She sighed and looked at Death beside me.
“So, this is it then? Your big coup de grâce? So she took the life of an insignificant half fae.” She rolled her eyes, laughing and causing the ground beneath our feet to tremble.
The sword began to gleam a hazy blue.
“I must say, I’m so disappointed in you, Messorem. It’s like you didn’t even try. Well, I guess if you’re determined to go down with your father, Tenebris, there is no sense in talking this to death.”
She made to move, but Death held up his hand. The golden runes on his skull glowed brilliant in the night.
“Just a second, Bellum. I have not given Scarnebris,” he said with a wink at me, “everything. What you failed to see, what you’ve always failed to see, is that sometimes, there are those who are truly willing to take the leap for the things they love most.”
She scoffed. “She’s got no one else, and if you mean that whelp of a boy, he is nothing. But if you push me further, then I will kill him too.” She shrugged as if it were nothing. Meant nothing.
I was strangely calm during this verbal sparring match. I didn’t know if it was Blue’s blood, or the souls of the four men inside me, or whether I was still in some weird kind of shock, but I didn’t feel pricked by her words.
There was a surety growing in me now, a sense that War really was at the end of all things, but she just didn’t know it yet. I wasn’t sure her end would come through me, because she was right, as powerful as Tenebris was, War was stronger still. But Death had always kept some of his power back.
War’s face reflected my own epiphany. She snorted, the sound mixed with even parts humor and alarm. Death was too calm, too arrogant to be dismissed. If I could see that, so could she.
He smiled and picked up my hand. “I cared for you once, Bellum. But no more. Your time of tyranny ends.”
She shook her head. “You cannot come against me. It is against the rules. The Master will—”
He nodded, tricolored eyes grave as he spoke. “Has given his permission for me to do as I am now doing.”
“No,” she said in a whisper, looking shocked and completely caught off-guard.
I expected Death to gloat, or at the very least, monologue more. But he did neither. He seemed to take no joy whatsoever from this situation, and I hurt for him, wondering if maybe Death had never been the prickly, self-righteous bastard the world had always made him out to be.
“Goodbye, sister,” he rumbled.
Then he closed his eyes. The world shook with chaos and a tremendous heave of power that nearly dropped me flat on my ass. Wind screamed through the tops of massive boughs, shaking the leaves and causing them to cascade like a sea of green all around us. Tips of branches that’d broken off struck my cheeks and arms, but Death did not flinch. I glanced at War, who still stood where she was as though tranced by the spectacle.
Then a soul orb, dark as the abyss, floated out of Death’s chest and sprung like an arrow shot from a bow into my own. The absorption of his power dropped me to my knees. I tossed my head back and screamed myself raw.
Like an avalanche of water rushing down my throat, I drowned in the unbelievable wave of endless dark power. And I felt every death, every soul that ever was and ever would be roll through me; life, death, rebirth. Over and over and over, an endless sea of it that threatened to drown me whole.
I screamed and screamed as I felt my body begin to transform. Felt myself being ripped apart from the inside out. My legs were ripped off me. My arms too. My chest was sliced into a thousand ribbons of bloody flesh. My skull was sheared off, the skin flayed.
But once I’d been torn apart, I was quickly reassembled into something greater than before. What was happening to us? Even Tenebris didn’t know. I tasted her fear and confusion, but also the gathering and building of something far greater than we’d ever been before.
My torso grew, stretching big, then bigger to enormous proportions as it was heated with embers of burning coal. My neck lengthened, moving higher and higher, like an impenetrable tower of black steel into the sky. A tail tore through my backside, long and thick and covered in scales so dense that nothing could break through them. Red burned in my eyes, and my teeth grew to sharp, killing spikes as large as a giant’s body. And when I screamed, I breathed fire.
I was a dragon.
I was the killer of worlds.
I was chaos. Madness. Vengeance.
I was mother’s right hand.
But now I was father’s too.
And within me burned five souls, five bright, shining souls that remembered love and honor—Glory. Passion. Wisdom. And Truth.
I grinned.
My name was Tenebris, and my time was now...
War
SHE LOOKED AT THE DAUGHTER she no longer knew, eyes wide, mouth gaping, and full of confusion. Tenebris had never before taken on such a form. And the power, the unmitigated power that rolled off her in waves made War break out in a sheen of sweat and blood.
Nox was deathly silent, as if she, too, feared what now came.
This was the end the gypsy had prophesied to her eons ago. But how could she have been so blind? How could she not have seen that it wasn’t the end of the ages, but the end of her. Of Bellum herself.
For eternity she’d only ever dreamt of one thing—winning the games, ending the worlds, and handing her victory over into the Master’s hands.
She cut her eyes toward Messorem. He stood behind the great beast, no longer wearing the bones of his heritage, but the skins of a man.
Tenebris might not know what he’d done. But Bellum did.
He’d sacrificed all of his power into her hands. He was now merely another Veiler, ancient, but killable.
Her nostrils flared as heat shimmered like a wave over her vision.
Tenebris screamed her fury into the night, blasting forth jet after jet of brimstone and fire. She gleamed like an ebony ruby in the night, her colors shifting from shadow to blood.
