Page 116 of Her Soul for Revenge

“No!” Jeremiah snapped, stumbling as his limbs returned to normal. All his wounds were visible now, bleeding thick black muck. I readied my aim again, advancing on him.

“Did you think the Deep One would be kind to you?” I said as he leaned heavily against the house, panting, his eyes darting left and right for an escape. “You and your family thought you could buy your way to power with the price of others’ lives. Your ownsister, Jeremiah! You waited for your own father’s death to take his place!You murdered my brother!”

He grinned at me cruelly, stumbling away, toward the inside of the house. “Your brother begged me for mercy.” He laughed, barely able to keep his feet. “I’ll never forget how it felt to see the life go out of his eyes.”

“He trusted you!” I fired, the slug hitting him in the throat. Jeremiah choked, gurgling as he retreated into the ruined house, like an injured bug scuttling into its burrow. “You made him think you were his friend. I saw the photos of you together! He was kind! Marcus never deserved this!”

The tears streaming down my face were hot with fury. Jeremiah shrunk back into the shadows of the house, groaning, leaving a trail of black blood behind him. Zane jumped down behind me from the roof.

“He’s got no fucking power left,” I said. “Let’s end this.”

55

The interior of the house was flooding from the rain and burst pipes. A brief flash of lightning was my only illumination as I stepped into the ruined hall. Zane was close behind me, and I could hear Jeremiah gurgling and coughing close by.

“Why…” He was muttering, crouched somewhere in the darkness. “I did what you asked...Idid...I brought the sacrifices to you...I did everything…”

There was a sudden agonized, contorted cry. I spotted him, hunched over in the darkness, surrounded by the bodies of the followers Zane had killed earlier. He looked up at me, eyes wide, shaking his head. “Juniper...Juniper, don’t…”

“You fucking dare,” I ground the words out from between clenched teeth. “You dare to begme? You’re a fuckingcoward, Jeremiah!”

He laughed again, and Zane muttered behind me, “He’s already dead, Juni. He’s falling apart.”

Zane was right — Jeremiah’s limbs barely moved, and he was surrounded by a puddle of black rot. He twitched on the ground, staring up at me, his face furious one moment, terrified the next. Thunder rumbled overhead, and a sudden burst of lightning was accompanied by a horrifying crack —

And then a boom. Then another.

I kept the gun aimed at Jeremiah as Zane hurriedly flitted from my side, then back again.

“It struck the house,” he said. “The gas lines are broken. When the fire spreads, things are gonna get really hot, really quick.”

I nodded, and looked back to Jeremiah — only to find him crawling away from me, dragging himself along the floor. I walked after him, shaking my head as he dragged himself down the ruined hall.

“Don’t make me shoot you in the back, Jeremiah,” I said. “It’s over. Face me.”

His voice growled into a high-pitched screech. “Nooo! No...it’s not...I’m blessed...God will...God…”

I pressed my boot against his back, pinning his weak body down. “Everything the Libiri did has failed,” I said. “You didn’t kill me. Your God couldn’t take me. Your sister died for nothing. You may have killed my brother, but he’s buried somewhere safe.”

Zane came up behind me. I felt his heat on my back. I took a deep breath and kicked Jeremiah over onto his side. He stared at me, but there was no light or recognition in his eyes anymore.

“Your God will never rise, Jeremiah. It didn’t have to end this way.” I took aim. My finger tightened. “You thought you threw a lamb down into the dark. You didn’t. You threw down a wolf, and I came back biting.”

I pulled the trigger.

The fire spread, quickly and violently. Zane had just enough time to throw the mangled bodies of the white-cloaks inside before the house was consumed. Explosions rattled the walls as the flames hit trapped pockets of leaked gas.

Zane and I watched from a distance, silent in the grass. Smoke was heavy in the air, but the pouring rain kept the fire from spreading too far.

“It’s over,” I said softly. “It’s really over.”

It had been years. So many years with the threat of them hanging over my head, so many years in fear. Years of hatred, of anger and pain. Those things didn’t simply go away, no, not after so long. Not even with them dead.

But I could breathe again. The unbearable weight that had dragged me down for so long was finally lifted.

This didn’t feel like an ending. It felt like a beginning. The beginning of a story not shadowed by pain, a story that wasn’t warped by terror. It was a story I didn’t even know how to begin; a life I had no idea how to live.

Zane leaned closer to me, tucking back my hair. Both of us were bruised and bloodied, ash smudged around our faces. Zane’s entire mouth and throat were drenched with blood from the fight. But the tension had gone out of him. His eyes were bright and golden again.