Droghan stepped back through his gateway and vanished. As it grew smaller, two more Triscani rushed through the floating doorway. She could hear the faint echo of the Immortal’s telepathy as he gave the monsters their orders.
Kill Raiden. I need the Timewalker alive.
Chapter Ten
They were going to die.
Damn Immortals. The bastards were always in the thick of things, pulling strings like a puppet master to his marionette. He was done being the sacrificial pawn in their centuries-long chess match. First his Immortal mother, then the evil female the Immortals now bowed to as their Queen, and now this. Another fucking Immortal asshole. Droghan. Whoever the hell he was. Raiden had never heard of him.
Raiden struggled under the weight of three Triscani soldiers, battling their minds, blocking their attempts to reform their limbs, to reshape their hands into obsidian blades like the one he was sure they’d used to kill Mari. He held them at bay, barely able to sustain the focus needed to block their thoughts while they pummeled him with all too human fists and sharp kicks.
Mari wouldn’t attack them with the Angel’s Fire, not while he was buried at the bottom of the pile. She was too soft to take such a risk with his life, even if he didn’t deserve her care. There was only one option. With one Triscani, perhaps he’d survive it. But three
He’d die, but Mari would escape. That was the only thing that mattered now. She had to find the Guardian of the Gate and get the Remnant out of her body before it killed her.
Tim would help her, would keep her safe. Tim and Sarah.
The thought rankled, but it would have to be enough. Mari wasn’t his, never could have been, even if he’d lived to recover the stone. Between the Queen and the Triscani souls he carried, he wasn’t sure even the Dark One could save him. And if he was destined to die, and he’d be damned if he’d take her with him through a bond. No. No one would use him against her, use him to weaken her, or even kill her.
She would live, and lead Tim to the Dark One. She’d survive the Remnant. She’d survive him.
Tim. Sarah. Listen and heed my call. I’m dying. Mari has absorbed the soul of a Remnant. You must find the Guardian of the Gate, the Dark One, and force him to remove the Remnant from Mari’s body. His name is Teagh. If he won’t help her, you must find a way to force the issue, or Mari will die.
Understood, Tim answered, a soldier’s practicality behind that one word. The man knew Raiden wouldn’t call for their aide if the situation weren’t bad. Very, very bad.
Mari gasped and regret weighed his heart like a stone as he sank into sorrow so thick it was like quicksand pulling him under. The evil Triscani made things worse as he blocked kicks and punches, ignored the hits they landed, and continued to disturb their minds enough to prevent them from shifting into battle mode. Once their knives came out, he’d be done for.
Thank the gods the bastard wanted Mari alive. With three they could kill her before he had a chance to blink.
A swift kick hit home on his temple and his concentration shattered for a millisecond. That was all they needed. The sharp edge of a blade flashed menacingly in the dim light.
“Die, Raiden, Son of Sora. Die, or join us.” The hiss in his ear froze him in place as effectively as if he were encased in granite. He couldn’t move, not even to blink. Even he did not know the name of his mother. He knew that voice. Somehow, he knew…
“Who are you?” The other two soldiers ceased attacking, one kneeling over his head while the other helped hold him down. He stared at the faceless space in the creature that sat on top of him, tried to see beyond the blankness that shouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.
“You know, brother. You know.” The Triscani formed a foot-long black blade from his right arm and plunged it into Raiden’s side, just below his heart.
“Ryu…” The whisper escaped him on a breath of disbelief and pain. But the soldier didn’t respond or remove the blade. Instead, a dreadful cold emanated from the weapon, a cold Raiden was intimately familiar with. “No!”
A flash of light burst through the room as Mari got a clear shot at the first Triscani. Moments later, she killed the second, but Ryu remained on top of him, the blade burning a hole in his soul, a chilling reminder of his own dark power, of the curse he’d been born to carry. The curse and its terrible power, the ferocity of it he and Ryu had kept hidden, even from their own father. The curse that would eventually kill him.
So be it.
