by F. J. Gale
“Jenna, please keep him away from this,” Alna said.
Jenna nodded at her sadly and pulled Mathias to her, holding him back.
“Take care of him.”
She winked at him and walked through the barrier with the ease of a ghost walking through a brick wall.
They watched as she assaulted Orion with both handfuls of magic. It blew him and a dozen or so of Immortalia’s soldiers a couple of hundred feet backwards. Such was her power.
“Ready?” Jenna asked Mathias as the barrier began to dissipate.
Thanks to Alna, the soldiers were no longer surrounding them. She’d blown half of them away from the fight. Jenna counted ten soldiers in front of them, including the idiot Arthur and the greatly misguided Tanya.
Mathias composed himself and gripped Jenna’s hand tightly. “Yeah.”
“Let’s destroy them.”
“Watch your defense,” he chided as usual.
“I know, I know, I’m mortal.”
“For now, anyway.”
Such an optimist, she thought to herself. We’ll see if I can get that far.
***
Inside the research facility, General Clark gripped the wall for support as he made his way across the control room towards the central computer. Disorientating? That’s an understatement and a half.
He could barely stand, let alone even try to attempt walking in a straight line.
But he had a mission to carry out. It was all that mattered.
He fought against every instinct permeating his body to keep moving in as straight a line as possible, toward the central computer. The mainframe. The hub. He could see the fingerprint scanner in the center of the keyboard. Just a few feet away now.
He froze suddenly at the muffled sounds of heavy footsteps hurrying down the corridor outside. Security guards. He waited until the sounds faded into the distance. They weren’t coming for him. But if they were running they had likely been summoned to a serious situation of some sort. The General knew exactly what that situation was. Alna’s force-field dome had dissipated and a battle had ensued outside. He had to hurry to assist them!
Just a couple more feet. Come on! Move, dammit!
***
“I thought you were going to rip my throat out?” Jenna called as she watched Tanya’s back jar painfully against the trunk of an aged Oak.
Tanya shrieked at her, baring her fangs as she tried to wipe Jenna’s muddy boot print off the front of her white leather jacket.
Jenna could barely hear a thing; the sounds of thunderous magic from Alna’s battle with Orion over on the south side of the research lab were deafening. Lightning. Thunder. Explosions.
She and Mathias had already taken out most of Arthur’s soldiers. She stole a quick glance at him. He was battling two soldiers and Arthur, holding his own as only a warrior of his experience could. Jenna had been raging a battle with Tanya for the last ten minutes thanks to Mathias’ insistence that she not kill her. Something to do with a code of honor between him and her brother, Luke. Luke had to be the one to end her. Jenna had never subdued a vampire before—she had always killed. Aside from that being her job description, it was extremely difficult to just subdue a vampire. They could recover quickly from any wound because they didn’t have to worry about blood loss. It was time to hedge her bets and go with knocking Tanya out cold with some blunt force trauma to the head.
Tanya withdrew two throwing stars and hurled them, one after the other, at Jenna. She was so fast and they came in such quick succession that Jenna only managed to dodge one. The other bit into the upper left arm of her tactical jacket. Despite the protective nature of the jacket, the blade sliced into her flesh. She winced and ripped it out. In the second that took her, Tanya was upon her. She fought to force her into a choke hold, but Jenna resisted.
“He is not for you!” Tanya hissed in her ear as she struggled to maintain her grip on Jenna.
“Learn to take rejection,” Jenna shot back.
Those words incensed Tanya and she lost control, becoming wild. She shrieked as her talons clawed Jenna. She yanked at The Hunter's hair, turning into a whirlwind of unrestrained animalistic violence. Jenna’s tactical gear protected her from the worst of the onslaught. She switched to a defensive position and finally managed to grab hold of one of Tanya’s arms. Wasting no time, she forced her into an arm lock and held her steady.
“You’re barely more than human, little girl. You can’t satisfy him like a vampire can. He’ll tire of you quickly,” Tanya seethed.
