The Reckoning (The Sentinel Series Book 4)

by Holly Martin

  ‘I need to tell the others,’ I moved towards the bedroom, but Eli pulled me back.

  ‘Eve, you need to tell only those that you trust, completely. The funeral, it’s to ensure you can live in peace, without threat from the Putarians or anyone else. Those in there now may be loyal to you, but only because you will save the world, after that there is nothing to stop them from handing you over to the Putarians. The less people that know, the less who can betray you. Choose carefully who you tell next. For your own safety, for the safety of your children, many of your Guardians will need to believe in the lie.’

  I swallowed uneasily. Hundreds of Guardians had pledged to protect me, to die for me and I now had to lie to them. But Eli was right. I had trusted Trey completely, Seth’s brother, Seth’s blood and for the right price he had betrayed us both. How many more would sell me out, once the world had been saved. But who to trust?

  Eli and Lucas had been in the prophecy, living on the island with me, but I knew I could trust them. Mason had been in the prophecy too, removing me from the coffin and taking me back to the cells. Isaac had saved me when Trey had tried to kidnap me. Ethan, Philip, Jacob, Thomas, Noah, Rhesa? But they were my outer guard now because they had proved they were loyal when everyone else had left me. Zach and Deacon? Unequivocally. The list was getting longer and longer and that’s what Eli had warned against.

  But as Trey had already proved, I was not the best judge of character.

  Isaac. He had known all along that Trey would betray me, that’s why he had watched him like a hawk, why he had distrusted him so much.

  I opened the bedroom door and looked inside at all the sad faces.

  ‘Isaac, can I have a word.’

  Isaac got up and walked out into the corridor with me, closing the door softly behind him.

  ‘Isaac, you knew Trey would betray me didn’t you?’

  Isaac nodded.

  ‘How?’

  Isaac shook his head. ‘I don’t know, nothing concrete, nothing I could actually put my finger on. It was just a feeling, something about the way he felt about you, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the same as… as what the others feel for you.’

  I nodded, thoughtfully.

  ‘Who would you trust Isaac, who would you trust completely with my life? Not just now but after the world is saved. If I somehow manage to live through it, who would you trust to continue to be loyal?’

  Isaac frowned, then opened the door and looked in at my personal and outer guard, Quinn, Persia, Izri, Zach and Deacon. They all looked back, in confusion.

  ‘All of them Eve, they all love you as much as I do.’

  I stared at him in shock. He flushed with embarrassment, but his eyes were filled with a steely determination.

  I looked back at Eli and Seth and they nodded in agreement. ‘He’s right Eve,’ Seth said.

  I took a deep breath and entered the room.

  ‘I have something I need to tell you guys,’ I said solemnly. ‘But you have to swear never to tell anyone beyond this room.’

  They all nodded seriously.

  ‘If any of you would prefer not to have this burden, for the rest of your lives, if, after the world has been saved you would prefer that your responsibility to me is over, then please can you leave the room now.’

  No one moved.

  I smiled hugely and I told them. At first there was a lot of tears, laughter and hugs, but then the conversation drew serious about how we would pull this off without anyone else finding out. I told them how they would all be welcome to come and live with me on my island. Plans and discussions went on well into the night, until eventually I had to bow out. I needed my energy for the next day. The end of the world, in whatever form it came was coming and I needed to be ready for it.

  *

  I woke to a blazing sun shining through my window, the first time I had really seen the sun in weeks. If the weather was a reflection of my moods, then today’s glorious sun was a reflection of the hope that I suddenly had. Cain had seen that I would live through this. I was going to save the world and I would get my happy future. I just had to trust that my daughter, who was growing strongly inside me, would be able to look after herself in there while I dealt with the little matter of the Armageddon.

  I had heard no more from Adam but, if my prophecies were right and I needed him to save the world then I guessed I would be seeing him at some point that day. The fact that we had managed to talk almost civilly at our last meeting had given me a sliver of hope that we would be able to somehow put our differences aside to save the world, even if it was only for a short time.

