“Say that again,” I whispered as I heard Kaine rise behind me.
The Light One, clearly bested, smiled defiantly. “She was a whore to the darkness.” His gaze flickered to where Kaine stood behind me—where my wings spread wide. “As is her daughter.”
“I am no one’s whore.” I sliced the blade through his neck and dropped his head to the ground. “And neither was she.” As he bled out at my feet, I turned to Kaine, who stood guard. “I could fix your wing, but only if you keep your hands to yourself in return. Oz has warned me...”
His smile grew wicked. “He always was smarter than I gave him credit for.”
“What does he fear you will do?”
“What I plan to do when you agree to my terms.”
I looked at his wing hanging limp at his side. “Can you turn it off?” I asked. “This ability? Can you control it, or is it inherent in your touch?”
Caution flashed behind his eyes. They, too, gazed at his broken appendage that had not healed, from what I could see. Perhaps the Dark Ones were not as invincible as I had presumed.
“I can control it.”
“Do so, and I will heal you. Do not, and I will leave you to perish. Choose quickly,” I said, eyeing the fray in the distance. “There are other matters that require my attention.”
His jaw worked furiously as he contemplated his fate. “Do it,” he finally bit out.
“Try to trick me and I will make you pay, Dark One.”
“Just do it.”
I reached for his wing and took it in my hands. When nothing ominous occurred, I did as the Healer had done. Seconds later, he was in the air, headed for what little remained of the fight.
The Light Ones’ numbers were nearly gone.
My brothers, Oz, and the Dragon were all accounted for.
I hurried toward them, anger renewing my resolve. I was tired from the fight, the lightning, and the healing, but there were more to slay and vengeance to reap, and I would not rest until every last one of them was dead. Oz stalked toward me, the loud clanging of blade meeting blade echoing through the plains. Then he stopped suddenly and turned toward the trees. My heart began to race as I watched my brothers and the Dark Ones do the same. The Dragon, too. Only Drew, the Light Ones, and I still moved.
The sound of twisted laughter prickled my skin in a way that terrified me.
I knew exactly to whom it belonged.
As I drew closer, I saw the unthinkable. I wondered if it was one of Phobos’ thralls, but I knew that it was not. While Oz and the others stared off into the distance, unmoving, Drew fought the remaining Light Ones—alone.
And the odds were not in his favor.
I flew toward them, lightning coursing through me with every slice of blade that got through Drew’s defense and bit into his flesh. One of the Light Ones got past him, sword raised high to slice through Kierson as he stood motionless. My feet met soil and I let loose a bolt of lightning so hot and strong that it incinerated the angel before he could swing his sword.
That laughter haunting me grew louder still.
“Phobos!” I shouted. “Show yourself!”
Far on the other side of the clearing, standing so the light cast him in a golden aura, was the god of fear himself. He looked nothing like his brother, whose olive skin and black hair suited his dark persona. Phobos was quite the opposite; deathly pale skin and white hair stuck out against the lush forest behind him in the distance—a ghost of the woods. A specter of fear and despair.
“Khara!” Drew called. His voice faltered as another blade gashed his arm.
I raised my hands, exhaustion tugging at my resolve as I turned to the remaining Light Ones. “Tell Zeus this has proven useful.”
They hesitated for only a moment before they charged me. I cut them down without a thought, leaving only piles of smoke and ash.
As I ran to Drew to see how he had fared, I felt a shift in the air. And though I could not tell what it was, it felt tainted and wrong, covered in an oily film of darkness that I could not shake. Drew’s expression tightened as though he, too, had felt it—knew that something wicked was coming.
“We need to kill him,” Drew said, looking back to where Phobos stood, smiling.
“Gladly,” I replied, raising my hands again. My anger had not abated, especially not when I looked at the pained expressions on my brothers’ faces. Whatever hell they were living, I would put an end to it—for good.