Raiden reached over and wrapped his hand around the Triscani’s forearm, forcing the arm to move, to slide the blood-stained appendage from his side in one slow, smooth glide. At the same time, he stopped fighting with his legs. Instead, he wrapped his thighs around the massive frame and squeezed, setting his trap. He latched on to the Triscani, but didn’t fight. Instead, he went deep, to the dark labyrinth inside his mind, and unlocked the cage.
The monster within roared and rushed up through his soul, through his flesh like a ghost passing through a wall. The rage and hunger rose like a mist, black steam whispering of death as it rose from his skin. It swirled in the air, hovered inches above his prone form before diving like burrowing worms into the body of the creature that held him. He could no longer think of this thing as his brother.
Many times Raiden had used this gift in battle, absorbing the life essence of another, slowing their bodies, weakening his enemy so he could cut them down. Always the well within, the desolate pit that caged this power, would fill to overflowing and force him to stop. Stop before the quintessence overcame his own spirit. Stop so that his soul wouldn’t perish under the weight of the malevolence it carried. Stop or become the evil he so desperately wanted to destroy.
Always, Raiden had a choice. But as the grasping, hungry fingers of his gift tunneled deep into the Triscani, into his own baby brother’s lost soul, Ryu’s darkness and pain agitated his power, ignited a conflagration of rage, rage at his brother’s betrayal, rage at the lost years, rage for the decades of blood and battle, rage for the distant memories of a life that should have been his.
Rage that the brother he loved, his twin, was gone, replaced by an empty husk of evil. Agony that the woman he desperately needed to be whole could never be his.
“That’s right, Raiden.” His brother leaned closer, cheek to cheek, as the colossal weight of the too many lost souls poured into Raiden’s body like mud filling an empty bucket to overflowing. He couldn’t hold their agony, couldn’t contain the emptiness washing away his soul. His brother laughed as his muscles collapsed and he fell back onto the floor. There was no turning back now, and his brother knew it. “You’re like me now. One of usss.”
“Fuck you, Ryu.” Raiden could’ve severed the connection and hoped to heal. He could’ve stopped, and simply allowed the Triscani to kill him, to end his suffering. But that wouldn’t save Mari. He needed to turn the bastard to ash, and that was exactly what he intended to do.
He didn’t close the link with his brother, he opened it wider, pulled harder, until the Triscani collapsed over his knees. Not dead yet, but soon. Soon his brother would implode with a sickening absence of sound before turning to dust.
“No!” Mari’s scream barely registered, but her horror touched him. She cared for him, worried for him, suffered at the idea of losing him. It only hardened his resolve to save her.
I’m sorry, Marina. Find the Guardian of the Gate, the Dark One, Teagh. Tim will help you. The Dark One must remove the Remnant from your body. Warn the others that the Queen on Itara is hunting Timewalkers. She wants to control your gifts, use you as her own personal army. That is why she sent me here.
No!
If I can’t contain this, promise me you’ll turn me to ash, Mari. I don’t want to live as one of them. I won’t. Promise me. It was a demand, not a request. There was no softness in the words, no tenderness or understanding he could offer her if the choice needed to be made. Promise me.
“No.” Mari leapt toward him. Raiden wrapped his brother in a tight embra
ce and rolled away from her, pinning his brother’s disgusting form beneath him. He ignored Mari’s frantic hands on his back and twisted the mental pathway that connected him to her, twisted and coiled their link until it was barely a thread in his mind. He wanted it broken, needed it broken, but somehow he couldn’t completely sever the bond between them while his brother’s bitter soul poured into him like acid, burning him from the inside out.
He couldn’t spare Mari from experiencing this pain.
One more sin his brother would pay for.
“Die, you heartless bastard.” Raiden stopped passively allowing his brother’s soul to pour into him. He pulled like a man dying of thirst would suck cool water through a straw. Unending. Merciless. Starved.
Ryu’s skeletal body shivered beneath him, quivering, on the brink of shattering into a million tiny pieces of dust. But his brother’s will was strong, and he held on, fighting to pull back, to reverse the flow of energy. Ryu fought to absorb Raiden into himself just like the blood that flowed from Raiden’s side soaked the dry, empty spaces in Ryu’s dark robes.
