by Dannika Dark
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Merc grumbled. “You’ve never thought me a better man, so cut the bullshit. Your Learner is not entirely our Breed. She’s nothing but a mutant gene that needs to be exterminated before it spreads like a virus.”
“She is a woman; have you forgotten the code of chivalry?”
“Woman?” Merc laughed. “I care not that she’s a woman; she would not be the first woman whose life I’ve taken, Justus, dear old friend.” Merc unsheathed a dagger.
“We’re not friends. You betrayed our trust.”
Merc scraped his hair back and his bicep flexed. “HALO should be dismantled. You turned me in without any evidence; my reputation was ruined!” he roared. “My good name was soiled and I deserved retribution.”
“Don’t deny what we both know is true,” Justus warned.
Merc glared down at me and sniffed. “I was incarcerated on charges never proven.”
“Deservedly so. You took bribes in exchange for confidential information. You swore an oath to HALO to uphold the laws and respect your brothers.”
He shrugged. “And? Nothing was ever proven by Nigel and that damn Chitah.”
“Proof is irrelevant. You were guilty and if that fact only lies between us, then I’ll be your judge and jury. Do you think that I’ve let this case go? I’m going to get the evidence I need one day, Merc.”
“Fuck, did you just see that?” Merc asked, staring at his ankles. “I think my legs just shook.” He laughed. “The Mageri has a conscience, as I found out. Did you know that’s how I got a position on the Council? To rectify what was taken—my reputation. Can’t say everyone was in agreement about it, but they owed me.”
Justus widened his stance a fraction and lowered his head. “Owed you for what? You lied. You deceived. You broke our trust for the sake of profit by selling information. You single-handedly placed doubt on our organization that took us years to reconcile!” he shouted in fury. The vein in his head stood out like a warning of the wrath to come. “And you still hold claim that you are owed for a punishment that was never fully rendered?”
“I broke nothing,” Merc denied. “That was your own undoing by failing to produce evidence. The Chitah deserved a taste of his own medicine for the public humiliation that was served to me on a silver platter, and I’m glad that it ruined the alliance between our Breeds.”
“He knew what you were up to and took an oath to expose the truth. Brother or not, the order and our principles come first. Do you think Nigel enjoyed knowing that he was going to turn in one of his own? He saw you as a brother.”
Merc shook his head indifferently. “I care not. Had you anyone in your life that mattered to you… I would have also ended their life.”
Justus shifted his stance and his jaw slackened. “What do you mean?”
Merc clicked his jaw from side to side and grinned. “You bastards really didn’t figure out what happened to Nigel, did you? Thought it was related to one of the HALO cases or a personal vendetta. It was personal. Mage or not, Nigel was no brother to me. He was in too deep and when the Mageri didn’t punish him, I got all the revenge I needed taking by his life. His sister was so sweet.” Merc’s tongue caressed the words like a delicious memory.
When I looked at Justus, his face was ashen—frozen—lost in the horror of the answers that time had never given him.
Until now.
Merc scraped a heavy shoe along the concrete and I stood up, looking between the men. The tension was palpable and crackled against my fingertips.
“I invited myself over to talk man to man,” Merc said. “He poured the alcohol and I put a stunner in his chest. I had propped him against the wall to sever his head when an unexpected guest tumbled into the room, screaming. What a gift that was. For what he did to me, his life alone was not enough retribution. I tasted the blood of Nigel’s Breed sister and let him watch as she took her last breath. Every scream, every plea that fell from her rosy red lips—I made sure he was witness to. Even though all she said was don’t watch,” Merc said mockingly, mimicking her reaction. “Now that you have a Learner, I might get the same satisfaction. Paybacks are a bitch, aren’t they?”
Without warning, Merc flashed at me from behind, ready to strike me down with his unmerciful intent. Christian spun me around and stood between us like a shield.
