The Flames: Book 2 of the Feud Trilogy

by Kyle Prue

  “I either send you off into the ocean in hopes that you’ll never come back, or I kill you here and now and tie up all of my loose ends.”

  Neil stood and faced her. “I wouldn’t take the first option even if you offered it. Your children need to know the truth.”

  She stared at him. “I did this for my children,” she said once more. “Do they really need to know how their better world was created?”

  “Have you considered that they might not want to be a part of your better world?”

  “I’ve considered everything.”

  She leapt at him and wrapped her hands around his neck. He tried to pull her off, but she was far too powerful. His hands ignited and she pushed him off. “My flesh won’t burn,” she said as she kicked him off of his feet. “The sea is on my side.”

  She stepped on his neck and pushed down. Neil felt his neck on the verge of cracking and he materialized out of her hold. “I’ve known Vapros before,” she said. “Your family is especially talented at prolonging death. Not avoiding it, but prolonging it.”

  An idea struck Neil. He couldn’t possibly win this fight while her hands were dripping with seawater. He couldn’t burn her, but the water wasn’t immune to evaporation. When she lunged at him again he leaned in instead of trying to fight it. He grabbed her hands in his and ignited them. She tried to pull away but as her hands dried her power faded. “I won’t let you do this,” she hissed. “The means don’t matter.”

  Neil held her tighter. “Your daughter almost died.”

  “She would have died for something greater!” The words escaped her like the steam escaping her hands. “I’d watch her die a thousand times to forge the new world.”

  She shook free of his hands and landed a solid punch against his jaw. Neil let fire stream from his hands and tackled her with the extra boost from the fire. She collided with the front steps of the mansion and Neil heard her spine snap. She howled in pain, rolled over, and crawled towards the ocean. Neil tried to hold her back. She was nearing the water and he knew that if she reached it she would kill him. He didn’t want to be responsible for killing Alex and Serena’s mother. He heard new footsteps walking down the steps of the mansion.

  Mama Tridenti collapsed mere inches from the water and Neil realized just from looking at her eyes that she was dead. She had fish eyes, eyes without a soul, eyes that had just had the life ripped from them. Neil fell to his knees and let the horror of what he had done wash over him. He looked to his side and realized that Alex was there with him. Every last bit of air escaped from his lungs.

  He expected to be killed, or attacked. But nothing happened. Neil tried to form a few words. “Don’t,” Alex said. “I heard what she said at the end there. About watching Serena die.”

  Neil stared at the sand. He didn’t know what to say. “She…”

  Alex was crying, but he didn’t look surprised. Neil felt so bad for him. “She was the spy.”

  Neil didn’t have to say anything. The truth was evident. Alex sat down. “It’s what she always wanted, to crush the Empire. Make it her own.”

  Neil didn’t remember killing anyone in the past, but with horror he wondered if he’d done it before. Did it always feel like this? As if you’d torn off a piece of your own heart? They sat there until the sun was almost up. Neither had words to say that would do the situation justice. Neil wanted to speak a hundred times, but what could he possibly do? Apologize? Nothing would be enough.

  “I want you to do something for me,” Alex said after a while. “Feel free to tell me I’m insane.”

  “Okay.” Neil’s voice didn’t sound like his own. It was filled with horrors.

  “I want you to carry this,” Alex said. “This burden.” He stared off into the ocean.

  “What burden?” Neil said.

  “I have uncles who want to take control of this family,” Alex said. “They’ll do it, too, if they know their last leader was manipulating them for power.”

  The realization dawned on Neil and he felt a weight settling on his shoulders, something that he’d never felt before. “You want to tell them I was the spy. That she found out and I killed her.”

  Alex’s head didn’t shift. He looked off. Maybe it was easier to ask for something like this without looking at his friend. “I do.” He put his face in his hands. “I believe in our purpose. The Man with the Golden Light told us to protect the shore, nothing else, and I believe in that.” For the first time he met Neil’s eyes. “I need to steer the family back toward that purpose. That won’t happen if I’m ousted for being the son of a murderer and a liar.”

