by Alan Baxter
Ovidius dropped to his knees and pulled his shirt off over his head. Bare-chested, trembling in the cold, he laid a heavy dagger on the shale before himself. ‘Over a thousand years ago I first had the vision. Already I’d spent so many lifetimes protecting the piece of the Darak that had been entrusted to me. That first premonition of you nearly destroyed me.’
Alex crouched to maintain eye level with Ovidius, but kept a safe distance between them. ‘Premonition?’
‘They began after I’d already guarded the stone for several hundred years. I was supposed to be dead, but I knew others would find it. I defended it time and again. The visions would warn me, help me prepare. Then I saw you. Not very clearly, I don’t recognise you now, but the same assailant appeared to me again and again. That first time, when the vision showed me broken, bleeding, dying, I despaired. For a thousand years I’ve been seeing variations of that same prophecy. I’ve thought of hunting you down, forcing the confrontation, but I couldn’t even know if you’d been born yet. I’ve ventured forth occasionally, when I’ve needed to feed. I’ve watched the world, studied history passing. Waited for you.’
‘I really don’t want to hurt you,’ Alex said. ‘I’d rather not hurt anyone else.’ He ignored the insistent cajoling of the book, drumming thoughts of murder into his brain.
Ovidius flashed a grin that disappeared as fast as it had appeared. ‘Isn’t that just it, though?’
‘Is it?’
‘How much do you want to kill me? Not when you think about it, but when you let your true feelings rise?’
‘I want to rip you limb from limb,’ Alex admitted. ‘But those aren’t my true feelings. That’s the book at work. Uthentia’s desires.’
Ovidius’s face twisted with discomfort. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘You still differentiate.’
‘Haven’t you seen all this?’ Silhouette asked. ‘Don’t you know what’s going to happen?’
Ovidius laughed, a high, shrill sound, sudden and short. ‘The visions are always different. I knew you were coming. For a thousand years I’ve known you were coming, but every time it’s slightly different. Sometimes we fight, sometimes I die.’
‘Do I ever die?’ Alex asked quietly.
Ovidius lifted his face, his eyes haunted. ‘No.’
They were silent for several moments. Alex wanted to get the shard and move on, but this strange old Kin deserved some time, some chance. Would he really let Alex pass? The dagger sat on the stones between them like a gate.
Ovidius’s shades were every colour of despair and disappointment, sadness and melancholy. He showed no intention of fighting, of trying to stop Alex. He moved so quickly that Alex was on his feet, crouched and ready, almost before he realised he’d moved. Ovidius held the dagger out in front of himself. He pointed the hilt at Alex. ‘Use it,’ he said.
Alex kept his distance, still tense. ‘What?’
‘Kill me.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘I should have died aeons ago, Alex Caine. What difference does it make now?’
Alex relaxed his ready position, tried to stand more casually. ‘You were supposed to kill yourself,’ he said. Uthentia howled his rage through Alex’s brain, the Fey creature’s wrath almost deafening in its intensity. Alex gritted his teeth, tried to shut it out. ‘It’s not my desire to kill you.’
‘You don’t want to give in to that urge?’ Ovidius said, his eyes wild. ‘I can see it in you, I can see the ’sign pouring off you. Your bloodlust is enormous. Imagine the thrill you’d get plunging this blade into my heart! Think of it, finishing one as ancient as I!’
Uthentia thrashed at Alex’s mind, forcing Alex to stagger forward against his will. He concentrated only on the stone at his chest, tried to ignore the hurricane of desperation pulsing from the presence of Uthentia. ‘I will not kill you!’ he yelled, his throat raw with the effort. ‘Uthentia does not rule me!’
Ovidius smiled, his hand reaching out to wrap around the other already holding the dagger. The point trembled as it pointed in towards his chest. ‘Perhaps there is some hope then,’ he said and slammed the blade into his body. He bucked, his mouth dropping open with a cough of surprise and pain. He twisted, grimacing in agony as his blood flooded over his hands to spatter on the dark grey rock under his knees. He stared into Alex’s eyes and Alex watched a life unimaginable blink out.
Ovidius fell forward and was still.
