The last thing I see is my best friend being sucked into the vortex with me.
CHAPTER 26
– Enzyria. Salicyar’s Temple.
DYLETRI
I open my eyes, my entire body pulsating with blood.
Ismini’s blood.
My neck cracks when I lift my head. My muscles protest, refusing to listen to my commands to move. Sweat rolls off me, pooling on the floor.
The first time I’ve ever broken out in a sweat.
Cringing, I force my upper body to be useful and lift me up. I make it to a sitting position before the dizziness goes on an all-out assault. Cradling my head, I squint open one eye and look around the temple.
Gone.
Ismini’s gone.
I swallow past the burn in my throat. A pang of hunger hits me so hard I’m almost slammed on my back again. Forehead abandoned, I wrap both arms around my midsection and rock back and forth like a pussy, trying to keep my common sense intact.
Hunt your female down.
Sink your teeth into her.
FIND HER!
I fall over on my stomach onto the marble floor.
Turning over onto my back, I raise my burning left arm. Down by my elbow, I see the ends of a new design etched into my skin, intertwined with my black tribal tattoo.
I don’t have to look up the rest of my arm to know what it is. My throat’s burning like hell, too, and the mark is the exact color of Ismini’s aura.
Fuck. I have to find her.
Determined, I close my eyes and breathe deeply. I have to get myself under control, think past the howls in my fucking head. I focus on her blood, honing in on the connection it gives me to her.
Like the click of a lock sliding home, my thoughts align with her blood.
My eyes fly open. Ismini’s intention is clear as day through my connection with her. Everything is.
I realize a couple of really fucked up things.
One, I’ve been knocked out, completely naked on this temple floor for over a day. A fucking day.
Two, Ismini still fucking believes I love Dimithinia. Her panic, guilt, and pain lashes at me in wordless waves, each one hurting more than the last.
I want to fucking shake her until she admits to herself that she matters to so many beings and that none of them can imagine a world without her. Shake her until she realizes that I’m hers.
Only hers.
Hold it, asshole. Keep yourself together.
Easier said than done.
Misguided as my little one is, Ismini ran for the sake of a woman she doesn’t even know—and for the sake of others.
She’s afraid, too. So afraid. She suspects something that’s very much a reality. The mark on my left side says it all. If she dies, I’ll die with her.
Her. Dying.
Whoa . . . A rush of adrenaline goes through me like nothing I’ve ever felt before. The Illion doesn’t have shit on the raw energy coursing through my veins.
I have to find my woman and make it clear that the Universe can kiss my ass, because she isn’t dying.
If I even contemplate allowing that to go down, she isn’t doing it without me next to her, damn it all.
I get to my feet, stumbling only once. Why hasn’t anyone come to look for us? They probably believe Ismini and I don’t want to be interrupted.
Yet too much time has passed. I feel Ismini’s life force deteriorating through the bond.
If I don’t hurry, I’m going to fucking lose my R’ma.
Infuriated, I dematerialize across Enzyria. I storm into the compound, still naked, and roar out for Ismini.
“Wha—Ah, fuck! I’m fucking blind!”
I walk up to Cy, grab him by the collar and land a solid smack against his head.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? I’m not the one with my dick hanging out! Don’t you dare press that thing against me, you sick fuck!”
I smack him again for good measure. “Ismini’s gone, you fidiot.”
Cy pushes away from me, focusing only on my face. “Put. Some. Fucking. Pants. On. Visions are one thing, motherfucker. Seeing that shit in person is traumatizing.”
“You’re such a little bitch.” I materialize into my armor. “Is Ismini anywhere around here?” My instincts already know the answer to that question but I have to try regardless.
“No, dude. We thought she was still with you.”
Shaking my head, I turn to leave. “Something’s not right about this. Get the others. I’ll meet you the—”
Zen storms into the hall, clad in armor.
It’s not his light-red-and-blue armor.
Black-and-blood-red adorns his body. I haven’t seen that specific armor since . . .
