Destiny

by A D Starrling

  ‘You could stop this right now,’ Lily told Crovir. ‘You can put an end to all that is to come.’ She took a ragged breath. ‘You can prevent the carnage and the terrible destruction your actions and those of your direct descendent will bring in the coming days.’

  Crovir went still.

  ‘Could it be that you have seen my death, child?’ he said after a short silence.

  Lily stayed quiet. Tomas kept his face carefully blank when he made out her silent answer in his mind.

  Crovir’s expression grew thoughtful. ‘Not all the predictions of the Seer came true during our reign. In fact, some we managed to influence because of Navia herself.’ He smiled thinly. ‘Your attempt to dissuade me is sweet but futile, child. You must have seen the demise of people you yourself cherish to utter such pleading words.’

  Lily paled.

  ‘They will stop you, you know,’ she said, her voice hardening. ‘My father and the others.’

  Crovir arched an eyebrow.

  Tomas fisted his hands under the table and glared at the king. ‘Nothing you say or do could ever persuade us to help you.’

  Crovir’s eyes glittered coldly at his words. ‘How…disappointing. And I had such high hopes for you.’ He rose from the table. ‘I will give you some more time to consider your options. After that, I will have no choice but to hand you over to that woman.’

  Tomas’s pulse accelerated at the king’s cruel words and mocking half-smile. He didn’t have to look at Lily to sense her apprehension at the possibility of them both ending up the subjects of Jessica Wu’s barbaric experiments.

  Beneath his sister’s agitation, Tomas detected the anger simmering in her veins. The same anger surging through him.

  Defiance flashed in Lily’s eyes. I will not let her touch you, Tomas.

  Tomas scowled. Nor I you, Lily.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Asgard moved soundlessly over the forest floor, Armistad strapped snugly to his back and a combat knife in his hand. He rose from a crouch, clamped his hand over the mouth of the man he had been tracking, and slit his throat in one slick move. He held onto the struggling figure until it went limp in his grasp before carefully lowering the dead man’s body to the ground.

  They’d landed at Khatgal Airport, just south of Khövsgöl Lake, some two hours ago. By the time they had reached the foothills of the Eastern Sayan Range and made their way north to the mountain that hosted the secret facility holding the tombs and hearts of Crovir and Bastian, the sun was already high in the sky. They’d decided the best strategy was to scale the summit of the peak one and a half miles from the concealed entrance before working their way down through the heavy forest covering its slopes.

  It had proven to be the right tactic. Olivia had detected the minds of the first line of guards moments before they spied them among the vegetation. Though she had registered they were normal Immortals as opposed to super soldiers, the men were spread out over too large an area for her to be completely confident that one of them would not sound an alarm before succumbing to her mind control. They had to engage them directly.

  Asgard pressed his back against the trunk of a birch and looked to his left, his breathing slow and steady.

  Fifty feet north of his position, Olivia drifted between towering pine and larch trees, her steps swift and steadfast as she closed in on her target. She came up next to the Hunter, slipped her knife between his ribs, and carved a livid wound across his neck before he could react. He crumpled silently at her feet, mouth open on a cry that never came.

  Admiration darted through Asgard as he observed his niece’s composed expression. Though he knew she was still the woman he had come to love and consider his own daughter, he could sense the essence of the other soul currently living under her skin. Navia, the Seer born in a time of great strife and danger. A powerful warrior who had spilled the blood of countless enemies to build an empire for her Immortal father and uncle.

  Deep inside his own heart, Asgard felt the quiet presence of the soul who had awakened within him. He was still coming to terms with the fact that he possessed a reincarnated piece of the man who had borne two sons who became the most powerful kings the world had ever seen, a soul descended from the very first man and woman who ever walked the Earth. Natalia Ashkarov, Olivia’s mother, hadn’t touched upon the subject of reborn souls when she had spoken of the vision she kept having before her death; she had only ever mentioned the powerful, marked Immortals who would possess abilities like nothing their world had seen before.

