by Ford, Lizzy
“Darian, no!” she shouted.
“It’s okay, kiri,” he replied in a mechanical voice.
He wrenched Sofi off the ground in a tight bear hug and deposited her on the other side of the gate line. Before the blonde could run, the devil snatched her.
“Get in the car, Darian,” he ordered. The man hesitated before obeying. “Now for you,” the devil said, facing Bianca. He held out his hand to Talon, who plunked a gun into it. Bianca backed away.
“Run, Bianca!” Sofi ordered.
The devil shot the Oracle twice, then once more. Bianca stared, horrified, as the blonde dropped.
“Now, you have a choice to make,” the devil said with a calm smile. “You can step out here and heal her, or you can stay there and watch her die.”
Bianca looked fearfully at the pregnant blonde, whose blood already soaked her clothing, then at the waiting devil beside her.
Stay with Sofi. The Watcher’s whisper was in her mind this time.
She took one step forward, then another, throwing herself onto the ground beside Sofi. She touched her once before Talon wrenched her up. Talon all but threw them both into the backseat while he climbed into the driver’s seat. Darian sat, hunched and unresponsive on the far side.
The car jarred her as they launched away from the gate. Bianca righted herself and carefully straightened the blonde, panicked by her pale features. She placed her hands on her face and winced as Sofi vacuumed her power as Darian had. Awkwardly jammed in the back seat, she sneaked a look at the occupants in the front of the car and withdrew her phone.
I need you. Her eyes watered as she typed it. She sent the text then tucked the phone in her pocket, praying they could track her with the tag Toni placed there. The thought of Toni lying in the driveway made her chest tighten. She looked at the unconscious woman in her lap then twisted to look up at Darian.
His golden gaze was down, turmoil on his face. He folded, face turning crimson and gold eyes swirling madly. He clutched his head and gave a small moan.
“Darian,” she whispered. Her hand trembled as she touched him. His body sucked healing power from her. The lingering sickness in his body fled, gone for good.
“No!” Darian roared.
The world around them stopped—literally. The car, the traffic, the wind, all went motionless. Darian fought himself, groping with glazed eyes for the crumpled Oracle. Bianca pushed herself away, uncertain which terrified her more: Darian’s meltdown or the fact he’d stopped the world in its place.
Talon’s jaw was lax, his eyes wide.
“What the fuck did you do?” he demanded, the first to break the terse silence.
She could hardly breathe, as if the air in the car was running out. The devil’s cold dark eyes flared and turned black. The devil reached over to Darian, placing a hand on his red forehead. The door tore off, and Darian was flung out, his grip around the Oracle tight enough to take her with him. Before they hit the pavement, they disappeared.
“Get outta the car,” the devil ordered. Bianca couldn’t move. Talon got out then reached in and snatched her, dragging her out.
The world was dead. There were no sounds, no movement but theirs. Everyone and everything around them had frozen in mid-movement, like an eerie sculpture garden.
“Pop—” Talon said, staring around them.
“Don’t ever call me that,” the devil snarled. “You’re the son of some whore I don’t even remember!”
Bianca righted herself. Talon released her, wired and uneasy. The devil looked around.
“Can’t you fix this?” Talon demanded. He began to pace.
She looked into the car beside them at the smiling family frozen in place. Afraid of what she’d feel, she resisted the urge to touch them.
This can’t be real.
Though his eyes were still dark, the devil appeared calm. He struck off in one direction, back the way they’d come.
“Pop, what the—”
“Shut the fuck up. Bring the girl. We’re going back to the portal.”
Talon appeared as baffled as Bianca felt. He paused and then snatched her arm, following the devil as he walked down a sidewalk full of frozen figures.
“Creepy, screwed up …” Talon mumbled then stopped. He withdrew a small case with a needle in it and several small vials. She watched him shoot up. At once, the tension eased from his frame, and his eyes went glassy. He returned the case and grabbed her again.
She brushed one of the frozen women trapped in time on the sidewalk, surprised to feel her warm skin and the brush of the wool suit. Cold fear spiraled through her.
