Blood Stained Tranquility

by N. Isabelle Blanco

  “Dago, stop trying to seduce me. We have company.”

  Laughing, Dago gave Spari the finger. “Shut it.” He moved to sit on his chair, and motioned for them to take the three other seats in front of him. “Now. Here’s what my spies have been able to tell me. The Aviraji are definitely moving. We’re talking infiltrations spanning from this galaxy, to Eren, to the Underworlds and C’ian.”

  Eve shook her head and raised her eyebrows. “C’ian?”

  “The elf dimension, if you will.

  Oh, of course. Why the fuck wasn’t she surprised that there was an elf dimension?

  “Anyway, we have Aviraji minions busy trying to stir up trouble and gather info, along with my personal favorite, trying to convince other beings to join their cause. By force if necessary.”

  Spari leaned forward, all playfulness gone. In its place was pure, hard determination. “Lisrn. Did your spies get info on him?”

  “That’s the most fucked-up part.” Dago ran his thumb across his bottom lip, lost in thought. “He’s involved in something that involves the humans.”

  “What?”

  “Amgen, Spari. He’s been seen exiting their facility late at night. If what my spies gathered is true, he has a connection there.”

  “Pharmaceuticals?” Spari asked, looking confused.

  “Genetic research, Spari. They’re fucking with something big. The Vy’shi refused to help them. We won’t mutate molecules for them.”

  “So they’re looking for alternatives.”

  “I’m guessing that when you say ‘Amgen’, you mean the big company in California. Am I right?” Eve knew she was right, but considering the fucked-up scenarios threatening to go off in her head, she figured it would be best to confirm.

  “The one and only,” Dago said with a nod.

  Eve sat back in her seat, staring blankly at the wall. “Shit.”

  She could just imagine all the different scenarios that could come of this. None of them ended even marginally well. Her brain went off into its own sick version of A Thousand Ways to Die.

  “I am confused, but I am going to go with this being a bad thing,” Dimithinia said.

  “You have no idea,” Eve mumbled. “We need to nab Lisrn on his next visit to the facility.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because whatever they were working on, it’s finished. He was going there regularly for three months. Then, two weeks ago, he stopped.”

  She stared at Dago, trying to figure out how to word her next statement without insulting him or his species. “And no one thought, at any time before that, of grabbing the fucker?”

  He glared at her, looking insulted anyway.

  “We’re reality benders, not gods. We don’t have the type of power to take down one such as him. We might have that power now that Flux is back, but we’ve been weakened as a species for millennia now.”

  “So Lisrn is a god?”

  Spari leaned forward so she could look at Eve. “Enteax, too.”

  “Gods of what?” she asked, almost afraid to hear the answer.

  “Lisrn is the God of Panic. His powers, like Enteax’s, are muted due to their currently forced servitude. Point is: Even with their powers muted, my spies didn’t have the strength to take any of them on.”

  Eve held a hand up, stopping him. “Wait. You’re saying they’re part of the Aviraji by force?”

  Dago moved his head back and forth, shrugging. “Might have not started that way, but it sure as hell is that way now. Vermylea, Goddess of Bondage, now owns them. Has for millennia, ever since they agreed to join the Aviraji.”

  “And Enteax? He’s the God of what?”

  “Strength. He’s the God of Strength.”

  Dimithinia gasped.

  Eve turned and saw her cupping her forehead.

  “I remember them now. From before. They did not look so . . . wrong back then. They were different. They used to spend time at my kingdom.”

  “Your kingdo—” Dago trailed off, eyes widening. He looked at Dimithinia, his pupils dilating and shrinking. “Wait . . . you . . . ah, holy shit. Your majesty, I’m sorry, I didn’t recognize you!”

  Dimithinia shot out of her seat, stopping Dago before he could fall off his chair and onto his knees. “Please. Do not . . . I am queen no longer.”

  Damn. Ritrio had apparently been a really big fucking deal back in its day.

