Page 103 of Despair
“Duck!” Mary shouted, then threw.
Blades whizzed by Daisy. Each target hit home. The creature jolted back a step. Mary was almost sixty, yet she’d not lost her touch. Flint darted about the broken lab behind Mary, collecting items, doing something with a determined look on his face.
“Concentrate on holding the gate,” Raven demanded, drawing Daisy’s attention back. “And I’ll—”
The creature lashed out. It’s claws shredded Raven’s shirt at the stomach.
“Get back!” Flint bellowed, barging past Mary. He used a lighter to set fire to a rag sticking out of a bottle then tossed it. It hit the creature. The glass broke. And chemical flames enveloped the being. Holding her bleeding middle, Raven booted the beast. It fell backward screaming into the black hole.
Daisy felt the atmosphere lighten a little, almost as though she was returning to normal—not upside down but half way.
“You sense that?” Raven’s eyes shot to Daisy. “The mystical energy is shifting.”
Panting and sweating, she stumbled to the wall beside Daisy where she collapsed. Her complexion was pasty as she met Daisy’s eyes.
“When balance is restored, do your thing,” she rasped.
Raven’s eyes fluttered. Her eyes rolled.
“Help her!” Daisy shouted to Mary, but the woman was already racing forward. She checked Raven’s wounds. Shredded claw marks ripped across the old wounds on her stomach. Daisy flinched at the glimpse of raw flesh.
“Get help,” Daisy said through her gritted teeth.
“The Sinners won’t let anyone else in,” Mary said, coming to her feet.
Daisy went cold. That tingling precognition sense she’d borrowed from Evan went haywire.
Wrong.
She almost lost her mental grip on the gate, but grasped it again as beings beyond pulsed and pushed at her.
It only occurred to her now that it was strange the Sinners had said to wait for Mary and Flint, and not the rest of her siblings. Not the Sinners, nor a priest, or someone else who could fight this evil trying to come through.
“Why won’t they let anyone in?” Daisy shouted.
Flint placed a calming hand on Daisy’s shoulder. “You know why.”
Her wild gaze darted to Flint, Mary, then to Julius still blubbering over a pile of sand. She looked at her hands stretched wide toward the gates. The yin-yang tattoo on her inner wrist glared at her. Balance must be restored. They’d removed two souls from each hole, but only the dark monsters had returned. And with Julius’s wife and daughter a pile of sand, two souls needed to go through the light gate in order to close it all.
“We couldn’t tell them because they would have found a way to stop us,” Mary explained. “And this way had the highest chance of success.”
Tears burned Daisy’s eyes and she shot accusatory eyes at Mary, who had clearly seen this in her visions. Why else had she been so determined to come?
“You promised,” Daisy accused. “You said no one would get left behind!”
Mary lifted her chin and took Flint’s hand. “I promised that no one you loved would get left behind. And, mija, despite our efforts, you don’t love us. Not the way you’re learning to love your siblings and I accept full responsibility for that.”
“We need to do this, Daisy,” Flint’s deep voice rumbled, just louder than the moans and wails coming from the dark hole. “We’ve lived a full life, something that was robbed from you. We need to show you how much you mean to this family.”
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Don’t do this. Two others can be sacrificed. I’ll be one, Julius can be the other.”
“It needs to be us.” Mary came up to Daisy, knowing full well Daisy could do nothing to stop her unless she released her hold on the gate. “I owe you this, mija. And Flint won’t let me do it alone. We decided together.”
Flint nodded, and tightened his grip on Mary’s hand. “This is our choice, Daisy. We’re making it willingly and we’re doing it out of love.”
“Family first,” Mary said. “Is something I always drilled into your siblings while they were growing up. It means the unit before the individual. You’re a part of that family, Daisy.”
“So are you!” she countered.