by Tessa Dawn
Not to mention fangs…and vampires.
As Nathaniel promised, the procedure was utterly painless—and not because Kagen was such a great Healer, although according to everyone she had met, he was. The procedure was painless because Nathaniel was absorbing all of the sensations into his own body for her, the Vampyr method for blocking pain.
She watched in apt fascination as the Ancient Master Warrior stood perfectly still and relaxed, showing no sign whatsoever of the pain he was absorbing on her behalf.
Somehow, the gesture gave her courage: If he could do it, maybe so could she.
The door to the room flew open, and Jocelyn rushed in with a look of flushed apology on her face. “Hey, Deanna.” She dropped her purse on a nearby chair and rushed across the room to give her a hug, careful to avoid the newly appointed apparatus. “I’m so sorry I’m late. It couldn’t be avoided.” She drew back and held both of Deanna’s shoulders in a firm but gentle grip. “How are you holding up?”
Deanna frowned. “Kind of like a prisoner about to face the gallows. I’m a mess.”
Jocelyn looked up at Nathaniel with an inquisitive look on her face.
“We’re doing all we can, my love,” he assured her. He turned to Deanna then. “We will do all we can until the procedure is complete.”
Jocelyn turned back to Deanna and raised an eyebrow. “Marquis?”
Deanna grimaced, feeling a little guilty. “Kagen asked him to wait outside the room—at my request.” She shrugged apologetically while glancing from one brother to the next. “I am sorry about that; he’s just…so intense, you know?”
Nathaniel chuckled lightheartedly. “No worries, little sister. We will all be more relaxed without Marquis’s…loving scrutiny.”
Kagen chuckled himself then. “Well put.”
A strange vibration swept through the room, and Deanna somehow knew that the brothers were answering for their recent comments telepathically; Marquis might not be physically in the room, but one could best believe, he wasn’t far away in his mind.
Kagen stepped away from the gurney and dimmed the lights. As if on cue, Nathaniel strode to the far side of the room and sat down in a comfortable armchair—one Kagen had brought into the exam room for just this purpose. There was also an empty chair beside Nathaniel for Jocelyn, in case she needed a break at some point, and Kagen? Well, he was not about to leave his baby brother’s side until the last drop of venom had passed into his destiny—a commitment Deanna was completely grateful for.
Jocelyn gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’m right here,” she whispered. Somehow, her voice was not as steady as before.
Before Deanna could respond, Kagen rounded the foot of Nachari’s bed, where Deanna was sitting, stopped, and knelt in front of her. “Sister,” he whispered, almost reverently.
She looked him in the eyes; they were practically glowing. “Yes?”
He whispered something beautiful yet foreign in an ancient language, and then he took both of her hands in his and repeated it in English. “You are Nachari’s blood destiny,” he said in a ceremonious voice, “the other half of his soul. You are the love he has waited a lifetime to find. The gift he will, gods willing, spend a lifetime trying to become worthy of. Your heart was revealed beneath the Blood Moon, your spirit chosen by the god Perseus, the Victorious Hero, to be honored, cherished, and favored by him—above and beyond all others—for all eternity. Do you accept this as your true destiny?”
Deanna was blown away by the beauty of the words, the ancient Vampiric vow between mates that preceded conversion. “Yes…I do believe that now.”
Kagen smiled, and his face lit up like the noonday sun. “Deanna Dubois, do you come to Nachari now of your own free will?”
Deanna nodded.
He waited.
“Yes…Yes.”
“Will you relinquish your heart, your life, and your body into his care—into our care—to be transformed, remade, and reborn? This night, unto forever, to be made immortal?”
Deanna knew that Kagen had added the words into our care as a concession. A promise. Nachari’s brothers were promising to care for her always should the unthinkable happen—should Nachari not return. She summoned all the courage she had in her soul, and more than just a little faith, and nodded. “I will.”
