The man’s lips curved in a faint smile as he studied her. He dipped his chin in a silent greeting, murmured something to the little girl, and turned on his heels. Gold flashed under his jacket and in the wings of the crow as they headed east along the beach.
Alexa took a ragged breath and found that she could move again. She closed the distance between herself and Lily rapidly.
‘Who was that?’ she asked.
Lily gazed after the man’s fading figure before looking at her solemnly.
‘His name is Uriel,’ she said quietly. ‘Romerus knew him as…Ury’an. The crow is Arael.’
Their names danced through Alexa’s consciousness, silver tunes of power.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of them,’ Lily said. She flopped down on the sand and sat cross-legged facing the sea. ‘They’re our friends.’
Alexa hesitated before lowering herself beside her. She looked east.
The man and the crow had disappeared.
‘What did they want?’
Lily was quiet for some time. She started tracing a pattern in the sand with her finger. ‘To warn me,’ she said finally. ‘About the visions I had when Tomas and I were still in the facility.’
Alexa regarded her niece for a moment. She sensed that whatever those visions had been, she wasn’t quite ready to talk about them yet.
Lily suddenly grinned. ‘Tomas says Will peed on him. And he pooped on Uncle Zachary when he was having his bottom changed.’
Alexa smiled.
‘He wants to know what you thought of him,’ Lily said after a while.
Alexa stared east along the beach once more. There was no trace of the man and crow who had vanished in that direction.
‘He is…formidable,’ she said after a thoughtful pause.
Her answer seemed to satisfy Lily. A comfortable silence fell between them. Alexa closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun, basking in the warm rays heating her skin.
‘I will. If he asks me,’ Lily said.
Alexa’s pulse jumped. She lowered her head and turned to stare at her niece, her breath catching in her throat. ‘How did you—?’
The question died on her lips. Alexa swallowed and looked out to sea. The treacherous thought that had occupied her every waking moment since Lily had made Asgard a true Immortal sprung to the forefront of her mind once more.
‘If Uncle Zachary wants to be an Immortal, I, or Tomas, will grant him his wish,’ Lily said.
Tears slowly pooled in Alexa’s eyes as she gazed over the ocean. She reached out and grasped the little girl’s hand.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered after some time.
Lily wrapped her fingers tightly around hers. ‘It won’t be long now.’
Alexa looked at her, puzzled.
‘The day he holds her in his arms for the first time, he will come to one of us,’ Lily said.
Alexa’s heart struck up a wild tempo against her ribs at the expression on her niece’s face.
‘Holds who?’ she breathed.
Lily lowered her head to Alexa’s lap and touched her taut belly gently. ‘Your daughter, Mila.’
Air locked in Alexa’s throat. This time, the tears spilled over and blurred her vision.
She blinked them away until she could see Lily again. ‘You mean…I’m—?’
‘Yes.’ Lily grinned up at her. ‘I can’t wait to meet her, you know. She and I will be the best of friends.’
Alexa pressed her hands to her face then, a low sob leaving her lips at the incredible happiness surging through her heart and overflowing her soul.
‘I love you, Aunt Alexa,’ Lily said softly.
Alexa wiped her tears away and smiled at the little girl in her lap. ‘I love you too, Lily.’
Lily’s expression slowly sobered. She sat up and started tracing patterns in the sand again. It took a moment for Alexa to realize she was drawing symbols. Five of them she recognized. They were the birthmarks she and her cousins possessed.
The others were new to her.
‘Tomas and I spoke to Mom and Dad a few days ago. About how we can make all of you true Immortals.’
Alexa waited in silence, knowing there was more to come.
‘It will happen,’ Lily said. ‘At some stage or another in the next few decades. It has to.’
Alexa startled at her grim tone. ‘Why?’
Lily folded her legs to her chest and crossed her arms atop her knees. ‘What we did to stop that explosion? The energies we projected? It sent ripples around the world that will awaken the others.’
Alexa stared at Lily, her heart thundering in her chest. ‘What others?’
‘The ones whose gifts have stayed dormant in their bloodlines up till now. Humans and…things that do not yet know who or what they are.’ Lily turned and looked gravely at Alexa. ‘You see, Uriel was not the only divine being who came to Earth. Others did too, after him.’ She looked out to sea again. ‘Creatures of light and darkness.’
Alexa listened, blood roaring in her ears and shock reverberating through her very core, as Lily spoke of what Uriel had told her and of the visions she had had.
Of the challenge laid before an Archangel by his Creator. Of the future the Archangel had wished to carve for humans and the creations fashioned by his master. Of the ones who would join ranks with Immortals and Angels in the future. Of the battles that still lay ahead. Of the End of Days and the war to end all wars.
‘Our future allies will have their own destinies to fulfill.’ Lily frowned faintly. ‘However much we will want to help them, we must not do so. How they handle the challenges that will come their way will be their own test, just as everything that has happened since Crovir and Bastian became Immortals has been our trial.’
