And for a few seconds, Kronos had been vulnerable. He had been so focused on punishing Garret that he’d briefly let down his mental shield, and Artemis had been able to look inside him.
There was a chink in Kronos’s armor. He was capable of uncertainty. He believed that she was more powerful than even he had guessed, and he was also desperately afraid of Garret. Of what he and Artemis could be together.
Garret pushed himself to his feet, then stepped between Artemis and Kronos, blocking the Bloodlord’s line of sight. “Did you get what you needed?” he asked Artemis.
His dark maroon eyes narrowed in fury, Kronos shouted a command. Garret jerked, and Artemis felt another explosion of emotion from her lover, his aura reaching for someone she couldn’t yet see.
Two soldiers walked around the corner with a red-haired child. A boy, dressed in a serf’s tunic and pants, who walked with his smudged chin up and his eyes searching for the one he hoped to see.
“Timon,” Garret said, his voice breaking.
“Dad!” the boy yelled. He started forward, and his aura, the color of a monarch butterfly’s wing, stretched to meet Garret’s.
“Let him see his father,” Kronos said, as the guards restrained Timon. They released the boy, and Timon pelted straight toward Garret. Their auras mingled even before they touched, and Artemis was swept up in a vivid outpouring of love that obliterated all hate and anger with a single embrace. Garret lifted Timon off his feet and kissed his cheek, murmuring words of promise and comfort. Timon grinned, his slightly crooked teeth gleaming in a face less like Garret’s than she had expected.
At last Garret set Timon down. The little boy examined his father’s face, a deep line between his ginger eyebrows. “You’re different,” he said. “You’re becoming like Mommy, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Garret said, sobering quickly. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you before I found you.”
“That means you’ll live a long time, like me,” Timon said.
“Yes.”
“And you won’t go away, like Mommy.”
Garret’s throat worked. He turned Timon toward Artemis. “This is Artemis,” he said. “She came here with me just to find you.”
“And I am very glad to meet you,” Artemis said.
Timon was wary. “Did you make Daddy this way?” he asked.
“Yes, she did,” Garret said. “But I wanted her to.”
“All right,” Timon said, unfazed.
His resilience surprised Artemis, but she was profoundly grateful. He, like Garret, was a survivor, brave and strong. If the other children were like him...
“Mommy would be very proud of you,” Garret said, his voice and aura thick with emotion. “Listen, Timon. I want you to stay with Artemis, no matter what happens. She’s still stronger than I am. When we—”
“Did I give you the impression that I was letting you take the boy?” Kronos asked, leaning back in his chair. “I was simply curious to see if such a reunion would meet all my expectations.” He smiled at Artemis. “Not at all like ours, was it, my child?”
“I was never your child,” Artemis said, resting her hand on the crown of Timon’s head.
The Master gestured at the Opiri who had brought Timon. “Bring eight of the children, the ones marked as of least value.”
Artemis reached out with her free hand to grip Garret’s arm, half-afraid that he might charge at Kronos again, and Timon grasped his father’s fingers. It was as if a broken circle had suddenly been made complete, a circuit closed by the most powerful of emotions. Timon and Garret became one, and as they become one with her, a shifting aurora of red, orange and blue light enveloped them.
Timon’s eyes grew very wide, and Garret froze. He was about to speak when a group of half-blood children, a mix of boys and girls, filed into the room. The guards pushed them to stand in front of Kronos’s chair. Eight pairs of eyes, brown and blue and gray and black, fixed on Garret, Artemis and Timon without comprehension.
It was as if they had been placed in some kind of trance, made incapable of resistance, and this time Artemis thought she might be the one to fling herself at Kronos. She dropped her hand, and the glowing circle broke.
“Let them go,” Garret said hoarsely. “If they’re useless to you...”
“Of little use to my program, yes. But I think in terms of decades, not years as humans do. Everything you said of my little Freeblood army was correct. I know they will not be reliable soldiers over the long term. Once they have what they believe they want, they will falter, lose their discipline, turn their attention to selfish pursuits. That is in their nature.
“That is why I realized, even in the south, that I would need more malleable and adaptable troops for the future, after the initial work is done and the Citadels fall. Troops that can fight in daylight as well as in darkness, and who have absolute loyalty to me.”
“My God,” Garret said. He reached behind him to touch Timon again. “And you think you can mold these children so easily, make them forget their families and their lives?”
“I have no doubt of it. But that is only one aspect of my plan. Eventually, I will breed my own half-bloods from humans and Opiri captured in the first phase of my program.”
“Decades,” Artemis breathed. Her disgust and horror were building into a rage that might make even Garret recoil. “You have truly gone mad.”
“I am not mad, Artemis. What I envision is a world dominated by those who are both human and Opiri. A world in which wars will eventually cease, because there won’t be enough full-blood Opiri and humans to destroy each other, and this earth along with them. All I need to do is encourage each race’s present fear of the other, and they will do most of the work for me.”
