The Pull of Destiny (Undying Love, Book 2)

by Felicity Kross

  “There isn’t anything you can do,” I say. “There’s no cure.”

  She looks at me as tears spill from her dark brown eyes. She blinks rapidly as the tears fall, though she stays silent in her sorrow.

  “I’ve been killing people, haven’t I?” she asks in a trembling voice.

  “Most likely,” I say.

  “If there’s not a cure…” She shakes her head. “Even if there is a cure it would take me too long to find it at this rate. I understand.”

  She stands up abruptly and turns to leave without saying another word to me or Donovan.

  I call after her, “Where are you going?”

  She doesn’t respond as she rushes out the door. Donovan and I exchange looks as we get up and follow her. We stay far enough behind, so she won’t notice us. At first, she slips through the people walking the winter streets, but she takes turns and more turns until she eventually gets to an area filled with trash behind an abandoned building. She starts digging through the piles of trash until she finds a large shard of glass. She holds it to her neck as she shakes, but she never brings it close enough to pierce her flesh.

  I step out from behind the building and show myself. I dig in one of my EEA uniform’s pockets and take out an aconite pill. Since we learned their use, we each carry a couple around as well as some activated charcoal. The aconite burns against my fingers, a side effect of me being an angel, but I bear with it. I reach out with my free hand and confiscate the piece of glass Alisha is holding.

  “Take this pill,” I say. “It’ll prove if you really are a monster or not.”

  “What is it?” She sniffles.

  “It’s aconite. It’ll show your monster’s true colors, if it really is in there.”

  “You don’t believe my footage either?”

  “I just want to be absolutely sure.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “If you really are a monster, I’ll put you down myself. The blood will be on my hands. If you’re not, you get to live. It’s worth making sure.”

  All the light is gone out of her eyes. She’s already lost all hope for herself. She nods anyway. Without another thought, she takes the pill. Almost immediately her body starts convulsing. The monster inside of her is ripping out and emerging as it spreads across her skin. She growls and cries in pain. I catch my silver knife from where it was resting at my hip, and I stab her in the heart. All of the shaking and noise stops. I let her body slump against me and feel her blood pool on my hand. I bite my lower lip and tell myself to let her go, but I don’t. Why did someone like her get a fate like this? I didn’t know her, but she was willing to put the lives of others before her own. That is a great sacrifice.

  I fight back the tears threatening to spill out my eyes as I finally remove my knife from her lifeless body, and I let her drop to the ground below as her body begins to turn into a black sludge. I take a cloth out of another pocket in my combat pants and wipe off my knife before putting it away.

  “In all my years of hunting I’ve never seen that before,” Donovan says from behind me. “I don’t think I would have had the guts to do what you just did, Rynne.”

  “It was the right thing to do,” I say. My voice sounds strange and gravelly, like I’ve been screaming and my voice is about ready to give out.

  “Not saying it wasn’t,” Donovan replies.

  We continue our patrol for the rest of the day, but I’m hardly paying attention anymore. I keep replaying what I did over and over in my head. I keep seeing Alisha’s face. It wasn’t her choice to become a monster. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve to die. If there was a cure, I would’ve done anything in my power to save her, but even angels can’t cure a human tainted by demon blood. That’s why we exterminate them, because it’s the greatest mercy we can give. Every human I’ve ever seen infected by demon blood caves into their monster, like they were always meant for the darkness anyway, but she was different. That demon she described, Victor, I’m going to kill him.

  WE SET OUT ONTO the ocean in a small motorboat we rented. Apparently stupid Imae knows a thing or two about boats. Our damn motorboat is so small that I personally don’t think it’s the best idea for traveling out into the ocean, but Tasia assures that Uden isn’t that far out, and Imae apparently isn’t worried in the slightest. There’s a light cloud covering overhead, but none of them look like storm clouds, and the ocean has been decently calm. Maybe that has something to do with the angel’s steering. She does it easily like she’s done this a million times before. I’ve never been very trusting of the ocean, and while I also know a thing or two about boats, none of this has ever really been my preference.