But it was too late. Too much of his strength floated in Raiden’s body. Ryu’s spirit tugged at Raiden, but it was like swinging a single oar upstream at the base of a waterfall.
Raiden felt the moment his brother stopped fighting, the moment he exploded into dust beneath him. The caustic smell of Triscani ash and burnt hair enveloped his head as Ryu’s final words floated through his consciousness to disappear in the dark whirlpool of chaos that was his mind. Now you understand. Now you are one of us…
Raiden rolled onto his side. Numb. Empty.
Mari shook him, her warm, glowing spirit, her life force, a sweet temptation at his back.
And he was so very hungry.
“Raiden?” Her strong fingers were scorching brands through his dive suit. Every inch of her flesh burned like a bright beacon in his mind. So hot. So vibrant. So much power…
“No.” He shook off her touch and crawled away from her. “No.” Dead. He was dead inside, and the emptiness that froze him now would devour his flesh, make him forever hungry. Make him one of them…
“Let me help you.” Mari ran her fingers through his hair, her touch featherlight. An agony.
“Kill me.”
“What?” Her sweet caress stilled where she touched him, melted his will like a hot flame melting candle wax.
Speech was beyond him. The muscles within rotted. He knew if he rolled over, if she saw what he feared was left of his face, she would run, screaming. Forever he would be a monster in her mind and in her heart. Forever an abomination. No woman could love an abomination.
He turned away, forehead pressed to the cool metallic floor of the room that had once been his refuge, his solace and peace. Now there was only her. And the pain of being a walking corpse, an ever-starving zombie from humanity’s favorite horror story. But instead of eating brains, he’d want souls. Kill me, Mari. Kill me before it’s too late, before I’m like them.
“Raiden, no.” She wrapped her arms around him, the sweet scent of her hair a cascade of soft silk over his shoulder, down his neck, and across his cheek.
“Kill me.” The sound of his voice echoed in the room’s sudden silence, so eerily similar to the other’s, to his brother’s hissing tones. To them.
Mari gasped behind him. Too late. She knew what she held in her arms, knew the price he’d paid to save her. He reverted to telepathy, unable to tolerate the strange discordant notes of his new voice. Kill me. Then find the Dark One called Teagh. Stop him before he opens the Black Gates. That is how we lost the war. You must tell him. It is your mission now. I’m sorry. I failed.
I won’t let you go.
You must. The Angel’s Fire will turn me to dust. It is the only way.
Give me your blade.
Raiden hesitated. The blades were ineffective on the Triscani. But if his heart still beat in his chest, if he still bled red, it would be enough. He might still be human enough to die if she stabbed him straight through the heart.
He pulled one small blade from his thigh and offered the hilt to her, sliding it up and over his shoulder. He spoke again, wanted her to hear the horrible discordant tone of his voice, needed to harden her resolve, so that she’d both know and accept what must be done. His voice was a hissing echo of sound. Terrible. Alien. “One sssure ssstrike through the heart, Mari.”
She didn’t respond, but she released him. He immediately missed her warmth, but held still for her strike. “Do it.”
“I need to cut your suit. It’s too thick.”
Raiden held still when he felt the cold metal kiss the nape of his neck. The perfectly honed blade made quick work of the rubbery diving suit. Small hands tugged away the corners, exposing his back to her. “One ssstrike, Mari. Basse of my brain ssstem or angled up under the ribsss, to my heart.” Raiden curled into a ball and tucked his chin to his chest to give her a better angle for either. He opened his eyes and realized his mistake when the dark charcoal gray of his transformed flesh startled him. So quickly, everything changed. His fingernails were black as deep space, his hands, skeletal. Hideous.
Not human. Not Immortal. Triscani. “Fire or knife, Mari. Pleassse. End it.”
“What if I can’t do it?” Her whispered question hurt him in places he thought already dead.
“You mussst. Or I will be one of them forever.” Perhaps he asked too much. What were his alternatives? If he left this place, left her side, the hunger would grab hold and he’d have no more reason to fight it. Honor would not hold it at bay. Courage would not defeat it. The hunger was insidious and insistent, crawling through him even now, demanding to be fed. No, if she left his side, he would be lost to the yawning emptiness that had claimed his brother.
