Bedeviled

by Sable Grace

  The only way to stop Cronos was to stop Haven, and as much as it was going to devastate her to do it, Kyana was going to have to kill her best friend.

  With a growl, Haven charged at her. They collided with enough force to make the loose pebbles on the cave floor skitter. Kyana slammed her fist upward into Haven’s kidney, stunning her long enough for Kyana to flip Haven behind her. By the time Haven recovered, Kyana was on her feet again.

  Anger, hatred, and regret fed her like ambrosia. She stood her ground, letting Haven come to her. When Haven launched herself at her, she caught Haven by the throat. With a roar, she flung her away, but Haven wouldn’t stay down. She just kept coming and coming, again and again, until her assaults became weaker and weaker.

  Kyana steeled herself each time Haven rose to her feet, and each time Haven charged, she reached into her gut, into her determination as Artemis had told her to do, and flung Haven backward.

  The tactic was working. Haven was spending all her strength and the frustration was muddling her ability to strategize.

  “I expected more from you, Cronos,” Kyana said, trying to keep her own breathing even so he’d catch no glimpse of her own growing fatigue.

  Something in her belly was aching, likely from one of Haven’s misguided blows. Whatever it was, it was stealing her breath with each passing second.

  Haven’s mouth opened and her throat visibly constricted with the desire to speak, but no words escaped. She lowered her head and stooped slightly, and Kyana prepared to be charged by a lunatic bull.

  Nothing happened.

  “Haven?”

  Haven just stood there, limp, like a hanged corpse whose feet were firmly planted on the ground. She could make out Haven’s black eyes peering upward at her through her long hair, but other than the slight sway of her body, she did nothing.

  Kyana would have preferred another attack. This was simply chilling. Eerie.

  She was torn between stepping forward to check on her friend and stepping backward for her own safety. The minute Haven’s feet drifted off the ground and she began to hover, Kyana followed her instincts and took a retreating step, her back pressing to the muddy wall.

  “What the—”

  Haven’s body spun; her head was thrown backward. Her arms reached out, grabbing at air. One leg bent, the other pointed its toes toward the earth. It was the form of the crucified, and the horrifying scream that exploded from Haven’s mouth sent Kyana’s hands over her ears in a desperate attempt to keep her own head from exploding.

  Rocks jumped in place overhead before crashing around her. She lifted her hands from her ears to her head, protecting her skull from the fist-sized stones pelting her shoulders and arms.

  Whatever was happening, it was coming from inside Haven. If Kyana didn’t stop it, they were going to be buried alive.

  Keeping one arm up to protect her head, she bent and ran at Haven. But instead of knocking her out of thin air, Haven caught her by the throat and threw her. It was no little toss. Kyana whipped across the room at the speed of light, her body folding in on itself as she crashed against the wall and crumpled to the ground.

  Stunned, it took her a moment to orient herself. She picked herself up, her arm hanging limply at her side. Her shoulder had dislocated from the impact and she was forced to crush it back into its socket.

  The sound of bone on bone churned her stomach, and the pain made her ill, but she didn’t dare look away from Haven, who was spinning again. Her body glowed, shimmering, lighting up the dark cave.

  One glimpse into her eyes had been a mistake, for she saw in there not a monster, but a friend. Black eyes had turned yellow, her pasty pallor now once again golden tan.

  “Let her go, Cronos!” Kyana screamed. “Take me! Use me!”

  As Haven’s head moved to look at her, the pleading in their depths broke Kyana’s heart and ripped through her soul.

  “Kill me,” Haven whispered.

  “No! Haven, fight him!”

  She rushed at her friend once again, this time grabbing Haven by the ankles and tugging with all her Vampyric, Lychen, goddess strength to bring her back to the ground.

  Haven wouldn’t budge. She remained suspended like a puppet, tears streaming down her face.

  “Kill me.”

  The desperation in Haven’s face nearly destroyed Kyana. She didn’t realize she was crying too until she heard the tears in her own voice.

