Inferno of Darkness (Order of the Blade #8)

by Stephanie Rowe

  The rogue spun around to face him, but the spear struck him in the heart before he could throw his dagger. He ripped it out and attacked, and suddenly the earth was shaking from the battle between these two massive warriors. Riveted though he was by the display of strength, Zach tore his gaze off them and searched the square for Christina. He saw her crumpled by the hut of one of the village elders. Anguish tore through him, fueling strength into his devastated body. He lurched to his feet and staggered across the square, collapsing beside her. “Christina,” he whispered, his voice torn and raspy from the blow to his throat. There was no response.

  No. No. No! Zach gathered her in his arms and felt the absence of her spirit instantly. She was dead. “No!” He screamed his grief as he cradled her against his chest, as he felt the weight of her body against him for the last time. Then, he saw two small figures slumped nearby. Two children. White-cold fear knifed through him, horror beyond words. “Liv? Thomas?” he croaked.

  No, no, no. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Horror rising to a crescendo, still holding his sister in his arms, he lunged to his feet and ran toward them. He fell to his knees before the tiny bodies lying face down in the dirt. “God, no,” he whispered as he gently rolled them over. Staring blankly at him were the faces of his niece and nephew. Dead. His sister. Liv. Thomas. All he had left of his family. Dead. All dead.

  He threw back his head and screamed.

  ***

  Dante stood, fighting back grief and regret, as he watched Louis stumble and fall, collapsing for the final time. The great warrior, who had terrorized so many, hit the ground with a thundering crash, his massive body thudding to the earth.

  For a moment, Dante said nothing. He just stood there, breath heaving in his chest, leaning on his spear as he fought to stay on his feet, barely aware of the screams of the people in the village, of the thick scent of death surrounding him. All he could do was stare into the face of the man who had saved his life so long ago. His leather pants were torn and bloodied, his chest gaping from Dante’s blows, his face contorted with pain.

  Louis rolled onto his side, his eyes still rogue red, but there was the faintest streak of the brown they’d once been. “You have returned,” he said, his voice rough and raw with the contamination of rogue. “You have come back to the Order.”

  “I have come back to the Order?” Disgust spewed through Dante at the idea, and he walked over to the one Order member he’d thought might have been worth saving. The man who had saved him from his father’s lethal attack. The man who had shown mercy to innocents when Dante’s father had not been looking. The man he’d waited until last to kill, wanting, wishing, and naively hoping that he might prove himself worthy. Louis had been kidnapped by the Order only three years before Dante, an eight-year-old mentor to the five-year-old Dante, two young boys thrust into merciless training to turn them into the monsters Dante’s father coveted.

  Louis had once been his friend, and although he had been corrupted by the power of the Order, Dante had never forgotten who he had once been, and he’d hoped that the human being Louis had once been still remained.

  But it had been a lie. The blow that had taken Louis down was the seventeenth direct strike to the heart Dante had landed before he’d succumbed. Seventeen times, Louis had survived, granted one more chance to come back to him, to regain control, to be the man Dante had hoped he could be.

  Every time, instead of asking forgiveness, Louis had torn the blade out of his chest, and launched another assault, proving what Dante had known all along: that the Order had to be destroyed. Despite the fact he had begun as a good man, Louis had wound up the same as the others, and he had earned the same fate.

  “No, Louis. I have not returned to the Order. I have come back to end it.” He pressed the tip of his spear to Louis’s throat, his hand trembling around the shaft of his weapon. “I’ve killed everyone else,” he said. “You’re the only one left.”

  Louis’s eyes widened, and he coughed, splattering blood across the dirt. “Your father?”

  “He was the first one I killed.” Dante hardened his voice, refusing to replay that moment in his mind. To his surprise, a small smile curved the corner of Louis’s mouth, and his body shuddered, almost as if in relief.

  “It’s over then,” he whispered. “Blackthorn’s reign of terror is over.”

