by Hanna Peach
Samyara kicked Passar’s body one last time before he stormed out of the security room with only two guards left flanking him. Two guards she could take on. Alyx kicked the corpses off her. She unsheathed her sword and a long dagger as she leaped to her feet. She flew out of the security room and towards Samyara and his two guards as they walked away.
She launched herself at Samyara. One of the guards must have heard her because he turned and blocked her kill strike with his sword. Samyara spun on his heel as the corridor filled with the clang of metal as Alyx battled the first guard.
Samyara just laughed as he continued to back down the hall. “Alyxandria. You are a fool if you think you can get to me.”
Alyx feigned an attack and caught the guard by surprise. She sidestepped and slid her dagger into his body. He dropped to the ground. Her dagger, unlike her sword, was not infused with Israel’s blood. She didn’t want Samyara to be tipped off.
“Really?” Alyx called back. “’Cause I think I just took out one of the two things in my way.”
Alyx stared down the only Darkened left between them. He was a tall wide-shouldered man, his face hidden under a black hooded robe. He slid off his hood and Alyx caught sight of the demon underneath, a bloodred-skinned monster with strange eyes that seemed to shudder. She couldn’t quite seem to meet his eyes. He raised his hands to her and a thick black tar-like smoke came pouring out of his palms.
Oh God. This wasn’t just a lesser demon guard. He was a greater demon. Alyx slashed at the tar smoke that came at her like tentacles but her sword went right through it.
Oh hell.
“Goodbye, little Guardian,” Samyara sang out as he waltzed away, disappearing as the smoke thickened in the corridor.
“Go to Hell,” she cried as she turned to flee.
“Been there. Done that. Didn’t like it. Thought I’d take over this lovely planet instead.”
Alyx couldn’t fly away fast enough. The smoke billowed around her, covering her entirely, and everything went black.
Chapter 29
Jordan secured the last FireGlobe on the ceiling of the pantry. He now had less than ten minutes to get clear of them. He wiped his sweaty hands on his pants. It had been stressful work dealing with those FireGlobes. Dropping one would have been bad news for him.
Now to get the hell out of this workspace and find Alyx. He ducked under the low pantry door and aimed for the other side of the workspace, where the entrance to the main building was located. Before he could reach the door, a set of footsteps caused him to halt in surprise. The first Darkened appeared at the doorway.
“There’s one of them,” he yelled. “Get him.”
Oh crap.
As the Darkened poured into the workspace, Jordan glanced back at the pantry where the FireGlobes were slowly unsticking from their places on the ceiling. He had to hurry. He couldn’t be in here when the FireGlobes went off.
As he lashed and kicked out at the Darkened swarming him, he flicked his mirage on and off. To them he would have looked like he was disappearing and reappearing somewhere else. The confusion was giving him the upper hand. The first two fell with little trouble. But two more Darkened appeared at the door of the kitchen, yelling when they saw him. What the hell was going on? Why were they all coming in here?
Suddenly the mirage fizzled out and faded from his body. Dammit, of all the rotten luck. He was all out of magic. He pulled out a dagger from his hip and threw it at one Darkened, catching him in the throat. He raised his sword at the Darkened charging at him. But as soon as one fell, another Darkened would appear in the doorway, preventing him from getting out of the workspace. He didn’t have much time left.
Jordan heard a sucking sound from behind him in the pantry, the telltale sign that the glue had failed and the first FireGlobe had begun to fall. He glanced at the exit across this large space. So far away. He wasn’t going to make it out of there in time.
He leaped over the thick wooden table in the center of the large kitchen and shoved it over on its side. He ducked behind the underside of the table just as the world went boom. The blast pushed the table and him back towards the far wall, and he felt an extraordinary amount of heat. Smoke and ash clouded his vision.
He felt his back smash against one of the machines that was bolted into the floor. The table crushed against him. Everything went black.
* * *
Crouching on the exterior of the wall, Israel heard the explosion. That was the signal. He drew in the bloodink tattooed on his forearm, a full mark − his first full mark − and he held Alyx’s image in the back of his mind.
He leaped up towards the wall, hearing the rustle of the other Rogues launching out of the bushes. He reached for the top of the wall but missed by a few inches. Aw crap. He started to fall, but a hand grabbed his arm.
“I gotcha.” Vix winked at him as she pulled him up and held onto him securely around his waist. “Alyx’ll be mad at me if I get you injured before you even get inside.”
She held onto him and flew them over the wall together. The grand mansion came into sight. Smoke was pouring from the back part of the house, but otherwise the place still seemed relatively quiet.
Israel frowned. “Weren’t some alarms supposed to go off once we breached that wall?”
“Yeah,” Vix said. “Odd. Maybe we got lucky and someone forgot to turn them on.”
Maybe Alyx had something to do with it, Israel thought.
They flew towards the sunroom, a section of the mansion that jutted out, covered mostly with glass. As they neared, they shifted so that they were feet first.
“Ready or not,” yelled Vix.
They broke through the sunroom roof with a smash. Israel landed on his feet, unsheathing his weapon. He was sure that another alarm was supposed to have gone off alerting the Darkened, but again there was no alarm. Through the door to what looked like the library, Israel saw the first Darkened appear.
