Love Eternal

by Nikki McCoy

  On their way through the gathered crowd, Dhani caught sight of Deirdra holding her son and hesitated. “Should she be here?” he asked, his gaze flitting down to Sevrick with worry. Roh Se Kahn had no compunctions about killing his own sons, and Dhani knew the God didn’t feel any differently toward his grandson. Sevrick could die if Roh Se Kahn took control.

  “I don’t know. I’ll—” Tailor started, but Deirdra had overheard and cut him off.

  “I want to be here. I was wrong about Vane and I’m…sorry for what you’re going through.” Her words were stiff and filled with hatred instead of remorse. “That coward is nothing without his father’s power and I want to watch it taken from him forever. Besides, Vane could teleport in at any time and take my baby, anyway. This is the safest place for me to be.” She looked to Rowan and asked, “Right?”

  Rowan sighed. “Deirdra, we’ve been over this. I can have my men take you far away—”

  “No,” she said adamantly. “I need to be here.”

  Dhani wanted to argue, he couldn’t stand the thought of inadvertently hurting Sevrick, but Tailor urged him toward the table. “Come on, love. Let’s get this over with.”

  Dhani lay down on the cold surface of the table and watched as his mate and Cy shackled him, keenly aware of the eyes on him. With each steel cuff they locked into place, the reality of what was happening bore down on him. An uncontrollable tremble started in his hands and spread to the rest of his body.

  Tailor leaned down to smooth his hair and kiss his forehead. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

  Though his words held strength, Dhani could feel no emotion in his mate’s energy. He knew Tailor didn’t want him to feel the fear distantly reflected in Tailor’s eyes.

  Laya moved to the table as Tailor and Cy stepped back and held up a syringe. “This is a heavy sedative, so you should be out in seconds.” At Dhani’s nod, she kissed his cheek and smiled sadly. “I’m so proud of you, my son. I’ll see you when you wake up.” She tied a tourniquet around Dhani’s bicep then pierced his vein to inject the liquid. “Count backwards from one hundred.”

  Dhani looked at his mate and focused on Tailor’s unerring gaze, unable to keep a tear from falling down his temple. “One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety…” He felt his eyes droop as warmth flooded his body. Gravity shifted, pressing him down until he was paralyzed, and the world fell away.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Awareness slammed back into Dhani when he felt someone pull the collar from his neck, followed swiftly by Roh Se Kahn’s darkness. It sprang forth with a vengeance, carrying all the rage of the dark God and searing Dhani’s insides with its magnitude. A scream ripped from his throat and his body arched as if he were being split in two. The agony crested, wracking him mercilessly, until it suddenly dissipated. He dropped back down onto the table, twitching from the residual effects.

  Dhani’s mind was sluggish, but his body was filled with tension. Roh Se Kahn writhed within him, taking over and elevating his senses. Dread coursed through Dhani as he realized the sedative and concoction he’d been given hadn’t affected Roh Se Kahn in the slightest. Once again, he was a prisoner of the God and powerless over his actions.

  Roh Se Kahn was confused, as if the collar had kept him blind and deaf. With the collar gone now, however, he was in full control and smart enough to assess his surroundings before making a move. He forced Dhani to keep his eyes closed, listening instead to the commotion around them. Dhani recognized Tailor’s raised voice suffused with alarm and several others arguing.

  Two fingers were pressed to Dhani’s jugular vein, then he heard Keenan shout, “Quiet, all of you! He’s still alive and unconscious, but I need to do this quickly. My father could awaken in him at any time.”

  Silence fell around them until Keenan began to recite the spell to evict Roh Se Kahn from Dhani’s body. Roh Se Kahn’s fury rose and he snapped Dhani’s eyes open. Tailor’s face came into view, hovering above him. Just as the God became aware of the shackles binding Dhani, Tailor yelled, “Keenan, he’s awake!”

  Roh Se Kahn used his darkness to send blinding sparks through the locks on the cuffs, shattering them and burning Dhani’s skin in the process. Dhani jerked up and shoved Tailor in the chest, sending him hurtling backwards with a blast of power so great, it knocked down all those in Tailor’s path. When Cy grabbed Dhani’s throat, Dhani sent him flying with another blast then cast out a coruscating wave of fire toward the rest who were closing in.

