Rise of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 3)

by Conner Kressley

  It sent him to the floor, grunting in anger.

  “Pilates, bitch,” I muttered.

  He wasn’t out for long. You see, the thing about that refractory period, is that three seconds isn’t really that long an amount of time.

  A wave of blue energy shot up at me. I tried to dive out of the way, but it slammed against my right shoulder. A blast of insane cold ran through me, freezing my arm where the energy touched.

  “Damnit!’ I screamed. That was enough. I looked down at my other hand, and at the cuff around it. For all intents and purposes, Roy was probably gone from this vessel, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t energy filling the cavern where a soul would reside.

  I had three seconds to scramble that energy, three seconds to save myself.

  With my right arm useless, I lifted my left, willing the Blade of the Divine to show itself. It pulled from the cuff with a whoosh, like Luke Skywalker with his lightsaber.

  I was quick as I pushed myself toward him, driving the blade into his chest and feeling the pop that came when the energy passed through his physical form and pierced the place where his spiritual form always hid.

  A blast of energy reverberated through the room and I held my stance.

  Roy screamed as his body shook. The warlock energy bled from him so much that his red eyes doubted, leaving him the eyes he was no doubt born with, the eyes he had before the demon part of him reared its ugly head.

  I pulled the Blade out and commanded it back inside. Roy’s eyes flickered to a close and his body went limp. Still, I knew he was alive. This body hadn’t died, and I needed to fix that. Otherwise, the terror he’d just inflicted would only be the beginning.

  With a mournful sigh, I pulled the switchblade from my back pocket, the one spelled to be able to cut through anything, even the throat of a warlock.

  “Rest well, friend,” I murmured, and started toward him.

  “Get the hell back, you loon!” Gary shrieked from beside me.

  Before I knew it, the imp was all over my, running up my body and scratching at any exposed part he could find, hoping to pull me away.

  “The curse!” I said, throwing him off me. He landed like a cat, on all fours, and sneered as he stood.

  “I don’t give two shits about your stupid curse. I’d go through a million curses if it meant stopping you from trying to kill him.”

  I sighed, more dread, more anguish washing over me. “I’m sorry, Gary,” I said. “The curse ate away at his soul. It destroyed him. I didn’t mean for it to. I swear I didn’t and, if I could trade places with him, I would. But it’s too late. His soul has already departed his body.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Gary balked, shaking his oblong head. “What the hell did you think was going to happen?”

  “What?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “You knew about this? Roy knew this would happen?”

  “Sure,” Gary responded curtly. “he’s not a complete moron,” His eyes drug over me. “Like some people I know.”

  “Why then?” I asked, swallowing hard. ‘Why would he put himself through this if he knew he was going to die?”

  “He’s not dead, dumbass,” Gary said. “Why do you think he performed that spell before he munched on you?”

  “The spell tying my soul to my body?” I asked.

  “Not just you,” Gary answered. “It tied his soul to. Albeit, in a less permanent manner.” He grinned. “You don’t wanna be in that thing where the morticians get to it. I’ll tell you that much.”

  “So he’s not dead?” I asked, looking over at Roy and feeling much lighter.

  “Hell no. He’s just taking a power nap; one that’ll probably last a lot longer thanks to that stupid magic sword up your sleeve.”

  “It’s not up my sleeve,” I answered, shrugging. “Like, in a literal sense, it’s not up my sleeve.”

  “How about you like, in a literal sense, kiss every square inch of my scaly green ass? What do you think about that?” he narrowed his spider eyes at me. “I didn’t want to help you lot in the first place. I’d had my fill of gods and goddesses. Wouldn’t care if I never saw another one.”

  “Another one?” I asked. “There’s just the one Go-”

  “Shut the fuck up,” Gary said quickly. “Like, for real, you should shut the fuck up. If you want to wait over there or something for Roy boy to wake up so he can give you the information you came for, then you can sit over there. But, as you do it- and please say this with me,” he said, splaying his green, elongated hands in front of him. “Don’t forget to shut the fuck up.”