  I stood up and went to the window, looking out on the view of trees, hills and mountains. Everything looked peaceful out there and not like it was all about to end in a sea of flames.

  What was it that destroyed the world and why did we still not know what it was?

  I felt Seth’s arms around my waist as he curled his body round mine from behind. He kissed the back of my head. ‘Whatever it is, you’re going to do this baby. Cain has seen it.’

  I smiled. I just hoped Cain was right. The prophecies could change, we knew that. Persia had always said that the future she saw for me was just one possible future and everything could change in a blink of an eye. A tiny decision could have a big impact later on, something I had said or done, or something that was completely out of my control and my future could still vanish without a trace.

  I turned in his arms. ‘If I don’t, if it goes wrong and I die—’

  ‘Then our plan still stands, I’ll try to save our daughter and if I do I’ll take her to the island, I promise you that.’

  I smiled. ‘And you won’t hate me for it.’

  He laughed. ‘I could never hate you.’

  I leaned into him for a moment. ‘Come for a walk with me. There is nothing for me to do until the end of the world comes.’

  He nodded and we quickly got washed and dressed. There was a weird sense of anticipation and nervousness. I couldn’t call it excitement but I was looking forward to it all being over with.

  Lucas fell into step by my side as Seth and I walked out. He took my hand and squeezed it in a sign of solidarity. ‘I know there won’t be a lot we can do to help once the end of the world comes, but we will do whatever we can.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  We were silent as we walked into the woods. There was a mountain of a task ahead of me and we all knew it wasn’t going to be easy, despite Cain’s prophecies of my future.

  As soon as we were in the shadow of the trees, out of sight of the fort, there was a soft swishing sound and someone landed in the woods with us. As Seth and Lucas instinctively stepped in front of me, I realised it was Adam and he wasn’t alone. He had Nathaniel with him and by the way that Adam was gripping him round the throat and Nathaniel’s white eyed terror, it was quite clear that Nathaniel had not come willingly. The bonds that had been placed on me to hide me from Adam had clearly been weakened by the deaths of the other members of the Oraculum and knowing Nathaniel, he clearly hadn’t taken much persuading to remove his bond from me too and that was all it needed for Adam to find me. But what did he want? I looked at the way Adam was holding Nathaniel. This wasn’t going to end well for him.

  ‘Adam, let him go,’ I said, hoping that our very fragile relationship held some weight.

  ‘I brought him to you for you to kill. Thought you’d like the pleasure of killing him yourself,’ Adam said. ‘He’s powerless, now, I made sure of that. You can do whatever you want with him. Just make it so he suffers.’

  Nathaniel squirmed in his grasp and Adam’s grip around his throat got tighter.

  ‘I’m not killing him,’ I said. Adam didn’t know me at all if he thought I was capable of that. It didn’t matter what Adam had seen, or what Nathaniel might do in the future, I was not going to be judge, jury and executioner for a crime that Nathaniel was yet to commit.

  Adam stared at me incredulously and even Nathaniel was surprised. After t
he way he had treated me there was certainly no love lost between us but I wasn’t going to kill him.

  ‘He will be the first in the queue to kill you once you’ve saved the world. What kind of gratitude is that?’

  ‘And if he does then he’ll have a fight on his hands. If he tries to harm me or any one of my friends or family then I will kill him immediately.’ I stared at Nathaniel as I said this. It was important for him to know I wasn’t going to go quietly. ‘But I would never kill any one unless it was out of self-defence.’

  I could see that Adam was getting angry over my refusal.

  ‘After everything he has done, the way he has treated you, belittled you, turned the other Oraculum members against you. And do you think it was mere coincidence that the Reapers attacked you on his land? He plans to kill us both, he deserves to die,’ Adam said, his voice getting louder.

  ‘Adam, I know they treated you badly, they’ve treated us both badly, but there is something bigger at stake here,’ I said, trying to distract him. ‘The world is going to end and I’ve had a prophecy that we save it together. Will you join me?’

