Rise of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 3)

by Conner Kressley

  “Slow down, Abe,” I said, swallowing hard. “Just tell me what’s going on. Tell me what I can do to make this better. You don’t have to be a monster. You don’t have to kill anyone. I’ve been in this world much longer than you have. I might not always act like it, but I know how things tend to happen. Things look bad sometimes. Other times, things seem downright impossible, but they’re not. There’s always a way around this stuff, Abe. Let me help you find the way. Let me help you fix this.”

  Abel couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down his face now. He looked anguished, like what was happening was tearing him apart inside. As I looked at him, all I could think of was that day in the field; that day with my hands in the air and a rock smashing down against his face over and over again.

  I stole so much from him because of that. I stole his future and his life, and I set him on this path. He was here now, pulled from peace and happiness, because of what I did to him. I could never make that right, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t try.

  “Brother,” I started, my voice cracking. “I-”

  “It’s not that simple, Cain,” he said quickly, cutting into my words. “I can’t tell you what’s going on. I can’t give away the truth, because- if I do- then he’ll hear it too.” Abel shook his head. “The other who takes your skin; he’ll hear it, and then he’ll know. And, if he knows, I can’t stop it.”

  “Who?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat as I thought of that scary bastard in the Nexus. “Who’s taking over my body, Abe?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Abel asked, his face loosing most of it’s color. “I thought he would have made himself known to you by now. I thought he would have made it clear.” Abel shook his head. “No. It’s better if you don’t know. It’s better if-”

  “Abel!” I said, moving toward him.

  “If she lives, the door can be opened. If the door is opened, then the world will end. The door must remain closed. She’s the only key now. Don’t you see that? Don’t you understand. If she dies, then the world is safe, then you’re safe, Brother. The door can never be opened if she dies.” Abel nodded. “So forgive me, Brother, but she must die.”

  “Abel, I’m sorry,” I muttered and rushed toward him, bringing the Blade of the Divine down on him.

  He lifted his hand and the Blade as well as my body stopped in midair.

  “You think you can touch my soul, Brother?” he asked. “You think you can spoil it with your weapons?” He sighed. “I’m afraid it’s too late for that. I must do what needs to be done. I must find the girl and put an end to her. I beg of you, brother to brother, don’t try to stop me. It won’t end well if you do.”

  A flash of light blinded me and, when it subsided, my body fell to the floor.

  Looking up, I saw that Abel was gone. He was looking for Amber, and he wasn’t going to stop until she was dead.

  21

  “Why would he do that?” my mother asked, looking at me with confused eyes and arms crossed over her chest. “Your brother isn’t a killer, Cain. He was always so gentle, always so kind.”

  “I know that, Eve,” I answered, remembering my brother as he was and then, in the same instant, as he had been just moments ago. I couldn’t make sense of the change, but that wasn’t all I couldn’t make sense of. “I need you to tell me everything you know about the way the world ends,” I commanded of her unblinkingly.

  “I know little more than you do,” she answered, shaking her head. “I know the half gypsy girl is responsible and I know it will extinguish human life on this planet for the rest of eternity. I’m afraid no one aside from He Who Made Us is aware of the specifics of it.”

  “That’s bull,” I said angrily, looking past my mother to the group behind her. Everyone of them took the news of Abel’s intentions- as well as the fact that Amber got away without so much as leaving a clue to her current whereabouts- pretty hard. No one harder than Merry obviously. Her eyes were practically fountains at this point, constantly streaming tears. “Abel knows,” I said, looking back at my mother. “He knows at least a little of how the world ends. So explain that to me, Eve? If no one aside from the Big Guy knows how the world ends, how come my baby brother is in on the details?”

  “I have no idea,” she admitted. “Unless He Who Made Us made it a point to enlighten your brother on future events.”

  “We both know that’s not true,” I scoffed. “He doesn’t roll that way. Besides, Abel is advocating murdering an innocent little girl. The Big Guy doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “He has at least a little to do with it,” my mother answered. “He’s allowing it.”

