Rise of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 3)

by Conner Kressley

  “Are you sure?” a tense and vaguely familiar voice asked at the corner of the room.

  “Positive,” a voice that I would have recognized a hundred thousand years from now answered.

  Turning, I saw Merry. She stood with her arms folded beside a tall man. He was gruff, with a five o’clock shadow, close cropped hair, and eyes as red as the blood moon.

  As I looked him over, I remembered. I’d spoken to him awhile ago. He was the brother of a warlock friend of mine. Though, unlike his brother, there was a little demon in his DNA.

  “Ralph Montez?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and trying to remember his name as I looked at him.

  “Roy Morgan,” he corrected. “And you’ll have to forgive my imp. Gary can get a little territorial.”

  15

  “I’m fine,” I said, waving off Merry and the cup of tea she was offering me for the second time since I came to. I had been out for nearly a week, or so they told me. It was insane. It felt like I had only been talking to Pearl for minutes, but she told me time moved different inside the Nexus and, in this case, different must have meant slower.

  Here on earth, I’d had plenty of time to free myself from my mother’s magical bindings and head over to Atlanta, to the home of a half demon warlock who once came to me for inspiration. I remembered that day, back in the War Room. I came off as a hot shit then, a person who knew everything because he had seen everything. It was clear to me now, looking at the red eyed warlock, that the tables had turned something fierce.

  “You should drink that anyway,” Roy said, taking a swig of beer and setting it back on the counter. “It has healing properties, and your nephew told me there’s probably still bullet fragments in your brain.”

  “It won’t kill me,” I answered, still waving it off.

  “It won’t do you any good either,” he answered curtly.

  “Please Callum,” Merry said, looking at me with those bright eyes that she must have known were my Kryptonite.

  “Fine,” I muttered, grabbing the tea and swallowing it in one huge gulp. “It tastes like ass,” I said, my face twisting downward in disgust.

  “We add the anus for flavor,” the imp, who I know knew to be called Gary said, sitting on Roy’s shoulder like some kind of nightmare looking parrot.

  “I bet,” I answered, setting the cup on the table. Since I’d come to, I hadn’t seen any of my team, save for Merry. She told me Andy, Clint, and Aria had gone out scouring for clues as to what was going on, but I knew better. I hadn’t gone to Atlanta for no reason. Back before all of this, when we learned the Romani were after Amber and I was busy dealing with Garreth and his machinations, I told Merry to bring Amber down here. Scott had told me about his brother, and I’d watched his power firsthand during a bar fight in the War Room. What was more, I spoke to him. He had a hero’s heart, and I knew Amber and Merry would be safe with him.

  She brought him here. She must have. While I had no doubt Aria and Clint were pounding the supernatural pavement, trying to get a beat on what was going on, Andy was very likely setting up a place for Amber and the mystically charmed Kyle to head to next.

  They couldn’t tell me that, of course. Not that it seemed to matter. I knew where Amber was the first time, and I somehow found out where she was now. Who or whatever was commandeering my body had a way of figuring things out and, until we either answered those questions or found a way to put a stop to this, Amber wasn’t going to safe, regardless of where that leprechaun with a medical degree took her.

  “How did I get out?” I asked, looking back at Merry. “My mother promised I would be trapped.”

  “And you would have,” Merry said. “But the magic holding you was connected to your mother, and she had electrocuted you at some point prior to this.”

  “The curse,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Sevenfold.”

  “One minute, she was standing there, and the next she was writhing on the floor.” Merry sighed. “You were gone before we could stop you. Luckily, Clint and Aria were able to track you.” She shrugged. “Not that it mattered. I knew where you were going.”

  “To Amber,” I said mournfully. “Who is it?” I asked, peering at Merry. “Who’s taking over my body and what do they want with your daughter?”

  “The same thing everyone else does, Callum,” Merry answered bitterly. “To use her, to take her childhood away and maybe even her life. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “I won’t let that happen,” I answered a swell of guilt and determination growing like a storm inside of me.

  Merry stared at me for a second, something like pity coloring her eyes. “I know that’s what you think,” she said. “But what can you really do?” She shook her head. “I can’t be with my daughter, Callum. I’m the only person in the world who can tell whether or not there’s a monster inside of you, and that means I have to be here. I can’t be with her when she needs me. She’s running for her life. She’s scared, and even if she makes it through this, there’s no guarantee she’s going to make it through what comes next.”

  My eyes flickered from Merry over to Roy and his imp friend. “We should talk about this later, Merry,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and steady.

  “Stop it, Callum,” she answered. “Roy knows what’s going on. He knows what they’re saying about my daughter, about the future.” She blinked at me. “He has a child of his own. I couldn’t put her here without making him aware of the risks. I’m not going to lie to people, Cal.” She swallowed hard. “I’m not going to-”

  “Do what I did?” I asked, finishing her sentence. I had to. It would have been too hard hearing her do it herself. “I did what I thought was best.” Merry was a world away from the way she had been back in Savannah. Back there, she was forgiving and comforting. She spoke about how much she and Amber needed me and how they couldn’t make it without me. The last week, the way things had played out, it stripped that away from her. It hardened her a little, got her thinking back to the things I’d done and looking at them with a more critical eye.