  “I can’t. Haven, please. Help me. I can’t do this. Fight him.”

  Laughter caused a new quake and before she could steady her stance, Haven’s body fell into her arms.

  They tumbled to the ground in a heap, and as she struggled to free herself from the weight of Haven’s body, a glimmer in the corner of the cave caught her eye.

  “Shit. No. No, no, no, no, no!”

  Haven turned, her eyes wide, her face soaked with tears. As she set her gaze upon the horror, she grabbed Kyana by the arm and yanked her up before shoving her toward the exit.

  “Run!”

  But Kyana couldn’t move.

  Cronos’s bones were radiating an eerie neon aura.

  The laughter around them grew louder and louder, deafening Haven’s pleas for Kyana to run. Greens and golds sparkled like jewels as the fragments of his body inched toward one another. Leg and arm bones attached themselves to the torso. The torso and neck attached to the head. Fingers moved. Knees bent.

  Cronos was rising.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Her gaze not daring to stray from Cronos’s bones, Kyana grabbed the daggers she’d lost with Haven’s first punch. The skeleton continued to piece itself back together—tiny bones slithering across the rock-strewn floor like stony worms. In horror, she watched as muscles materialized and tendons stitched themselves into place.

  “You have to get out of here,” Haven pleaded.

  She couldn’t look away. Morbid fascination held her attention as the body before her slowly rebuilt, repaired itself, became whole again.

  “Kyana. Get out of here!”

  She snapped out of her temporary hypnosis. Haven wore a frantic expression, her body half leaning toward the exit, half leaning toward Kyana.

  When she turned her attention back to the bones . . . they were gone. All of them. There wasn’t a single trace of Cronos anywhere around the abandoned Eyes of Power.

  “What the hell?” She turned in a small circle, keeping Haven at her back. “Where did they go?”

  The ground began to vibrate until the sound was deafening. The cave was closing in on itself.

  “He’s rising, Kyana! We have to run!”

  “Sonofabitch!”

  Cronos intended to make his tomb become theirs. Kyana snatched up the Eyes of Power, grabbed Haven’s hand, and charged to the exit.

  She tossed Haven up and through the opening, but when she attempted to follow, pain ripped through her body, so intense, so mind numbing, that it doubled her over. She fell to her knees and wrapped her arms around her belly. Her vision blurred. Her entire body shook so hard her teeth rattled.

  “Give me your hand.”

  She managed to tilt her head in the direction of the distant voice, and forced herself to see through the pain.

  “Give me your hand, damn it! Let me help you.”

  Somehow, she found the strength to lift her arm. To wrap her fingers around Haven’s wrist. Haven pulled her to her feet, then slowly through the opening. They’d barely managed to extract themselves before the rocks collapsed, sealing the cave completely.

  Kyana lay on her back. Her stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself. Bile rose in her throat. Had this been Ryker’s fear? Was this why he’d been adamant about her staying Beyond and near Artemis? Prying one eye open, she stared at the sky. Darkness was upon them.

  Her transition had begun.

  “Oh no, oh no, oh no.”

  Haven’s fear-filled whisper pulled Kyana’s attention from the sky. The color had drained from Haven’s face. Her lips mov
ed, but nothing more than no escaped.

  “What is it?”

  Haven pointed toward the canopy of trees in the distance. They were coming alive, swaying with some hidden force she couldn’t see or feel. “They’re coming.”

  As Kyana cursed Cronos, she kicked at the rock-sealed opening, wishing now that they’d stayed inside. It would offer them some protection against the creatures hunting in the darkness. But Ryker and Ares were on the beach. They had nowhere to hide. Ares could port them out, but if there was any life left in Ryker, she knew he’d die at the hands of these creatures before he left her.

  She wouldn’t let her pain prevent her from getting them off this island.

  Using Haven as a crutch, she managed to stand. How did she hope to outrun these things when she could barely breathe?

