Unfortunately, something must have caught on to us though, maybe a camera or motion sensor, because a couple of the soldiers unexpectedly began heading in our direction, while a large commotion developed inside one of the buildings.
The metahuman who had been heading to meet up with our target took off in a run too.
“Dammit,” I hissed, glancing back at Blair. “Our cover’s blown. Hurry.”
We both took off in a sprint straight for the hanger. There was no point in hiding now. Someone barked out for us to halt, but that wasn’t going to happen. I shot my blood out, but not towards them – I couldn’t reach them while being so low. Instead, I wrapped myself around Blair’s torso to get her out of harm’s way, jerking as hard as I could to toss her through the air towards the hanger.
Again, when my blood touched her, she seemed to know what to expect, as if we were completely in sync.
Like a sling shot, my movement all but came to a halt as she zipped by me. I quickly sucked my blood back inside my body though, watching her hit the ground rolling before fluidly popping back up on her feet to dash into the huge building. The two massive metal doors were open just wide enough for her to slip through. She unloaded her gun, shooting a soldier just on the inside, before bolting across the room to meet her target head-on.
My body was immediately assaulted with machine gun fire, the bullets easily breaking through any shield I might have had from Liz’s ability, my weakened condition rendering it useless. All my instincts told me to turn back and destroy this new threat, my freezing body begging me to feed, pulling me towards the warmth behind me, but they were too far away.
The precious few seconds, maybe as long as half a minute, that it might take for me to backtrack to kill these men would be all it might take for the mission to fail. Blair needed me, and while she might be able to kill this guy on her own, I couldn’t risk it – the consequences of failure were far too great.
I pushed onward, my internal organs ruptured from the gunfire, my instincts fighting against me every step, and finally managed to slip through the opening. I immediately spun around, more gunfire hitting my chest, and I used every ounce of strength I had left to slam the large metal doors shut, twisting the metal so it couldn’t easily be opened up by human hands.
“Stop!” A voice barked out. A voice I recognized, and simultaneously hated.
I whipped back around in a flash, terror gripping my chest, and ran after Blair who had frozen solid.
My blood ran cold when I saw her.
Because he had her.
But then I realized, she had him too.
Chapter 19: Fooled
A single command was all he managed, before Blair had trapped him in her gaze. The horrified look on his face said it all. She was helpless to continue, but she had done the one thing I needed from her. He couldn’t look away, his focus trapped on her demonic eye, panic making him immobile.
I ran as hard as I could across the concrete, my blood shooting out of my back and sides like a massive eldritch horror heading straight towards him. A massive crimson hand with twenty bony fingers ready to snatch up my prey and drain him dry.
However, just as I passed Blair, the second metahuman burst through a doorway into the massive open space.
I stumbled and rapidly came to a halt, my entire world shattering when I recognized the face of the girl staring back at me with wide eyes.
It was Sarah.
Not just some random Sarah, the name so common I hadn’t even considered it as an option, but Farah’s twin, Sarah.
I felt like I was choking on air as all the implications hit me all at once.
No. This couldn’t be happening. This had to be a dream. Please let this just be a horrible nightmare. Trinity was safe on the other side of the world. I could feel Liz still – she was still beneath my feet, so please. This couldn’t be real.
“Jake?” Sarah asked in surprise, staring at me in horror, despite that terror not leaking into her voice.
“W-Where’s Trinity?” I choked out, my blood pulling back into my body.
“S-She’s with my sister,” she stuttered. “Your sister,” she corrected herself immediately. “Don’t you remember?”
“What?” I gasped, suddenly sensing the truth in her words. Trinity was safe. She was with my sister. And this fifteen-year-old girl was my sister too – they were my twin sisters. And that man, frozen in place, the man I had been after just a moment ago, was my brother. How could I have forgotten something so important?
“Jake,” Blair urgently whispered not far behind me. “Hurry – I can’t hold him forever.”
I looked back at her in shock.
What was she even suggesting? That I kill my own brother? But unexpectedly, the panicked expression on her face hit me like a wave of nausea. I could smell her scent, thick in the air, heavy with fear. It made me feel sick. My head snapped towards my brother, seeing a horrified expression frozen on his face.
She was hurting him.
But he was also making her afraid.
I felt torn.
I shifted my gaze to the floor, in the direction I knew Ava was waiting underground. She was inactive, and understandably so. A comment she had made several days ago echoed in my thoughts, ‘Even if you both remind me of my little sisters.’
Ava would never attack her sister. I knew that without a doubt. She wouldn’t even kill her psychotic father.
Sarah spoke up again. “Jake, your brother and sister are really good people. We are a part of a special family called the Grim Grimoire. We are working really hard to make this world a safe place for all the Grimoires like us. And we really want you to help. We can all live in peace one day.”
My eyes widened in surprise, stunned that my family had been working so hard to benefit everyone like us. And what had I been doing with my life all this time? Only living for myself really.
Sarah quickly continued after a moment. “Jake, Liz is really sick. She’s been in the hospital since you left. But your family has been taking good care of her while you’ve been away.” She gestured towards the man. “Your brother, Abel, made sure all the doctors are giving her the best medical treatment possible.”