  Asgard glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of Zachary as he felled the seventh Hunter guarding the perimeter of the remote facility. The man’s movements were fluid and his sword unwavering, his ice-blue eyes reflecting the same single-minded focus and determination Asgard could read on Olivia’s face.

  Romerus had never known Aäron, but Asgard could feel his silent approval of the formidable prince Mila had chosen as her true mate, and of the man who now possessed his reincarnated soul. It was also clear to see that Olivia and Zachary had been correct in their assumptions; Navia and Aäron’s awakening had brought out their inherent combat skills and rendered them as deadly on the battlefield as their forebears.

  They disposed of the last guards before converging on a ridge overlooking a narrow ravine. Two hundred feet down and to their left, the facility’s entrance stood under a shallow overhang at the base of a vertical rock face. The steel doors were fifteen by ten feet and disguised to look like the gray granite surrounding them. Were it not for the coordinates Victor and Eva had provided and the faint tire tracks they had spotted when they were climbing the mountain, they would have missed the portal.

  ‘Can you sense the minds of the men inside?’ Asgard asked Olivia where she hunkered beside him.

  She nodded, her gaze locked on the gray doors. ‘Yes. Five of them are super soldiers.’ Olivia frowned. ‘I will have to get close to them to break down their mental shields. Their barriers are more powerful than those of the men I fought in Yuma.’

  Much to Olivia’s frustration, she had failed to uncover any information concerning the whereabouts of Tomas and Lily or the identity of their enemy from the minds of the Hunters they had eliminated. The men, it seemed, were simply following orders from Crovir headquarters.

  ‘Once we breach that opening, they’ll know we’re here,’ she said in a hard voice.

  They were at the bottom of the canyon within minutes. Asgard glanced at the security cameras covering the immediate approach to the entrance as they headed for the steel doors.

  They had been informed of the layout of the surveillance network covering the one mile area around the facility by the Bastian techs in Vienna while they were still flying out to Mongolia. Instead of overriding the devices, something that would have alerted the men inside the complex to their presence, the Immortals had recorded an hour of live footage from all the cameras before Asgard, Olivia, and Zachary reached the mountain, and uploaded continuous loops of the videos to the facility’s command center to conceal their incursion.

  Tension wound through Asgard as they came to a stop before the metal portal. He drew Armistad from the scabbard at his back and gripped the arming sword tightly.

  ‘Get ready,’ Olivia warned.

  Olivia took a deep breath, laid her hands on the solid, gray panels, and focused.

  Navia stirred behind her eyes, her curiosity echoing through her consciousness. Since the original Seer had never been physically intimate with Jared during their lives, Olivia knew she had never accessed the elemental powers of her true soulmate.

  Even though barely a day had passed since her ancestor’s life force had awakened inside her, Olivia was surprised at how strangely familiar her presence felt. She wondered if it was because of that time following her first death, when she had seen Navia and all the Seers descended from her bloodline during that suspended moment before her resurrection.

  Olivia detected Navia’s surprise and wonder as she drew on
the power pulsing in the golden lines around her heart and reached out to the glittering source of Ethan’s own ungodly abilities across their bond.

  She exhaled and released a blast of combined psychokinetic and elemental energy into the doors. They groaned and buckled under her touch.

  Olivia narrowed her eyes and flexed her fingers.

  The metal panels shrieked as they were wrenched free from their hinges and cast violently inside. They sailed some thirty feet through the air before crashing onto the ground of the wide rock and concrete tunnel that opened up before them. An alarm sounded in the next instant.

  Olivia unsheathed her sword and headed inside the gloomy passage with Asgard and Zachary. Eighty feet in, they came to an intersection.

  Shadowy figures appeared in the passages on either side of them.

  Olivia crushed the guns in the hands of the men charging up the corridors and scanned their minds. She identified the three normal Immortals, delved through their mental barriers, and suppressed their consciousness with a psychic surge. The Hunters stumbled and fell.

  The five super soldiers never faltered in their stride. Though they outnumbered them heavily, Olivia was relieved not to see any giants among them.

