Blood of the Infinity War (Afterlife saga Book 8)

by Stephanie Hudson

  And I did...

  I saw the arrow in my chest.

  I had been shot.

  Chapter 36

  A Kiss from the Devil

  I never imagined this was how it would end. I thought my death would be at the hand of Draven, not by the hand of his actions…not by choices made to fight Lucius. But was this what the Fates had meant all along? Was I always supposed to come here and die for nothing? No, surely there was some way I could stop this?! Surely one of them would save me? Which then begged the question…

  Why weren’t they?

  I didn’t even know who it was behind the bow that fired the arrow. Although I shouldn’t be surprised, after all, it seemed there was always someone out there trying to kill me.

  “We have to do something! She can’t fucking breathe!” I heard Lucius snarl and I felt hands grip my shoulders,

  “Keira look at me! Open your eyes!” Draven’s voice was shouting at me in sheer panic.

  “Why can’t she look at you?!” Sophia shouted.

  “Find her! Bring me her fucking head!” I heard Lucius roaring in the background.

  “Keira listen to me!” I couldn’t speak and as one of them had said, I could barely breathe. It hurt so bad. It felt like I was drowning and trying to breathe underwater…was I choking?

  “She is drowning in her own blood! Just open a fucking vein, let me deal with the people!” Lucius ordered and I felt Draven place something to my lips. My nose still worked as whatever it was, it smelled metallic. Was it blood? Oh good, that was a good idea. Soon, soon and I would be healed. And the pain, the agonising pain I couldn’t even scream about would fade. Oh God, but the pain!

  “She’s not drinking!” I heard Sophia yell and her voice sounded strained as if upset. Well, I guess looking down on what state I was in would do that to you.

  “Lucius help me rip out this fucking arrow so I can put my blood on the source, quick!” I felt hands start to move me and my hair being pushed back from my face.

  “This will hurt little lamb, but try to hold still.” What they didn’t know was that I couldn’t move my limbs even if I wanted to. I was frozen and unable to do what I wanted, not understanding why. I felt myself trying to scream at what they were doing to me, like silent torture. I only felt the liquid in my throat gurgling up and I tried to open my mouth to spit it out but I couldn’t manage it.

  Why couldn’t I move?

  Even when the pain was unbearable. Even when I felt them snapping the arrow and yanking it back through my chest. Why wasn’t I screaming. This very question was asked by someone else.

  “Why isn’t she screaming?” Sophia asked and I felt hands come to my face and then to the rest of my body.

  “She isn’t moving!” Draven shouted and then I felt him shake me,

  “Keira! Keira speak to me, open your eyes, Keira!” I wished that I could but I felt trapped in my own body. Even in my head I was screaming at them to let me out. Then I heard the cause and it felt as though my blood was the next to freeze inside my veins…

  “Why isn’t she healing? Why doesn’t your blood…” Sophia was cut off when Lucius snarled a venomous,

  “Fuck!”

  “What?! What is it Septimus?!” Draven demanded and I would have done the same had I been able to move my dead lips. Of course, I would also have gasped had I been able to when I heard the next sentence out of Lucius’ mouth.

  “The arrow head, its…its Achlys…she’s been poisoned.”

  Septimus.

  After helping Arsaces pull the arrow from her chest cavity, I watched helplessly as he placed his slit wrist over her wound, ready to cut him in half if need be. It was only when the Princess’ voice cut through our hope that I looked down at the broken arrow in my hand. I lifted it to my nose and one sniff was all it took. I could smell the foul stench of misery and sadness that represented the only one powerful enough to create such a poison…

  “Achlys?” Arsaces hissed snapping his head back to me after I had informed them of such.

  “The one and the fucking same!” I replied with such violent rage, I could feel my eyes seep with the blood of my victims. The ones I had fed on, the ones I had taken to give me strength and life. But what was it all for if my blood was useless now!

  Achlys was the Greek Goddess of Eternal Night. She was the mother of Chaos and her weapon of choice was the ‘Mist of Death’. According to Hesiod, the Greek poet, she was the personification of misery and sadness. She was a pale, emaciated, and weeping creature, one with chattering teeth, swollen knees, bloody cheeks, and her shoulders covered with the eternal dust of the deathly remains of all the lives she took. But more importantly right now, she was the Goddess of deadly poison…one that had no cure.

  “No! There must be something?!” the Princess cried out as she, like myself and her brother, knew what this meant. Our blood couldn’t save her…

  But what if his could?

  Could this be what it was always meant to be?

  “I am not losing her! Do you hear me? DO YOU FUCKING HEAR ME?” Arsaces roared up at the Gods, ready to curse them as I once did.

  “There might be another way,” I uttered trying to hold on to my sanity and convince myself that this could work. Arsaces snapped his head up and the hope I had planted there was easy to see.

  “What, tell me?” he demanded, but right now he was not my King. I was doing this with or without his acceptance. So, I did not reply, for it would only be wasting time. No, he would soon know what I had planned.