Alex pressed his palms against his face, shaking with the force of Uthentia’s furious dissatisfaction. He sucked in air and kept his mind focused on the Darak, let its magic soak through his body, infuse every vein and fibre. ‘I deny you!’ he growled and the rage subsided to the dull roar he had come to accept as normal.
Silhouette crouched beside Ovidius, closed his eyes. ‘Poor bastard. I seem to be seeing a lot of old Kin die lately.’
‘Even when I refuse to kill, this whole situation ends in death,’ Alex said. ‘Hard to believe he’s been here all this time, protecting the stone, and it ended for him like this. So quickly.’
‘He should have died a long time ago. Shouldn’t have still been here.’
‘He was testing me.’ Alex felt Uthentia’s muffled joy at the death of such a being even while it raged that Alex hadn’t done the murder. He did his best to ignore it.
‘You passed,’ Silhouette said, putting one hand on his shoulder. ‘You resisted.’
‘To what end?’ The sound of a helicopter made them both spin around. ‘Frigeir …?’ Alex started to say.
‘No,’ Silhouette said sharply. ‘Alex, this is someone else arriving. You better find the shard!’
Alex stared at the approaching chopper. For some reason it struck him as very strange that whatever had been tracking them all this time would arrive by helicopter, just as they had. Maybe there was another way.
Silhouette dragged at his sleeve. ‘Alex, come on!’
They turned and ran into the dark cleft between tall, cold rocks.
29
Sparks pressed herself as tightly into the corner of the cramped cabin as she could. Hood sat stiff beside her, buzzing with excitement. How could he bear the proximity of the Sisters, sat opposite them, smiling? They lounged on the seat, sexuality pouring off them, letting Hood drink them in. Sparks could barely contain her disgust, yet Hood seemed mesmerised. Perhaps their magic only worked on men.
Since meeting them at the airport and transferring quickly to the waiting chopper, they had been in a bubble of ice and terror. Sparks’s skin crawled in the presence of these creatures. Their exquisite exteriors did nothing to quell the memory of what they really were. What they had done. And the fear that had knotted her stomach ever since Scotland bound ever tighter.
‘Looks like we’ve found them,’ Hood said, pointing.
Another helicopter sat inert on the dark ground below. Smoke from fissures in the barren landscape twisted up and away in their downdraught as the pilot brought them down next to it. As they landed, a man with close-cropped blond hair and a friendly smile approached.
Blonde leaned forward. ‘Ooh, he looks nice.’ Her sisters giggled and Sparks’s stomach tightened another notch.
The five of them clambered out, their pilot staying in his seat. He had been uncomfortable from the moment they met and clearly had reservations about his passengers. Sparks noticed he kept the engines running, the rotors whipping the cold air as they slowed to an idle.
Hood approached the other man, a broad smile across his face. ‘Hello there,’ he called out.
‘Hi.’ He shook Hood’s hand. ‘I’m Frigeir. You’re colleagues of the other two? I think they expected you to be here already.’
‘Really?’ Hood kept his smile in place. ‘Where are they?’
Frigeir pointed. ‘They went that way, only a few hundred metres. The man thought he knew where to find you.’
Hood nodded a thank you. ‘That’s okay, we’ll find them.’
Blonde stepped up, offering a hand to Frigeir. ‘Lov
ely to meet you,’ she said, her voice like warm, silky chocolate.
Frigeir shook the offered hand, a frown forming at her touch. Sparks saw the sudden concern in his eyes.
‘Not now, please,’ Hood said. He jerked his head, gesturing to their own pilot. ‘We don’t want to scare anyone off.’
Blonde pouted. ‘How boring.’
Hood strode off in the direction Frigeir had indicated. ‘Come on then! Let’s find them.’
The Sisters followed Hood, chattering to each other and giggling. Sparks lingered, incredibly uneasy. A deep sense of foreboding dragged at her.
Frigeir caught her eye. ‘You okay?’
‘Fine, thanks.’ She turned to follow her lover.
‘You’re a strange bunch, if you don’t mind me saying so,’ Frigeir said with a nervous smile. ‘What is it exactly, your business here?’
