Chapter 18 | The Unbridled Rage
The central passage was wide enough for all four of them.
Matthias was grateful for that.
He was more grateful for the people occupying it with him.
Aki kept the cultists at the end of Gungnir. Yuki struck whenever they tried to crowd past him, and Joseph covered the other side with his Sun Blade.
Matthias dealt with anyone who slipped through.
One man got past Yuki's sword and immediately discovered that Matthias had one too.
He went down with a cry, his weapon skidding across the floor.
"Nice," Yuki said.
"Watch your left," Aki told her.
"Saw him!"
Gold light swept across the passage.
Matthias stepped over the fallen weapon and followed them.
Under his collar, Astreal's pendant tapped against his chest.
He hoped the twins were having as little trouble.
The Steel Golem waited in the next hall.
It stood nearly three meters tall, with broad shoulders and fists large enough to make weapons unnecessary.
Yuki walked toward it.
The golem raised an arm.
Joseph cut through the joint behind its knee.
It lurched toward him, exposing the other side to Aki. Gungnir drove into its elbow, pinning the arm long enough for Matthias to cut through the opened joint.
Then Yuki brought Durendal down through its chest.
Steel hit the floor in several heavy pieces.
They waited.
Nothing moved.
"That was quick," Matthias said.
Aki pulled his spear free.
"Four against one. It only had two hands."
"I barely got a turn," Yuki said.
"You had the last one."
"Yeah, but still."
Joseph was already looking beyond the wreckage.
"The lock."
They found the central mechanism beside the far door, with its key set into a recess in the stone.
Matthias turned it.
A deep clunk answered beneath the floor.
One lock released. Two to go.
He opened the door and looked into the short passage beyond.
Then something cracked overhead.
"Move!" Joseph shouted.
Matthias lunged through the doorway.
Stone struck his shoulder. He stumbled against the wall as the ceiling behind him came down.
The crash swallowed everything else.
He covered his head and waited for it to stop.
Dust filled his mouth.
When he looked back, the doorway was gone.
"Aki!"
Matthias coughed and tried again.
"Can you hear me?"
"We're here!" Aki called from the other side.
"All three?"
"All three. Are you hurt?"
He rolled his shoulder and regretted it.
"Nothing broken, I think."
"Back up, babe," Yuki called. "I can cut through this."
Another piece of stone fell near his foot.
Matthias looked up at the fresh cracks above the blocked doorway.
"Don't. The rest might come down on us."
There was a pause.
"He's right," Joseph said. "Yuki, lower it."
Matthias leaned against the wall and breathed through his sleeve.
On the other side, Joseph spoke quietly to the others. Matthias caught only a few words.
Then Joseph raised his voice.
"There's an eastern route around the blocked section. We'll double back and reach you from outside."
"All right."
"What's ahead of you?"
"A passage. Steel door at the end."
"The final locks. Wait somewhere clear of the damaged ceiling. We're coming."
"I know you are."
Matthias moved away from the rubble.
Behind him, grit continued to fall.
The steel door was still shut when he reached it.
Matthias rested his good shoulder against the opposite wall and listened.
Somewhere to his left, a heavy mechanism shifted.
He straightened.
A second answered from the right.
The door released with a low metallic groan.
Both of them.
He hadn't realized how tightly he'd been holding his breath.
Belial had reached her lock. So had Astreal.
He pushed the door open and stepped into the cold air beyond, glad to leave the dust behind him.
It had been a garden once.
Dead borders lined the paths. Gray trees stood against the castle walls, their bare branches reaching through the smoke drifting overhead.
Gunfire sounded from the far side of the compound.
Matthias stayed near the doorway, looking for the eastern entrance Joseph had mentioned.
Then he saw the figure hanging from the largest tree.
Long golden hair fell across a white coat.
Her arms were drawn above her head, wrists bound to a branch. Her feet hung clear of the ground.
Matthias stopped breathing.
