Redemption (Book 4, The Redemption Series)

by S. J. West

  This is the first time I’ve seen Rafael Rossi in the flesh. Only Bianca showed up for my wedding in Cirrus. I wasn’t told why Rafael was a no show, but I didn’t really care at the time. I could see why so many women found him attractive. Though, with Baal wearing his skin, Rafael didn’t look like the golden boy of Alto anymore.

  “Where is my son?” I ask Baal when we’re only a few feet away from him.

  “Safe,” Baal answers back. “At least he will be as long as you keep to your end of this bargain. I hope you don’t intend to just slaughter me like you did poor Belphagor.”

  “That was a mistake,” I tell him.

  “Well, I want to make sure there aren’t any mistakes made during this trade,” Baal says. “I’ll give your son back to you as long as you just take my seal and leave me alive.”

  “Do you intend to stay in this body you’ve stolen?” I ask him, stopping just a couple of feet away from him.

  Baal shrugs his shoulders. “Depends on if I can get the lovely Bianca to ever accept me as her husband. It seems Rafael was a very bad boy when he was alive. I wouldn’t waste my time mourning over his loss if I were you. He got what he deserved.”

  “No one deserves to have their life snatched away from them prematurely,” I say.

  “I really don’t care,” Baal says off- handedly, sounding bored by the conversation. “Why don’t we just do what we’re here to do? The sooner this is settled, the sooner you can have your son back.”

  I notice Daniel turn around to keep an eye on the area behind us. I look over at Malcolm and see him nod to me to go ahead and take the seal, but his eyes are watching Baal very closely.

  I take two steps forward towards Baal.

  “Give me one of your hands,” I tell him.

  As I look at Baal, I can see a fine sheen of perspiration covering his brow. Malcolm’s right. Baal is definitely nervous about something, but what?

  “I won’t kill you unless you do something stupid,” I try to reassure him.

  Ok, maybe not the most comforting words I could have uttered in that moment, but I feel sure I got my point across. Maybe he was just nervous about giving up his seal. I wasn’t sure how it would affect him. Surely giving up that much power would lessen his own. Perhaps that was what he was concerned about.

  “Give me one of your hands,” I repeat more stridently.

  With great hesitance, Baal lifts his right hand. I grab it with my own and wait for him to transfer his seal to me. He doesn’t. I squeeze his hand so tightly I hear a few bones crack with the added pressure. He whimpers but still doesn’t transfer his seal to me.

  “Give me your seal!” I yell at him, quickly losing what little patience I have left.

  I see Baal look over my right shoulder. He smiles at whatever he sees there before looking me straight in the eyes.

  “You should be more careful about what you ask for,” Baal says to me with a sneer.

  I feel the full force of the seal transfer hit me in the gut. The pain makes me feel like I just jumped off a high cliff and hit the ground at full velocity. I hear myself scream out as I experience a pain that is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. None of the other two seal transfers felt this excruciating. The deep-set pain emanates from my lower abdomen all the way through to my back. I feel like someone has just drilled a hole straight through me. I close my eyes against the agony as I fall to the sand on my knees.

  “Kill the bitch!” I hear Baal scream to someone as he wrenches his hand out of mine. “We might not get another chance!”

  I’m faintly aware of the sound of swords clashing against one another and know Malcolm and Daniel are in a fierce battle behind me. I force my eyes open and see Baal backing away from me. He looks over at something to my left. I turn my head in that direction and see Mammon, in the body of Callum Ellis, lifting a sword above his head and swinging it down with all his might towards me.

  I hear Malcolm scream my name somewhere behind me, but he’s too far away to be of any help.

  I stare at Mammon’s blade and watch it arc down towards my head like the action is happening in slow motion. The power I’ve just absorbed from Baal reaches down into the darkest part of my soul, yanking all of my rage and hatred up through the wall I’ve been using to keep it at bay. It rises to the surface all at once, bubbling over like boiling water. I instantly feel a sense of freedom in no longer having to keep it contained.

