“What the hell are you doing? He’s coming!”
Their arms circled around him, hesitant at first and then when nothing bad happened, with more force.
Lilith leaned into him. “Relax.”
So did Trina. Don’t fight it. Trina hadn’t spoken but her voice echoed in his mind.
They pressed closer. The pain from his wounds lessened as if they each took a portion to bear for him. Everything grew warm. Even the air became heavy. Stuffy. Smothering. Except the women weren’t holding onto him anymore.
His eyes shot open.
No longer did he kneel at the edge of the sacred circle with two women he barely knew wrapped around him. He was inside . . . something. Alone.
It’s our avatar.
Okay, so not alone. They were in here with him. Somewhere. The avatar cocooned the three of them inside. All around him he could feel the beast’s muscles contract and elongate as the avatar hit the ground running. He could feel what Lilith and Trina were doing as if they were extensions of him. Trina had control of the legs. Lilith, the wings. Both women had a head atop a long neck.
The eyes belonged to him.
Jesus, it all made sense now, why Azazel had cursed him to cut out his eyes. That part of the curse had been insurance. In case he survived the felo-de-se. In case he eventually remembered. Azazel had hoped that if he somehow made it through all that, that his eyes would be so damaged, he wouldn’t be able to use his power.
The lid was closed now. Not the eyes on each of the heads the women controlled. No, his eyes didn’t see everyday things. His eyes looked deep. His eyes would see everything. His eyes would absorb the knowledge until nothing remained.
His eyes destroyed.
Kat stumbled to a halt as Trina and Lilith wrapped Julius in an embrace and began the transformation into the Original. She bent over, sucking deep gulps of air. Gaia. For a moment there she’d thought the worse. Thought they were going to kill him while he was too weak to fight.
He had so many wounds, would he even survive their transformation?
Someone pulled her back.
She whipped around. Harrison held up his hands. “You gotta give them some room, Kat.”
“Right.” She nodded and backed away with Harrison.
The dragon grew until it blocked the light of the moon, its two heads rising high overhead. “Where is he?” Why were there only two heads? Shouldn’t there be three now? Like last time she witnessed the Original’s avatar, the dragon had dark, iridescent scales covering the body. Long, sharp teeth filled the mouths. The feet were tipped in claws thicker than her arm.
She gripped Harrison’s hand. “I don’t see him.”
“There. She’s different this time—the spikes. The chest plate.”
He was right. From the crowns of the two heads to the tip of the tail, large curved spikes lined her spine. More sprouted from her knees and elbows. The chest plate, running from the base of her twin throats to her belly was a bright angry red, stark against the dark scales covering the rest of dragon. Mid-chest were two bright yellow spots ringed with black and then green. They reminded her of the eye-like spots caterpillars sported to warn away predators. Almost hypnotic, they held her attention.
“Jesus. Is that what I think it is, in the center of her chest?”
Kat forced her gaze away from the yellow eyes. In the center of the chest, the red scales covered a lump. Now that she was staring straight at it, she could make out the seam along the lower edge—an eyelid.
The first thing that came to mind were those little eyes sprouting one on top of the others. They’d never proved to be dangerous, not to her, but she still didn’t like them. The way they saw through things. The way they saw things they shouldn’t.
She turned to Harry. “Don’t look at it.”
His gaze dropped to hers.
“When that eyelid opens, it’s not going to look like a regular eye. It’s going to be disturbing and yet almost difficult to look away from, but I think it’s dangerous. Don’t look at it.”
He nodded. “Okay.” His gaze shot up and his face went blank.
“Harry?” She snapped her fingers in front of his face.
Nothing. No acknowledgment. Not even a flinch. Slowly, Kat turned around. The eyelid was open. Thousands of tiny eyes filled the socket, each moving independently, blinking. Staring. Searching.
She glanced around. Harrison wasn’t the only one captured in trance. Everyone was.
Everyone but her.
“Oh, Gaia.” This wasn’t good.
Julius strained against his surroundings. Azazel was on the run. Trina raced after him and Lilith added a little speed with strategic flaps of their wings.
They were going to catch him.
In his truest form, Azazel almost seemed pathetic, his charred, twisted bones awkward and gangly as he raced across the planes toward his tower.
Damn, he was going to get away. “Catch him before he reaches his tower.”
Trina leapt. Lilith caught air with her wings and they coasted down to tackle the Watcher.
“Make him look at me.”
They pawed and bit, forcing the Watcher onto his back. He had no skin to protect himself. No lids to hide his eyes. The women hefted the weight of their avatar up until the Watcher had no choice but to stare into the eyes.
Azazel stopped struggling.
Julius remembered what he’d seen in the shadows that day in Azazel’s tower. The fire streaking across the sky. The oceans evaporating. The bodies. This time, though, he understood. This wasn’t a man-made weapon. Not an atomic bomb or alien tech.
This was him.
What he could do.
He was Abaddon. The first soul. Someday he would be the Destroyer. The last soul.
But today wasn’t that day.
He absorbed the Watcher’s knowledge. All the weapons man had made, the ones they’d make in the future. Even the ones they would never conceive of. He took all the knowledge of warfare and fighting, of killing and torturing, strategy and sacrifice. And when there was no more, Azazel was no more.