  ‘We need to kill them all and then the world would be ours,’ Adam said, not listening to anything I was saying. ‘There would be no one to stop us. With our power we could be kings, no, we will be Gods.’

  I swallowed uneasily. This was his plan all along. It wasn’t just to kill them to save his own skin. He wanted to rule the world. It was this arrogance and greed that the Oraculum were afraid of, to create someone strong enough to be able to save the world also meant creating someone so powerful that no one would be able to stop us. This is why they wanted both me and Adam dead, there was no way they wanted to risk leaving someone this powerful alive after the world had been saved. And with Adam it would be a risk, I could see that. Even if he agreed to save the world with me, what would happen after? This greed, his evil heart, that would never change.

  But if he helped me to save the world, could I really stand by and let the Oraculum kill him? And could I let him walk away, knowing that his immense power could destroy the world we had once saved? Was it even my decision to make? Cain always said that we should never meddle, that making a decision to save or kill someone could have greater impact further down the line. We could be killing someone who finds the cure for a terrible disease or saving someone who turned out to be a killer themselves. Who was I to assume that Adam would always be evil? Maybe I could help him to see the good in the world. Maybe after he had helped me to save the world he would go on to do great and wonderful things with his powers. Although as I looked into his dead black eyes filled with wrath and hatred and a need for power and glory, I had to admit it wasn’t likely.

  ‘Adam, I’m not going to kill him, let him go. This is not how it should end. Your compassion for him now will prove to them that you don’t need to die. They’ll leave you alone, won’t you Nathaniel?’ I said, meaningfully.

  Nathaniel hesitated way too long for it to be convincing before he nodded. Though it didn’t matter, Adam was clearly not to be talked out of it.

  ‘I brought him here for you, I did this for you,’ Adam roared. ‘I thought we could be friends.’

  I stared at him. ‘You brutally tortured me, physically and emotionally. You came into my body and forced me to hurt myself and my loved ones. You kidnaped and tortured my brother and because of you Alexandria is dead. I don’t think we can ever be friends. I’m prepared to put aside our differences and work together to save the world when the time comes but friendship, real friendship that is born out of loyalty compassion and love, that’s a very long way away.’

  And that was clearly the wrong thing to say as I watched his face screw up in a furious anger and I knew straight away he intended to kill Nathaniel himself.

  I reached out with my powers. I couldn’t kill Adam but I could do something to distract him long enough to get Nathaniel out of his clutches.

  Fire filled my hands and I deliberately aimed it to miss Adam’s leg by a few inches. But as the fire ripped from my hand, it glanced off a shield that Adam had already raised. Not a shield, a screen that seemed to stretch out wide either side between us. Adam clearly trusted me as much as I trusted him.

  Adam smiled smugly at my attempt before he placed his hand over Nathaniel’s face and as his hand glowed with a white hot heat, Nathaniel screamed with agony as Adam’s hand melted through Nathaniel’s head like a hot knife gliding through butter. Blood and flesh and bone melted around Adam’s fingers until there was nothing but a hand shaped hole in Nathaniel’s face. His dead body slumped to the floor and Adam kicked Nathaniel away from him with disgust.

  I quickly raised my own shield around me, Lucas and Seth in case Adam tried to kill us next.

  ‘The world is really that important to you?’ Adam said.

  ‘Of course it is.’ If the world ended, we would all be dead. How could he not see how important it was?

  Adam smiled cruelly and vanished.

  I looked at Seth and Lucas in confusion. What had he meant by that? I stared at the dead body of Nathaniel sadly. There were now only two members of the Oraculum left, Cain and Leon and if Cain was right they would both be dead before the year was out. I suddenly knew I had to warn Cain. Adam would be looking for them next.

  Before I could slide to him, Cain suddenly landed in front of me. He looked frantic.

  ‘Eve, it’s Adam.’

  ‘What is?’