Mavrak.
Nervous, I search my friend’s face, looking for the black-and-red eyes, the matching markings, or the pronounced cheekbones—things that signal his War Demon half.
“Evesse is gone.” He shoots right by me, a tower of single-minded focus.
I think I see Zen’s eyes flash the same color as his armor as he rushes past.
Sonofabitch. If that motherfucker gets out, we’re all fucked.
Later. I have to find Ismini first before I can worry about what’s happening to Zeniel.
Ian appears at the foot of the stairs in his black-and-dark-blue armor. His eyes are full-blown wolf, white irises and pupils enlarged to twice their normal size. “Astoria. Last place I managed to track them down to. I was scanning for Enteax and Lisrn, but managed to pick them up instead.”
Soleria stops at the top of the stairs. She’d obviously been running. It takes her only seconds to make it to the bottom in her haste. “I’m coming with you guys.”
“No you’re not.” Ianthen doesn’t even look at her as he walks.
“Excuse me, hoebag, but those are my best friends!”
He whirls on her and points his finger in her face. “You’re not coming. I won’t let anything happen to you. Do you understand?” That last part sounded more beast than male.
Sol’s baby blue eyes water. “But they mean everything to me.”
“And I’m going to help get them back for you, female. I swear it.” His black and blue aura flares out brightly. “Now promise me you’re going to stay.” When Soleria finally nods at him, Ian spins around and heads in the direction Zen went.
I follow them out of the compound and we all dematerialize once outside. Grabbing on to the bits of Ismini’s essence I can sense, I will myself straight to Earth.
Almost an hour later, we haven’t found anything. Ian can’t seem to find a trace of them anymore, either.
A sense of unease slithers down my spine.
Sweating, cold, and weaker than I’ve ever been, I stalk the streets of Ismini’s neighborhood. Every second she weakens and draws closer to death, I feel my own body following suit.
Ismini doesn’t know where the sacrifice is supposed to take place, and that’s the one thing that calms me a bit. The girl is crazy enough to sacrifice herself, given the chance. But if she isn’t heading to the energy vortexes, where the fuck is she?
I’m getting sicker by the second—Zen’s getting more enraged by the second. I’m approaching death; he’s fast approaching uncontrollable killer status.
The girls have to be found for all our sakes, and soon.
Never, in my two million years of life, did I imagine that I’d catch the scent of her blood fifteen blocks away from her home.
I turn the corner and slam to a halt. Ismini’s blood isn’t the only thing I’m scenting.
Zeniel comes around the opposite corner.
We lock eyes for a second. Long enough for me to see a pair of eyes I haven’t seen in fourteen-in-a-half millennia.
Black eyes with bright red irises.
“Zen?”
“I’m still here.” Yet his voice is clearly split in two. The voices of two males I know very well.
I’m just going to have to take Zeniel’s word on it.
A
s one, we flash towards the source of the scents.
An alley.
Blood. Everywhere.
Her blood.
I stumble backwards and almost land on Zen.
He tries to catch me, but I’m bent over by an uncontrollable force, and I throw up for the first time in my life.
A torrent of blood rushes out of me to join with hers, my body rejecting the sight of all the blood. My R’ma’s blood.
Gods, for a second I wonder if she’s still alive after that. What the hell happened to her?
There are signs of humans having already been here. Police tape. Faint traces of chemicals from when they probably did a sweep and took a DNA sample.
There’s black energy still tainting the air.
Zen notices it, too.
“Ian! Cy! Get over here!” He barks out.
“We’re he—Holy shit!”
“What the fuck? Is that . . .”
“Enteax,” I growl through a pause in my vomiting, feeling my eyes bleeding red with rage as I recognize an energy signature I remember very well.
“Evesse was here.” A shock of even darker energy comes off Zen. I’m forced off my feet and into the wall.
The building shakes from the impact of my body. In response, Ian and Cy rush to throw up a Gnetica. Humans run outside to investigate anyway.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.
