Zultha stepped forward collecting her flowers in her right hand and leaned into her lover’s shoulders, her left hand cupping his chin, lifting his eyes to hers.
He had such beautiful eyes. Pity.
“Then die,” she breathed, a moment before a brass collar slid from the bouquet in her hand. It flashed brightly in the softly lit room, a hint of dark magic in the eerie light. Before Torn could move, or his father could react, she slid the cuff around his neck. As the pretty flowers fell around them, falling like leaves in the wind, softly beautiful and heralding change, the collar snapped around his throat with a loud sickening click.
The witnesses began to mutter uncomfortably, wondering why suddenly the groom was gripping his throat. Then there were screams of outrage as the heir was left gasping and choking.
It was the kick that Zultha delivered to his chest that exposed what she had done and caused a panic to set in.
“Zultha!” Torn gasped, falling flat on his back, his eyes going wide as his face paled.
“I want the Reaver!” she screamed as her father’s armed guards stepped forward, pushing people forcibly back toward the exit.
Suddenly there was a mass exodus as the people inside the room decided discretion was the better part of valor and ran for the rear door, en masse!
The women screamed and the warriors, not wanting to see the sword of one of the fighters descend upon Torn’s unprotected body, formed a line behind the fleeing women protecting their retreat.
“Torn!” Terror screamed as he attempted to race forward, to protect his son.
But he was tackled by several members of his guard and pulled backwards through the screaming bodies and nervous men, towards the rear door and safety.
“The Reaver will come and save you, Torn, dearest,” Zultha laughed as she stood above him, shoving one of her guards away. “But he needs to be dealt with. He is the one thing standing between my father and the throne!”
“Zultha!” Torn gasped as the ring tightened around his neck. He tugged and pulled at the metal, but to no avail. It just tightened its hold on his flesh, buzzing with some unknown but dark spell.
“Oh, stop struggling, Torn,” she grunted as she tossed what was left of the flowers aside and nodded to the wide band surrounded his neck. “It will only get tighter.”
“Why, Zultha?” he gasped as he continued to struggle with the collar. He turned huge purple eyes in her direction, pleading for just a bit of understanding.
Zoot stood beside his men and his coldly smiling wife, looking down at him, and shaking his head, before he stepped forth to answer that question.
“Well, for power, young Torn,” he replied as if his answer was obvious to anyone. “You were never any threat to me or my power, Torn, but I needed a pawn. The Reaver always acts in the best interest of the Ruling house, conjured by your father. So the perfect pawn is you.”
He took a step back, observed the young man who had made the mistake of loving his daughter, then shook his head. His wife stood by his side, unmoved by the tragedy and angst in the fallen man’s plight.
“My father…” Torn began, but Zultha cut him off.
“Too well-guarded, Torn, and protected by your mother’s magic. Have you any idea how many death spells were canceled by that whore’s magic? You were easier to get to, and much more enjoyable. When the Reaver is destroyed, no one will be there to protect your father or those simpleminded fools who support him. The throne will be ours.”
“Power,” Torn spat, pausing in his mad struggles to free himself. “All of this for power.”
“And to rid ourselves of the Reaver,” Zoot added. “What good is it being evil if that dark angel always comes to defend the people and right the wrongs?” The last was said in a singsong voice, the sarcasm unmistakable. “Your father’s magic, stolen from your mother as it may be, is too powerful for us to overcome. Therefore, the rules of strategy dictate that we remove his next greatest offensive device. His main weapon must be destroyed, Torn. Even someone as lacking in intelligence as you should understand that.”
“Cleansing hearts and eliminating evil souls.” Zultha rolled her eyes as she shook her head in disgust. “That job is overrated, Torn. He has to go, and you, being the innocent party in this power struggle, will force your father to call him. And call him he will. The Reaver will arrive, my love, but he had better show soon. That collar is set to perform a specific function.”