It was the Immortals dirty little secret. All of the Triscani were of his bloodline. The Queen’s bloodline, forbidden sons. Perhaps men he knew, brothers and cousins now lived in their dark realm? For over a hundred years he’d battled them, fought them, feared them. And it was all a lie, a lie told to protect the Immortals’ precious Queen and her family. A horrible secret the Immortals kept from humanity and the other races. The Triscani belonged to them, were their blood, their family. Their fucking sons. He and Ryu were irrefutable proof.
Son of Sora. That was what his twin, Ryu, had claimed. Sora was of the Circle of Judgement. She was an Angelus Mortis. An infamous and feared Death Dealer for Immortals that broke their laws. And she’d been Queen of all Itara over a thousand years ago, gone for hundreds, ashed by her own son. Sora could not be his mother, his grandmother perhaps.
The royal females in that family only birthed daughters. It was a well known and publicly touted fact.
A lie that cost millions of lives. A lie that started a brutal hundred and fifty year war. A lie that would now cost both him and his brother their lives.
Hesitant fingertips winged their way across his back before settling into a firmer touch on his shoulder blade. The Shen blazed to hot life on his shoulder, but it wouldn’t be enough. He couldn’t allow it. He’d take her with him, kill her, drain her dry faster than the Remnant bastard already eating away pieces of her soul.
Silence, then a featherlight kiss on the back of his neck, on his inhuman obsidian flesh, on the very place he’d told her to stab him, to kill him and the twisted corpse his body’s metamorphosis would eventually produce.
Mari?
No. I won’t do it. I can’t.
Raiden relaxed into her touch, unable to deny himself this last, small moment of pleasure at having her near. Knowing that she cared, at least a little, enough to want him to live, was a balm he’d hold to. The knowledge would strengthen him for what came next.
Too late he realized he wanted more than that…he wanted her love. He didn’t deserve it, he hadn’t earned it, but the selfish bastard that he was, he wanted it anyway. He’d never had a woman’s heart for his own. He discovered in that last moment that he was selfish, greedy for it.
&nb
sp; Raiden knew it was past time for regrets. When he’d left on this mission he never would have foreseen meeting her. Turning his brother to ash. Discovering the truth about his lineage and joining the ranks of the Triscani. Tormenting the one woman he might have loved with endless pain. Becoming a monster. Asking a healer to kill him, even though it went against the core nature of who and what she was. She was an angel. He was a demon. There was no middle ground for either of them.
But he could spare her this. He could set her free.
Mari, amata mea, it’s all right. Her soft sobs hurt him more than the blade he pulled from his other pocket ever could. It’s over. Hush now. It’s over.
Wrapped in her arms, he plunged the sharp blade into his own chest.
A moment of searing pain. One heartbeat. Two.
Raiden closed his eyes and set her free.
Mari knelt on the floor, Raiden in her arms, and fought back a scream as the dark emptiness of the Triscani crawled beneath Raiden’s skin, staining his muscular back like a spilled cup of black ink on a white marble floor. And it spread, encasing his hands, his face, every ounce of flesh until even his voice was unfamiliar. Tinny and mechanical. Hissing and inhuman.
Like theirs.
He’d defeated the others, killing to protect her. And now he paid the price, the price for her failure, for her indecision when she could’ve taken the shot on the Triscani bastards, even if Raiden had been behind them, beneath them, covered completely in their dark stench.
She should’ve taken the risk. Anything would’ve been better than this…
God, she’d tried to protect him, to recover the stone and face the Triscani alone. He was more important than she was. Earth needed him alive. Celestina had moved her through time to save his life. And now he begged to die. Because of her. This stupid stone had been his. All of this was his. His mission. His ship. His life. She’d given up everything to find him, to save him. And pulled a dumb-ass move trying to play the hero.
Blue Abyss: Timewalker Chronicles, Book 3 (The Timewalker Chronicles) Page 20