Color flooded into my Ghuardian’s face like an erupting volcano. A vein protruded in a vertical line on his temple and his eyes blazed with light. Never had I witnessed such savagery and loss of control as in that moment. It was as if the lights went out and a warrior emerged—one without mercy, compassion, or recognition for all the laws he stood to protect. I sensed the heat funneling around him like a firestorm.
Merc tapped his blade thoughtfully against two fingers, watching the change that took over Justus. A knowing smile bled from his expression.
“Of course. Why did it never occur to me before? You liked Eleanor, didn’t you?”
There it was—an open wound exposed for all to see. A secret buried, a truth revealed, and a vengeance awakened.
The pieces of what I knew began to fit together. Logan’s father was part of HALO. He and Nigel had discovered Merc was accepting bribes in exchange for confidential information. The accusation had gone public without evidence. Logan’s father walked away with a tarnished reputation; that was enough punishment among his own kind. The Mageri cleared all charges against Merc and he was free to walk, but not without a black mark on his name. Nigel received the same public scorn for slander, but in Merc’s eyes, he hadn’t suffered enough. So he exacted his own revenge against him and his sister.
Visceral pain spread across Justus’s face and my heart constricted. Merc had crossed the line. Justus was more than my Ghuardian—he was family.
I approached Justus, but nothing existed in his eyes. Not the battered trees or the ancient moon smiling overhead. Only Merc. I cupped his face in my hands and it was rich with pain. His skin prickled the tips of my fingers as power surged through his body uncontrollably.
And the heat. My God, the heat.
“Look at me,” I pleaded.
For the first time, he didn’t pull away. Justus stared beyond me because in that moment in time, the only thing that existed was his nemesis. I tried to turn his head but it was granite.
“She didn’t cry out for you when she died, Justus.” Merc strutted around with mockery on his tongue. “Did you not consummate your love? I felt the heat between her legs and it was delicious. Had I known about your infatuation, I would have done the honors. Of course, with all the blood and crying, it would have been a stretch to tell if she was still a virgin.”
“Shut up!” I screamed. “Justus, please don’t listen to him. Please come back to me.” I used his name, hoping that would bring him out of his blind rage. My heart was racing out of control and an impending sense of dread took hold.
Justus believed that emotions made you vulnerable and if you allowed them to consume you, then you would only know defeat. In this moment, he wasn’t thinking rationally. He wasn’t even thinking.
For once, Justus was feeling.
“Ghuardian, don’t do this. Please don’t do this.” My hands traced over his sculpted jaw and I tried to pry his gaze away from Merc, but he was unresponsive.
Merc’s dagger was eager to remove life from our bodies and a dark laugh rocked from his chest like a boulder tumbling down a mountain.
“I tasted her down to the last drop, Justus. Her light was so sweet when I plucked it out of her and made… her… mortal.” He licked his thumb for emphasis. “You know what the real shame of it is? That gift of hers would have resisted your charm. She could block gifts; it was a tragedy when it leaked away from me. Had I known an Infuser, I would have sealed her light to my core. Blockers are so rare to come by.” His grin faded as if he finally recognized a flavor on his tongue. “But you didn’t know that, did you?”
Merc howled with laughter and darkness filled the contours
of Justus’s face.
It happened fast.
I spun around with an outstretched arm and used my gift to pull the dagger from Merc’s hand. Christian stepped in the path and it sank into his abdomen. In the blink of an eye, Merc flashed forward and Justus shoved me to the ground, out of harm’s way.
Their bodies collided like Titans and they fought in dark suspension—a blur of fists, muscle, and blood. Without a weapon, a Mage could only battle with another Mage using their hands and years of experience. I caught a glimpse of a blade planted in the dirt and realized that Justus had thrown down his weapon so that he could take down Merc with his bare hands.
The dagger was too far for me to pull.
“Christian, the knife!” I yelled.
He yanked the blade out of his side and slid it across the dirt. I used my gift to pull it the rest of the way. It left a cutting trail and I caught it.
Christian made no attempt to stop them, but kept his eyes focused on me.