I shot a final bolt of lightning at Phobos and watched it strike him in the chest. His laughter ceased immediately, but he did not. He looked down at his scorched flesh, at the wound blossoming on it, and scowled. His jet-black eyes that so deeply contrasted the rest of him narrowed, and his expression turned feral. I wondered if that had been the final thing Eos had seen before he had killed her.
He launched himself toward us with a massive leap and landed twenty yards away. I wondered why he had not attacked us directly, given that my lightning had proved little more than a nuisance. I wondered if fire would inflict more damage—or perhaps my wings. Maybe that was why he did not travel to the in-between or the Underworld. Perhaps he feared the weapons of the Dark Ones.
Just as we moved to attack Phobos, I heard footsteps at our backs. I turned to see the twins and Casey rushing past a motionless Dragon, headed toward us, weapons drawn, their eyes still blank but focused on us. Oz flew like a rocket at me, while the Dark Ones stood motionless, and I knew that we were in trouble. Phobos had a hold on their minds, and he was using it to turn those I cared about into weapons to be used against us.
I knew that I could break his thrall if I could get close enough to do so, but how was the question that ran on a loop in my mind as they barreled toward us, poised to attack. I wondered if I would have enough time to do so before Drew and I fell victim to Phobos’ play.
“Brace yourself,” I said to Drew as I took a fighting stance. “Do all you can to stave them off but not hurt them.”
Drew nodded just as Casey’s blade whizzed past his head. Kierson and Pierson converged on me, and I sliced my wing at them to push them back. Together, they spread out to circle me, until Oz landed and shoved them aside. His glowing white eyes bore holes in me as he stalked toward where I stood, wings spread wide. There was no hint of the being I knew in that stare; just the cold, brutal emptiness of that which he had become. A Dark One in its truest form.
“Ozereus,” I said, his name a warning on my tongue. I had hoped that hearing his proper name from one of his own would help pull him to the present, as he had once done for me. That our connection would prove a tether I could use to haul him out of the thrall of Phobos.
The sword he slashed at my neck told me it was not.
And so began a war between us that mimicked our training—an endless battle that would leave us either exhausted or dead. I could not be sure which result Phobos desired, and I had no time to look back and read his expression to find out. Oz was a terror of blade and wing and fist, relentless in his pursuit.
I prayed that Drew was faring well against his attackers. Our brothers.
I ducked a blow from Oz and parried with a kick to his stomach that launched him back. I capitalized on the moment and landed on top of him, my hands clamped around his head. I tore into his mind as quickly as I could, not knowing what he might do while I straddled his waist, defenseless against any attack. It took only moments to find the familiar wall of Phobos encasing his mind. I called upon my fire and lightning and destroyed it with a single thought: YOU CANNOT HAVE HIM!
I gasped as I pulled away, both mentally and physically, and was on my feet in a second, prepared to fight Oz if Phobos took hold of him again. When his eyes went from glowing to brown, and I saw realization settle into his stare, I knew he was all right—or at least no longer in whatever hell Phobos had trapped him in.
“We have to help Drew!” I yelled as I hauled him to his feet, then ran to where our former leader stood, bloody and battered, thwarting off our brothers’ attacks w
ith increasing futility. The pain in his eyes was not from injury, but the knowledge that, to win, he would have to slay them all—provided he could.
“Oz!” I called as I tackled Kierson from behind. He struggled against me, and I punched his face until he was stunned enough to allow me to take hold of his mind. Before I did, I glanced back to find Oz staving off Casey, leaving Drew to fight Pierson alone.
Kierson punched me, knocking me off, and I sprang to my feet only seconds before he swung his sword at me.
“Kierson!” I screamed, parrying the blow. “You must hear me! Whatever you see—it is not real!”
“You have to get into their heads!” Oz yelled. “You have to force him out!”
“There’s another way,” Drew grunted as Pierson grazed his shoulder with a blade. Then my quiet brother went painfully still—the way he did when a premonition of death came over him. His twin followed suit seconds later, and fear once again spiked in my veins.