I knew she was telling the truth. Everything about her radiated sincerity. Every word of it was honest. Liz was sick somehow, and this man – this man who I wanted to kill only a moment ago – was responsible for making sure the doctors took excellent care of her.
Because my brother Abel could make anyone do what he wanted.
Anyone.
Blair spoke up again, her voice desperate. “Jake, please.”
My eyes narrowed.
My older brother, who I loved dearly, could make anyone do what he wanted. I trusted him with every fiber of my being, but there was something I feared too – betrayal. I knew for a fact my brother would never betray me, and yet what if he did?
Abel could control anyone. I knew he would never do anything to hurt me – he would never make Trinity do something I wouldn’t approve of, and I knew he had only used his power on Ava because he hadn’t realized it would hurt me.
But that was the problem. With a power like that, he could hurt me, even by accident. He could betray me. He might have already, depending on what he had done to Ava before she returned to me. And then there was Trinity to think about too. Liz was in the hospital, but what about Trinity? Had my brother already betrayed me? Had he already violated Trinity? Already stolen her from me?
I had no way of knowing right now.
But I did know one thing.
I was selfish.
Too selfish.
And too hungry.
He was my brother Abel, and I was his brother…
Cain.
My blood pooled into my core, a thread of it bolting out at my body at full speed. It hit my brother with such force, that it knocked him off his feet, slamming him into the wall. The connection between him and Blair was broken by the attack, but it was too late.
I
was already draining him dry, the thread of blood thickening into a tendril, his warmth seeping into my body like a black hole sucking up light. In a matter of seconds, his skin looked decrepit, his life gone.
Just like that.
“NO!” Sarah shrieked at the top of her lungs. “YOU MONSTER!”
I was a monster, and the moment my condition returned to normal, that truth hit me like a ton of bricks landing on my head. I sank to my knees, my world shattering all over again.
I had just killed my brother. I could never take that back.
I was a monster.
“NO!” I cried out, slamming my forehead straight into the floor, it shattering into a spiderweb of cracks. My fingers clawed into the concrete like it was mud. “What have I done?!” I choked out.
“Jake,” Blair said urgently.
“NO!” I repeated. “NO, NO, NO, NO!”
Unexpectedly, a weightless body curled over mine, before solidifying into a warmth like none other.
“Jake,” Ava whispered in my ear. “It’s okay. It’s over.”
I broke. My soul shattered. My eyes burst with tears. I began sobbing incessantly. “I’m a monster!” I cried out. “I killed my brother!”
“You’re not a monster,” she replied desperately. “You’re my savior.”
I shook my head, pressing my forehead so hard into the floor, that it cracked more from the movement. “I killed my brother,” I sobbed. “I’m a monster.”
Ava wrapped herself around my trembling body as tightly as possible, her next words coming out choked. “You’re not a monster,” she managed, followed by a shaky breath. “I could never love a monster.”
Every muscle in my body froze, and my mind went blank. Because with her words, a burst of heat erupted from Ava and settled deep into my core. The warmth I had been sensing, the heat radiating off of her like she was my own personal sun, it was affection.
Her affection.
Her love.
I was feeling her love towards me, sensing the waves of tender energy, now pulsing throughout my body like I was being bombarded with a thousand hugs instead of just one – one that unexpectedly mattered more to me than anything else in the world in this moment.
“Jake,” Ava whispered after a moment, sounding desperate. “Jake, I love you. Please don’t leave me.”
What was she even saying? Did she think that my sudden silence was because I had snapped?
I hadn’t snapped. Not since her affection had bombarded me last time on the plane ride, when they had lied about Trinity. Ava had kept me from snapping. And she kept me from snapping now, though now my mind was just empty.
With my silence, I realized someone was crying. Sobbing in devastation. I twisted my head to look up at Blair standing over me, her expression intense, but not sad. When I met her gaze, she dropped down to her knees, wrapping her fingers firmly around my wrist. My own fingers were buried in the concrete – they relaxed when she grabbed me, and I took a shaky breath, keeping my mind empty.
I couldn’t handle having thoughts right now, so instead, all I did was experience the warmth all around me.
The devastated sobbing stopped briefly, as a trembling voice spoke up. “KILL THEM!” Sarah unexpectedly shrieked into a radio, before she ran out of the room, slamming the door shut behind her.
I mentally prepared myself for an attack, but nothing happened right away.
And then, suddenly, everything happened in the blink of an eye.
Instantly, the ground disappeared beneath us, and a torrential vacuum sucked us downward into an empty abyss. I rapidly grabbed Ava and Blair with my blood, yanking them both into my arms as I turned around to look up at the hole we had fallen through, already far in the distance due to the speed of our descent. Everything else was black.
Pitch-black.
Empty.
Truly empty.
Not even air.
I shot my blood up to the ceiling as I began suffocating, but just as I grabbed ahold of the top of the room, the massive hole slammed shut, blinking out of existence, cutting off some of my blood with it.
In its place, a million tiny specks of light filled my vision.
