A Torment of Savages (The Reanimation Files Book 4)

by A. J. Locke

  Which was why I was here, to try and make things right and see if she knew how. I cleared my throat, but Nova did not acknowledge my presence. I took a step closer to the bars and fixed my gaze on her.

  “Nova.” My voice came out strong and unwavering. Still, she did not look my way, just gave a slow blink and continued muttering to herself. My patience, which I barely had in the presence of this woman, began fraying. I kicked the jail bars and ignored the repercussions to my foot.

  “Answer me, damn it,” I said. “You’ve been calling for me all this time, haven’t you? Well, I’m here now. Let’s talk.”

  Nova blinked. Once, twice, three times. Then a smile curled her lips and she sucked in a breath.

  “Oh Selene, oh Selene, oh Selene…”

  I frowned. I already knew she had to be halfway crazy to have done the things she did, but had she completely cracked now? I sighed.

  “Nova, I’m here. I need to know how to stop Revath.”

  Nova slowly turned her head and fixed her gaze on me. Her smile widened and her head tilted slightly as she regarded me.

  “It is too late for you,” she whispered. “She is done collecting. You are next.”

  “Tell me how to stop this.”

  Nova crawled toward the bars then held on to them and pulled herself up, pressing herself against them as she stared at me with frantic eyes. I took a step backward.

  “Give up your soul,” she said.

  “No. I won’t be doing that.”

  “You don’t have a choice, my moon goddess.”

  I frowned.

  Nova smiled.

  “Your grandmother so loved Greek mythology,” she said. “If you were a boy she was going to name you Hyperion.”

  I was glad I was not born male.

  “I said, why ‘Selene,’ mother,” she continued. “And your grandmother said that you will be someone who will shine so brightly your light can pierce the most impenetrable dark, like the moon. That you will be so grand the universe won’t be big enough to contain you. She said many foolish things, your grandmother.”

  “And what did you think I would be?” I said through gritted teeth. It burned me to hear her talk about my grandmother. I didn’t want to hear stories from her lips. She did not deserve to have stories about my grandmother that I didn’t have.

  “Insignificant,” she whispered. There were tears in her eyes and her face crumpled. “I did not have hopes and dreams for you. I could not see that far ahead…”

  “Because you only cared about yourself,” I stated. “But you figured it out, didn’t you? That I wouldn’t be insignificant, I would be your bargaining chip. That was the destiny you put upon me. And now I have to stand here with the realization that my life was never really mine to control because someone else owned my soul. There are no words that could sufficiently describe the type of monster you are. You don’t even deserve to be called a human being.”

  “Oh, Selene…”

  “How could you do that to your own child?” I couldn’t help but scream. I was shaking. If there weren’t bars between us, I wasn’t sure that my hands wouldn’t be wrapped around her neck. “How could you take my life and throw it away like that?”

  “I didn’t think you’d die young.” Her voice wavered; her eyes still brimmed with tears. “Amelia was supposed to protect you. You were supposed to be everything she wished for you to be. You were supposed to grow old…”

  “Supposed to,” I spat. “No one can say who gets to grow old and who doesn’t. Did you really think the prospect of me growing old and dying before my soul was taken made it better? My soul could be damned for eternity, but it’d be okay because at least I got eighty or so years to live?”

  “Selene…” Nova clutched the bars and started to sway slightly from side to side.

  I made a sound of frustration. I very much wanted to hit something right now. But there were bars between us.

  “Coming here was a mistake,” I said. “All it did was rile me up. Why would I think you would help when you’re the reason for this fucking mess?”

  “Help, help, help,” she said softly. “Why did I give my baby away…why did I hurt my baby…?”

  I eyed her. Some of her screws had definitely come loose even further. I sighed again.

  “Nova, I’ll ask one more time. Do you have any idea how to stop this? Does Revath have a weakness? What can I do to keep my soul and save the Savages?”