Jenna responded with a powerful roundhouse kick that propelled Tanya brutally into the wall of the lab. She smacked against it with such force that she lost her balance and crashed to the ground. Before she could even attempt a recovery, Jenna was on her again. She dragged her to her feet and gripped the back of her neck, pushing her face against the cement wall.
“Here’s something you don’t know: fucking The Hunter is an infamous fantasy among powerful vampires. That’s what you are to them, girl. Nothing more. Now you’ve spread your legs, the novelty’s over. He’ll be done with you!” Tanya laughed, a vile and maniacal sound of triumph.
Jenna’s fingers dug into the back of her head, causing the laughter to be replaced by a scream.
“You know nothing,” Jenna spat.
Before she could utter any more poison, Jenna slammed her face into the concrete wall, over and over until finally the vampire lost consciousness.
Jenna released Tanya and stepped back. But any chance of being granted a mere moment to recover was shot to hell when the ground beneath her began reverberating violently. What the hell? She turned towards the south and froze.
Alna levitated thirty feet off the ground, her arms held out to her sides, crackling with blue magic. But it wasn’t just her hands that held the magic this time. It stretched from the heavens to the earth, with her at its center. The power was so great that it cracked the sky in half causing heavy rain and thunder to burst forth. Blue magic tore through the earth, splitting the ground like an earthquake.
“Mathias!” Jenna bellowed as she watched the crack spread towards him and Arthur.
He followed the sound of her voice and saw what she saw. He was so shocked that he dropped his guard against Arthur for a mere split-second.
He was brutally tackled to the ground.
Jenna sprinted towards him, yelling, “Roll!” The ground split beneath her feet and she vaulted over the widening gorge. Ear-splitting cracks of branches ripping from trees and the roar as they thudded to the ground assaulted her senses. Her instincts screamed at her and she looked to her right to see a towering fir tree toppling towards her. She leaped from its path with all the supernatural speed that she possessed, and the heavy tree missed her by a hair. Her heart beat ferociously with surging adrenaline. She fought against it to focus on the situation at hand and continue on forward. She watched in horror as the gorge spread to the wrestling figures of Mathias and Arthur. They sensed it before they saw it and rolled out of the path, onto the same side that she ran along. Phew.
By the time she reached the two of them, Arthur had Mathias held in front of him, his sword at his neck. But Mathias was barely concerned with his own life as he watched Alna in the distance. His head wasn’t in the fight. Neither was his heart. For a warrior that meant only one thing: sure-fire defeat.
Jenna ripped off a four-foot branch from a fallen tree and raced towards Arthur. She stopped a foot from him, clutching the makeshift weapon tightly.
Arthur eyed her weapon. “You’ll kill us both,” he warned her.
“Release him and face your fate like a warrior.”
“We both know you won’t do it.”
Jenna's eyes narrowed with determination.
“Jenna!” Mathias protested. “Retreat! Go to Jax,” he choked, as Arthur pressed the blade into his neck, drawing blood.
“Tell him why you hesitated that night, why I was able to stab you,” Arthur ordered.
“Final warning,” Jenna sa
id calmly.
“Fine, I’ll tell. The Hunter is tied to Silas and his blood brethren—me. How does the book put it? ‘...she is connected to Immortalia, to its leaders. She will feel the pain of their death and suffer with them as one.’ Nasty stuff, huh?”
She saw the look of alarm on Mathias’ face. Why didn’t you tell me? He caught her eye and she looked away uncomfortably.
“Don’t worry, when I’m done with him, I'll put you out of your misery.” He gripped Mathias’ hair and told him, “I'll drain her dry.”
Mathias struggled, but Arthur drove the blade further into his flesh.
“Get ready,” he breathed, grinning with the anticipation of murdering his father’s arch nemesis.
