Pure Destiny

by Aja James

  Until everything he was became hers.

  Mindless soldier. Amped up body. Poisoned veins.

  None of it mattered. The wreckage and the man. The tortured, frozen soul. They were all irrefutably hers.

  Until suddenly, he angled his profile toward her, his eyes flashing silver.

  Sophia gasped.

  Could it be? Was he—

  “Wake the boy and strap on the utility packs under your seats. Do it now,” he commanded low, finally wrenching his hand away from hers.

  “Wh-what?” she stuttered, the sudden withdrawal of his touch rendering her bereft. She could barely make sense of what he was saying.

  But then the meaning and urgency in his tone sunk in.

  “Why?” she asked, her stomach plummeting with dread.

  He punched some buttons and pushed the yoke and throttle forward, increasing their forward momentum so drastically Sophia had to clutch the arms of her seat to brace herself.

  “Because I’ve set a collision course with the mountainside up ahead. We have thirty seconds before impact, fifteen seconds to bail over the lake below.”

  *** *** *** ***

  “Do you know how the Pure and Dark Ones were created?”

  Seth and Rain looked up from their own texts to regard Eveline.

  The three of them, with Cloud, Valerius, Gabriel, Ishtar, and Tal continued to dig through the Shield’s archives for potential clues as to who or what they were dealing with. Although Tal could not see to read, he could provide additional context for the duration of the Great War.

  But more importantly, Ishtar needed him close. After millennia apart, and the difficulties of their bittersweet reunion, they were just now settling into each other in all the ways of Destined Mates. If Ishtar had a choice, Tal would be with her always. Especially when she was reeling from the loss of Erebu and Benjamin.

  “Is that a rhetorical question?” Seth asked. “I can only relate Egyptian mythologies to Immortal Kinds. I never knew about the existence of Pure souls until I was offered a second life by the Goddess. At the time, I thought it was Anubis come to guide me into the afterlife. That the god appeared female with a hauntingly soft voice rather surprised my human self.”

  The gathered members of the Dozen came from a variety of backgrounds and timelines. Yet, all ancient and even modern mythologies contained similar variants of the Creation story, of life and death and the afterlife. Mankind across history had interpreted the unexplainable with the cultural and religious beliefs of their time, but there were always common threads, no matter who, when or where.

  “My papa used to tell tales about the Twin Goddesses when I was a boy,” Tal murmured. “They were believed to be the most powerful of all of the gods, but only when they were together, in perfect harmony. They balanced each other’s strengths and weaknesses so that their combined powers exceeded all the rest. It was in their image that Pure and Dark Ones were created.”

  “Yes, all evidence, oral and written, would point to the fact that the Twin Goddesses created Pure and Dark Ones,” Eveline confirmed. “But the question is why did they do it. And why did they give us certain Gifts and limitations?”

  “Do you mean the Dark Ones’ unquenchable bloodthirst, love of the night, and other…thrills?” Gabriel asked.

  “And the Pure Ones’ Cardinal Rule?” Rain added.

  “Exactly those,” Eveline said. “As far as I can glean, the Twin Goddesses never had those particular traits. They might have had weaknesses relative to other gods, but neither were limited or strengthened by light or dark, and neither suffered for love.”

  “Perhaps because they never knew love,” Tal thought out loud. “Love can only be felt when a being has a soul. Gods don’t have souls.”

  “In the beginning, no, they did not,” Eveline agreed. “There are of course many variations of this, but in the beginning there was only Darkness and Light. The gods of old when they reigned supreme did not have feelings; they only knew power, creation, destruction, action and reaction. And then, one of the gods’ own creations, a Beast, fell in love with a Goddess.”

  The other members of the Dozen were rapt with attention as Eveline carried on.