What kind of creature could do this?
“How many people in the village?” Dusty asked.
“They call them towns in this century,” Iggy corrected him.
“Boss, you can take Iggy back any time you want,” the disgruntled Southeast Ohio Sector chief, Speck, grumbled. “About two thousand.”
“Two thousand?” Dusty echoed.
“Everyone’s contained. We’ve got patrols around—”
“Speck doesn’t understand that if even a mosquito leaves the town, there’s no way we can stop the spread!” Iggy cut in, agitation clear as she fumbled to open the case to her iPad. “Let me show you the virtual re-enactment of what happens if—”
“Don’t need to see it,” Dusty said. “Iggy, give me a minute with Speck.”
She left in a huff, and Dusty crossed his arms against Ohio’s fall breeze. Speck’s sector headquarters was abuzz with activity; the only private place to talk was the back porch overlooking a field of knee-high winter wheat facing a sun setting too early. His breaths hung in suspension with his thoughts as he mulled the fate of two thousand souls.
“I’m not the idiot she takes me for,” Speck said, looking from the screen door Iggy slammed closed to Dusty. “How do you wipe out an entire town down to the rats without anyone else ever finding out?”
“You make it look like an accident. Assassinations 101,” Dusty replied. “We did it all the time in the Dark Ages. More of a challenge nowadays.”
“Can’t exactly blame this one on contaminated water, boss,” Speck said a little uncertainly. Speck shifted away from him, a response Dusty was accustomed to after thousands of years as Damian’s lead executioner. “The mad scientist is right—we can’t let anything living out of this town.” He paused, then said, “I need a drink. You want anything?”
“Vodka. Straight, no ice.”
“I’ll bring the bottle.”
Dusty waited until he heard the door close behind him before he moved. He rubbed his neck, unable to shake the feeling that something was wrong. Rather, that something else was wrong. He doubted anything could make this fucked-up situation appear less unsettling than it was.
He shouldn’t question what to do. He loved clean-up duty, the mass execution of vamps. This was different. This time, innocents had been infected. He had no pity for those who chose to become vamps. He had little pity for humanity in general. But two thousand innocent people, down to the family dog.
There was one solution: wipe everything off the map. The fallout was less important than ensuring the safety of everyone outside of the town.
Bianca healed a newly turned vamp.
He closed his eyes, feeling her warm breath and soft skin against his again. He could imagine her horror when she discovered what he planned. For the first time in his life, he wondered what solutions other than execution would work.
“Hesitating for a woman,” he muttered.
The sense of ill-boding returned. He expected these days to be his last, but he’d give the order to decimate the entire state if it meant humanity as a whole survived. He pulled his phone free, realizing neither Toni nor Darian had checked in for a couple of hours. The Grey God might have realized his suicidal wish and was lying on the bottom of the ocean by now.
“Dusty.” The Grey God’s hoarse, broken voice made Dusty tense as he turned to face him. Darian was in the shadow
s, dressed in his workout gear, splattered with blood. His golden eyes blazed like two candles. “Dusty …”
Dusty saw his mouth working, the glint of moonlight off the tears on the Grey God’s face. His air was beyond agitated. Moonlight and darkness alike bent and danced around him, surrounding him in a hazy metallic shimmer.
“What’d you do, Darian?” Dusty asked, a knot forming in his stomach.
“I don’t know!”
“Where are the girls?” he asked in a low, level growl.
“Sofi … she’s safe,” Darian said and stepped from the shadows to pace. “I did something bad, Dusty.”
“Where’s Bianca?”
Darian hesitated, and fury filled Dusty. He closed the distance between them, his own tightly controlled god-power unfurling. His power hit Darian at the same time he did, and the Grey God crumpled, pinned to the wooden deck.
“Safe!” Darian gasped. “Dusty, she’s safe!”
“You have sixty seconds to tell me what happened, Darian. I’ll kill you here. I don’t give a fuck what you are if you hurt either!” He paused, bristling with lightning and rage at the thought of Darian betraying their family. “Now you’ve got fifty seconds!”
