Chapter 32

Ihad no power left within me, so I drew on pure rage. I punched through the force field hemming me in and broke out, not into the field of battle on the parking lot, but into a crowd of gray figures, faces slack, arms out in supplication. All moaning and groaning in utter despair, rage, or mindless confusion.

"Justice," they groaned, whispered, even shouted, but faintly, weakly, as if from a far-off distance. "Justice."

I whipped around, seeking any way out, but the figures converged on me from all sides. The first one reached me without me realizing it, coming up from behind, but I felt the cold weight of him as he passed through me, and I knew his story. A man killed by a local witch for threatening to take over her tiny farm. He'd been beset by dark shadows while traveling. The shadows had spooked his horse, and the horse ended up throwing him into the ditch. In death, he knew his killer, however, and he'd cried out for Justice. Justice had never responded. All this had happened centuries before I'd been born, and by then, jobs had already been piling up in Justice Hall.

"Justice." Another wraith walked through me, this one female, a young woman killed for her eyes in a barbaric ritual that had echoes in the arcane black market even today. She was sighted in the way of the Connecteds, and then blinded and killed out of fear and covetousness. I couldn't save her either. There were so many like her I hadn't saved, despite the handful that I had, and I felt the weight of her passing slow me down ever so slightly.

By the time the third wraith reached me, pushing, shoving, straining close, I understood what was happening here. I'd fallen into a trap within a trap, one only an ancient, malevolent member of the Arcana Council would know how to engineer in their spare time, when she or he wasn't possessing Dixie. What did we know about the Star? What did anyone?

I twisted this way and that, trying to avoid the weight of humanity seeking to drape itself upon me. Stars were remote and shiny, hanging bright in the far sky. Everyone who looked upon them was filled with desire and longing. They were too distant to truly care, too remote to understand, a perpetual guide that no one could reach. They also saw everything, bearing constant witness, especially everything that happened in the shadowed night. Where the Moon was brighter, they dimmed, and beneath the Sun, they vanished altogether.

These thoughts ran together in my head as the fourth and fifth wraiths slammed into me, lending their outrage to the albatross these creatures were seeking to hang on me.

"Justice," they hissed, but these were no saints, no victims without recourse. These were members of the arcane black market, from maybe only a hundred years earlier. Running prostitution and smuggling operations and blasted out of business by Connecteds who were more powerful and more ruthless than they were. But even they felt righteous enough to call for help. Everyone had their limit, after all. Everyone thought their way was the right way.

Each new body flowing through me weighed me down, and there was always another to take its place, but I could see the far-off sheen of the Moon on the horizon. And so, rather than trying to fend off the moaning supplicants from all sides, I bent my shoulder and pushed through. Taking on their problems, their complaints, their miseries willingly.

Never mind that I couldn't solve them, never mind that I could never right the wrongs that had befallen them during their lives. They were dead. They were human. They had left this plane of existence to reenter at some other point, and they carried their outrage with them to their new incarnations. I couldn't help that. I could only acknowledge the outrage they felt, agree it wasn't just. And move on, as there was nothing more I could do.

Strangely, that seemed to be enough. As I proactively took on the draining force of each new victim, acknowledged it, pushed through it, and moved forward, no new weight was added to me. If anything, the tiniest sense of relief and release peeled away a layer of my misery. I didn't have time to think on it too much as I continued through, faster now, harder. The trap the Star had set for me became another gateway, another path of understanding.

I didn't know how many bodies I punched through, both those I deliberately plowed over, and those that reached me from the sides and even from the back, desperate for their piece of me, desperate to be acknowledged, but flowing away with a new rush of emotion that left me feeling strangely heartened in the end.

I hadn't saved them. But I'd honored their cry. I'd heard them. Whoever they were to become in their future lives, I'd honored the pain they'd felt in this one.

In front of me, the Moon shone brighter, as if she were rising on one of those surreal evenings when her fullness appeared to hang low to the earth, unnaturally large—

I burst into the raging battle of demons and shifters.

Nigel instantly caught my eye, whaling on a pair of demons, but I couldn't see Nikki, and I whirled quickly, my hands alight with fire. The demons outnumbered the shifters three to one, so that was an easy place to start, but where was Nikki? Where were the Moon and the Star?

Justice was with the people, but dammit, she needed to be up on stage.

"You bitch!"

Through a break in the crowd, I felt a streak of starlight rake across me. I looked up to see Dixie glaring at me.

"You should still be locked in that prison of those you had failed." She gestured sharply with her hand, and another score of demons filled the tight space, fire erupting in pockets at the edges. A vehicle exploded, and spectral fire danced along the spire of the Chapel of Everlasting Love in the Stars. A bolt of white fire lanced me through the shoulder, while twin roars of defiance sounded in my ears—feminine and strong. Two women rushed forward from the shadows, both of them surprising me. Judgment of the Arcana Council and Danae, Queen of Swords.