Alexa’s pulse raced as she tried to digest the incredible things Lily had just revealed to her.
She recalled what Dimitri had said about the Order of the Three Spears, the sect created by the Lotus-born Second Buddha to preserve the secret of the existence of the Immortals. She remembered what he had said about the first Immortal Rinpoche had met and how he had been convinced the creature was of divine lineage.
She also remembered what Olivia had said when she and Ethan had first met them in Sumava all those years ago, about how all of them had been touched by a higher power, Lily and Tomas most of all.
Alexa took a shallow breath. ‘That’s a lot to take in.’
‘It is,’ Lily murmured.
Alexa glanced to the east again. ‘Will he be there, at…the End of Days?’
Lily nodded. ‘Uriel is the oldest and wisest of all the Archangels. He is also their greatest warrior. He will be our general.’
Alexa followed her niece’s gaze to the horizon once more.
‘What happens?’ she said after a while. ‘If we win the war?’
A breathtaking smile lit up Lily’s face.
THE END
Afterword
I hope you’ve enjoyed this final, epic chapter in the Seventeen series. For those of you who wondered why Origins preceded Destiny rather than being the first book in the series, I believe Destiny answers that question. The impact of this story is so much more because of the journey I took you on during Origins in early 2017. The tale of the original Immortals is still fresh in your mind, as is the emotional ride of their adventures. That their journey did not truly end in Origins I hope came as a pleasant surprise.
I never intended for there to be a spin-off series to Seventeen. Destiny was going to end with Lily telling Alexa about all the battles that were still to come, battles that would be fought by an Immortal-human army. But so many of you asked for a continuation of the Seventeen world that I just had to plan it. And I’m already having so much fun plotting this second series.
It will be a bit different from Seventeen. If the Immortals feature in it (they might), it will be in a peripheral role only. There will be less science and technology, and more myth and fantasy. There will also be more humor; these guys and girls are super dry.
I already have several working titles and character names in mind.
If you liked Destiny, I would be super grateful if you could consider leaving an honest review on the book’s page and/or on Goodreads. Reviews are vital for authors and all reviews, even a couple of short sentences, can help readers decide whether to pick up one of my books.
You can jump right to the relevant pages by clicking the links below:
Destiny (A Seventeen Series Novel) Book Six
Destiny on Goodreads
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Acknowledgments
To Glendon Haddix of Streetlight Graphics. Thank you for the fantastic cover as always.
To my editor Sara Litchfield. Thanks for doing an amazing job on Destiny and for your wonderful suggestions. I know you were super sad to see the end of the series but I hope you’ll enjoy the next one even more!
Facts and Fictions
Now, for one of my favorite parts of writing my books. Here are the facts and fictions behind the story.
Frangibles
Frangibles, or fragmenting bullets, are factual. These are bullets that split into multiple projectiles after hitting their targets. What should be one deadly projectile turns into several lethal shards as the eight trocars in the nose of the 9mm bullet open up and shred through anything they come into contact with, including, yes, your organs. Frangibles are also known as RIP bullets. Not Rest in Peace, although that would be highly applicable in this context, but rather, Radically Invasive Projectile. Whoever thought that acronym up will laugh all the way to their grave. Once thought to be the bullets of the future, frangibles are very much the bullets of the now and are in active use by various special armed forces around the world, including the UK’s SAS as of 2017.
When I was researching what dangerous new ammo to give the bad guys in Destiny, I also came across three more “bullets of the future” that, quite frankly, made my eyes pop and my jaw drop.
MIB or Multiple Impact Bullet, is another type of fragmenting bullet, except this one doesn’t fragment on impact but before, giving a wider zone of destruction. Why just go for the stomach when you can hit the liver and the spleen at the same time.
EXACTO or Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance, is a self-steering sniper bullet that increases the hit rate of difficult long distance shots. EXACTO literally tracks moving targets in mid-air and can even accelerate. They were first field tested by DARPA in 2015 but have yet to be deployed on active missions. I think.
The final type of bullet is still very much experimental. That’s the laser-guided bullet, which will boast steerable fins instead of conventional rifling and contain a smart chip that can steer it and make up to thirty trajectory corrections per second, all under the control of an optical sensor in its nose.
Pacific Missile Range Facility, Barking Sands, Kauai
The US Navy’s Barking Sands facility is factual. Classed as the world’s largest instrumental multi-environmental range, capable of providing complex and realistic training scenarios involving surface, subsurface, air, and space, PMRF is a missile testing and training facility for the US military and is heavily used by NASA and defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. PMRF plays an active role in RIMPAC, the world’s largest maritime exercise and the setting for one of my favorite action movies, Battleship. In Destiny, I used PMRF for one very specific reason. It was the only military facility capable of facilitating a C-17 Globemaster III on its runway on Kauai.