  “Damnit, Mother!” I yelled. “I’m not having the whole ‘why bad things happen to good people’ conversation with you right now. Things are the way they are. Blaming God is ridiculous, and it’s a waste of time.”

  “You called me Mother,” she answered, blinking. “And you called Him God.”

  I took a deep breath. She was right. I wasn’t exactly up on the idea of calling either one of them by terms of endearment. The way I saw it, both of them had turned their back on me at one time or another. Sure, I was a murderer, but even they deserved forgiveness.

  “I can’t do this with you right now,” I answered, my voice lower. “There’s no time. I just need you to think. I need you to dig into that brain of yours and try to figure out what Abel meant when he sais that a door would be opened. What does he mean by that? What door is he talking about?”

  “A door to hell perhaps,” my mother answered. “But that’s not quite right. Portals to Hell are almost nonexistent and, even if they were plentiful, going through them would require more than the hand of a tween girl.”

  Brushing aside the fact that my mother apparently knew what the word tween meant, I continued.

  “Then what?” I asked. “Abel said that Amber was the only person who could open the door, and that it was my fault that she was.”

  “Perhaps he’s just angry with you,” my mother answered. “Maybe he holds a grudge against you for what you did to him. Or maybe he means it in a more philosophical level. Maybe he means, since you brought death into the world, this can all be traced back to you.”

  “I might have brought death, but I’m not the one who brought sin. If he wanted to trace evil back into the world, he needs to go one generation prior to me.”

  My mother balked. “Oh, it was an apple. When the hell is everyone going to stop talking about it?”

  “I wouldn’t hold my breath,” I replied. “In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself useful? There has to be a locator spell you can use to track her. Merry has more than a few of her possessions on hand and, if that doesn’t work, she has the same damn blood.”

  “Locator spells won’t work,” my mother said, glaring at me. “Not with that damn Irishman in tow with her. He’s like a damn magical blind spot.”

  “Seriously?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. I knew a thing or two about the luck of the Irish, but I never dreamed the power would be potent enough for Kyle to hide himself from someone with the amount of energy my mother was toting around with her. And he wasn’t even trying.

  “He might be immune to magical tracking, but he smells like fucking corned beef,” Clint said from behind my mother. “I’ll go out there and follow their scent. If they’ve stayed on foot this entire time, then I’ll be able to get to them. If not, at least I’ll be able to give you a direction to start looking in.”

  “Good idea,” I said, nodding at Clint. “Take Aria with you please. Two trackers are always better than one.”

  The vamp and wolf made their way out the door, my mother shaking her head vigorously as they left.

  “You don’t really think they’re going to find anything, do you?” she asked, leering at me. “Of course you don't, because you know that someone with the Wisdom of Solomon at her disposal would be smart enough to know how to avoid tracking by what I’ll generously describe as a pair of subpar supernaturals.”r />
  “They’re good people,” I answered.

  “They’re mediocre people and, even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t matter,” my mother said. “Good people can be useless. In my experience, most of them are. That’s your problem, Cain. You surround yourself with people you think you can save.”

  “So?” I asked.

  “That’s not what you do, son. That’s not who you are. You’ve been gifted eternity and, aside from a few stints playing the bad boy, you’ve been actively running away from your nature. You killed Abel. That doesn’t make you Abel, son. You’re not like him. You’re not the shepherd. You’re the wolf. You want to save the world, then you need to get down in it. You need to stick your hands in the damn dirt and rub it around.” She scoffed. “It would seem your brother doesn’t have any objection to it.”

  “What are you suggesting?” I asked, looking from Andy and Merry back to my mother.

  “I’m suggesting you stop this nonsense. You can’t even see how different you are, can you?” She turned away from me, looking out the window. “The boy I raised had fire in him. He was full of it. You couldn’t mess with him, Cain. You wouldn’t dare, and look at you now. You’re being jerked around by every person who comes into contact with you. You were very nearly killed by a coven of witches, son. A coven of witches!”

