Stay here behind this wall and do not move, okay?”
“But where are you—”
“I’ll be back, I promise. Just do not move.”
And without another word, Asa blitzed away.
He reappeared next to Mr. Jameson, who nearly fell back in shock.
“Jesus!” Mr. Jameson said, throwing a protective arm in front of Lucy. “What the—”
“Daemon,” Asa said. “No time to explain. But the cricket! Give it to me! I can take it to her.”
Still standing between Asa and Lucy, Mr. Jameson put the cricket in Asa’s hand. Without another word, Asa blitzed to the roof, placing himself between Olivia and Sal and the beast that was Mother Morevna.
Mother Morevna looked confused for a moment, faltered.
Olivia stepped forward, her hands blazing with deadly magic, ready to aim the killing blow.