Finale by Becca Fitzpatrick

Author:Becca Fitzpatrick
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780857072917
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Limited
Published: 2012-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

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I WOULD NOT SWEAR THE OATH. AND I WOULD NOT allow him to drag the words out of me. No matter how much pain he heaped on me, I had to stay strong. But a resilient defense alone wasn’t going to be enough to endure this. I needed an offense, and fast.

Counter his mind-tricks with a few of your own, I commanded myself. Dante had said mind-tricks were my best weapon. He’d said I was better at it than almost any Nephil he knew of. I’d fooled Patch. And I would fool Baruch now. I’d create my own reality and shove him so hard inside it, he wouldn’t know what hit him.

Squeezing my eyes shut to block out Baruch’s insidious chant to swear my oath, I catapulted myself inside his head. My greatest confidence came from knowing I’d consumed devilcraft earlier today. I didn’t trust my own strength, but the devilcraft made me a more powerful version of myself. It heightened my natural talents, including my aptitude for mind-tricks.

I fled down the dark, twisted corridors of Baruch’s mind, planting one explosion after another. I worked as quickly as I could, knowing that if I made one mistake, if I gave him any reason to think I was reconstructing his thoughts, if I left any evidence of my presence . . .

I chose the one thing I knew would alarm Baruch. Nephilim.

The Black Hand’s army! I thought explosively at Baruch. I assailed his thoughts with an image of Dante rushing into the room, followed by twenty, thirty, no—forty Nephilim. I leaked pictures of their enraged eyes and hard fists into his subconscious. To make the vision even more convincing, I made Baruch think he was watching his own men being dragged away captive by Nephilim.

Despite all this, I felt Baruch’s resistance. He stood nailed to the spot, not reacting as he should have at being surrounded by Nephilim. I feared that he suspected something was off, and plunged ahead.

Mess with our leader, mess with us—all of us. I flung Dante’s venomous words into Baruch’s mind. Nora isn’t going to swear fealty now. Not now, not ever. I created a picture of Dante picking up the poker from the fireplace toolkit and plunging it into Baruch’s wing scars. I shoved the vivid image deep inside Baruch’s brain.

I heard Baruch fall to his knees before I opened my eyes. He was down on all fours, shoulders hunched. An expression of utter shock seized his features. His eyes glazed, and spittle pooled in the corners of his mouth. His hands reached for his back, grasping at air. He was trying to remove the poker.

I exhaled in weary relief. He’d bought it. He’d bought my mind-trick.

A figure moved near the doorway.

I shot to my feet and snatched the real poker from the fireplace. I raised it off my shoulder, readying to swing, when Dabria stepped into view. In the semidarkness, her hair glowed glacial white. Her mouth was a grim line. “You mind-tricked him?” she guessed.

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