“I take it I used to be besties with these jerks?” Douma muttered to Dmitri, who gave her a brief nod.
“I’m not sure ‘besties’ is the most accurate description of your relationship, but, sure, let’s go with that,” Dmitri whispered.
Araquiel snorted a laugh, shaking his head in dismay. “Ugh. You took the memory chip out and blocked the central database, didn’t you?” he asked, then looked at Amane, his lips twisted with anger. “I feel like I don’t say this enough, but you’re ridiculously lucky that Father wants you alive. Still. You’ve been a thorn in my side for too long, already.”
“Besides, don’t beat yourselves up too much,” Abaddon interjected. “I tracked you well enough on my own for a while. We’ve been on to you for hours, now, but Araquiel deemed it necessary for us to keep our distance and not engage you… yet,” he added, gritting his teeth, clearly displeased with Araquiel’s decision.
“We knew you’d make it worth our wait, and… well, looky here!” Araquiel continued, grinning gleefully as he motioned at the frightened Draenir, who slowly moved back. They were desperate to put some distance between them and these new, menacing creatures that had already killed one of their own. “I didn’t think any of the Draenir had survived the plague.”
“Ta’Zan will enjoy picking them off, one by one,” Oriphiel replied, scowling at them.
“Believe it or not, you guys have no idea what you’ve just stepped into,” I said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
Wallah and his friends were already holding their weapons. Rakkhan had his hand up to his side—he’d already motioned for them not to shoot just yet. I had a feeling he was curious about the Perfects and wanted to see what they were like before the triggers were pulled.
“Oh, it looks pretty obvious to me,” Araquiel retorted. “You’ve stumbled upon an isolated camp of Draenir survivors. My guess is they took advantage of the region’s harsh climate to stay out of sight, and they’ve been isolated from the rest of the world since the plague decimated their people.”
“Do you think Ta’Zan will mind if I rip some of them to shreds?” Abaddon hissed, baring his fangs. He was out for blood—he wasn’t angry or out of control, this time around. He was simply homicidal, and that made my stomach turn itself inside out.
Araquiel rolled his eyes, clearly frustrated. “For heaven’s sake, Brother, can we please not turn everything into a bloodbath? You’re literally down to your last chance before Father sends you back to the drawing board.”
Raphael chuckled.
“What does he mean by that?” Rose asked him.
Raphael was unable to conceal his smirk. “It’s what Ta’Zan does when he wants to remove a Perfect from this world. Permanently. What I escaped from. It seems like Abaddon has found the edge of Ta’Zan’s patience.”
“You shut your mouth, prissy boy!” Abaddon spat, extending his claws and shifting into an attack position.
The other Perfects moved outward, forming a semicircle in front of us, ready to take us on. I heard the clicks on the Draenir’s weapons behind us, and I knew this was about to go crazy, fast.
“We don’t wish to harm anyone,” Rakkhan finally said, though I could sense the wariness in his voice, without even looking at him. “We just want to live in peace.”
Araquiel pointed an angry finger at him. “That’s never going to happen! You will all pay for what you did to our father!”
Rose stepped forward, joined by Ben and Amane, with Ridan and Raphael right behind them. “What exactly did Ta’Zan tell you that the Draenir did to him?”
“They persecuted him! They tried to kill him! They made his life a living hell, and they killed his maker!” Araquiel said. “You think we’re the ones in over our heads? You have no idea!”
“Ta’Zan began to slaughter our people!” Rakkhan replied, raising his voice. His aura blazed crimson with fury and grief. “Sure, we weren’t too crazy about him, and we never approved of his creation, but we never sought to kill him. Not until our people started turning up maimed or dead! His maker was arrested for crimes against the Draenir. We had to punish him for what he did! He’s the one who allowed Ta’Zan to escape, to steal our research, even after he learned of what his precious creation had done!”
“Mudak Marduk killed himself in prison,” I added, clutching my sword handles. “Ta’Zan destroyed the Draenir because they tried to hold him and his maker accountable for their crimes. Granted, Mudak didn’t kill any Draenir himself, but by aiding and abetting Ta’Zan, he was responsible.”
