Fatal Retribution

by Diana Graves

“I agree,” Ranger said.

  “Okay, fine,” said Damon.

  I nodded. “Are you pleased with this arrangement, John?” I asked.

  “Yeah, okay. Beyond this door is holey ground so the Demon and the vampires can’t go through the door.”

  “I do not believe in such silliness,” Mato said.

  “It might not hold true for vampires, but we demons cannot step foot on ground that any gods have blessed.” He turned to me, and he closed the distance between us simply by bending over to my level, even though we were feet apart.

  “Listen to my words, witch. If you fail to save my wife you will wish for death before I’m done with you,” and with that Raphael ascended in smoke through the same corner he came. I was left horrified. I was already trying to save her life, the threat was so unnecessary. My worried eyes met Mato’s. I was beginning to regret putting the priest to sleep.

  38:

  AFTER THE DEMON left John was much more talkative. He told us that there were five more guards with semi automatics waiting for us behind the door. He said that the door opened into a round chamber that acted like a circle of protection, not at all similar to a witch’s circle. A witches circle protects against all would-be invaders, this door was a bit more specific. The round walls were painted gold, the ground was blessed so that demons, devils and the undead couldn’t hear or see past the doorway.

  “Beyond the round room there’s a cement hall that will lead you to where Anax keeps his labs, a dungeon, a ballroom and a temple to Apollo,” John said. “He’s a religious man. He’ll probably be at the temple, which is through the ballroom. His body guard, Connor, will be with him. Connor is a dangerous…man.”

  Damon nodded. Bright red blood still covered much of his face and chest. It looked uncomfortable. That’s what he got for ripping a man open with his teeth. He turned to Mato. “Because of the blessing you and Michael will have to wait behind. I’m sorry. We could have used your help.”

  “It’s not the blessing that’s keeping us away from the fight, it’s the rising sun.” I looked for a window to confirm it, but there were none. He must have a terrific internal clock, one honed over hundreds of years.

  “You two can find shelter in my van. The back half is sectioned off and no light will leak through,” Damon said.

  I was surprised to see Michael’s face distorted in anger at the prospect of not being included in the fight. He argued with Damon aggressively, but he couldn’t argue away the sun. He distanced himself from the rest of us, waiting in an entryway at the opposite side of the room. My timid brother was no more it would seem.

  “Come Raina, let’s leave them to their work,” said Mato with spite. He was holding his hand out to me.

  I looked at his hand and then at the room covered in blood, bodies, and other bits. I knew that if I went with Mato and Michael I’d be safe, waiting out the fight in a warm van. Going with Mato meant I accepted being the damsel in distress, the weak woman that needed to be taken care of. I might not have been able to argue the weak part right then or the woman part, but I’d be damned if I was going to let anyone take care of me. Who should I expect to take care of me? Should I rely on an absentee father or my mother, who wants me out of her life? No, if Admetus wasn’t stopped today then more people would die. I couldn’t just walk away and let Ranger, Damon and Tristan face him alone.

  “No,” I said out loud. “I can’t leave.”

  Damon gave me a flat stare that told me I was being ridiculous. “It’s not your choice. You’re leaving.”

  I gave him an unfriendly look. “I can’t leave. This is my fight. I was the one kidnapped. I’m the reason you’re all even here. It’s my life on the line if we don’t succeed.”

  “This is stupid,” I heard Tristan say, but I didn’t look at him.

  “Tristan is right, Raina. You’re leaving with Mato and Michael right now. You’ve been through enough tonight,” Damon said and it sounded too much like an order. I opened my mouth to argue, but he stopped me with a hand. “No, Raina, go! Take her, Mato.”

  Before I could protest, Mato wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me like a sack of potatoes.

  “Damn it Mato, I can walk! Put me down!” I yelled.

  “Promise me that you will leave with me,” Mato said. He sounded more like my father than a scary vampire. He gave me all but two seconds to respond before he started walking again.

