glimmering in the dim lighting, and I throw my hands out, blasting him with a wave of my power. It’s weak, barely an ember after being contained for so long, but it still propels him across the room, where he careens off the wall and lands in a heap on the floor, his body still.
Another Blood advances, this one female, and I can hear her chanting under her breath. I don’t recognize the spell, but I can sense the darkness wafting off of her in waves. It shrouds my skin in oil. Before she can finish her spell, I use one hand to call on my fire power and the other to shake the earth under her feet. She stumbles, a pained cry escaping her mouth, as I shove the fireball into her face. Her skin blisters and cracks as she screams into the night, but I don’t relent. Only when she’s face down on the ground do I step away from her fallen body. My magic reserves are rapidly depleting, and I know I’m not going to be able to last long without a weapon. Without something. Still, even when my power drops to its lowest, it still rivals the potency of the Bloods’, despite the fact that they’re using dark magic.
Just keep fighting, Peony. Keep fucking fighting.
Gabriel’s going hand-to-hand with another Blood as I wobble towards the table, searching desperately for a weapon that can help him. My fingers close over the handle of an axe as I heft it up.
“Peony!” Gabriel screams, and his warning is the only thing that saves my life. The female Blood I noted before had been creeping behind me on silent feet, the dropped sacrificial dagger in her hand. I have just enough time to swing my axe at her, watching in abject horror as she tumbles to the ground, blood pouring from her stomach.
I hear a sharp inhale from behind me, and I turn, prepared to leap into the fray, when I see Gabriel tumble to his knees.
No. No. No.
“Gabriel!” I scream in horror as he stares from me to the knife protruding from his stomach. When he glances back up, something akin to grim acceptance shines in his gaze. And I know without a shadow of doubt, the split second he took to warn me about my attacker was a split second he didn’t have.
“I’m sorry,” he mouths to me as his emerald green eyes well with tears.
“I always knew we couldn’t trust you,” Emmett says to Gabriel, whistling softly under his breath.
“Gabriel! Emmett, no!” I run forward with the axe just as Emmett swings his sword in a swooping arc.
And Gabriel’s head falls to the ground and rolls, his eyes dim.
Time stops. Everything stops. All I can see is the man who risked his life for mine. My family. One of the very few people in this world I can claim to care about. And that’s what family is, after all. Forming indestructible bonds that simply cannot be severed, because we don’t allow them to. Because we don’t want them to. Because we fight tooth and nail to keep them whole and strong.
“No!” I begin to sob desperately as I stare, just stare, at his lifeless figure. Gabriel sacrificed himself for me. To save me. I can live for centuries, and I’ll never find a way to repay him. How can a person live with that knowledge? How can I go about my day knowing that a man’s dead because of me? “Why did you do it, you stupid old man?” I scream, my heart splintering in two. Searing agony grips both halves of the organ and refuses to let go. “Why?”
“Because he loved you,” Emmett interjects, rolling his eyes as if the idea is absurd. “Because you were his family.”
“I’m going to fucking kill you!” I scream, lifting the axe and racing forward.
But like before, my feet abruptly still and my hands drop uselessly to my side. My fingers slowly unclench from where it was holding the axe in a death-grip. The weapon clatters harmlessly against the floor.
“I don’t think so, my sweet girl,” Emmett whispers. He holds up the voodoo doll with a sinister smile. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Chapter 53
“Emmett, please, I am begging you. Please don’t do this,” I plead, refusing to allow my eyes to flicker down to where Gabriel’s headless body now lies. I know that the second I see it, the second I see him, I’ll fall apart. And at the moment, that