Realm Book Three - Illuminated Death

by K. A. M'Lady

  Had to give the bitch props on one account...it was definitely demoralizing. Me, personally, I really tried not to let the bad guys see my fear. They’d usually find a way to beat the crap out of me with it.

  I took a brief moment to scan the wounds of my pack. Ien had a horrible puncture in his torso and his left eye was completely sealed shut. His chest bore the marks of claw and bruises everywhere. His brother Garric was not much better. It appeared he hung from a dislocated right shoulder. A bullet hole marred his upper left thigh, the wound a garish crimson with the silver tinge of pus. Thankfully, both of them had passed out.

  Jade, on the other hand, hung like a crucified warrior, unrepentant and unashamed. Three Werewolves stood with spears before him, their silver blades glistened in the dim light of the wall sconces, each sharp edge aimed for his throat.

  “I’m going to fucking rip your throat out, you vile bitch,” he growled, struggling against his chains.

  Jirvel’s wicked laughter echoed through the great hall. “You poor, pathetic beast. Have you not yet seen your demise?” she questioned. “Your brothers are nearly dead. And soon you too shall follow.” Her voice was so reasonable. So contemptuous. I wanted to wipe the smirk off her pouty red lips. I yearned to rip her voice box right from her throat.

  “Did you think that your Chosen One was going to save you?” she questioned. “That your precious, half-breed, your prophetic Fey, Rihker, was going to save all of you?” she laughed hysterically; the sound of a mad-hatter run amok.

  Jade finally looked up, his eyes finding mine across the distance that separated us as realization struck. I could feel the wild frenzy of his beast howling inside him. I tried to tell him without words to calm himself. That all would be well. That we would get through this, but my she-wolf caught another familiar smell.

  It was a scent that had once stirred the passions of warm nights and warmer desires. A scent that was uniquely dark and musky. The smell of earth and sandalwood, dark dreams and darker passions fulfilled. A scent that stirred my soul. One I thought I’d never smell again. One I’d worried over and feared for.

  The hackles of my she-wolf rose. Danger rushed through her flesh and mine. Fear burst in a nauseating rush up from the pit of my stomach, lodged itself in my throat. Beads of perspiration broke out all over my body. I wanted to run. Knew there was no place to go, that I was trapped. I was afraid to look, yet fearful not to. Hesitantly my head turned to the left side of the room, where I found the sum of all of those fears.

  I couldn’t keep the gasp of horror from escaping me, my knees from going out beneath me. If not for Lucien’s hold, I’d have slit my own throat on his blade, had he not moved it in time.

  Kieran lay chained to a black marble altar, his beautiful body lifeless. His pale, pale flesh now held the ashen color of true death, a blade plunged through the center of his chest.

  My thoughts began to run rampant. My throat closed off while the thundering of my heart took over, swallowing up my will to breathe, to think or to function. And right on queue, Blaen strolled into the room with Mercy chained like a dog on a leash behind him. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck, screamed over and over in my head.

  “Has my wolf been treating his new Goblin-vamp whore with care?” Jirvel asked, her voice tinkling with ironic laughter.

  I tried not to look away from Kieran, tried to keep all of my focus on him, but I knew that Mercy deserved better than being left to the brutality of Blaen and his wolves once again. Her past experience with him told me that whatever torments he had done to her would be just as terrible. Just as sadistic. This time was no exception.

  She wore nothing but the spiked collar at her throat and a chain of crosses that ran from it to the belly band at her waist; this too hung with more crosses. Each one singed as it struck her fragile flesh. The hiss seemed to stalk down my spine. It resonated in the pit of my stomach, where darker hatreds began to ache.

  A dark row of bluish-purple bruises ran the expanse of the right side of her face. The pale shimmer of older bruises, yellow-green in color, burst beneath. Each mark reflected how often she’d been beaten. Beaten into submission by a beast who knew no kindness.

  Her lips were swollen, stained dark red. There were puncture wounds at every blood mark on her body: neck, wrists, the indenture at the bend of her arms, even the inside of her thighs still bled with fresh blood. It was like she’d been passed around to Jirvel’s vamps as well.