Kagen kissed the back of her hand and gently helped her off the bed onto the gurney, where he meticulously strapped her in, careful to place thick cloths between the straps and her delicate skin. He connected the loose end of the tubing to the catheter in her neck, looked her in the eyes, waiting for her nod of approval, and then gently flipped the switch on the pump.
Deanna held her breath.
Waiting.
She watched as the venom slowly made its way down and around the tube traveling toward her neck.
At first it felt like a bee sting, painful but not unbearable, as miraculously, Nachari’s venom began to flow into her veins. She tried to breathe deeply…relax. And then the venom thickened. Not a single bee sting but several.
Ten.
Fifty.
One hundred.
She began to shift uncomfortably on the gurney, wondering what the hell she had gotten herself into. The venom began to heat up then, like liquid fire or molten lava flowing from a volcano, and her eyes opened wide with fright. “Is it supposed to feel like this?” she asked, her voice revealing her panic.
Jocelyn took her hand and squeezed it. “Yes, sweetie. Try to breathe as deeply as possible; don’t hold your breath.”
Deanna squirmed beneath the restraints. It had been less than five minutes since the procedure began, and the venom was burning her from the inside out like acid, tearing away at her skin. She moaned as the horrific sensation intensified.
And then she screamed aloud. Whatever the substance was, it was invading her bloodstream, traveling quickly toward her heart, and her very bones rebelled. She felt herself pull against the restraints, realizing all at once that she couldn’t do this.
She could never do this.
It was too unbearable.
“Untie me,” she demanded, turning to Kagen. “I can’t.” A sudden surge of panic hit her, and she screamed again. “Untie me!” She turned to Jocelyn then. “Jocelyn—I can’t do this.” Her body began to shake violently from the pain, and she fought not to vomit.
Jocelyn reached for an EmBag and held Deanna’s head. “If you need to throw up, do it in this.”
Deanna’s voice grew hoarse with desperation. “No…no! Untie me. Unplug it. Stop this.”
Jocelyn’s exquisite eyes filled with tears, and she stroked Deanna’s cheek, which only felt like needles piercing her skin. “We can’t, sweetie; you know that. Try to focus on something…an object across the room. Just breathe.”
“To hell with that!” Deanna shouted.
If her body had been inflicted with a thousand wounds, and the Silivasis had dunked her in a tub of alcohol, the sensation of burning could not have been more intense. It was as if her internal organs were rebelling, collapsing, twisting into little knots. The venom was unlike anything she had ever experienced before: a dozen snakes biting her at once, her skin on fire, her organs under attack—her nerves imploding with agony.
Deanna Dubois threw back her head and shouted an ungodly, inhuman sound. She bucked against the restraints and wished to God she could bite into her hands, chop off her limbs—hell, slit her wrists—just to escape the potency of the pain.
What was it they had told her? She would die to be reborn? And all for this male she had never met? All because of a series of drawings that had compelled her to come to this place?
Helpless tears of anguish and frustration rolled down her cheeks as she moaned, groaned, and screamed in desperation. Delirious from her suffering, her mind splintered into a thousand pieces, and she turned her head to the side to regard the male who lay so still on the bed beside her.
How could he do this to her?
Didn’t he understand the sacrifice
, the leap of faith, the devotion she had shown to him—a total stranger? Was she insane, desperate, or just stupid? I hate you! she thought, needing desperately to lash out in some direction…any direction. I wish I’d never heard of you. Stop this! Please…oh God, please…don’t do this to me!
A surge of venom passed through her heart and began to travel into her lower organs: her liver, pancreas, and kidneys. Like the sudden downpour of hail from a thunderous cloud, unspeakable agony began to rain down upon her, pounding her reason into dust, obliterating her will, rendering her speechless—and thoughtless—from the force of its unrelenting attack.
Deanna felt the gurney rock and tip.
She saw Kagen move with unearthly speed and set it right again.
She heard Jocelyn’s voice, and thought she saw tears streaming down the beautiful woman’s face, but she couldn’t make anything out. Everything was fuzzy.