  I sit in silence as Tasia instructs Imae on exactly where she needs to go. I don’t know how the girl can possibly know where we’re going with such certainty when everything on the ocean looks the same. There aren’t any landmarks to follow, but I keep that thought to myself. I keep hoping we don’t find Uden. I’m worried that we will though, and it has my beast unsettled.

  It takes some time, but eventually we reach these three large rocks jutting out in the ocean, and Tasia announces we’re where we need to be. I can’t sense another demon’s presence. If Uden really is here, he must be far under the water.

  “Now what?” I ask.

  Imae stops the boat and digs into the large pack she brought with her. She pulls out thick and relatively thin silver chains and cuffs. She reveals thin silver bars with pointed ends, too. Apparently they attach to the different clasps that are part of the silver chains. I’ve only seen these silver restraints once before this, and I’ve never seen them used. These chains must come from Ilenima, but I don’t remember ever seeing anything like them.

  “Now,” Imae says, “we drag Uden out of his hiding place. He’s much too large for this boat in the body of his beast so we’ll have to get him to surrender and shift back to his logician.”

  “We’re going to capture him, not kill him,” Tasia says as she pulls out a semi-automatic pistol and starts loading it with silver bullets. “I’ll be support,” she says.

  “I’m the first line,” Imae says. “I’ll dive into the ocean, and I’ll engage Uden. Arsen, you will take hold of the water element, and you will force Uden out of the ocean. Isolate him in the air. Can you do that?”

  I snarl. “Of course I can do that.”

  “If I feel you need help, I’ll grab a hold of the element with you. So don’t fight me for it.”

  I’m about to tell her to stop treating me like a child, but Tasia gives me an irritated look, and my beast reels back its aggression. “Understood,” I say calmly.

  “Turn around,” Imae says. “When you hear a splash, you can look again.”

  I roll my eyes at the ridiculousness of it all, but I turn around without anyone having to tell me twice. The whole shifting thing must be the reason why Imae isn’t wearing silver armor today; she’s wearing a sweater and pants instead. Tasia turns around with me, concentrating on her gun. She holds it out in front of her and aims like she’s going to shoot. Then I hear a splash.

  We both turn around. Tasia stands on the edge of the boat so she can see easily into the water, and I do the same. I see glittering scales underneath the water. Imae’s beast is huge too. She’s not as large as Uden, but her beast is larger than mine. I barely make out the shape of her silhouette, similar to a shark’s, before she disappears into dark waters. Now I can feel a demonic presence deep under the water starting to stir. Uden is here and he must be getting worried now that he feels an angel coming for him.

  “Help Imae,” Tasia says. “Follow the plan.”

  “I know,” I say quickly. “We went through that already. Just shut up and let me concentrate or else I won’t be able to do this.”

  I guess I’m really doing this. She’ll keep hounding me until I do.

  The truth is I’ve never attempted the amount of element control they’re expecting of me. This is the sort of thing I’ve only seen once and it came from the oracle, when
he tried to catch Uden before he escaped. He grabbed hold of an insane amount of water. If he had caught hold of that much of the element before Uden had a chance to slip away, Uden would’ve been trapped in his grasp. He was able to hold on to and control it for a long time as well. He did all of this in fucking Terra, too. It’s so much harder to use elemental magic in Terra. What he did takes an immense amount of concentration, and even then it’s not guaranteed. That was when I realized just how powerful the oracle is.

  First thing’s first… I concentrate on the light and dark presences I feel below the water. They’re coming closer, but they’re staying safely underneath. The water is reacting to their war down below though, because I can feel the boat begin to shake and I see large waves surfacing. I’m able to keep my balance, but I hear Tasia’s hands as they grip the railing. My beast tells me to stand behind her to prevent her from being flipped out of the boat, but my logician reminds my beast to stay focused. The waves aren’t that fierce—yet. She can take care of herself. We aren’t that bad off. She isn’t going to fall off.

