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Summary
Chapter 59: Carpe Kill-Em
Grace claws at Finn, trying to fight him off. He keeps shaking his head and apologizing, explaining that he has to kill her before Lia can use her to execute her plan, as if she does so, it could end the world as they know it. Flint is clearly deeply upset, but continues to strangle her, saying he has no choice. Suddenly, the pressure lightens as Finn’s fingers break and bend backwards. He slumps to the floor. Grace gasps for air, also falling to the ground, and looks for a way out, noting that Lia is still unconscious and apparently out of commission. She has no idea what is going on, but because of the unnatural way his fingers were bending she surmises Jaxon is probably the reason Flint couldn’t kill her. She’s right, and Jaxon bursts into the room and begins to fight with a newly conscious Flint.
Flint transforms into his full dragon state, and he and Jaxon begin an intense battle. He sends a volley of fire at Jaxon, who blocks it and starts to direct it back toward him using telekinesis. Seeing Flint is distracted, Grace starts to edge out of the room, hoping that she can crawl away to safety. Unfortunately her attempts to be quiet aren’t enough to evade vampire senses, and she doesn’t get far before Lia stops her, shoving her to the ground.
Chapter 60: Some Call it Paranoia, But I Call It An Evil Bitch Trying to Use You As a Human Sacrifice
Lia grabs Grace roughly and drags her up the tunnel. She’s whispering furiously at her to shut up, aiming kicks and slaps at Grace as she bundles her down the muddy hallway back the way they came. Grace screams, trying to attract Jaxon’s attention, but the sounds of his battle with Flint are deafeningly loud. Lia, who is not taking any more chances with Grace escaping, kicks her in the head hard enough to almost knock her out again. Grace is furious but can’t do anything but keep going in the direction toward which Lia forces her. She thinks furiously about the fact that the only reason she is in Alaska at all is that Lia killed her parents, and wonders how long this plan has been in place. They arrive back at the room with the altar, and Grace tries to fight her off as Lia attempts to force her onto it. Grace tries physical force and playing possum, but nothing works. It seems like all is lost, until Grace lunges for the book lying on the altar, and rips out the pages it’s open to. Lia screams in fury, jumping on Grace and trying to grab the spell back. Grace reaches out and plunges the spell into the fire of the candles.
Analysis
It's ironic that after the disdain Grace expressed about being treated like a damsel in distress, Jaxon's categorizing her that way actually saves her from Flint's attempt to strangle her. There's a vicious moment where, as he begins to crush her windpipe, Finn's fingers are suddenly broken and bent backwards. Grace is briefly confused, but then understands it must be Jaxon using telekinesis to save her. On cue, Jaxon bursts into the room like a white knight dressed “all in Gucci black” and begins a furious fight with Flint, who has turned back into a dragon.
There's an interesting opposition in the fighting styles of these two characters, especially given how they normally interact with others. Flint, usually more restrained and less volatile than Jaxon, is fighting all- out, breathing gusts of fire and flapping around wildly. Jaxon, by contrast, is far more controlled here, and appears to have harnessed his emotions more effectively than before. Grace, seeing the fight turning in Jaxon's favor, tries to discreetly escape. However, like almost all of Grace's plans when Jaxon is involved, she’s interrupted before she can get what she wants. Lia seizes Grace and begins to heave her back the way she came, to the room where she was originally chained to the altar. Blood is everywhere here: the walls are lined with vessels of blood, and Grace and Lia struggle ankle-deep in bloody mud. Lia snarls at Grace that she has spent too long organizing this ritual sacrifice to let Grace mess it up for her.
As the two fight, Grace uses every scrap of strength she has and every trick she knows in order to try and survive. She knows that she will definitely join her parents beyond the grave if she allows Lia to tie her up again. Seeing an opportunity, Grace does the only thing she can think of to make Lia let go of her. She tears a page out of the book that Lia has been reading Akkadian script from, plunging it into the flames of the candles in a last-ditch attempt to foil her murderous plans.
In this section, it’s not just Grace who is walking a thin line between life and death. Lia, devastated and living a half-life since Hudson’s death, desires nothing more than to bring him back. She also believes that everyone's life will improve if he can execute his genocidal vision where vampires rule over everyone. Because of this, she reasons that killing Grace will not just bring her partner back, but also convinces herself that it will also serve the greater good. Grace, whose life is already significantly tinged with death, finds her own life in jeopardy multiple times in this chapter. She's constantly on a tightrope of danger, as she could have been killed at any point since arriving in the tunnels. Unlike the others around her, Grace is a fragile human. The reader gets a real sense of this delicacy here, especially as the paranormal beings around her can fight each other with such frightening strength and ease.