  My anger continued to grow despite the overwhelming feelings of defeat that flirted through my mind like apparitions. How could she have done this to them, especially to Kieran? Hadn’t she created him? Once professed to care for him? I knew part of the answer—she was a stone-cold-dead bitch. She just hadn’t lain down yet.

  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waited for Gimlit to arrive in his own set of chains. Looked to the doorway that Blaen and his flunkies had come through, waiting to see the shining turquoise eyes that I knew so well. But they never came. My heart sank, fear an ugly knot that twisted my guts.

  I stood firmly for the first time in several minutes. Let Lucien’s blade remind me of the pain the others had suffered on my behalf as it pierced the flesh at my neck, the cool air of the great hall stinging the warm trickle of blood that now seeped beneath.

  “What have you done with Gimlit?” I asked her. I couldn’t keep the hatred from my voice, the glow from my flesh increasing as my anger rose. I could feel the Darkness inside me seeking an escape, burning in my belly like a cauldron filled with dark, slippery mutilated things waiting for the right moment to be stirred that one time too many so that the pot overflowed.

  Visions of a murderous rampage swarmed my thoughts. Blood mania—total annihilation. Walls bleeding and limbs dripping. I wanted to feel the warmth of eviscerated remains run through my fingers. I wanted to worry bones like the beast I knew thrashed inside me for vengeance. Fury became a glowing haze. I had to clench my teeth to stifle it. Trample it down inside me for my own fear of its dark rage.

  Jirvel merely laughed with wicked mirth. “Your pet Ogre is a mite busy, dear,” she merrily stated as she turned and retook her throne. “Off fighting Shadows. You know how those Ogres can be...such an ugly warring lot.”

  Her offhanded statement and smugness was almost more than I could stomach. My teeth were clenched so tightly my jaw began to throb. I clenched and unclenched my fingers, yearning for a blade. I wanted nothing more than to rip the bitch’s face off. Cut out her heart and rip off her head. But even I knew that there was greater Darkness behind her. Someone—or something—pulling her strings.

  Sure, Jirvel was strong, but she wasn’t strong enough to capture this many of Glen Hills mightiest creatures. There was also the answers to the motive behind all of the deaths I was seeking. I knew she’d killed all of the Necromancers. That she’d killed the Lady Twilla. But I didn’t know why. What had any of it to do with us? Why the battle with us? Why the sacrifice of Kieran?

  Oh, it was certain the bitch was going to die this night, but not before I got my answers. And whatever was happening to Gimlit, I knew it was her doing. At her ultimate command. Despite the fact that they were Lucien’s Shadow Slaves, she had given him the order to do it. But if Lucien had called them, then maybe he could release them and return Gimlit to me.

  “Let him go, Lucien,” I told him. “Call off your Shadows, and I swear to you I will help you. I will help to free you from this psychotic bitch and get you your soul back.”

  Lucien looked at me and I watched shades and shadows pass through his eyes like clouds on a crystal blue lake. It seemed a lifetime of memories and pain passed that I would never hear the words for and would never understand. “I will save you from her,” I whispered, praying that he would believe. “Help us and I will free you.”

  I felt a sudden change in the air around us. The temperature shifted, dropping by degrees and every nerve ending I had rose to attention. Fear that I’d been holding stabbed me in the gut, brought my head back up and arou
nd, where my eyes alighted to Jirvel’s pale form.

  “She can’t help you, Lucien,” she growled, the whites of her eyes fading to pure ebony as she rose. Anger and loathing were clearly writ in the lines that now creased her sneering lips and her once delicate face. Showing now what I had always known lay below: age and ugliness. The ugliness that her soul held. The ugliness that a millennia of death and torture to a plethora of others could only wrought upon a creature. All of it was there in the creases at her eyes, the line above her brow. The sneering crimson lips.

  “I hold your soul. It belongs to me,” she snarled. “You were nothing when I found you; a pathetic Necromancer without any idea how to use his skills. You couldn’t raise the dead then and your feeble, failed attempts to raise them now has cost me nothing but disaster,” she scolded, and a huge chunk of my story clicked. All that remained was the why.