“I could kill you,” she told him simply. “For all that you’ve put me through.”
He was handsome. There would never come a day when Messorem wouldn’t be beautiful in his deadly way. He was like a venomous snake, brightly colored and irresistibly alluring, even now, when he’d ensured his victory over her.
Looking at his face, which seemed more a stranger’s to her than a one-time intimate lover’s, Bellum realized she had still held out hope that what had been fractured between them could one day be salvaged.
“You could,” he said quietly, but it didn’t matter. She heard him over the tremoring birth pains of a world that knew the ultimate showdown was now upon it. “I wouldn’t stop you either way.”
“You fucking bastard. You really hated me that much?”
He grinned and shook his head. “Hated? I never hated you, Bellum. I pitied you for your ridiculous hate that drives out all else. I’d have brought down the worlds for you. I didn’t know, then, what I needed. All I knew was that you had never given it to me. And maybe for myself, it wouldn’t have mattered.” He pursed his lips and cocked his head.
She sniffed, looking out over the hillside as a lone tear slid down her cheek. The fall of that bit of water felt like a hammer fist to her dark and shriveled soul. “Tenebris,” she whispered.
She didn’t look at him. Didn’t have to see him nod. Maybe his eternity of dealing with souls had softened him. He’d forgotten what he’d been created to be. The heartless, uncaring King of Horsemen was no more. He’d died long ago. And in his place stood a creature who’d become so radically altered that Bellum had failed to see the truth until it was far too late.
Death would sacrifice himself out of some misguided ideal.
When the wind had swept away the evidence of her shame, she turned back to him. Tenebris stood as a tower beside him, cold and indifferent to the fate of her mother.
And for the first time, Bellum felt a prickling of pride for it. Had her daughter shown her the least bit of mer
cy, she’d have exploited it. She knew herself well enough to know that for a fact.
She stared at father and daughter and thought that maybe she should relinquish Nox and end it all quickly. Painlessly. She would not be walking away from this alive either way.
But the regret of not sensing the trap right away turned into an endless wellspring of rage that grew and grew, drowning out all reason and sanity.
Bellum ran, and Tenebris stood as a sentinel high upon that hill, staring down with wicked burning eyes, but not blinking. Not even a quiver betrayed that bone-chilling stillness of hers.
The sky grew thick with heavy black-and-gray clouds full of lightning, thunder, and rain. A deluge of it came crashing down, soaking Bellum to the core. She raised her steel, and Nox gleamed a vision of glowing blue.
But even as she made ready for the killing strike, she felt Nox began to shudder with the finality of their end together. The night lit up with the shriek of eons of souls Nox had taken.
Men. Women. Beast. Veilers. None had been sparred her blade’s wrath and justice. But now those souls rose high, surrounding Bellum with ghostly hands and faces contorted in masks of endless pain and hate.
Tears of blood ran down her cheeks as the hands and claws ripped at her flesh. Death had held the souls at bay for so long, but now they were released, given over to their madness and lust for vengeance.
And just as Nox made ready to spear through the scales of Tenebris’s impenetrable hide, the dragon came to life.
There were no words spoken, no sharing of the heart, or truths laid out bare one last time. The dragon had moved beyond her need to please a mother who could never find joy in the daughter she’d found so lacking.
If there was a flicker of pain in Bellum’s heart as she watched that gargantuan neck move lower and lower, she buried it down deep, refusing even in the end to see it, to acknowledge it, padlocking the truth so deep and so far down into the darkness of her infinite black soul that she would be unable to recognize the emotion for what it was.
The first brush of heated breath caressed Bellum’s skin, causing her to break out in a wash of thick, seeping blisters. The air was awash with the fires of hell, a baptism of blood for all her sins.
The dragon swatted Nox away, but not before the blade sank in deep, slicing through scale, flesh, tendon, and bone. However, she was the daughter of Death, and now bore Death’s own kiss. The dragon would heal itself.
But Bellum would not be so fortunate.
With a smile, almost of relief, she spread her arms to the sides like a bird about to take flight and tipped her chin up, ready and willing to face her own destiny. The Master’s judgment was just. She did deserve her fate.
Teeth as sharp as Nox’s edge, whispered against her now ruined and burned flesh, and she whispered three words to the wind.
“I. Forgive. You.”
Then she was buried in the throat of the beast and consumed until all that remained was naught but a pile of ashes. The Age of Bellum had come to an end.
Chapter 18
Scarlett
I knew what I had done the second it was over. The raging night gave way to a type of quiet I’d never heard before and probably never would again.
I came to myself slowly, reshaping, reforming, back into the form of the woman I’d once been. But inside myself, I wasn’t the same anymore.
I still felt the dark sting of Death’s kiss coiling like an angry serpent in my belly.
When I was once again me, I turned and saw Death, still just a man, no longer the powerful figure he’d once been.
I stared at my hands, now covered in dark curling runes that glowed like flame beneath my skin. A gentle breeze whipped through my hair, sliding tendrils of it over my face, making me recall the swish of a powerful dragon’s tail.
This was almost too much, what’d just happened. I clenched my jaw and looked at the man who’d only been a stranger to me before tonight. It felt like we’d gone through war together and had come out on the other side no longer quite so different, but eerily similar.