And inconsequential.
She watched as Nathaniel rose from his chair, released his incisors, and began to drip venom on…what? Her ankles?
Ah yes, she had torn through the cloth in her struggles, and her ankles were bleeding from the abrasion of the straps. He was healing the wounds as she made them.
She would have laughed, if laughter was something she had access to—compared to the siege taking place in her body, bloody wrists and ankles didn’t even register on the pain odometer. Hell, childbirth would probably be a walk in the park compared to this.
Angry, forlorn, and utterly…insane, Deanna took a deep breath, held it in her sweltering lungs as long as she could, opened her mouth, and screamed all the way to the heavens and back.
Like the raining agony, she would never…ever…stop.
From the midst of a torturous cauldron of boiling water, Nachari Silivasi sat up straight and ceased his cries of agony. It was a cruel bedtime routine that Ademordna reserved for those rare occasions when he entertained a host of minions and neighboring demons in his palatial court: He would fill a bath with boiling water, have Nachari submerged in the scorching liquid, and read bedtime stories to the wizard as his skin peeled back from his bones and floated around in the tub, cruel tales of life on earth, his brothers and their destinies, the world Nachari would never see again.
It was a torture unlike any other, and despite his best attempts to escape his body and the unbearable agony, Nachari could do nothing more than endure the vile brutality.
But tonight, something had jolted him out of his own misery.
Deanna.
He felt her—her own agony—and his heart skipped a beat in his chest, assuming it was even still attached at this juncture.
He struggled to focus.
Dear gods and goddesses in the Celestial heavens…
No.
he prayed absently, addressing the petition to no one in particular.Please tell me she cannot feel my pain!
In the midst of his torture, he reached for the body of the raven—just as he had done unsuccessfully a thousand times before. “Black as night, dark as coal; into flight, release my soul!”
In an instant, he catapulted out of his body, swept up into the form of the great bird, and soared through the netherworld, circling between dimensions.
Searching.
Great Pegasus, what had happened? How had he transitioned successfully this time? So quickly? So seamlessly?
He looked down at the body thrashing in the bath below him, still crying out in agony, and dismissed it. Something so much more powerful was calling to him, summoning him away from the throne room. Tugging. Beckoning. Insisting that he come…
Now.
Nachari followed the faint vibration, drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and as the raven soared higher…and higher…farther and farther away from his grim existence in hell, he began to discern small clues.
Deanna’s voice.
Deanna’s cries.
Deanna’s reality.
He stopped in midflight: They were converting his destiny!
His brothers.
Using Kagen’s medical skills—and Nachari’s venom—in a procedure that had never been done before. And by all the gods in heaven, she was suffering immeasurably.
Without thought or reason, unaware of his current realm—or the next—Nachari drew the four winds into his body to give the raven more rapid flight. He aligned his unconscious mind with the collective, creative energy of the universe around him—all that had ever been created, and all that was yet to come—and he harnessed it in his breath. He became fire. He became water. He became the molecules that manifested the earth, and he became raw, unrestrained power, infinite potential awaiting a focused intention.
And then he flew like a rocket through a small, rectangular window.
With wings outstretched to the east and west, with talons curved and reaching for something nameless yet so important, with a curved beak extended to the sky, open, and screeching its rage, he landed on the far end of a hospital gurney and stared straight ahead…at the most beautiful, and tortured, woman he had ever seen.
The wizard inside him coalesced into a pillar of such intensity that it manifested as a swirl of fire—red, orange, and blue energy blazing in an unnatural conflagration—enveloping the makeshift bed, surrounding the woman and her cries, reaching…piercing…demanding her very soul in that moment.
No male in the house of Jadon had ever escaped the cruelty of the Blood Curse: No destiny had ever escaped a moment of the agony that accompanied conversion. While some human women were converted in mere hours—and others suffered for days—none could be released from the slow, agonizing annihilation of their human bodies in order to find even a moment’s reprieve.
