31. ~Alena~

31

~Alena~

I thought I’d managed to take some big hits lately.

But none of that had come close to what had rattled my bones and my insides alike when Lenora had blasted me with my mom’s power.

The megalomaniac who was fucking up everything.

Including my agreement with Orpheus not to take her on until I’d taken away her magic. That plan had been thrown right out the window with this sudden attack of hers.

Orpheus had just expended a mass amount of power protecting everyone from the collapse of the pocket dimension and he hadn’t even been able to rest or recover for even a second before soaring over here and fighting to stop her from freeing the maniacal hell beast who’d started all of this in the first place.

Purple lightning pierced the sky as he gathered his power and one hell of a storm before bringing it down with a sweep of his hands right upon her, as he hovered several feet above her immediate area.

She cried out as it wracked her body and had her stumbling back from Constantine’s cell.

He hit her again and again in a clear bid to overwhelm her.

She screamed in fury at him keeping her from her goal. Her fucking insane goal.

Constantine was pacing the cell wildly, like a literal caged beast. He suddenly slapped his palm to the magical cell wall and Lenora noticed. Then a sly smile spread over her face and the next thing we knew, she was shoving her palm full of magic right through the cell and clasping his hand.

In the next second, she was yanking him out with the grip, past all the magic, even the phoenix flames, just absorbing it all and for him while they were physically connected, all because of my mom’s sheer power she had at her disposal.

Holy fuck.

I gritted my teeth and managed to roll onto my side as my body slowly fought to heal itself from the major blow she’d dealt me.

And then I was screaming as she fired a bolt of that same power straight at Orpheus.

He managed to dodge it, but it was a short-lived relief when Constantine joined her, the two of them targeting him mercilessly and Constantine strategically forcing him straight into a direct blast of Lenora’s power.

It hit Orpheus in the gut, making him cry out as it ripped him out of the sky and sent him careening into a tree. He ricocheted off it and landed painfully hard on his stomach.

Just as he tried to get up, Lenora stalked over there, firing at him, blowing him onto his side, over and over.

No. No. No.

I struggled onto my knees.

He threw his palm out, his hand trembling as he tried to call his power. But then Constantine was there snapping his wrist, making him cry out, then kicking him in the face.

“I warned you,” Lenora told Orpheus.

“And yet,” he seethed back at her, choking up a mouthful of blood as he lay there on his back while the two of them closed in.

“Did you really think you’d survive turning my followers against me, forming a fucking army to defeat me, and caging me like an animal?” Constantine growled at him. “I gave you a way out during our last battle and you failed to take it. In fact, you crossed me. Now you will suffer for your insolence and your utter foolishness.” He called his power, his palms flaming on one side of Orpheus while Lenora stood on the other, hers also aflame. “Make it hurt,” he told her. “Keep him alive until he begins to beg for the torment to end. I want him broken first.”

Orpheus moved to call his magic again, but this time Constantine stomped on his hand, breaking his other wrist. He then stepped back and left it to Lenora.

I jolted as he swung his head toward me , his fangs dropping.

I couldn’t fucking worry about that right now while Orpheus was suffering.

I forced myself to my feet and managed to call my power.

But then my vision was obscured by a sudden blur a moment before I was slammed onto my back again.

I choked and looked to see Constantine eyeing me, now just a few feet from me as he took me in.

He blasted me with his power, knocking me onto my side and sending a searing pain through me.

I caught sight of Orpheus through it and Lenora was moving in for a killing blow.

“Stop!” I screamed. “Fucking stop!”

Silver flames lit up the night a moment before my cries were answered and Lenora was suddenly blown back by a ferocious blast—straight from Saryan Hart.

He was in front of his son in the next moment, blocking Lenora’s way to him.

“Not this night, abomination.”

She sneered and fired upon him.

He thrust a shield of his power before him and Orpheus.

“Not even you, the almighty King, can defeat me now.”

“I don’t need to. I merely need to endure.”

I didn’t get the chance to figure out what he had in mind there, because I was suddenly ripped off the ground by Constantine and tossed several feet across the field.

He was there in the next second pouncing on me, snarling and baring his fangs. “Punishment will befall you for what you said to me earlier. Rest assured your unimaginable suffering will end later tonight when I have Lenora take your life.”