Wearing a suit and tie, with eyes of only one color staring back at me. They were a black so dark that they reminded me of boiling tar. He no longer had irises. They were entirely black.
But his smile was genuine as he spread his hands. “It is done, daughters. You have done as I always knew you someday would. But it is not over. Sadly. It never can be.”
He sighed, and I said nothing. I just waited, feeling a peculiar sense of detachment, like I was no longer a part of anything that mattered.
Nothing to keep me here. Nothing to hold me here. I could leave. Wander the vastness of space and time, alone. Without this... form of flesh and blood that hindered me. Become nothing but the power.
My mind filled with images of blood. Screams. Death. A scythe. And a blood red moon. My insides quivered, that serpent within me desperate to break free.
Death grabbed me, held my hand, and forced me to look in his eyes.
“Listen to me, daughter, and listen well. I should have warned you when I gave you my power that it was not temporary. You are now the instrument of Death, the great balance to life. That call, that darkness that moves inside your soul, it is tempting, alluring. And you will be forced to give into it over and over again. But you can be infinitely better than I ever was because I learned the truth far too late. I committed so many heinous atrocities giving into the delicious draw of Death’s insatiable hunger. Gods!” His black eyes raked my face, and his smile was soft and sad. “You are going to fight the biggest battle of your life now. But I’ll give you the key to victory, the knowledge that took me far too long to grasp. Ask me what it is, girls?”
I swallowed, feeling myself pulled, wanting so desperately to break free and fly, become the creature of endings. But his question was subtle, soft enough to pique my interest and force my eyes away from the eternal sky and toward him.
“What knowledge?” I heard myself ask in a voice that still sounded like the dragon’s. Hard. Intelligent. Wise.
Death’s power was my own now. Forever. The burning drive to indulge my needs warred with a greater knowledge inside me.
I was two in one. I was Scarlett. I was also Tenebris. Both sides of me were so very different. Tenebris was all-powerful, impulsive, and chaotic. Scarlett had been grounded in the real world, forced to grow up faster than she should have, but developed a spine of steel that made her—made me—stronger for it.
There was also another thing in me now. The vast wisdom and knowledge of Death that thought and reasoned not like a human, or even a Veiler, but rationally, without emotion to muddy the waters. There was a clarity in me now.
I had the ability to see far, far into the future. Many futures. To see where each action and thought could lead to several million different possible outcomes. I saw now why they called it the great game.
In the end, that’s exactly what it was. An endless path with thousands of forks in the road. In fact, I stood upon my own fork now.
Turn to the left and fly off into the yawning maw of eternity, shutting off all emotion and thoughts. Becoming only one thing, an unflinching agent of reason. Making the choices not based on emotions of the heart but solely on the need to win the game at all costs.
I frowned, nostrils flaring because that description seemed awfully familiar to what had become of Bellum herself. So unemotional, so unyielding in her beliefs, that it had eventually led to her ruination.
I stared into his eyes and he nodded, gently brushing his fingertips over my cheek. Touch felt foreign. It was like I was a new creature in this body. I had my old memories. I remembered love and hate and despair, but I was untouched by them now.
I was a clean slate.
But whatever I chose here would be permanent for me.
“So now you see,” he said softly. “The game begins with a simple choice and it starts right now. Do as we’ve always done, become unfeeling, unthinking, obsessed only with the win, no matter the cost. O
r... be the maverick I know you truly are. Blaze your own path, Scarnebris. Be your own Horseman. Dare to go against the tide and do it the right way.” He blinked. “Bellum lost herself to her choices, and I nearly would have too. In truth, I did lose. By my choice, but the results are the same. War was right. I could not end her without ending myself. My reign as the Master’s right-hand man is done. But at least I was given redemption before it was too late for me.”
“I am Lady Death now,” I said in a voice that still sounded foreign to my ears. “I have the power to give it all back to you.”
He shook his head and curled his hands around mine, balling them up tight.
“You are the greatest and most magnificent of the Master’s will, but the outcome cannot change for me. I moved against War, and the rules are very specific. I am who you see now. Nothing more than a transient. A Veiler, unknown to all. No power given to me anymore, except that of eternal life.”
His voice sounded hollow but there was a thread there, something I’d not heard in him before. Small. Very tiny. But ringing so loudly in my ears. There was hope. Hope for what, I didn’t know. It was faint, nearly insignificant, but there.
He shrugged. “This was my final gift to you, daughter. And I would do it all over again if it meant ridding you of War’s strife and constant battle for supremacy. But just as you were reborn tonight as a Horseman, another War has already been made. He or she will be your opposite, the black king to your white queen. Do not make the same mistakes I did. Learn from the past, and the world will feel that stability. Find your anchor, as I found mine. Far too late, but found all the same.”
“The winged woman?”
He nodded. “Yes, the great love of my maddeningly eternal life. She is now and will always be my driving force to stay good and positive no matter what. And you know you can always visit me when you need advice or a friendly ear.” He chucked my chin.
The Vampire Went Down to Georgia (Southern Vampire Detective Book 3) Page 22
