by Aja James
“Since Olivia was my mom, not Nana, not biologically anyway, I guess you mean I’m powerful from my dad’s side?”
Sophia could hear the thoughtful frown in his voice.
“But before Dad got turned into a vampire by Nana, he was a human just like me. I get that he has an ancient Pure soul and all, but these things aren’t inherited, are they?”
Mercy! But the boy was impossible to argue with. Sophia was relatively sure she hadn’t thrown around multi-syllabic words every other sentence when she’d been his age.
“You have a Pure soul too,” she revealed. “It is all your own. Not inherited from anyone. Unique and special.”
“So do you,” he immediately replied. “I’m no more special than you are.”
Before she could come up with more attributes to convince him of his own greatness (all except the one that their enemies really wanted him for), he said, “If I were the bad guys, I’d totally want to abduct you, Sophie. Cuz you’re real scary when you go all Alien versus Predator.”
“What?” she couldn’t help but sputter.
“You know, when your eyes get all black and demonic and veins branch out all across your skin. And your teeth sharpen, and nails too. I bet you could take down both the Alien and the Predator, and they’re totally badass.”
Wow, she was that grotesque and terrible when the Destroyer overtook her? He was most certainly the only person on earth who saw her inner monster in this positively awe-struck light.
“Language, Benji,” she admonished weakly.
“Wouldn’t it be cool if you could control the monster inside you and fight for the good side?” he continued in an increasingly excited whisper.
“I—”
But before she could complete her thought, familiar, scuffed up bare feet appeared on the low ridge she was crouched behind.
She knew without looking all the way up that it was Dalair, and scrambled to her feet with Benji in tow.
Immediately, she took in every minute change about his person: He was still bare-chested and bare-footed, wearing the loose, drawstring pants from the day before. Except now, two leather straps criss-crossed his chest. He must have acquired one of the enemy’s weapon holsters.
His body bore faint marks from his recently healed wounds, but there were fresh ones as well. Long scratches that looked like slices from swords and knives that were already starting to close, though still bloody. Tears in his trousers from various attacks. Bruises on his arms and torso that likely looked much less severe than they actually were, his Pure healing abilities hard at work to contain the damage.
It only took a second to take all of this in, and in the next second, Dalair was leading the way again, his footsteps swift and silent.
Sophia tried to keep up, holding onto Benji’s hand. The boy had to run a little to match Dalair’s long-legged strides, but he didn’t complain.
As she followed behind Dalair, she noticed the half-moon blades she’d commissioned for him long ago strapped to his back.
You got them back, she communicated to him.
He grunted in his mind. Even telepathically, he was a man of few words.
For some reason, this made her smile.
Isn’t it strange that one of the enemy soldiers had your weapons? She noted.
Someone is helping us, he responded, keeping his brisk pace during their exchange.
A traitor in our enemies’ midst? I thought everyone was mind-controlled.
I was mind-controlled too, he reminded her. But there were moments of lucidity. Even while carrying Medusa’s orders, I could sometimes manipulate them to minimize as much damage as I could.
She clenched her jaw as her eyes roved over the back of him. So many new wounds.
Were there many? How hurt are you?
Doesn’t matter. They’re all dust and ashes now. He didn’t answer her second question.
Before she could persist, he suddenly stopped in a small clearing and looked directly into her eyes.
Brace yourself.
He tossed her a dagger, which she caught reflexively, thanks to a year’s worth of combat training, snatching the hilt out of the air.
Two dozen soldiers are headed our way.
Oh shit.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t been trained to handle those kinds of odds.
*** *** *** ***
Remaining barefoot despite the option of combat boots from all the assassins he’d dusted (literally and figuratively) was a purposeful decision, which Dalair now regretted.
When he was on the attack, sneaking up behind each enemy soldier who had advanced upon their location through the woods from the east, being barefoot aided his stealth. Only a couple of the assassins had noticed his approach before it was too late. But those split seconds of alertness hadn’t saved them in any case.
There was good reason Dalair was Medusa’s chosen general—he strategized and anticipated, his hyper senses in tune with his sharp mind. And that was before she amped up his body with strength and healing abilities even beyond his original Pure One Gifts.
But now, as he engaged the swarm of enemy soldiers coming at them three or four at a time, stealth was the least of his worries. Combat boots would have come in handy when he aimed lethal kicks to their necks and temples, when he tried to break legs, ribs and arms.
At least they weren’t firing guns with killer-bullets, he processed mentally as he flipped an assassin onto their head, breaking their neck with a crack as they hit the hard ground at an angle. This probably meant that the Master wanted to take all three of them back alive.
Over his dead and disintegrated body.
Stay behind me, he commanded Sophia, and heard her move to obey.
A giant of a vampire chose that moment to swing a long axe at his head, so much for his assumption that the Master’s orders were to debilitate but not kill.
He ducked and rolled, slicing one of the half-moon blades across the front of the assassin’s shins, turned, and sliced the other blade across the back of his calves.