  Before I could hear her reply, which I already anticipated would be garbage, movement in my peripheral made me turn to see Tielle hustling down the hallway. I frowned. Something about the look on Tielle’s face gave me a bad feeling.

  “Selene, you have to come with me right now,” Tielle said once she reached me. She glanced at Nova and her expression tightened.

  “Why, what’s going on? What’s happened?” My stomach already felt like it was full of ice.

  “Revath has finally shown herself,” Tielle said. “She resurfaced with all the Savages. They’re gathered in Central Park, live feed is now streaming through.”

  “Shit.”

  Tielle turned and started jogging back down the hallway and I moved to follow, but Nova grabbed my hand. I startled, and tried to pull away, but she pulled harder. I turned back to her.

  “Darkness is all she is,” Nova breathed. “All she has to give. Her own darkness, her own darkness, her own darkness, it’s all she has. Take it away…and what will she be?”

  I frowned. “I already know that Revath is full of darkness,” I said. “That doesn’t help me.” I pulled my hand away and started to walk down the hallway.

  “She is nothing without it,” Nova called. I paused and turned to her for a moment, then turned back around and quickly exited so I could go see what was going on with the dark bitch and the Savages.

  * * *

  I was standing in a conference room with Tielle and a bunch of people who worked at the PCC. The room was quiet save from the sound coming from the television, which was a live broadcast showing Revath gathered in Central Park with neat rows of Savages standing motionless behind her. Collectively, all the red from their eyes was unnerving, even though the news cameras were not getting very close shots. Try as I might, I could not pick out Micah. That feeling that there was a fist squeezing my heart returned. My palms were clammy and my nerves were on edge. PTF officers were arriving on the scene and setting up a perimeter around the gathering.

  Revath suddenly spoke, and it was captured very clearly by the reporter’s microphones from however far away they were.

  “Selene Vanream is what I want,” she said. “Come to me, what is mine, and I will spare your city and what lies beyond it. Try to hide, and I will lay waste to it all. Then I will take you. Come to me now. Or I will unleash my army to burn down your city.”

  That was apparently all the cue the PTF needed. They started firing, which further constricted my heart, but all of a sudden a wall of darkness shot up around Revath and the Savages, enclosing them in a dome of shadows. It cut off the camera feed, so we could no longer see Revath.

  All eyes in the room were on me. I shifted my gaze from the television and caught Tielle’s eyes. Her expression was grim, to say the least. I looked away and turned to leave the room.

  “Selene.”

  I turned back to Tielle.

  “Let me gather some officers and—”

  “I don’t need your help,” I said sharply. “Or want it. No one else can stop this but me. So stay here, all of you. Where it’s safe. For now. I’m going to face her and end this. Or lose my soul trying.”

  I headed out of the room, and Tielle didn’t call me back again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Kyo kept calling me as I drove, so I finally answered him while I was at a stoplight. I put the phone on speaker and left it on the passenger seat.

  “Finally, damn it! Where are you?”

  “I’m—”

  “Heading to Central Park,” he finished.

>   “Well if you knew why did you ask?”

  “Selene, it’s a trap, you are walking into a trap.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday, Kyo. But what other choice do I have? If I don’t show up, the Savages will be unleashed again. There’s been enough death.”

  “So you’re just going to hand yourself over to her?” he said incredulously.

  “No, I’m going to figure out a way to get rid of the bitch and save the Savages.”

  “How, exactly? Please tell me your plan in full detail so I can set my mind at ease. And Ethan’s, since he’s also freaking out.”

  “Uh…” I didn’t know what to say beyond that.

  “Oh my God, you have no plan! Baka! You’re going to face her with no plan whatsoever?”

  “I have a whole car ride to figure something out. Look, Kyo, Micah is there! I have to go; I have to figure out how to get that rune from Revath so I can give him his soul back. Him and everyone else.”

  “Let me guess, you’re going to start by asking nicely.”