  “Yes.” Dante pressed the tip more firmly into Louis’s neck, knowing the warrior was moments from death. “And now, you die.”

  “Then it is your turn,” Louis said faintly, coughing as blood began to fill his lungs, his injuries too deep for even a Calydon to heal.

  “My turn for what? To die?” Dante laughed softly, not even bothering to look down at his decaying foot, at the poison creeping its way up his leg. “I’m dying anyway. Not at your hands—”

  “No!” Louis moved suddenly, so quickly that Dante wasn’t prepared to react, and Louis got his hand around Dante’s arm. “You cannot die,” he rasped out. “You must rebuild the Order. You must make it what it was supposed to be.”

  Dante wrenched his arm free. “The Order is no more! I will never rebuild—”

  “You must! Only Order members can save the innocents.” Louis coughed again, and what little strength he’d summoned seemed to bleed from his body as he slumped back onto the earth. “Spare us all, Dante,” he whispered. “You have the mark. It is your Order now. It is yours. Make it what it should be.” And then he was gone, his eyes gazing blankly at Dante’s face.

  For a moment, Dante simply stared at the last of his father’s legacy. He felt empty. Drained. Finished. “I bear no mark,” he said quietly. “I left the Order. It’s over.” Unwilling to deny Louis honor in death, even after all he’d done at his father’s bidding, Dante knelt and brushed his hand over Louis’s eyes, closing them. As he did so, he saw a pulsing red mark on the underside of his wrist. A cold wind seemed to knife through him as he slowly turned his arm over to inspect it. It was a symbol of crossed swords embedded in a double circle, the same mark that his father had carried. The mark of the leader of the Order of the Blade.

  Chapter Two

  Dante went still, horror wrenching through him at the sight of the Order’s mark on his flesh. “No,” he gritted out. “Your legacy is done, Father. Done.” He grabbed his spear to cut the mark out of his wrist—

  “You killed him,” the whisper was raw and anguished, horrified.

  “Bless you. Oh, dear saints, bless you.”

  “Thank you for coming,” said another.

  Warily, Dante dragged his gaze away from his wrist. Kneeling before him were dozens of townspeople, many of them still splattered with the blood from the battle. Although Dante had just killed a man, they were all looking at him with a great sense of awe and appreciation. Bowing deeply and whispering repeated murmurs of thanks and blessings, they genuflected, as if Dante was some angel who had arrived to save them.

  At the front, was the leader of the town, a man who looked like he’d seen a few battles himself, with grizzled hair and a long scar across the side of his sunken face. “We have tried to stop the rogues,” he said. “But we can’t. No one can. The Order doesn’t come anymore. No one has come in a hundred years. Until you. The Order has returned.”

  Dante shoved himself to his feet. “The Order is gone,” he said. “No more.” He offered the news freely, knowing that this decimated village needed the hope that the Order’s reign of terror was over.

  “Gone?” The town leader rose to his feet as the villagers erupted into frenzied whispers. “But it can’t be gone! We can’t defeat the rogues alone!”

  “The Order is poison,” Dante replied. “They rape your women. They steal your children. They—”

  “They save us!”

  “They bring suffering upon you!” Dante called his spear back from Louis. It sailed through the air and vanished into the matching black brand seared on his forearm. How could these people not understand what the Order truly was? How could they hold it in
esteem after all his father had made them do?

  Dante had lived with the horrors of the Order for so long. Every victim they’d killed still bled through him. He’d seen good men, strong men, brave men come into the Order, and change into monsters. Power did that. Power corrupted. Power destroyed even those like Louis, who had good buried deep within their souls. “It’s over.” But as Dante looked into the stricken faces of the townspeople, many of whom were still cradling the bodies of those who Louis had slain before Dante had arrived, he felt the deep, deep stab of pain in his own chest. He knew all about the grief of losing people they cared about. He fucking knew that loss. “It must be this way—”

  “You were too late!” The anguished roar ripped across the courtyard, and a burst of fire billowed through the village square. The townspeople screamed and scattered, leaving Dante to face a young Calydon who was standing a hundred yards away, flames cascading from his body and littering the ground around him.