“Enough!” Abaddon snarled. “I’ve had enough of your talking and meddling!”
“Brother, you really should stand down and leave us be,” Raphael said. “There aren’t enough of you for what we’ve got here.”
“Oh, yeah? How about I tear your head off, and then we’ll talk!” Abaddon replied.
He dashed forward, but before he could reach the speed needed to deliver any kind of attack on Raphael, one of the pulverizer weapons was fired. The pellet hit him right in the chest, bursting into a bright blue dust. Abaddon froze for a split second, his eyes wide with sheer horror as the blue particles attached themselves to his skin.
He gasped.
Then he turned to ashes, scattered onto the ground.
The other Perfects were stunned, unable to look away. All that was left of Abaddon, Ta’Zan’s psychopathic prize hunter, was a pile of ashes. There was no way of coming back from that. This time, Abaddon was definitely and irrevocably dead. I never took pleasure in the death of any creature, but in this case, I had to admit… I was relieved.
“You’ll pay for this!” Oriphiel hissed, then charged us.
“Oriphiel, don’t!” Araquiel said, but it was too late.
The other Perfects attacked, as well. Raphael, however, was quick to snatch Rose’s sword from her hand, dart toward Araquiel, and cut off his head. Within seconds, more pulverizer pellets were shot, and Oriphiel, Elyon, and the other ten Perfects in his crew were permanently destroyed.
Heavy silence settled between us for a while, as the breeze swept through and lifted some of the ashes into rolls of charcoal dust. The wet grass around us was covered in it, as the Perfects’ remains settled on each blade.
“Somehow, I didn’t see this coming,” Dmitri murmured, his eyebrows arched with surprise.
“You’re used to fighting these bastards tooth and nail, that’s why,” Zeriel replied. “I, for one, am perfectly okay with getting them off our backs. Finally.”
“That’s because you’ve had your ass handed to you by them one too many times,” Ridan said with a chuckle, making us all smile.
“You people wanted someone who can move around in the waters for this mission, yet all we do is hop from one island to another and fight Perfects on dry land,” Zeriel grumbled, crossing his arms.
Vesta giggled. “Okay, we’ll make sure we get attacked in the water next time, so you don’t feel left out anymore.”
Zeriel got so close to her that she could almost breathe him in, and his gaze darkened. “I’ll take you in the water right now and show you what I’m made of, if you’d like,” he whispered.
I could only imagine what Vesta felt like, in that moment. Her aura burst into shades of gold, while my cheeks caught fire. The Tritone king was deliciously shameless.
Raphael cleared his throat. “I feel like I should point out that we have a short supply of these pulverizer pellets. We’ve just wasted thirteen of them.”
“Yes, but we have one of Ta’Zan’s most valuable assets in our possession, now,” Rose replied, then gave Raphael a half-smile. “Well played. Araquiel will be useful, going forward.”
“Not just useful. Downright instrumental,” Amane said. “Araquiel is Ta’Zan’s right hand. Without him, Ta’Zan will have to nominate another.”
Rakkhan instructed the Draenir to pick up Araquiel’s body and take him into his hut.
“What do we do with him now?” the elder asked.
“He’ll regenerate,” I said. “We need to remove his memory chip and put a serium blocker on him, like we did with Douma.”
“That will take some time,” Amane replied. “I only have enough serium left for one blocker.”
Rose nodded, watching the young Draenir as they carried Araquiel’s body away, while two of them proceeded to bury his head beneath the roots of a nearby tree.
Raphael raised his hand. “Now would be a good time to put a serium blocker on me, too,” he replied. “Ta’Zan surely knows I’m with you by now. Araquiel will be presumed dead, but not me. So if you’re going to put a serium blocker on anyone, it’ll be me.”
“Oh man, he has a point,” I gasped. “We haven’t considered that.”