  “From what I pieced together from obscure oral histories and hidden sections of the Ecliptic and Zodiac Scrolls, that Beast died because the Goddess didn’t—couldn’t—love him back. But the loss of him taught the Twin Goddesses to regret. It taught them sorrow. And it created an imbalance in the universe. That was when the gods began to decline in power. When chaos and wars ensued. Until one day, their powers diffused entirely, scattered to the four winds in the sparks of souls. Immortal and human.”

  “As fascinating as all this is,” Seth noted, “how does it pertain to the situation at hand?”

  The Seer slid a look of mild annoyance his way.

  “I’m getting to that,” she grumbled.

  “Get there faster,” the ever silent Protector, Valerius, growled.

  “I’m trying to figure out who we’re dealing with here,” Eveline huffed. “Medusa seems well understood with hind sight. But Wan’er is still an enigma.”

  “And this lesson in mythology will help us better understand her?” Gabriel asked, clearly skeptical.

  “It helped us figure out the importance of Benjamin, didn’t it?” Eveline returned, gray-blue eyes sparking with an inner fire.

  Gabriel let out a breath that was half-contrition, half-frustration.

  “I am sorry, Seer. I know you are trying to help. I just feel so… powerless, confined to this library looking through the past when my son is out there right now…”

  He put his face in his hands, elbows on the oak table, as an involuntary shudder racked his body.

  Ishtar took the seat beside him and stroked his broad back with a reassuring hand.

  “Please continue, Eveline,” Tal urged quietly. “You obviously have some theories.”

  She nodded and began again.

  “Throughout history, there has always been a push and pull, action and reaction. Balance requires opposite forces acting in harmony. We sense a disturbance in the Balance because of one individual amassing too much power. Violence and chaos are only the symptoms of the larger issue. We’ve been trying to neutralize the symptoms, but we’ve never addressed the source. And in order to do so, we have to understand why.”

  “Because she craves more power,” Cloud said, frowning.

  “But why?” Eveline persisted. “What does she want to do with it? Gain by it? Power for the sake of power is pointless.”

  “To a rational person, perhaps,” Seth murmured. “We could simply be dealing with a megalomaniac.”

  “Actually, I think that descriptor more accurately pertained to Medusa,” Eveline returned, “along with narcissistic psychopath. But this enemy is different.”

  “Based on what I know from the Cove, she’s been experimenting with different species and Kinds for a very long time. If we put aside Medusa for a moment and consider that this enemy is the real mastermind behind everything that’s happened, then you could argue that she used Medusa—to form the base for the Hydra.”

  “She is using…others’ genetic material as well,” Rain added, flicking a quick glance at Tal. “If I think about it, Wan’er started a number of clinics years ago in Boston, then New York City, and who knows where else. Those could have been fronts for experimentation on humans. We know that the Genesis serum came from Tal. And recently, we learned that Evergreen is a match for Erebu.”

  Eveline nodded.

  “She’s creating hybrids between Kinds, many of them failures, but some successes as well. Ramses suspects that the rise in number of Rogue vampires lately is manufactured. As in, these vampires were made, and not in the old-fashioned way of turning, which has built-in limitations.”

  “You mean, they are the result of experiments?” Gabriel’s eyes flared with comprehension.

  “Artificial man-made creations,” Eveline confirmed. “That’s what Ava be
lieves, anyway.”

  “We had the same hypothesis before, remember?” Rain said. “But we were never able to discover how that was possible.”

  “Ava is trying to get enough samples to prove it,” Eveline related, “but that necessitates bringing back Rogues alive versus killing them outright, which is not as easy to do as one might think. The Chosen have tried, but all the vampires they’ve captured have turned to dust before they could collect any usable samples.”

  “But I digress,” Eveline came back to where she started. “What I wanted to point out is that Wan’er, or whoever she really is, seems to be artificially replicating what the gods of old did with magic—she’s creating life.”

  “She has a god complex,” Seth deduced.

  “More than that,” Eveline said.

  “I think she wants to become a god.”

  *** *** *** ***

  Sophia was getting rather attached to caves.

  Such utilitarian rock formations—great for shelter from the elements, as a hideout from potential threats, and quite luxurious when there’s close access to water as well as dry kindling for a cozy fire.