A sudden white-hot pain seared his heart. He lost his grip on the sword and it fell to the sodden ground. He looked down at his chest to see wood embedded in his heart. She had driven it all the way through Mathias and into him. No! This is not the night of my death! It can’t be so! Noooooo!
“It can’t…you can’t…no…no…” he murmured as he pushed Mathias off him, ripping free from the branch that had pierced his heart.
He gripped his heart and gazed at her dumbfounded. He heard her scream, clutch her own heart and collapse to her knees.
It was the last thing he saw.
And then he was dust.
“Jenna!” Mathias choked out as he gripped the branch embedded just below his heart. He thanked the Gods that her aim was so precise. He braced himself and ripped out the offending object, growling as it tore through his flesh. The pain was so severe that he could feel his body fighting his will, needing to shut down. But he couldn’t pass out now.
Jenna’s screams of agony forced his body forward, crawling through the few feet of muddied ground to reach her where she lay, clutching at her chest.
He pulled her onto his lap.
“It hurts!” she rasped, her eyes finding his.
He ripped open her tactical jacket and pulled up her tank top.
“Let go,” he urged her as he fought with her to break her grip on her chest.
He was shocked to see that there was no wound there. His heart sank. He didn’t know what to do. A wound, he could fix. But this was something different altogether. It was internal. He couldn’t free her from the pain. He couldn’t do anything.
“Mathias!” a voice bellowed from behind him.
He glanced over his shoulder to see the General running towards him.
“Alna’s magic is destroying everything in her path. The walls of the lab are crumbling. People are dead. Human fatalities,” he reported frantically. “The files on the drug are destroyed,” he added. At least they had achieved their mission objective.
Mathias nodded absently, barely taking the General’s words in.
“Are you listening to me?” the General demanded. As he reached him, he became aware of Jenna's state. “What—what happened?” he asked, crouching beside them. “Was she wounded?“
Mathias shook his head. “Not physically. It’s the curse. She killed Arthur. His pain of death is hers. There’s no wound—I can’t—there’s nothing I can do to ease her agony.”
The General was taken aback at Mathias’ vulnerability. He had never seen him like this. For a moment he forgot what he was. He seemed so human.
He reached for Jenna’s wrist to check her pulse, but was stopped by Mathias’ words. “It’s weak, but steady.” The General looked at him.
“I can feel her.”
“Her blood?”
Mathias nodded uncomfortably.
The General pushed down his reaction to this disturbing revelation.
“All right.” He reached into his inner jacket pocket and withdrew a hard plastic case. He opened it and ripped open one of the packages. A syringe already full of some sort of liquid.
“What is that?”
“Morphine. If we don’t stop the pain, she could go into shock, which, given her current state, could be enough to kill her. This will knock her out until we can get her some proper help. Human doctors won’t have a clue what they’re dealing with here. Is there anyone in…your world?”
“Yes.” Jax. He was the only one who could help her now.
“Hold her,” the General ordered.
Mathias tightened his grip on Jenna and held her steady as the General injected her with the syringe. Within moments he felt her body weaken, her screams subside. He struggled to get to his feet with her in his arms, but his body wouldn’t let him.
“I can’t—you need to take her,” he admitted with bitter defeat.
“Mathias, this place is being torn apart. We need to leave now.”
Mathias gestured to his chest and the General almost choked from the shock of what he saw. There was a five-inch gaping hole through his chest.
“Take her,” Mathias urged.
The General snapped into action and took her from Mathias, cradling her in his arms. He stood up and watched Mathias struggle to one knee and then the other, before finally managing to get to his feet. He held his hand over his chest and gritted his teeth.
“I know how you feel about me, but I know you'll protect her. The way you were warning her off me is proof of that.”
“You heard that?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I may have misjudged you in some respects.”
A look passed between them. “Where?” the General asked.
Grunting against the pain, Mathias pulled out his cell phone and handed it to the General.
“Eternus. Hit REDIAL and say you seek sanctuary for The Hunter at my request. They’ll trace my phone and come to you.” He couldn’t reveal the location of Eternus to the leader of the STR. It was too great a risk no matter what the circumstances.