  Neil remembered once again that the right thing wouldn’t be the easy thing. It was hard to think of something that sounded so terrible to be the right thing. “Serena too?” he asked.

  “Would you rather she know that her mother offered her up for sacrifice?” Alex asked.

  Neil had never wanted to fight anything more. He could feel energy in his fingertips looking to ignite, but there was no enemy. Serena and he would never be together. The fantasy that they’d had, sailing away into the unknown, was dead. He knew she would hate him for what he’d done. He knew her offer wouldn’t stand. And he knew that he would never be able to look back.

  “I’ll do it,” he said as his heart broke.

  Alex rubbed his eyes and Neil could hear the tightness in his voice. “I’m sorry to have asked it.”

  “You have no choice. I see that.”

  They sat in silence for what felt like hours. It was probably a minute, but Neil couldn’t tell the difference. “You’re going to need to go soon,” Alex said. “Seas are only gonna get rougher.”

  “In my experience they always do,” Neil said.

  Alex helped him up and led him to a rowboat. Neil climbed inside and paused. There wasn’t anything that could possibly fit a situation like this. “You’ve been like a brother,” Alex said for him.

  “Lead this family well,” Neil said. “Protect the shore. Make a better world the right way.”

  “I will,” Alex said. “You’ll have to go north. There’s an island midway between here and the mainland. Set up camp there for the night so you don’t have to row through rough waters.”

  Neil took control of the oars. He got one last look at Alex, a boy thrust into leadership and on the verge of a new order. Neil rowed off and channeled his pain into the physical labor of rowing forward. He closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to look at a life that he was leaving behind. There was nothing left for him on those sands, despite how badly he wanted there to be.

  Chapter Seventy

  ABINGTON LIBRARY

  DARIUS TAURLUM

  They approached the doors and Darius pulled them open. He looked at his friends. They all shared the same look. Unlocked. They stared at each other silently. He was waiting for them. They entered back to back-to-back in order to prepare for any ambushes. It wasn’t planned, but done out of instinct and fear. It appeared to be an ordinary library aside from the fact that it was abandoned. Thick layers of dust covered everything in sight. It was clear that people in today’s world weren’t as interested in reading as they had once been. Revolution beckoned and the people had answered. Simple pleasantries had fallen away. “Do you hear that?” Anastasia whispered.

  Darius craned his head and listened. Beneath them a mechanical whirling noise floated through the cracks in the floor. “That’s a familiar sound,” he whispered.

  “The Imperial Doctor’s sword sharpener?” Bianca asked.

  That was it. Darius remembered the shrill wailing that had filled the Doctor’s last workshop. He was in the basement. Darius remembered the Wolf telling him the Empire had overtaken several buildings in Abington and had started turning them into secret fortresses. “The only question is, how do we get down there?” Bianca asked.

  “Look for a staircase?” Darius asked.

  They fanned out hesitantly. The Marksman could be hiding behind any one of the bookcases. “Over here,” Ana
stasia said almost immediately.

  Darius trotted over with Bianca and it was apparent what she meant. The dust was cleared away in an arc in front of one particular bookcase, as if it could swing away like a door. “Our tax man in the Industrial City had a secret door that looked like a bookshelf,” Darius said. “You have to pull out the books in a certain order to open it.”

  Bianca ran one finger down the spine of a random book. “I robbed that guy once.” Darius gave her a look. “You had to pull out all of the ones by William Cartwright.”

  “Didn’t he write Little Billy?” Darius asked.

  “You read Little Billy?” Anastasia asked.

  “No,” Darius said as he examined the bookshelf closer. “Any idea what the Doctor reads?”

  “I’ve never seen him read,” Anastasia said. “He’s a fan of puzzles though.”

  Darius read the spines of the books and found nothing that obviously leapt out as a solution. He pulled on the side of it with his Taurlum strength. The wood creaked but didn’t budge. Whatever this door was made of, it was well anchored and meticulously constructed. Either that, or it had been built with him in mind.

