deadly reach expanding wider with each new acquisition.
I was right about you, it purred. You are worth a hundred of them.
I scowled. Surely more than that.
Its mocking laughter echoed inside my soul. It found me arrogant. It hungered to eat me, become me, assimilate me, steal everything I’d worked so hard to become.
With enormous effort, I made a box, and deposited myself within it. I ended up with less than half of me inside, it had the other half.
Battle is futile. I existed long before your puny race came along and will exist long after you are gone.
It yanked savagely.
I stretched long and painfully thin, dug mental feet beneath the rim of my box. I needed a name, damn it. I wasn’t leaving without one and I would be leaving.
Who are you?
God, Death. Soulstealer.
But I caught a name beneath it, deep beneath. It was proud, far more arrogant than me. It wanted its name said, over and over, it commanded its soulless army to repeat an endless chant, worshipping it. That was the indecipherable chant I’d heard through those dark mirrors.
Balor.
It was a place to start. I instantly embraced the Hunter’s darkness within, encouraged it to explode inside me, slam into my brain, back down to my heart, then raised both hands and flung them at it.
How are you moving? Balor screamed.
I released bolt after bolt of pale blue—
Holy hell, where was I?
Rocketing through a wormhole, achieving superluminal velocity, faster than I’d ever managed in my slipstream, exploding into open space, drawing to a sudden complete halt in the middle of a circle of Hunters.
She comes, they gonged. It’s time.
I hovered there, feeling as if I stood in a doorway, one land behind me, one land ahead; both fascinating, both real, and all I had to do was lift my foot and take a step either way.
And for a split second I hungered to go forward not back, to feel great, black Hunter wings churning ice as I soared, exploring the mysteries of the universe, no door barred to me, to be so bloody powerful and untamed and wild and free, the biggest bad in the universe, owning the skies, tasting of stardust and eternity, and it felt oddly as if I belonged there, as if my destiny was writ in these very stars—
But.
My people.
NO, IT’S NOT TIME, I roared, resisting with every ounce of my will. MY WORLD NEEDS ME!
Then I was rocketing back through that wormhole at a dizzying speed and I was in the room with Balor, and my beautiful pale blue lightning was exploding, not only from my hands but my body, crackling out in powerful bursts, jolting the god, again and again, and Balor was roaring inside my head, screaming with pain, then he was buckling in the corner, doubling over, clutching his leg, and he whipped his head back and roared at me, as if insulted beyond enduring, You wounded my fucking leg!
I gathered myself to hurl a bolt straight into his face.
Balor dropped his mask over his eye and exploded into a cloud of misty, damp black dust that smelled of coffin linings and the sterile chemicals of autopsy rooms and morgues, so cloying and suffocating that I couldn’t breathe.
Abruptly, he was gone.
I tried to whirl and scan the room, in case he’d circled back for another attack, but I had no sense of space, couldn’t comprehend myself in relationship to it.
My strength was decimated, both from the tug of war over my soul and the staggering high voltage still sparking beneath my skin.
I drew a ragged breath then another, trying desperately to center myself.