  She deflected the knife heading for her belly with her sword, spun on her heels, and brought her blade up toward the super soldier’s back. He twisted, blocked the pointed edge an inch from his chest, and brought his right knee up toward her left flank. She veered sideways, felt his kick glance off her hip, and leaned sharply backward to avoid the second knife arrowing in on her throat from up ahead.

  Olivia clenched her jaw, repelled the other man with a burst of elemental power, and released another wave of her soulmate’s energy. The super soldiers’ knives crumpled in their hands. They cast them aside and kept on attacking, their faces expressionless.

  Metal clanged on Olivia’s left.

  ‘They’re wearing those liquid-armor suits Madeleine told us about!’ Zachary shouted.

  He stabbed at a super soldier and swore when his broadsword juddered violently in his grip before skimming off the man’s combat suit.

  Unease shot through Olivia.

  Asgard’s arming sword bounced off a super soldier’s arm to her right. A grunt left her uncle’s lips as he took a powerful blow to his left flank. He ducked beneath a fist, thrust his shoulder into the super soldier’s chest, and drove him into the wall of the tunnel. They crashed onto the rock face with a sickening thud.

  Olivia took a step toward them. Movement flashed on her left.

  She dropped beneath a high kick and felt a foot skim her right shoulder as she rolled onto her back and came up on one knee. She brought her sword up, fended off the boot heading for the left side of her head, and blocked the one arcing toward her right flank with a flash of elemental power.

  Veins bulged in the super soldiers’ necks and temples as they leaned into her.

  Olivia scowled. Damn it! I need more time. I can’t get into their minds like this!

  As if heeding her silent call, Zachary and Asgard disengaged from the super soldiers attacking them and moved to flank her. A grim half smile crossed Olivia’s lips as she rose to her feet. From the echo in her mind, she knew Navia had communicated her wish to the reborn souls living inside the two men at her sides.

  She lowered her sword, took a shallow breath, and focused on the powerful shields protecting the super soldiers’ consciousness, confident Zachary and Asgard would keep them from getting to her in the moments that followed. Her unease intensified when, at long last, she beheld the mental barriers of the five men at close range.

  Instead of the solid walls she had encountered in the minds of the super soldiers she had battled in Yuma, the shields protecting these men’s thoughts were fluid. They shifted every time she attacked, bending but never yielding to her psychic probing, their shapes assuming an impregnable defense within a second of her mental assault.

  Olivia recalled what Anna and Madeleine had revealed on their video call from Sumava several hours ago.

  It must be because of the way they were bioengineered. That’s the only explanation for why their minds are so different from the super soldiers in Yuma.

  Grunts reached her ears as Zachary and Asgard continued to fight the men, their bodies protecting her from the enemies’ attack even as they took the brunt of their violent blows. Olivia gritted her teeth when she sensed that their defeat was but moments away.

  There was only one option left.

  She had never attempted to replicate what she had achieved in Yuma all those years ago, when she had overpowered the giant super soldiers who had proven to be their most challenging enemy to date and rendered almost everyone else unconscious. She knew it was the rage and pain of seeing her soulmate and the people she loved suffer at the hands of Jonah Krondike’s monstrous army, and the knowledge that they and their allies would die if she were not to succeed, that had propelled her ungodly gifts to a level of destruction she had never achieved before or since. To create that devastating phenomenon coldly and deliberately was going to take everything she had. Her resolve hardened when she thought of Lily and Tomas.

  If this helps us find them, then so be it.

  Olivia ignored the nervous dread rushing through her, fisted her hands, and zeroed in on the golden threads of power around her heart. The soul dwelling inside her startled when she realized her intent.

  For all that she was prepared for what would follow, Olivia could still not contain her gasp when heat suddenly exploded inside her chest. Though her every instinct warned her to contain the incredible energy pouring from her heart and soul, Olivia let it flow and fill her veins.

  She was surprised at the speed with which she had been able to draw it to the surface and how much more easily she could control it this time around.