  “Come, bring her, for this is something I cannot do here.” I ordered Arsaces, knowing that he would do anything to save her right now…or he would find death at my hands for trying to stop me. For if I was not successful, then she was lost to us all.

  “Easy with her.” I looked back over my shoulder to see the Princess crying as her brother hoisted Keira’s deathly still body into his arms. Anyone else seeing her and they would have believed her dead but I knew different. I had tasted her blood, so would always know with just a thought, if and where it still beat through her heart. Which was also how I knew she didn’t have long.

  “Everyone is being evacuated, Imperator,” Marcus said after I had jumped back up into the Imperial box, knowing such a thing would not be seen in the eyes of mortals. The second that arrow had pierced her flesh I’d started concealing what was really happening. Then I planted the thoughts of an earthquake and soon the whole place was being evacuated, taking care it was done so at an orderly pace. Thankfully, the place was built for such a thing to be done with ease.

  “Did you find her!?” I snarled the demand, knowing nothing would ease my rage other than seeing her blood on my hands. The blood of the killer being spilled in return for the blood they tried to take from me. I would pierce her body with over a thousand poisoned arrows in return. That was if I could restrain myself and my rage from just ripping her head slowly from her neck!

  “Not yet, but we will.”

  “Good, see to it that you do, for I want Lahash on her knees begging for her life at my feet before sunrise. Now go!” I knew Marcus could see how on edge I was and it was an unusual sight but then so was the sight of the only girl I have ever cared for bleeding in the arms of another man. Oh yes, I was on edge all right.

  We all moved with pace through the tunnel that connected directly from the Flavian into the Palace of Domitian and we didn’t stop until we were back in my private chambers. For what we had to do next couldn’t been done in front of any witnesses. Not even those of our own kind. It was utterly forbidden and for once, both Kings would have to choose to break the rules.

  Now, all I had to do was convince the other one to cut me open and help me do it.

  Keira.

  I couldn’t speak, all I could do was hear the desperation in their voices and feel the pain…so much pain. I would have passed out from it long ago but this uncontrollable force in my body wouldn’t even let me do that. So, the only thing I had left was to try and reach
out my mind to speak with them. But even that seemed utterly useless.

  “Speak of your plan Septimus, I can feel her slipping further away!” I heard Lucius taking a deep breath before laying it all out on the line.

  “She will die and there is only one way left to save her.”

  “Then fucking do it!” Draven roared but Lucius didn’t shout back in the way I would have expected. No, it was Sophia who must have seen what her brother was missing.

  “He needs your permission, isn’t that right Vampire?”

  “I need his help,” he reworded, obviously not liking the idea of him needing his permission for anything, especially when it came to saving my life.

  “I allow you to break every rule I know, just save her!” Draven snapped back but this was when Lucius said,

  “And what of those that you don’t, are you willing to break those also?”

  “What is it of which you speak!?” Draven demanded. I would have held my breath if didn’t already feel as though it was already stuck there. But either way, nothing prepared me for what Lucius would say next as, after a deep breath, he told us precisely what rule needed to be broken in order to save my life.

  “I must change her…I must change her into a Vampire.” Hearing this must have snapped something inside me as it was enough power to open my eyes but nothing else.

  “NO!” Draven roared and just before he could react even more by giving into his furious impulses, Sophia grabbed his arm.

  “Look!” He snapped his head down to me and his eyes softened once he saw that I could now see him.

  “Oh, sweetest little lamb…” he whispered down at me, placing his forehead to mine.

  “She is losing too much blood! If we are to act, we do so now!” Sophia shouted and both Draven and Lucius looked up at each other.

  “We can’t do this to her!” Draven argued and Lucius growled back,

  “Then she dies!” I would have flinched at the harsh reality. Draven closed his eyes against the pain, hearing that caused him.

  “What you ask, does it have the power to save her?” Sophia asked, obviously not so opposed to the idea.

  “I would be gifting her with the blood of the Devil, right now it is the only thing we have left to fight against this,” Lucius told her sounding more in control than anyone else in the room.

  “NO!” Draven argued again and said,

  “There must be…!”

  “What, another way like she said?!” Lucius threw back at him my words just before I was shot.

  “Well, what if this is it!? What if this is the only other way? I know it is hard to ask you to trust me but something is telling me this is it… this is what she has come here for.” Lucius finished and I couldn’t help but feel as though he was right. The Oracle had spoken about something I needed from Septimus, something to help defeat the Titans…what if this was it? What if everything happening now was for a reason…or at least part of the reason I was here? Could it be possible that even at the face of my death, could that too really be part of the prophecy?

  “What do you mean?!”

  “Last night she dreamed of Tartarus, she saw it all as if she had been there before…” Draven snapped his eyes accusingly to Sophia who was looking grave. She merely nodded confirming without words that it was true.

  “But how, how is that even possible, she is mortal?” Draven argued and Sophia placed a hand on his arm and said,

  “I think we both know she is much more than that.” Draven lowered his head as he accepted her words, before coming to terms with it and asking Lucius,

  “What else did you see?”

  “When she woke, she asked me to delve into her thoughts and see for myself what she had seen.”