“The blocker doesn’t just stop the memory transfer—which, in my case, is moot, since I never had my memory chip removed, since it would’ve rendered me an amnesiac and not the amazing creature standing before you today,” Raphael said, smiling. “It also stops Ta’Zan from tracking me like he would Douma or Araquiel.”
“You’re right. Araquiel will be thought dead,” Rose replied. “You’re more of an urgency.”
Amane motioned for Raphael to go into the hut. “You make yourself comfortable, I’ll prepare the device.”
“And Araquiel? We’ll need to be cautious, still,” I said. “We can assume that Ta’Zan won’t look for him, but we can’t be 100% sure.”
“Okay. And as for the serium deposits, we’ll look for them during our mission, then,” Vesta suggested.
“Yes,” Rose said. “We’ll leave at midnight. Darkness works in our favor… In the meantime, we’ll remove that memory chip.”
We were all in agreement on this. We definitely had our hands full. But there were solutions to our problems, at least for the time being. Until the moment of our departure, however, we had some time to kill.
And Araquiel’s memories to wipe out.
Ridan
After Amane planted a serium blocker on Raphael and removed Araquiel’s memory chip, we took turns watching over his body while it regenerated. We still had some hours before midnight, and I’d already packed my bag for the road, complete with pulverizer pellets and my own weapon. Wallah had already shown me how to operate it, and we’d agreed to use the bullets first, and the pulverizer only if we had no other option.
Without a serium blocker, Araquiel was still at risk of discovery, but Rose and Ben agreed to keep him underground, in the stronghold, to avoid detection. It had worked with Douma, and it was bound to work for Araquiel. In addition, there was a chance Araquiel would automatically be presumed dead once the Perfects found traces of ash from the others in his crew. They were bound to find some left in the grass and could easily assume that he, too, had died permanently.
I went back to the surface, after I left Vesta and Zeriel with him, in one of the stronghold’s medical chambers. Outside, our crews were assembling and preparing for the trips ahead. Kallisto and Lumi were checking magical supplies, while Dmitri, Ridan, Nevis, and Taeral prepared the weapons and ammunition. Draven and Serena handled the sharpening of blades, while Avril and Heron were busy mingling with the young Draenir, getting to know them better.
Rose, Ben, Bijarki, and the Faulties helped some of them to clear out the vacant tents, and then dismantled them and burned them, piece by piece, in the campfire. The smaller our footprint, the better, in case of more Perfects popping by. Bogdana sat on the small steps leading up to Rakkhan’s porch, with the Elder right next to her. They were talking, nostalgic smiles settled on their faces as they looked around.
I wondered if they were discussing the days gone by, the Draenir, the times when she was still here and alarmingly close to Mudak… I still didn’t trust her. My gut was telling me that she wasn’t fully honest with us. That she was holding something back. According to Elonora and Lumi, I was well within my rights to be suspicious—they were, too.
I walked through the camp for a while, noticing the ashes scattered right by the entrance—dashes of gray across dark, wet green grass. I couldn’t shake the uneasiness that had been haunting me since the Perfects’ demise. More would come, eventually. I didn’t fully understand how they were so good at tracking us, but if Abaddon had done it, others could, too. In addition, there were aspects of Ta’Zan’s magi-tech that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around.
Amane’s figure slipped through the trees, several yards from the camp’s fence. I was compelled to follow. Light on my feet, I darted after her. She moved fast, like a flicker going deeper into the jungle. She didn’t notice me, though I stayed close.
She glanced over her shoulder, and I hid behind a tree. She was crying. It broke my heart to see her like this, and I became determined to find out what made her suffer.
I kept still, watching her climb into one of the tallest trees. She jumped from branch to branch, until she settled on one close to the top. She didn’t move for a while, but for her shoulders, as she shuddered and sobbed some more. I took a deep breath, then made my way up toward her.
Amane heard me and looked down, her bright orange eyes widening when she saw me.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice trembling.
Within seconds, I was sitting next to her on that same branch. It creaked beneath me, but I held on to the hope that it wouldn’t give out under my weight. It seemed sturdy enough to not drag me into an embarrassing episode in front of a creature that had me fascinated. My heart thumped whenever Amane looked at me. I could no longer ignore the effect she had on me. I had to do something about it.