‘You wouldn’t understand. Sorry.’ She hurried away, swallowing an urge to tell the kind-looking man to get in his helicopter and fly away, pretend he’d never seen any of them.
Hood looked back. ‘Come on, Sparks!’
‘I’m coming.’
Hood paused, gesturing for the Sisters to take the lead. When Sparks caught up he slapped her hard on the butt, fell into pace a few metres behind the Sisters. ‘Here we are then. At last!’
Sparks smiled at him, but felt her lips trembling. ‘Yes. Here we are.’
Uthentia’s fury threatened to tear Alex apart. The Darak pulsated with urgent longing. He turned through a narrow channel between high, dark rock and found the cave he’d seen in his vision. A simple bed in the corner, with blankets piled high. A small fire burned in the centre of the space, providing a wan dancing light but little warmth. A few belongings were scattered about, mostly books. Ovidius had lived like a monk, doing the one thing he had been tasked with at the exclusion of all else. He had shown a devotion to his cause unlike anything Alex could imagine. And he had died selflessly for it. Alex bit back his shame.
Silhouette stopped in the entrance, glancing nervously back over her shoulder. ‘Hurry, Alex!’ she hissed.
The Darak burned against him, trying to drag him into the shadows in the cave’s depths. He pulled the stone on its cord from his shirt and it burst into blinding light, filling the cavern like a thousand flashbulbs firing at once. An answering burst of light lit a deep alcove at the back. Alex stumbled forward, barely of his own free will.
The third shard sat before him, tiny, almost insignificant. For so long it had waited, hidden in these folds of rock, silently guarded. How many people had passed close by and had no idea? How many times had Ovidius had to defend his secret? Alex wondered if there were legends in any nearby towns about these wastes. There should be.
He reached for the tiny shard, his hand trembling. As his fingers touched it, an electric bolt of raw magic thumped through him. Uthentia howled. Alex arched back, gasping in ecstatic agony. Pure, raw power stretched the seams of his being as blinding light wiped everything else away. He distantly heard Silhouette calling his name.
The third and the first two pulled towards each other like magnets. He took hold of the stone he wore in one hand, the shard in the other, and slammed them together. A pulse of magic burst out, lifting him high, throwing him back through the cave. Silhouette cried out. He hit the ground, sliding across hard rock that felt icy against his burning skin. He bucked and twisted, trying to squirm away from the blaze that racked his body. A slow howl of pain, starting low, rose from his throat until it became a piercing wail of anguish. He couldn’t hold it, he was surely incapable of containing this energy.
Silhouette screamed at him from a million miles away. ‘Alex, take control, please!’
He dragged air into his lungs, still writhing in pain. When he tried to speak he screamed again.
‘Alex!’ Silhouette shouted from another planet. ‘Please, you have to control it before it destroys us!’
He heard her pain, her desperation. Why didn’t she run away, leave him here to burn? He wanted to cry out to her, tell her to save herself from this nuclear explosion of magic he had no hope of managing. He ground his teeth, tried to shout but only screamed again.
‘Please, Alex!’ There were tears in her pain now, sobbing as she pleaded with him.
He had to save her, had to be with her. If she wasn’t going to save herself, he had no choice but to best this energy. He remembered how it felt to channel the power of the stone when he fought, taking the energy through his body, making it a part of him. Through the screaming pain, through the raging red mist of agony in his mind, he remembered how he had owned it before, when he had only two parts of the whole. The three combined were exponentially more powerful, incalculably more potent. He ground his teeth again, biting down the pain. He forced it to comply with his boundaries. His body stretched, his molecules threatening to burst apart and wash away in a wave of uncontrollable magic. He braced every muscle, held himself together by force of will.
He held his hands up before him, the stone between his fingertips. It was terrible and beautiful, larger than the three pieces should be combined, like a flawless black diamond the size of a hen’s egg. It shimmered and rippled with the flood of magic it produced. Own it. Make it a part of you. He remembered the corpulent horror on the island off Canada, the shard buried deep in its body. Make it a part of you.