“They took them.” I dig my fingers into the bricks next to me and try to stand straight. She’s dying. Wherever she is, she’s in so much pain and I’m not there with her.
Cy stares in front of us with that far-off, blue-tinted stare he always gets when looking out into the Universe. “We have minutes. Like two. The sacrifice is due.”
Zen hisses. “Lisrn. I can sense him near Evesse’s signature. If he touches her . . . if any male ever touches her against her will again . . .”
He’s rambling, making no sense.
“It’s too late. I see them,” Cy says, his voice splitting, his eyes fully changing from gold to metallic blue.
Everything rips apart inside me.
“They’re there!” Cy shouts. “They fucking—” His voice changes into the voice of a thousand beings.
The Fates.
He’s mere nanoseconds from interfering. Seconds away from unleashing his other half, the God of Prophecy, and stopping what’s about to happen, regardless of the cost to the Universe.
Regardless of the cost to himself.
It’s too late.
My entire body bows backwards as my back is bent at an unnatural angle. I hear my spine snap. A scream is ripped out of my chest.
In a stark, horrifying moment, she’s gone. I feel her ripped from me as if she was ripped from the Universe.
My roar’s punctuated by Zen’s matching cry.
One side of my body goes numb as I fall to the ground, seizing. I vaguely hear Cy and Ian shouting in the background.
“Zen, chill! Dude, stop!”
Ian runs over to me. “Knock him out! Cy, do it! He’s losing it!” He skids to a stop and kneels down before raising my head up. He turns me so that I won’t continue choking on the torrents of blood rushing out of me. “Hang in there, Dy. You gotta hang in there!”
Doesn’t he understand? There’s no longer any point.
“The Fates . . . They’re appeased,” Cyake says.
She was sacrificed. Ismini was fed into that vortex.
My R’ma was killed.
My mate is gone.
Somehow, Evesse was killed with her. And it’s all my fault. I allowed two innocent women, including the woman I love, to be killed.
I want to fucking die.
That’s the last thought that goes through my mind.
CHAPTER 27
– Utorou. The Dream Realm. Portal to the Haklanayasas.
DYLETRI
“W here . . . what the . . .”
Everything’s dark, but as the half-formed question leaves my mouth, I suddenly know where I am. The darkness around me runs deep, and I see the Universe before me, right through the open portal.
Portal.
Then I see the bane of my existence. She walks out of the darkness, arms crossed.
“How am I still alive?”
“I am a powerful being, the likes of which your puny mind could never comprehend.”
I don’t have time for this shit. If I’m not dead yet, I need to get the fuck out of here and finish killing myself.
Living without Ismini isn’t an option.
“Female, I’m a god of ultimate power, too.”
She somehow stares down her nose at me although she’s a foot shorter. “Not like me, puny one. None like me.”
“Ny—”
“Shut it. One question and one only, Salicyar.” She waves her hand in front of the open portal. It morphs, like a milky sea of clouds, swirling until the image inside it changes and all I can see is my R’ma. “If I told you this was waiting for you on the other side . . . would you follow me through?”
I’m already stomping towards it. “Of course!”
“Oh, good.” Nylicia’s voice drips with sarcasm as she watches me run to the portal. “Then wake the fuck up, ass. We have a lot to do.”
A bang sounds throughout the space as I’m ripped out of the Haklanayasas and straight back into the waking world.
“He’s still alive. It’s a miracle.”
Vedlyl.
“It’s destined.”
Nylicia.
Why can I hear them? Why the fuck am I still here?
There’s something . . . something I can’t remember . . .
“Is he going to be all right?” Ianythi asks.
“He’s waking up. Which might be a no. He’s got company coming that might just kill him anyway,” Nylicia says, amusement in her tone.
Amusement?
I’m shocked fully awake with fury. Ismini is dead and she’s amused? I rear up on the bed.
Wait. Didn’t I just see her in a dream?