  The room erupted into screams as several tried to escape the flames burning them alive. A female voice rose above the chaos, shouting, “Shoot him!” but Roh Se Kahn had already spotted the weapons on the guards. He erected an invisible shield around Dhani that deflected the barrage of bullets aimed at him. A few of the guards fell from the ricochets and, somewhere in the background, Tailor commanded a ceasefire.

  “Father!” Keenan’s yell caught Roh Se Kahn’s attention at the same time a bright ball of pure energy was flung from Keenan’s hand.

  Dhani had no doubt it could penetrate the shield, but somehow the dark God had anticipated this. He drew on the light of Dhani’s spirit and formed his own energy ball made more powerful with the darkness he spliced it with. Dhani threw the ball and watched as it impacted Keenan and created a shockwave that threw Keenan back and all those surrounding him. Keenan crashed into a large, glass cabinet then fell to the floor.

  Dhani stalked over to him and yanked him up by his hair. “Did you really think you would win this time? The light in this shifter is just as powerful as yours.”

  “No!” The shout came from Rowan who drew a dagger from his belt and hurled it at Dhani.

  Instead of deflecting it with his shield, Roh Se Kahn made Dhani move Keenan to intercept it. The blade buried itself hilt deep in Keenan’s shoulder and he staggered with a pained grunt. Dhani wrenched Keenan’s head up and said in a low voice, “Say goodbye to your precious mate.”

  From the corner of his eye, Dhani saw Cy aim a gun at him and fire just as Tailor tackled the man. The bullet never made its mark, however. The room shifted and blinked out of existence as Roh Se Kahn used his power to teleport Dhani and Keenan from the parlor.

  Dhani’s stomach lurched from the displacement and when his vision cleared, he found himself in what appeared to be a lavishly decorated living room. While he’d never been there before, he knew the dark God had. Roh Se Kahn’s comfort in their surroundings made him sure of it.

  He shoved Keenan to the floor then pressed the sole of his shoe to Keenan’s throat, pinning him. Keenan struggled weakly, glaring up at him.

  “Save your strength, slave,” Dhani sneered. “I won’t let you die yet.”

  “And I won’t let you get away with this,” Keenan rasped. “I defeated you once and I’ll do it again.”

  Dhani laughed with Roh Se Kahn’s cynicism. “You’re no match for me anymore, boy. It seems your friend has bonded with his pathetic mate, giving him twice the amount of light as before. I can feel it like a beacon in his soul, infusing me with more power.”

  Inwardly, Dhani’s mind seized in panic. Had he really empowered Roh Se Kahn by bonding with Tailor? He felt the truth in the God’s elation. Horror sickened him as he stared down on his best friend. After all of this, he was still going to be the death of Keenan.

  He knelt and fisted the hilt protruding from Keenan’s shoulder. “I should be thankful to you. I took my power of darkness for granted before, but you can be sure I won’t make that mistake again. In fact, I’m growing rather fond of this shifter. I think I’ll keep him. Once I open the portal to that hell realm, I’ll reunite him with his second spirit, giving me three times the amount of light to match my darkness. I’ll be unstoppable. And you, slave, will be the catalyst that begins my reign over this realm.”

  When Dhani yanked the blade free, Keenan screamed then slumped down with sweat beading his brow. “Not today,” Keenan whispered.

  A loud crack came from the ceiling an
d Dhani glanced up to see a wide seam parting the plaster above. The ground started to shake violently and the walls creaked in protest. Keenan was using his power. The entire room was about to cave in on itself. Dhani had seen Keenan do it before.

  He pressed a hand to Keenan’s chest and sent a bolt of lightning into him so powerful, Keenan screamed again as sparks ignited all over his body. Dhani watched, incapable of stopping himself, as Keenan writhed for countless seconds before the pain became so great, he passed out. Afterwards, two men and a woman, all Vam’kir, ran into the room and stared in shock, then pointed their guns at Dhani.

  “Who are you?” the woman demanded.

  Dhani lifted a hand and this time, felt only pure darkness emanate from him. The trio froze as if held in suspension. “I am your one true God, Roh Se Kahn. This is my dwelling and so long as I inhabit this earth, I will not suffer traitors at my side. If any of you choose to continue worshipping my son, Vane, I will end you now.”

