by Porter, Jack
He was standing beside Piper’s cabin, his attention focused through the window.
At first glance, from the angle we were approaching, Zavier seemed nonchalant. But I could see half of his body was badly burned and there were slashes and gouges from Layla’s Sai, and multiple head wounds from above.
He was using the cabin more as a crutch to keep himself standing.
Good job, girls, I thought and swept my gaze around the small settlement for my goddesses.
My heart lurched in my chest when I found them. Hannah, Layla, and Yua were all unconscious.
What has he done to them?
The crystals apparently hadn’t protected them completely.
Heart in my throat, I divided up my mist and sent it crawling along the ground to find out and aid in the healing process if I could.
“Come on out, little one,” Zavier’s voice was sickly sweet as he attempted to coax the mother of my child out. “I won’t hurt you.”
He hadn’t noticed us yet. And despite my powerful instinct to run at him, sword out, a war cry on my lips, I needed to keep it that way.
Until I was ready.
It never occurred to me to wonder why he didn’t just force his way in.
Anger and fear mingled in my gut as I turned to Cyanne and the other human goddesses. “Go around the back and see if you can find a way inside,” I whispered. “Do what you can to get Piper to safety. But no unnecessary risks, understand?”
They nodded, eyes hard as they slipped off to the trees, their feet not making a sound. Megan remained behind, watching the other girls until the foliage covered them. She turned to me, waiting patiently for my orders.
Pursing my lips, I said, “See what you can do for Hannah, Yua, and Layla. Try to keep them safe from whatever happens.”
As Megan turned to go, I took a step toward the dark god.
“Here I am, Zavier,” I growled, drawing power from my crystal. “How about you get the fuck away from my wife and child, or I’ll roast you like a Thanksgiving Day turkey.”
Thirty-Seven
Zavier whirled toward me. He stood there in shocked silence for several moments before his shoulders shook in what I could only assume was poorly suppressed laughter.
That’s probably not a good thing. Damn.
“Do you think I’m joking?”
“No, I don’t. And that makes it all the funnier,” Zavier mocked, wiping a tear from his eye. “I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Figure out what?” I asked at the same time as something small and black zipped past me and ran in the dark god’s direction.
“Salem! Come back, boy,” I shouted.
A twitch of furry black tail was the only indication that he heard me. The black cougar cub had scented Megan, who’d gone to the injured goddesses as I’d asked. She was the one who’d been caring for him most since he was a cub. He was going whole hog to get to her.
But Zavier was faster. His nose wrinkled in distaste and he lifted one enormous foot. Adrenaline kicked in and I started pumping my legs to get to him, or to spook him in a different direction, but I knew I couldn’t make it in time.
Salem never cowered before the giant god. He just hissed and put a clawed paw out, swiping out in warning for Zavier to back up and let him pass.
Megan cried out, a pained wailing sound that broke my heart as Zavier’s foot came down hard on the wildcat.
Then that bastard had the audacity to look up at me and grin.
That was it. I wasn’t going to play into his game any longer. Pulling my sword in one swift movement, I went for the tried-and-true method of dealing with pretentious, sadistic, cat-killing assholes.
“Megan, get out of here!” I growled. “Go to the others!”
Keeping my sights on Zavier, I didn’t know if she obeyed me or not. She might have been too locked in her own grief. If she was, I couldn’t blame her. I liked Salem, but he was her family, as precious as any sister or brother.
However, I did not fail to notice how Zavier’s eyes narrowed when I said the word ‘others’.
Had he figured out that I’d saved the other goddesses yet?
I pushed every last ounce of my crystal’s energy into my sword. The sharp double-edged blade burst into white-blue flame at a height even I didn’t expect.
From the look on Zavier’s face, I could tell he wasn’t expecting this either. I could see the shadow of memory flicker in his swirling crimson eyes.
Had this been what Kain’s sword could do as well?
That made me charge all the faster. Zavier was bigger than me by about half, but in true David and Goliath fashion, I was going to bring this beast down.
Zavier hurled dark energy at me in what I had to assume was his only move.
My blazing sword cut through the dark energy, pulling some in like a vacuum and letting the rest spill safely around my body. I took that energy and transformed it into fuel for my crystal’s magic, giving me a boost.
Jumping high with the sword in both hands, I hit my mark with ease, slicing down Zavier’s burnt half. Kain’s sword cut through Zavier like butter, leaving a blazing trail of white-blue energy to cauterize the wound. Zavier roared and stumbled back, doubling over to cradle the lumpy, deformed flesh at his shoulder where his arm had just been.
The hunk of charred muscle and bone landed with a meaty thud beside my feet. Again, that sensation struck me as something being off.
He didn’t even try to dodge or deflect my attack. Is he truly mental? Or can he grow his limbs back, like a lizard’s tail?
The off feeling only increased when Zavier slowly stood back up, still holding his smoking flesh, but grinning like a man who’d just won the lottery.
“By all the heavens, that fucking hurt! But it was worth it to keep you distracted. Checkmate, Dexter.”
Unease crawled up my spine. At the same time, a quick slash of a knife on my back told me why. Someone was behind me.