Gamon instantly fell into the fray, slashing and hacking at the demons for the mere joy of it, but Danae drew herself up straight, lifting her arms and tilting her chin, as if compelling the heavens to do her bidding. "You, who must obey me, fight!" she cried.

She wasn't calling on the heavens at all, as it happened, but creatures from a far more southerly location. A new rush of shuffling bodies surged out of the darkness and flowed around her, converging on the parking lot. Dough-faced golem warriors, their mouths slack, their eyes hollowed out, their bodies rich with the smell of Italian seasoning, pounded into the fight.

The value of a doughboy army.I stared in absolute shock as Sariah's words floated back to me, offhanded and sly.

Was this why she had saved Barry? Had the vision she'd siphoned off Eshe been clear enough to show a band of golem warriors coming to our aid?

Either way, it appeared that Barry had offered up his demon minions for the use of the Arcana Council, and Danae had taken over from there.

I lunged forward into the renewed battle, as fire raged around us and one building after another exploded, first Death's tattoo parlor, then Dixie's chapel. I fought through the inky blackness of demons, gaining new ground, when suddenly an entire swath of demons screamed in front of me, and burst into a shower of primordial goop.

The spatter had barely cleared before Danae saluted me.

"I don't need the approval of the Council to fight this filth," she declared. "And this army will serve as well as any other." She whirled, directing her Gumby battalion to strike again as a group of the horde leapt toward her.

I turned as well, gesturing to the largest of the Syx, who still glowered at the edge of the parking lot. "She's a fucking human," I informed him.

Gregori stared at me impassively. "She's a witch."

"She's a human witch. And she needs your help."

"She doesn't—"

"Go," I demanded, gratified to see the big guy finally move as I thrashed forward again.

At length, I came up alongside Nigel, who grabbed me and all but flung me forward. "Get Nikki!" he gasped, before another wave of demons knocked him to the side.

I surged on. I still couldn't see my friend. A wall of demons rose ahead of me, dozens more than there should be. It was worse than the throng of humans who had called Justice for help. Those, at least, I had understood, while these asshats were only crowding in front of me to keep me from reaching Nikki. Screw that.

I pressed my hand down on the tattoo I'd received from Death nearly two years earlier, a tattoo that connected me to my best friend, my earthbound anchor. In a flash, I was no longer battling my way through claws and talons, but was up on the stage with Nikki, Dixie, and the Moon. Nikki was down on one knee, braced and wielding the same knife Dixie had buried into her gut moments earlier—a wound that was still leaking blood. Beneath Nikki the Moon lay crumpled and bloody, Nikki as her sole protector now. I rushed forward, and Dixie spun to face me.

"My dance card is full today, sugar," she said with her trademark Southern drawl. "I've got what I've come for."

She flinched and turned back, snarling with rage as Nikki landed a well-timed slash along her lower thigh. A long, dark wound gaped open along Dixie's creamy skin, the blood that leached out midnight blue. I jerked my gaze from it up to Dixie's face as she flung her hand toward Nikki. My hand came up at the same time, my bright blue fireball lashing out to combat her bolt of crimson flame.

The explosion of the two fireballs connecting knocked me on my ass, the fire bouncing off the stage and skittering into the crowd of the battling shifters, demons, Danae, and the Syx. Screams erupted as the fire caught the fighters unaware, but I could only worry about one thing at a time.

I lurched around to confront Dixie in time to see her draw her blade up high. As she did, the dagger became a flaming sword. She plunged it down in the space between Nikki's arm and torso.

Nikki struggled to pull the Moon away, but she wasn't fast enough. The fiery sword plunged into the Moon's body, and even I jolted from the impact, the unearthly crack of magic. The Moon arched beneath the blade—and expired. Instantly. There was no fight. There was no counter magic.

The bright light bathing the parking lot merely…went out.

I leapt for Dixie, but by the time I reached her, she was gone. I heard nothing but her exultant cry, which was apparently an order, as the brace of demons who hadn't yet succumbed to Danae and the Syx disappeared a moment later.

I staggered forward another step, then slumped to my knees where Nikki and the Moon lay tangled in a broken heap.

I vaguely heard the sound of footsteps running up, and the rush of smoke. A moment later, the Magician knelt beside me, one arm around my shoulder, the other beneath Nikki. Nikki, who did not breathe. Nikki, whose life essence was burning down to an impossibly low level. I reached out instinctively, my hands gripping her body, the Magician's as well. And I felt the cool whoosh of air as Death appeared beside us.

"It's not her time," I insisted. "She can't have survived everything she has to die like this."

"It's not for humans, even immortal humans, to make that call," Death murmured, but it was Nikki who convulsed beneath me.

"I'm not going down because of bitch-faced Barbie," she muttered, with what seemed like the last of her strength.

I choked out a laugh that might also have been a sob. I no longer cared what the rules were. I was Justice of the Arcana Council, and I was going to make my own goddamned rules.

"Miss Wilde," the Magician murmured beside me, but for once not in a repressing tone. He wouldn't take this from me, I knew. He wouldn't let me fail.

I focused all my attention on Nikki until I blacked out.