“Here we come,” he said.
Chapter 30
Alyx was standing in a bedroom, a light white bedroom, a gentle breeze blowing in through the open window and ruffling the cream lace curtains. Everything here seemed so bright.
Glancing around, her eyes came to rest on the bed and the old man lying in it, the sheets up to his armpits. His hair was white and time had creased his light brown skin, but she could tell he would have been handsome when he was younger. He was staring back at her, smiling with full lips marred only by a thin white scar.
Oh my God.
“Israel?” She fell by the bed at his side. No, it couldn’t be. What had happened to him? How?
She reached for his hand, her chest squeezing when he could barely grip her back. She held him gently, so scared that she may tear his paper-thin skin.
“We had a good run,” he croaked. “Didn’t we, angel? Almost a hundred years together.”
Alyx shook her head. No, but…this wasn’t fair. Israel wasn’t allowed to die. “You can’t leave me.”
“We knew that this would happen one day.”
Deep down inside Alyx, she knew it. Even though she had never let herself consider what would happen at the end of Israel’s life if they were to be together. She was immortal and even though he had Seraphim blood in his veins, Israel was still part mortal. He would still die one day. Today. This was their future.
“I love you,” he said, his voice growing quiet. “You are my beginning. And my…”
Then he was still.
For the second time in her life, her heart broke in two. There was a moment of shocked silence before the sob wrenched forward from deep within her belly. She pressed her face to the hand of the man she had loved for a hundred years, now gone, willing him to touch her cheek, willing him...
Her cries shook her like two storms colliding, like the very Earth was breaking apart from her grief.
“It doesn’t have to be this way.” A deep voice caused her head to snap up. There on the other side of the bed had appeared a man dressed
in a black robe, hooded so that she couldn’t see his face.
Alyx wiped her eyes. “Who are you?”
“Who I am does not matter as much as what I can do for you.”
She sniffed. “What can you do for me?”
“I can take your pain away.”
“What…what do you mean?”
The hooded man waved his gloved hand over Israel’s body. “I can make it so that you never have to experience this painful ending. You just have to say ‘yes’.”
“But…” His offer seemed too good to be true. And if it seemed too good to be true…
She stared closer at the man on the opposite side of the bed. She caught a glimpse of red skin from under the hood and she recoiled. “You’re the demon. I was…fighting you…” As she strained to remember, the room seemed to dim.
The demon flinched. “Yes, I am a demon. But you have me misunderstood. I want to help you by taking away all the pain that you will ever have in your life. This just happens to be the greatest pain you will ever know. Don’t you want to avoid pain completely?”
“But…if you take away the pain, won’t you take away the good too? Our love? Our growth?”
The demon hissed. “Think of the pain, the suffering. Think of how unfair life is to give you love but to make you experience pain when it ends. The real demon is life. Tell me ‘yes’, and I can take away all your future pain.”
Alyx paused. Would she give up love just to avoid the pain when it ended? Would she give up growth to be spared the pain of making mistakes? “How would you take it away?”
“There is only one way, but you need not concern yourself with it. Just tell me you want the pain to go away and it shall be done.”
How would the demon take away her pain? Pain, she thought, was part of life. Then she realized it…this demon was trying to make her give up her life.
“No,” she said.
The light flickered in the room like a brown-out.
“What?”
As Alyx stood up she glanced down at Israel’s still form. Even though I will lose you one day, I won’t give up everything in between. She drew her sword and pointed it at the demon’s face. “You heard me. I said no.”
Alyx inhaled sharply as she woke up thrashing. The painful sucking feeling faded from her chest, but she couldn’t see anything. Holy crap. The demon had been taking her life force while she was distracted by that weird dream. If she had said yes, she would have been saying yes to death. That was this demon’s power, she realized.
As the black smoke sucked back from around her, her vision cleared. She was lying facedown on the thick carpet of the corridor. She looked back over her shoulder.
Crap.
Alyx rolled aside just in time to avoid a sword in the head. The demon roared in anger. She launched off the ground feet first, scissor-kicking the demon in the face. He flew back, tripping on his long black robe.
She spotted her fallen dagger. She kicked off one side of the corridor wall and landed beside it. Snatching it up, she launched after the demon, falling on him. Her dagger slid into his fleshy shoulder as she knocked him over. The end of the dagger embedded into the floor, pinning him down.
Alyx stood up, searching for her sword, as the demon struggled to pull the dagger out. She found it a short way up the corridor and picked it up. Time to test it on a demon. The demon managed to yank the dagger out and was climbing to his feet.
“Stupid girl. I could have spared you the pain while you died.”
“Too bad I won’t do the same for you.”
Alyx stepped up to him and swung the sword across his neck. The demon’s head went flying and black rays shone from the neck wound. Alyx squinted from the unnatural light. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a glimpse of fire from the center of the rays and smelled a hint of sulphur. She heard a long roar of pain, echoing from somewhere in the depths of Hell. Then it all disappeared and the torso fell with a thud.