I whirled, sword at the ready to fuck up whoever stood there.
But then I froze, stilling my blade, stopping it inches from the woman’s swelling belly.
It was Piper. She wasn’t in the cabin. In her left hand was a tiny knife used for peeling vegetables, coated in my blood.
“Pipes, honey,” I said, barely feeling the sting of my cut as the crystal magic healed it. “What are you doing?”
She didn’t seem to hear me. Her eyes appeared clouded. Glazed over in a look I’d seen before, in Zavier’s host.
Dark mist spilled from her mouth in a continuous flow that snaked its way down her body, controlling her actions.
“Pipes!” I cried, stepping forward.
Piper dripped my blood off her knife and into a small vial she had clasped in her other hand. Dropping my sword, I grasped her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake. I knew that Zavier was still there, was still a threat, but he was injured. Just at that moment, Piper was more important.
“Piper, wake up! This isn’t you. This is Zavier. You need to fight it!”
Her obsidian eyes met mine, and I swore I saw the old Piper in there. But just for a moment.
Without saying a word, she leaned toward me and moved to grab my necklace. The one with the dull, deactivated, two-pointed crystal on it.
“Yes,” I hissed. “It’s your crystal. Do you feel it calling?”
With lightning reflexes, she suddenly moved to grab not her crystal, but mine. She crushed whatever vial had been in her hand, coating my crystal with whatever black gooey contents had been inside.
Within seconds, I could feel my power leaving me. My connection to my crystal was fading, slipping rapidly through my grasp. I staggered back, turning to face Zavier again.
Whatever I was going to do, I had to do it quickly. Zavier was still badly wounded, and I could see the beginnings of fever and fear in his eyes as I snatched up my sword again.
Yet he still kept his grin. “It was you who introduced my power into this woman,” he said.
“You who fused it with her, in a way that not even I could do. Did you think, just because you had taken that power as your own, that it was somehow beyond my reach?”
I wanted nothing more than to hack the dark god’s head from his shoulders, to see if he could be so cavalier about that. But his words made an impact. Suddenly, a number of things all made sense.
Why Zavier had been standing outside Piper’s cabin door in the middle of the night. And the jab about deciding my own fate.
The morning I healed Piper’s body with my golden mist had been her downfall. The mist still lingered in her body, and was completely corruptible by Zavier.
That’s why he didn’t just smash the cabin in. He didn’t want to hurt her. His goal was to make her a puppet.
Howling my fury at his sadistic games, I charged at the dark god with everything I had. But Piper beat me to him. The mists carried her above my head to land safely on Zavier’s uninjured shoulder.
He was using her as a shield.
Fuck!
Zavier stepped several paces back. His and Piper’s hair floated as if they were in water, tinted red, and I knew he’d just stepped into the spirit line.
In an eye blink, they were gone. I charged after them, desperate to get the mother of my child back. My healer. My lover. But no matter how I searched for the line I’d just witnessed them leave in, I couldn’t find it.
As if there was some wall between me and my power, my crystal’s energy flickered out. I could no longer connect to it.
I sat down where I was and willed myself to astral project into the spirit world to follow them, but I could not.
Right then, I was as good as human.
Thirty-Eight
But I was damned if I was going to accept such a defeat.
Zavier had my woman and my unborn child!
And there was no way he was going to keep them.
This wasn’t going to be like when he abducted Hannah and kept her for weeks. I was going to get Piper back, and I was going to do so now!
I didn’t care that the dark god had blocked me from my crystal. He thought that was a way to beat me. But he had been obviously concerned to learn that I’d found my goddesses, which meant that there had to be a way to reverse what he’d done.
Or maybe the one had nothing to do with the other.
Either way, I had to try.
“Cyanne!” I called out. At the same time, I stood and headed over to where Megan was tending my injured goddesses. “Megan, how are they?” I asked.
The redhead looked completely distraught. But she managed an answer. “I think they’re okay. They’re starting to come around now.”
“Good.” I wanted to say something comforting to her about Salem, but just at that moment, the best I could offer was a threat of revenge. “I’ll get him for what he has done. I’m going to kill him.”
Megan nodded, accepting my words but adding none of her own.
By then, Cyanne and the others were starting to file out of the cabin. Apparently, they had managed to find a way in, although directing them to do so hadn’t helped. If Piper had been in there at all, she’d made her way out before they could get to her.
The beautiful woman approached with her regal bearing intact.
“I don’t know how much of that you heard,” I said to her. “Zavier has taken Piper. Somehow, he’s blocked me from my magic. Do you know of any way that can blockage can be removed?”
I held out my crystal so she could see the way Zavier’s darkness seemed to be part of it. But the Atlantean queen, after studying it thoughtfully, slowly shook her head. “I know only what I have witnessed Kain and Zavier to do. This is not something I have seen. It is beyond my understanding.”
The regret was clear in her words as she spoke, and I struggled to hide my disappointment. But all was not yet lost. Yua was struggling to rise to a seated position.
“Show it to me,” she said.
For all I knew, she could have been simply responding to the ongoing antagonism between Cyanne and herself, trying to offer what the Atlantean could not. But I was willing to grasp at any straw, no matter how fragile, so I did as she asked.
