right path. Show them the way. They need you more than they realize.”
“I’m going to save them or die trying,” I vow to her, my mind blown by so many revelations. “Snatch, want to see what trouble we can get ourselves into?”
He doesn’t move but sits shivering in the evening gloom giving me a wary look I know well. “It might be dangerous, and you’re going to get us both killed. For god sake, Robin, I know you’re in love with him…them…but that thing he is now isn’t human. It doesn’t feel love. It won’t stop until we’re dead.”
“You’re more than welcome to stay here,” I call, walking down the hillside toward the battlefield.
“And leave you to face all that alone when I should be seeking medical attention? Everything about this screams recipe for disaster,” he tells me, his faltering footsteps hurried as he catches up to me as we leave the specter to her solitude. “But I do love the way your eyes lit up when I said it might be dangerous.”
26
The Doll Maker
“Kill the Angel and the humans,” Cupid orders the second we materialize on the island. “I’m sure you have ways of persuading the other parts of your soul to join you.”
“And Thanatos?” I question the blood still drying on my hands from the female captives we’d slaughtered before arriving. I’d delighted in their hopeless sobs and pleas. Fed on it while it had empowered me.
Adjusting the eye patched around his face, his one good eye gleams with malice. “There’s only so much he can interfere with. Once we eradicate the rest of them, he won’t have anything left to fight for.”
Darkness blankets the landscape, the moon rising to share its pale, silvery light as we begin our hunt. A vast land yet still I can sense them, the other shards of this broken soul. I know everything about them. Every perceived flaw, every vulnerability, and where to put pressure. Like twisting a finger in a wound reminding them of their pain, the agonizing memories while ripping their unity apart. They’d be smaller, weaker, easier prey.
The house resides in a vast meadow, the long, sweet-smelling grass swaying gently in the night breeze. Lights blaze brightly in the windows. I sense its life force. The sentient being. Its steady attempts to repel me and hide those within.
Behind me, the sounds of my minions shambling and shuffling break the silence. My perfect dolls crafted by my own hand. Resurrected from death by my powers they exist now only to serve me.
“We’ve been expecting you, and it was rude to keep us waiting.”
My attention settles on the brawny, blond archangel sitting so arrogantly on the top step of the porch. Behind him, the god of death rakes a hand absently through his short, black curls before restoring his wide brimmed hat to its rightful place on his head. The last two pieces of my being stand in the safety of the open doorway wreathed in light watching me with mixed expressions of hostility and wariness.
“You had to pry into something that wasn’t your concern,” Cupid informs them winding his way closer to the building through the grass. “and now it’s time you pay for that mistake.”
“Who invited a cyclops to the party?”
The archer’s one eye narrows angrily. “You really don’t want to mess with me…”
Gabriel ignores the threat, continuing to talk. “Tell me, can you still blink, or is it more of a wink now?”
Thanatos props his hand confidently on the butt of his gun, still resting in his holster at his hip. “I don’t think he appreciates your sense of humor, Gabe. Then again, I don’t rightly recall him ever having one.”
Calling silently to my toys, they amble to encircle the house. “Resistance is futile and will be crushed without mercy.”
There’s a ripping noise of material as mighty white wings burst from the angel’s back. “Damn it, I liked this t-shirt, and now it’s all messed up, because I have to kick your arses.”
Clambering to his feet, he pulls a flaming sword out of thin air. In two powerful flaps, he’s airborne swooping above us in the dark.
Bow already in hand, Cupid lets loose a flurry of black arrows. “Biker boy is mine. You take the others.”
Breaking into a run, he launches himself skyward, the delicate, colorful stained glass-like wings of a dragonfly unfolding from his shoulders. Beating them rhythmically, he zooms off on the tail of his target leaving a trail of shimmering rainbow colors in his wake.
“Morpheus?”
Attention