  “Dago!” Spari cried, slamming a foot on the floor. “You fall to your knees that easily for another female?”

  Dago was still staring at Dimithinia in awe. “Holy crap. It’s true. Nylicia really is bringing a bunch of you back from the dead.”

  Dimithinia blinked those big-blues. “A bunch of us?”

  Evesse wasn’t even going to ask. Enough knowledge had been funneled into her cranium; she did not need to dive deeper into Nylicia’s machinations.

  “What do we do now, then?” she asked instead.

  Dago lifted his ass back up onto his chair. He still looked shaken and his eyes kept bouncing back to Dimithinia. “We’re working on getting inside the facility. My spies will be hacking into its systems tonight. We need to know what the hell they were working on.”

  “You’re going to keep us informed, you understand?”

  He raised an eyebrow at Spari. “As if that sister of yours would give me any other choice.”

  Evesse couldn’t believe the shit she was hearing. “So that’s it. Nylicia sent us here to gather this fucked up information, and that’s it? We’re supposed to just leave now? What about Zen?”

  “I guess we report this info to my sister?”

  “You could’ve reported it all on your own. This still doesn’t make sense. I was supposed to find Zeniel with this info.”

  Spari tilted her head, looking pensive. As if the thought hadn’t occurred to her until then either.

  “True . . . I guess. But she made it very clear that you two were supposed to be he—”

  Her head shot up and her wide eyes clashed with Evesse’s.

  “Oh fuck,” they both said, obviously coming to the same exact conclusion. After all, Nylicia was involved.

  “Something bad is about to happen, is it not?” Dimithinia said sounding resigned.

  Even Dimi was figuring out how the demonic pixie worked.

  “Knowing how my sister operates . . . probably.” Spari gave a very long suffering sigh. The kind that let Eve know she was right in her conclusion about Nylicia. She’d done things like this before. Probably many, many times.

  Dago sat up straight, tensing. “Do you think something is about to happen here? In my fucking mall?”

  Eve momentarily forgot her panic. “Your mall?”

  “Yes.”

  Spari’s eyes flickered in Dago’s direction. “Motherfucker has the largest share in the Macerich Company.”

  Of course. Because that made perfect sense.

  “Forget that. What the hell do you think is going to happen?”

  Evesse sat forward. “I don’t know. But considering Nylicia sent us here, I’m guessing that it revolves around us. We have to leave. There are thousands of people here.”

  The four of them shot to their feet. Before they could head out the door, Dago touched his fingers to the wall again, changing the office back to its former state.

  He grabbed Spari by the arm. “I’m going to be waiting. If anything happens, you call me right away. You hear me?” The intense way he gazed down at Spari left no doubt in Eve’s mind. The male was in love with her.

  Spari jacked her head all the way back. She was tiny compared to Dago, almost a foot and half shorter than him. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m calling the reinforcements, just in case. You call me. Hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  All three females rushed outside. Most of the people in the department store turned to stare at them as they all but ran back out into the mall.

  “Maybe we’re just overreacti
ng.” Evesse knew she sounded desperate, but hey, a girl could hope. “Maybe she really did just send us here to get the info.”

  They stepped out onto the concourse. Spari looked around them, looking just as nervous as Eve was.

  “I hope so. And I hope that bitch didn’t forget I’m still human. I can’t die now . . . not yet.”

  Evesse made the mistake of locking eyes with a teenager standing by the elevators. Looking at him was like getting punched between the eyebrows. That rage she had felt back on the roof of the hospital blew up inside her, and red mist came to life around him.

  Ten victims, some much younger than him. Two bad been much, much older.

  He couldn’t be more than seventeen.

  She staggered back. Dimithinia and Spari called her name. She could barely hear them. Her own voice screamed inside her mind, sounding mutated.

  Just as split in two as Zeniel’s did when Mavrak took over.

  Guilty! Must . . . punish. Deserves to die. Guilty.

  The guy had frozen in place and was staring at Evesse, terrified.

