“We’ll be there in time,” Marley assured them.
And true to his word, they arrived just before the sun set the following day. Tensions were running high. They could all feel it—that sense that Hell itself was about to be unleashed.
Remington and Colt leaned over the rail of the Circe. The sea below was a clear aqua blue that met in a level line with the vibrant orange and red band of the horizon of the sunset. Islands, some smaller, some quite large were scattered everywhere and clothed in a vibrant pattern of black volcanic rock and lush green vegetation.
“How the hell do we even know if it’s the right island? There’s so damn many of them,” Colt groused. “It ain’t like they’re labeled like they are on the map.”
“Look for the Darkin clustered around it, and you’ll find it easily enough,” Remington said, his tone flat as his eyes scanned the land and water below the ship.
In the distance he could see an oily blackness that surrounded a very small island between two much larger ones. Remington pointed. “I think I see it. Looks like Rathe has called them all to the party. Tell the captain it’s time to take us down.”
Orders were shouted across the decks and the brass wings that collected water folded into the ship’s hull, letting the sails take them down as they billowed overhead, slowing their descent. The smell of brine grew stronger, along with the stench of sulfur.
“Easy on the main sail!”
“Aye, captain!”
The sun was setting, casting the white sails in shades of pink and coral. And the closer they got, the darker and more pervasive the Darkin presence became. They were in the water and the air; they occupied the land like a stinking, writhing plague.
Winchester had joined them at the rail. “They’re all waiting for the Gates to appear, aren’t they?” he muttered.
The sun slipped lower as they came to rest with a splash in the waters fifty yards from shore. Surf from the ocean pounded up on the rocks, sending a shower of salty cool spray through the air. The red rim of the sun sank beneath the edge of the darkening ocean, and a flash of brilliance from the island caused them all to hold their hands over their eyes.
Standing thirty-feet tall, the Gates of Nyx looked like they were made of wrought iron. They stood at the mouth of the volcano that spluttered and fumed, letting off great belches of steam and dark smoke.
“I’ll be damned. It’s real.”
Winn glanced at Colt. “You doubted that?”
“Didn’t doubt so much as had a shred of hope it was all some grossly misleading joke.”
“Well if this is a joke,” Remington said, cupping a hard fist with his other hand, “let’s be the punch line.”
Chapter 25
The men prepared to go into battle, loading up their weapons with Marley’s special Darkin-killing ammunition. They grabbed a new Blaster, Colt’s Sting Shooter, and anything else they could get their hands on. But when it came time to climb down the ladder and into the dinghy, Remington found their path barred by six women. China stood shoulder to shoulder with Lilly, the contessa, Captain Le Renaud, Octavia, and Monica Nation.
“You aren’t going without us,” Lilly said, blunt as could be. Her folded arms and grim expression showed their stance was nonnegotiable.
“Have you seen what’s on that island?” Winchester shot back. “You’d be killed in no time flat. You aren’t Darkin anymore. You’re mortal.”
The contessa came up to him toe-to-toe, nose to nose, her shoulders squared. “Have you seen what’s on that island? You need all the help you can get, and while I may not be Darkin any longer, I know how they think, I know how to fight, and I know my brethren will listen to me still.”
“Your . . . brethren?”
Suddenly the decks filled with spirals of dark smoke as vampires began popping out of the ether faster than rats could multiply on a ship stocked with cheese.
A big grin spread across Colt’s face. “Now that’s more like it!”
Winchester glared at him, then fixed his gaze back on the contessa. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Do you think any of us wants any of you to go?” China snapped, looking right at Remington. “This isn’t just a Hunter’s battle; this matters to all of us.” Behind her, several of the vampires nodded in agreement, crossing their arms.
Remington looked at them all. Well, if they were going to do this, then they might as well do it together. He climbed to the edge of the ship and held fast to the rope rigging. His clothing rippled and flapped in the evening breeze, ripe with the sulfuric stench of the multitude of Darkin waiting on the shore, ready to tear them to shreds.