  He took another look at the books. “Here’s one by Cartright,” Darius said. “It’s not Little Billy, though. It’s the Wight of the Cliff.”

  Anastasia looked at it. “There’s also a misprint. Isn’t Cartwright spelled with a W?”

  Darius pulled the book out and something behind the bookcase clicked. “W?” Bianca asked. “Maybe there are spelling errors on the spine and the missing letters spell something?”

  “Something that starts with a W?” Darius asked.

  “Web,” Anastasia said. “He’s obsessed with building his web.”

  “Look for the missing E then,” Bianca said.

  After a little searching they found a book entitled The History of Abington with the E left off of “the.” Darius was thankful he’d practiced his reading and writing the night before. He was the one who found Arkney and its Rebels with a missing B.

  Nothing happened. “Damn,” he said. “I thought we had it.”

  Bianca shook her head. “These books, each one represents a place we’ve been in pursuit of the Doctor.”

  “What?” Darius asked. It dawned on him. “The Wight of the Cliff. That’s the military base that was in the cliff.”

  “Arkney and its Rebels and The History of Abington are obvious.” Bianca said.

  “This is a taunt.” Anastasia whispered. “Everything we’ve done… It’s all been part of his plan. He knew we’d go to Arkney. He knew we’d find him here.”

  “So we pull them out in order,” Darius said. He didn’t want to admit that this was a death trap.

  He pulled them out in order now. The Wight of the Cliff first, Arkney and its Rebels next and finally, The History of Abington. As he pulled it down, the sound of shifting gears echoed throughout the library and Darius realized how modern and impressive the door was. It opened as if controlled by a spring mechanism. Behind was a deep stone staircase that amplified the sounds of the Doctor’s personal forge.

  “You first,” Bianca said quietly as she pushed on Darius’s back.

  He glared at her, but proceeded down the staircase with his friends behind him. He knew that they were descending into the Doctor’s web. It didn’t matter. That’s where Rhys was. He could only hope they’d be strong enough to tear through the strands.

  Once they made it to the bottom of the stone staircase Darius, Bianca, and Anastasia stepped into a sandy pit that was so far around it probably encompassed the entire library above. The space reminded him of the Taurlum coliseum. They were in the fighting pit now. Where seats would normally go was the Doctor’s workshop. The only way out, foreseeably, was a giant gate on the opposite side of the arena. Darius suspected he could climb up given enough time to punch into the wall to make holds, but in order to escape to where the workshop most likely was, he’d probably have to boost the girls up and climb out on his own. Darius took a moment to look back at Anastasia. She appeared sicker than ever, and Darius wasn’t sure how much more time she had left. “You’re here earlier than I had expected,” the Doctor’s metallic voice rang down from the upper area. “Despite this, I am so glad you are here.” He sounded overjoyed to have them in his company. “Are you ready, Darius?”

  Anastasia and Bianca looked over at him, and he looked up into the shadows above. “Let Rhys go and you’ll be imprisoned, not killed,” Darius said.

  “You expect me to believe that?” he snorted. “Besides, Rhys is so close to achieving his destiny. We cannot stop now.”

  Darius was almost sure that he could hear muffled cries for help coming from the upper ring where the Doctor’s voice was coming from. “I’m going to get you guys up there,” Darius said low enough that the Doctor couldn’t hear him. “I’ll deal with whatever he has planned for me down here.”

  Without warning, Anastasia jumped up and he boosted her easily over the side of the ring. She leapt into the darkness and was gone. Bianca followed closely behind her. “Victor,” the Doctor commanded. “Take care of them.”

  Darius was now alone in the Doctor’s ring and he could hear something behind the gate growling. Presumably it was his opponent. He pounded his fist into his palm and the thud echoed throughout the Doctor’s makeshift coliseum. “Come on!” Darius cried. “I’m ready.”

  “Nothing could prepare you for this,” the Doctor’s voice said. “I’m curious. Do you remember your childhood, Darius?” The Gate began to open one click at a time, operated by a crank somewhere. “What about your role models? Did you look up to any family members in particular?”