“What?” Torn asked as he rolled to his hands and knees, and when that move wasn’t objected to, he moved to his feet.
His anger had begun to grow, taking away the chill of a painfully shattered heart. Heart? No. He had no heart.
His sudden cool assessment and detachment from this situation was proving that beyond any doubt. He was a man, betrayed by one he thought to trust, but he now only felt nothing but a mild curiosity about the whole affair.
“It’s magic, Torn. It is set to send you to a place far from the reach of your people. Death is simply too far a place for anyone to grab at you, Torn. And the irony of this all—you will love this one, beloved—is that the spell and the collar were made by your mother’s people.”
“Mother?” he gasped as the buzzing increased in intensity. That would explain how the collar could affect him, but why?
“No, Torn, not your precious mother. Her father.”
Zultha shrieked in laughter as she watched the disbelief on Torn’s face.
“He decided that Terror hadn’t been punished enough for stealing his daughter and her virtue away. He wants him to suffer. He wants all whom he loves to suffer. That means the people of this land, and you, beloved.”
Torn’s head dropped at her words, but then, just as emotionless as his former bond-mate, Torn raised his eyes, cocked his head to the side and smiled.
“What is so funny?” Zultha demanded as she stepped closer to Torn, angered that her words had not broken the proud man.
“Death, my love,” he replied with a chuckle. “I guess I will have to die here and now, for the Reaver will not show his face.”
“Wrong, my son!” came a voice from the rear doorway.
A short, purple-haired woman stood there in a long flowing gown. Her head was cocked curiously to the side as she smiled at the man with the choking band around his neck.
“Nello!” Zoot gasped as he took a step back. “I thought you dead.”
“So you decided to visit my father and spin your lies about my mate,” she stated, her soft voice ringing with the sound of thunder.
“Mother?” Torn gasped, as he tilted his head and widened his eyes in wonder.
“Oh, my son!” she breathed as she stepped forward. “I came as soon as I heard!”
“Torn!”
Torn raised his head to see his father standing there, horror written on his face.
“Father,” Torn gasped, momentarily forgetting the buzzing collar around his neck. “Mother has returned.”
“To stay, my son,” she decided as she finally reached Torn, disregarding the enemy warriors who stood staring at her and her child as if they were bothersome insects on the ground. “To stay.”
“But you can’t save him,” Zultha laughed as she stepped further away from the magical woman who seemed to have arrived from the dead to join them. But then, that was not so surprising in a woman who defied the wrath of her father, one of the most powerful magical beings to ever exist, to be with Terror. The same woman who then fled her home and her young son to save the family she loved. “Your father said that once magic has been set, no one could undo it!”
“That is true,” she decided quietly as Terror, flanked by his men, stepped forward.
“Nello?” he whispered, before his arms went around the woman he loved more than life. Several expressions, joy, disbelief, fear, and an undying love, crossed his face.
“I ran away to spare you my father’s wrath,” she explained as she stared into her Terror’s beautiful eyes, one hand reaching up to trace the solid l
ines and planes of his face. “And when I finally get the chance to behold my son, he will soon be taken away from me.”
Then she lifted menacing, glittering purple eyes to Zultha and her parents. “This will not go unpunished.”
“You can’t hurt us,” Zultha decided with a decided smirk. “We have a talisman for protection from your father. Your magic is useless against us.”
“But the talisman is useless against the Reaver,” Torn chuckled around the tightness around his neck. “The Reaver is of magic, true, but is also of this realm as well as the magical one, Zultha. He is beyond my grandfather’s influence.”
“What?” Zoot asked as he reached out and pulled his daughter closer to him, closer to the dubious safety that his warriors represented.
“Magic does not affect him, Zoot! He is the curse and the scourge of my mother’s people. He destroys the wicked and absorbs their dark souls into himself. He was supposed to kill my father once he was released into this plane, but refused. There is no evil in my Father or in his supporters. So instead, he cleanses this land of evil, Zoot. All evil. Evil…like you.”