  I close my eyes and concentrate on the water around the two presences, mostly the dark one. It wouldn’t do me any good to capture Imae in my trap as well. I’m just about there. I’m going to grab the exact amount of water I’ll need to get Uden out of there and nothing more. If I try to control too much, it’ll backfire on me. I take one more moment to watch what’s going on, and then I grab the element.

  I keep my eyes closed and feel the element along with the boat being pushed around. I need to do it now before we get pushed too far away. I hold out my hands as if physically grabbing hold of the water, and then I lift my hands over my head. I feel the water react to my movement. A large splashing sound comes from in front of me as water spills up and out of the ocean, and I feel the spray of little droplets that fall back down, water I’m not holding into place. The spray isn’t much though, because I’m holding most of the water that has emerged from the ocean suspended in the air. I can feel Uden trapped inside of the large water sphere levitating in the air. I caught him.

  I open my eyes. Sure enough, the gigantic blue serpent is squirming in the unmoving water floating above the ocean. Imae’s shark-like beast covered in light reflecting scales leaps out of the water next as she rips into Uden with her rows of teeth when his head peeks out of my water cage. He lets out a roar that must carry for miles, but we’re far enough out in the ocean that probably nobody but us hears it. He’s fighting against my grip on the element, but I don’t let go. I can feel I’m starting to sweat and shake with the exertion though.

  Tasia fires off a few rounds of her pistol, speckling Uden’s flesh when he manages to get even a small part of his large snake-like body out of the water sphere I’m holding him in like a fish bowl.

  “Surrender!” Tasia shouts. “Arsen, fly up there and grab him when he shifts back.”

  My beast reacts, forcing my wings to rip out of my back and ruin the sweatshirt I’m wearing as I fly up to meet the struggling water serpent while still keeping him trapped inside a water sphere floating about ten feet above the ocean. Imae stays in the ocean, circling Uden from below as if she’s waiting for him to drop down so she can devour him. The shaking in my body is worse now that I’m flying and holding on to an element at the same time, but I don’t cave.

  “Shift to your logician,” I tell him. “You’ve lost.” I look Uden dead in one of his nearly all white eyes.

  Tasia fires off a few more rounds as Uden tries to struggle out of the water to hit me. One of her bullets almost clips me. I want to tell her to watch where she’s fucking shooting, but my logician says that would be a wasted effort for someone who doesn’t care.

  I can see in Uden’s eye that he’s about to cave at any moment. I’ve trapped him, there’s an angel below him, and there’s a girl shooting silver bullets at him. He’s not getting out of this. That’s when he shifts. As he shrinks I lessen the water I’m holding on to a little bit at a time, feeling relief as tension begins to leave my body as well. Once Uden has completely reverted to is logician, I drop the element completely, and catch him by the hands as I fly him down to the boat. He’s bleeding, and the silver bullets that Tasia shot off inside of him are stuck there, making it impossible for those wounds to heal until the bullets have been removed or until his body pushes them out. Tasia tosses some pants at Uden once he’s on board. He puts them on wordlessly as she keeps her eyes trained on him. She’s not fucking around today. Who is this girl and what did she do with the meek and mild one that I met in Reverie a few months ago?

  I draw my wings back in, returning my back to nothing but smooth human-like skin, but I keep my claws out in case I have to get forceful again. Damn it. Forceful? I don’t want Uden here. I didn’t want to capture him. Why is she making me do this?

  “How did you find me?” Uden asks.

  The boat shakes again as Imae jumps aboard. I’m surprised she did, since she’s naked. She slips her clothes on quickly and wordlessly, not bothering to tell me to look away, probably because I just saw everything. Too bad I’m not in the mood to give her shit for it.

  “Well, it’s a funny story,” I say in response to Uden’s question. “I’ve never met any humans quite as resourceful as these hunters. Then again, you being the information broker you are, I’m sure you’ve heard of astral projection.”

  Tasia glares at me hard, but she doesn’t tell me to stop talking.

  “What I want to know,” I say, my hackles rising, “is why the hell you were just hiding out here in the middle of the fucking ocean.”