  “And?”

  “I saw Cronus,” Lucius stated and I wished in that moment I could have cried. Lucius had seen my dream and not the empty void like he claimed…but all of it.

  “No…impossible,” Draven hissed as if hearing that name held enough weight to tell them all they needed to know.

  “He was there. He was walking towards her as if he knew her. As the great war battled on around her, the Titans bursting free from their eternal chains, he taunted her with the truth and whispered in her ear…” Lucius said replaying it all back to me.

  “Tell me.”

  “He said, ‘You cannot win against a war that has already been won’ Then he lifted her face and whispered in her ear, ‘For I am a God and you are a mere mortal girl…what could you ever do to me?’ Then he left her dreams,” Lucius said and then went on to explain his own thoughts,

  “What if I was always meant to do this. What if this was the reason she came here?” I looked to Sophia to see her looking as though she was fighting with herself.

  “You think she would want this!?” Draven sounded outraged but Lucius threw his own outrage back at him,

  “You think she would want to die, knowing how far she had come? I don’t know why she came back here but it wasn’t for you or I to gain her heart for our own…for she clearly already has ours in the palm of her hand back in her own time.” Draven looked deflated as he turned to his sister.

  “You know her best of all Sophia, for you have been with her longer than Septimus or I can claim. You are the only one who knows her reasons…would she want this…would she, forgive us?” Draven asked his sister, almost pleading with her to make the choice and take that responsibility from them.

  “I only know one thing and that is she would do anything to protect those dear to her…including her unborn child…your child, brother.” The second Draven heard this his hand shot to my stomach and his eyes to my own. The power and strength in his gaze was like nothing else in the world.

  “My child?” he repeated in utter shock as if such a thing wasn’t possible. He looked so happy for that short moment as if nothing in the world could crush it…well other than me dying of course.

  “Then do it!” he vowed with such strength I knew he no longer made the decision just for me but for the child as well and I couldn’t have loved him more for it.

  I looked to Lucius who tried to mask the hurt that hearing such news must have caused him. It was only small, but I knew Lucius better than most. It was like being allowed that tiny glimpse into his soul, only one seen through his eyes and the pain found there.

  “I will need your help. The blood of Lucifer never leaves my heart,” Lucius said sternly, all business.

  “Then how…?” Sophia started to ask but was quickly interrupted.

  “I need you to help me cut it out.” My eyes widened and in that moment if I could have screamed NO, I would have. I couldn’t have him sacrificing himself for me and cutting out his damn heart!

  “Right at this moment this is not a task I will find difficult.” Lucius chuckled at Draven’s response and said,

  “I thought you would say as much.” Then he drew his blade and said,

  “Cut through my chest but take care, for I only need to access the heart enough for a single drop.” Lucius then spun the blade round and handed over his knife.

  “Sophia, take my place,” Draven said leaving my side and even though I couldn’t feel it, she placed my hand in hers. I couldn’t bear to watch. But then seeing as he was doing this for me, I knew I also couldn’t look away. If he had to endure the pain, then I would also endure it by watching.

  “Ready?” Draven asked.

  “To be cut open, what do you think?” Lucius asked sarcastically as he pulled off his armour making Draven smirk. Then Lucius lay down next to me on the bed and Draven gave him his reply.

  “Yeah, you’re fucking ready!” Then he pulled back before plunging the dagger into his chest, taking care not to go too deep but also, deep enough.

  “AAAAHHH!” Lucius roared, and I had to say, I felt his pain. If I had been able to move I was sure I would be currently adding vomit to the pints of blood that were now pouring from the large gash in his chest. It overflowed his torso, onto the bed, until we
were both lying in a pool of blood, his and mine combined, as we were in this together.

  It was a sickening sound, hearing someone cutting into flesh and knowing that it didn’t belong to some dead carcass of an animal. No, it belonged to someone I cared deeply for and knowing that he was enduring all of this to save my own life…well it was like receiving another arrow to the chest, only this time, one to the heart.

  “Now…ho…hold…back…the sides,” Lucius gritted out as Draven had cut him enough, then what I saw would haunt me to my very core. This was no fake body parts made of rubber and stage blood. Or anything you would find on some hospital show, where actors dressed as doctors had their hands inside a dummy pretending to do surgery. No, what I witnessed now was heart stopping real and it had the power to do just that.

  Lucius reached his own hand inside his body and that’s when I started to lose it. I felt myself starting to fall to a place I had no control over and the next thing I knew I was screaming inside my mind.

  “Hurry up, we are losing her!” Sophia shouted as Lucius lifted his hand up before delving it back inside his own chest, reaching in to find his heart. Blood spewed up around the invasion and he screamed as if he had found what he had been looking for.

  “Keira listen to me, give me a sign, anything that tells me this is what you want, that you are ready for this? Because once you taste this blood, it will change you…it will change you forever!” Draven said looking to me and with the last of my conscious self, I did the only thing I had the power left to do. I told him with my eyes that I was ready. That I would do anything for us to be together and that I would do anything to save our unborn child.