Darian spoke in hoarse, sob-punctuated words. Dusty was prepared for the worst, but Darian’s story left him speechless. His rage simmered, yet he couldn’t maintain the rage when faced with the sudden need to think.
“You broke two divine codes!” he shouted. “You left Sofi and Bianca to fend for themselves!” Furious, he shoved himself up from the crying god and paced.
“But they’re safe, Dusty, I promise. Sofi is in the netherworld, and Czerno knows he can’t hurt Bianca or—”
“You left Bianca with the Black God! On what fucked up planet have you been living, Darian? Have you learned—no, do you remember nothing about loyalty, integrity, and family? I knew you were fucked up, but this, this—” He blew out a breath. “You’re no brother of mine, Darian. I don’t know what the fuck you are.”
“I can fix it, Dusty. I can fix it,” the Grey God swore, his large body seated and hunched as he held his head. “I promise.”
Dusty rubbed his face, wanting nothing more than to kill Darian where he sat but knowing only the Grey God could un-fuck what he’d done. He’d spent so long hoping Darian became what he once was. His gaze returned to the Grey God, who looked both pleading and tortured. The Darian he’d known was gone. The shell of a man before him was too weak to ever measure up to Damian’s noble brother.
“Get away from me, Darian,” he said.
“Dusty, please! Sofi made me come. I can fix the village!” Darian pleaded.
“I don’t give two shits about the village, Darian! Bring Bianca back!”
“I can’t, Dusty. I’m not strong enough!”
“You sent them to that temporal dimension! Bring them back,” Dusty said, not understanding how Darian had punctured a hole between the mortal and immortal worlds. The two worlds were sealed after the Schism.
“I don’t know how.”
“They’re stuck?”
“Czerno can bring them back.”
“And kill Bianca when he does,” he said. “You fucked up good this time, Darian! I can’t fix this one.”
“Czerno … I know he can …” Darian struggled visibly. “He and Damian can use the portals. I think … no, I know they have to be able to, if I can.”
He felt sick to his stomach and wondered how Bianca had become so much a part of him in so little time.
“I can fix the village,” Darian said again.
Dusty didn’t care about the village. He wanted Bianca back. He wanted Darian dead. He didn’t want to die this weekend. The last was a thought he never expected to have. He’d never had a reason to live if the immortality thing didn’t work out.
“Dusty?” Darian asked. “Are you gonna kill me?”
“After this weekend.”
“I deserve it.”
“You do.”
“Can I save the village first?” Darian asked in a sad voice. He sniffled and stood.
“I don’t care what you do,” Dusty snapped. “When dawn hits, I’m wiping every trace of that village off the planet. You wanna solve both our problems, be there when I do.” He stalked away, sensing how hurt Darian was.
The Grey God didn’t follow, but Speck—who’d been lingering in the shadows—did. Dusty strode to the small gym behind the main house, stripping off his jacket and shirt as he did so.
“Boss,” Speck called, trotting after him. “You want us to prep a clean-up crew?”
“Do it.”
The Sector Chief remained in the doorway, watching as Dusty unleashed his fury against a punching bag. He fought it until his anger subsided, unable to shake the sense of fear. He’d last felt the cold sense of impotent rage when he was a child and his family was slaughtered before his eyes. Somehow, he’d survived and was auctioned off like an animal with several other children his age. Damian saw him and bought the herd of them, freeing all but him. Damian’s mother, an Oracle as crazy as she was powerful, told her son about the slave child with blue eyes who’d one day change the path of fate.
Breathless, Dusty closed his eyes and leaned against the punching bag, unable to shake his first memories of Damian or his last memories of his sister, Trinka.
He’d trade all the powers Damian granted him after the Schism for his sister’s life. He’d trade them for Bianca. He couldn’t lose the only other woman he’d ever cared about.
“You need anything, boss?” Speck asked.
“Send Iggy in. I need to know how this happened.” Dusty straightened, the pain of his memories subsiding.
“Vampire pigs,” Iggy replied from the doorway.