  Imae steps forward with the silver bindings she brought onto the ship in hand. It looks like some heavy-duty shit, and now I’m going to see exactly what it does. She goes over to Uden and cuffs him. He growls and tries fighting back, but she’s ready for that, and spears a silver bar all the way through his hands as she locks the bar and his cuffs together, making him howl in pain. She shoves him to the ground and forces a silver collar around his neck, clipping it closed and causing the silver spikes attached to it to dig into his neck. Then she does the same thing to his feet that she did to his hands. The last thing she does is use a thinner silver chain to connect the hand and feet cuffs to his collar. I see the fight sap out of him almost immediately.

  His movements become sluggish as he struggles one more time, causing his long sopping black hair to cover his eyes. He’s acting as if the silver bindings are tremendous weights. I don’t enjoy being close to them, or anything else that is silver, but the fact that Uden is wearing and being pierced by them makes it much worse. The silver restraints are sapping his strength and his fight. I wonder why I’ve never seen anything like this in Favor. I guess there was never a lot of fighting back then. These chains have obviously been used by angels before though. Imae knows how they work and what they do. They’d be a great way of showing an example to all other demons what happens when you disobey angels. I wonder if these things were used before Favor was founded. I wonder if Favor was built on this sort of thing. It’s ironic that I’m an immortal who was born in the immortal world, and I know so little.

  “Why don’t you just kill me?” Uden asks between gritted teeth. “What use do you possibly have for me?”

  “You damn idiot,” I snap. “I thought you were supposed to be smart. That’s why you stopped a pointless fight you knew you couldn’t win. If you hadn’t surrendered, you would’ve just lost a bunch of life essence, and then we would have caught you anyway. Obviously they want you alive for some reason. Stop asking stupid questions you already know the answer to.”

  “Shut up, Arsen,” Tasia orders.

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know if you let me live,” Uden states.

  I growl and pull him back by his wet hair. “You’re not in a position to bargain, and it’s not up to you or anyone else here if you live or die.” I press my lips to his ear. “You really shouldn’t have let yourself get caught, slimy bastard.”

  “I said to sh
ut up,” Tasia demands.

  I fall back from Uden, wobbling as I grab my head. I hold on to the boat’s railing, but I don’t take my eyes off the damn demon that let me down. No, he didn’t owe me any favors, but I thought he was smarter than this.

  Uden growls. “What do you have to gain by working with angels anyway, Arsen?”

  Imae replies, “He doesn’t stand to gain anything at all.”

  Uden glances at her, and then he returns his light eyes to me. “Yuki’s worried about you,” he says flatly.

  Something inside of me snaps. “Shut up,” I say, breaking out of Tasia’s command once again. Then I shout it, “Shut up!”

  I run up to him, determined to rip out his heart and kill him now before his information can get Yuki into trouble. I have my claws halfway through his chest when I hear Tasia shouting at me again.

  “Stop!” She shouts. “Don’t make another move until I tell you to.”

  My body shuts down. I retract my arm from Uden’s chest as the wound I inflicted on him heals slower than usual, thanks to all the silver he’s wearing, and then I stand away from him, paralyzed. I can’t move a muscle.

  Uden laughs, though I can see even talking is becoming a chore for him thanks to his imprisonment. “You’re letting a human child boss you around, Arsen? And you’re supposed to be the feared son of Maelstrom? All this time your power has been nothing but a hoax.”

  “Show him, Tasia,” Imae says calmly. “Show him Arsen doesn’t have a say in the matter. Show him why he should fear us.”

  Tasia looks at me thoughtfully. “Cut off his arm,” she says simply.

  My body acts without my permission. My claws sharpen, and I slice off Uden’s arm at the base of his shoulder.

  A bloodcurdling scream rips out of Uden’s throat as he tries to reattach the flailing limb caught in his his cuffs and the silver piercing through both of his palms. He doesn’t get very far and ends up grovelling on the wet floor of the boat as his severed arm dangles obscenely next to him.