“Spare me your self-important villain monologues,” I spat at him.

He dug his talons into my arms, the sharp pain making me hiss. “You could have been my queen, but you foolishly rejected all that I offered you.” He shook me, deepening the wounds he was digging into my arms in the process. “You rejected me!”

He ripped one hand free, then wrapped it around my throat. “Now you’ll beg for mercy that won’t come. You’ll cry for me, bleed for me, and scream for the torment to end.” He called his power, his crimson fire erupting around my throat, burning my skin and trying to weaken me in the process.

He’d just made his biggest mistake.

He’d given me access to his magic.

Up close and personal access.

While he was busy laying down threats and going on about all the despicable things he planned to do to me, I zoned out and discreetly twisted my left hand, forming a golden sphere, watching as the sparks began to fill it up, my dark magical annihilation ability taking the reins.

And then I thrust it into his back.

He roared and fell back off me, his eyes wide as he looked at me.

I forced myself to my feet, finally feeling my healing working well enough to enable me to do so, while I called my golden power, holding it at the ready on both palms while I watched Constantine’s magic start flickering in and out as he fought to call it forth again. It just wouldn’t come.

“No,” he uttered in distress. “Stop!” he screamed at me.

I didn’t.

I kept moving forward even as he moved back.

He dropped to his knees as his entire stream was annihilated, and then he was clawing at his arms, his chest, obviously feeling the chill from me destroying every ounce of his magic with my infection sphere.

“Did you really think you could come at us and survive it again?” I spat at him as I stood before him.

He shuddered on the ground for several moments.

And then I heard a vicious snarl.

“You won’t survive this!” he roared, forcing himself to his feet, completely irate, the monster in him fully manifested. “You took my magic!”

“Gone forever. You never fucking deserved it.”

He went for me in one of his insanely fast blurs of motion.

But he never made contact.

A sudden wind whipped around and then Constantine was bellowing and lurching forward as a tree branch was shoved through his back and right through the other side, protruding from his chest.

As he dropped to his knees, choking and gasping, I saw Xavier standing there.

“You won’t lay a hand on her again,” he growled at Constantine’s ear as he angled the branch, making his entire body convulse and another ear-splitting roar tear from him.

He conjured another branch with a spark of his magic, then shoved it through Constantine’s throat. He gurgled, blood spewing everywhere as Xavier had obviously nicked his carotid artery.

“And you won’t speak another ill word either.” He twisted it and Constantine spluttered, his nails digging into the ground. “This is how it comes to an end. You dying at the feet of those you’ve wronged.”

He ripped out the first branch and then he blurred in front of Constantine and drove it through his chest, right into his heart.

A choked gasp escaped me as I watched Constantine lurch, his eyes shooting wide, as the realization set in for him too.

It was over.

Xavier released him roughly and kicked him onto his back and we watched as he died right before our eyes, becoming a mass of desiccation, bone, and ash in a pool of blood.

Becoming… nothing.

“Oh my God,” I breathed. “He’s gone. He’s really… defeated.”

“If you hadn’t been able to annihilate his magic like that, there’s no way any of us would’ve been able to get so close. And it made him into a simple vampire, making it possible to actually kill him with just a stake.”

The battlefield suddenly fell quiet and we turned to see the acolytes had stilled mid-fight and were staring our way, their shocked gazes focused on the dead body of their master, the man they’d long foolishly thought a god.

The shock became ours when we saw some of them drop to their knees in pain and crying for the loss of him, while others raised their hands in surrender, the reason for their fight now gone.

Wow.

It took Obsidian a moment to respond to this crazy turnabout before they were then swarming them and incapacitating them, arresting them, and sending a bunch off to Exemplar to be charged and processed.

Before we could revel in that, an ear-piercing cry sounded from Lenora as she took note of what had happened, having been caught up in her face-off with her former family to notice earlier—or to try to prevent his demise.

And then the worst happened.

She lost control, her power exploding out of her and creating a magical shockwave that blasted through Saryan’s shield. I saw him manage to soar him and Orpheus to safety a split-second before it made contact. But then the white power rushed toward the rest of us, covering the ground at a dangerous speed and rising into a tidal wave of power.

I threw up a wall of my golden fire. Xavier brought his magic into play alongside mine.