“Do it now, Khara!” Oz’s words spurred me into action, and I put my hands on their heads and worked to pull them from Phobos’ thrall as visions of a grim future played in their minds.
I saw that grim future, too, and I let loose a banshee cry that would have shattered glass.
“Can you speed it up a little, new girl?” Oz said as he fought off Casey. “Before I actually have to start hurting him?”
I turned to help him just as Drew made a move to run. “Drew!” I yelled as I started after him. “You will remain here until I am finished,” I said as I grabbed Casey from behind. “That is an order!”
Drew looked at me over his shoulder, and my heart fell to my feet. “This is my fight, Sister,” he replied, a sad smile tainting his expression, “and you don’t give the orders around here—I do. Now, NONE OF YOU MOVE.” His words rang out through the plains. I felt rooted in place, as though the ground itself were holding me still. I looked on helplessly as Drew stormed toward Phobos, his weapon drawn to slay the foe who had, with such cowardice, cut him down once before.
“Oz! You must stop him!”
I looked past my struggling brother to find anger in Oz’s eyes. “I can’t move…”
“Drew! STOP!”
I felt the power in my words as I called after him, and he ground to a halt only feet from Phobos, stopped by the very magical ability he had just used on me. It was then that I realized what I had done, and I panicked to undo it.
“RUN, DREW!”
But that order came too late. By the time his foot lifted from the ground, the icy white blade that Phobos brandished ran red with blood. It plummeted through Drew’s chest, just as Kaine’s obsidian feather had skewered Oz days before. The god of fear pulled it free and smiled.
“Don’t you see, Khara? They cannot save you…”
As my feet came loose, I charged him, lightning flying from my hands. But just as I was about to reach him, he disappeared. The blast blew past, annihilating a tree in the distance. It exploded into pieces, just as my heart did, bits of wooden shrapnel raining down upon me as I dropped next to Drew and pressed my hands to his mangled chest.
“Brother,” I said, my voice cracking, “stay with me. You cannot leave, Drew. Do you hear me? You cannot leave…that is an order.”
“Khara,” Oz said, his hand pressed against my back. I turned to look at him, wondering how he had freed himself from Drew’s magic. Then the truth impaled me as he spoke, delivering the news I was so desperate to deny, even though it was plain from my brother’s blank stare and the wound in his chest that would not heal. “Khara…he’s gone.” When I would not release my hold on Drew, Oz reached around and gently took my wrists in his hands. “You have to let him go…”
But I could not, for releasing him would mean acknowledging my failure—my inability to adapt quickly enough to save him. I was the reason he had fallen at the hands of Phobos—again. It was all my fault.
My brothers loomed above me, all of them staring down at Drew with a renewed sense of pain that I could not abate—could not stop. How they would ever be able to look at me again with anything but disdain in their eyes was beyond comprehension.
“This is my fault,” I said, still unwilling to release my dead brother.
“This was Phobos’ doing, Khara,” Pierson said. “Not yours.”
“Why did Drew do that?” Kierson asked, a slight break in his voice as he spoke. “Why would he go after him alone?”
“Because he had a score to settle with Phobos. And because that’s who Drew was,” Casey said, his tone mournful, yet angry. “Our fearless leader—even if he only just remembered.”
Faint footsteps approached. I looked past the others to find Kaine and his Dark Ones there, staring down at me and my dead brother.
“We have done what I said we would do—I have honored my end of the deal,” he said, no sympathy in his tone. “I will await your return to the Underworld and your response. Perhaps the sting of losing your brother will remind you what is at stake if you do not agree to my terms.”
“You motherfucking piece of shit,” Casey growled, unsheathing a blade. The Dragon caught his arm before he could let it fly at the vacant hole in Kaine’s chest where a heart should have been.
“Go,” was all I could say as a new level of rage boiled within me, temporarily eclipsing my sadness. All that mattered in that moment was Drew. His life lost again.
My failure.
The Dark Ones flew to the narrow passage, then disappeared through it in single file.