The giant toppled with a gurgled grunt when normal men would have screamed in agony at having their legs cut out from under them.
But these were not normal soldiers. They were completely mind-controlled to ignore pain. They felt it, just as Dalair felt it when he’d been the same, but their brains were wired to fight on until their bodies completely gave out.
Pain didn’t slow them down. They felt no fear. And they never disobeyed orders.
Which was why, instead of ignoring the fallen soldier who was incapacitated but not dead, Dalair sliced his blades in a cross-wise stroke and severed the vampire’s head from his body. He couldn’t afford to leave loose ends.
As the torso turned to ashes, he picked up the discarded long axe and flung it in a sideways arc at a soldier to the right, who was getting closer to where Sophia and the boy stood.
The axe struck the soldier in the chest, deep enough to embed in his heart. After a few full-bodied twitches, he slowly disintegrated into stardust, showing that his original base form had been Pure.
Dalair was already leaping toward the next two assassins, who came at him in concert.
Dark or Pure, it didn’t matter. Turned to obey Medusa’s, and now the new Master’s bidding, what used to be men were now machines. Emotionless. Conscience-less.
Soulless.
After dispatching a dozen soldiers, Dalair was starting to breathe more heavily, his heart thundering to pump more blood into his muscles, to keep up his strength.
These weren’t human men, after all, but well-trained, ancient, immortal warriors. Medusa only recruited the best of the best, second only to the Chosen and Elite warriors who guarded the leaders of their Kinds, of which Dalair used to be a member. As such, his fighting skills had an edge over the others. But only a slight edge.
When it was over twenty-to-one odds, all he had was disadvantage. And if enemies swarmed them from other directions, he wouldn’t be able to protect his rear. Sophia a
nd the boy would be exposed.
He tried to always pick off the nearest opponent first, tried to hamper others’ advancement with dagger, knife and even sword and axe tosses. But there were too many of them. He’d judged two dozen at first, but there must be more.
And they kept on coming.
He’d faced worse odds before. He fought and killed ninety-eight warriors in one night when he’d been human, defending Kira to his last breath. But those had been human warriors, and he had fought them one at a time.
Dalair was on autopilot by this point, barely thinking as he sliced and plowed his way through the enemy forces with deadly, instinctive precision. His body kept moving despite the descending numbness of his mind.
He had only one thought: to protect Sophia and the boy.
It was as if history was repeating itself in this moment, in this forest. He was fighting against seemingly insurmountable odds, his strength steadily depleting, bleeding out with the blood from his countless wounds.
He didn’t need to look behind him to know that Sophia was staring at him, frozen in horror and fear, as he dispatched their enemies one by one. He could feel her eyes on his skin, smell her fear and something else—the burgeoning scent of violence and vengeance.
A shiver of ice chased down his spine in warning.
He did flick a glance toward her, then, and almost stumbled in his fight before righting himself and slicing across the jugular of an enemy soldier with a last-second twist.
He’d never seen her like this before. Sophia looked like a completely different being. Eyes opaque black with blood-red centers. Veins zig-zagging across all visible skin. Her hair lifted in waves around her face, though there was no breeze to stir it. Fangs sharper than he’d ever seen them descended over her lower lip as her mouth pulled apart in a silent hiss.
No.
He had seen this before.
Moments before he died as a human, Kira had looked exactly the same—
As if she was about to set the world aflame and watch it burn.
Chapter Sixteen
It was a massacre.
Sophia watched Dalair engage the swarm of enemy soldiers as if in a dream.
And perhaps it was a dream. It didn’t seem real. This couldn’t be happening.
Not again.
Past and present conflated in a blur of reality and memories. All she knew was that bad people were hurting her Dalair. Cutting into him with swords, daggers, spears and axes. Hitting and kicking him. He was coated in blood and sweat. Dirt-mingled black and red streaks slid down his naked torso. His trousers were torn, his bare feet shredded.
Every sound was muffled, as if she was submerged in a watery hell. Even though the fighters’ movements were almost too fast for the naked eye to track, she witnessed each action and reaction as if in slow motion—
An enemy attacking Dalair from his left, while another advanced in a frontal assault.
Dalair deflecting the swing of a sword that glanced across his side, opening a bright red line, while taking the downward arc of a heavy axe with one raised half-moon blade.
With two more moves, he dispatched both soldiers, only to immediately engage three more.
Sophia didn’t notice the flutter of ashes and dust Dalair left in his wake. Those fallen enemy soldiers didn’t matter. All she saw was the damage to Dalair’s body, how he sustained blow after blow, cut after cut. How his jaw was permanently clenched in pain he would not voice. How his muscles quivered with stress to maintain power and speed. How his skin was no longer streaked with blood but painted with it.
And she remembered.
She saw the present Dalair fight black-robed enemy soldiers at the same time that she saw a past Dalair fight one warrior after another in single combat before the Temple of Neith in Kira’s homeland of Zau.
There had been one hundred fighters that night, impossible odds. He’d harnessed extraordinary stamina and determination to conquer ninety-eight of them.
