Zealot (Hidden: Soulhunter Book 3)

by Colleen Vanderlinden

  It had to. I was running out of options.

  Chapter Seven

  It seems that no matter where I go, I find myself pulled back to Detroit. No matter how much I love London, Paris, and Tokyo, no matter how I crave the comfort that comes with the old temples to my fellow immortals, I find myself drawn to this city that is home to none of us, and yet, home to all because of Mollis’s tie with it and the way Mollis has changed all of us. Sometimes, I hate it. I hate the mingled scent of car exhaust and fast food, the litter, the crumbling homes with their overgrown lawns. Sometimes, I want to be anywhere else.

  And yet. There is a beauty to Detroit that lies just below the surface. It is the beauty that comes from age and hard times, from perseverance and pushing limits. It is the vitality that comes from a place that never seems to give up, no matter how much everyone tells it that its time has passed.

  It is all very Mollis, really. Mollis and Detroit are tied in my mind, as they are tied in the minds of all of the immortals. And so, even though I often hate Detroit, I love it more than anywhere else.

  And so, I found myself in Detroit again after my failed trip to Egypt and a few more of Morpheus’s favorite places, slaying the undead after checking in with Detroit’s vampire queen, Rayna, and hearing that though her people were being more careful, more than a few had died after trying to feed upon the undead. The rest of the world, undoubtedly, would not mourn the loss of a few vampires, but I knew better. Rayna’s people were good, honest, honorable vampires. Their loss, especially in Detroit, would be felt. The vampires mourned, and they attempted to keep the peace that Brennan had been working toward, and they raged at the fact that they could not do anything against a foe that only a Guardian could destroy.

  It was becoming a common theme among my friends and allies. There was anger there, that they could not solve this problem themselves, along with guilt that it was up to one lone ancient Guardian and seven New Guardians to solve this plague that was ripping the world apart.

  I chased a group of undead through the city’s dark streets and found myself near the old Packard Plant. Once I finally cornered them, slaying them was not difficult. They fought, frenzied, hungry for immortal flesh, and my flesh in particular. They feared me, hated me. It was in their eyes, in the particularly ferocious way they clawed and snapped at me. Killing them was unsatisfying, only because I knew that there were so many more out there, causing death and destruction at that very moment.

  I stood still, catching my breath, and glanced around. The Packard Plant was, for Mollis and her friends, at least, where all of this had begun. It had been the hiding place for the gateway between the Aether and Nether and the mortal realm. It was how Mollis’s enemies had first gotten to her, and how she had made her way into our world.

  It had been where her mate had died, and where she’d begun shedding the mortal disguise Tisiphone had given her, hoping to protect her from the enemies who knew her existence would change everything they knew. It had been her beginning, as much as it had been our end. For years, the presence of the gateway had kept mortals away. The factory had remained empty, disintegrating a bit more year by year. It had become a favorite place for those who enjoyed photographing the ruins of modern life.

  And now… now that the gateway was gone, life had returned. I could see repairs to the structure, new glass where there had once been gaping, empty windows. A few small production facilities were already open and operating, and there were plans to develop the rest of the site. It was progress, and it made me feel empty.

  I was so lost in thought that it took me a while to realize that there was an immortal presence nearby.

  A powerful one.

  One I had thought I would never have the experience of feeling again. I whipped my head back and forth, then began running through the still-dilapidated parts of the old factory, looking for her.

  Nyx.

  Nyx, who was supposed to be sleeping, who had decided to turn this world over to Mollis, entrust it to her care. Nyx, who was the Creator of all existence, including my own.

  My heart pounded, and I ran. I rounded a corner, and there She was, as if She had been waiting for me. She was the same as always: larger than life, terrifying, beautiful. She looked at me with kind, sad eyes, and held Her hand out.

  “Guardian,” She said. Her voice thundered, sent prickles along my skin. I had forgotten what it felt like to be near Her, to feel Her power. Mollis, Her granddaughter, holds a good portion of Her power. But Nyx Herself… it was enough to make me feel dizzy.

  I stepped forward and took Her outstretched hand and bowed low before Her. “It is an honor to behold You again, Creator,” I said quietly.

  “Rise, Guardian,” she said, and I did.

  Nyx is much taller than I am, in her physical form at least. This is the form she chooses to allow us to see; in reality, she is nothing but power, energy… magic. She has no actual form, other than the one she has created to allow us to communicate with her. All of us, the immortals, carry some of that power in us. That is why we can resurrect. We are, like Nyx, more like power contained in a body, than a body that contains power. That is why, in general, we are unkillable.

  Except for when Mollis ends us. We do not know why Nyx gave Mollis this power. I cannot begin to comprehend what led her to foresee any situation in which a single immortal should be allowed to decide which of the others lived and died. If it must be so, however, I am glad that she chose Mollis, who, as rage-filled and frightening as she is, is the most moral of us.

  That may not be saying much, considering most of the immortals I know. But it is enough.

  Nyx studied me, and I focused on remaining still and strong under her scrutiny.

  “This world, Guardian, is not as I left it,” she finally said.