Nylicia’s face is set in hard lines. “Easy there. She’s not completely gone. Not yet. On the other hand, I dare you to come at me right now. I’d love to lay you out flat once more.”
I blink and try to focus. How can Ismini not be gone? And why can’t I fully remember that dream? “She’s dead. I can feel it. She’s dead!”
A wave of energy shoots out of Nylicia’s translucent form and knocks me into the headboard. “But not gone!”
Her words are still ringing in my head when a voice I’d almost forgotten drifts into my room.
“Where is he? Where is Salicyar?”
Am I imagining things?
Nylicia runs her pinky across her eyebrow, having the grace to look sheepish. “She’s not in love with you anymore. And . . . she’s pissed you ripped her out of the Underworld. And . . . I told her all about you. Ismini. How you lost the woman you truly love to bring her back . . . Maybe I should’ve mentioned some of that before now?”
“Where the fuck is he?” the voice sounds out again.
Nylicia bites her pinky nail. “Yeah. Probably should’ve mentioned that.”
“Where is that ungrateful, idiotic bastard?”
The heavily-accented words seem out of place. That she’s speaking in English is also unexpected. I’m so fucking confused.
Nylicia smirks, her amusement returning. “She’s been aware of the world, watching everything happen over the centuries. English is the least of her talents. She also fell for another male and guess what? It’s not you. Now get ready to be bitch slapped, oh great Salicyar.”
“What?”
Movement catches my eye, and I look towards the door.
“You! How dare you? You are in love! You are mated! And you still allow a sacrifice for me? I did not want to come back!”
“D-Dimithinia?”
She looks the same way she did fourteen-thousand years before. Thick, long black hair. Piercing, deep blue eyes. Pale skin.
She’s even wear
ing the same long, black sheath I saw her wearing the morning of her death.
“You . . . you . . . ugh! What is the word I am looking for?” Her face flushes red as she looks back and forth between the two women in the room.
“Asshole?” Nylicia offers helpfully.
Ianythi nods sagely. “Yeah, I think that’s it.”
Dimithinia turns and points at me. “Yes. You asshole! How could you do this to me?” She walks to my bed, lifts her skirt enough to climb up, and begins raining down blow after blow.
Blows that, to my surprise, actually fucking hurt.
“Ow! Dimithinia! What are you . . . ouch! Stop this shit!”
“You fucking moron. You are a fool!” Each word is punctuated with a hit, and she soon abandons English in her frustration, segueing into her ancient Ritrioan dialect.
“Will you . . . fucking shit! Nylicia told me to do it!” I manage to move out of her way right before she lands a hard hit on my dick. She catches my thigh instead.
I spin away from her. She jumps onto my back, one arm wrapping around my neck while pounding her other fist into my head.
Ianythi whistles under her breath. “I wasn’t looking forward to meeting her after what I heard. But now I fucking like her. I do.”
“I always liked her,” Nylicia comments with a proud smile on her face.
Dimithinia tightens the arm around my neck and I lose my ability to breathe. She’s definitely not human anymore. “Someone get me a cutting utensil! I am going to castrate him!”
Nythi falls into a laughing fit so hard she ends up losing her footing and hitting the wall. “I love her, I do! Get her the knife. I have to see this!”
I’ll heal, but the fact that Nythi wants to see me go through something like that has me ready to wring her neck.
“Okay.” Vedlyl finally steps forward and shows some solidarity. “I don’t need to see my fellow male, or any male for that matter, be put through that while he’s sick.” He gently grabs Dimithinia and lifts her off me.
“Thank you,” I grumble. Losing my mate left me too weak to get her off on my own, and that burns.
Dimithinia tears her arms out of Vedlyl’s grasp and points her finger in his face, facing the much taller being like it’s nothing. “You are next if you do not step back. This bastard deserves to hurt for setting up that sacrifice. She was, and is, an innocent!”
Ryze Series: Books 1 & 2 Page 19