  “I did what I thought was best,” I answered, breathing heavy. “I figured that, if I could undo it somehow, if I could keep her safe, then you wouldn’t have to know.”

  “I wouldn’t have to know?” she sneered. “I wouldn’t have to know the truth about my own daughter?” She ran hands through her thick hair. “In the future, I’d appreciate it if you’d let me be the judge of what I do or do not have to know about my own child.”

  A coldness ran through me, similar to the one I’d felt when that thing roared passed me in the Nexus. She was right in a way. I had lied to her. I had treated her like a child; one who was incapable of processing a great truth. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. Maybe, if I’d have been honest with everyone from the start, we could have forgone this.

  No. I knew different than that. This was a game that had been set into motions eons before any of the players involved, save me, was even born. We were pawns in this, all of us, and free will was an illusion. Still, if I had learned anything in my long life, it was that people enjoyed their illusions. And hey, maybe I was wrong about the whole thing. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

  “I can do that,” I answered, nodding firmly. My jaw tightened. “Where is my mother?”

  “I can’t believe your mother is in the Bible,” Roy said, taking another swig of his beer. “I can’t believe you’re in the Bible for that matter, or that any of that stuff actually happened. You know, until I met you, I pretty much thought all of those stories were just myth.”

  “More often than not, myths have a way of surprising you,” I answered bitterly.

  “Yeah. I’m starting to figure that out,” Roy said, and there was a darkness in his voice that told me something else was weighing on his mind. If his life was even remotely similar to the way it had been that night in the War Room, I had little doubt that he had problems of his own. The difference this time being that I didn’t have the time to help him out
with them.

  “She’s trying to find a way to detach that damn thing from your arm,” Merry said, motioning to the cuff that held the Blade of the Divine inside of it.

  As I reached down toward it, I remembered a key component to the relic. Once it had bonded with a wearer, even death wouldn’t dislodge it. It would remain, mystically stitched into the body until that body was absolutely no more, until it had disintegrated and returned to the earth.

  Or, until the body had been burned down to ashes. Either way.

  “She wasting her time,” I answered. “I’ve dealt with this long enough to know it’s boundaries. It’s not coming off my arm.”

  “Forgive me, Callum, but you don’t know anything,” Merry answered, swallowing hard. “You told me your curse was unbreakable, but your mother almost stole it right out from under you. You told me magic couldn’t heal my daughter’s illness, but then you did it.”

  “That was different,” I butted in, remembering Gabriel and the celestial energy he gifted me in order to, not heal, but move Amber’s illness over to me where it would run its course without having the potency to kill me. I blinked as I thought about that. I hadn’t felt the pain of Amber’s illness in awhile now. I had been running so much that I hadn’t really thought about that. Andy told me that, when that thing took over my body, it healed the wounds I had suffered. It very likely healed that as well. So maybe Merry was right. Maybe I didn’t know anything.

  “The point this, things are up in the air right now. None of us know anything for sure, and I’d rather if that thing that jumps into your body every time you bump your damn head didn’t have access to a weapon that could, and I quote, carve the soul out of me.”

  “Who are you quoting?” I asked, tensing up. “Who told you that?”

  “You did, Callum,” Roy answered. “Or, whatever was in your body did. He was a nasty son of a bitch, and he had very little respect for my protection runes.”

  “I told you to make ‘em stronger,” Gary said plopping down onto the floor and pacing around. “I told you that leaving this place open to ‘known friends’ was a bad idea. You’re a grownup, Roy Boy. You don’t have friends anymore.” He pointed to himself with long claws. “Except Yours Truly, of course.”

  “Gary thinks that, because this thing was in your body, it was able to bypass my mystical security.” He sighed. “I can’t think of a better reason. So he might be right.”

  “I’m sorry for the damage I did, and I’m sorry if I put your child in danger,” I answered, once again feeling guilty for something I hadn’t done.

  “I appreciate that, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have a problem.” Roy stood up and looked down at me. “After retelling the whole ‘snake in the garden’ story, your mother told me that your condition is likely linked to a sin in your past, to one of the most horrible things you ever did.”

  “She loves telling people that story,” I muttered, shaking my head. ‘And yeah. I met someone in the Nexus who believed the same thing. The problem, of course, is that I’ve never been a saint. I’ve known a few, but I’ve never actually been among them. And I’ve lived a long time, Roy. I’m afraid that, if we’re going to go rummaging through my list of bad behavior, it might take a couple centuries.”

  “Maybe not,” he said, folding his arms. The red in his eyes pulsated brighter now as a smile crept across his face. “I have an idea.”

  16

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” I said, glaring over at Roy from across his living room. The plan which he’d just laid out in front of me was equal parts bad and dangerous. And, worse than that, he didn’t seem to understand.

  Gary, his little imp friend, stood between us, looking back and forth at us like this was some sort of presidential debate, like we were about to lay out two compelling sides of a complicated argument. The truth was, this was far from complicated. It was ridiculous.