Close the eye.
Yes. He had to stop now. The memories of other beings were leaking in. He eased the eyelid shut, trying to be as gentle as he could, not wanting to put any of the beings caught in his trance into shock.
They walked away from the ashy remains of the fallen angel. When they were clear of his ash, the avatar began to fade.
Julius dropped to the ground on his feet. The pain from his wounds returned full force. He swayed.
Everything turned sideways.
Abaddon rallied, though. He came through for daemon kind and brought both the Watcher and Leopold to justice. He barely survived the ordeal, and though he gained allies in the daemons, he’d done it for selfish reasons. He still didn’t believe in the goddess, nor her curse. He thought all would be well now.
How could Abaddon possibly find it in himself to save the beings who wanted to destroy him?
The goddess paced.
Chapter 33
“Jules.” Kat knelt next to him and lifted the tattered remains of his shirt. His front was fine. She shoved against his weight and turned him over.
Twelve. There were twelve stab wounds.
She looked up at Trina and Lilith, fully prepared to beg.
“Tell us what to do.” Lilith knelt on one side, Trina on the other.
“Pull energy from Machon; don’t use your own. Let it flow through you and out your hands into him. Picture the skin like ripped material, sewing itself back together from the inside out.”
Come on, Jules. Come back to me.
Lilith picked up on the technique first. She managed to get two of the smaller cuts healed. “His aura’s dimming.”
Trina was too impatient to keep trying. She stood. “I need blood!”
Kat expected one of her coven sisters to volunteer, but it was Scott who came over first. “What do I do?”
Trina took his hand, and went for his pa
lm with her blade.
“No!” Kat reached up and grabbed Trina’s arm. “I have a needle.” She opened her medicine satchel and took out a sterile bag. She ripped it open, took out the needle with an attached blood tube. It was meant to collect blood, if she attached the collection tube to the end. She took hold of Scott’s arm, found the vein and inserted the needle. Blood wound up the tube. Trina grabbed hold of the end and held it over Julius’ wounds.
Julius’ body absorbed each drip and splatter and began to heal one wound at a time.
Lilith came around and took Kat’s place, holding the needle in Scott’s arm.
Kat went to the other side of Julius. She lifted his head, scooted under him and let him rest against her leg. “He did good right? He came back. He brought you both Leopold and the Watcher.”
Trina nodded. “Yes. Just like you said he would.”
He’d proved he was on their side. “So that’s it? He’s free?”
The women shared a glance. “Let’s get him back to the Citadel and let him clean up.” Lilith reached over and patted her hand. “Everything will be fine.”
Lilith pulled the needle from Scott’s arm. “Thank you, Scott.”
“Yeah, no problem. He gonna be all right now?”
Trina leaned over Julius, one hand on the muddy ground next to his shoulder, and touched his forehead with the index finger of her other hand. For a long moment, nothing happened.
Julius sucked in a deep breath and his eyes opened. His whole body tensed.
“You’re okay, baby.” Kat cupped his face in her hands. “We’re all safe.”
He swallowed. Studied each of the faces leaning over him, but didn’t move.
Kat glanced up. They were all looking away. Shifting their weight.
Even after everything that happened, none of them would meet his gaze.
Julius wasn’t sure what to think. They hadn’t put him back in the hood, but no one save Kat would meet his gaze. They let him clean up. Gave him a change of clothes. Fed him. But while he bathed and changed, he’d been locked in a room—granted it was a nicer room than the cell downstairs.
They let him come to the main hall of the Citadel to debrief them on what happened in London. “Trina sent me there because she thought I might finish remembering everything that had happened, including Leopold’s name and the name of the Watcher. She was right.”
Lilith leaned her hip against the chair James was sitting in. “I still don’t understand why Leopold started all this in the first place.”
“For Evelyn.” He leaned back in his chair. “He was the second son of a noble family. She was the first daughter of another, but poorer, noble family. When they eloped, both sets of parents disowned them. She found a vampire to transform her and then transformed Leopold. She had both families killed so they’d inherit their properties. It wasn’t enough. She wanted more than what their families had. She wanted everyone to respect them. She pushed Leopold toward the Vampiric Council and she started a side business to keep their coffers full.”
James’ brows furrowed. “I don’t remember them having a business.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Julius chuckled. “It was all hush-hush. By the time I came onto the scene, though, it was becoming a problem.”
James shook his head. “We were pushing you to mesmerize Leopold to step down because the Council wasn’t doing its job.”
“Right. They were turning a blind eye to a massive herding ring. The Watchers were sending us after ghosts—people who didn’t exist. No one could figure out what was going on, but we knew it had something to do with the Council. We wanted new leaders.”
Kat touched his arm. “What’s herding?”
James grimaced. “Some vampires think of humans the same way humans think of cows—dinner. They’ll gather ‘herds’ of humans and sell them to the highest bidder.” He dragged his hand over his head. “Problem is, as the humans are sitting there, waiting their turn to die, they’re anxious and afraid. Adrenaline floods their bloodstream, which acts almost like a drug to vampires. They became reckless. They were slipping back into the human consciousness.”