  “I promise, damn it.” I said it as calmly as I could. He stopped and set me down. His eyes never left my face, as if daring me to go back on my word. Tristan, Ranger and Damon waited by the door for us to leave. I was outmanned. I wasn’t going to win this.

  “Come on John,” I said to the big tattooed fellow still huddled on the floor, thoroughly soiled. He stood up awkwardly, visibly uncomfortable in his jeans. Without meeting anyone’s eyes he came to my side and together we followed Mato and Michael through the entryway and into a wide hall.

  To our right was a long wall of tall windows, revealing a dewy green lawn encircled by tall evergreens and a mountainous horizon. The sky was a deep cloudless navy blue with a neon pink glow in the distance.

  Even though I was walking to safety, I walked like a woman condemned. My entire future was in the hands of three people with the odds stacked against them. Granted they were three very capable people, but that didn’t help ease my mind.

  I decided the moment I realized what I was capable of that I wouldn’t use mind control on anyone ever again…except on bad guys of course. However, I think I needed to break that rule, just this once. I let go and opened up that part of me that once was only able to sense emotions, but now seemed capable of so much more. I could feel John’s regret and discomfort in my head like a small whisper. Somewhere in there was gratitude to me, but mostly he was thinking of his family. He had decided that the moment he got home he’d hug his wife and kids, maybe take them out to a big breakfast to celebrate not being dead—and then he’d look for a new job, maybe even a new town to live in.

  Everyone but Mato jumped as gun fire broke from the room we just left. The gun shots illuminated the hall like a faulty strobe light. I smelled blood.

  “I won’t leave,” I said barely audible over the of gun fire.

  Mato stopped walking and looked back at me. “You gave me your word,” he said.

  “I can’t go, Mato. I can’t leave here without knowing he’s dead. For all he’s done, I can’t.” I watched Mato’s face as it changed from stubborn and disagreeable to something a few degrees softer.

  “I should carry you out to that van.” He closed the distance between us in a blink and suddenly he was inches from my face. “If I stop you, will you hate me?”

  The question caught me off guard. I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing, but something must have shown on my face, some lingering anger or stubbornness maybe.

  “Go, but do not die.” And there he was, the o-so-serious Mato.

  “I can’t, I’m a virgin. Virgins don’t die.”

  “In my time, virgins were always the most likely to die.” And, on that charming note he leaned in and kissed me gently on my forehead before he turned to leave. I watched him walk away, Michael and John at his heels. See, that’s what happens when you depend on a dead man for words of comfort.

  When I came to the den the gunfire had stopped. The door was open, casting the den in a golden haze. Tristan was wrestling a tall man to the ground. Damon wasn’t there and Ranger was lying in a mess of blood. She wasn’t moving. I ran to Ranger’s side and tried to find a pulse at her neck and wrists, but I couldn’t find it. I placed my hand under her nose, but no air was coming out. I opened my mind, but I didn’t sense a thought or feeling come from her. She was dead.

  Tristan finally landed a hit in the man’s stomach with his knee, and the man doubled over. He took aim and put him to sleep. He stared down at the man he defeated with his eyes too wide. His long black gold hair was drenched in sweat and something thicker, blood maybe.

/>   “Are you hurt?” I asked at him. He looked at me, but he didn’t seem to see me. He was in shock. “Are you okay?” I asked again, louder this time.

  He blinked slowly. “No,” he finally answered me. He stared at me for a moment longer until his brow creased, “Get your ass to the van!”

  I ignored that. “Where’s Damon?” I asked.

  “Just get the hell out of here, now!”

  “I can deal,” I said, standing over Ranger and looking at what remained of the five guards…not much, besides the one man Tristan put to sleep. It looked like Ranger only had time to shoot one man before she was sprayed with led. The remaining men looked like they spontaneously combusted, arms, legs and heads were intact, but their torsos were hollow burnt shells!

  “What the hell did Damon do to make their bodies look like that?” I asked.

  “He turned into a dragon that could spit a straight line of fire,” Tristan said.

  “Damon can take on the traits of the animals when he takes their appearance?” I asked after a moment of awkward silence.