“What do you know?” Zultha shouted as she stepped further away from the man, now standing quite easily despite the collar, the man who had begun to unnerve her. Where did Torn gain such command? It made her nervous, like there was more to him than she estimated. “What do you know of him, Torn?”
“I know that he is coming,” he purred, his voice growing light yet menacing. “He is not very far now.”
“He has blood of the Magic Realm,” Zoot breathed as he stepped back amidst the protection of his men. “He would know. But when the Reaver does show, it will be for the last time! Magic may not touch him, but hard, sharp steel will! Let him come! My men are at the ready. And there is nothing, nothing that you or your father, or your magical mother can do about that!”
He looked back at his specially trained men, at the smug grins on their faces, at the words of praise from their commander. His lips spread into an almost childlike smile.
“But Zoot,” Torn breathed, catching the man’s attention, “he is already here!”
Before anyone could move, Torn dropped his head and began to laugh.
Louder and louder his laughter grew, until it filled the room, echoing off the walls and striking fear in the hearts of those who would murder and maim for their cause. Anyone unlucky enough to hear that laugh would never forget it, its low manic quality, and the undisguised undercurrent of danger.
Torn raised his head and watched as they all stood back from him, staring at the changes in his face. His purple eyes swirled and changed until they went bright scarlet, pulsing with anger and menace. An unseen wind, a mystical wind, began to blow his long hair around his face as it carried the faint warning, Beware!
The sound of snapping seemed to fill the air as his clothes began to rend and tear from his body as his physical structure began to change. His arms flung out to his side and he tossed back his head with laughter as the muffled wet sound of tearing flesh caused the watchers to jump, and suddenly two obsidian wings exploded from his back. Dark and leathery, they slowly uncoiled, increasing his mass, as they struck fear into the hearts of those who had sinned.
Still laughing at the shocked faces of those before him, Torn snapped his wings to their full length, casting eerie shadows on the walls, before raising his hands in front of his face.
“Torn?” Zultha gasped as she scrambled backwards, almost tripping over her father in an effort to get behind him.
“No, Zultha,” his midnight voice answered, deeper than before, darker, scarier, as he lowered his hands from his face. “The Reaver is here.”
Zultha bit back a scream as Torn exposed his face. He was completely changed! In place of the almost beautiful man, stood a fierce demon with black angel’s wings, and the changes that kept growing!
His eyes glittered bright blood red and his skin slowly darkened to a shade of the deepest black. Where once his strong yet gentle hands had hung at his sides, now existed two strong, powerfully clawed paws, their sharp talons glittering silver at their tips.
His body grew until it more than doubled in size, his heavy breathing drawing attention to the massive chest that rose and fell rhythmically, as he cocked his head to the side and examined those who would have murdered him to gain his alter ego. He stood nearly nude, the scraps of his white leather pants all that protected the thick mound of flesh at his groin from public view.
“No!” Zultha screamed as this startling apparition stood, grinning at her, exposing its elongated fangs. “It can’t be true!”
“Oh, but it is.” That midnight voice seemed to echo in three different tones as he answered her cry of disbelief. “Are you ready to pray for redemption? Are you ready to be cleansed?”
Growling low in his chest, he narrowed his eyes at the woman he’d sworn to love and protect. Those eyes that once stared at her, naming her his salvation and his freedom, now stared at her…filled with disgust.
“Nooo!” Screaming, Zultha turned to flee by way of the rear doors that let her father’s soldiers in, and barely made it through the doorway, before her father’s men attacked.
But the Reaver met the challenge head-on, easily dodging their cuts and jabs and ripping out throats where he’d made an opening.
Zoot’s wife, freed at last from her paralyzing silence, screamed and tried to rush past the beast murdering her mate’s men, but she was met by an angry, purple-eyed woman.
“Repayment!” Nello shouted as with a wave of her hand a purple glowing wall surrounded the woman, preventing her escape.
