Stefan shook his head, fingers digging into my shoulders. “No, you don’t.” He drew on the connection between us, draining my horror and fury and resolve. “It’s all right, Daisy. I promised you. I won’t let it happen.”
“Stop!” I begged, shoving ineffectually at him with my empty hands. “I know what I’m doing!”
Stefan kept draining me, and I realized I should have kindled a shield, realized I no longer had the strength to do so. It was happening all over again. The razor-thin line of blue was vanishing.
In another few seconds, Stefan would be ravening. I caught my breath in a broken sob as terror blossomed and faded inside me. In another few seconds, I would forget what I’d intended to do in the first place.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lean streak of tawny-gray fur launch itself at Stefan, taking him down with a silent snarl. Man and wolf tumbled and grappled in the sand.
“Shoot the wolf!” Persephone ordered.
“No!” Dufreyne countermanded his mistress, turning on the reverb. “Everyone hold your fire!”
Someone got a shot off before his powers of persuasion took effect, a lone crack of gunfire.
The wolf yelped in pain and shifted. Cody lay naked on the sand, pressing his hand to a wound on his side, blood spilling through his fingers. “Whatever you’ve got to do, just do it, Daise,” he said in a ragged voice.
A few yards away, Stefan was climbing arduously to his feet, grimacing and clutching his shoulder.
I wished I’d had more time—time to explain, time to seek advice, time to think this through. A month, a day, an hour . . . hell, even five minutes would be a gift. But time was something I didn’t have. In the space of a few heartbeats, Stefan would be on me again, and this time, he would drain me. Persephone wouldn’t allow Dufreyne to interfere again. She would make sure it happened. She’d let Stefan drain me until I was an empty husk, no longer a threat to her plans, and then she’d order her troops to launch the third drone; and if that one didn’t succeed, another and another, until Yggdrasil’s mighty roots were blasted and destroyed, and Hel and the Norns with them, and a tangled thread in the skein of time was broken, and the entirety of existence might or might not unravel.
All I could do was trust my heart, no matter how much the prospect of what I was about to do horrified me.
Closing my eyes, I held the image of the sigil in my mind and spoke the words I’d never thought I’d say. “Belphegor! Father! I invoke my birthright!”
The ground beneath my feet trembled.
My father’s face swam in the darkness behind my eyes, dipping toward me. His eyes were as black as my own, and long curved horns jutted from his temples. Daughter, you have done well.
Power filled me.
It didn’t happen slowly like it had in my dream. It came all at once in a rush, exploding outward from the center of my chest. Brightness ran through my veins, and I blazed like a noonday star.
I opened my eyes.
No one had moved. Stefan looked at me with a profound mixture of pity and regret, then turned away, averting his face. Almost everyone else, even Persephone, gazed at me with fear and awe. Dufreyne was grinning with unholy glee, and I understood that he’d spoken the truth. I could taste hellfire and brimstone on my tongue, and the taste of it was sweet. With the full power of an apex faith at my command, I could bend even a goddess to my will.
I could bid the mercenaries to lay down their weapons; I could order the fighting to cease. I could banish Persephone. I could protect my community, everything I loved, and never, ever have to feel helpless again.
It was a glorious feeling.
But it came with a terrible price.
As it had in my dream, a clap of earsplitting thunder sounded as a jagged crack tore open the sky above us. Men fell to their knees in the sand, crying out in terror and covering their ears. In the basin, all fighting came to a halt. Atop the rim, only Persephone, Dufreyne, Stefan, and I remained standing. I wondered if my mother was standing or kneeling on the other side of the basin. I wondered if she’d turned her face away from me, too.
A clarion trumpet blast sounded a call to arms, and golden radiance a thousand times brighter than sunlight spilled through the crack in the sky.
There was darkness, too—darkness shimmering like a doorway over the dunes, and I saw in it my father, Belphegor, and a legion of demons behind him. Apparently the gates of hell couldn’t be flung open wide until the gates of heaven were, which was a good thing, since I hadn’t considered the alternative.
On the ground, Cody gazed at me with half-lidded eyes, his gaze steady. The sand beneath him was dark with blood and his breath was shallow, but at least he was still breathing.
I clenched my fists, feeling the leashed lightning in them, and lifted my face to the sky. “Look, I’m willing to take it back!” I shouted to the heavens. “But I want to bargain!”
“You can’t take it back!” Daniel Dufreyne said incredulously, rounding on Persephone. “Can she?”
“How should I know, traitor?” Her tone was cool. “Mayhap she can. She has not yet used the power she invoked.”
I waited.
Nothing happened.
“Come on!” I shouted. “You bargained with Abraham! You had big plans for him, remember?” I gestured all around me. “You can’t tell me this is your last, best plan for humanity! You can’t be finished with us yet, God. There’s got to be more.” I took a deep breath. “Tikkun olam, right? Give us a chance to repair the world! Give me the chance to mend my world!”