  Navia’s grim acknowledgement of what was unfolding reverberated inside her. Olivia felt her ancestor’s psychic power swell within her body and meld with her own, complementing and augmenting it. She frowned and concentrated the violent pulses flooding her bloodstream into a single, large psychic wave.

  The hairs rose on her arms. Her right palm tingled.

  Olivia exhaled and let go.

  Though she shielded them from the attack as best she could, she felt Zachary and Asgard’s consciousness stutter. She blinked and saw them stumble, their bodies bowing under the potent psychic blast she had discharged.

  The super soldiers froze in their tracks, their mental shields flexing and stretching under the explosive force. Sweat beaded on Olivia’s brow as she pushed at the shifting walls. She bit her lip, brought forth a second powerful psychic wave, and projected it with the full force of her mind once more.

  The super soldiers dropped to their knees.

  Olivia inhaled sharply when she felt the barriers protecting their minds start to disintegrate. Heart thundering against her ribs, she forced her way past the breaches appearing in their crumbling mental shields.

  A shiver raced down her spine when she finally registered the essence of their consciousness. Like the giant super soldiers from Yuma, these men’s brain chemistry and wiring were all wrong.

  There was nothing remotely human or Immortal about them.

  Snow. Ice. A desolate landscape framed by low peaks under a sky where color danced.

  Olivia’s breath locked in her throat as the super soldiers’ memories started flashing across her inner vision.

  Giant caverns with ice floes drifting in dark waters. Warships and nuclear submarines docked at wide, manmade piers in an underground port. A facility housing barracks and an arms and ammunitions factory. Dozens of depots full of military hardware. An immense, thirteen-story complex with scores of research labs and the living quarters of the scientists and technicians who worked them.

  Olivia’s stomach twisted at what she perceived next. She fought back a cry of alarm and sensed Navia’s deepening disquiet. When there was no more left to see, Olivia reached out and extinguished
the consciousness of the broken creatures who knelt around them.

  Asgard and Zachary caught her as she swayed.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she mumbled shakily. ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘You don’t look okay,’ Zachary muttered.

  Asgard glanced from her to the unconscious super soldiers.

  ‘What did you see, Olivia?’ he said, his voice full of trepidation.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  ‘They’re somewhere north,’ Olivia said.

  Lucas’s pulse thrummed rapidly as he studied her pale expression on the monitor of the laptop.

  It was three in the morning on the fourth day following the attack on Balthazar Island. They had returned to Boston following their dramatic encounter with the super soldiers in Nevada and were on conference call with the others in Mongolia, Sumava, and Vienna.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Alexa asked, leaning against the table next to Lucas.

  ‘Because I could see the Aurora Borealis in the memories I captured from those super soldiers,’ Olivia replied.

  Tension knotted Lucas’s shoulders. ‘Did you find anything else at the facility? Anything that can help us find out exactly where they came from?’

  Asgard grimaced. ‘Bar the empty vaults that should have held the tombs and hearts of Bastian and Crovir, no. Whoever is behind this made sure not to leave a single trace that could lead back to them.’

  Lucas swallowed a curse. He could see his frustration mirrored on Anna’s face.

  ‘The ships and subs you saw, did they look old?’ Victor asked Olivia stiffly.

  Olivia shook her head. ‘No. They all appeared pretty modern, as did the weapons facility and stores I glimpsed.’ She hesitated. ‘The complex with the labs was a larger version of the facility in Yuma.’

  Victor’s face darkened at her words.

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling us, Livvy,’ Ethan said softly beside Lucas.

  Olivia’s lips twitched in a faint smile despite her visible apprehension. ‘You know me too well.’ Her expression sobered. ‘Remember the life pods we discovered in the cave in Yuma? I saw something similar in the super soldiers’ minds.’ She took a shallow breath. ‘Anna and Madeleine were right. These men were grown inside—tanks. Tanks they were placed in from when they were babies and where they were fed artificial nutrition and drugs while their bodies and brains went through a phase of rapid physical growth and maturation.’