  Dante instantly tensed, prepared to charge the male and hurl him into the nearby river to put out the flames, only to realize just as quickly that the man wasn’t on fire. He was fire. The flames were bleeding from his pores, flickering in his eyes, and coating his skin, but not burning him. His upper body was bare, his clothes hanging in burnt embers. “You fucking bastard,” he screamed. “He killed my sister! He killed Liv and Thomas! You were too late!” And then with a roar of outrage, the Calydon called out his weapons with a crack and a flash of black light. A three-pronged sai appeared in each hand, matching the brands on his arms. “You stupid, fucking bastard!”

  Then he launched himself at Dante, a roiling ball of fire streaking across the bloody dirt right at him.

  “Shit!” Dante called out his spears again with a crack and a flash of black light. “Stand down,” he shouted. “I don’t want to hurt you.” Now that the Order was dead, Dante would never kill again. It was over, this life he’d led for so long.

  “You betrayed us!” The warrior screamed. “The Order was supposed to protect her!”

  “I’m not the Order!” Dante rapidly assessed the best place to slow the youth down without hurting him, and then hurled his spear. The handle slammed into the warrior’s feet and tripped him, bringing him down in a jumble of flames.

  He skidded to the earth, and the flames erupted around him, charring the barren dirt. Dante saw then that the warrior was badly injured, barely even able to hold himself up. Townspeople rushed over, dumping buckets of water on him, but the flames grew even stronger as he rolled to his hands and knees, glaring at Dante through hooded eyes. “You stupid bastard,” he gritted out. “You were supposed to stop the rogues. The Order was supposed to keep her safe.”

  His mangled foot throbbing in pain, Dante limped over to the warrior and crouched down so that he was eye level with him. “I know. The Order has failed the people. It betrayed its birthright.” He gave no excuses. “That’s why it’s over.”

  “Over? No Order?” Outrage darkened the younger warrior’s features. He tried unsuccessfully to struggle to his knees, but collapsed onto his chest again. “More will die,” he gasped. “More innocents. Like my sister. Like her children. What happens when others fall victim to the sheva curse? This is what happens when the Order doesn’t do its job. This!” He flung a bloodied hand out, and Dante saw he was gesturing to the bodies of a young woman and two small children crumpled in the dirt.

  Sudden grief rushed through him, and Dante ground his jaw, fighting to contain his emotions. He knew what would happen without the Order. That was why the Order had been formed, to protect innocents from rogue Calydons. A rogue Calydon was insanely strong, virtually unstoppable, except by those trained to be Order members and gifted with the protection of the Order’s trinity of guardian angels. A rogue Order member was the most deadly Calydon of all, as Louis had shown. All Calydons were susceptible to going rogue, but those who met their sheva, their soul mate, were destined for a violent, bloody end that could not be stopped…except by those trained to do so. Except by the Order as it had once been. But not the Order as it had become. “I know what happens when Calydons go rogue. I know about the sheva destiny,” he said quietly. “It is the way of our kind.”

  Since the birth of their race, the Calydons has been subject to the sheva destiny: to meet their soul mate, to be unable to resist sealing their connection through the five bonding stages, and then, once the bond was complete, the male would go rogue and destroy all that mattered to either of them, only to be killed by his mate, who would then kill herself in despair of the loss. There was no way to stop the process once begun, no way to protect against the hell that awaited a Calydon and his mate. No way to stop it, unless one of the parties was killed before the final fate took them…and no one could defeat a rogue Calydon, except the Order, as it had been intended to be.

  “It doesn’t have to be our way,” Zach shouted. “It has to be stopped! You must stop it!”

  “I’m not Order—”

  “Yes, you are! I heard the rogue! You’re the new leader! What are you going to do about it?”

  Dante’s jaw tightened. “You know nothing of which you speak.”