“Not decades, but centuries,” Garret said. “Unless you...”
There were no words, Artemis thought, to describe Garret’s emotions then. They were so clear that she could see the images in his mind: terrible pictures of slaughter on a massive scale, people killing other people because they were of a different culture or appearance, or simply because it was convenient to get them out of the way.
“Genocide,” Kronos said. “You humans tried it first. You have a long tradition of such cleansing. Your San Francisco Enclave developed a lethal virus that would have killed nearly every Opir who came in contact with infected blood.”
“And good people stopped it,” Garret said, his voice shaking.
“For the time being. The project can be revived.”
“You cannot begin to implement your program without vast quantities of blood to support your troops,” Artemis said. “You do not have enough humans to—”
“I am working on that, as well. I did say that I still saw value in some aspects of our original plan. Relieving Freebloods of their dependence on human blood is just the beginning, Artemis. There are dhampir half-breeds who do not require blood at all. I will have scientists working on this problem night and day, until we can extend those benefits to all Opiri.”
“Will that matter to the Opiri and humans you have already slaughtered?”
Kronos leaned forward in his chair. “Just imagine, Artemis. A world of true peace. An earth permitted to heal. Is that not more important than the lives of a few thousand, even tens of thousands, of Opiri and humans?”
“You won’t have peace,” Garret said. “Eventually your half-bloods will turn on each other, just as Opiri and humans have always done.”
“But they have me,” Kronos said, spreading his arms wide. “With Artemis’s assistance, I will become their true father.” He dropped his hands and signaled to the soldiers. The guards moved to stand behind the children, one Freeblood to each child.
“No,” Garret said.
“There is a simple solution,” Kronos said. “I will permit all of you to live, even to remai
n together. But only if Artemis agrees to stay with me.”
“I can’t,” Artemis whispered. “I can’t help you destroy—”
“I will be generous, my child. I will not expect you to work with me. I merely ask you to give your word that you will never use your abilities against me. If you were to break this agreement, then, of course, the boy and his father would die.”
Garret looked down at Timon and then met Artemis’s eyes. They both knew that Kronos was lying. He was still a powerful empath. If Artemis agreed to such a bargain, Kronos would find a way to coerce her into helping him. If she dropped her guard, and he got inside her mind...
Garret knelt before his son. “I’ll need you to be very brave for a little while longer, Timon. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Timon smiled and touched the tears on Garret’s cheek. “I understand.”
Garret rose and met Artemis’s gaze. They didn’t have to speak again.
“Do not harm the children,” she said, bowing her head to Kronos. “I will do as you demand.”
“Then come to me,” Kronos said. “Release your vassal from your control, and he and the child will remain here as hostages, unharmed.”
This, Artemis had not expected. Releasing Garret meant breaking the newly formed bond between sire and vassal, and she had no idea what that would do to him. What it might do to them.
“Garret has not fully turned,” she protested. “If I release him so soon...”
“You have made your choice,” Kronos said. “Now do what must be done.”
So he is counting on something going wrong, Artemis thought. Garret could become gravely ill or mentally unstable. She sent him a clear picture of the danger, unable to separate her fear from her warning. Timon was staring at her.
“It’s all right,” Garret said, as if he was reassuring her and Timon at the same time. But his gaze conveyed a far more complex message.
They would let Kronos think he had won.
“I must bite you again,” she said softly. “But this time I will break the chemical bond that tethers you to me, and you will be free to do as you will.”
“I understand,” Garret said. He touched Timon’s head. “Whatever you see, don’t worry. Artemis is going to make me stronger.”
“Okay,” the boy said. But he grabbed Garret’s hand again, and Artemis had to wait until Garret convinced his son to let go.
“Enough,” Kronos said. “Artemis.”
She expelled her breath and leaned toward Garret. “Listen to me,” she said. “When it happens, drop all your mental barriers, even any you hold against Kronos. And give me all the strength you have.”
It was obvious that he understood. He closed his eyes. She lowered her mouth to his throat and bit him quickly.
He stiffened. She tasted his blood and prepared to alter it yet again.
But more than merely his blood flowed into her. His emotions—so complex, so familiar—mingled with hers and, as before, became so much a part of her that she could no longer separate his from her own. His belief in her buoyed her up above all fear and uncertainty.
Acting purely on the power of those emotions, Artemis shaped them into an arrow, nocked a bow crafted of unshakable conviction and let the missile fly.
Kronos began to rise from his chair, only beginning to guess at the danger when Garret and Artemis attacked. They made a single, surgical strike at the weakness Artemis had sensed before—the fear—and broke through. Kronos fought to restore his barriers, but Artemis and Garret were already flooding his mind, replacing greed and ambition and hatred with love and trust and hope.
Kronos tried to speak, to order his solders to strike at the children. His Freebloods stared at him, waiting for a command that never came.
“Return...the children to their quarters,” Kronos whispered. “Leave me.”