But the Blood of the Slain itself could not deny the harnessed power of the Universe, coalescing in that one serendipitous moment…
In Nachari Silivasi.
The power of heaven reached down to sustain him; the brute force of hell rose up to surround him; and the power of all the dimensions between fused in his being—all submitted like soldiers to his command.
“Deanna!” he called out, compelling her attention.
Deanna felt a force like a whirlwind sweep through the room. It drew her briefly from her unrelenting hell, and turned her head to the side, drawing her full attention to the open window adjacent to Nachari’s bed. The most enormous, magnificent bird she had ever seen flew through the window in a radiance of light, squawked in defiance, and fell like an anchor at the foot of the gurney. Its wings were like onyx silk, its eyes a luminescent, emerald green, as it stared beyond her. Through her. Inside of her.
Like an archangel sent from heaven, it called to her: “Deanna! Open your eyes. Come to me, now!”
While her eyes were already open, she somehow knew that this was not what the raven meant—what the being was commanding of her. He was asking for her spiritual sight, the eyes of her soul that saw beyond the physical.
As she stared ahead at the manifestation, a cascading fire burst forth from the center of the raven’s chest, flowed swiftly around the gurney, and engulfed her body in a protective circle—yet nothing the fire touched burned. Kagen and Nathaniel rushed around feverishly, trying to determine the source of the phenomenon—trying to protect her from the flames—but Deanna knew she needed no protection from the wizard.
As long as she stared into the center of the flames, just below the space where emerald eyes had so recently stared back at her, there was no sensation.
No pain.
No reality.
There was nothing but peace.
And overwhelming, unadulterated power.
“Nachari,” Deanna whispered, her mouth softly parted in wonder. She didn’t know how she knew—she just did. He had come for her. He had come to help her…
He had come from the bowels of hell.
Her eyes swelled with tears as she stared at the miraculous apparition before her. Holy mother of God, what kind of wizard was he?
“Deanna. Deanna!” Kagen kept calling he
r name, demanding her attention, but she wasn’t about to look away from the raven.
“I hear you, Kagen,” she whispered.
“Are you okay?”
“What’s happening?” Nathaniel asked.
Deanna stared straight ahead. “Nachari’s here,” she whispered.
The room fell silent.
“Can you see him?” Jocelyn finally asked, her voice filled with awe.
Deanna shook her head. “No. But I have the answers we’ve been searching for.” The restraints fell away from her body, and she sat up slowly, still staring, dumbfounded, at the source of power before her. “He is neither alive nor dead. His corporeal body is bound to the earth because Kagen is keeping him alive; while his ethereal body, which has taken on a substance of its own, exists in the underworld—in the Valley of Death and Shadows.” She drew a deep breath. “He’s Ademordna’s prisoner, kept in a cell, some kind of dark chamber behind a throne room in the…Middle Kingdom.” She winced. “He’s been tortured day and night for the amusement of demons, but he is…sentient…aware. And he is fighting”—she swallowed back her tears as the meaning of the words that flowed through her truly sank in—“he is fighting to come home.” Deanna cleared her throat in an attempt to steady her voice. “There is one…I’m not sure…another presence, a female, a demoness. Very dark and dangerous. But she is collecting…something…no, several things for him…and when he finally has them all, he will try to create a rift between worlds, craft a spell to return home. His success is not guaranteed. It’s a very difficult and risky—”
The stream of information disappeared as swiftly as it had come, and Deanna understood…
She knew that there would be no more words—no more visions.
No more psychic revelations.
The raven—Nachari—needed to focus all the energy he had on protecting her, not sending her a stream of psychic information: The wizard had harnessed an enormous amount of energy in order to communicate with her, and his power was swiftly waning. He had defied all the laws of the universe to be there, and what little he had left would be used to ease her suffering. There would be no argument. No other consideration. Protecting Deanna meant more to Nachari than revealing his own circumstances—than seeking his own salvation.
