He folded his arms around the man on his lap and gently kissed his brow. ‘Be at peace, brother.’
Crovir grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly.
The crows fled as one, black clouds that dwindled rapidly into the azure sky from the three facilities.
‘Get ready,’ Lily said.
Alexa took a deep breath and focused inward, to the source of her unearthly gifts. Heat erupted inside her heart. It flowed through her veins and warmed her flesh and bones.
She felt the same explosive energy burst inside Conrad and Olivia where they stood on either side of her, and through everyone else along their chain.
Fire seared the trishula birthmark at the back of Alexa’s neck. From it poured the very essence of Mila’s power, a potent force almost identical yet subtly different to hers. With it came all of the ancient warrior’s memories, thoughts, and feelings. Tears pooled in Alexa’s eyes at the enormous weight of the centuries of emotions.
Conrad and Olivia’s fingers dug into her palms, their breathing ragged.
Alexa knew without looking that all of them were going through the same heartrending experience. She gasped when Mila’s soul fused completely with hers. An unholy radiance burst into life along her skin and throughout the bodies of her cousins once more as their powers exploded.
Madeleine sat on the ice behind one of the snow vehicles, Asgard in her arms. Zachary and Anna stilled at her side, their gazes similarly riveted to the incredible figures on the crest of land ahead of them.
A golden light shimmered and danced around the seven Immortals, the brightest halos concentrated on the two children in the middle of the chain.
Standing behind them, so faint she thought she was imagining them, were six ethereal forms.
Sadness bloomed inside Madeleine, so sharp and sudden she choked on a silent sob. Tears blurred her vision as she experienced the heartbreaking sorrow of the soul inside her.
Anna took her hand, her eyes gleaming with tears of her own.
They knew then that they were looking at the original six Immortals. The ones who had revived inside the bodies of their marked descendants. The ones who had once risen against their own fathers in order to forge a different path for mankind and their own kin, in an epic war that history had long since forgotten.
Brightness bloomed on the horizon.
Lily and Tomas drew on the formidable energies of the Immortals beside them and raised their linked hands toward the searing ball of light rising toward the sky.
‘Up,’ Tomas whispered.
The flash of the fourth nuclear detonation was visible from the International Space Station where it orbited the Earth. What the astronauts witnessed next defied all known laws of gravity and physics.
Although the initial fireball created shock waves and ripples in the Earth’s atmosphere, the mushroom cloud and sequential condensation rings never formed. Instead, most of the blast was concentrated into a rising funnel that dispersed its explosive power and radioactive material into outer space.
The ground trembled violently beneath Tomas’s feet as he watched the wall of ice and rock head toward them in a thunderous roar ahead of the firestorm.
The first wave of elemental and psychokinetic energy he and Lily had created had curtailed the devastating explosion by encircling it and channeling its cataclysmic force in the only direction it could go. Up, toward the sky.
There was little they could do to completely stop the effects of the blast at ground level and the destruction of the thick ice sheet and rock beneath it.
Sweat beaded on Tomas’s forehead. He clenched his teeth and felt Lily’s fingers bite into his palm. They inhaled, focused the combined powers of all seven of them once more, and released the second wave.
Olivia gasped and dropped to her knees. Ethan and Conrad folded a moment later.
Although Alexa and Lucas sagged at their sides, they managed to stay upright by the barest thread.
Lucas’s entire being throbbed and tingled with so much power it nearly drove him to the ground. He blinked, his heart stuttering at what he was seeing.
The wall of ice and debris stopped half a mile from where they stood. He watched, mesmerized, as it soared higher and higher, curving along the massive bubble of elemental and psychokinetic energy it had crashed into, its angry howl muted to a faint rumble.
Twilight covered the land as it arched above and around the ridge. It took less than thirty seconds for the dome to form.
In that moment, Lucas felt the sudden agony of loss.
The two souls who had been his constant companions for the last three days were gone.