The guards escorted the children out of the room, and Kronos slumped in the chair like a discarded doll.
It is done, Artemis thought, still floating on the currents of two auras, two minds, two hearts joined in consummate harmony. He cannot harm anyone now.
Kronos croaked like a dying raven, gave a strangled laugh and shaped his mouth into a death’s-head grin.
“Impressive,” he said. “But where is...that admirable human quality...forgiveness?” His eyes fluttered closed. “What of...your wife, Mr. Fox?”
Chapter 25
The arrow rebounded and flew toward Artemis and Garret. Emotion become memory. Kronos’s memory, of a time when his new ambitions had begun to take hold.
Garret bent almost double, and his pain battered Artemis like a fist.
“Pericles...didn’t tell you,” Kronos said. “It was when I was returning north, abandoning my first experiment. The Freebloods who remained with me...were beginning to starve. I sent them to raid a colony that...had the misfortune not to consider defense a priority.” His voice hitched. “There was a Bloodlady. Very beautiful. I had heard of her. She...fought for her adopted humans with great courage.”
Garret sobbed. Artemis fell to her knees beside him. He tried to push her away. Timon ran to him and put his small arms around his father’s shoulders, tears streaking his face.
“I did not know...that you were her mate,” Kronos said, “until Pericles said that Artemis had told him about your high-ranked Opir ‘friend’ who had died at the hands of rogue raiders. Artemis told me much about you and your origins, and I was able to deduce the rest.” His chin dropped to his chest. “What have you won, Garret Fox?”
No, Artemis said silently. No. No. No.
Garret didn’t hear her. His aura darkened until all traces of red were gone, until Garret himself was shrouded in shadows even Artemis couldn’t penetrate.
He lifted his head. This time he nocked the arrow.
She fought the dark impulse the only way she knew how: with her love for Garret, with Garret’s love for Timon and his unshakable belief in her. But he had created a wall impenetrable to every emotion but rage, and not even all her power and experience were enough to pierce it. Soon she found herself sucked in by the very love she felt for Garret...lost, ready to strike out, to obliterate Kronos’s mind completely.
Daddy?
A small, warm hand clutched at hers. Suddenly she broke into two pieces—Artemis and Garret, with Timon between them.
Timon was the bridge.
“No, Garret,” she said. It will destroy you.
“No, Daddy,” Timon said, tugging on Garret’s arm. “Stop!”
Garret blinked. His aura wavered, leaped again, guttered like a flame doused with water and then rose up greater than before. Hatred became a weapon deadly enough to destroy not only Kronos but every living being in the castle.
She had given him that weapon.
Artemis looked into Timon’s eyes. “Can you help me again, Timon?” she asked. “Can we show him how much we love him?”
He hugged her tightly. “He loves us, too.”
She was afraid to believe it, afraid to rely on emotions that might not be real. But if she had to pretend in order to save Garret...
“Let’s help him remember,” she said.
* * *
If Garret had been in his right mind, he might have remembered that he had not always had this power. He might have realized that Artemis had given it to him when she changed him, when their minds and emotions had mingled and become indistinguishable from one another.
He might even have remembered that it was love that made it possible. But for him, now, there was no past, no future. Only the need to make him pay, the one who had taken Roxana and Timon from him.
Closing his eyes, Garret concentrated. The rage was a furnace inside him, a forge to create a weapon so powerful that nothing of his enemy would survive. And if the enemy’s dest
ruction reverberated outward, if it took the others of his kind down with him, there would be no one to mourn them.
The weapon took shape, red and black amid the seething flames. Garret seized it in his hands, but it did not burn him. It only grew larger, heavier, more potent. Its core began to hum with all the explosive energy of the world-killing bombs humanity had created during the War but never dared use.
Garret was not afraid to use this one. It began to vibrate, its shell no longer able to contain the energy of rage and hatred. He lifted it with his mind, positioned it, took aim.
We love you.
The words formed in his mind, distracting him from his purpose. He tried to brush them aside. They returned, more insistent than before.
We love you, Garret.
Love was a warm, soft light that wrapped around the weapon, dulling its radiance, seeping into his soul. Again he tried to reject it, and again it refused to dissipate.
Love. Memory returned: of Roxana, and laughter, and Timon a babe in his arms. Love that even death could not destroy.
And then other memories: Artemis, when he had first met her...before he had realized how quickly his heart would accept her even when his mind could not. Artemis taking his blood, giving him a part of herself she shared with no other living being. Lying with her, joining with her, beginning to recognize the truth.
Love.
The weapon in his grip began to cool. He tried to hold on to it, but the memories were too thick now, and he was filled up with Artemis and Timon and the emotions that were everything his hatred was not. Emotions he couldn’t fight, because the darkness he had harbored for so long could not endure the light.
But then the new images formed in his mind. Ugly, distorted, unbearable scenes of death at the hands of savages.
See how your Bloodlady suffered, the enemy said. See how she died.
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