Descendant: The Protector (The Descendant Series)

by Daniel W. Koch

  “Let her go, Kyle!” I screamed, and he froze. “Do you want a repeat of last time?”

  “I didn’t expect to see you again,” Kyle spat at me as I moved closer to them.

  “Jason!” April cried. “Stay back, please!”

  “Yes, Jason, stay back. That would do so much to help you right now.” He looked at me with devilishly black eyes. “Alexander will be so pleased that we killed you.”

  “You’re a Dahmshed!” I exclaimed.

  “That’s right.” Kyle pushed April into Jay’s arms and walked toward me. “There’s nothing you can do to me, now.”

  He smiled to reveal his sharp teeth and long canines.

  “I’ve survived way too much over the past week to be killed by the likes of you.” I narrowed my eyes and stood my ground just as Kyle reached me. “So do your worst. It won’t be enough.”

  “Oh, shut up.” He reached out and grabbed me by the throat, lifting me into the air. “Your time ends here!”

  “Not if I have anything to say about it!” Peter’s blonde hair flashed by, knocking Kyle off his feet and sending me to the ground.

  “Run, Kyle!” Jay called to him as he pushed April to the side and took off into the woods.

  Before Kyle could get up, Peter was at his neck. Kyle lashed out and struck Peter across the face with the back of his hand. He didn’t bother to stick around to see if he could win the fight, he just followed his cousin into the woods.

  “Aren’t you going after them?” I asked Peter when he didn’t make a move to follow.

  “They’re not important right now.” He brushed some wet dirt from his shirt. “And how the hell did you get out of the marina?”

  “That’s not important right now, either.” He knew I was right and didn’t bother to argue.

  “Both of you need to come with me. I have to get back to the fight, and the safest spot for you would probably be the gym.” Peter threw April over one shoulder and me over the other. We glided up to the school, past the diminishing battle, and into the building. He put us down right at the entrance.

  “I thought you said we were going to the gym.” I looked at him curiously.

  “You’re going there. I have to get back to the fight. I don’t want to lose any more of the Peacekeepers.” He jumped back into the battle, leaving me alone with April.

  “Hurry.” I grabbed April’s wrist and led her down the hall toward the gym.

  “Jason, I…I thought you were dead,” April stuttered as we sprinted along.

  “I thought the same thing a few times. Life’s been a bit hectic ever since my last day of school.” I gave a halfhearted laugh.

  “Ever since you disappeared, I thought that Dahmshed was going to take me, too.”

  “Aderes? Don’t worry about her, she’s…”

  I wasn’t able to finish my sentence because Grath walked around a corner into the hall. I forced April to stop, and she screamed at the sight of the vile creature. He smiled at us and gave me a wink, an assurance that this was finally the end for me.

  Grath was never this confident. Usually he needed an army behind him to even consider an attack, and at the sight of any threat, he would flee. I felt that something was wrong, and I had to get April to safety. That was, after all, the reason I had come to the school in the first place.

  I turned around and banked a left down a hallway to a computer lab. It was short and dark, and as we made it closer to the end, I realized that it was just that: an end. There were no other hallways to run down, and when I tried the door to the lab, it was locked. In a panic, I turned to see if we had time to escape. Grath stood at the other end of the hall, and next to him was Falko.

  ***

  Elliot-

  As the battle raged on, the light drizzle turned into an all-out downpour, and bolts of lightning lit up the sky. As the thunder roared, I leapt towards a Jager who was seconds from killing one of the human guards. I knocked him to the ground and began to tear at his neck, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw the human aiming his flamethrower at us. I jumped out of the way just as bursts of fire jutted towards me. The Jager wasn’t so lucky.

  I left him behind and looked for my next target. I saw Peter struggling against three Jagers by himself and instantly flew over to him. Dane, the father from the family we had found in New York City, must have had the same idea because we both crashed into one of Peter’s attackers. He, Lily, and their children had all insisted on helping us fight the Jagers. I was grateful to them, and it proved their loyalty to the Peacekeepers. With all three of us fighting now, the Jagers didn’t stand a chance. Each of them fell to our feet within seconds.

  “Elliot, I need to tell you something!” Peter yelled through the rain and thunder. A single Jager ran at me, and Peter and Dane both helped to kill him.

  “What is it?” I asked him. “Now isn’t the greatest time.”

  “Jason’s here, Elliot,” Peter said the words just before another Jager jumped us.

  Again, we all killed him together.

  “What?” I said in disbelief. “Where is he?”

  “I put him inside and told him to go to the gym with the other humans.”

  Before I even said a word, Dane volunteered to come with me to find Jason.

  “Let’s go make sure he made it there okay.” Dane began to run to the front doors. “There were still some Jagers inside.”