WMRD, US Army Research Lab, Aberdeen Proving Ground
The Weapons and Materials Research Directorate of the US Army Research Lab is factual and is indeed based at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. The aim of WMRD is to improve and enhance the lethality and survivability of the weapons systems used by the US military. Simply put, they make deadlier, faster bullets, and also make stronger ballistic vests/barriers capable of sustaining impacts from those deadly, fast bullets. And not just bullets. WMRD’s field of scope encompasses researching the materials and technologies applicable to armor, armaments, missiles, ground vehicles, and helicopters, as well as an individual soldier’s hardware. In Destiny, I have a WMRD scientist work out the components of the new metal the bad guys use to make their lethal bullets. More about that new metal later.
Nano film tracker
Although the nano film tracker Vlado Krall places on Dimitri Reznak’s AMEX card is fictional, the science behind the water-resistant, liquid, thermoelectric element isn’t. I based it on a technology called Power Felt, which is effectively a thermoelectric device that converts body heat into an electric current. Power Felt was much talked about in 2012 but never made it to market. Other technologies and materials based on the principle of piezoelectricity (the ability of a solid material to accumulate or generate an electric charge in response to a mechanical stress or stimulus) have been in R&D phase since, including a mobile device nanogenerator film capable of turning mechanical vibration into electricity (so, jiggle your phone and it charges itself), and even piezoelectric floors capable of harvesting the kinetic energy of walking pedestrians and turn it into electricity (look up power generating floors in train stations in Japan).
Missing submarines
The mysterious case of the four submarines that went missing in 1968 is scarily factual. When I was trying to decide how I could get the bad guys stolen nuclear materials to build their reactors in Greenland, I thought the best way to do this would be to fake the disappearance of a few nuclear subs. The hairs literally rose on my arms when I actually started researching this subject and came across the 1968 missing subs.
The American Skipjack-class sub that went missing in the Atlantic was the USS Scorpion. The Russian Golf II-class ballistic missile sub that went missing in the Pacific was the K-129. The modified British T-Class sub commissioned by the Israelis that went missing in the Mediterranean was the INS Dakar, formally the Totem. The Daphné-class French sub that also went missing in the Mediterranean was the Minerve. There are many theories out there about what happened to these subs. Go read up on them. You’ll be pleased to know that none, thankfully, involved Immortals or suspicious individuals named Krall.
Super soldiers
I already alluded to the concept of super soldiers in Legacy and wrote about it in the Facts and Fictions section of the book’s back matter. In addition to bionanotechnology used to recombine human and Immortal DNA, and the use of performance enhancing drugs and strict physical training regimes and psychological conditioning to prepare super soldiers for battle, I added several more technologies to the super soldiers in Destiny.
First, bioengineering from the cellular level up. Whereas the super soldiers in Legacy were human soldiers and Immortals who either volunteered or were tricked into joining the Yuma program, the ones in Destiny were conceived and grown in a lab, their DNA put together with extreme precision from cellular conception. This makes them deadlier as they have none of the limitations of the original super soldiers.
Second, the use of nanotechnology and nanorobots at a cellular level. This makes the super soldiers highly adaptable to all sorts of environments and stresses, with the nanorobots being able to accelerate tissue repair, control blood flow to vital organs in critical injuries, and maintain a perfect homeostatic environment inside the super soldiers’ bodies by regulating their organ function. Imagine a soldier with a life threatening liver or spleen injury or even head injury on the field; with nanotechnology on board, his body will instinctively be able to reduce an
d control shock, pain, and minimize permanent injury by a careful balance of hormones, chemicals, blood flow, and the autonomic nervous system. This technology is already in experimental phase by DARPA under its IVN (In Vivo Nanoplatforms) program. In Israel, a company called Nanoretina is developing an artificial bio-retina composed of nanoparticles that can restore sight in under an hour.
Third, the use of neurotechnology. Closed-loop neural implants like the ones Anna discovers in the super soldiers’ brains and spines is not the stuff of the future but very much in experimental phase under DARPA’s BRAIN program and by the Israeli’s BIRD foundation. By using neuromodulation and neural augmentation, these devices can assess the state of your health and literally fix you from the inside out by sending nerve stimulation to your organs to control and modify their function. The biggest areas of research right now in neurotechnology are for diseases like strokes, spinal injuries, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and even ADHD.
In Destiny, I have Jessica Wu go further and use the neural implants to manipulate the emotions, free will, and pain thresholds of the super soldiers, enabling them to fight beyond the physical limits of their bodies. Cue the cackling of other evil, James Bond-type baddies the world over.
Liquid-armor tactical suits
The liquid-armor tactical suits featured in Destiny are very much factual. The use of nanorobots in said suits is entirely fictional. For now. Here’s how liquid armor suits work.
Take some Kevlar. Soak it in a shear-thickening fluid (STF), which behaves like a solid when it encounters mechanical stress or shear. In other words, it moves like a liquid until an object strikes it. Then it hardens, in milliseconds. The science behind it goes something like this.
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