“Impossible…” Lucius croaked out and I cried out in panic as he fell to one knee. Alex straightened up and wiped his neck like he had nothing but a bug bite that he didn’t even need to scratch.
“Is it?” Alex asked cracking his neck to the side and coming over to kick Lucius in the side, knocking him over to his back.
“Stop it!” I shouted but Alex took no notice of me.
“You’re… not…Nephilim.” Lucius managed to get out as it sounded like now his throat was closing up completely.
“Ah but you just needed to have a taste to finally figure it out, well I am glad you know the truth before you die.”
“NO!” I screamed thinking it wasn’t possible! Lucius couldn’t die, he just couldn’t!
“He…he will…kill you!” Lucius said forcing each word through his bloody lips.
“The King can’t kill me, just as you couldn’t and just as no one can…for I am…” He paused and then turned round to face me showing me the real face of Alex Cain before killing all hope with the truth…
“The Venom of God.”
Chapter 43
The Final Trade
As I woke I was starting to get used to the feeling of cold hard stone beneath me. But what I wasn’t used to was the frozen numb feeling like a dear friend had just died. I didn’t want to believe it and my mind was reliving the last ten minutes as if I was stuck in some auditorium in Hell. I would be sat there all alone and screaming at the screen just as I had done in real time at seeing the life leave Lucius’ body.
It just wasn’t possible. Someone like Alex couldn’t kill Lucius, how could he…? He wasn’t powerful enough. No! I wouldn’t believe it and I just couldn’t believe it. No one was strong enough to do that…no one!
“No.” These thoughts made me whisper to myself as I felt the tears still following the tracks down into my hairline. I couldn’t even care enough that I couldn’t move or the fact that I had fainted after seeing what was the last thing to pass through Lucius’ lips before he left this earth.
“My Keira, forgive me.”
I had reached out my hand to his and tried to use the last of my strength to crawl to him. I had called out his name over and over. I had screamed it until my lungs crashed but there had been no response. There was no cocky reply. No calm collected sarcasm. There had been nothing but the fight going out of his body and the light fading slowly from his beautiful eyes.
No, my friend had gone.
Lucius was gone.
“Ah awake I see.” Alex said at my side from where I knew I was strapped to the altar awaiting whatever ritual the psycho had in store for me. I wanted to tell him to go and fuck himself but as he approached the altar I turned my head from him, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing me crying for my friend. However, this wasn’t enough for him and he grabbed my chin painfully and forced my head back round.
“Aww poor little bitch, crying for her bloodsucker.”
“Don’t touch me!” I snapped ripping my face from his hold no matter the pain it caused me.
“Whoa! Brave now aren’t we? Well let’s see how brave you get when lover boy turns up and the fun really begins!” He laughed down at my disgusted face before kissing me and then pushing himself backwards before I could bite him.
“I will smile when Draven kills you!” I said with more venom in my voice than I had ever heard before. That was the thing about truly hating someone. The levels you find yourself rising to when someone threatens the ones you love become like an infection you can’t rid yourself of. It had been like that for Morgan. Waking each day with this weight bearing down on your soul that he could hurt your family at any time was crushing.
However the type of murderous hate you feel for someone who has taken someone you loved from this world was like no other. It flooded your veins with the raw need to do harm at unspeakable levels and its bitter twisted obsession for revenge burrowed deep beneath your skin. I think this feeling must have been where the saying ‘making your skin crawl’ came from as one look at this vile creature and the repulsion I felt made me both shiver and want to throw up!
“Then you will die with tears in your eyes and nothing but pain on your face!” He threatened smirking at the idea causing me to turn my head to save myself the sight.
“I’d prefer to make the lady smile.” A new voice boomed powerfully around the Temple.
“Draven!” I shouted looking back and seeing the man I loved come to my rescue. He walked slowly into the centre and naturally commanded the space around him without even trying. I however wasn’t surprised to see Alex so lost in his madness that he failed to realise this.
“Draven it’s a trap!” I screamed but he just swiped his arm downwards as a way of dismissing the fact and said,
“I know, Love.”
“Ah! Finally our guest of honour arrives. So good of you to join us, if you had come any later there might have been parts missing off your little bitch…I was getting bored.” Alex said adding this last part leaning forward like it was a secret and Draven’s demon snarled at him.
“If I find you have harmed her…!”
“You will what exactly!? Oh that’s right…you actually think you’re in charge here don’t you?” Alex walked around Draven, although I noticed still keeping his distance. Draven folded his arms looking unimpressed and forbidding in his black clothes that were ready for the fight ahead. Alex opened his arms and then putting his outstretched arms behind him he brought his face forward and said,
“Let’s enlighten you should I…? Keira, if you would please sing for us.” And then with a click of his fingers the bloody Pentagram around the altar started to burn and sizzle before the flames erupted out like gunpower had just been ignited. It was in this moment that my nightmare really began.
“AHHHHH!” I screamed in agony as my skin soon felt like it was being split apart.
“NO! KEIRA!!!” I heard Draven roaring my name over the sounds of my suffering and in my blurred vision I could just make out him running towards me. But there must have been something that was blocking him as he couldn’t make it past the circle of fire.