Deafening silence descended around them. Madeleine blinked and slowly opened her eyes, blood pounding inside her skull.
Zachary uncurled his arms from where he had wrapped them over her and Anna’s heads and took a shuddering breath. It froze on his lips in the next instant.
Anna gasped.
Madeleine followed their gazes to the sky. Or where the sky should have been.
Instead of azure, all she saw was whiteness. It took a few seconds for her to register that she was looking at a vault some one mile high.
‘Is that—ice?’ Anna said hoarsely.
Murmurs rose around them as humans and Immortals alike gaped at the incredible phenomenon, stunned that they were still alive and unharmed.
Something fluttered past Madeleine’s face. She put her hand out and watched a snowflake land on her palm. Flurries formed above her head as more snow started to fall.
That was when she felt it. The absence of the soul that had been reborn inside her.
Footsteps crunched in the ice up ahead. Madeleine looked down and stared at the seven Immortals walking toward them through a film of tears.
Conrad knelt by Madeleine and gently helped her lay Asgard on the ground between them. Shivers still shook the Healer’s body, no doubt an aftermath of the incredible forces that had filled him only moments past.
‘Are you sure?’ she said.
He nodded and blinked back tears.
He could no longer sense Rafael inside him. He hadn’t realized how much the reborn soul of his ancestor had come to mean to him in the three short days they had spent together until he was no longer there. He could read the same sadness in the eyes of his cousins, Zachary, and Madeleine.
Conrad took a ragged breath, laid his hands on Asgard’s chest, and closed his eyes. He had just started to focus on the unearthly lines of energy surrounding his heart when someone touched his shoulder.
‘No.’ Lily lowered herself beside him and moved his hands aside. ‘Let me do it.’
Conrad stared at her, nonplussed.
‘Lily?’ Anna said, her face pale as she exchanged a troubled look with Lucas.
Lily smiled at her father and mother. ‘It’s okay.’
She placed her hands on Asgard’s body, a tiny frown furrowing her brow.
Conrad blinked. Shock flared through him when he grasped what he was feeling under his fingertips where they still lay on Asgard’s chest.
‘Conrad?’ Alexa said in a low voice.
Olivia’s knees slowly buckled beneath her. Tears streamed unchecked down her cheeks as she stared from Lily to Asgard. Ethan inhaled sharply and gripped her shoulder, his face turning to ash as whatever Olivia had felt was communicated to him across their bond.
‘What’s going on?’ Madeleine said, her eyes wide with apprehension.
Conrad swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. ‘Seventeen. She’s giving him back all of his seventeen lives!’
Panic washed across Anna’s face. She took a step toward Lily. Tomas grabbed her hand.
‘She’ll be fine.’ He dipped his chin at his mother. ‘Trust me.’
Conrad’s breath locked in his throat. He stared blindly at his fingers where they rested on Asgard’s chest, unable to comprehend what it was he was sensing now.
‘More.’ His gaze switched to Lily’s face. ‘There are more than sevente
en lives. I can’t—’ He faltered, his pulse racing as he finally grasped what was happening.
The new golden lines around Asgard’s heart were multiplying faster than he could count them.
A shudder ran through the body beneath his hands.
Conrad looked up in time to see Asgard’s eyes slam open. He gasped and bolted upright, his fingers rising to clutch Lily’s where they still lay over his heart.
‘Immortality,’ Olivia whispered.
Conrad exchanged a stunned glance with her. He hesitated before nodding his agreement.
Alexa dropped to her knees in the rapidly building snowdrift, tears glittering in her eyes. ‘You mean—?’
‘He is a true Immortal now,’ Olivia mumbled. ‘Like Lily and Tomas, and Lucas and Anna.’
Asgard blinked and looked around dazedly before staring at Lily. ‘What happened?’
Madeleine broke down and cried, her sobs echoing in the silence around them.
Epilogue
November 2017. Balthazar Island, Pacific Ocean.