He couldn’t tell if he heard something from his memory, something from the Darak itself or Uthentia’s mad cajoling, but it was the only thing that made sense. He couldn’t control this level of power from the outside. It had taken a group of powerful Kin mages, the Eld, to wield this thing. How could he hope to handle it alone? He had to be one with it, not apart from it. Uthentia roared in sudden anticipation, sensing the power to be free again.
With a yell of repentant rage Alex slammed the stone against his chest, opening himself to bond with it, willing it to become a part of him. He arched off the floor as a thousand bolts of lightning tore through him. He clenched down on it, forced his mind to focus, channelled the power like he had before. Not from outside, but within, guiding the magic through every cell. Guiding power that wasn’t coming from something he held but from something he was. Something he had become.
The energy found pathways through him. The chaotic explosion of pure force now contained started to race in his body, following the ancient meridians of his body’s own energetic lines, engorging them, empowering him. The Darak had become Alex Caine and Alex Caine the Darak, inseparable. The magic pulsed through him in wave upon wave of agonising fire, threatened to burn him to a crisp from the inside out. He willed it to conform, drew against his training to control the energy flow through his body, balance his essence and his spirit with the power. The pulses grew less violent, less painful. His heart beat hard and fast yet slow compared to the vast ripples of magic scouring through him. He tried to calm it to match his heart, then command his heart to slow down, back under his control.
The burning ebbed from the cave as he lay on the cold floor, gasping massive, desperate breaths as his body buzzed and trembled with barely contained power. As he mastered his breathing, he finally began to settle.
Silhouette scrambled across the cave floor to hold him, her cheeks tear-streaked, her eyes wide, red. ‘Are you okay? Alex, please tell me you’re okay!’
He tore open his shirt, staring at the stone embedded in the flesh of his chest. His body merged seamlessly with the large black gem of the Darak. He ran his fingers over it, still gasping, hardly able to believe it was done. ‘I think so,’ he managed between gasps. ‘But what have I done?’
Silhouette rained kisses all over him. ‘I don’t know, Iron Balls, but you’re blazing like a supernova.’
‘You don’t have to tell me!’ His breath slowly settled and the Darak pulsed with his heart, matching his heartbeat, but inside now, not separate. As blood flowed through his veins, the power of the Darak flowed through him too. It felt incredible, unfettered energy filling every atom of him. He l
aughed, more a cough than real mirth. ‘I feel awesome!’
Silhouette smiled through her apprehension, kissed him again.
A man’s voice shouted from outside. ‘Anyone there? Come on out and play!’
Alex grimaced. ‘Fuck me, here we go again.’
He leaned on Silhouette for support. As he took a step, something bolted through him, made him stagger. He felt Uthentia, thrashing in the no-space between realms, battering against his bonds. He felt the pressure of a galaxy against him, the consciousness of something unfeasible roaring through his mind, trying to use him as a conduit.
Silhouette pulled him upright. ‘Alex? What is it?’
He began to shake in panic. ‘It’s Uthentia. He’s trying to come back and I don’t know if I can stop it.’
Silhouette looked him hard in the eye. ‘He was exiled once before, Alex. With that.’ She pressed one finger against his chest. ‘Now you and it are one. You have the power.’
‘Come on out or we’re coming in!’ The voice outside was loud, confident, amused.
Alex pulled free of Silhouette’s grasp. ‘All right then. Fuck this. All at once, let’s finish this thing.’
He strode through the cave, back between the high, cold rocks. Silhouette hurried after. He emerged from the shadows to see three stunning women, dressed for a summer in the city, standing in a row some twenty metres away. A safe distance behind them were a tall, thin, bald man with pasty white skin and a lithe woman with long blonde hair and a stark, angular beauty.
The three women in front, one blonde, one redhead, one brunette, leaned forward as one when they saw him, their eyes going wide. ‘Look at you!’ Blonde said. ‘I’ve never seen such a thing.’
Alex’s body was racked with tremors from the magic coursing through him. After everything that had happened, a welcoming party of two suits and a trio of supermodels struck him as hilariously absurd. ‘What kind of fucking circus is this?’ he said through laughter. The sensation from the women drifted over him, cutting through the miasma of his magic like a draught through a warm room. They exuded a malevolent, destructive essence far from anything human. ‘Really,’ Alex said, more serious. ‘What are you?’