“My friends”—his gaze drifted to Captain Le Renaud, to Captain Nation and his daughter, and to Marley—“my former enemies”—he nodded to the vampires—“my brothers.” Remington locked eyes with Winchester and Colt. “Tonight we fight for our very existence. We fight not because it is easy, but because it is right. We join together in victory or in death!” A great roar rang up from the decks of the Circe, and it shook Remington to his core, swelling in his chest, filling it. He looked to China. She only had eyes for him. His whole world shrank for one second to the color of her eyes.
“To battle!” cried the vampires, and they began to puff into dark swirls of smoke. The moment between them was gone and replaced by a frenzied rush for the boats to go ashore, and in it somehow Remington grabbed China’s hand, holding fast.
The closer they got to the shore, the quieter everyone became. Captain Nation and his daughter stared straight ahead. They held the three stone statues inside leather packs on their laps. Lilly entwined her fingers with Colt’s, and Winchester wrapped his arm around the contessa, but no one spoke. The base of the Gates of Nyx, the hills, teemed with Darkin of all shapes and kinds. China stared at Remington. She’d only seen one person turn ice-cold in a similar way—his eyes going dead before he started killing everything in his path. And that person was Rathe.
The fact that there was any similarity between Remington and the archdemon lord forced a surge of bile up into her throat. She couldn’t think of the man she loved being anything like the evil entity who sired and tormented her. Refused to. Remington would never be like Rathe. He would never harm her. At one time she’d thought that the absence of pain and humiliation was love, and now she knew differently. But the emotionless smoothness of his face, and the flat, faraway look in his eye made her shiver all the same.
Whatever switch had been flipped, Remington was now a killing machine.
“Let’s go.” He stepped from the boat into the warm surf, but there was no heat inside him. No warmth to be found. His belly was tight and cold, his mind focused on one thing and one thing only—destroying Rathe and closing the Gates of Nyx. A close third was survival, but he might not have that option. So be it.
His brothers flanked him, each of them carrying one of the guardian statues in a pack on his back. Behind them was a force of vampires bent on removing Rathe from power. It wasn’t so much, Remington suspected, that the Darkin wanted to fight their fight with them; it was that they were more afraid of the unknown that Rathe was about to unleash. Their very existence might depend on siding with the Hunters. At least for now. Remington wasn’t sure which side the Darkin would be on when it came down to who was about to win, and who was about to die. Their allegiance, he suspected, could be swayed.
They marched, two lines toward one another on the battlefield. Behind Rathe’s forces rose the Gates of Nyx. A shimmering ethereal blockade that looked as if it were an elaborate, black iron gate. It stood ajar, the intricate scrollwork laced with magical, writhing green flame. It twisted and moved, like a living, breathing thing, huge and formidable. Through the narrow opening and out of the wall of flame behind the Gate poured more Darkin.
“How do we get close enough to throw the Book at the Gate?” Winchester shouted over the noise of shrieks and war cries and the crackle of flames.
Remington’s heart pounded loudly in his ears
and muffled the cacophony. He tightened his grip on the revolver in each hand. “We fight our way through.”
“We’re screwed,” Colt muttered.
Remington lashed out at the oncoming Darkin forces, werewolves, demons with solid yellow eyes, shape-shifters, scoria soldiers, hellhounds, and fire wraiths. He killed whatever he could.
The brothers worked in unison like a finely tuned machine—one reloading his guns while the other two laid down a hail of Marley’s special bullets into the oncoming Darkin. Marley’s Gatling gun was a wonder, mowing them down into nothing but dust, but it wasn’t enough.
By the wee hours of the morning, they pulled back, unable to take any more losses. Darkin could kill Darkin. None were immortal in this fight. The onslaught was too much and far greater than they’d feared, and they hadn’t been able to get close enough to the Gates to place the guardians in position or throw the Book through the narrow opening.