  He shook his head. “I’d offer you coffee, but I wouldn’t have anywhere to put it, since your fat ass broke our coffee table.”

  I looked at myself. “I’m not- I’m not fa-”

  “Does that sound like shutting the fuck up to you?’ he looked over at me.

  Just them, a loud pounding came on the door. My body froze, and then I remembered that Merry was on the other side of it. If something had happened to her, I didn't know what I was going to do.

  I rushed toward the door, flinging myself at it, and pulling it open, untethered by the idea of who might be on the other side. If they had already gotten to her, then it really didn’t matter what they did to me.

  Luckily, Merry herself was on the other side.

  “It’s okay,” I said, letting out a sigh of relief. “I’m fine. Roy is fine too. Everything is fine.”

  I put my hand on her shoulder but, as I felt her tenseness, I knew something was up.

  “What is it?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at the woman I loved.

  “He found her, Callum,” she said, tears in her eyes. “Your brother found Amber.”

  19

  My heart leapt clean into my throat. As pressing and immediate as my need to get to the bottom of my condition and its connection to my brother was, it was nothing compared to this.

  Amber was what all of this was about. She was the future destroyer of the world. Her fate was the fate of us all, and I needed to make sure it was a good one.

  I looked down at Merry, at the tears cascading down her cheeks. I vowed then that I would do everything in my power to make sure those tears were the last pained ones she ever cried. She wouldn’t lose her daughter, not to my brother or the future.

  “Where is she?” I asked, quickly, nodding back at Gary and pushing out into the hallway. Roy would have come in handy for this. As a half demon warlock, his powerset was formidable, but he was down for the count and- if what I remembered about the Blade of the Divine was true- he’d be out of commission for awhile now. No. This was on me to fix, and I needed to move quickly.

  So why was Merry hesitating?

  “Merry, where is she?” I repeated as Merry stood, blinking at me in the hallway.

  As I stared at her,I realized what was going on. She was still afraid of me, afraid of the thing that entered my body when I went out. “Merry, it’s me,” I said firmly. “Look at the mark. It’s me.”

  “I know it’s you,” she said, shaking her head. “But it won’t always be. If your brother gives you a fatal blow and that thing enters your body again-”

  “That won’t happen,” I assured her.

  “You don’t know that!” she yelled in response. “You haven’t seen what you become when it’s inside of you. You haven’t seen what you’re capable. I had no idea one man could ever be so destructive.”

  A wave of guilt and even shame ran through me, but I didn’t have the luxury to address it. This was insane. I couldn’t believe I was even being forced to have this conversation.

  “I understand that you’re afraid, Merry,” I said, trying to keep my voice measured and calm. “But my brother is with your daughter right now, and we have no idea what he wants with her.”

  “Right,” she said quickly. “We don’t know. For all we know, he wants to protect her.”

  “You don’t believe that,” I said, shaking my head. “He attacked me, Merry. He did this to me. He incapacita
ted your daughter’s greatest protector, and I promise you, he didn’t do it to help her.” I took a deep breath. “He harnessed the power of an extinguished mystical bloodline. I have no idea what he used it for other than to put this weird mojo on me. He could have any sort of abilities at this point. He could be one of the most dangerous people in the world.” I put my hands on her arms and squeezed. “I love my brother, Merry. I know I killed him, and it’s hard to believe, but I love him more than almost anything else in the world. There hasn’t been a day of my eternity where his face hasn’t flashed through my mind.” I nodded. “But I won’t let him hurt your daughter. I just won’t.”

  “There are others,” she croaked. “Your mother is there. I called her, and Andy, Clint, and Aria. Not to mention Kyle. Maybe his luck powers will-”

  “None of it matters,” I said firmly. “We can’t trust my mother and the others don’t have the power to stand up to Abel, not if he has the sort of energy I think he does. I know this is hard. I know you just want to do what’s best for your daughter, what you need to in order to keep her safe.” I bit my lower lip. “Believe me when I tell you that’s me. I’ve been in this world a long time, Merry and, in that long time, nothing has ever been more important to me than this. Let me do what I need to do. Let me fix things. Let me make this right.”