“I will kill you for this!” Draven said exploding into his other self and it wasn’t only his wings that came into play. One long sword grew from his hand until the tip touched the floor. I could feel my back bowing with the strain my body was being put under from each laceration to my flesh. It was as though some invisible entity was stood over me with a knife and just slicing away at me. But wait, that wasn’t just it…I was starting to remember…but it couldn’t be, could it?
“You die, Nephilim!” Draven promised and I saw him holding out his sword, pointing it at Alex.
“No, I don’t think so. You see if you don’t do what I want and do it soon then every old injury her body has ever known will come back for a revisit and you know I have heard that she has received quite a few nasty cuts since knowing you…so times a’wasting…oh and look, it’s the time she sliced her own wrists, fuck, but that must be hurting her so bad right now.” Alex said and the twisted bastard was right, it was hurting me… bad.
I didn’t know what was worse, when I did it the first time or the duplication of events now, because no matter what people told you, after feeling something once, it still doesn’t prepare you for ever feeling it again.
At first it had started as simple grazes and bumps every child gets growing up. But then the accident of when I fell down the stairs and broke two fingers came back with a snap of bone. Even the time that I fell from the tree and winded myself came rushing back to me. I was soon gasping for air and dragging it in panicked painful gulps, along with feeling the spasms in my diaphragm. But now came the worst part as the cutting of every imaginary blade slice into my skin as if I was holding the mirrored glass as I did that fateful day.
“KEIRA!” Draven ran at me again only this time he tried to use his sword against the invisible barrier that kept us apart. However, every time upon impact it just
sparked like grinding metal against metal and nothing was achieved other than a wasted effort.
“Stop this! Stop it now!”
“There is but one way and unfortunately for you killing me isn’t it, as she will just eventually bleed out, with or without your healing influence.” Alex said picking his nails casually with the tip of his wooden blade. I screamed out again as my time with Morgan and Sammael and their treatment of me was starting to lash out at my abused body.
“Then what?! WHAT IS IT YOU NEED ME TO DO!?” Draven’s demon thundered out.
“It’s simple really. I just need you to take her place and take a little trip for me.” Alex said grinning and looking unthreatened by Draven’s mounting rage.
“NO! Do…don’t do it! Ahhhh!...NO! He…he, wants to Ah… release…the Titans!” I managed to push out the words of warning through the bursts of pain my body was going through.
“Keira!” Draven shouted my name and I could just see the distress in his eyes at seeing the hurt reflected back in mine.
“Draven…don’t do…this.” I muttered knowing like a deep rooted certainty that he was willing to put the whole world at risk just for me. This was confirmed when he whispered back,
“I must.” And just as I cried out he turned back to Alex and snarled,
“Do it!”
“Excellent!” Alex said clapping his hands and kicking away from the pillar he was casually leaning against. He then clicked his fingers once more and I vaguely heard him saying something in another language before finally my exhausted body was given its rest from agony. I slumped back hard onto the stone and looked down to see far too much blood leaving my body. It was flowing like miniature canals through the carved symbols that were all around the altar dripping along the grooves as I lost more of my life too. I actually feared I didn’t have much blood left and knew if I didn’t start to heal quicker and soon, my body was likely to go into shock.
But I also realised that if Draven and I hadn’t made love when we did I would have died long ago. I looked up at the man I loved just as the flames from the Pentagram died down and noticed he was looking back at the exit as if waiting for something.
“Oh I wouldn’t worry about them, your family and council will be occupied enough with my dead army.” This was when I knew that Draven hadn’t come alone but thanks to my blood, they now had a zombie battle to fight. Draven growled at Alex as he walked past him and came to me, no doubt now feeling the weight of worry from all sides.
I felt his hand on my cheek as he pushed the hair from my face.
“It will be alright, my love.” He whispered down at me.
“Oh how very touching. Now get your bitch off the altar and lie down!” Alex snapped and Draven with one hand still gently on me, his other hand found Alex’s neck and squeezed. I saw first the shock that made Alex’s eyes bulge before they started to turn black.
“AHHHH!” I screamed in pain again as I started to feel the growing burn from when Lucius had touched me in my dreams so long ago. I could even feel his fingers imprinted on my flesh and this time I couldn’t bear it again.
“Alright, alright, release her!” Draven shouted after letting go of Alex’s neck. As soon as my screams turned to whimpers and moans Draven scooped me up and walked me away from both the table of my torture and my torturer. He lay me back down on the marble floor and I looked up at him, pleading with tears in my eyes and a tremble in my voice,
“Don’t do this…please.”
“Ssshh now, this is the only way.” He whispered down to me and I shook my head not trusting myself to speak from fear of sobbing. Draven was just about to bite into his own arm to speed up my healing process when Alex said,
“Huh uh, I don’t think so. After all, remembering her dripping in that pretty colour will act as great motivation I think!” He said highly amused. I looked past Draven to then see Alex drawing his own blood with a syringe and I knew this would be my only chance to tell Draven what I knew.