  Her history with caves, underground enclosures, caverns and such had been quite eventful. She was practically a connoisseur. She should start a travel tour for five-star cavern stays.

  Her first experience kind of ruined her for all others—during her trip to China when she was ten years-old, newly dubbed Queen of the Pure Ones. Chaperoned by Ayelet and Valerius, their task was to recruit the race’s most powerful healer, Rain, into the Royal Zodiac.

  Rain’s society of Pure and human healers, all women, inhabited a web of underground facilities beneath the famous West Lake in Hangzhou. The enclosures were outfitted with both ancient and modern luxuries, nostalgic and convenient. Magical.

  Such an experience was hard to beat, especially given Sophia’s next, less voluntary stay.

  The second time, she was abducted several years ago by the Creature (or Erebu under Medusa’s orders). She’d been taken to a maze of abandoned underground tunnels outside of Boston. Creepy, like catacombs. She was kept in a gilded cage, taunted but not harmed. She didn’t remember much else; she’d been drugged out during the Elite’s counter-attack and rescue. And when she finally gained consciousness, Dalair was gone.

  That experience was decidedly unmagical, given that they’d lost two Elite warriors and the Pure Ones’ Scribe in the final battles.

  The third time, Dalair himself had abducted her. Taken her right out of the Shield from under everyone’s noses.

  He took her to a hidden location in the Catskills. She was kept there for many days, perhaps even weeks. She’d lost track of time. Then, he helped her escape (or so she thought), and she succumbed to their need for each other under a secluded rock overhang much like the one at the entrance of the cave she huddled within now.

  Which brought her to her present circumstances: holed up for the night in this cozy cave whose entrance was hidden by the liquid shield of a waterfall, waiting for Dalair to return from whatever he was doing outside.

  It didn’t occur to Sophia to run for it while Dalair left her and Benji alone for the time being.

  First, because the little boy was tuckered out, sleeping like the dead in a huddled ball in a small nook toward the back of the cave behind a row of rocks that almost entirely blocked him from view.

  And who could blame him?

  He’d been taken from his home, thrown off a fifty-story building, absconded in a helicopter to the middle of nowhere, hurled out of the helicopter into a freezing lake, dragged out of said lake and carried on his abductor’s back through dense woods, until finally they called it a night in this hidden cave after taking care of various bodily needs in rote, zombie trances.

  Sophia was exhausted just retracing their experiences in her head, never mind that she lived through them right alongside Benji.

  Thankfully, the utility packs Dalair instructed them to strap on were waterproof, and they made use of all the goodies inside. Thin, but warm blankets, pouches of freeze-dried food, canteens for water, which they collected directly from the falls.

  Their wet clothes were laid out flat on the cave floor around a toasty fire. Sophia kept her underwear on but covered the rest of herself with a blanket. Benji was a naked blond burrito in his, only the top of his head and the bottoms of his feet visible outside of the covering. But Dalair still wore the same loose pants and no shirt.

  Well, those pants weren’t “loose” when they were soaked through from the lake, and Sophia took much pleasure hiking through the woods after him so she could enjoy the view. Which was exponentially improved upon with his lack of underwear. Even in the dark, with just a hint of moonlight filtering through the trees, she could see the outline of his muscles as they shifted with his movements.

  Sophia distinctly recalled comparing Dalair’s hind quarters to that of an Arabian stallion when she was a teenager completely and bewilderingly in lust with him. Keeping her eyes glued to his scrumptious male ass as he walked in front of her, she had the almost irresistible urge to say “Giddyup, cowboy!”

  Determinedly, she squelched this impulse.

  Really, she should be ashamed. With a reincarnated soul as old as hers, with so many millennia of life experiences, one would think she’d have better control of her bodily urges. But apparently, her current twenty-one-year-old self, despite being a recently Awakened Pure One, still retained those pesky youthful hormonal side-effects. If at any point during the night she leapt upon Dalair like a mad woman, well, there really was no help for it.