“We should go, too,” Oz said, drawing my attention. His hands grasped me with a touch more intensity—a deeper sense of urgency. “We can’t stay here, Khara. Phobos might return—”
“Then let him,” I snapped, ripping free of his grasp. I shot to my feet, Drew’s lifeless body beside them still, and stared at my remaining brothers. Those that had survived his death before. With every breath I took, the fire inside me raged and the lightning crackled and the vengeance I sought grew more real. I reached for Phobos with my mind, tugging on the hint of connection we had shared when he had tortured me with visions of my home in ruins and my brothers’ corpses. The one that had grown stronger with every dream of mine he had invaded. I followed it until it met something solid, something real—and then I sent a vision of my own. One of him falling at my feet, his smoldering body writhing in pain.
This is how you end, my mind whispered to his before I let loose another banshee cry that nearly deafened those near me, signaling the falling of the fear god. For he would fall by my hands and no one else’s. I would kill the unkillable.
I would avenge Drew.
26
“Khara—” Kierson said softly before I cut him off.
“I am going to get him back,” I said, headed for the front gates.
“Hades’ power has still not fully returned,” Casey cautioned. “He cannot do what you want, even if he wanted to. And he will not let you take him.”
“I do not require his permission or his assistance,” I replied. “One way or another, Drew is coming home.”
Without further argument, I shot into the sky, the objections of my brothers fading on the winds that carried me toward the passageway. I landed and ran through as though nothing else mattered. I could feel Oz gaining on me, so I pushed myself harder until I emerged from the corridor and shot into the air, passing through the Hallowed Gates without pause, headed for the Underworld. I did not stop until I stood at the gates of my father’s realm. Moments later, Oz was at my side.
He said nothing, but I could feel the weight of his gaze on my face.
“I do not wish to hear your warnings,” I said. “I am aware of what I am doing.”
“I sure hope that’s true, because I need you focused on the clusterfuck at hand, which is Kaine and the others, not Drew.”
“Kaine stands in my way, so he dies. It is that simple.”
“And if he wipes your other brothers from existence because you can’t see past your own rage, what then?”
“He will not have the chance,” I said as I started down the stony cavern toward the Acheron. “He will die, and I will get Drew. That is my plan. Join me if you wish, or do not. I will not argue with you about this.”
I could hear the mighty flapping of the Dragon’s wings echoing through the cave, followed by the shouts of my brothers as they raced to catch us.
“Khara,” Oz called after me, “I don’t mean to be a total dick about this, but have you stopped to consider that maybe the weapon Phobos used on Drew is the same as the ones Deimos gave your brothers when you let the souls of the Oudeis loose? The kind that eliminates them—forever?”
I stopped and turned to face him slowly. “He will be there.”
Oz did not seem to share my conviction—or my delusion—whichever would prove to be the case.
With renewed purpose, I ran toward the Acheron. My body itched with anger waiting to be released. It fueled me, as it fueled my brothers, who were now at my side, armed and ready to take on Kaine. To take back our fallen brother. And as we entered the long hall leading to the Acheron, the perfect place to release that anger awaited.
On the far side stood Kaine and what remained of his army of Dark Ones, surrounding a legion of my dead brothers. Hades was nowhere to be seen, and I knew he was keeping his word to protect my mother—Deimos, too. Perhaps that was for the best. I did not wish for my father to see what I was about to do.
I looked at the crowd of fallen PC, obsidian feathers extended toward them. Weapons that could wipe them from existence permanently. My anger pulsed through my veins.
“Kaine!” I shouted, drawing his attention. “My debt to you was paid by saving your life at the Hallowed Gates. To spare you once more, I will offer you and your army a chance to leave now.”
“Or what?” he asked, amusement in his tone. “What will the Princess of the Underworld do if we do not comply?”
I felt the corner of my mouth curl, as Oz’s so often did. “She will get very, very angry.”
The leader of the Dark Ones smiled back at me. He delighted in something he found staring back at him.
Unmade (Unborn Book 4) Page 19