  I focus this newfound power from my anger at Mammon. I stretch out my hand and watch as a ball of blue fire flies from my palm and punches him directly in the gut, propelling his body so far back I can’t even see where he finally lands. I immediately turn my full attention to Baal.

  “Damn it! This should have worked! It should have knocked you on your ass!” he yells at me after he sees that his orchestrated deception with Mammon has failed.

  I watch as he quickly brings up his holographic display over his broken right hand and punches in a code of some sort.

  I feel the earth beneath me lurch so violently it knocks me off balance, and I find myself lying face down against the white sand. When I look back up to find Baal, he’s already phased away.

  In the distance, I hear the simultaneous screams of thousands of scared people emanate from the cloud city of Alto.

  “Anna!” Malcolm screams as he comes to kneel down beside me. He pulls me up to a sitting position looking half crazed with worry.

  I take a few precious seconds to look behind me and see a scattering of dead bodies bleeding out all over the white sand. Daniel is walking over to us with his sword dripping with blood. I see a deep, open wound across his chest that is bleeding profusely.

  The ground beneath us begins to tilt slightly to the right.

  “What’s happening?” I ask Malcolm.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “But I need to get you out of here.”

  “We have to follow Baal,” I say. “He might do something to Lucas!”

  “Baal’s phase trail leads to Hell,” Malcolm says, ending my hope that we could follow it and find our son. “Besides, you’re still alive. Baal won’t do anything to Lucas because he knows that’s the only reason you won’t kill him.”

  I fully intend to kill Baal the next time I see him. I wasn’t sure what he did to me during the transfer of his seal, but he seemed to think it would knock me out, allowing Mammon to kill me easily. Cowards like that didn’t deserve to live. They needed to be put down like the mangy dogs they were.

  “Malcolm!” We hear Brutus yell from the veranda in front of what’s left of the shattered glass wall in the throne room. Brutus quickly phases down to us as Malcolm helps me to my feet.

  “You need to get Anna out of here,” Brutus says urgently. “Someone just blew the propulsion system keeping Alto in the air. The city is sinking. We only have a few minutes left before it crashes to earth.”

  Now I know what Baal did right before he left.

  I look over at Daniel. “Get Linn and Bai out of here,” I tell him.

  I don’t have to say it twice. Daniel immediately phases back to the throne room to get his family out of harm’s way.

  “What about the people in the city?” I ask Brutus. “Is there enough time for them to get to the escape pods?”

  “If there were any escape pods to get to,” Brutus says in frustration. “We were informed they were all jettisoned without any passengers at the exact same moment the propulsion systems were blown.”

  “If Alto falls, it’ll destroy the down-world city beneath it,” Malcolm says. “What about the backup propulsion system?”

  “It was blown too,” Brutus tells us. “There’s no way to save the city. Just get Anna out of here before it comes crashing down. The royals who have personal teleporters have already left, but there’s simply no time to teleport everyone in the city somewhere else.”

  Brutus looks completely powerless to stop what is about to happen. It disgusts me slightly to see him just give up and want to run away lik
e a scared little child. I feel Malcolm take hold of my arm closest to him as if he intends to take Brutus’ advice and phase me away.

  I yank my arm out of his grasp.

  “Anna, we need to go!” Malcolm says urgently. “There’s nothing we can do!”

  The ground beneath our feet lurches with a great force, almost knocking me off my feet again. The protective force field of the dome surrounding Alto blinks with a flash of light just before completely disappearing. The gale force winds at this elevation tear at my thin dress, and I hear the gossamer material begin to rip as it’s sheered by the wind. Malcolm grabs my arm again, and I yank it out of his grasp for a second time.

  “I’m not running away!” I yell at them.

  “We can’t do anything!” Malcolm protests.

  “You can’t. But I can!”