  “Stay and fight, Peter. We’ll be back soon.” He nodded and went into a denser part of the battle. There were almost no humans left in the fight, and the Jagers were dying out. I hoped that soon they would call a retreat.

  “Come on, Elliot!” Dane was already at the door, and I swiftly followed after him.

  ***

  Jason-

  “Take the girl to the lair,” Falko ordered Grath immediately. “We can feed her to the nomeds.”

  “Yes, my liege.” Grath shot forward and snatched April from my grasp, knocking me to the ground in the process. He ran from the hallway, leaving me alone with Falko.

  “So,” Falko walked forward and smiled at me, “there’s absolutely nothing here that can save you now. No Aderes, no field of ramsons, no…”

  “Falko!” Elliot exclaimed as he walked into the hall. He was with another Dahmshed, Dane, who I had met for only a brief moment when I first got back to the marina. “Get away from him!”

  “Elliot, don’t!” I yelled, but it was too late. Both he and Dane ran to Falko at full force. Their combined strength didn’t even make Falko flinch as they rammed into him. All I could do was sit on the floor and watch as Falko grabbed Dane. He tore his head from his body, then threw him aside like a rag doll.

  “No!” Elliot screamed as he thrashed his arm out and struck Falko across the face. “What happened to you? You were such a good man when I first met you.”

  “You’re not proud of your creation anymore?” Falko taunted him.

  “Not at all!” Elliot snapped back.

  “Well, I must admit that I really don’t care. I’m achieving far beyond what you ever thought I could!”

  “That doesn’t make it a good thing.” Elliot’s voice became very cold.

  “Listen, Elliot, you don’t have to die here. I still respect what you did for me. But if you don’t get out of my way, I’ll kill you.” Falko narrowed his full black eyes as he awaited an answer.

  “Get out of here, Elliot!” I yelled at him. “There’s no point in us both dying!”

  “Do what the boy says.” A smirk ran across Falko’s face.

  “I’ll never let you touch Jason!” Elliot tried to attack again, but Falko reached out with one hand and lifted him into the air.

  “I don’t think that’s up to you, anymore!” Falko grabbed Elliot’s left arm with his free hand and ripped it off with one hard tug. Elliot screamed out as Falko threw his body one way and his arm another.

  “Now, Jason.” Falko walked up to me. “What’s this I hear about a marking on your foot that proves you’re a Sterk?”<
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  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied.

  “Let me see it!” He yelled at me just as he had in my hallucination.

  “I already said I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And I said, let me see it!” He screamed it this time and reached for my right leg. “Alexander told me that Caleb saw it when you were under his care.”

  My shoe was pulled off my foot, but instead of hearing the reaction he had given in my hallucination, he hissed and shielded his face with his hand. Whatever my birthmark was, Falko didn’t seem to like it too much. And that gave me one last hope.

  I kicked my leg out and the ball of my foot landed square on Falko’s rock solid cheek. This time he didn’t just hiss, he screamed out in such agony that it hurt my eardrums. He fell to the floor and began to crawl away, screaming the entire time. His left hand was covering the spot where I had kicked him, but I could still see a faint column of smoke coming from his skin, like I had burned him.

  “How is this possible?!” he yelled into the air. “You’re only human!”

  He kept crawling away and seemed unable to stand up. When he reached the end of the hall, he removed his hand from his face for a split second, revealing a red burn in the shape of the symbol on my foot. The three triangular, interlocking ovals stood out against his pale white skin.

  Then, he was gone. I was still in too much shock to move. Elliot was unconscious, and a pool of black blood surrounded his body. I had to find someone to help him, but I was frozen and unable to speak.

  Luckily, Peter ran around the corner and entered the hallway. I saw his lips moving but heard nothing but my rapid heartbeat. Many of the Peacekeepers arrived, including Aderes. Some picked Elliot up and ran him from the scene while the rest came to my side. I was shaken and apparently being yelled at, but I didn’t move or hear anything until I saw Aderes kneeling beside me. Suddenly, everything started up again, and I could hear all of the yelling.

  “Jason!” She threw her arms around me for a second, but to my dismay didn’t kiss me again. “What happened?”

  “Falko…” I said slowly. There were gasps from the crowd of Dahmshed.

  “You survived him again?”

  “I…yes, I did.” I looked at her hidden face as the crowd broke out in hushed conversations. “Something happened to him; he could barely stand.”

  “We can figure that out later. Where did he go?”

  “He turned left around the corner.” I grabbed her wrist, but she pulled away and stood up. “Don’t leave me.”

  “I have to go after him, but I promise you that I’ll be back soon.” She turned to the crowd. “I want all of the High Members here, right now. The rest of you head back to the marina.”

  The twelve High Members emerged from the crowd and stood in front of Aderes.

  “I’m going after Falko,” she said to them. “From what Jason has told me, he’s weak. I have to try to find him before he regains his strength. I want all of you to stay here with Jason until I get back.”

