Page 111 of A Dangerous Bargain

“He’s gone,” Leonardo whispers. “You know it.”

If this doesn’t work, nothing else will. My brother will be trapped in hell forever. Florence will drown.

Lorenzo’s eyes lift. Cut to mine.

He lifts his hand. Sends something sailing across the room.

Feeling like my heart might explode, I catch it.

The dagger.

Pain is a crushing, wailing force, threatening to gut me, but I grit my teeth and heave forward, my gaze tunneling to the metallic blood on Piero’s face.

I plunge the dagger up into his belly with all my might.

He shudders, just as the old angel shuddered when Verrocchio’s sword ran him through. I remember how my magic faded the moment those hungry, haunted eyes went dark. The demon inside the workshop’s angel might’ve been immortal, but the body he possessed on earth wasn’t.

The devil’s eyes bulge wide. He slumps to his knees, pink bubbles frothing from his shocked mouth. He covers my shaking, blood-soaked hands with his and starts pulling the dagger from his body. The edges of the wound start to close—

Another force slams behind me, adds strength to my cause.

Leonardo pants in my ear, his body a furnace against my freezing back. “I can’t believe Verrocchio’s sodding morning lessons were useful!”

Together, we thrust the dagger deeper, higher.

And with a final spurt of blood, Piero falls against me.

Leonardo pulls me away, and Piero collapses face-first on the floor with a wet crunch.

The demons howl. One by one, they disappear in a scarlet blur. The roar of the storm becomes a growl, even if the oppressive sky remains. I hear hysterical footsteps race past and fade. Lorenzo fleeing.

Leonardo makes an awful, wounded sound. He gathers my broken body in his arms.

I murmur softly—the syllables of his name coming out scrambled—and brush his thigh, the only part of him I can reach. The edges of my vision wave and dance. “Find my brother.”

“No!” He presses his brow against mine. “You’ll find him yourself!”

I let myself hang heavy in his arms. He can believe whatever he wants, but the feeling in my hands and feet is already gone, the spreading numbness a dark shroud pulling over my sight. The warmth of him is a rocking boat, one to carry me into the afterlife.

I think I hear him begging someone.

A flare of light burns through my eyelids right as I’m about to tip over the edge of consciousness. I jolt back from the cliff with a pained moan.

“Leonardo da Vinci. I’ve come to honor my bargain with you.”

That voice.

I know it.

The room is noon-bright, all the light coming from a figure that radiates gold power.

Lupa.

Gone are the horns, the bloodied armor. The face she wears is the one she had when I met her, the stolen girl’s. Maddalena. The thought is a hazy dust mote. Someone needs to tell her family what happened.

Leonardo runs his hand over the black mark on his wrist, each breath a ragged pant. “I didn’t think you’d come. I thought you’d already done it.”

She bows her head, like an artist before an angel, begging for magic. “I gave Virgil his soul back before. Now I’m here for your bargain.”