  “Now isn’t the time for snark.”

  “It isn’t the time for stupidity either,” he said. “Look, I’m coming to meet you…”

  “No,” I said sharply. “Stay where you are, stay with Ethan.”

  “No fucking way. You need backup.”

  “And what do you expect to do against Revath and an army of Savages?”

  “What do you expect to do?” he countered. “I may not have more of a plan than you do, but I’m not leaving you to face this alone.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said. “This is not your fight Kyo; I can handle this by myself.”

  “The hell you can! I’m coming…”

  “Kyo please, stay with Ethan, I am begging you. This is not some tough girl I-can-kick-anyone’s-ass act. I am terrified and I have no idea what’s going to happen. I could very well lose my soul and she could end up razing the city with the Savages anyway. If that were to happen, if things were to really get to that point, I at least need to know that Ethan was not alone in the end, locked in a jail cell. I know he’s scared, I know you are too. Please just stay with him through this. Stay together. For me. I will try my best to survive, I promise.”

  Kyo was silent for a long time, then he sighed. “Fine,” he said. “But for the record I don’t like this and it will be all I can do not to run out there. But I will stay and protect Ethan as much as I can.”

  “Thank you.”

  He made a sound of frustration. “Anata no tame ni, nandemo.”

  Anything for you.

  * * *

  When I arrived at Central Park there were PTF officers and media crews everywhere. The media had been corralled to the very fringes of the park where you really could not see anything, but they still jostled each other for a better position. Well, it wasn’t that you couldn’t see anything. The dome of darkness shot up above the trees, creating a shield that completely blocked those within it from the eyes and weapons of those outside it. Every now and then I would hear a series of shots from the PTF, but as I’d seen on TV, the bullets did nothing to penetrate the dome. Above, there were several helicopters hovering, but I was sure they weren’t getting a better shot than the cameras on the ground.

  I barreled into the park without taking the time to stop and talk to anyone. Once the reporters caught sight of me, they started throwing questions at me in such a frenzy that even if I wanted to reply I couldn’t because I could make no sense of what they were saying. The PTF officers didn’t try to stop me since they’d gotten the memo that I was the one the soul-stealing psycho inside the dome wanted. My heart felt like it was racing a marathon around the galaxy, and all I could think about wasn’t the soul-stealing psycho, but Micah. I needed to see him, needed to save him. Whatever the cost.

  Not surprisingly, the dome was located where the open necromancer circle was. When I was a few feet away, I stopped to catch my breath and my bearings against the staggering feel of energy given off by the dome. I had been feeling it long before I’d even parked my car and headed into the park. It felt like fire ants were biting along my skin, and I was resisting the urge to use my nails to peel my flesh off. I gritted my teeth and drew closer. Every part of me that cared about staying alive wanted to run out of here, drive to the airport, board a plane, and fly to the furthest corner of the world and hide, but instead I steeled myself and stepped into the darkness.

  I expected the darkness to constrict around me, burn me, suffocate me, but it just felt like walking through thick smoke, momentarily blinding and uncomfortable, then it was over. On the other side, I stood still and looked around. Since I was now inside the dome, a shadow was cast over everything. I had gone from mid-afternoon brightness to the hour just after sunset when the light was almost gone and night was about to rise.

  And it was deathly quiet. I tried to maintain a sense of calm as I stared at the rows of Savages about a hundred feet in front of me, but it was hard to stay calm when I knew Micah was among them. It was even more jarring when I noted that all the Savages were splattered with blood. From their victims. I took a few steps forward, then realized that what I really should have been focused on was the figure standing in front of the Savages.

  Revath hovered several feet off the ground looking as terribly vicious and haunting as the last time I’d seen her. Her dusky gray skin seemed shades darker in the artificial twilight, and her fiery eyes more piercing as they took me in standing there in all my faux-calm, weaponless glory. It would have made no difference to bring my rune gun because it had no effect against her, but the familiarity of it in my hands was a comfort I missed. As it was, all my useless hands could do was clench and unclench. What they wanted to do was make Revath suffer.