“Just out for a stroll,” I replied, the corner of my mouth twitching.
She scoffed, then looked away. “And you couldn’t pick a different tree to enjoy the view?”
And what a view that was. We were still in the shadow of the treetop, but we could see everything around us, clearly, despite the gathering storm clouds. The jungle was thick and lush, bursting in deep shades of green and yellow. The gray sky stretched on forever. The ocean’s waters were almost teal, rather than the usual bold turquoise. The area surrounding Merinos was constantly battered by storms and week-long rains, but it still maintained a certain wild beauty that could take one’s breath away, effortlessly.
“I like this tree better,” I said. “It’s got you in it.”
Amane tried to smile, but there was so much sadness that it practically burst out of her. She caved and started crying again. I was speechless, my mind blank as I tried to do or say something to at least make her feel better. But nothing came out.
My arm, on the other hand, seemed to have a mind of its own. It wrapped itself around her shoulder, and I pulled her closer to me. Amane didn’t object, though. Instead, she kept sobbing uncontrollably.
“Shh… It’s going to be okay,” I whispered, then realized I had no idea what I was talking about. What if it wasn’t going to be okay at all? It would’ve made me a liar, or worse, an idiot. “Or, at least I think it will be.”
She didn’t reply, but she did calm down, over the course of a few minutes.
“What’s wrong, Amane?” I asked, gently squeezing her shoulder. Her flesh felt soft, yet firm at the same time. I felt her scales under my fingertips—slightly malleable, and not at all hard, like I’d imagined them. I found myself wondering what animals Ta’Zan had crossed to create her, for she was truly stunning.
“Everything,” she said. “Everything is wrong, and I’m to blame…”
“Wait, what are you talking about?”
“I did this!” she cried out, motioning around her. “The Draenir, the plague… I helped Ta’Zan destroy an entire civilization. Millions of innocent creatures, dead because of me!”
I exhaled. Technically speaking, Amane was right. But her circumstances were complicated, and she lacked the experience and reasoning required to understand that. Despite her brilliant mind, Amane had yet to learn to discern between the various shades of gray that life was made of.
“You didn’t know an
y better, Amane,” I said to her. “You were naïve. You only knew what Ta’Zan told you. You thought you were doing the right thing. Granted, devising a deadly virus isn’t exactly noble, but like I said, Ta’Zan manipulated you, like he manipulates everyone around him, to suit his needs.”
She nodded. “Like he’s manipulating my sister, you mean.”
“Well, yes. And you can’t blame yourself for any of it. Ta’Zan has kept you all in the dark for too long, and I doubt that Amal is just blindly following him now. She must have doubts of her own, but, without you, she might lack the courage to leave Ta’Zan.”
“We have to stop him,” she replied, tears glazing her orange eyes and turning them into precious amber gems. “I have to stop him, Ridan. No matter what. I have to do whatever it takes to prevent another genocide. I can’t let what happened to the Draenir happen to anyone else. Not to your people, not to any other planet in this endless universe. I can’t allow any more blood to be spilled for his lies.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. There was a sense of determination blaring from her very core, shaking my senses and demanding my full attention and admiration. She’d come a long way from the nihilistic rogue that had saved my life after Araquiel’s crippling blow. I owed her a lot, and I refused to let her succumb to any form of despair—not now, not ever.
But I also had to be honest with her.
“You know lives will be lost in this whole mess,” I said. “This is war, Amane. Others will die. Us included.”
“I’m aware,” she sighed. “But still, I think I could find a way to minimize the number of casualties. I think...”
“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.
She breathed out, then rubbed her face with her palms. “I’m not sure yet. It’s only an idea. I won’t know more unless I get to my sister. My mind works differently when she’s around. I told you, we may be twins, but we’re also two parts of a whole. If you think I’m smart now, wait till I’m with my sister. It’ll blow your mind.”
A Shade of Vampire 65: A Plague of Deceit Page 8