I flashed into the chaos. Merc elbowed Justus in the eye, caught my wrist, and spun me around so that the biting edge of the blade I still held was cutting into my neck. He stood behind me with his hand firmly gripped over mine and the other arm wrapped around my waist.
“Stand back. One clean stroke and her head will be away.”
“Release her!” Justus roared, blood trickling down his cheek. Rage snarled on his curled lip as he assessed the situation the way he often did in the training room.
“No matter what happens,” I ground through my teeth, “kill him.”
Damn Merc for what he inflicted on that man.
Justus vanished; something I’d rarely seen him do. The speed of action was beyond comprehension. One minute he was standing ahead of us and the next, Justus appeared behind Merc. In a swift motion, he pulled Merc’s wrist away from my neck and drove the dagger straight at my head. I winced, but the dagger had another target.
It plunged into Merc’s eye, impaling him in the skull.
Gasping, heart racing, I staggered forward.
Justus had balled up his energy and, in one powerful burst, pushed himself in a position of control. Only a skilled Mage could harness their light in that manner. It was too advanced for me to understand, even after several attempts in the training room. Because it was a one-time shot and depleted an abundance of power, it’s a last resort when there are no other options.
Merc collapsed to the ground in a heaping pile of worthless Mage manure. Justus kicked his legs to straighten them out and I winced at the gruesome image of the blade impaled in his eye socket. The wind shifted and a chill ran up my body as the leaves rustled in the trees.
Simon edged out from the road where he stood witness. “Come with me, Silver. This is a private revenge.”
Chapter 39
Justus couldn’t hear the empathy in the footsteps of his friends when he was left alone with Merc. He was only aware of the frost licking the back of his neck like an ice dragon. The pale moonlight gave a murky appearance to the blood that oozed from the mangled eye in Merc’s head.
Unable to speak, he paced around the paralyzed body of a man who was born a Norseman.
Killing him quickly would be mercy that Nigel and Eleanor never had. Dirt and pebbles crunched beneath his boots and a narrow black shoelace dragged behind him as he stepped off the pavement. Years had elapsed and Justus would never know what might have been if Merc had only spared her life. Never had he imagined such a reawakening of suffering, proving that the laceration would never mend. Only now there was salt in the wounds with the revelation that she had been a Blocker.
Sweat trickled from his brow and he kicked Merc in the head. He continued to pace—arms thick with punishment, fists clenched with murderous intent, and a bitter taste of bile when the images of the confession swarmed in his head like angry bees.
Poison from Merc’s lips. Acid from his tongue.
Justus kicked dirt up with every step, wearing a trail that circled Merc’s soon-to-be incarcerated body. It wasn’t enough. He wanted to know everything.
Being a Charmer was something of a disappointment to his Creator. Women were in abundance like the bounty from a vineyard, and Justus often selected the most beautiful and unattainable fruits until he was drunk with them. But after Eleanor’s death, he’d felt more like an imposter with women. It became easier to pick the ones that were weak minded and easy. Every emotion they felt for him was a lie, and coming to terms with that fact was numbing. Sex was no longer a patient harvest but a quick bottle of cheap wine. Justus drank up the adoration, but in the end when the lights went out, it was only about the sex and the hangover was always the darkest part of the experience.
When Justus had first laid eyes on Eleanor, she was leaving a restaurant in a sage-green dress with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. He’d stood on a busy corner and watched the lovely young woman with soft ribbons of long, silky blond hair looking expectantly up the street. Her smile was radiant when she waved at Nigel and kissed him on the cheek, with eyes that glittered like the Pacific Ocean. Such incomparable loveliness and grace. At first, he thought it was Nigel’s woman, but later discovered that Nigel considered her a sister as they shared the same Creator.
Justus remembered the way her creamy complexion could make a man stutter, but most of all it was the innocence that played in her eyes.
Each day he followed her at the same times because she was a creature of habit. He watched her admire small trinkets and fabrics in the local shops. Her fingers were so delicate it made his own seem oafish and dangerous. From the opposite side of the windowpane, Justus’s charm had no effect.