“Here!” Talon’s voice sounded, a moment before he touched down on my other side and created a wall of phoenix fire to bolster us.

Her power hit, blasting against our barriers with a force unlike anything I’d ever felt before.

The three of us stumbled back, fighting to hold it off.

“Shit, this is worse than before,” Talon cried. “I can’t… I can’t hold this for long.”

“Me neither,” Xavier gritted out, his magic already starting to tap out under the insane pressure of celestial magic. Vanessa suddenly teleported right beside him and lent her power to the mix as well.

I looked past the wall to see Saryan and Orpheus—now he’d had a few moments to recover—raining down fire upon Lenora, trying to weaken her, trying to do anything to stop this wave that would annihilate us all if our barriers fell even for a moment.

After everything we’d been through, all the trials and hardships, all the grief and utter pain, there was no way we were going to perish here tonight when we were so close to ending it all finally.

No fucking way!

“I need you!” I called to Saryan and Orpheus.

They flew over, realizing Lenora was too far gone in her utter loss of control to be stopped while she was in this fully unleashed state.

“You’re second only to me,” I told them both. “I need you to bolster the barrier while I pull back and open the portal.”

“You need an anchor,” Orpheus argued.

“I don’t do this now and we all fucking die.”

“Then I’ll—”

“You can’t,” I said, cutting him off. “I need yours and Saryan’s power to hold this barrier in my stead.”

A look passed between all four of us, emotion threatening to get the best of us, as the brutal reality set in.

There was no choice.

Orpheus gave a reluctant nod, and then he and Saryan were erecting a wall to replace mine.

As soon as they did, I stepped back and began the incantation to open the portal to the celestial plane.

Reciting the incantation I’d learned by heart, I brought my golden fire together on either palm, holding them steady in the center until the beginnings of a gateway erupted. Then I thrust it forward a few feet. It settled a little off the ground and a golden doorway began to grow into being.

I could feel the pull on my power and I gritted my teeth, my hands shaking as I pushed harder until it was fully formed.

With another push, I managed to open it, bright yellow light flooding through, almost blinding to look at. In moments, a vortex came into being through the opening, growing larger and larger and more powerful until I felt the pull of it.

I dug my heels into the ground as it started to drag me toward it.

It was sensing celestial magic and because I wasn’t anchored, it was coming right for me!

I lost ground until the yellow light was flooding me, pulling at my power and me.

I couldn’t hold it.

And then a hand clasped mine, the jolt of it cutting off the pull, the vortex retreating from trying to take me.

I turned to see Orpheus there, his magic live on either palm, including the one grasping my hand. He was grimacing and fighting to hold me to this plane by his sheer astounding force of will.

“No,” I rasped. “It’s going to drain you.”

“I won’t let you go,” he told me resolutely. “Not for anything.”

A blast of white power slammed into his chest, making him stagger back, but still keeping hold of my hand, and I swung my head to see Lenora firing down on him.

She’d obviously realized what had happened and now she wanted the portal to take me instead of her.

“Orpheus!” Saryan bellowed.

“Ore!” Talon screamed, looking back and forth wildly between the barriers he was trying to hold alongside the others and us.

But Orpheus still didn’t let go of my hand.

I looked out at the field of battle, watching as Marlowe was working swiftly to evacuate everyone. Not fast enough, though. If they dropped the barriers now, so many would still perish. Not to mention, some of us might not be able to teleport away fast enough to escape it either.

Lenora shrieked and then brought her hands together, creating a shockwave of power that burst through the wall and slammed straight into Orpheus.

A scream ripped from my throat as he went hurtling from me and landing several feet away on his front.

And he didn’t move.

“Orpheus!” Talon screamed at the top of his lungs.

His pained cry cut through the noise of battle and then he was bolting toward him and skidding to his knees.

I watched him reach out to touch him.

He was stunned, just stunned.

That was all.

All it could ever be.

The moment he rolled him over onto his back, a chill ran down my spine.

His eyes were closed. I couldn’t see his chest rising and falling with breath.

Talon looked out at all of us, tears filling his eyes. “He’s not… he’s not here anymore. No!” He threw his arms around him, shaking him. “Where did you go? You can’t… you can’t go. Ore! Ore! Ore!”