“Talk to me, Iggy,” he said and wiped his brow. Speck tossed him his shirt, which he donned as he listened.
“They infected the animals in the town with the vamp disease. Animals bit the people. People bit others. You tracking, boss?” Iggy paused.
“I get it. No cure?”
“Nope,” Speck said.
Iggy hesitated, and Dusty’s gaze sharpened.
“Boss, I heard you all turned a vamp into a human,” she said. “Can you bring him here?”
“Why? We’ve never been able to transform a vamp into a human in thousands of years.”
“How do I explain it to you …” Iggy said with a thoughtful pause. “They’re vamps but they haven’t completed initiation.”
“So?” Speck asked.
“So, Speck,” she said with an exaggerated sigh, “they’re more like humans with some nasty disease that might have a cure and not like vamps, which are just good for pushing up daisies. As long as they haven’t completed initiation … well, I don’t know. Can you bring me one?”
“One what?” Dusty asked.
“Someone infected. And the guy you turned back into a human.”
Dusty exchanged a look with Speck. “We’ll bring ’em, but I’m leveling the place at dawn,” Dusty warned.
“At least let me look at a couple of things. This is why I’m a Natural, you know.”
“Hurry, Iggy,” Dusty advised.
“Boss, you can have my room if you need to rest,” Speck said as she darted past him.
“Thanks, but don’t—” His phone rang. Speck crossed his arms and waited as he answered. “Whatcha got, Jenn?”
“You remember a few days ago when we were talking about Talon and Czerno?” Jenn asked.
“That’s been every day for the past month,” he said with some impatience. “And for now, they’re contained.”
“Hold that thought. You remember how your condo building came down this morning an hour before you planned?”
“Yeah.”
“It wasn’t Jimmy,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it wasn’t Jimmy. He rigged the building but didn’t blow it. I thought it was strange, since Jimmy’s the last person who would veer off course from your
orders because you let him blow up whatever he wants and he doesn’t wanna lose that. We started looking into it and sure enough, it wasn’t Jimmy.”
“Then who was it?” Dusty asked with a frown.
“My money’s on Talon.”
“Makes sense, since he knew I was there,” he muttered.
“No, boss, he didn’t. Czerno, not Talon, sent the vamps to your condo building for Bianca. Talon would’ve been happy blowing her up, if she’d been there, but Czerno wants her. Dusty, we found out why he wants to keep her close. Jonny is some rare Natural who can kill a god.”
“Talon wants Jonny to kill the Black God, and the Black God wants Bianca to make sure he doesn’t die,” Dusty summarized, surprised.
“Bingo.”
“Tell no one of this,” he said. “Whatever you found, keep it to yourself. No more conversations on the phone, no reports. If this is true, Jonny is worth destroying a city for any vamp with an itch to off the Black God. Bring Jonny here. Now.”
“Sure, boss. I also checked on Toni. He’s in bad shape, but he’s alive.”
“My only piece of good news today.” He hung up and lifted his chin at Speck, who obeyed the silent command to leave. Dusty looked around the gym, sensing it was beyond time for him to admit he couldn’t prevent what was coming. He flipped through the address book in his phone and dialed the Watcher.
“You almost waited too long,” the mysterious creature said from behind him.
Dusty braced himself and turned to face the grandfatherly figure with a smile and emerald eyes standing in the corner.
“No bullshit, Watcher, or you can watch me fuck up the rest of the universe,” he warned. “How can Jonny kill Czerno?”
“It’s an interesting time to be here,” the Watcher said. “Oracles, healers, many of which haven’t been seen since the ancient times. In the ancient times, there were also God-slayers, men of a special kind who were bred and raised by the Gods for immortal wars. They possessed a unique gift, the ability to kill an immortal without being an immortal. The Gods raised them like sheep, because men were more plentiful and more easily replaced than immortals. The trick was to breed men who could kill immortals without ever allowing them to become immortals themselves. If they did, their gift was elevated and what made them dangerous to immortals then made them dangerous to the Gods. The White and Black Gods never allowed the slayers to become immortal, no matter how bloodthirsty they were.”