  To Dhani’s surprise, they all fell to their knees in obeisance as soon as Roh Se Kahn’s power was lifted from them. They weren’t innocents, Dhani realized. Wherever this place was, it harbored the God’s followers.

  “Take him,” Roh Se Kahn commanded through Dhani, gesturing to Keenan. “Bind his wound. I need him alive to carry out the spell that will free the rest of my essence from the realm it was banished to. Go nowhere and tell no one of my presence. I’ll return after I’ve procured everyone else I need.” When the trio didn’t move right away, he barked, “Now!”

  Dhani stared as Keenan was dragged roughly away, then raged against the God’s will. Roh Se Kahn flexed Dhani’s muscles and spoke to him softly. “Don’t fight me, shifter. You should be grateful my plans for you have changed. I’m going to make you immortal. Your face will be the last one every Ba’Kal, Vam’kir and Bassen’kir on this earth sees before they perish. We will bask in the blood of their destruction.”

  Within, Dhani felt himself die a little. There would be no one to stop Roh Se Kahn now and no hope of Tailor finding him when he didn’t even know where he was himself.

  Roh Se Kahn laughed through him, then cast out his senses to blanket hundreds of miles in every direction in search of his wayward followers. When he detected several within range, he teleported out, reveling in Dhani’s anguish.

  * * * *

  Tailor hit the floor with Cy then reared back and punched him. When Cy blocked the next punch and rolled out from beneath him, Tailor hauled him up and slammed him against the nearest wall. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t going to kill him!” Cy shouted. “Just slow him down. And you should’ve let me. Now he has what he came for.”

  “I should rip out your throat right here.”

  “Try it and you’ll be sipping your food through a straw for the rest of your life.”

  “Enough!” Rowan shouted from across the room. “This isn’t going to bring our mates back.” He looked around the parlor at the damage done then scraped a hand through his short hair. “Cy, call the clan doctor and tell him to come immediately. You three,” he said, pointing to a group of the guards, “take the wounded and do what you can for them until the doctor shows up.”

  “This one is dead,” Cain said from where he knelt beside a guard with two bullet holes in his chest.

  “This one, too,” Laya called out from a corner of the room where a female guard lay across a shattered end table, eyes staring out into emptiness.

  Guilt conflicted with the anger on Rowan’s face as he flexed his jaw. “Get them out as well,” he said to the remaining guards. “Don’t contact their families yet. I don’t want it made public that Roh Se Kahn is loose in our realm again. We need to take care of this with as much discretion as possible.”

  Tailor waited impatiently as Laya and Quinn helped take the wounded and the dead were carried out. When only a handful of the unharmed guards remained, he turned on Rowan. “Screw discretion. We have to figure out where Dhani and Keenan are.”

  “I want to get them back as much as you do,” Rowan fumed, “but I can’t risk an uproar. Not so soon after the last battle with Roh Se Kahn. We barely contained our exposure to the humans then. If my people find out Roh Se Kahn is back, there could be rioting among my clans.” To the handful of guards, he ordered, “Leave us.”

  “No, wait,” Manning said. He narrowed his gaze on two of the guards standing near Rowan. “Why didn’t you open fire with the rest of the guards when Dhani attacked us?”

  The two men looked at each other, then shook their heads in denial. The man with the buzz cut spoke first. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We hesitated,” the other said a little too quickly. He looked to Rowan. “Sorry, Magnique, but we didn’t want to take the chance of killing the kid. We know how important he is.”

  They were lying. Tailor could feel it in their energy like an oppressing veil.

  Fortunately, Rowan sensed it, too. “Mark, Jermain, what are you hiding?”

  The pair glanced around at the other three guards spread throughout the parlor, then the one called Mark gave up his innocent act and raised his gun to Rowan’s head. “Fuck it. Now’s as good a time as any.”

  Rowan’s eyes turned crimson in outrage at the same time Manning lifted his gun to the betrayers, but before either of them could make a move, the female guard near Manning yelled, “Don’t.” Her own gun was aimed at Manning’s head, just far enough out of arms’ reach to prevent Manning from knocking the weapon out of her hands.