  She had no doubt she was staring back at him like a raving lunatic, ready to attack.

  An ear-shredding shriek sounded, echoing inside the mall. Before it could fade, the startled screams of the humans rent the air, and the floor shook with the booming, lumbering footsteps of what could only be one thing.

  “Fuck,” Dimithinia spat. “ceFtuts.”

  Those assholes had unleashed monsters in the fucking mall.

  Chapter 22

  He’d allowed Mavrak to annihilate two humans—one female, one male—and it still hadn’t been enough.

  For the first time ever, Zeniel allowed himself to admit that he understood why.

  The two humans he’d killed had been in charge of a small prostitution ring. The females they “recruited” were treated as virtual slaves. Never allowed to leave. The seventeen-year-old homeless girl they’d forced to work for them months ago hadn’t deserved to die the way she had. One of their regulars had gone overboard and snapped her neck during sex. Her two pimps, the male and the female, had simply disposed of her body.

  And by disposed, he meant they’d had her body put through a fucking grinder.

  Sick. The Universe was so sick. It was a putrid infestation that ran deep down into the very fabric of all existence. It’d been a long time coming, but he could finally come to terms with one irrefutable fact.

  He no longer blamed Mavrak for the rage he felt when faced with such crimes.

  Zen had turned a blind eye to most of it for thousands of years. It’d been his way of accepting it. Good cannot exist without evil. But as he stumbled back into the abandoned house he’d taken as his own, the reality of how out of balance the Universe was hit him full force.

  For fourteen thousand years, the primal energy of Karma had been trapped inside a mortal form, only appearing in full force between reincarnations. Because of that, Karma wasn’t being properly dealt out. Beings continued to commit disgusting crimes, and the majority of them were going unpunished.

  And it hurt. Gods, it hurt so much. Perhaps because his mother had been the Goddess of Integrity and it was hardwired into his coding not to accept injustice. Not that he had any memories of her. She was a part of Mavrak’s life, not his. He suspected that he could access the memories of what she must have been like as a mother. To do so, however, meant that he had to open himself up to Mavrak. Become one.

  The memories of five hundred years of torture weren’t something he wanted banging around inside his skull.

  Worse, even if he accepted Mavrak and his need to punish every injustice no matter how small, how would he control himself around his friends? Damn it. He’d kill all of them.

  Starting with Vedlyl.

  Cyake and Ianthen would be next.

  And Zexistr. Fuck. The fabric of reality would rapidly unravel if Zex were to die. Unless there was another being nearby who was powerful enough to handle his powers and absorb them instantly, the Universe could not exist without Zex.

  It was only a matter of time. He was aware of the Universe again, seeing the ugliness that abounded. He had no clue how he was going to exist without constantly avenging someone or something. His emotions were realigning, merging with his demon half.

  The two kills he had made earlier hadn’t been anywhere near enough to calm the combined force of his and Mavrak’s needs. They hadn’t been enough for Mavrak alone.

  But Zeniel was still hungry, too.

  Feeling as though his God of Tranquility days were long over, he dragged himself through the living room. Evesse wasn’t here. He could sense that she had left the house even though her scent coated everything. It added to the world of hurt he was stuck in. Had he been a normal male, he would’ve been with her when she awoke. The need for vengeance wouldn’t have forced him from their bed.

  Yet, he was also grateful. No matter how understanding Eve was—and Gods help him, she was—he didn’t want her to see him this way. Nor did he want her to see where he was going, and what he planned on doing once he got there.

  He practically fell down the stairs on his way to the basement. He caught himself before hitting the Gnetica. For a second, he was convinced that Eve’s scent was haunting him. Then, he realized that her scent was there. It was in the staircase with him. The fear that burst out of him was almost enough to override his vengeance drive.

  No. Gods, no.

  If he hadn’t already been shaking, he sure as hell would’ve started then. Sweat popped out on his forehead. He raised his hand and placed it on the Gnetica, praying. When he realized it was still intact, his kneecaps went weak. He didn’t want Evesse in there. Didn’t want her to see her stepfather’s soul and what he was doing to it.