  “And you,” she glowered, pointing with even more dark hatred blazing in her eyes. I had never seen such vile hope for the destruction of a person before. “You are nothing. Nothing!” The words were growled between clenched lips. They erupted as though from the pit of her belly, a belly of a monster; a monster born in the fires of hell. I could suddenly feel the air pressure around us shift again. Darkness blazed to life before us like a living flame, extending from her outstretched fingers toward us.

  “You will never save him or his pathetic soul. You will never save any of their souls!”

  One moment Lucien was holding me, blade poised against my throat and the next he was just gone. Flung away like mist, blade spinning free of his hand. Jirvel opened her palm, flexed her fingers and Lucien’s body slammed against the nearest column. She moved her wrist and he spun, slammed repeatedly against the column like a bag of bones. She swiped her arm the opposite direction and his body twisted, flew across the other side of the room, slammed against the far side of the wall and slid to the floor. Nothing moved again.

  I started to turn to the left and Jirvel flung out her other hand toward me. I had time to blink, take a quick breath and a sphere of Darkness spread from her outstretched fingers, spiraled across the room and crashed into my chest. I watched it form like a bubble of soap; sparkling in intervals yet dark as sludge. The force of it as it rammed into me was like being struck by a boulder the size of a Hummer H2. My feet went out from under me, elbows jammed against the solid rock of the floor and the remaining air left my battered lungs.

  Power slithered over me. Evil power. Power filled with utter Darkness. It was repulsive. Vile and disgusting. My skin crawled with the sickness and death that clung to the air around me. All at once I heard the voices of one hundred million dead things screaming. My stomach churned at a memory. My vision swam while I struggled to breathe. I could hear the dead scream their madness; calling me and I trembled at their need.

  I only knew of one creature with this Dark gift. One with the force of will to cast his Darkness from afar. I knew one other creature besides Jirvel who possessed as great a will and dark desire to kill me as much as I wanted to kill him...my father.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  in the instant between blood and breath

  the terrible functionless whole

  the knowledge of death, and time the wicked thief,

  for all, a celebration and a burial.

  From In the Crevice of Time by Josephine Jacobsen

  Great swarming shards of black hatred pierced my mind like rods of steel burning through bone. I screamed in agony and my voice was drowned out by a legion of many. Fear jackknifed its way through my limbs and they grew numb with the icy chill of destitute dreams, lost hopes and inconceivable desperation and I knew I’d walked this Dark road before.

  Misty, ethereal corpses spun erratically like blinking white ink spots before my eyes; each one bore faces in various stages of rot and decay. Faces that screamed. Faces that cried. Faces that spewed their wrath of anger and blasphemies. Each one decried their fate.

  I gasped, the air a heavy weight in my lungs while I struggled to rise to my feet. I blinked to ease the sludge of Darkness seeping through my mind and two worlds swam across my vision. Before me, the great hall where Jirvel and her mad affair of macabre hopes to annihilate all of those I loved and cared for. Beyond, the Darkness where the wayfaring wandered, seeking their souls, spending their eternity in the Shadow Lands for their corruption and their sins.

  And I, who now stood between.

  Somehow, Jirvel had found my father. Or my father had found her. Either way, one was using the other, both deranged and vying for their own Dark way. Together they had sent me between the realms. A witness and a watcher, trapped in this sphere of Darkness where I must choose to watch those I loved die, or walk the Shadow Lands praying I found a way to save us all.

  It was in this conundrum that I recalled Maebe’s words. “Into you great secrets now hide. The Way has been chosen and all must abide. Darkness and Death call out in the night. Steal they the Light when sleeping dogs lie. The sins of the Chosen—forgiven they must. Life unto Death—the Light you must trust.”

  “The Light I must trust. The Light I must trust,” she said. Ugh! Fucking Witch! Tell me how? How? When I’m stuck in this damn Darkness? How the hell am I to save anyone if I can’t get myself out of this shit? If it wasn’t for me none of them would even be trapped here in the first place! I couldn’t help but rail at myself when everyone I loved was trapped beyond my reach. What good were all of these Tells I’d taken into myself if I didn’t know what they all were and didn’t know how to use them. I hadn’t been given enough time!