  Merry stared at me for a long time. Her eyes searched mine, looking into me and obviously weighing the decision before her.

  “Merry,” I repeated. “You know me.”

  “She’s downstairs,” Merry said, her voice cracking. “Apartment 413.”

  “Downstairs?” I asked, my eyes widening. “In this building.”

  “The place was spelled even tighter than his own apartment. Roy assured me that she’d be safe there. I thought-”

  “Stay here,” I said, and rushed passed her toward the staircase.

  “Like hell,” I heard Merry mutter from behind me. That didn’t come as a surprise. As much as I was intent on keeping Amber safe, Merry was even more so. I bounded into the staircase, galloping as I descended the stairs. A thousand thoughts pushed their way through my cluttered mind. If the apartment Amber was in was spelled tighter than Roy’s own, that meant that my brother had magic potent enough to burst through it. If the runes I’d noticed on Roy’s walls were any indication of what I could expect downstairs, that meant Abel was packing some serious heat.

  Either that, or he hadn’t actually gotten in. Merry never said Abel was inside, only that he’d found them. Maybe I’d open the fourth floor door to find my brother waiting outside the apartment. That was certainly a better, if less likely scenario.

  I burst through the fourth floor doorway with Merry close behind me. The instant I took in the sight, I knew things were worse than I’d thought.

  The door to room 413 had been blown off the hinges. Splinters of wood tinted with red magic lay crackling and useless on the floor. The air was still as I rushed toward the room and the hallway was empty; too empty.

  It took a half a second for me to realize what had happened. My brother had frozen the rest of the area. It was a way to keep the rest of the people on the floor from knowing what was going on. It was also why the air was so still. Even that was stuck in place.

  It wouldn’t work on me, of course. Only baseline humans were susceptible to that sort of manipulation. Still, it was quick tricky and spoke to the sort of magic my brother had at his disposal.

  I stopped hearing Merry’s footsteps falling behind me. Turning back quickly, I saw the magic had taken effect on her as well. She stood there, frozen in a running stance, her face painted with worry and urgency.

  “I’ll get her, Merry,” I said, turning back around. “I promise.”

  Reaching the door, I threw myself inside. Even though the protective runes had been broken and were- as such- incapable of keeping me out, I still felt their immense power as I moved through the doorway.

  Panic ran through me as I took in the room. The place was a mess and there, frozen in the center of the room with his gun raised, stood Andy. Rage pulled at my heart as I looked him over. He was right here, ready to protect Amber even if it meant his death. He wouldn’t have been able to kill Abel. Garreth had made it clear that his resurrection made it so he could never take another human life. Still, it mustn’t have messed with his DNA enough to make him anything other than human. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been frozen like this.

  With my guard up, I raised my hand and called on the Blade of the Divine. My other arm had thawed enough to be usable, though I knew a straight up fight with Abel probably wouldn’t end up going in my favor.

  I needed to do to him what I did to Roy, use his weaknesses against him and gain the upper hand long enough to take him out with the Blade. That plan, of course, hinged on the fact that- in this state- my brother even had weaknesses.

  I turned a corner to find my mother laying unconscious on the floor. Beside her was Aura and there, on the bed, lay Clint. They had all been dealt with rather easily, all taken out by the brother I murdered all those years ago. He had come back now, and he was ready to take his revenge, it seemed.

  “There you are,” a familiar voice sounded from the fear corner of the room. Turning, I moved the Blade of the Divine in front of me, clutching it with both hands like it was an actual sword with an actual hilt. “I’m glad you’re here,” Abel said, stepping out from the shadows in the corner of the room. “I was wondering when we’d get to catch up.”