“They were herding too many humans,” Duncan added. “Shipping and selling them by the hundreds.”
Julius nodded. “We had to put an end to it. Everyone knew the Council and Leo were right in the middle of the whole mess, but no one could prove it. They were getting rich while the rest of us suffered the consequences. It’d been going on for a long time before the coven clocked on.”
Trina’s brows knitted. “What about the Watchers? Didn’t they notice?”
“Of course they did. Except that Leo’s a projector. He could send anyone he wanted to make the deals and collect the money. The Watchers saw what the rest of us saw—what Leo wanted us to see—and they’d send the Guardians chasing after ghosts—projections.”
“Jesus.” James shook his head. “I always wondered what came of that. But then the Clearances happened and the coven was gone and Machon was closed and everything was total chaos.”
“The Clearances.” Julius let his head fall back. “By the time the coven arrived at the colony of Roanoke, all the colonists had been transformed into Nephilim.”
Trina nodded.
He shook his head. “I was weak from possession already, an easy target. So when the coven showed up, Azazel possessed me again. Except he’d had a little practice by then. He wasn’t so clumsy or passive. He was too strong. He killed Lilith while she tried to exorcize him.” He shook his head. “See, back then, Augustina had told everyone Lilith was the Original. Katherine must have thought Lilith alone could take on Azazel.”
Lilith cleared her throat. “We saw a vision of the Clearances. Azazel was taunting Lilith even while she was trying to exorcize him.”
Julius nodded. “When he stabbed her, Trina died, too. None of us knew about the poem—the Black Book of Daemonology was still being written.”
Trina sat up to stretch her back before leaning against the wall. “Katherine led the coven there to rescue you.”
He nodded. In the end, she’d felt guilty for leading him on. For sending him after Leopold.
“And instead, the Watcher killed her.” He looked at Kat. “I was so angry, so upset that I gained control back for a few seconds. Long enough to hold Azazel through the hour mark. I trapped him. I made it impossible for him to make any more Nephilim.”
“That’s what Tamriel meant. He told me never to leave my consciousness in one of my projections longer than an hour,” Kat mused.
His gaze narrowed. “You’re a projector talent? Leopold transformed you?”
Trina cleared her throat. “Leopold’s projection of you transformed her.”
He dropped his gaze to her throat, to the massive ragged scar there. “Jesus, Kat.”
“It wasn’t you. And now we know that you did what you could to keep the Watcher in line. You did good.”
“Why did you hold on to the Watcher?” Duncan asked. “What did you think to gain?”
“Time,” Julius said. “I remembered that Augustina said the Original could fight a Watcher as an equal. Both Katherine and Augustina believed Lilith was that being. At Roanoke, I learned that the Original was both Lilith and Trina together, but they were dead. So, I held onto him, thinking they would reincarnate.”
Scott leaned back in his chair. “But why did you think holding him would be better—you gave him a body, a way to communicate with humans.”
“It was the best I could do. I limited his power. He had to leave my body to create the Nephilim—if he used me to bite a human, he’d have created vampires. I figured at least I could prevent him from creating more of those creatures.”
“Why isn’t he in his cell?”
Everyone turned to the entryway where Angie stood with four human men.
Angie folded her arms over her chest. “I told you they were going to renege on their bargain. They fired me because I’m the only one who could verify him at trial.”
Lilith stood. “The trial is tomorrow. We haven’t backed out; we do, however, have new information.”
One of the males came forward. His hair matched the snow-white shirt beneath his dark suit. His little eyes narrowed behind his thick-rimmed glasses. “You still have to present him tomorrow. The DDC court will decide his fate, not you.”
“Senator Dorset, this was not part of our agreement.” Lilith cleared her throat. “You have no right to be in Machon, much less in this Citadel. You were not invited. This is a breach of our treaty.”
His lips thinned. “I’ll be staying or I will go straight to the media.”
Julius stood. “It’s fine. I’ll spend the night in the cell and tomorrow, after the trial, I’ll spend the night with my mate.” He squeezed Kat’s shoulder and headed for the door that led to the cells. Harrison and Scott flanked him.
“He needs to be chained and hooded. I won’t have him mesmerizing my men.” The senator’s words rang out through the room.
Julius nodded once. “Fine.”
The three of them went downstairs in silence. He let himself into the cell and sat on the bench. This was just a little setback. Trina and Lilith would present new evidence and the jury would let him go. He held his arms up so Harrison and Scott could lock him back in. Didn’t even flinch when they lowered a new hood over his head. Hell, at least he was clean, healthy, and fed. He was doing better than yesterday.
George sat on the bench between his legs, watching. At least the little shit wasn’t growling or hissing.
When they finished, Scott walked out but Harrison lingered in the doorway. His colors were off. Cloudy. He was probably still stressed over what happened in London. “What?”
“You could’ve escaped.”
“And what, leave Kat holding the bag? I’m a bastard, I’ll admit that, but even I’m not that much of a bastard.”
The Knight: The Original's Trilogy - Book 3 Page 32