  As one, the remaining guards pulled their guns even as Tailor, Cain and Cy drew theirs. Deirdra gasped and shrank behind the cover of a tall recliner, holding Sevrick close to her breast.

  Tailor braced his fury at the unseen standoff as his mind raced to make sense of what was going on. It wasn’t likely the guards were in league with Roh Se Kahn or they’d have left with him. Which could only mean they were working for Vane. Either way, he didn’t have time for this shit. Dhani was somewhere out there, trapped again by Roh Se Kahn’s power, and Tailor’s gut told him the God was going to go through with his plans in the next twenty-four hours.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Rowan seethed.

  “Call him,” Mark said to Jermain without looking away, then twisted his lips in a mocking grin. “Did you really think you could put an end to everything my lord worked for and spent years cultivating? Did you think you were so impervious that you could escape his retribution? We have always been here, serving him, while you sat on your so-called throne and chose your pitiful compassion for the shifters over taking power.”

  Rowan’s heated gaze flicked to Jermain, who was talking animatedly on his phone. “I trusted you. You helped me track down dozens of Roh Se Kahn’s followers after the battle.”

  “They were weak!” Mark shouted. “It was Vane they should’ve been serving, not his father. Roh Se Kahn would’ve destroyed us all, and he still might, unless Vane takes his power for himself.”

  “And you think Vane will reward you for your service once he has that power? You’re a fool! Vane won’t stop until there’s nothing but sheep for him to lead among the humans and our kind. He won’t need you to stand at his side once he takes control. He’ll destroy everything—”

  “You’re wrong! I hold more value to him than I ever have in your court. Our people need a leader, not a coward who hides behind the walls of his palace. You’d see that if you weren’t so busy taking the advice of your precious council.”

  Just as Jermain ended his call, Vane appeared in the center of the parlor along with a mixed dozen of humans, Ba’Kal and Vam’kir armed with various weapons. His pale blond hair was slicked back and the expensive, designer suit he wore was at odds with the combat fatigues of his followers. He surveyed the room then focused on Deirdra with an avaricious gleam in his eyes. “You’ve done well, Jermain. How long ago did my father leave with his slave?”

  Mark spoke up, overriding Jermain’s response. “
No more than ten minutes ago, my lord. I made sure Roh Se Kahn was gone before he knew of our involvement. What would you have us do with the Magnique and Jaes’din?”

  Vane flashed his teeth at Rowan in a feral smile. “Kill them. Kill them all.”

  At that moment, a black fox darted into the room and sank its teeth into the tendon at the back of Mark’s knee. Not a second later, Laya sprang through the open doorway and let loose a throwing knife that pierced the back of Jermain’s neck, taking him out instantly.

  “Stand down!” Rowan roared, ignoring the bullet that flew over his head from Mark’s gun and charging Vane with deadly intent. His voice resonated with the power of the Magnique, paralyzing those followers who were Vam’kir. Manning called out his own command, freezing the Ba’Kal followers with his power of the Jaes’din, but neither order lasted long. An invisible yet tangible force pulsed outward from Vane which seemed to negate Manning and Rowan’s powers.

  Once again, the room exploded into chaos. Laya barely had time to retrieve her knife before Mark rounded on her, striking her hard across the face. Mark reached behind him to snatch Quinn in his fox form and flung the fox toward the bay windows of the parlor. Cy leapt to catch Quinn and rolled with him safely to the floor. Simultaneously, Laya came up behind Mark and slit his throat, her eyes blazing bright green with the ferocity of her spirit.

  Tailor smashed the butt of his gun into the guard’s nose beside him then hooked an arm around the man’s neck and used his body as a shield. With no hesitation or emotion, he aimed his gun and fired, taking out the female guard threatening Manning first, then the five closest to where Rowan wrestled with Vane. Each one fell with a bullet to the head.

  “Tailor,” Manning shouted as he dodged the swing of another guard, “on your left!”

  Tailor swung around and shoved the man he held into the follower racing toward him. He emptied the last of his rounds into them then grabbed the gun his living shield had dropped. In the middle of the room, Cain and Rowan fought viciously with three others, but Tailor couldn’t find Vane among them anymore. He glanced around, unable to spot the demigod, until a high-pitched scream drew his attention on the opposite side of the room.