  “Do you have a better idea?” he asked, opening a cabinet on the far end of his living room and pulling out a book. “besides, last I heard, you were talking about how impossible it would be for you to go running down a laundry list of all the shit you pulled.” He slammed the book down onto his coffee table. “This seems easier.”

  “Easier isn’t exactly the word I’d use,” I said, chancing a glance over at Merry. She had a stake in this. The stowaway hijacking my body at every available instance was after her daughter, after all. Still, I needed everyone, her included, to know the risks involved.

  “You’re a demon,” I said flatly.

  “Half of me is,” he answered instantly.

  “Which is more than enough,” I answered just as quickly. I wasn’t trying to be rude. On the contrary, I owed Roy for all he had done for up to this point. It’s just that demons were notoriously shady and slippery characters. What was more, they had a nasty hunger inside of them. They wanted- no, they needed- to feast on the energy of other living things to survive. That could make them desperate, which made them dangerous. Couple that with dark energy and durability well beyond that of a normal human being, and you get a creature so dangerous that it’s no wonder they’ve become the stuff of nightmares.

  And this dude, he had magic too.

  “The other half of you is a warlock,” I said, nodding. “Your brother aside, warlocks have never been big fans of mine.” I narrowed my eyes. ‘Where is your brother, by the way? I wouldn’t mind him being here for backup.”

  “Neither would I,” Roy sighed mournfully. “But he’s off world.”

  “Off world?” I asked, my eyebrows shooting up.

  “It’s complicated,” Roy answered. “And not important.” He opened the book, flipping through the pages until he settled on one about midway through the obviously aged tome. “Here it is. This should do the trick.”

  “You want to cast a spell on me,” I said, walking toward him and running down the plan he’d just laid out in front of me. “A spell that will open up my psyche and expose mystical fingerprints.”

  “Think of it like a Litmus test, but for magic,” he said. “Wherever you’ve been effected will show up and whatever is actively screwing with you right now will show up too.” He looked up at me from his book. “And what’s more, it’ll leave a trail. All I have to do is go down it, and I should be able to pinpoint the anchor its latched onto.” He took a deep breath. “I just have to be connected to you.” He tilted his head. “In a rather intense manner.”

  “Which is where the demon part comes in,” I finished. “You want to eat me.”

  “I want to latch myself to your life force and use that connection to guide me to the information I need, the information you guys are so desperate for.” Roy shrugged. “it’s not as weird as it sounds.”

  “It’s definitely weirder than it sounds,” I answered. “And what’s more, it’s insanely dangerous. First of all, my entire being is magic. The fact that I’m here at all is thanks to magic. I don’t really see how you’re going to be able to find what my brother did to me through all of it. It seems like trying to find a needle in Manhattan.”

  “That’s because you didn’t grow up having the different sorts of magic drilled into your head everyday. You grew up a stone’s throw from Paradise, eating forbidden apples for fun or whatever,” he said.

  “That’s only partially true,” I answered.

  “The point is, I’ll be able to tell what’s supposed to be there, and what’s not. If I’m lucky, and hopefully I will be, I’ll also be able to tell you where you need to go to stop it.” He shook his head. “Fix the sin, fix the sinner, right?”

  “Something like that,” I lamented. “But what about the rest of it? Tapping into a life force is dangerous. Trust me, I’ve seen more than my fair share of it. If you go too fast, too far, or too deep, you could kill a person. Normally, that wouldn’t bother me, but at this particular moment, handing me a fatal blow means-”

  “Releasing the Kraken?” Gary suggested, his fangs bored into a disconcerting smil
e.

  “I know what I’m doing, C,” Roy said, turning the book toward me. “The spell needs to be enacted first, before I can-”

  “Go succubus on me?” I muttered.

  “That’s a dirty word,” he answered.

  “It’s a dirty thing,” I responded. “There’s also the curse to worry about. Whatever you do to me is going to be visited on you at some point in the future, times seven. There’s nothing I can do about that, and nothing in any of your books will be able to stop it.”

  “I understand that,” Roy said. “I’m not going to do anything that would kill you, not even a seventh of anything that will kill you. If I have to feel what it’s like to have done to me what I do to people; well, maybe that’s something that can help me grow.”

  “That’s very Zen of you,” I answered.

  “I’m nothing if not progressive,” he answered.

  My eyes moved back to Merry. She She was standing there, completely still, completely silent. She had so much to lose, I hated the idea of not going through with this, but I hated the idea of it backfiring even more. “If this goes wrong, is Amber far enough away to stop me from being able to get to her before you can fix it.”

  Roy just stared at me and I knew the answer.

  “Jesus,” I muttered. “If this goes wrong-”

  “Then I’ll take you out,” Roy finished.

  “People have tried to do that before. Most of them have failed.”

  “I’m not most of them,” he said, his eyes flashing red.

  ‘Fine,” I said. “But if this goes wrong, if there’s even a chance that I’m going to hurt that little girl, then you tear me into pieces and bury those pieces far away from each other.”

  “That’s intense, dude,” Gary said from below.

  “Done,” Roy answered. “Now I need you to stay still. As soon as this spell starts, there are a million that could go wrong.”