  I nodded. “That is true. We have had some complications since you entered your sleep.” I wanted to ask her why she had chosen to wake now, but at the same time, I felt it was an answer I would rather not hear.

  “Yes. Complications,” she said quietly. Of course, “quiet” for Nyx is roughly the sonic equivalent of a freight train passing while you stand, awed and helpless beside the tracks. “This world is overrun by abominations.”

  “The undead,” I agreed silently.

  “It is your duty to destroy these beings,” She said.

  “There are too many. I cannot keep up. I have seven New Guardians, but the undead taint is spreading more quickly than we can stop it. We continue to work at it, and I vow to work until every last one of them has been destroyed.”

  She sighed, and it felt like a tornado. “I know you would. It is in your nature to be tenacious. Unfortunately, it is also in your nature to be utterly incapable of recognizing when the time has come to stop fighting.”

  I stared at her in silence.

  “This world is a loss, Guardian. Eunomia,” She said, saying my name as if it was a foreign word, as if She Herself had not named me. “This is not as it should be. This is not the world I created.”

  “Worlds change,” I said, balling my trembling hands into fists. “They change, and we change with them. Yes?”

  “Not like this. This was never part of My plan. Someone has corrupted all that I have created, destroyed the beauty of My most beloved realm. I refuse to let them pervert the beauty I put into this world.”

  “What are you saying, Creator?” I asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “I am saying, Guardian, that I will destroy this world and make it anew, rather than watch it be further covered in filth.” I began to argue, and she silenced me. “I left this world in the care of my granddaughter, with you at her side. It has not been enough, and that is my own error. I should have known better.”

  “Mollis can’t stop them. Only a Guardian can,” I said quietly. “Or the dead, but they are often too afraid or confused to fight.” I paused, realizing that I was becoming angry. “You cannot blame her for my failure.”

  “I do not. And I do not blame y
ou, either,” Nyx said in a tone that I suppose was meant to be comforting. “The only one I blame is whoever it was who set this plague upon the world I so lovingly created. It angers me to see so much work, so much beauty, corrupted.”

  It hit me, then, that Lethe had indeed heard or foreseen or whatever it is she does. She had heard this. This was “the end” she had spoken of.

  I could not allow it to happen.

  “I beg you, Creator. Allow me to continue fighting. Give me more time. I will fight harder. I will push my New Guardians harder, I—”

  “What more can you give? It is not possible to squeeze blood from a stone. You have nothing left, and neither do your New Guardians. I have failed. I have allowed something to live that is so vile it has destroyed everything. This is my failure, and I will not make it again.”

  “Please. Please don’t do this,” I begged.

  She was still, and quiet, and the way she looked at me made me want to disappear. Finally, she shook her head. “Say your goodbyes, Guardian. Hold your loved ones, and leave nothing left unsaid.”

  “Give me a chance!” I shouted, no longer caring who it was I was shouting at or what she might do to me for this show of disrespect. “You give up too easily. You think I am empty, that I have nothing left to give? I am willing to fight every second of every day of my existence to keep this world alive. I will do everything in my power to fix this. I will save it. But you have to give me a chance.”

  “Why?”

  She genuinely seemed curious, and that alone made me nervous. I paused, and tried to think of something that might sway her from this madness. Immortals are flighty, tumultuous beings. It is something I have observed over my long existence. It is, perhaps, easier to see when one has been trained since day one to be emotionless and logical. My mind spun, and I finally had an answer.

  “Because I have dutifully served. Because I have never been swayed in my devotion to the cause you created me for. I have been loyal, obedient, and tireless in my duties. I have never asked anything of you, my Creator. I beg for this. Give me time. If I can halt the destruction, you will not have to destroy all of the hard work you put into this world, a world I know you love, by the way.”

  She stayed silent, as if considering it.

  “Do you really want to destroy Tisiphone? Mollis?” I pressed, and there it was: a flicker of doubt. Her blood ran through the veins of Tisiphone, Mollis, and baby Hades, the Furies being the only beings she had truly birthed. They held a special place in her heart, and I was not above using that connection to my advantage. “If this world ends, so do they.”

  “I can always create more,” she said, though I could hear the worry in her voice.

  “You know better than that. You can create beings that look like them, sound like them, have their powers. But they will not be them, not any more than my sisters and I were all the same being, no matter how much we looked and sounded alike.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed her face, and I did not understand it. “You were never meant to be like your sisters, Eunomia.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She stayed silent. “You have until the first night of the next full moon. I refuse to watch this mess any longer than that.”

  “Thank you, Nyx,” I said, bowing low. It was not much. Barely any time at all, really. But it was something, and I would find a way to make it work. I would find a way to save it all, no matter how hard I had to work to do it, no matter who I had to hurt or where the journey took me. I would not see this world and the people I loved destroyed.

  I straightened to see that I was alone in the factory. Nyx had gone, and her absence allowed me to breathe easily once again.

  Now… now, I had work to do.