It wasn’t until my body became shadowy, Ava rapidly shifting all of us, that I finally began registering where we were…
But I couldn’t believe it.
I twisted my head around in horror to see a sight I could only wish I was hallucinating.
The planet Earth, far beneath us, as we floated helplessly in outer space.
The sensation of suffocating came to a complete halt the moment Ava finished shifting us, but as I looked at Blair’s shadowy form, I realized we had a major problem. Even if we could somehow survive this, even if we could somehow make it back to the surface, Blair wouldn’t live through turning solid again.
She was as good as dead, no matter what.
I tightened my grip around her waist, prompting her head to snap back in my direction, before looking over my shoulder again. I turned to look in that direction too, only to be shocked by another sight.
A bright blue moon floating in front of an impossibly massive black hole, like a glowing demonic eye staring at us. Despite my shock, a thought strayed into my mind, thinking that the blue moon was all wrong. It was nighttime right now, which meant we should be seeing the red moon – the sight before us should look like Blair’s demonic eye, not mine.
And yet, I couldn’t deny what I was seeing before me.
Unexpectedly my attention was pulled towards Ava again when I felt the sensation of being tugged. She was pulling us, dragging us along with her as she urgently tried to move back towards the planet below. I half expected for gravity to take over any moment, and us begin falling to our deaths, but it never happened, as if gravity didn’t exist at all.
Even as we drew ever closer, we never sped up. We continued to be tugged by Ava in my arm as she drifted downward.
I wasn’t sure if it felt so long because of how terrifying it was to unexpectedly be in space, or if it was because a fair amount of time had actually passed, but it felt like an eternity later that we finally floated down into a forest and settled on the ground once more.
Ava spoke to me urgently as she began solidifying my body. “Jake, I’m running out of time. I can’t keep Blair in this form much longer. But when I bring her back…” Her voice trailed off.
Blair’s shadowy form was visibly shaking. “I f-feel fine right now,” she tried reassuring us, her voice sounding more traumatized than anything.
“But I might kill you when I return you to normal,” Ava admitted urgently. She then groaned before either of us could respond, grasping her head in her hands. “It’s too late,” she gasped. Her hand grasped Blair’s arm firmly as she focused as hard as she could on bringing her back in one piece.
It wasn’t a slow process.
Blair solidified all at once, starting with her head, and Ava’s shadowy form fell over on her side.
“Ava!” I exclaimed as she hit the ground soundlessly. But then Blair caught my attention instead, her eyes wide, blood leaking out of the corner of her mouth as she began sounding like she was choking. She slumped over, her body shaking violently as if she was going into shock.
My blood erupted out of me in a hundred tiny threads, entering her body just as her head hit the forest floor. I quickly moved inside of her, finding thousands of tiny holes everywhere, and quickly used by blood to plug them up, to keep her functioning.
“Blair!” I exclaimed, grabbing her face in my hands. “I’ve got you! I won’t let you die! Just stay focused on me.”
She only made a gurgling noise in response, her eyes unseeing. Her slitted left eye wasn’t a slit at all right now. The pupil was dilated so wide that her eye was basically all black, with a thin red line that marked where her iris was.
I shot myself into her lungs from the inside, clearing out the extra fluid and putting it back in her veins, before manipulating her muscles to force her to breathe. He
r body sucked in a large breath, her eyes finally locking onto mine.
“J-Jake,” she choked out, tears appearing in the corner of her eyes.
“You’re going to be okay,” I reassured her, though I had no way of knowing if my words were a lie or not. I felt my eyes grow warm. “Just try to relax. Focus on my face.”
Her mismatched gaze unexpectedly focused on my right eye. Not my left, but my right. I wasn’t sure why until I pulled closer, seeing my reflection in her almost completely black demonic eye – seeing my right gold eye, marked with a black four-pointed star, like a sharp plus-sign. It appeared as if it were two slits overlaid on each other – one horizontal, one vertical.
I had no idea where this eye had come from, but I quickly lost interest when Blair became completely nonresponsive. Her heart was still beating, and more importantly, I could still sense a colorless flame in her body that I assumed was her lifeforce, but all I could do was desperately hope that she had just lost consciousness.
I kept my hands on her face, my blood in her body, feeling like I was teetering on the edge of a cliff of anxiety while I waited to see if her body would get better. If it would heal on its own. I recalled biting her earlier that day, remembering that it had stopped bleeding quickly, but I didn’t know if that meant she would heal faster than normal or not.
Ava finally woke up a few minutes later, her body shifting to normal, along with her red silk dress. She immediately bolted upright to a sitting position, before struggling to crawl to Blair’s other side, the dress making it difficult to move her legs in that position.
“J-Jake,” she whispered, staring in horror at our friend’s blank face, her eyes still open.
“Her heart is still beating,” I managed as a response. “And she’s breathing on her own. She has holes everywhere, even in her heart, but it’s still working. I’m just keeping her from bleeding to death right now, but that’s all I can do.”
“S-She heals faster than a normal person,” Ava choked out. “I put most of my focus on making sure her brain came back whole.”
Omega Zero Page 26