  Darius’s heart began to pound and he could hear his blood pumping in his ears. He couldn’t find the proper response to answer the Doctor’s question. “Follow up,” the Doctor said. “Do you understand what it means for something to be feral?”

  Panic seeped into Darius’s chest and he wanted to flee. He didn’t have to see his opponent to know that something was very, very wrong. Darius remained silent.

  “When a creature is feral, it is untamed. It is wild,” the Doctor said. “The term may also apply to a human who has abandoned all civilization and has become an animal in its own right. This is normally brought on by extensive trauma.”

  One step at a time the beast lurched out of the gate. It was about seven feet tall. Darius had never seen anything like it before. “Imagine living in the sewers for years, Darius. Eating rats to stay alive. It must have quite the effect on a man’s psyche.”

  “No…” was all Darius could manage when he realized that the monster had human eyes.

  “That’s right, Darius.” The Doctor was cackling now. “Once I captured him it only took a few weeks for him to learn to like the taste of human flesh. And then it was only a matter of time before he turned completely into an animal. He speaks and understands no language. Did you look up to your uncle, Darius? Do you admire him now?”

  The beast stepped fully into the light. What had once been armor had been molded to his skin and had become a thick exoskeleton. His nails had been filed into claws. Darius was sure that beneath his scraggly facial hair his teeth were just as sharp. His eyes lacked understanding and were instead filled with a dark hunger. “Darius Taurlum, meet your opponent!” the Doctor thundered. “The Sewer Man, your uncle!” The monster stood upright and prepared to charge. “Nikolai Taurlum!”

  Chapter Seventy-One

  THE DOCTOR’S WORKSHOP

  BIANCA BLACKMORE

  Anastasia landed in the upper ring and immediately dodged a bullet fired by the Marksman. Bianca was next over the side and threw a knife into the barrel of his second pistol as he drew it. Bianca was finally able to see the full extent of the Doctor’s workshop. He had enough room to work on any possible project. He had four workbenches covered in sharp instruments and vials of chemicals. His forge roared, unwatched, and sprayed sparks into the air. The man himself was on the other side of the ring an
d Victor surely wouldn’t make it easy to reach him. She peered through the low light and realized she could see Rhys tied to the doors of the cage he was imprisoned in. She gasped audibly. He looked to be on death’s doorstep.

  Victor grinned for the first time at Bianca. “Are you ready for round three?” he asked as he pulled another pistol out and spun it around his finger. “I assure you, this will be the last one.”

  “Get Rhys,” Bianca told Anastasia.

  Anastasia looked on the verge of collapsing, but she slid past the Marksman as Bianca distracted him with two more knives. He fired a bullet through both knives and they shattered into tiny shards of metal. Bianca grabbed a knife in her hand, and instead of throwing it, she lunged at him. She managed to cut his hand and he dropped one of his pistols. His multiple weapons method proved effective against the common target, but Bianca was not a common target. He jabbed with his right hand and struck her arm hard enough to paralyze it. She dropped it, undeterred and snap kicked him in the stomach. The force pushed him back, and she dodged his next strike. “Have you gotten quicker?” he asked.

  “No,” she said as she pulled another knife from her belt. “Angrier.”

  He pulled out his other guns and dropped them. This was a bare hands fight and they both knew it. She dropped her knife and they circled each other. He ran forward suddenly and roundhouse kicked her. She blocked it barely and as soon as he dropped his foot she drove her front facing foot into his groin. He yelped and dropped to his knees. She tried to knee him in the face, but he ducked to the left and she awkwardly stumbled. He sprung up to his feet and head-butted her in the face. She saw stars and darkness seeped into her vision. He elbowed her across the face and she dropped like a sack of bricks. She was awake, but he’d nearly knocked the consciousness out of her. He stomped down where her head had been a second before as she regained her wits and rolled out of the way. “I was on the verge of feeling impressed,” the Marksman said. “And I don’t feel that often.”