  There were already enough reasons for her to hate what he was.

  He couldn’t ignore the small voice in the back of his head that pointed out that she wasn’t the one that hated it. He was.

  Zeniel lowered the shield. The sounds that had been contained within the basement reached him. Pathetic whimpers. He squeezed his eyes shut. He’d walked that path so many times in the last few weeks, that he had no problem making his way over to the wall while blind.

  Gleipnir, the Asgardian magical binding he’d taken from Cyake, was tethered to the wall. Zeniel had had to magically reinforce the wall to keep it from coming down when he struggled to free himself. Luckily, it’d proven to hold time and time again.

  “Don’t . . . you . . . no . . .”

  Zen hissed, jacking his head to the side to keep from opening his eyes before it was too late. He could hear Mavrak prowling and scraping—itching to get at the piece of shit that was in front of him.

  “No more. Please. Return me to hell. They’ll punish me there.”

  “Not as long as I live. You suffer more under my hand.” Zeniel heard his voice splitting. He blindly reached for the thin black ribbon tied to the wall and began wrapping it around his right wrist, then his left. It was enough, once the knot was tied tight, to keep him from breaking free and rushing out into the world.

  “Please!”

  “Did you stop when they begged? When all those girls cried for you to have mercy?” Growling, he planted his ass on the floor, back to the wall. “Did you stop when Evesse begged you to?”

  He opened his eyes, meeting the dead-brown eyes of her stepfather’s ghost.

  Out of its Aristi, the soul had taken form once more and, as all souls were wont to do, it had reverted back into its last form. Dark brown hair that matched his eyes. A face that was frightening when angry, but was now crumpled in absolute terror.

  The soul was trapped by the red and black mist that Zeniel had left in place around it. He had never been able to control Mavrak’s weapon before, had never even tried, but he took fucking advantage of it now. The spirit of Eve’s stepfather began crying when more mist came out of Zen’s eyes.

  Pathetic.

  The ones that loved to inflict agony on others could ra
rely handle having the same done to them.

  Wraiths burst into life, emerging from out of the mist and cackling as they advanced. The soul flailed around and cried harder, knowing that he was about to be torn apart in ways that not even Lucifer’s demons could come up with. Again.

  Hell, if Zen had any say, it would never end.

  He stopped cold when he realized what had just crossed his mind. What it meant.

  He was thinking like Mavrak.

  Not only that, Zen wasn’t losing himself to the thoughts, either. No. They were both there. His thoughts and Mavrak’s. They were both watching. They were both waiting.

  They were both going to enjoy the show.

  He had no clue how much time had passed. Only that it’d been daylight when he’d gone into the basement, and now, as he stumbled ass-over-face to the first floor, it was night.

  Mavrak was sated. Sort of. But for some reason, letting him loose had left Zeniel so weak that he could barely stand. As soon as he reached the top of the stairs, he fell into the wall.

  The house shook. He lifted himself upright, groaning and wondering why he was so drained after letting Mavrak take control.

  You didn’t let him take control. Admit it.

  Shit. There was no denying that. Mavrak was back in the cage Zen had built, but for a few seconds down there, Zen had seen past the roars. He had seen past the rage, and the screams of the soul they had tortured.

  They had become one, and Zeniel had glimpsed the memories.

  His blood spilled, his flesh ripped off, the burn of his eyes being sealed shut.

  But he had also seen his mother. She had smiled down at him, and lifted him into his arms, and he’d known that smile on her face was special. It was just for him.

  She had blue and gray eyes. He knew this from the holographic image of her he had in his room. Yet, seeing them soften in affection as she tickled him had been indescribable. He had his father’s hair color and the markings of a war demon when in that form, but the shape of his eyes, and his facial features were all his mother’s. He’d known that, yet seeing her face . . . man, it’d hurt. Made him miss her even more.