Glass trembled and hummed violently. The windows vibrated in their frames. Bob startled and ran out of the room before peeking his head around the doorframe, bushy tail swinging hesitantly. Anna winced.
‘Jesus, does that kid have a pair of lungs on him,’ Ethan muttered.
He was seated at the kitchen island, his index fingers rammed inside his ears.
Olivia grinned on the stool beside him.
William Rafael Hartwell-Greene opened his mouth and let out another explosive shriek before shoving aside the bottle Conrad was holding to his lips.
Rapid footsteps sounded on the stairs. Laura skidded to a stop in the doorway next to the golden retriever, her hair still wet from the shower, her clothes disheveled. Alexa, Zachary, and Reid followed leisurely behind her.
‘What the hell is going on?’ Laura snapped.
Conrad sighed and indicated their son with a jerk of his head. ‘He won’t take his milk.’
Laura’s shoulders drooped. ‘Again?’
‘Let me try,’ Anna murmured.
She took the baby from Conrad’s arms, walked over to a chair by the patio doors, and rocked him gently as she brought the bottle to his mouth. Will studied her with a calculated stare, reached up, and yanked sharply on her hair.
‘Ow,’ Anna said with a chuckle. A gasp left her lips as he folded his chubby legs to his chest and booted the bottle to the floor.
‘Wow,’ Reid said in mock admiration. ‘Three months old and he’s already perfected a double-front-flying kick.’
‘Your son’s a regular terror,’ Ethan told Conrad and Laura bluntly.
‘Ha ha,’ Laura said with a scowl.
Conrad grimaced.
The front door opened. Madeleine and Asgard strolled into the hallway with Lucas and Tomas, fishing rods in hand.
‘We heard the screaming from the water,’ Madeleine said.
‘I think he scared the fish,’ Asgard said gruffly. ‘Not a single damn one of them would bite.’
Lucas swallowed a bark of laughter. Tomas grinned.
A lighthearted feeling swept over Anna as she gazed lovingly at the people around her.
Thirteen weeks had passed since the events in Greenland.
Defying all scientific explanation, the one-mile-wide dome of ice and rock that had formed around the protective bubble Lily and Tomas had created with the help of Lucas and their cousins still stood and remained visible from space. It had taken a blast of elemental energy from Ethan and Tomas to create a break in the west wall large enough for them to pass through in their vehicles and meet with the soldiers who had been coming to their rescue.
Although everyone had feared that the snow that had drifted down on them following the detonation would be rife with radioactive debris, no trace of radiation had been found in the air above and around the impact zone by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Health Organization, something no one could fathom.
It was Lily who had revealed the reason why days later. ‘Most of it followed the path of the primary blast into space. Tomas and I destroyed whatever was left over.’
Anna had stared at her children for a stunned moment.
‘What?’ Lucas had said hoarsely.
They’d still been at their apartment in Boston at the time.
Tomas had nodded. ‘It’s just as Lily said.’ He’d glanced at his sister. ‘It’s like healing. Instead of flesh and bone, we cured the air.’
As she had lain in Lucas’s arms in bed that night, Anna had turned to him and finally voiced her concern. ‘There are still so many things I don’t understand.’
Lucas had regarded her for a moment before pressing a soft kiss to her mouth. ‘I think that’s something the scientist in you is just going to have to come to terms with.’
A new era of previously inconceivable cooperation between the Bastians and the Crovirs had started following Greenland and the embarrassing Immortal war that had almost erupted. Victor and Ivan were even talking about merging their councils, something which Dimitri found intensely amusing. He had teased both men mercilessly about it when they had visited him in Sumava and had started to take bets as to who would lead a unified Immortal Council. It turned out Ivan was as much a fan of chess as Victor and Dimitri were, and even defeated Eva during a game that had seen Jordan sulk for an entire week.