"Belial?"
She didn't lift her head.
The lock had opened. He had heard it.
She reached it. She was all right.
He left the doorway.
"Belial!"
Twenty meters. Less than that now.
He began to run.
Sylvia stepped out beside the tree.
Six men emerged behind her.
Matthias raised the Sun Blade.
"Get away from her."
Sylvia looked at him, then at the woman suspended from the branch.
"I'm glad you made it here."
He tried to see past Sylvia's shoulder.
Belial's face was hidden by her hair. Her staff was nowhere in sight.
"Let her down."
"You keep refusing what you are," Sylvia said. "And they keep helping you do it."
Matthias moved toward her.
Her hand rose.
He knew what she was about to do before he could reach her.
"Don't—"
"Witness the consequence."
Light flashed from her fingers.
It passed through the body on the tree.
The woman's head lifted.
Emerald eyes found him.
For a moment, she looked as though she wanted to say something.
Then her head fell forward.
Matthias heard himself make a sound.
He couldn't have repeated it afterward.
His feet stopped. The Sun Blade slipped from his fingers and vanished before it struck the soil.
He stared at her.
No.
He had spoken to her at the stairs.
She had smiled. Told him to stay safe.
There should have been something he could do. Reach the tree. Cut her down. Call her name loudly enough that she would look at him again.
He couldn't move.
Sylvia was saying something.
He turned toward her voice.
She was watching his face.
Smiling.
"You..."
His hands closed so hard his nails bit into his palms.
"You will pay."
The ground trembled beneath him.
Power rose through the soles of his feet.
He had spent weeks learning to find the reserve inside himself. This came from below, vast and cold, flooding into the place his grief had opened.
The dark current.
He recognized it without knowing what to do with it.
Dry soil cracked around his shoes. His coat lifted in a wind that hadn't been there a moment before.
Sylvia laughed.
"Yes."
One of her men stepped back.
She didn't notice.
"Let it in. Do you feel it? That's what you are."
Matthias barely heard her.
He saw Belial outside the florist, sitting on the cobblestones with her cloak tangled around her.
I was hoping you would say yes.
Her hands setting down his breakfast. Her face when he told her he liked the house. Her leaning against his arm after Germany, too tired to pretend she didn't need him.
He had wanted another Saturday with her.
There wasn't going to be one.
The power surged.
"All that training," Sylvia said. "The little house. The ordinary life. Did you think any of it could change this?"
He wanted her voice to stop.
He wanted the tree gone, the garden gone, everything between him and the woman who had done this gone.
Light spread across his vision.
His heart hammered so hard it hurt.
"Use it," Sylvia urged. "Hate me, if you must. Just let it happen."
Something warm struck his chest.
He looked down.
Green light shone beneath his open collar.
And red.
Thursday night. The kitchen, long after dinner.
Astreal had found him checking his bag for the third time.
"You packed that already."
"I'm making sure."
She had watched him close the pocket, then held out a pendant.
Two stones rested in its setting. A ruby and an emerald.
"Wear this."
He'd taken it carefully.
"Yours and Belial's?"
"They're linked to our lives. If either stone goes dark, you will know."
His fingers had stopped around the chain.
"Astreal."
"If we're separated, you won't have to guess."
He'd looked at her for a long moment before putting it on.
She had checked the fastening herself.
Both stones were glowing.
Matthias caught the pendant in his hand.
The emerald shone between his fingers.
Belial.
He lifted his head.
The figure still hung from the tree. Golden hair. White coat. Her face.
He looked back at the stone.
Still lit.
His next breath caught halfway in.
She's alive.
He looked at the figure again.
This time, he noticed the hair. It caught the light around it, but there was none of the faint warmth he had seen even in the dark outside his apartment.
The bound hands were too still, the fingers held in a shape he couldn't remember hers ever taking.
Small things.
Things he hadn't been able to see while all he could think was that she needed him.