Remington scanned the faces of both enemy and ally on the battlefield, looking for a trace of China. He spotted her blond hair flying in the wind as she shot down a hellhound and then two werewolves. The woman was fearless.
She caught his gaze. Her cheeks and clothing were smeared with black Darkin blood, and cuts that bled scarlet, which was her own. He motioned to her, and she came zigging and zagging through the battle toward him.
Before he could even utter a word, she kissed him hard, full on the mouth. He cupped her head, deepening the kiss, taking it like water to his parched soul. God he wanted to win. For her. For all of them. But it wasn’t possible.
He released her, and she pulled back, checking the deep, gouged lacerations in his side. “Those don’t look good.”
“They’re fine. I’ll be fine,” he lied. “We need to call a truce.”
She bolted back from him, her eyes angry. “What?”
“We have to be strategic. Look around you; there’s far more of them than there are of us. We’re not making headway. The only thing that will stop any of this is if we get the guardians in position and Book through those Gates, and we must do it before sunrise. They aren’t overrunning us because they are stalling. Time is running out.”
China frowned. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you and Colt to meet one-on-one with Rathe.”
China thought about it. Two Darkin against one. Given, Rathe was an archdemon lord with a ton of tricks up his sleeve, but she was smart and resourceful, Colt had quick reflexes, and both of them had Darkin powers. It just might work. Especially if they played to Rathe’s ego.
“Winchester and I will stay behind and—” Remington said.
“No. You won’t.”
He frowned. “I’m telling you how the plan is going to go.”
She put her hand up. “And I’m telling you, if this happens, you and Winchester and any other mortal you give a damn about needs to be as far away from this island as the ship can fly. Colt and I can transport in an instant, but we won’t be able to take anyone else with us in our weakened conditions. You stay, you die. It’s that simple. At least Colt and I have a chance.”
His frown deepened. “So we’re all just supposed to fly away and watch from a distance?”
She gave him one curt nod.
Remington gathered her up into his arms and held her tight. “You’re smart. I know you can do this. I know”—his voice cracked—“I know you can win.”
A half hour later their forces had reassembled on the decks of the Circe, and preparations were underway for the ship to fly away from the island. The boilers were humming, and the huge propellers at the aft deck made a steady whop, whop, whop. Captain Le Renaud shouted orders at her crew, and the large brass wings of the airship were extended as they prepared for liftoff. The smell of smoke and sulfur, blood and gore hung heavy in the air around the island.
China wished she too were going far, far away, but instead she locked her gaze on Colt. He held the Book. She had taken the packs with the statues. “When we go to meet Rathe, you need to act like we’re a couple still.”
Colt frowned. “Now why the hell would that matter?”
“Just trust me on this.”
“China, tell me what’s going on.”
“Rathe doesn’t just want the Book, he wants to destroy the Chosen, especially you. I’m guessing your little deal with him pissed him off, and now he’s expecting payback. He’ll have taken the ship’s leaving as a surrender. You and I are going in to talk terms.”
Colt cursed under his breath. “I should’ve expected this. You get me into the worst situations, you know that?”
“It’s a hard habit to break. But I promise, I’ll get you out of this one too.”
As the ship lifted into the air and the wind buffeted them, Colt clasped her hand. The instant their skin connected, they both began to dissolve into oily dark particles of smoke that twisted and moved off the ship and toward the mouth of the volcano—and the Gates of Nyx.
Particle by particle her body reformed itself. She hated to travel by transport, but there was no other way to get to the Gates without risking their mortal lives. And it had to be a Darkin in league with the Chosen to close them. Only then would there be balance, a chance to make the world right again.
Rathe waited at the Gates. They were halfway open now as the new moon rose. The wall of green Darkin flame filled the slowly widening gap, and his Darkin minions crowded around on either side.