  Horniness, spiked with everlasting love, was a serious, terminal condition if not properly assuaged.

  Her night vision improved by leaps and bounds with such tantalizing incentive dangled before her in the form of Dalair’s rear end. Truly, she didn’t think she could have put one foot in front of the other with so much conviction and enthusiasm if not for her body’s indefatigable need to follow its Mate wherever he should go.

  Second, Sophia was quite certain that if she made a run for it with Benji, they wouldn’t get far. It was stupid even to contemplate. Besides the fact that she was physically and skill-wise no match for Dalair, she didn’t know where they’d be running to. She had zero sense of direction in the woods at night. And, she’d run before after her second abduction. Look where that got her. Exactly where her enemies wanted her to trigger her Awakening.

  Third, and most importantly, Sophia didn’t want to run. She wanted to be wherever Dalair was. Even if he took her to the Evil One tomorrow (she refused to think of the she-demon as Wan’er, the kind hand-maiden to Rain Sophia had first met in China), she’d face the monster with him.

  She refused to lose him again. And if their enemy intended to turn her too and use her for their nefarious purposes, well, good luck to them. The contrary, selfish part of Sophia just didn’t give a damn at the moment. As long as she had Dalair, she would do and endure anything.

  The only thing that pulled her back to sanity was Benji. No matter what, she’d protect the boy from the monsters that were after him. Even from Dalair.

  Even from herself.

  On the bright side, based on Dalair’s actions over the past couple of hours, Sophia had an inkling that he was helping them. Though he shared none of his thoughts or intentions verbally or telepathically, this was the only logical conclusion.

  He could have fatally wounded the members of the Shield who got in his way when he was abducting Benji, but he didn’t. A small twinge of conscience? Possibly. He was supposed to take them to the Evil One’s lair by helicopter, and yet he purposely crashed that aircraft after changing course. Misdirection and faked deaths? Seemed likely.

  He could have easily ditched Sophia when they jumped from the helo into the lake; she wasn’t part of his mission. But he pulled her from the water along with Benji and made sure he walked slowly enough for her to keep up. And, too, he didn’t have to allow her to get close enough to come on this hai
r-raising adventure in the first place, but he did.

  Sophia was almost certain she’d been able to reach him—truly connect with his soul—in the helicopter. But she didn’t have the opportunity to glimpse more of his eyes in the dark. He hadn’t offered words of reassurance, and he didn’t respond to any of her mental probes.

  The only thing Sophia could do, as her eyelids became too heavy to keep up, was trust. She had to have faith that her love was strong enough to bring Dalair back. That together, they were strong enough to overcome all odds.

  In the meantime, while she waited for his return, Sophia succumbed to exhaustion.

  And she dreamed of the Before that she had long forgotten…

  Third millennium BC. Capital City of Akkad. Sometime before the Great War.

  “Tell me the story again, Papa,” Titi wheedled with a whine.

  “Pleeeassse.”

  Papa’s melodious chuckle rumbled from his big chest.

  Titi imagined that she could feel it shaking the ground upon which they lay side by side. That’s how big and powerful Papa seemed to her, as if he could carry the entire world on his broad shoulders.

  “I must have told it a thousand times,” he murmured, not impatiently.

  Papa was never impatient with Titi or Mama. Verily, Titi had never seen Papa impatient with anyone. He was the very best male and the very best Papa in the whole world!

  “Then tell it one thousand and one times,” Titi begged. “It’s my favorite story.”

  “Very well,” Papa relented.

  Titi could hear the smile in his voice. One of the reasons she loved this story was because of how Papa sounded and looked when he told it. His voice deepened with a different kind of warmth, and if she leaned over and looked down into his face, she would see the corners of his eyes crinkle with affection, his expression soften with love.

  Not the kind of love Papa showed to Titi though. A more mysterious, wondrous, indescribable kind of love. His love for Mama.