  Chapter Eight

  I lost track of how many days and nights I spent hunting, pushing my New Guardians harder, constantly, to destroy as many of the undead as possible. Quinn, at least, seemed to sense my urgency and prodded the others on. Like me, he did not sleep.

  I kept Nyx’s ultimatum to myself. I considered telling the other Guardians, or telling Mollis, but in the end, I kept it to myself. I checked in with Nain regularly, and his constant worry over Mollis’s emotional state and Nether’s increasing volatility ensured that I kept it to myself. Adding extra worries to Mollis now would cause nothing but a bigger mess.

  Aside from the fact that this was my problem to solve, there was the fact that as powerful as my best friend is, this is one thing she cannot help me with. Feeling helpless would only add to everything else she was dealing with. If I could protect her from that, I would.

  So I hunted, and I drove my New Guardians crazy, and I let everything else in my life take a back seat to trying to save the world. I gave it no thought at all, other than that I needed to save it.

  It wasn’t until my New Guardians and I were back in London once again that I finally made my way home, if only for a moment or two. When I arrived, our flat was empty. I walked through the living room. Some of Sean’s toys were scattered on the floor, and several intricate LEGO creations lined the windowsill. I studied them, then turned and noticed Brennan’s jacket tossed over the back of his favorite chair. I walked over to the chair and picked the jacket up, gently, as if it was Brennan himself I was holding in my arms. I lifted it to my face and breathed in, letting his scent soothe me the way few things ever have. It was comfort, and strength, and if I felt ridiculous for needing this just now, I chose to ignore it. I could be strong for everyone else. I could stop pretending when I was alone. I buried my face in the nubby fabric and kept breathing. After a few moments, I realized that I was trembling.

  It wasn’t enough. We were not even making a dent in the number of undead. We would clean out a city and move on to the next, only to find, upon returning, that it was as if we’d never fought the undead at all.

  The only way I’d marked the passing of days was by looking at the night sky, watching the moon grow a bit fuller every night, and realizing that I was failing miserably.

  My brooding was interrupted by a knock at the door. I set Brennan’s jacket down and took a deep, steadying breath, focusing on trying to get a read on who stood on the other side of the door.

  When I realized who it was, I looked at the door in disbelief.

  “More proof that the end is nigh, maybe,” I muttered to myself. I walked over to the door and pulled it open. Triton stood on the other side. His eyes met mine for just a moment. He looked nervous.

  “Eunomia,” he said quietly.

  “Triton.”

  “I owe you an explanation.”

  “You think?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I wanted to say so much more. I wanted to hurt him. Instead, I clamped my mouth shut and waved him into our flat. We walked into the living room, and he waited for me to sit at one end of the sofa before he sat at the other. He rested his elbows on his knees and shot me a nervous glance.

  “I really am sorry,” Triton finally said.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “We were friends for a very long time. You were one of the people I was closest to in the entire world. I never would have hurt you willingly.”

  “So you hurt me unwillingly.”

  “They didn’t give me a choice,” he said miserably.

  “Who is ‘they?’”

  “I don’t know,” he answered. “I swear I don’t. They made me forget, somehow.”

  Dream gods. I wanted to scream. I had been so focused on the undead, I had let my search for Morpheus and the others fall by the wayside. But if the world was ending, finding Morpheus to find out who was behind it all would hardly matter at all.

  “So did they mind control you?” I asked.

  Triton shook his head. “No.”

  I studied him. He took a deep breath. “They threatened my sisters.”

  “Which ones?” There are jokes upon jokes about how many children Zeus fathered, but Poseidon could have given him a run for his money.

&
nbsp; “Evadne and Rhode.”

  I nodded. He was older than both of them, and had always been protective of Evadne in particular.

  “Eva’s been through enough lately,” he continued. “She hasn’t been right since Apollo’s death.”

  “Oh. Right,” I said, remembering that centuries ago, Apollo had fathered a child with her. Being Apollo, of course, he’d moved on soon after bedding her, but she had never quite stopped caring for him. I shook my head, refusing to be distracted by a trip down memory lane. “Your sisters have your father to protect them, if they even needed protecting. They are not exactly powerless in their own rights.”

  “I know. But whoever these assholes were who made me do that to you, they were apparently powerful enough that I was afraid they’d really hurt them. I wish I could remember who they were,” he said, frustration evident in his voice. “All I can remember is that they vowed that if I didn’t do what they asked, they’d make sure I’d never see my sisters again, and that they’d suffer horribly. They…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “They made me see what they’d suffer through,” he continued quietly. “I can’t un-see it, Eunomia.”

  We were back to mental manipulation, in a big way. I needed to get to the bottom of this somehow.

  “Does your father know that they were threatened?”

  He shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “I was told not to tell him.”

  I felt the urge to scream again.

  “We need to get to the bottom of this, Triton.”

  “That’s why I’m here. I convinced them both to go into hiding. They’re safe. When you saw me at my father’s palace, you suggested having a Fury look at me. I couldn’t let you do that then, not until I had them hidden safely. But now… look, I want to make this up to you. I mean, I know I can’t, not really. But I want to try. I’m sorry. I hate what happened to you.”