Page 71 of Incoronate
I stepped over Trace’s body and walked to my dresser, pulling out a black shirt and a pair of black jeans and quickly changing into them. Smoothing out my shirt, I grabbed my jacket from the desk chair, the weight of the Sword of Angelus resting cold and solid in the inside pocket where I’d tucked it before bed, and I left my room without looking back.
My mind was locked onto a single purpose.Find the child. End this.
Nothing else existed beyond that singular imperative.
I pushed open the front door and stepped into the night without looking back. The door swung wide behind me, left open to the elements, but I didn’t register the oversight, much less care enough to fix it. The cold air bit at my face, but I barely felt it as my gaze locked on the horse waiting for me at the bottom of the driveway.
She stood there like an apparition made solid, pale as bone, her eyes dark and fathomless. She was perfectly still, as if she’d been carved from marble. As if she’d been waiting for this moment since the beginning of time.
I climbed into the saddle without hesitation and grabbed the reins. The leather felt familiar in my hands, like I’d done this a thousand times before in lives I couldn’t remember.
The horse took off before I could give the command.
We tore through the night, hooves pounding against asphalt in an unrelenting rhythm that matched the beating of the baby’s heart. The sound echoed in my chest and resonated in my bones, drawing me forward like a rope wrapped around my ribs that pulled tighter with every stride.
He’d been born. I was sure of it. I could feel it in my veins, could sense the change in the air, the inevitability of it draping over everything like a shroud.
The pavement gave way to gravel. Then dirt. The horse didn’t slow. She maintained her relentless pace, never wavering, because she knew where we were going just as surely as I did.
Trees rose up on either side as we plunged into the forest. Branches whipped past my face, catching in my hair, while leaves scraped against my jacket with a sound like whispers. The wind bit and clawed at me, but I leaned into it and welcomed it, letting it push me forward.
The baby’s heartbeat grew stronger. Louder. Filling my head until it was all I could hear.
I could feel the others nearby. War and Death. They were closing in from different directions, each of them following the same sound, drawn by the same pull, our paths weaving through the trees like threads being drawn toward a single knot. There was no need to speak. No need for whispers or commands when we were of one mind. One mission.
The forest opened up ahead and I caught a glimpse of movement through the trees. Two horses charging through the undergrowth, their riders shadows against the moonlight. Three paths converging into one. We fell into formation without a word, Death on my left and War on my right, our horses moving in perfect synchronization, hooves striking the ground in unison as we closed the remaining distance.
A clearing came into view up ahead.
The baby’s heartbeat thundered in my ears now, drowning out everything else. It obliterated every doubt, consumed every hesitation, erased every memory of who I used to be.
The horses slowed before coming to a full stop at the edge of the clearing.
A small wooden cabin sat in the center, smoke rising from the chimney in a thin gray plume, light flickering in the windows in a way that almost made it look warm. Inviting.
My hand moved to the inside pocket of my jacket, fingers closing around the hilt of the Sword of Angelus as I surveyed the perimeter. There was no movement outside, no guards posted. Just the cabin and the smoke and the steady thrum of the baby’s heartbeat pulling me forward.
I could feel him inside. Could sense his tiny heart beating, could identify the life that needed to be extinguished with the same clinical detachment I might have given to a target on a map.
But underneath that, something else bled through. The scattered, chaotic energy of a home birth gone wrong. There was happiness in the mix somewhere, relief maybe, but it was buried under layers of panic and fear and desperation. Someone was dying in there, their life force flickering like a candle in a draft.
I noted it all with perfect clarity and felt absolutely nothing about any of it.
We dismounted in unison, our boots hitting the ground without sound. War moved to my right, his auburn hair falling around his face in waves that looked darker in the moonlight. Almost black. Death moved to my left, half-cloaked in shadows that carved his massive frame into something almost skeletal, all sharp angles and hollowed-out planes despite his size.
We moved as one unit toward the cabin. Our thoughts had synchronized so completely that we finished each other’s intentions before they were fully formed. One brain split across three bodies, operating with perfect unity.
The door gave easily when War’s shoulder met it, the wood splintering and cracking before swinging inward with a groan of protesting hinges.
The smell hit us immediately. Demons and dark witch magic and so much blood that the metallic tang of it coated the back of my throat.
Black-eyed demons materialized from the shadows, their forms twisting and wrong as they came at us without warning.
I pulled the Sword of Angelus free, the blade singing as it cut clean through the first demon’s throat and sprayed black ichor across the floor. War’s matching sword flashed beside me, cleaving through another with the same brutal efficiency, while Death’s scythe whistled through the air, the curved blade finding its mark again and again.
We moved like a machine, every strike economical, every kill clean.
Chanting rose from somewhere deeper in the cabin. Familiar voices weaving together in Latin. The Roderick sisters. I registered it, categorized it, filed it away. There wasn’t time to do anything about it yet.