Eleanor had admired a sample of blue silk fabric once and walked away when she noticed the price. Justus must have ordered twenty yards of it and had it special delivered. He hadn’t included a card and never knew what she thought of the anonymous gift. Nigel had money, so it didn’t seem right that she denied herself beautiful things. Anticipation rose each day with the sun when she emerged from her door. He hoped to see her wearing the fabric, but a heavy sigh always followed when she stepped into the bright sunlight wearing a plain dress. There were many nights that he imagined her wearing it, and that would be the day that he would speak to her.
Eleanor often strolled along the streets alone with a pencil tucked behind her right ear. It bothered him that she didn’t have an escort. She would spend hours on a park bench sketching inside her small notebook. What would it be like to touch her? Would her hair smell of fresh flowers as he had imagined? Her eyes looked upon the world with such adoration, sketching wild petals shaking in the breeze below her feet, or children lying in the grass and watching clouds drift overhead. It inspired him because he was also an artist, but Justus never looked at the little things the way she did. As much as he yearned for her affection—to hear her voice, to know her touch—it would be nothing but a lie.
Months passed and Justus was perfectly content with his routine. One Sunday morning, she never came out of the house.
Justus continued circling around Merc’s body, each breath serving as a reminder of the one Eleanor no longer had. Light burned through his veins like hellfire, settling in the pit of his stomach as Merc’s words festered.
Eleanor screaming. Eleanor screaming.
He squeezed his eyes shut because the stars burned too brightly. His right foot kicked up a chunk of dirt and it landed by Merc’s arm. Justus sat on top of the former Council member’s chest with his hand wrapped around the grip of the dagger buried deep in Merc’s eye.
“We’re talking,” he said through clenched teeth. “Move an inch and I’ll take your head.”
Justus would wait until the Enforcers arrived because that’s what law-abiding men did. In a swift motion, he pulled the dagger out and pressed it sharply against Merc’s throat with his right hand gripping the handle and his left palm pressing the back of the blade. Justus wanted answers.
“Why kill Nigel? He would have faced punishment by the Mageri for n
ot producing evidence.”
Merc’s lips peeled back as the blood pooled from his socket. “That’s bullshit and you know it. The Mageri sat on it because they never had any intention of going against him. Nigel knew more and threatened he would talk.” A rivulet of blood trailed down his neck.
“Knew what?”
“Where I was investing my money.” He smiled. “How’s your gut these days?”
Justus paused and looked at him gravely. While he had little memory of the bombing at Novis’s house, Merc had just indirectly admitted to being the responsible party behind the sword. It didn’t matter. “You funded the experiments?”
“You see the world in black and white, Justus. This whole fucking mess we created ourselves—hiding from humans and letting their population explode. Working together in harmony? That’s a joke. We built civilization. Deep down, everyone knows we don’t belong in the shadows of mortals. Some just need a push in the right direction, but they’ll follow. Peace is nothing but a bedtime story, and I think we’re all big boys now and know that fairy tales don’t exist.”
“There is peace outside of the factions that threaten it. War never brings power, it only brings death.” Justus leaned closer to Merc’s face. “If you fight, it should be for a noble cause to protect, not to disembowel the laws that keep us civilized.”
“Blah, blah, blah,” he muttered. “My funding was a waste of money, so enjoy your monkey for as long as you can. When others find out what she is, they’ll want her dead. Imagine the fear in knowing a mutation exists, one with powers they don’t understand. Hell, maybe she’s contagious,” he said, huffing out a laugh.
The teeth of the blade bit into Merc’s neck and he grimaced. He wasn’t going anywhere, not with Justus using his knees to pin down his arms.
“That woman is a life to be valued, which is more than I can say for you.”
Merc lifted his eyes to the sky. “You’ll never win. You can lock me away, but my connections will bail me out. They have big plans and unlimited funds. The faith in the Mageri is fractured and it won’t take much more to break that trust. The people will look for answers, and they won’t look to you. Our time will come, Justus. Humans will know we exist. Ready yourself.”