  “Selene, so lovely of you to join us,” Revath said. Her lilting, almost lyrical voice was one I would never get accustomed to. She should have had a raspy, nightmarish voice. I hated when the bad guy didn’t fit the stereotype.

  “Like I had a choice,” I said flatly. “What you issued was an ultimatum, not an option.”

  She smiled. “Yes, I supposed it was, wasn’t it?

  “Why even go through all this trouble?” I said, spreading my arms. “Why make such a big public show of it and make me come to you? At any time you could have found me and taken me. What’s the point of this?”

  “What’s not the point?” she said, grinning. “Oh how I do love this technological world you live in. The cameras, the people watching on those screens, some of them so tiny! Why not make a show of it? Why not show the world…everything?”

  I recalled her calling card; dead animals and blackened earth. She did love to put on a show. I shook my head. “So this is just a game to you.”

  Her smile vanished. “Oh no, my girl, it is not a game. It is a web, one that you became tangled in a long time ago. But I am here to set you free. Or…” she spread her arms, “shall I set my little army free? Before I only let out a few at a time, I was just collecting my debt you see. But now, I have so many hungry little Savages who would lay waste to any and everything in their paths. Including…” She snapped her fingers, and just like that Micah appeared from among the crowd of Savages. I couldn’t have even said where he’d been standing. He moved up beside Revath, who floated down to the ground and snaked her arm around him, sliding her fingers through his hair. It was all I could do not to run over there and try to poke her eyes out with my thumbs.

  I looked at Micah, feeling immense fear crash through me. He stood rigidly still and stared straight ahead with those glowing red eyes. It was like staring at a corpse; there was nothing of my Micah standing before me. Just an empty shell filled with vicious darkness. But it was a shell I needed to make whole again. Him and all the Savages that stood behind him. Like them, he was covered in blood and I hated to think about what he’d done as a Savage. I forced my gaze to Revath again. The rune necklace with all the Savages’ souls lay against her skin like a beacon calling to me. I had to incapacitate her somehow and get it
.

  “Give me his soul back,” I said. It was a useless demand, but seeing Micah like this, I couldn’t stay quiet. “His and everyone else’s souls. Give them back.”

  Revath threw back her head and laughed that horrible laugh that made me want to jam something in my ears until I damaged something vital and blood poured down the side of my face. She was a disgustingly beautiful creature, and I hated every part of her. When her laughter subsided, she fixed her gaze on me again.

  “They are mine,” she declared. “They are what I am owed for not getting what I was promised.”

  “Then just take me, damn it,” I said. “Take me and release them. My soul is the one Nova bargained away, so just take me!” I was none too keen about dying again, this time permanently, and having my soul end up as her plaything in the In Between forever, but I would do anything to save Micah from that fate.

  “Oh no, little one,” she said, wagging her finger at me. “This is not an either or situation. I get it all; their souls and yours.”

  “And what happens to them after,” I said. “Their bodies that you stuffed with darkness.” I hadn’t really thought that she would take me and give them up, but I was desperate and running out of ideas as to how we could all come out of this with our souls in our bodies and Revath stuffed back into the hellhole from which she came.

  “Oh, who knows, who cares,” she said with a shrug and dismissive wave of her hand. “They can lay waste to whatever they can up here before someone stops them by chopping them into itty bitty pieces.”

  I swallowed hard as a visceral image of Micah’s body in multiple bloody chunks flashed before my eyes. No doubt if Revath were to claim my soul and return to the In Between, leaving the Savages here, the only way anyone would be able to stop them from their all-out rampage would be to blow them to bits. The fear that gripped me over that thought almost doubled me over. Think, Selene, think, how the hell did I win? How could I undo Nova’s deal at this point?