  20

  I held tightly to the Blade as I moved closer to Abel. My heart was racing, but my hands were firm and still. I might have hated the idea of hurting my brother right down to the bone, but I wouldn’t let him harm Amber, providing I wasn’t too late already.

  “Where is she?” I asked, looking around the room at the array of broken and unconscious bodies and hoping Amber hadn’t suffered a similar fate. “What did you do to her?”

  “Me?” he asked, his mouth turning up at the corners. “I did nothing to her, Brother. It was you. You’re the one who put her in this situation. It was your actions that made her what she is.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” I argued, settling a few feet from him. “Amber is the Antichrist. It’s the way she was born. It was fated. There’s nothing I could have done to cause that to happen.”

  “Is that what you think, Brother?” Abel asked, shaking his head. “Tell me, how is it you could live in this world for so long and still know so little of it.”

  “Stop this,” I said, my voice nearly a growl. “I know what you’re doing.”

  “Do you?” he contested. “I doubt that very seriously, but why don’t you shed some light on things for me?”

  “You’re trying to screw with me, to confuse me and throw me off my game.”

  In truth, I hadn’t been on my game since the moment I laid eyes on my brother again, maybe even before that. All of this had gotten out of hand. Things had been moving too quickly, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I couldn’t keep up with them.

  Abel sighed heavy, looking at me with eyes tinged with something like regret.

  “If you are confused, then I’m afraid that’s proof of your own lacking. I’ve done nothing but save you from your own actions as well as the circumstances of your birth.”

  “Circumstances of my birth?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “The circumstances of my birth were the same as yours, only earlier.” I gnarled my teeth together. “Now stop playing with me and tell me where to find Amber.”

  “The girl isn’t here,” Abel said, shaking his head. “She must have left moments before my arrival, because your lackeys and Mother assumed she was still here. I found here and the leprechaun gone when I searched the room.” He shrugged. “I shouldn’t be surprised. He has the luck of the Irish and she has the Wisdom of Solomon. It’s quite a potent combination.” He sighed again. “It’ll make it much more difficult for me to kill her.”

  My heart dropped. I should have known better, b
ut there was still a piece of me that was hoping I had simply misunderstood what my brother’s true intentions were. Maybe he was just upset with me. Maybe he wanted revenge for what I did to him. Anything but this. Anything but the truth.

  “Abe, what the hell are you doing?” I asked, tightening my grip on the Blade of the Divine. I knew now, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was going to have to use it on my brother. If he wanted to kill Amber, he was going to have to come through me first…again.

  “You’re not this person,” I said, remembering my little brother, remembering the kind boy who tended sheep and was afraid of storms. He wasn’t a murderer. He couldn’t be. So what had happened to him? He should have been in paradise. The Who Made Us loved Abel. He preferred him actually. That was the whole thing about our conflict. How was it possible that, in the presence of the Big Guy, Abel could grow into a cold blooded killer? That wasn’t how it worked. “She’s innocent, Abe,” I said. “She’s an innocent little girl.”

  “She used to be,” Abel answered. “And don’t use that tone with me. I’m not the one who took that away from her. I’m not the one who made her what she is.”

  There he went again with this ‘making’ crap. I didn’t give Amber this horrible destiny. She was born with it. She had to have been.

  “Do you think I find joy in this?” he asked, blinking back tears. “Do you think I wanted this, to come back to this horrific place and be turned into a monster? I was happy, brother. I was at peace. I’d even found a way to talk to you from time to time. I didn’t want things to change, but I couldn’t stop the rising tide. I couldn’t undo what had been set into motion.” He shook his head. “And you- you were right there in the center of it. It was all about you, and then it wasn’t anymore. It was about her then, about the girl. So I had to make it only about the girl. I had to take you out of the equation.”

  He was technically the enemy. I knew that, but he was still my brother. He was still the person closest to my heart. So, when I spoke to him next, my voice was full of concern, full of empathy.