But then he fell.
He fell…
She couldn’t let it happen again.
She wouldn’t!
Even if the whole world had to suffer, Dalair must live!
As these thoughts and emotions overwhelmed her consciousness like a solar eclipse, she felt a ravaging coldness flood her body, mind and soul. It was as if ice flowed through her veins instead of blood. Her heart no longer thrashed and flailed with terror and anguish; it was deadly calm. She wondered if it beat at all. Her pulse slowed and her extremities tingled with electric awareness, as an ominous power surged through her.
They had to die, so that Dalair could live. And if he didn’t live, then no one else should.
There was no life without him.
No reason. No light. No love.
They all had to die!
But just when a blast of energy radiated from the center of Sophia’s body to the tips of her fingers and through her blackened eyes, something warm and soothing took her hand.
Don’t, Sophie, a small voice said.
Though she heard none of the commotion from the death match unfolding before her, this voice in her ear was crystal clear.
Darkness isn’t the only way. You have Light within you too, remember?
Mentally, she shook her head, though physically, she didn’t move.
No, she didn’t remember. She only knew bleakness and vengeance.
You also know love, the voice argued, as if the speaker could hear her thoughts.
And then, suddenly, the little boy’s voice changed into a deep, masculine rumble.
You have the best of us…choose wisely, my sweet Ninti…
As if in a trance, Sophia turned her head slightly and looked down.
Benji gazed up at her with his beautiful, angelic smile, his blue eyes bright like stars, his golden curls blazing in a halo of sunlight.
He was holding her hand, and where they touched, she didn’t feel cold. Only warmth. Peace. Comfort.
Love.
Sophia gasped as the energy churning within her transformed into something else and exploded outward from her body in a flash of white.
And then—
Nothing.
*** *** *** ***
“Where are they?” Tal bit out, trying in vain to rein in his impatience.
“We should be close. Any moment now, we should see them in the woods below,” Cloud replied.
They’d been circling in one of the two helicopters for the past ten minutes within range of the coordinates their team provided. They already passed the crash site, but thus far, scans of the topography below hadn’t yielded glimpses of either enemy soldiers or Sophia and company.
Cloud and Valerius served as his eyes as Tal could not see for himself.
He almost wished that they’d brought Inanna, instead, for her Gift of laser vision. She could easily zoom in and out of objects with microscopic and macroscopic precision. Surely she would have spotted them by now.
“Bank slightly west,” Tal said, closing his blind eyes and focusing his newly developed Gift.
Perhaps he could sense them, anticipate where they were going instead of where they were presently.
The copter veered to follow his direction.
“They’re close,” he confirmed. “I can feel it.”
“There,” Valerius pointed out. “A flash of steel amidst the trees.”
But just as the helicopter dove lower to get close to the action, a blinding light mushroomed from the treetops like a physical force, sending the helo staggering off course as it caught the edge of the shockwave.
As their pilot struggled to regain control, the panels and alarms in the flight vehicle going haywire, Tal heard and sensed the second helicopter groaning and screeching through the same plight.
The rolling and spinning of the helicopter completely disoriented an already blind man. Tal no longer knew which direction was up or down. Strapped into one of the two rear seats, he could only grit his teeth as his internal organs tumbled thro
ugh the tailspin. Overwhelming nausea threatened to cripple him even further.
Were they going to crash?
How far away were the treetops?
The ground?
Out of nowhere, something heavy pounded into the belly of the aircraft, accompanied by the shriek of tearing steel. Then, the downward descent halted with stomach-flipping suddenness.
As Tal’s dizziness subsided somewhat, he could feel that they were upright and stabilizing in the air.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” the pilot muttered in a strange twang Tal had not heard before. “That’s the biggest fucking eagle I’ve ever seen! I know y’all aren’t regular folk, but that there’s somethin’ else!”
The Dark eagle warrior had come to their rescue, it seemed. Jade had assembled the team of Chosen wisely.
“Can you land in the clearing amongst the trees?” Cloud asked.
Tal rather envied the warrior’s ever calm, smooth tone. He himself was still getting his bearings and catching his breath. As an ancient Akkadian warrior who’d spent many millennia imprisoned and only the past couple of years learning modern ingenuity, to say that he was not used to flying was to put it mildly.
Within a minute, they maneuvered to a patch of open ground close to the nexus of the blast. The second helicopter landed nearby, and the six warriors emerged from within while the pilots stayed put.
In concert, they moved swiftly across the clearing and into the woods toward the action. Except, when they got there, all was silent and still.
Only one individual remained standing in a ring of scattered bodies lying immobile upon the ground.
Tal could almost see it with his other senses, forming a mental picture of the scene. He stumbled across one of those bodies in the outer ring and bent down quickly to assess.
The fallen soldier was breathing, his chest rising and falling as if in slumber. Tal felt no tension in his body. He was not forcibly paralyzed; he was simply unconscious.
“Dalair,” Cloud greeted, his voice edged with wariness.
“She is here,” the Pure Ones’ Paladin answered.