  The sins of the Chosen—forgiven they must… the words whispered through my mind in Maebe’s eerie, singsong voice. Okay, so maybe this wasn’t entirely fault. I mean, I didn’t make Jirvel become such an evil, sadistic bitch. And, I hadn’t made her kill all of those Necromancers or kidnap and torture Kieran and the others – just the thought of Kieran made my heart hurt. Had she killed him? Truly killed him? Gods! Why was this happening?

  “He’ll never let you rule,” I suddenly shouted unable to hold back my anger any longer.

  “What?” Jirvel questioned. My anger began to clear my mind a bit and as Jirvel turned toward me, the debauchery of events I hadn’t even noticed going on in the room around me suddenly came into focus.

  Someone had picked up Lucien’s limp body off the floor and placed it on the slab next to Kieran’s. Jirvel’s little flunkies were in the process of stripping him bare. It seemed another offering was in the preparations stage.

  “When you set him free, he’ll only kill you and all that you have,” I told her. “All that you have done will be for nothing.”

  She smiled, a slim baring of teeth behind the garish red of her bright lips. I wanted to yank her fangs out with my bare hands.

  “Your father has sworn I will rule beside him. We will be equals and rule the Darkness as one.”

  I couldn’t help but snort at that one. Bitch was truly wack if she thought he was going to share his power with her. Yet, her words made me wonder. “Is that why you killed all of the Necromancers? To set him free?”

  “All right, little half-breed. I guess there is no harm in indulging you, since you’re about to die. I see no reason I can’t share a bit of our glorious Dark plans,” she stated. There was nothing in her eyes but pure evil delight. Yeah, even death can’t cure stupid.

  “It is written that seven children of The Way who control the dead will set him free. Add an offering of true death from a creature whose soul was once pure,” she stated, trailing her fingers down Kieran’s bare chest, “and the blood of the Chosen and The God of the Moon will rule the Darkness forever.” She smiled.

  Yep, it was official. Definitely dead and utterly stupid. But I wondered where she got the Words of The Way from. I only knew one person…Modgav.

  Another death for another time.

  “Quite the plan if you can pull it off,” I told her, not even trying to keep the sarcasm from my voice.

  �
��Oh, I’m quite sure I can pull it off.”

  “Tell me,” I asked. “You had the four Necromancers killed, right? And Lady Twilla was five?”

  “I killed them.” She nodded, obviously pleased with her handy work.

  “I take it Fred the Zombie was Necromancer six?”

  “Quite right, my dear half-breed.”

  “So who’s the seventh harbinger?

  “Haven’t figured that out?” she asked, picking up another ornate dagger to match the one she’d already thrust into Kieran’s chest.

  I stared at her cold, dead eyes for a minute, trying to figure out her game when it struck me. “Lucien,” I whispered. “But you already have his soul. Why not just give it to my father?” The wheels of an idea were spinning.

  She glared at me, but did not immediately respond.

  “You need Kieran and Lucien to willingly give you their souls, don’t you? That’s why you haven’t burned Kieran to dust.”

  If she could have burned me on the spot, I think she would have. “Oh, I think they’ll give them to me.” The spark of vile morbidity flickered in her eyes.

  I knew then exactly what she intended, and what I needed to do. See, the thing that Jirvel needed to remember was that when you play in the dark with mad devils and those devils have daughters…well, let’s just say there are several ways to watch a body burn. Me, I was definitely looking forward to this pyre.

  I took a deep breath and did two things: I closed my eyes, opened myself to all my powers of Light and Darkness and Called my backup; envisioning each of them as I left them, fully armed and war ready. And like heat shimmers in the sun, Kieran’s Vampires from the Mound, Markus, Ivy, Berg, Jet and Prism in the shape of a huge, multi-colored, spike-tailed, long-toothed dragon appeared before us in the great hall.

  Then I stepped into the Shadow Lands, knowing that I had mere moments to retrieve Kieran’s soul before Jirvel forced him to give it to her, and to find and save my Gimlit.