  “We’re going to run,” she said, inhaling as deeply as she could to summon strength from agony. “Don’t stop. Don’t look back. Don’t think about what’s chasing us. When you hear the surf, start screaming for Ares to start his circle. Do you understand?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  Try like hell to keep up. But in case that didn’t happen, she had to know the others were safe. “Just do as I say, damn it!”

  She shoved Haven to get her moving. Keeping her gaze locked on Haven’s back, she stumbled along behind her as fast as she could, clutching the Eyes of Power against her chest. Her Vampyric speed was deserting her. Her goddess speed was lost in the lava boiling in her belly and spilling into her legs.

  Trees popped from the ground like cannon fire. Branches crashed around them like thunder. The very air hung with the oppressed odor of death. Even without seeing them, she knew the creatures were almost upon them.

  She tripped over a gnarled tree root and dropped Zeus’s staff. When she stooped to retrieve it, another sharp pain seized her neck and electrified her brain.

  “Ares!” Kyana yelled, hoping the faint sound she heard was the ocean and not her blood whooshing in her ears. “Get us outta here!”

  “Ky?” Her name, carried faintly on the wind by Ryker’s voice, had never sounded more beautiful. “Hurry!”

  “Gogogogo,” she chanted, both to prod Haven to move faster and to her feet to keep moving forward. The pain in her gut was spreading into her chest. Every breath was like inhaling razor blades. Only the sheer will not to be ripped apart by those hunting them helped her see beyond the agony.

  Hard, packed earth gave way to the soft, sugary sand of the coast and she almost wept with joy. They’d made it. Her knees gave out and she went down hard, the Eyes of Power rolling beneath her body as she struggled to keep them near.

  Haven skidded to a stop and turned back.

  “Get to Ryker,” Kyana screamed. “Make sure they get out of here.”

  For a split second, Haven looked like she might ignore the demand, but the Dark Breed broke through the underbrush and dropped from the trees, cutting off any hope Kyana might have had of escape.

  The last thing she heard before the creatures closed in on her was the sound of Ryker bellowing her name.

  Chapter Forty

  Ryker couldn’t pull his gaze off the spot where Kyana went down. The pure Vampyre spilled onto the beach behind her, their numbers so great that their stark white bodies illuminated the moonless night. Their hisses and growls, combined with the leathery scraping of their wings, blocked out the sound of the waves crashing on the beach and muffled Ares’s demands that Ryker stay back.

  If he didn’t act fast, the creatures would be upon Kyana’s fallen body in mere moments. He concentrated all his energy inward. His body warmed and his eyesight became sharper as the power within him took over.

  He held his hands out before him, prepared to stop Haven despite Kyana’s wishes, but one look into Haven’s frightened face told him she was once again their friend.

  Shifting his energies, he focused his mind and knocked the three beasts closest to her back into the jungle, giving her time to reach his side. It was all he could do. Going to her, getting closer to the domain of the pure evil emerging from the trees would kill him.

  Get up, Ky. Get the hell up!

  But she wasn’t moving.

  He shoved Haven toward Ares. “Draw your circle. I have to get Kyana, and you better be ready when I get back.”

  “If you go after her, you’re dead,” Ares said.

  “She needs help. I’m not leaving her.”

  He waved his hands, causing several more Vampyre to go flying backward as he slowly inched his way forward. “Just be ready to port when I return.”

  “Those things will kill you too,” Haven said.

  He didn’t want to look at her. She was standing here, safe, while Kyana was lying helpless in the sand. He wanted them to change places . . . now.

  As he inched forward, his chest tightened with each millimeter he traveled. The sheer number of the Vampyre was staggering. For every three he sent flying, ten more charged at them. He doubted he could make his way to where Kyana’s body lay and back to Ares before the nearness of the creatures alone killed him, but he had to try.

  The fear on Haven’s face vanished. The tears stopped. She pushed to her feet, and before either man could react, pulled Ares’s sword from the sheath at his waist and ran past Ryker.

  “What are you doing?” he roared.

  “I’m the only one who can get close enough to help her,” Haven said, already out of Ryker’s reach. “Stay here!”