“He wants to use you, Draven. He is going to get you to use his blood to release the Titans but you can’t! You can’t do it!” I said whilst Alex was busy gaining the key in his blood to no doubt give to Draven.
“Keira you need to trust in me now…can you do that?” He asked putting his forehead to mine and I couldn’t help it this time… I cried for him.
“But Lucius…he…he…Draven, he killed Lucius!” I said trying to catch my breath on a caught sob.
“Lucius is right where the Fates need him to be and you need to also trust in that.” The tone of Draven’s voice told me all I dreaded to know and confirmed the reason for my broken heart.
Lucius was gone.
I managed to drag myself up against a pillar and was left helpless and healing too slowly to do anything but cruelly watch as Draven took my place. He was stripped to his trousers after he was forced to take back control of his other form. Alex had strapped him down just as I had been and it was painful to watch as Draven took it without putting up a struggle. He just kept his eyes to mine and gave me the strength I needed to watch this.
“I must say, all that planning and all that waiting really paid off. To think that all it really took was one simple spell, one switch of a cursed, purple jade necklace and bam! It draws in a King even as powerful as you like a dog to a bitch in heat.” Alex said walking round Draven and with a long pole in his hand, he started using the burnt blood as a way to draw symbols in the Pentagram.
“You?!” Draven hissed as the realisation hit us both.
“Yes me! Of course after you left your Chosen One for good all I needed was to have a seed planted firmly enough to grow. One that made you believe you needed to be contained and to do that there was no place like Hell’s greatest prison.” Draven growled and tensed at hearing this but as for me I was frozen in shock. I was trying to process everything that had happened and soon realised the depths Alex had gone to just to make it all possible that Draven could get back into Tartarus. That was why when I took off the necklace Draven had stopped needing to be chained to his prison. The curse had been broken but Draven still had the ticket carved into his flesh.
“So now all that is left is to send you back there with the key that is my blood to free its prisoners.” On hearing this from Alex, Draven started to laugh and I frowned unable to see what he could have found funny in that moment.
“You mean ‘prisoner’.” Draven said after the laughing ceased and he turned his deadly purple gaze back to his enemy.
“You don’t get to speak about him!” Alex fumed and Draven taunted him further.
“Belphegor sends his regards asshole!” Draven said and Alex lost it. He punched Draven across the face making me cry out. Draven just laughed harder and it was an unnerving sound that echoed around the room.
“That Gorgon Leech’s shit for brains doesn’t know the first thing about loyalty!”
“Your father was a fool for trusting him but he was an even greater fool for trying to take what’s mine but I gather that foolhardy stupidity runs in the family.” I didn’t understand who they were talking about but I was about to find out.
“We shall see who feels like the fool after you release him and we finally have the Titans on our side.”
“You really think the Titans will follow your rule.” Again Draven laughed and shook his head but Alex was the one who looked smug.
“And who do you think my father really worked for and still does, even as he remains buried deep enough in the belly of Mount Tartarus.”
“You lie.” This time it was Draven who lost his edge of controlling the situation.
“All Cronus has waited for is a key to be passed into Hell. And as my dear mother was mortal with the blood of Kings flowing free in her veins it was left up to my father to create the new King of men. But I still wasn’t granted access into the deeper levels of Hell and neither was my father. So that is where you came in.” Alex said poking his chest at the word ‘you’ that he spat down at him.
&n
bsp; “See originally the plan was to take your bitch here and use her as leverage but then Daddy dearest fucked up using that pathetic mortal and getting himself thrown into the very prison he was trying to gain access to.” Draven started struggling when he heard this and one chain snapped before Alex walked over to me and forced Draven’s submission by holding the dagger to my throat.
“Do you want to see more of her blood, is that it?! ‘Cause I will gladly oblige.” Draven’s demon rumbled out a growl before calming enough for Alex to put away the threat.
“That’s better. Now, let’s get back to it should we? You will take this blood into Tartarus and use it to first free my father, then you will give the rest to him. Only when I see my father back here will I give you back your Electus.”
“This won’t end well for you. Nephilim.” Draven promised as Alex stalked back to him and just as he grabbed the chain and pulled it tight across Draven’s bare torso he leant down and said,
“Oh but haven’t you heard…the Nephilim was my brother, before I killed him of course!” And then after slipping the vial of blood into Draven’s pocket he stepped back and clapped his hands. Draven’s body, like mine, was suddenly surrounded by flames, reaching up until I could no longer see him.
“DRAVEN!!!” I screamed but it was pointless because what Alex told me next meant that once again my past was coming back to haunt not only me but Draven as well…
“Oh don’t you worry, he’ll be back and with him an old friend of yours.”
“What are you talking about?!” I snapped having enough of his games.
“My Father is…” I held my breath and waited for the end of all my hope to come crashing against the walls I had guarding my mind. As now I finally realised they were all pointless in this battle. Because who exactly was the Venom of God and why had the same blood that ran through Alex’s veins become poison to Lucius?
The Pentagram Child: Part 1 (Afterlife Saga Book 5) Page 47