He closed his hand around the emerald.
Astreal had given him something he could trust.
The woman on the tree wasn't Belial.
Relief hurt.
It arrived so suddenly that his knees almost gave way.
She was alive. Somewhere in the castle, Belial was alive.
Astreal too.
He wanted to sit down. He wanted to hear both their voices. He wanted a moment in which nothing else happened.
The ground split beneath his heel.
Power was still pouring into him.
Knowing the truth hadn't emptied it. His arms shook, and the pressure behind his ribs kept growing.
He turned toward Sylvia.
Her laughter had stopped.
"What are you doing?"
Matthias drew a breath through his teeth.
"Your cheap trick failed."
Her gaze dropped to the pendant in his fist.
Then to his face.
"No."
She took a step forward.
"The power is already in you. You can't simply stop."
He wished it were that simple.
The anger remained. She had watched him believe Belial was dead and laughed because his pain was useful to her.
He could still see that false face lifting toward him.
He would see it again when he closed his eyes.
Sylvia raised her hand, as though she could coax the process onward.
"You cannot contain this. Not at that strength."
Matthias looked at the six men behind her.
They were backing away now.
"Then I won't."
He planted his feet.
The first thing Joseph had taught him was to find his own reserve. To know what he was moving before he tried to move it.
Matthias reached for that familiar warmth beneath his breathing.
It was still there.
The cold flooding up from the ground wasn't his. He didn't have to keep taking it.
He held on to the distinction.
For a moment, the two forces pulled against each other so hard that he thought his chest would break.
Then the flow from beneath his feet faltered.
Enough.
He let go of what was already inside him.
The roar tore out of his throat.
Power followed.
A shockwave burst across the garden, flattening dead grass and throwing loose earth against the walls.
Sylvia's arm flew up.
Whatever defense she tried to summon broke beneath the impact.
She and her men were lifted off their feet and hurled backward.
They struck the wall.
Stone cracked.
Then they fell.
Matthias stood in the sudden quiet.
His hands were open.
He didn't remember opening them.
The pendant lay against his chest, both stones still glowing.
He tried to breathe.
The first attempt became a cough. The second reached his lungs.
No more power rose through the ground.
He waited, afraid that another wave would come the moment he stopped paying attention.
Nothing did.
Across the garden, Sylvia lay motionless beside her men.
He couldn't tell from here whether they were breathing.
The thought reached him slowly, through the ringing in his ears.
They had come to take her into custody.
He hadn't been thinking about custody.
Matthias took a step toward them.
His leg folded.
He caught himself on one hand and lowered the rest of the way to the ground.
For now, sitting would have to do.
Movement at the tree made him look up.
The figure's outline was coming apart.
Gold hair faded into thin wisps of darkness. The white coat lost its shape, and the body dissolved before it could fall from the branch.
In a few seconds, the tree was empty.
A doppelganger.
He had known. The pendant had told him.
Seeing it vanish still loosened something painful in his chest.
He touched the emerald again.
Please get here.
He didn't know whether he meant Belial or Astreal.
Both.
He wanted both.
Footsteps came from the eastern side of the garden.
Aki appeared through a narrow entrance, Gungnir in his hand. Yuki followed close beside him, with Joseph only a few steps behind.
All three stopped when they saw the wall.
Then Yuki saw Matthias.
"Babe!"
"Here," he managed.
It wasn't loud enough.
He tried to lift his hand, but his arm was shaking.
Aki was already coming toward him. Joseph looked from the empty tree to Sylvia and her men, his expression tightening.
Behind Matthias, the steel door opened farther.
He heard another pair of footsteps.
Then a second.
He knew those steps.
He had heard them in the hallway before breakfast, on the basement stairs, coming to meet him when he got home from work.
Matthias turned his head.
Gold and silver at the doorway.
He lifted his hand again.
This time, he managed a wave.
The footsteps didn't slow.