Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [105]
No. No, I hissed to myself. I may be weak but I was a survivor. I would live. Battered and broken, I would live because the were would not let me die. No matter how much it hurt, this would not kill me. This was not the way everything ended.
“No,” I whimpered, because that was all that came out. “No.”
Seamus’s chanting stopped and he turned around when I spoke. “What in all things Hexed and holy!” he demanded. “That should have killed you!”
Holy crap, I was really talking. I wasn’t floating up toward the ceiling, going toward the light and all that nonsense. My body hurt way too much for that.
Know that I have aided you. The cold wasn’t dying, it was the daemon in me, the protection he’d afforded me with his own obscene parody of a life force.
“I know,” I muttered. “I know.”
The last vestiges of Asmodeus’s magick sighed in me and then they bled away, and I just hurt, and felt heavy enough to sink through the floor. But I was alive. Burned, but alive.
“You son of a bitch,” I ground at Seamus, rolling onto my side and making it to my knees. “That was the last jacket I owned.”
The gold aural glow still flickered softly around me and I stood, shaking off the residual flickers of magick and walking toward Seamus. He stared at me, uncomprehending, until I was almost on him. His eyes were pure black now, and his skin was waxy. The carvings on the Skull were the same pulsating black, alive and crawling over Seamus’s skin.
Hex it. Even with my Lazarus act, I was too late.
Seamus turned and bolted up the stairs to the roof, leaving the Skull to rattle on the marble tiles. I guess he didn’t need it anymore.
I followed Seamus, heard the shrieking chant from the stairs, and banged open the door to find him with his arms outstretched and roiling clouds in the sky overhead.
“Infinitum obscura!” Seamus bellowed, and as I watched in horror the clouds coalesced in front of the sun, plunging Nocturne City into blue twilight as if a vengeful god had stretched out his hand.
“Seamus!” I screamed over the shrieking wind. He turned and grinned when he saw me.
“Isn’t it marvelous, Detective?” he shouted. “Mathias had a vision of the world and we are alive to witness it! He was a god!”
“And what are you?” I screamed. “You’re just a rider on a dead man’s power! You’re nothing!”
“How wrong you are.” Seamus wasn’t shouting any longer, but I could hear him as if his mouth were next to my ear. “I am the heir apparent. I am the god’s new incarnation.”
Oh, spare me. If I had a nickel for every time I’d heard some two-bit methhead shrieking the exact same invective, I could go play the tables in Las Vegas until retirement.
“You want to see?” Seamus shouted at me. “Behold!” He spread his arms and stepped up onto the ledge at the edge of the tower, pivoting to face me. Then he spread his arms and flew.
He didn’t fly like Superman, more like he was walking on air, floating up and away from me, out toward the bay. His laughter carried on the wind, distorted and childlike.
At that moment I knew two things: if I didn’t stop Seamus soon, the city was seriously screwed. Also, the magick of the Skull had driven him positively bat-crap insane.
“Why is it always me dealing with this shit?” I asked no one, before running down the stairs and sprinting for my car.
I followed Seamus as he floated on the raging windstorm that was bending trees double, using my portable light and judicious pressure on the horn to maneuver down Magnolia Boulevard, dodging flying tree limbs, stalled cars, and snowflake-style broken glass from windows that had imploded in the gale.
Mac answered on the first ring of my cell phone, his voice distorted by static. “Wilder! Why do I know you have something to do with this?”
“Never mind that!” I snapped. “There’s