“Veritas, now!” Ian shouted.

How could I pick between over four thousand years of Tenoch’s conditioning versus Ian’s claim that he was wrong this instant? But not picking was its own choice. The walls were crashing down. Who should I believe? The sire who’d known me most of my life? Or the man I loved, yet had only known months?

Dammit, why should it be a choice between the two of them? Didn’t I have control over me, even the most frightening parts of me? Even demons had free will! Why should I be any different?

My father had chosen to “stray where it was forbidden” by impregnating Ashael’s mother and then, later, mine. He’d also chosen to lose his position as Warden of the Gateway to the Netherworld to bring Ian back after I begged him to. If the most fearsome otherworldly creature I’d met could choose despite the inclinations of his nature, then so could I!

And I chose not to let Ian get hurt by Dagon or Ereshki when I had the power to stop them. No matter what terrifying form that power took, or what I’d have to do to bring it forth, because there hadn’t been two aspects to my nature back then. There’d been only one.

“Ian,” I rasped. “When you get free, take Ereshki and get as far away from me as the pentagram allows.”

“The hell you say?” he snapped, but then I felt a resounding boom! that overwhelmed even the pain. He’d broken through the wall. Dagon’s howl of rage confirmed it.

“What I’m going to do could swallow everything in its immediate vicinity!” I said, the falling wall giving me strength to shout. “You can’t be near it, so take Ereshki and go!”

Then I reached down, feeling for the cage that housed my other half. But this time, I didn’t merely open the door or pull her out of it. No more partial measures.

I smashed the cage completely.

Chapter 42

Blackness rolled over my vision as I felt my other half rise, but for the first time in over four thousand years, I didn’t draw away to keep her separate. I embraced her, feeling a shocking surge of ice and heat as both halves began to merge into one. More shocking was how, almost instantly, she wasn’t “she” anymore. It was just me, with so much more to me than there had ever been before.

“Ian,” I managed to say between blasts that made me feel as if I’d detonate at any moment, but not with pain. With the kind of power I’d never felt before. “If you love me, trust me and go.”

I thought I heard him mutter, “Five minutes. That’s all you get,” but I wasn’t sure. I did feel him leave in a whoosh, though, a cut-off scream indicating he’d grabbed Ereshki, too.

Vow not to kill Ereshki myself fulfilled.

As for Dagon . . .

I opened my eyes. Dagon’s icy blue gaze met mine. Just as I’d guessed, the demon had one of Ian’s guns, and he didn’t hesitate. Silver rounds slammed into me, throwing me backward, but my heart was protected by the bulletproof vest.

I rolled behind the counter that had once serviced ski patrons, expecting another volley to blast through the wooden barrier at any moment. It didn’t. Instead, I only heard the rapid patter of footsteps that quickly faded.

He was running away from me.

I dragged myself to my feet. The spell that had secured the circles meant I healed slower than I would have normally, but I was healing, so I forced that unfamiliar feeling of sluggishness aside and chased him. With the pentagram’s boundaries still in place, Dagon couldn’t get too far.

He didn’t. I found him at the end of the star’s tip on the top of the ridge, beating against the spell that didn’t allow him to go any farther. He had his mobile phone in his other hand, of all things, and he screamed “Now, now, now!” at whoever was on the other end of it.

“Did you not pay attention when Ian and I said that no one can teleport into or leave the pentagram until dawn?”

He whirled, boyishly handsome features almost deformed from the hatred that twisted them. “Stay away from me.”

“Stay away?” I repeated, closing the distance between us. “Stop? Don’t? Please? How many times have you heard those words? I remember that they only amused you . . . and incited you to greater acts of cruelty.”

“You cannot best me in your condition.” A snarl that sounded more desperate than confident. “You can barely walk!”

He had a point. I wasn’t nearly healed enough to fight him, and his distance from Ian meant that he was in far better shape than he’d been before. In a hand-to-hand battle, Dagon would win. That’s why I wasn’t using my hands.

“True,” I replied. “But I am my father’s daughter.”

I let the power I’d only accessed once before rip through me. When it overflowed, I saw Dagon through eyes no vampire had.

Darkness poured from him in putrid waves, staining even the ground he stood upon. Not a glimmer of light broke through it. Unlike most people who committed terrible deeds, Dagon hadn’t been warped by cruel circumstances or a distorted view of what was best for the world. No, Dagon knew exactly who he was and what he was doing, and he’d taken the darkest joy in both.

I had my own darkness, made up of the other side of eternity instead of the stain of too many foul deeds to count. I let it billow behind me like a cloud before it pooled at my feet, widening as it snaked toward Dagon. He saw it and leapt back, but the barrier of the pentagram left him nowhere to go.

“What are you doing?” His voice, always so confident, cruel or amused, now sounded plaintive. “Stop! Stop, please!”

I ignored that, just as Dagon had ignored similar pleas countless times before. At last, everyone who’d pled for mercy from him and received none would get their long-overdue justice.

“No,” I said, my voice booming in a thunderous way I’d never heard before. It sounded, I realized, like my father’s did when he was angry. “You’ve been sentenced.”

I plunged every bit of that otherworldly power inside Dagon. It didn’t curl around the water and blood that plumped his skin and made his features as ruddy as a youth’s; it went deeper, wrapping around the foulest part of him.

His soul.

Dagon screamed as I grabbed that part and pulled. For an instant, there were two Dagons: the body that made up the demon and a translucent duplicate that struggled in my power’s grasp. I pulled again and his soul broke the surface of his skin, blurring it. The darkness around me became liquid and plummeted to depths that went all the way to the netherworld.

This was what Tenoch had seen back when his enemies kidnapped me to coerce him into complying with their demands. Tenoch hadn’t yet reached the point where he was so powerful that few dared to cross him, and as a new vampire, I hadn’t been able to defend myself against Tenoch’s older, stronger foes. But being at the mercy of the merciless again had triggered a frenzied PTSD attack that brought forth the darkest of my other abilities. Tenoch had arrived to see me ripping the souls out of my captors, forever causing him to fear me.

Now, it was Dagon’s turn to fear. I tightened the grip my power had on his soul, about to rip it free—

“Veritas,” a shocked voice gasped. “What are you doing?”

I would have expected that question from Ian. Telling me to do my worst and actually seeing it were two different things. But this wasn’t Ian’s voice. It was feminine, and it was speaking in Mandarin.