Page 45 of Blood of Night (The Thorne Hill)

“Hey,” I say again and wrap a sleeve of my jacket around his wrist. “Hang in there, okay?” My voice catches in my chest. “I’m getting you help.” I take a hold of his wrist, trying to heal him, but I fail. Again.

Binx can hear the djinn’s bones slowly cracking back together, turning her head around so she can get up and come at me again.

“Thank you,” I say to Binx as he shadows away, telling me he’ll take care of it. The sound of her bones breaking reverberates off the trees. The breeze blows again and I shiver, pulling my arms in close to my body. “Come on, Kristy.” I look down the road, knowing I’ll be able to sense Pandora before I can see the headlights, but I can’t help but stare into the dark horizon.

I sit on the ground, putting Easton’s head in my lap. “If you could just open your eyes or moan in pain or something,” I plead because he doesn’t look good.

But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t so much as take in a slow, deep breath.

Another few minutes pass, and Binx rebreaks the djinn’s neck again. And then again. And once more before Kristy’s car finally comes into view. I get up, waving my hands like mad so she sees me, though it’s hard to miss the glowing ball of blue light floating above us.

“Callie!” Kristy shouts, putting her car in park and throwing her door open.

I run over. “Please tell me you have a knife.”

“A knife?” Kristy’s eyes widen and she looks around her car, shaking her head. “Oh! I have this!” She grabs her purse off the floor and pulls out a letter opener shaped like a sword. “I just got it in my Book-Swag box,” she offers and extends her hand.

The thing is not even six inches long and not sharp at all, but it’s metal and can do some damage if I stab hard enough. “It’s better than nothing. Get Easton into the car.” I flick my eyes to the side. “Binx will help. I’m going to go kill that genie once and for all.”

Nodding, Kristy gets out of the car, running to where Easton is lying. Nothing I can say will surprise her anymore.

I don’t know how to kill a djinn, but cutting off the head or cutting out the heart both seem like a good idea. I’ll burn them each separately, just to be sure. The creaking of healing bones echoes through the otherwise empty forest. I hold up my hand, summoning another fistful of blue hellfire. It’s just enough to light up the ground in front of me, and holding it is starting to feel right, comforting even.

Making a face as I eye the letter opener in my hand, I get to my knees right next to the djinn and position the blade—if you can even call it that—above the djinn’s chest. I’m about to bring down the dull blade when I remember Bael’s attack. He created his own monsters out of tree roots who were able to go under my warding to get to me.

We didn’t know how to kill them either, yet for some reason, my blood was like poison. I have all of my angel abilities unlocked now. Will the same work for other demons as well?

There’s only one way to find out, and I grunt in pain as I use the letter opener to reopen a healing scab on my forearm. Smearing the blood over the blade, I move my hand up to the side of her neck. It’ll be an easier place to stab since there are no bones to go through.

The djinn’s eyes fly open right as I stab the letter opener into her neck as hard as I can. Her dark blue blood starts to sizzle and she writhes in pain. I jump back to my feet, hold my hands over her body, and say, “ignis.”

Fire erupts around her, and I take a few more steps back, adding blue hellfire to the mix. Her screams go from human to demonic, echoing all around, shrill and gravely at the same time. The regular yellow flames take on a greenish hint and then turn blue, and warmth surrounds my head.

“Not now,” I say through gritted teeth, knowing Kristy will freak out if she finds out I might have accidentally tried to stake a claim on Osiris’s throne. Bringing my hands up, I try to pat out the flames but my fingers go right through them. And dammit, I like the way the fire feels, and it hits me that what I thought was comfort was actually the feeling of power.

Andthatis comforting to me.

“Callie?” Kristy’s voice comes from the road. “We need to go. Easton doesn’t look too good.”

Swallowing hard, I bring my hands together, containing the hellfire that’s still burning the body of the djinn. It’s magic and burns brighter and hotter than regular fire, reducing the djinn to ash in only a few seconds. The blue light glowing above us dims and I let out a breath, relieved this is over.

Once the fire is nothing but sparking embers, I run back to the road. Easton is slumped over in the passenger seat, and Kristy is nervously standing by the driver’s side, looking into the woods for me. I snatch my jacket up from the ground and rush into the backseat.

“Hospital?” Kristy asks, closing her door and putting the car in drive.

“Yeah.” My jacket must have fallen off when Binx and Kristy were getting Easton into the car, and I ball it into my lap, feeling for the scarab again. It’s still in my pocket and as tempted as I am to take it out, I leave it.

We don’t need any more bad luck.

“What happened?” Kristy’s eyes meet mine for a split second as she looks into the rearview mirror.

“We were on our way to the Covenstead,” I start and then stop. Kristy doesn’t know that I broke into the Order’s archives last night. None of my friends do. Evander just knows that I needed his help with something potentially dangerous, but not one of my friends are aware of what went down.

And that’s when I realize they’ve been a little distant since I left the Covenstead. They’ve texted, checking up on me, but it’s almost as if they’ve stepped back and let me go into crazy-research mode to more or less get it out of my system.

Trying to ignore the lump in my throat, I take in a slow breath. “Last night, Easton helped me get the oracle Julian had been talking about. It’s…it’s a rock, basically, and I’m hoping to use it to communicate with Osiris. When we were getting the oracle, this ring caught my eye but I didn’t take it, I’m sure.”

“Take it? From where?”

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