  Like hell. If anything happened to Haven now, Kyana would kick his ass when all this was over. He followed slowly behind Haven, mentally pushing back a few Dark Breeds at a time, giving him room to move farther and farther as Haven pushed on toward Kyana’s unmoving body.

  Each step became more difficult. Each breath more labored. The pain in his chest threatened to cripple him, but he didn’t stop.

  He made it another three feet when he heard Haven scream. Shifting, he saw the Vampyre surround her, stepping between her and Kyana. Why weren’t they attacking Ky? She was vulnerable. A sitting duck and easy prey. Yet they ignored her completely, even seeming to purposely avoid going near her body.

  He moved toward Haven as quickly as his body would allow, his gaze catching a glimpse of the Eyes of Power lying beside Ky’s body.

  That was why they weren’t touching her. She was protected by the conduits.

  Haven screamed again, thrusting Ares’s sword upward as a pair of leathery wings wrapped around her. He pushed the creature backward with his mind, but the Vampyre dragged Haven back with it.

  As Ryker approached, the one holding Haven bared its teeth. Its hiss of warning was like a rancid punch in the chest. He didn’t give himself time to consider what touching that thing would do to him. Turning his focus inward, he gritted his teeth against the electric charges suddenly humming through his blood. He fed it, focused on it until it surfaced to his skin.

  Then, reaching out and with both hands, he gripped the Vampyre’s head and released the power. The monstrous face began to smoke. It opened its enormous mouth to let out a piercing scream just before its head went up in flames.

  Ryker’s fingers burned, and he lifted his hands overhead and shot off the lingering magic before it could incinerate him. Around him, a bubble of light exploded as three waves of electricity burst from his hands and destroyed the beasts approaching from all sides.

  It only managed to clear about five feet of space around them, but it was enough room to extract Haven from the suffocating wings still bound around her face from the headless corpse.

  When she was safe, Ryker collapsed onto his back, blackness clouding his mind like an impenetrable fog. The nearness of the Vamps was too much, stealing every second heartbeat and making it hard to remember that he was supposed to be running. Saving Haven and himself.

  Saving Ky.

  “Get the hell up!” Haven screamed at him, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him into a sitting position. “I can’t carry you both back!”
/>   He blinked, desperate to clear his vision, then wished he hadn’t. His gaze was locked on the woods. So many Vampyre spilled onto the beach that they blocked the jungle from view. There was no way he could use his powers to keep that many Dark Breed off them.

  He struggled to stand, fought to breathe. He heard Ares shouting his name, and knew even the God of War could not fight back this enemy.

  Thunder rumbled overhead and lightning flickered out of the sky. Three bolts smacked the forest not fifty feet away, felling a copse of trees to his right. Another bolt punctured the sky and pierced the heart of a palm ahead of him, unearthing the tree so that it landed with a loud boom and crashed into the brush at its roots. Then, like pearls on a broken necklace, the forest began to pop. One tree after the next, exploding from the inside out, raining leaves and bark down upon the beach.

  Ryker lifted his arm to protect his head, searching for the source of the chaos. Had Cronos fully risen? Was he doing this?

  “Get down!” he yelled, forcing his own body back to the sand.

  What the fuck was going on?

  Belly-crawling his way behind a small dune, he squeezed his eyes shut to protect them from the debris. He had to get to Kyana. But each time he moved, another tree was uprooted, was suddenly on the beach or in the ocean.

  Then, everything was quiet. Not even the sound of the Vampyre broke the silence.

  Ryker opened his eyes and lifted himself to peer over the top of the dune. The creatures stood close enough that he could smell them, but he and Haven no longer held their undivided attention. One of the larger beasts turned to stare into the distance. The others seemed to watch it, waiting to see what it would do.

  The brewing storm continued to build, turning the crisp coral and blue sunset to charcoal gray. Ryker squinted against the flying sand to see what held the Vampyres’ attention. When his gaze finally found the source of the commotion, he forgot how to breathe.