  He nodded and bent down to Ranger’s side. I wasn’t insulted that he was double checking for life signs. I hoped he’d come to a different conclusion. With all I’d been through tonight being focused was on my wish list, not among my current abilities. When he hung his head, I knew I had been right. She was dead.

  “God damn it!” he screamed. “Get out of here Raina, you can’t help here. You’re too weak,” Tristan growled at me from over Ranger’s body.

  “Too weak! I’ve been through more than you know Tristan! This is my fight, mine!” I was screaming. I meant it to sound confident and demanding, but it came out a little too hysterical. A lot of tonight hadn’t truly sunken in.

  “Shit, Raina!” Tristan yelled. Anger lashed out from him, hot and reckless. I didn’t want to feel that from him, and I didn’t want to see in his mind either. Call it what you will, self preservation maybe. I shut down that part of me that could do those things, and it wasn’t easy.

  He visibly calmed himself, taking in slow deep breaths and stared down at Ranger. “You’re exhausted, you’ve been beaten, kidnapped and you’ve witnessed all this death.” Not to mention that I just barely escaped being sawed in half, long ways.

  “Oh, I’ve seen death, Tristan. I’ve seen violence, and I dealt this it, and I can deal with this.”

  “I know about Mark Press, I watch the news.” He shook his head with a small laugh that left me feeling cold.

  “I’m going to kill him,” I told Tristan. I felt distant, chilled. My mind was made up.

  “You can’t kill, Raina, you’re an elf,” he said and he looked angry.

  “All I feel is hate,” I said. I bit the sides of my cheeks so I wouldn’t cry, because if I let myself cry now I wasn’t sure I could stop.

  Tristan looked at me and it was a face I had come to recognize well. It was the face Dan gave me every time I did something that reminded him I wasn’t human. It was the face strangers gave me when they saw my red eyes, and it was the face my mom gave me the night she kicked me out of her life. It was half disgust, half confusion.

  “I don’t want to lose you too, Tristan, please.”

  “Then walk away.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can, you just won’t.”

  “Fine, I won’t.”

  “If you do this, I don’t know if I can still be your brother. I don’t know if I can love a murderer.”

  I could feel the life drain out of my face, but I nodded and started walking toward the doorway that would lead me to Admetus. My head felt heavy and light at the same time. I’d lost my family, but that didn’t change what I had to do.

  “Raina! Come back! You can’t kill him!” Tristan shouted after me. I stopped walking and looked back at my brother. He was breathing heavy, hyperventilating. “How can you go against everything that you are? How will you live with yourself after you do this?”

  “How could I live with myself if I don’t do this, Tristan?” I said.

  His shoulders fell, and I started down the hall. He was a proud wizard and a proud elf, like Mom. I didn’t know what the hell I was anymore, but I knew what I needed to do.

  39:

  THE HALL WAS damp, cold, and it smelled putrid, like something dead and rotting. Naked wires, metal pluming and light bulbs hung from the ceiling. I walked cautiously because I so didn’t want to get lost in the laboratory of a mad ex-immortal fucking with vampirism.

  The hall branched off at several locations. I didn’t have time to follow each path presented or search behind each door. I opened myself back up, searching with my mind, searching for thoughts or emotions to follow.

  I sensed Tristan. He was carrying Ranger out to Damon’s van. He was angry and sad, but mostly angry. I just didn’t care anymore, I ignored him. There were more pressing matters than my overly emotional brother. I walked farther down the hall, listening carefully with my mind. Thoughts were like static in the background until I came to a large metal door. Then I felt Damon loud and clear. He was screaming in his head, screaming his thoughts because he wouldn’t dare scream out loud, “OUTRAGEOUS, MONSTROUS, PURE EVIL!” Those were his thoughts screaming through my mind. I laid my hands on the door and an image sprang into my head too fast to recognize, but it sent my head between my knees until I could trust myself not to vomit. When my stomach settled I braced myself to open the door. I bit my bottom lip and held my breath as I slowly pressed down on the handle.