He stood between China and Colt and the Gates, wearing a black top hat and a spotless black greatcoat. Beneath that was a tailed tuxedo jacket and an impeccable, crisp white shirt. He looked to all the world like a highbrow English lord about to go out for a night on the town. She could even smell the starch in his shirt over the vile scent of decay and death that permeated the air. China despised him. The waxy pale skin of his face stretched over his bones, making him look more like one of the walking dead than an archdemon lord.
“That form don’t suit you, Rathe,” she said, her voice full of distain and loathing. “You look like a sick old man rather than Lord of the Darkin.”
One brow arched up in a questioning fashion. “Is that any way to greet your father?”
Colt stared at her, his mouth hanging open, confusion and doubt flitting through his blue eyes like bolts of lightning. “He’s your goddamn father? You could have told me that!”
Ah, yes, but if I had, your reaction wouldn’t have been genuine. “Damned, yes. Father, no. He’s merely the man who raped my mother then came back to try and enslave me after he’d tortured and murdered her.”
Rathe smiled as if her recollection of the situation pleased him enormously. “I can see I left quite an impression on you.”
China forced herself not to wince at his double entendre. The scar at the base of her spine throbbed. God how she hated him. Every fiber of her being pulsed with it. The urge to brand him straight in the forehead throbbed like a second heartbeat in her body, taking over her mind and pounding right behind her eyes.
“How delightful, my prodigal child by blood and my half-born Darkin returned home to give the Book of Legend to their father.”
“Not. A. Fucking. Chance. In. Hell,” China ground out.
A rumble of worried voices washed through the Darkin crowded on either side. Rathe squeezed his hand into a fist, and her airway closed off as her feet rose up off the black volcanic slag, lifted by a massive invisible hand. He shook her like a rag doll. “You will give me the Book or you will die. Both of you, and the rest of the Hunters and those who blindly follow them. You will all die, a slow, excruciating death. I will see to it personally.” He waved a violent hand in demonstration.
China went flying to the side, her body slamming into the ground in a red-hot flash of pain. She struggled to her hands and knees, fighting the stars and blackening edges of her vision. Blood streamed into her eyes. A cheer shot up from the Darkin amassed there. She scrambled for the packs, feeling them with her fingers to make sure the statues were still intact after
the blow. Her heart sank. One of them was smashed to bits by her fall.
“And you, Colt Ambrose Jackson, were your brothers surprised to find you were no longer one of them?”
“We didn’t figure it mattered much.”
Rathe’s gaze snapped up, his vertical slits growing wide with anticipation and delight. China gasped. Standing right behind Colt were Remington and Winchester. “Just because my brother is half Darkin doesn’t mean he isn’t all Jackson,” Remington continued. “And just because we’re not Darkin, doesn’t mean we can’t transport with a little scientific assistance.”
Behind Remington two more people appeared. Lilly and the contessa. The men turned, looking surprised at their appearance.
“What are you two doing here?” Winchester growled.
“We know what needs to be done,” the contessa answered as she stepped up beside him. “The unbreakable bond. It’s love.”
Rathe laughed. It was vile and repugnant, a harsh and grating sound that seeped into one’s ears and slid oily and thick down one’s back. China wanted to shut it out, wanted that familiar chill to leave.
“How very droll. Oh, China, you’ve done well. You’ve brought me all the Chosen, their feckless Darkin whores, and the Book of Legend. How splendid, daughter.”
Colt and Winchester both glared at her as they grabbed hold of their women beside them, but Remington stepped away from his brothers. Winchester grasped him by the sleeve of his shirt, but Remington shook off his grip and came to stand beside her, taking her hand in his. “Don’t even think about it. She’s mine. I love her.” He said it as much to Rathe as he did to his brothers.
Rathe’s gross approximation of a smile grew even larger. “And to have them divided right when they need to be one, even better. I couldn’t have asked for more.” His malevolent yellow eyes, with the thin, reptilian vertical pupils, turned to her. “And now, since our bargain is complete, my dear, you may die.”
The Chosen Page 29