  “A coven of witches that you were in charge of,” I reminded her.

  “Like that matters,” she responded. “The truth is, you haven’t been yourself in at least a thousand years, and that’s not okay. You think He Who Made Us kept you on this earth because he wanted you to learn to be kind or compassionate? You think your life is meant to be spent playing footsie with some nurse and raising her gypsy baby? That’s not your life, son. It’s not who you are.” She threw her arms into the air. “You were upset with me for coming back here the first time. Would you like to know why I did, why I had to?” She turned back to me, disgust in her eyes. “Because you couldn’t do what you needed to. Because the people laying the chess board in this game we’ve found ourselves in knew something about you that I didn’t, something I wouldn’t dare allow myself to think. They knew you were soft. They knew you would be useless.”

  I opened my mouth, honestly unsure of what I was about to say. Was she right? Had I gotten soft? Could it be that what I saw as improvements in myself- compassion, honor, a sense of justice- was actually to the detriment of the world?

  Was I useless?

  Before I could answer though, another voice cut through the air.

  “Get the hell out of here, you bitch!”

  I turned to find Merry rushing my mother, the tears in her eyes replaced with rage.

  “Merry,” I started.

  She didn’t listen. She pushed past me, laying hands on my mother and slamming her against the window she’d just been peering out.

  “If you were smart, you’d take your hands off my, Little Girl,” my mother snarled.

  “I guess I’m not smart then,” Merry answered in a huff. “Because the only thing my hands are going to be doing is throwing your ass out of here. I should have listened to your son when he told me about you. I should have forgotten about your whole damn family because, as far as I can see, Callum is the only one of you who is worth a damn.”

  “You don’t know him, Meredith,” my mother answered. “You have no idea who the man standing before you is.”

  “I’ve heard that before, lady,” Merry said. “Didn’t buy it then, and I sure as hell don’t buy it now. Maybe you’re the one who’s mistaken. You ever think of that? Maybe it’s you who doesn’t know a damn thing about your son. That’s definitely how it looks from where I’m standing, because the man standing before me is the bravest, most honorable, most absolutely kickass person I have ever met in my life. And if you can’t see that, then I feel sorry for you.” She pushed her again and, with that force, pulled off of me, backing away just a little. “Not that I’m surprised by it. You always struck me as a shitty mother.”

  I looked at Merry, at the fervor with which she spoke, at the fire in her eyes; fire like the kind my mother had just said was in me. Hers was different though. Hers didn’t destroy. It built. It created.

  “You need me,” my mother said, looking past Merry to me. “I’m still your best chance to find that girl.”

  “With what?” Merry asked, sneering at her. “You already said your precious magic doesn’t work and you sure as hell don’t know anything about children.”

  “But you do,” I answered, taking Merry’s hand and turning her toward me. “Abel might have the upper hand in a lot of ways. He has more power than us, and he has a head start, but what he doesn’t have, what no one else in the world has, is you.” I smiled at her, my first true smile in a while. “You know Amber better than anyone. Wisdom of Solomon or not, she’s still the same little girl underneath. She’s still the girl you raised. You tell me, Merry. Where would that little girl go when she felt like she had nowhere else to turn?”

  Merry looked off in the distance. Her eyes then took on a brightness. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “I know where she went.”

  “Let’s go,” I said, taking her hand and motioning for Andy to follow. As we reached the door, I turned back to my mother.

  “And she was right, Eve. You can get the hell out.”

  22

  “I can’t over how awesome this car is,” Andy said, looking around in the backseat of the Mustang I ‘borrowed’ from the parking garage in downtown Atlanta. He was geeking out for sure, but my nephew had a point. This thing was prime; ay blue with a silver pinstripe and chrome wheels and a custom license plate that read ‘MNS MN’. ‘Man’s Man’, whoever that guy was, would be seriously pissed when he came out in the morning looking for his ride, but I had a world to save. And sure, I probably could have asked to borrow Roy’s car, but he was still unconscious and I didn’t really have time to haggle with Gary over the keys. So, aside from making sure Gary told Roy to call us the instant he woke up to tell us what info he gleamed from his little trip inside the wondrous land that was me, I basically made a quiet exit.