“How did it get like this?” the dragon woman asked.
“Piper mixed some of Zavier’s dark magic with my blood,” I said.
Yua nodded. “He has corrupted the crystal, like he does with all things. I didn’t know such a thing was possible. Likely, he wouldn’t have been able to do so with just his dark magic. Even after so many years, Kain’s power is too strong. But with your blood added to the mix—he has made the crystal his own.”
Yua’s words didn’t surprise me, but if anything, they added to my anger. “How can I reverse it?” I demanded, my voice unintentionally harsh.
“The same way you cleanse anything else he has infected.”
The same way I cleansed anything else he infected.
Yua’s words reverberated in my mind like an echo. On the one hand, I was elated that the crystal could be fixed, that I really might be able to go after the monster who had taken my woman.
On the other hand…
“But I can’t do that anymore. My connection to the crystal is blocked.”
It seemed to be an impasse, a road block that I couldn’t get through. Maybe Zavier had beaten me with this one simple trick.
I swore to myself in frustration. I was desperate to get to Piper, desperate to take her back from the dark god, but it seemed at that moment that I wasn’t going to be able to do so.
“Maybe you can’t,” Yua said. “But maybe we can.”
I stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“Your magic is what powers all of our crystals. Maybe that is enough. Maybe we can cleanse it for you with what we have.”
Without the slightest hesitation, I offered my crystal over. “Do it,” I said. “Gather your magic and send it into my crystal.”
Yua wasn’t at her full strength. She had only just roused herself after her battle with Zavier. But she was willing. She took my crystal in her hand and focused her own power, that she had borrowed from me.
I saw a glow appear from within her fingers and reached out with my own senses, hoping to once more be able to connect with my crystal.
It was the first time I’d known any of my goddesses to use magic this way, and maybe I felt something. The merest hint of the connection I sought. But maybe it was no more than my imagination.
For long moments, Yua kept trying, during which time Hannah and Layla both roused themselves. Megan filled them in on what had happened while they were unconscious, and what Yua was trying to do, until finally, the dragon goddess had no choice but to give up.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Then she looked around to the others watching her. “But maybe together?”
The others were willing. Hannah, Layla, and Megan all reached out a hand, to hold not the crystal exactly, but each other.
“You all understand what you need to do?” Yua asked, and the others all nodded.
“Call upon our magic,” Megan answered. “Flood the crystal with it, to chase the darkness away.”
Yua nodded, accepting her answer, but before they could begin, Cyanne stepped forward as well, placing her smaller, human body between those of the goddesses whose crystals had been activated.
“It might help,” she said.
As if that was a signal, the others, tattooed Faizah, pink-skinned Kara, the normally talkative Amandeep, Elsie with the mismatched eyes, and the white-haired Velma all gathered around as well, joining their hands with the others.
They did it with the solemnity of a ritual, and it was clear that every one of the women knew what was at stake.
I couldn’t have been more proud. I wanted to say something, but my voice caught in my throat. All I could do was stand there and watch as these magnificent women all concentrated on what they needed to do.
And it worked. Even beneath all their hands, I could see the white glow of their magic, far stronger
than Yua’s all on her own.
That magic grew brighter and brighter, so bright it was hard to look at.
“Dexter?” Yua asked.
Immediately, I reached out, seeking the connection to my crystal.
I found it. It was far, far weaker than it had been, but it was there. In my mind’s eye, I saw my crystal, still awash with swirling darkness but with a single mote of brightness within it.
That brightness was mine. I grabbed it and drew my magic back to me with everything I had.
It was intoxicating, a feeling of power that I’d so recently lost, and I wanted to let out a roar of pure triumph.
But I wasn’t yet done. The blackness was still there, threatening to overwhelm the light if I didn’t watch out.
So I did what the girls were doing. I redirected the magic I drew from the crystal and poured it back in, doing my absolute best to flood the crystal with it, to drive the dark god’s septic foulness from it.
It was like a howl of hope mixed with pain, like a muted explosion of blue-white light, and it was powerful enough that it blasted the goddesses apart.
They tumbled about onto the ground, the blue-white light immediately extinguished, and I immediately worried that I’d hurt them.
But, one by one, they righted themselves. Some were laughing. Others were grinning.
And Yua, the dragon goddess herself, was beaming in pure delight.
In her hand, she held my crystal.
It was back to how it should have been. No dark poison in sight.
Thirty-Nine
I placed my crystal necklace back where it belonged. “Right. I’m going to get Piper back,” I said.
I had every intention of heading straight for the spirit line Zavier had used and doing just that, but Cyanne placed a hand on my arm. “Wait,” she said.
“For what? Now is the time. Zavier is injured, and there’s no way he’s going to be expecting anything. And I don’t want to leave Piper with him any longer than necessary. I don’t want him trying to turn her into his wife.”
The Atlantian woman smiled. “Zavier heals very quickly, but other than that, everything you said is true. But he is still a god. Still powerful beyond measure. Which means that if you wish to be sure of victory when next you face him, you should be as powerful as you can be as well.”
