I stared at Eleanor, my throat tight with pain. I couldn't speak, so great was the agony that threatened to claim me. Tears burned in my eyes, but I blinked them away, wanting to see Eleanor's face when she realized that I would give up my life to ensure she was utterly and completely destroyed.
Sally touched my shoulder. "I can see we'd better begin before emotions run too high. If you three would join hands, please."
Eleanor's eyes widened as she, too, started to back up. "I'm sure Jane needs me. I promised to help her.... What the devil?"
Sally made a gesture at Eleanor, evidently one of those binding things that she'd mentioned earlier. "Ward," I think, was the word. I started to reach out to Alec's mind to ask him if that was the correct term, my inner devil collapsing in anguish when I realized that I would never again feel the brush of his mind against mine.
Never is such a very long time, came the softest of whispers.
"Look, I know I said a few things that probably were unwise, but really, I think they're perfectly understandable given the situation," Eleanor said, struggling to make her feet move. "What on earth did you do to me?"
Diamond took my hand as I half turned to the side to look at Alec's body.
"Oh, dear, and you looked like you had so much potential, too," Sally said, tsking at Eleanor. "But you don't even know about a common, ordinary binding ward.... Such a shame. You could have gone places."
I ignored Sally, peering intently at the scene on the other side of the ballroom. Kristoff was holding a weeping Pia to his chest, his head bent to hers. Beyond them, the two vampires stood in consultation. Alec's body remained where it had slumped, his head at an unnatural angle, blood everywhere, soaking his shirt and jacket, seeping out to form a thick pool around him.
Alec? I asked, half-convinced I had conjured up his voice out of desperation.
"All right, I'm willing to admit I made some mistakes, just a couple of tiny ones, and assuming you were all show was one of them," Eleanor told Sally. "But that doesn't mean you have to do anything rash. Why don't you unbind me, and we can talk about this like civilized people."
Silence answered my mental plea.
"Ah, but who ever told you I was civilized? " Sally asked with one of her toothy smiles. She placed two fingers on my shoulder, and two on Ulfur's, standing behind the three of us now locked together by Diamond's firm grip. "Besides, I think you'll want to stay for this. It should be very exciting."
Hope, which had lifted up its head, curled up into a ball and withered away again. There was no hope. Without Alec, there could be nothing.
You've come a long way from wanting to stake me every chance that presented itself.
Alec, you are alive ! My heart, formerly shattered into a million pieces, miraculously re-formed itself, my skin tingling with electricity as Sally started chanting.
Barely. What happened?
Eleanor used Diamond against you. Oh my god, Alec, you're alive! I thought you were dead. I was going to destroy Eleanor for killing you, then die, myself.
The tingling ramped up to that familiar sense of power flowing through me, but my heart and mind were concerned with one thing only - Alec.
As flattering as it is to know you'd kill yourself because I was dead, such a thing doesn't please me at all. You could survive me, Beloved. I would want you to continue to live, to find happiness should I be destroyed.
Alec?
Yes?
Shut up and heal yourself. . . . Jesus wept! The power flowing through and around me suddenly turned back on itself, moving from an explosion of power to an inversion . . . straight through me to Sally.
Her chanting stopped abruptly as she said in a loud, clear voice, "Bael, lord of Abaddon, ruler of seven hundred legions, by that which makes thee, I summon thee to my hand."
What is it?
Sally!
I tried to stop the flow of power going straight to her, but it was no use and I knew it - I was merely a Tool, a channel through which the power moved.
What about her?
She's gone rogue! "What the hell, Sally? You're supposed to be destroying Eleanor, not summoning Bael!"
"I thought that was the plan?" Diamond asked, her voice breathy as she, too, obviously felt the effects of the power now pouring into Sally. "Aren't we supposed to destroy Bael?"