  He had barely glanced at Nathaniel’s body as if he wasn’t bothered by his death at all.

  ‘The end of the world. I’ve just seen it. It’s Adam that destroys it.’

  Chapter 19

  ‘What?’ It couldn’t be. We were supposed to save the world together. And what would it achieve. Destroying the world would kill him too.

  ‘Something has changed, this prophecy is a new one. It’s almost as if he has just decided to destroy it, but I see it so clearly. He is the one that destroys the world.’

  I couldn’t believe it. I had done that. I had refused his friendship and because of that he was going to take away the most important thing to me. Destroy the world and kill any chance of a future.

  Suddenly I realised, the prophecy I’d had all those months before, the visions of him trying to stop the volcanoes and tidal waves, I hadn’t seen us working side by side to save the world. It was him destroying the world and me trying to stop him. All those times I could have killed him, all those times I stopped the Oraculum from killing him, we could have prevented the end of the world from ever happening.

  ‘This is our fault. The Oraculum. We should never have meddled. We created him and now we have to pay the price.’

  ‘Well you might have created the poison but you also created the anti-venom too,’ I said. ‘This is my fault as well. I’ll sort it out. I’ll talk to him and if that doesn’t work then I’ll stop him once and for all.’

  In the distance a great cracking and rumbling noise echoed loudly though the air. I rushed out the trees to look at the fort which was still standing but up on the top of the next mountain a great cloud of dust and smoke erupted and billowed into the clear sky. The Oraculum’s castle and by the looks of things Adam was going to destroy this first.

  I turned back to Seth and Lucas. ‘This is it, it starts here. I need to go to him.’

  ‘Let us come with you,’ Seth said.

  ‘No. I’m not letting him get anywhere near you, near any of you. This is between me and him. Go back to my room and stick to the plan.’ I leaned into him and he kissed me on the forehead. ‘Our future depends on that plan Seth. I love you and I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  He nodded.

  I looked back at Cain and he frowned. ‘Good luck.’

  The rumbling got louder and I looked back up to the other mountain and watched in horror as Adam, clearly not content with destroying the Oraculum’s castle, destroyed the mountain it was standing on too. It crumbled to dust as if it was made from sand. Adam had so much stre
ngth. I raised my chin defiantly, but so did I.

  Huge chunks of rocks and debris tumbled down the slopes of what was left of the mountain and my heart leapt knowing there were two large villages down in the valleys that would be buried underneath the landslide.

  I immediately slid to the bottom of the mountain, raising my shield round the villages as the mountain crumbled above us, an avalanche of rocks and dust came crashing into the shield. There were screams of alarm from some of the villagers as they realised what was happening but as the dust settled, I knew that they were safe.

  I carefully lifted the shield off, making sure all the debris fell to the ground around the villages and not on it. I looked around making sure that no one was hurt but I knew I couldn’t hang around. Adam was not going to stop at destroying the Oraculum’s castle. He was intent on doing as much damage as he possibly could.

  Luckily the brother sister bond we had that meant he could find me anywhere in the world also meant I could find him too. I closed my eyes and slid straight to him. He was standing on a beach his hands reaching out towards the sea. I frowned with confusion as I looked around.

  We were in some warm tropical location, I could tell that from the palm trees. It was dark wherever we were and the lights of the hundreds of hotels that lined the beach behind us twinkled in the darkness. Suddenly I realised where we were. This was my beach in Mexico, this was where Seth and I had got married. We were slightly further down the beach from where we actually had wed which was why I didn’t recognise it straight away but as I looked around I knew I was right. Adam had chosen this place deliberately as he knew it was important to me. He’d seen it in my dreams.

  I turned back to him and watched as he stretched out towards the dark inky water. I had no idea what he was doing but it probably wasn’t good.

  ‘Adam,’ I called over to him to try to distract him from whatever he was doing. He ignored me. I didn’t want to have to kill him. He had been treated so badly by the Oraculum and I knew this in part was down to that. Maybe I could talk to him somehow.