“I did nothing!” the woman cried.
“Nothing but keep quiet about this action against my son and husband. After hearing all of the lies that you spouted about my Terror, my father is anxious to meet you and your husband. He wants to have words with you. He is especially anxious to meet your lovely daughter.”
The woman’s eyes grew as wide as dishes before she gave a queer whimper and passed out in a dead faint, which was probably the only real emotion she’d showed in years.
By now, the Reaver had destroyed Zoot’s men, becoming a spinning, whirling dervish of death.
Heads fell, severed limbs lay twitching on the ground at his feet, men screamed and died until there was none left.
And then, only then, did he turn to face the man who had wrought all of this blood and destruction himself…Zoot.
“I should kill you,” the multi-toned voice taunted as the man cowered and ran away from the carnage, escaping in a way that was not taken by his daughter or his wife. He cowered in the nearest corner and watched his plans fall apart. But at his words, Zoot looked into the eyes of death himself, and he feared. “I should tear you apart, piece by piece, and scatter your parts all over this realm!”
“Torn!” his mother interrupted, then shocked at the strange tone in her son’s voice. “Torn, no!”
“And should I cleanse him, Mother, take this bad, this evil, unto my body and purge his soul?”
“No!” Nello cried as she stepped forward, a pleading look in her eyes.
“Why not then, Mother?” he asked, his eyes never leaving the frightened form of the man who was responsible for his latest misery. He could smell his taint and his fear.
“Now we go home!” she said as she reached up and cupped her son’s face, hoping to ease his pain and confusion, and stared into his scarlet eyes. “Now we start over.”
“Start over?” he laughed, his voice filling the room with echoes. He slowly, almost reluctantly, pulled away from the caress of the woman he had dreamed about feeling. It pained him, yet he pulled away. “There is no time to start over, Mother.”
He pointed to his father’s men, noting the frightened looks on their faces as they viewed the monster in their midst and the death he so easily delivered. “Start over, go where there is nothing but the fear, loathing, and disgust that I am sure you feel? I can’t even go back to being invisible like I was b
efore, Mother. And you know what? It doesn’t even matter anymore. Nothing else matters. Your father’s neckband will kill me soon anyway. Can you not hear the humming, Mother?” As he spoke, the buzzing around his neck increased, growing louder and more frightening. “My time here is short.”
“No, my son. I can’t break my father’s magic,” Nello said, her eyes wide and tragic, but filled with confidence. “But I can alter it.”
“Mother,” he began as he looked around at the destruction he had wrought in such a short time, at the death that seemed to surround him like a shroud.
He furled his wings and dropped his head. “I would rather die than to live the rest of my life feared and alone.”
“Never alone!” his father said finally as he stepped to his wife’s side and enveloped her small form in his embrace. “You will always have a place with us!”
There was an unnamed fear in his father’s eyes, but for once, Torn felt, no, he knew that it wasn’t fear of him.
“No, Father,” he decided as his eyes began to slowly dull into the more familiar lavender shade of his mother’s eyes. “I am tired, so…very tired. I have the weight of a thousand souls within me, Father, evil souls. They consume me. I can no longer…feel my own emotions, and what I do feel, I am not sure of. I would rather cease to exist than to live with this…emptiness.”
“I will not allow you to die!” Nello cried out as she broke free from her husband’s arms. “I refuse to give you up for lost!”
“And you,” Terror said quietly, his rage focused on Zoot. “I want a few moments of your time before you go to face the ruler of the Magical Realm.”
Zoot whimpered in true terror as Terror latched on to him and pulled him from his corner. After shaking the man, he tossed him to his men with curt orders to toss him in the dungeons until he had time for him. He was afraid that if the man stayed in the room with him, he would give in to the temptation to crack his spine in several places.
“Let me go, Mother!” Torn begged, feeling the weight of his existence as well as the truth of his name. “Let me die, let me find peace.”
Reaver of Souls Page 2