  “I know you’re a fucking coward who got here too late.” The flames bleeding from the other warrior’s body grew higher, towering almost twenty feet into the air. “I’ll do it,” he snarled. “I’ll take over the Order. Give me the fucking mark.” His eyes were blazing with orange flames even brighter than the ones still cascading off him, and his body was rigid, flexed with the emotions raging through him.

  “No!” Dante shoved the warrior back to the ground. “You’ll become that which you rail against even now! You have no idea of the power of the Order. It will destroy you.”

  “You’re wrong.” Zach was on his hands and knees now, glowering at Dante. “My family died today. I will never forget this moment. I will never become that which killed them. Never.”

  The intensity of the youth’s words struck at Dante, and he leaned forward, studying him more carefully. The male had to be in his early twenties, well over a hundred years younger than Dante, just at the front edge of his powers, and yet there was an impressive strength within him. A burning in his eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “Zach Roderick.”

  “Take your flames down,” Dante commanded, testing him.

  Zach stared at him, and the flames grew higher, crackling with anger, grief, and loss. A flame leapt to a nearby hut, and the townspeople leapt into well-practiced action with buckets of water, trying to halt the destruction.

  “You’re too angry,” Dante said grimly, disappointment like a sharp knife digging at him. No one was strong enough to do what he needed. No one. “You can’t control yourself. You’re exactly the type who will fail. To succeed as Order, you have to be cold and hard, above such human weaknesses as love. You have to be stronger than the call of the sheva bond. You aren’t what I need. You can’t stop yourself now. What would you become under duress?”

  “Duress? Fuck that!” Zach lurched to his feet, staggering as he fought to stand, despite the decimation of his body. “My sister and her kids fucking died today! You don’t think I understand what’s at stake? Well, I do.”

  Dante understood Zach’s passion, because he had once been the same way, before he’d seen how dangerous it was, before a hundred years in hell had stripped him of everything but the need to survive. Zach was too angry, grieving too deeply, to be able to focus. This battle was too personal to him. Zach would never be strong enough to resist the lure of power. Dante had seen it too many times. He would not invite another into this world only to have them tear down the innocents he had sworn to save. “No. I can’t risk it—”

  “Mark me!” The flames seemed to be licking right through Zach’s skin, burning from the inside out, so fiercely it was almost as if his skin had become translucent, a thin barrier barely containing the fire raging within him. He grabbed Dante’s arm. “I can do this! I can do it!”

  Dante stared
into Zach’s eyes, which were literally dancing with flames. The young man was made of fire, a deadly force, but so volatile. Too volatile. He knew what he needed, and it wasn’t a warrior who would allow his emotions to control him…or even have the emotions in the first place. “No—”

  There is a sword you need.

  Dante turned sharply at the rough voice in his head, and saw an old man sitting under a tree at the edge of the village square. “Did you speak to me?” Only Calydons could speak into each other’s minds, but the old man sitting there had no brands on his forearms, no mark of a Calydon. But the sword…he’d been dreaming of a sword for weeks, an ancient black sword. Plain. Without any jewels, but always surrounded by swirling mists of a dozen colors. It was the same one he’d seen in his mind before the fight with Louis, the one that had called to him from the mountain. “What do you know about the sword?”

  The man looked right at Dante, but didn’t acknowledge he had spoken. The sword is your answer. It is searching for you. Open your mind to it. Let it be your guide.

  Even as the words were still echoing in his mind, Dante felt a sudden, intense call reverberate through him, drawing his attention to the south. The air thickened, and Dante turned around to stare at the mountain in the distance.

  He studied the thick green foliage that covered the lower half, and the sparse, raw rock. His gaze narrowed to a fissure on the northwest side, from which heavy, thick steam was rising. There. He was suddenly filled with the same certainty as before that the sword he sought was in that location. That was where he needed to go. Was the sword the answer he was seeking? His chance to rebuild the Order of the Blade? Was the sword the weapon that his team would need to defeat the rogues?