  “It’s definitely a dream. I just wish it had a navigation system,” I answered, looking out onto the dark freeway.

  “I don't need it. I'd never forget how to get here. Besides, phones have navigation systems in them now, Callum. I know you’re old, but that doesn’t mean you have to act like it,” Merry answered, rolling her eyes.

  “I know phones have navigation systems,” I countered. “I just don’t know how to use them,” I added in a mumble.

  “I hate to say this,” Andy started from the backseat. “But maybe it would have been smarter to let your mother tag along. She could have twitched her nose and gotten us where we needed to be in a jiffy.”

  “Twitched her nose; that’s a Bewitched reference,” I told Merry, pride in my voice. “Sometimes age has it perks.”

  “Keep telling yourself that, Grandpa,” she chimed.

  “Either way, it’s not a valid point. Even if my mother’s abilities did allow herto teleport, and I’m not sure they did, we couldn’t risk it. Energy like that is usually traceable, especially for people who are as powerful as Abel seems to be right now. He’d know where we were in an instant, and I’m convinced that’s the reason he stuck around after Amber left to talk with me. He wanted to let me know he was after her, to put the heat on me, so to speak. That way, I’d panic and make a stupid mistake. He knows Amber is smarter than him. She’s smarter than everybody. So he was waiting for you to find her, Merry, for you to tell me where she was going to be. That way, he could just follow us and do the deed right there.”

  “The ‘deed’ is my daughter,” Merry said, disgust running through her features.

  Guilt, empathy, and determination flashed up inside of me. “I know that,” I answered. “And that’s why I didn’t make those mistakes. You see, my brother is like my mother. He still sees me as the hotheaded boy I used to be outside of Eden. He doesn’t know the ma
n I am, the man who can see the forest for the trees. He thought putting pressure on me would cause me to act impulsively, to forget that he’d be able to follow us if we took to magic as a helper. He didn’t know it would only cause to make me more cautious. He didn’t know how important that little girl is to me, how important you are to me,” I said, moving my right hand from the steering wheel and placing it in Merry’s.

  “So I was just wrong then?” Andy asked from the backseat. “I can live with that.”

  “We have to keep a low profile. Driving might take longer, but it’s still infinitely quicker than the time it would take for Abel to find Amber without using us as a compass. She’s got the Wisdom on her side, as well as a doctor with a stupid haircut and luck based powers. Even without her connection to the end of the world and her innate gypsy abilities, she’d be a force to reckon with.”

  “Innate gypsy abilities?” Merry looked over at me, her eyes widening. "Please tell me you’re joking.”

  “Merry,” I said, chancing an eye off the road. “She’s half Romani. Certainly you knew that would come with some added complications.”

  “You mean more complications, don’t you?” she scoffed, pulling her hand away from mine and shaking her head. “And I didn’t know Patrick was…different until a few months ago. It’s not like I’ve had time since then to process any of this.” Merry’s hands went to her face. “My God. This is never going to be over, is it? Even if , by some miracle, we make it threw this, even if we bypass the end of the world and the Wisdom of Solomon and whatever else throws itself in our way in the meantime, she’s never going to be like other people. She’s never going to be like me.” A single tear rolled down her face. “I knew they wanted her, the stupid Romani. Her grandfather wis king, after all, and now that Patrick is dead, she’s next in line for whatever constitutes as throne in that ass backwards world they live in. I just figured we could get around that. I figured you could help us, Callum. But it’s deeper than that, isn’t it?” She sighed heavily. “She’s got an entire culture, a whole community of people with her shared experience. I’m not going to be able to help her navigate these powers. I’m not going to be able to teach her about where she came from.”