  The door opened to a gymnasium sized room with tall windows and soft music coming from small white speakers that hung discreetly from the four corners. The walls were white painted wood panels with murals decorating each gigantic panel. A family tree growing larger and larger as the panels progressed around the room. The name at the bottom of the tree was, Admetus. The art reminded me of ancient Greek pottery. The chandelier that hung heavily from the ceiling was made of twisted dark metals. For all its mass it gave off a thankfully small amount of light.

  From the moment I opened the door I was overwhelmed by the most awful smell imaginable, the unmistakable smell of death: sweet and bitter, and oh so nauseating. There was blood everywhere, little hand prints, large arching sprays covered the walls, and great big puddles littered the floor. The bodies were left in a pile, a massive pile of blood, limbs, and faces distorted in pain and shock.

  “By the Gods,” I said. I felt my heart drop, and I fought the urge to puke or run…or both.

  “Raina,” I heard Damon say.

  I searched for him and found him at the far end of the pile, “What is this?”

  “A massacre.”

  I took in a deep breath and regretted it immediately. “Admetus killed his family.” He nodded and walked back toward me.

  With my empathic ability wide open I couldn’t tell my screaming thoughts from Damon’s, but there was something else, something quieter. I had to master my mind, to ignore the sickly sweat metallic taste of ripe innards that was hitting the back of my tongue as I breathed, to look beyond the glazed eyes and torn flesh and drying blood. I had to.

  “Damon, think quieter please. I think I hear something,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t question it, because whatever I was sensing was getting fainter. I didn’t think it would last a drawn out explanation if Damon wanted one. Thankfully, he didn’t. He quickly found some mundane thing in the room to focus on. A name on one of the family trees that he recognized, Clare Scott, an old friend from college.

  Immediately I could feel something, someone, a terrible feeling of panic and hopelessness. I opened my eyes wide, as though I could see the person through the mass of broken bodies. Holy shit, someone was still alive in there!

  “I feel someone, Damon!”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Where are you?” I whispered. I walked around the pile and it took such a physical effort to do even that.

  It wasn’t just adults here. It was whole families and that meant babies, kids, teens, an
d the elderly were all torn to pieces and piled up like Sunday’s garbage. If I thought my hatred for -Admetus couldn’t get any more intense then I was beyond wrong.

  Beyond the pile of carnage was a stage with a throne and a wood door painted gold and dark blue. The throne was lying on its side, covered in bloody handprints, like everything else in this room.

  I found the spot in the pile where the feeling felt the clearest. ‘Mama!’ Yelled a voice inside my head.

  “It’s here!” I yelled to Damon.

  I hesitated only a second before I started digging my hands into the body parts, blood, and cold heavy meat, wet and tangled hair glided over my arms. I wanted to puke so badly. I closed my eyes and let my hands search through the gore, reach out to the emotion I felt.

  “Where are you?” I said through gritted teeth. “Help me! Damon, please!” I didn’t mean to scream it, but as I pulled my arms out of the pile someone’s large intestine broke and whatever composure I had broke when bile spilled out over my arm, thick and still warm.

  Damon came to the side of the pile I was digging in and started helping me pulled body parts out without hesitation. I was panic stricken, grabbing at arms and rib cages. My fingers were digging deep into slippery fat and muscle tissue. The flesh felt so cold and limp in my hands, but one limb felt warm and solid. I held onto it, trying to pull it out, but it was covered in body parts. There was no way.

  “Here!” I screamed for Damon’s help. I could hear crying, a child’s cry. “Hold on, honey, hold on!” I cried. Tears filled my eyes until my vision was nothing but a blur of flesh and bones. Sharp jagged bones cut into my arms as I pulled at the meat.

  “MAMA!” the child screamed.

  “Oh my God,” whispered Damon as I pulled a little boy into my arms from the butchery of his family. He was covered thick with blood and un-guessable bits of flesh.

  The boy couldn’t have been six years old. He clung to me. His little wet arms holding on for dear life, and screaming for his mother. I looked down at the pile. She was in there somewhere, torn and broken, dead and gone. Damon took the boy from my arms and he held him tight.