Anna and the others’ esteem for the Crovir leader had only grown after Lily and Tomas had related what had happened while they had been prisoners in the facility. As for the children and babies Ivan had helped rescue, they had all been taken into care by the Immortal societies.
It had taken twelve weeks for Anna and Lucas to rebuild their home on the island with Ethan and Conrad’s help. Today was the first time everyone had returned to visit the new house.
‘Where’s Lily?’ Alexa said presently.
‘She went for a walk,’ Tomas said.
‘She was headed for the beach near the lab,’ Asgard added.
Anna gazed fondly at her uncle. The fact that he was now a true Immortal like Lucas and herself had come as an utter shock to him when he had woken after his seventeenth death.
‘But—but what about Lily’s lives?!’ he’d said, aghast.
‘She is a true Immortal still,’ Conrad had explained. ‘And it looks like she can gift her immortality.’
Asgard had remained pensive for a long time after that. Anna knew he had been thinking of Madeleine. That he would outlive her was obviously a subject of much anguish for him.
Anna swallowed a secret smile. What she had not told him or the others yet was what Lily and Tomas had said to her and Lucas a few nights ago.
An unholy sound exploded across the kitchen, startling everyone. Anna stiffened and stared at the crying infant in her arms.
Tomas walked over to the chair. ‘Can I?’
Anna glanced at Conrad and Laura. They shrugged.
She rose and passed the baby to her son.
Tomas took the seat and the bottle from her.
Will gazed wide-eyed at Tomas. He closed his lips around the teat and drank greedily, his blue eyes fixed unblinkingly on the older boy.
‘Holy cow,’ Ethan said, breaking the stunned silence. He pointed at Tomas and looked at Olivia. ‘When we have kids, he can be their official nanny.’
Olivia blushed.
Tomas stiffened. Will giggled.
Anna bit her lip; there was a wet patch spreading on Tomas’s T-shirt.
Laura’s face fell. ‘Did he just pee on you?’
Tomas sighed and observed the chuckling baby and the growing blotch morosely. ‘And so it begins.’
Sand and dirt puffed around Alexa’s feet as she headed for the north beach.
A strange peace had descended on her and Zachary’s lives since the events in Greenland. This despite the fact that they both sorely missed the souls that had been with them for such a fleeting time. Though three months had passed since the explosion, there wer
e days when Alexa felt that Mila was still there, living in the space behind her eyes and inside her heart.
‘They stayed for as long as they were needed,’ Lily had explained while they were making their way back to Iceland on a transport helicopter following their rescue. ‘To do what they couldn’t do all those years ago. To see their fathers return to ash.’
Alexa knew the grief she had experienced since was not just her burden to carry. She could glimpse the same sorrow in the others’ eyes. It was truly as if a part of them had died. A fragment of their soul they had never even realized had always been there.
She passed Anna’s lab. The trees cleared up ahead. Beyond them, surf rolled off the dazzling, green Pacific Ocean and crashed gently onto a white beach.
Lily stood at the edge of the water. She was not alone.
Alexa stiffened when she saw the figure her niece was talking to.
The man was tall and dressed in short boots, gray jeans, a white T-shirt, and a brown, leather jacket. A hoodie covered his head and obscured his face.
There was a crow on his left shoulder.
Alexa clenched her teeth and broke into a run, conscious she’d left her guns and sais at the house.
The man and the crow turned their heads and looked straight at her.
A memory slammed through Alexa’s consciousness and brought her to a staggering halt, her feet inexplicably freezing to the ground. A memory of the night Mila had stumbled upon the dreadful sight of Crovir slaying Romerus.
She recalled the warm breeze and the incredible pressure Mila had sensed beside her as Romerus had taken his last breaths, and her instinct that something else had been present in the citadel with them that night.
Something beyond her understanding.
Something otherworldly.
The same powerful feeling washed over Alexa as she stared into the silver eyes of the man at Lily’s side and met the fathomless gaze of the crow on his shoulder.
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