  I fly straight up into the air and hover above the city. If the situation wasn’t so tragic, I might think what is happening is pretty from this vantage point. Some of the buildings within the city itself are crumbling against the might of the wind. They were never built to withstand so much pressure being applied against them. Now that the force field is no longer present, the water that made up the pseudo-ocean around the city is spilling over the sides, forming what appears to be one massive waterfall in the sky. As I float above what is quickly turning into the ruins of Alto, I begin to wonder if I should just let nature take its course.

  Were the people of Alto really worth saving? Wouldn’t it be a more fitting justice to allow them to fall out of the sky and reap their just reward for living in decadence all these years? Yet, what about those below them? Did the people in the down-world city of Rio de Janeiro deserve such a horrible demise? Perhaps they would find more peace in death than in the lives they were being forced to live. Such a catastrophic event was meant to happen in history from time to time. It weeded out the weak and forced the strong to survive.

  A part of me simply wanted to sit back and watch the devastation that was about to take place. Another part of me wanted to do everything within my power to aid the people below me. I could hear their screams of terror as death approached. Their fear was intoxicating and made me feel drunk with power as I held their fates in the palms of my hands. I could save them, or I could simply do nothing and watch them all die.

  I turn my gaze away from the city of Alto and notice a chain of mountains dotting a large bay of water in the down-world. It looks like as good a place as any to land a cloud city.

  I stretch out my arms on either side of me and send out thick streams of blue fire from each palm. The fire acts like ropes, securely tethering the city to me. The strength of my telekinetic power has increased to a point where I feel as if I could change the course of the Earth’s rotation if I wanted to. But right now, I’m only interested in holding Alto up, like a child would a ball in the palm of their hands. I decrease the cloud city’s descent just enough to better control it’s trajectory to the rocky terrain underneath it. I begin to fly through the air dragging Alto along with me. Once I’m over the mountain range within the bay, I loosen my grasp on Alto and allow it to come to a gentle rest as it’s cradled within the bowl shaped formation the mountains make.

  Almost immediately, I hear cheers come from the citizens of Alto as their lives are saved.

  Their jubilation brings me no joy. I simply wonder how people can be happy living such useless lives. Perhaps I should have simply followed the rules of survival of the fittest and only allowed those strong enough to live through such a disaster continue to exist.

  I phase back down to the beach area and find Malcolm there waiting for me. The look of relief on his face turns my stomach.

  “Are you all right?” he asks, holding his arms out for me to walk into.

  I stare at him for a moment, simply wondering why he feels the need to ask me such an absurd question.

  “Of course I’m all right,” I say. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Malcolm lowers his arms as he keeps his eyes locked with mine.

  “Anna, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m wondering if I should have just let these people die,” I tell him, feeling no guilt over having such a thought. “Odds are not many of them would have lived. Do you think that would have been a bad thing to happen?”

  “Of course it would have been bad,” Malcolm says, looking even more worried about me after my question. “How do you think the death of thousands would have made you feel, knowing you could have prevented it?”

  “I don’t think I would have felt anything,” I tell him truthfully. “Why should I have? I don’t know these people. I don’t owe them anything.”

  “And yet you saved them,” Malcolm reminds me. “Anna, you’re a good person. Nothing can change that.”

  “I wish you would stop doing that,” I say, feeling my anger take control of my words. “I’m not some saint to be worshiped. I’m not the savior of this world!”

  “No, you’re not,” Malcolm agrees. “But you are one of its protectors, and I think you just proved that.” Malcolm holds out one of his hands to me. “Anna, use the bracelet and touch me. Let me help you through this.”

  “Why do you think I need help?” I ask, feeling myself getting angrier by the second.

  “Because your whole body is on fire,” he says, looking me up and down. “Baal’s seal has done something to you.”

  I look down at myself and notice that the blue flames, which have only covered my hands up until this point, are engulfing me completely now.

  “Please, Anna,” Malcolm begs, taking a step closer to me. “Let me help you.”