He staggered forward and reached for the choker around Jenna’s neck. He unclasped it and put it in his pocket. He gently peeled off the gauze. The General stared at him.
“When they come to you, they’ll recognize my bite and they won’t harm you.”
“If you stay here, you’ll die,” the General cautioned.
Mathias gestured to Alna and the devastation all around them. “I have to stop her.”
“How?”
“By reaching through the dark,” he answered cryptically.
The General nodded and started to walk away.
“Silas must be taken out, whether I live to lead the assault or not. She’s the key,” Mathias called.
The General looked back at him. “She’ll make it,” he vowed.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
“Alna! Release the magic!” Mathias bellowed from the ground beneath her.
“I don’t need your mercies, Mathias!” Orion rasped from a few feet away where he lay sprawled. He screamed as Alna assaulted him with another bolt of light. She was moments away from killing him.
“I’m not doing this for you!” Mathias yelled at him. “I warned you not to attack her.”
“You can’t reach her; she’s buried beneath the magic now.”
“She’s the ivory witch. The white light in her is strong.”
“It’s gone too far,” Orion told him, gesturing towards the lab with his shaking, bloody hand.
Mathias looked to his left and watched as Alna’s magic rained down on the lab. In seconds it disintegrated. All that remained was a black charred outline of where its concrete walls had once stood. It was as though it had never existed. Oh my God.
“Alna! Let go!” Mathias bellowed.
She cocked her head towards him. Her eyes were black, devoid of all their former light. But he saw recognition in her eyes. His voice had affected her. “You’re destroying everything! Stop, Alna! Now! This is not what magic is for!”
Her eyes met his and she floated to the ground. Thick blue magic surrounded her as she glided towards him.
“You’re wounded.”
He ignored her concern. “We devoted ourselves to white magic, to the good that it could do. Not this, Alna.”
<
br /> His comment struck a nerve and she screamed, “Graven ripped that life away from us!”
“Not for you,” he said, sadly. “You never became this.” He bared his fangs.
“You don’t know what it feels like to possess this power. It’s intoxicating. I won’t give it up now.”
“Yes you will!”
He shot out his hand and grabbed hers. The blue fire she held in her palm burned his skin. But then something inexplicable happened. He felt a warmth course through him, a sensation that he hadn’t felt since his human years. And he watched the blue fire extinguish.
“What is this—stop!” she protested, trying to pull away.
But he held her hand tightly.
“What are you doing?”
He jerked her towards him and made her look at him. “Letting you go,” he whispered gently.
He took hold of her other hand and the same thing happened. The blue flame on her palm extinguished.
“Your white light is…weakening…me,” she choked.
He shook his head. And that was when she realized the truth. “It’s extinguishing the black. It’s strong.”
“It’s gone centuries without use.”
He watched as the dark blue light surrounding her gradually dissipated. He felt her body weaken. He could feel her heartbeat slow. She dropped to her knees and that was when he let go.
As he did, he felt movement from his right. Orion! Without thinking twice, he slid a knife from his sleeve, spun and hurled it at him. He was so fast that Orion didn’t see it coming until it plunged into his chest.
The magic that Orion had intended to assault Alna with was diffused instantly. He caught Mathias’ eye. Gripping the handle of the blade, he murmured words under his breath and gritted his teeth from the searing pain in his chest. And then, he was gone.
Mathias turned back to Alna. She leaned forward on her knees, barely able to hold herself up, yet looked up at him and smiled. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, the brightest bluest embers he had ever seen engulfed her. He reached for her, but she held up her hand, commanding him to stay back. I am done, Mathias. The embers quickly grew to flames. She didn’t cry out, didn’t fight it. She simply let it take her, engulfed in her own magic. A sorceress’ death. Mere seconds later she was gone. No trace of her remained. No ashes, no body. Nothing. It was as though she had never been.