  “All right.” Peter nodded. “Hurry up before he gets away.”

  Aderes took off as Peter, Andi, Philip, James, Johnathan, Matt, Taddi, Tommy, Bart, JD, Jamie, and Simone grouped around me in a defensive circle to wait for my protector to return.

  Epilogue

  “I couldn’t find any trace of him, Jason,” Aderes said sullenly, and my heart sank.

  “If I was a Dahmshed, I could’ve stopped him for good.” The words left my mouth before I even realized what I had said.

  “Do you want that?” Aderes asked me hesitantly.

  “No.” I looked away from her and stared at the ground. “But look what’s happened because I’m a human. Dane is dead, along with some of the other Peacekeepers, Elliot’s in critical condition, and April is going to be killed.”

  “Elliot will be fine and…”

  “No, he won’t! He doesn’t have a left arm!”

  “But the point is that he’ll live.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “And as for April, she’ll be held captive and used to draw you out at another time. That means she’s safe for the time being.”

  “I have to help her somehow, though. The Jagers are probably treating her horribly.”

  “There’s nothing we can do about it until Grath makes his next move. Even if we do try to sneak into the lair again, it’ll be next to impossible to find her. The tunnel system down there is more complicated than the one we’re in right now.”

  “If I was a Dahmshed…” I stopped myself before continuing.

  “Then what? You’d go and save her?” Aderes shook her head. “If you don’t want to be a Dahmshed, then just get your mind off of it.”

  “I can’t! It’s haunting me!” I held back tears that were trying to escape. “I’m either going to die a human or be forced to become a Dahmshed!”

  “No one’s…”

  “No one’s forcing me, I know that. No one except for everyone.” I looked directly to where I assumed Aderes’s eyes would be. “The entire world is depending on me. The Peacekeepers are dying to defend me, and innocent lives are being lost. Look at all of the human guards that were killed yesterday. And how many of the students and faculty died?”

  “Not many.”

  “I know for a fact that Grath killed Brian Spark, the one person besides April that actually befriended me.” A single tear broke from my right eye and ran down my cheek. “Peter told me when I asked him to find Brian for me. His parents had already lost one son, and now both of them are dead.”

  “You’ve been against being altered from the very beginning. That was back when you had no idea about the Peacekeepers and no idea about good Dahmshed. I don’t want your only reason for staying human to be because you think you have to be evil as a Dahmshed.”

  “I know, I don’t.” I squeezed my eyes shut tightly. “I just…I can’t explain it. I need to become a Dahmshed, I almost want to become a Dahmshed, but something deep inside of me is fighting against it.”

  “There’s more good in you than anyone else on this entire planet. You just have to decide if that good is keeping you from what you think is right.” Aderes shifted in her seat so that she was closer to me.

  “But, what is right?”

  “That’s what you have to decide.” She paused for a few seconds. “Your instinct is to stay human, to stay pure. But sometimes your blood must be tainted if you want to do the right thing.”

  I weighed my options for the thousandth time. There seemed to be so many reasons to become a Dahmshed that it was almost stupid to argue against it. My entire family was now dead or, possibly, in a state worse than death, at the bottom of some dark pit being tortured by what Aderes had called nomeds. April was probably close to the latter, being held captive by the Jagers’ new leader, Grath. Brian Spark and so many other innocent lives had been lost because of me. I couldn’t let that happen to anyone else. Lily, Cato, and Coby were now without a husband and a father, and Elliot was in critical condition because I wasn’t strong enough to fight off Falko Van De Hemel.

  If for no other reason, I had to become a Dahmshed so that I could kill him and stop the elimination of the human race. The evidence of me becoming a Sterk if I were to be altered was great enough that even I wasn’t able to argue against it. Even as a human, I had single-handedly weakened Falko to the point of fleeing. As a Dahmshed, I would be able to stop him for good.

  So many people, especially the Peacekeepers, had sacrificed life and limb to keep me alive. I thought it was time that I returned the favor.

  “I want you to alter me, Aderes.” I took a deep breath and opened my eyes wide. “I want you to alter me right now.”

  She leaned her head in closer to mine.

  “I’ll do it, but I want you to be completely sure. Once I do this, there’s no turning back. Are you completely sure you want to become a Dahmshed?”

  Her lips hovered above my neck as she waited for my answer.

  Acknowl
edgements

  This novel would never have made it into your hands without the help of some very special people. I’d like to thank them all: to my dad, for sitting for hours as I bounced ideas off of you. Courtney Gatewood, for introducing me to the world of publishing, and for all your editing and advice. Hannah Acito, for being such a great friend, and my personal grammar-guru. Jacky, for being my crisis averter when I needed one the most. Cooper, for always being there. And finally to my mom, for everything else and more.

  www.TheDescendantSeries.com