  “I don’t need your help,” I tell him angrily. “What I need is for you to stop treating me like some helpless child!”

  “Anna, don’t pull away from me,” Malcolm begs. “I need you. Lucas and Millie need you. They’re lives are still in danger. We need to find Baal and Mammon and make them tell us where they are.”

  With the mention of Baal and Mammon’s betrayal, I feel my temper burn a hole through my heart.

  “I’m going to kill those two with my bare hands when we find them,” I promise Malcolm. “They’ll wish they never existed after what I have planned for them!”

  “You can’t kill them until after we find Lucas and Millie,” Malcolm says fiercely.

  “Do you really believe they’re even still alive?” I yell, disgusted with how naïve Malcolm is being. “They’re dead, Malcolm! If they weren’t before this happened, they certainly are now! And I intend to make sure Baal and Mammon pay for their deaths with their own lives!”

  Malcolm runs straight at me with a growl and grabs the tops of my arms. He phases us to the living room of the old cottage by the sea and slams me hard up against one of the dilapidated walls, causing dust to plume all around us.

  “You are not going anywhere until you use that bracelet on me!” he orders, roughly pushing me up against the wall as if to punctuate his words.

  “You’re not strong enough to make me do anything, Malcolm,” I say in a quiet voice that holds more authority to it than his yelling.

  Malcolm pulls me up against him and kisses me with a fierce and desperate need. I feel his hands tighten on my arms as his tongue attempts to coax mine into a familiar dance.

  I raise my hands and push my palms against Malcolm’s chest with extreme force. I watch as he flies across the room. His back slams up against the opposite wall so hard his body passes straight through it easily to the other side. I look at him beyond the freshly made hole in the wall and see that he landed kneeling on one knee with his hands stretched out in front of him to help prop him up. Malcolm quickly stands to his feet and strips his jacket off as he walks back to me.

  “I am not losing you to the seals,” he thunders, a look of grim determination on his face.

  When he reaches me, he grabs me by the belt of my baldric and roughly pulls me back up against him. His mouth covers mine once again, preventing me from making any verbal protest. I feel his hands q
uickly work to release the clasp of the baldric at my waist. Once he has it undone, he slips the straps from my shoulders, and I hear the metallic clatter of my sword as it falls to the floor behind me.

  His hands quickly find the back of my dress, and I feel him begin to pull the magnetic closure apart. I push him away from me again with added force this time. Malcolm’s bulky frame makes another hole in the wall on the far side of the room. I feel the foundation of the house shake from the force of the impact.

  By this time, I’m gasping for air because Malcolm’s kisses aren’t leaving me enough time to even breathe.

  Malcolm lands just as he did before, on hands and knee. I watch as he quickly stands back up as if practically tearing a house down with his body doesn’t faze him at all. He pulls the front of his shirt open and quickly strips it from his muscular torso as he walks back over to me. The determination on his face is even more intense this time as he pushes my shoulders up against the wall behind me and leans his half-naked body into me. His mouth devours mine making it hard for me to think coherently much less remember what we’re fighting about.

  Malcolm’s hands slide behind me again, and I feel him pull the back of my dress apart. I don’t stop him this time, and I feel the dress fall from my body to the floor. I run my hands over the hard muscles of Malcolm’s chest and push at him again but not as hard this time. Malcolm stands stock still before me, and I notice his breathing is as labored as my own. I look pointedly down at his pants and lift a questioning eyebrow at him.

  Malcolm grins and doesn’t have to be told what I want him to do next.

  He unbuttons his waistband and slides the zipper of his pants down, letting them drop to the floor. He steps out of the legs and begins to walk back to me, but I hold one hand out palm forward to stop him.

  “You forgot something,” I say, looking pointedly at the tight black briefs he’s wearing that are doing a very poor job of covering his arousal from our foreplay.

  Malcolm crosses his arms in front of him with his legs spread apart as he looks straight at me.