Chapter 31
Jordan felt himself returning to consciousness. There was a dull ache all over his body. He couldn’t seem to move. He was stuck. Ah, that’s right. Crushed by a big-ass table. He shoved the table forward as hard as he could and it shifted a centimeter. Maybe two. It was just enough for him to slip out. He coughed and waved his hand in the smoky air as he stood.
Around him was chaos. Where the pantry had stood was now a smoking crater; pieces of the workspace wall stood open and exposed with bricks jutting out like broken teeth. Thankfully, the night breeze blowing in was helping to clear this smoke. Past the large hole in the building was the back garden where he could see the clash of bodies and from where the sounds of fighting drifted in.
Around him he spotted the bodies of several Darkened, all now wearing shards of Black Stone in their bodies like strange-looking hedgehogs. The other side of this table was also covered in large shards of Black Stone as were the cupboards on the far wall. He gulped. He may have looked like a pincushion if it weren’t for the table. A very dead looking pincushion.
Now he had to find Alyx. To find Alyx, he had to find Samyara. How the hell was he going to do that in this sprawling mansion?
Jordan heard a noise coming from the corridor leading to the main building. It was a Darkened, still alive, shards of Black Stone embedded in her thigh and stomach, smaller pieces in her face.
Jordan flew over to the Darkened, a gruff-looking female with dirty blond hair and mascara-smudged eyes with the telltale green skin of a lesser demon underneath. He grabbed her shirt in his fists. “What happened?” he demanded. “Where is Samyara?”
“Not feckin’ tellin’ you nuffin.”
Jordan narrowed his eyes at her. “Listen here, lady. I have two blades at my disposal. One is just a normal metal blade. The other is infused with the blood of the keye. Do you know what that means?”
Her eyes widened, letting him know that she knew.
“Good. Now if you’re a good girl and tell me everything I want to know, I’ll kill you with the normal blade. If you don’t…”
The Darkened hissed.
“Don’t want to talk?” Jordan tsked. “Too bad.” He reached to his side.
“Alright, alright. I’ll tell yers.”
“I’m listening.”
“Security systems been ’stroyed. We were sent ’ere to get the weapons.”
“And Samyara?”
“He’s too smart for you. He’s going to get away. And you can’t do nuthin’ to stop ’im.”
Jordan held the point of his blood-infused blade under her chin and she whimpered. “Where. Is. He?”
Chapter 32
Surrounded by several Darkened that he had collected along the way, Samyara walked casually along the corridors heading towards the library. One of the little invading Seraphim charged at them, giving a valiant little effort, but he was felled by a Darkened.
As they neared the end of the corridor, Samyara could see the great oak doors of the library had been flung open, a cacophony coming to him through the doorway.
The library was the centerpiece of this magnificent mansion, a mansion that Samyara had grown quite fond of. The library soared all the way to the roof of the mansion and could be accessed from all three stories. It curved around in a large cylinder, floor-to-ceiling oak bookcases wrapping around the walls, broken only by a set of floor-to-ceiling casement windows that let in the moonlight and a view to the stars. If the Great Hall was the stomach of this mansion, then the library was the heart.
As Samyara entered the library, he observed the scene before him with an element of sadness − broken furniture scattered around bodies that clashed together with their swords and blades. He growled a little under his breath when he saw several books being pulled out of their cases as a Seraphim grabbed a case to steady himself before flinging himself back into the fray. Torn pages fluttered about the air like scared doves. The air smelled rich with the copper tang of spilled blood.
Samyara’s knuckles cracked as he drew his han
ds into fists. He loved this library. There was a rush of anger under his skin and he felt his magic roll with agitation across his flesh, making his hairs stand on end.
Never mind. If he had to find a new base and build up his army again, so be it. Being immortal, you learn to be patient.
Around the room were rings of platforms. Connecting the platforms was a small lift that ran along a vertical track. It allowed readers to negotiate their way up the bookcases and platforms. And right now Samyara needed to get to the top platform. This was his escape route if he needed one, and right now he needed one. He knew when to fight and when to withdraw and today…well, today was the day he withdrew and lived to fight another day.
Zhair was already there, and he joined Samyara’s little group of Darkened. They started to cut a path through the mess of fighting bodies. Samyara inhaled with impatience as his guards stopped to grapple with advancing Seraphim. Alyx had roused herself a decent-sized little army, hadn’t she? He had underestimated that little bitc−
A wisp of silvery-blond hair caught his eye. He frowned as he watched a familiar looking seraphelle with short wild hair and sharp cheekbones behead a Darkened with her sword. He knew her. She was the seraphelle who had entered his demon den in the Valley of Saint Joseph with Israel looking for Adere.
His eyes swept around her, looking for other familiar faces. He froze when he saw the lean, petite figure of Alyx near Vix.
No, it couldn’t be…he had left Alyx back near the security room fighting off Chemosh. How could she have possibly fought off the greater demon and reappeared here? Impossible.
So…this couldn’t be Alyx.
A thought occurred to him. He remembered how Alyx had tricked him by miraging over her face and body with Israel’s. If this person underneath “Alyx’s” image wasn’t Alyx, then…who?
