He came over the top of a small rise and swallowed the relief that threatened to buckle his legs. There it was, the house from her visions. Dusk darkened the sky and he thanked the gods he’d found it before full night. He’d approach in the shadows of twilight, and slip past the doctor’s human protectors.
Using his precious energy reserves, Aron scanned the house and the minds of the human inhabitants. Some had power. Some did not. But their minds were trained, disciplined. They were soldiers and each and every man on the property was on edge.
Aron could read energy signatures from this distance, but to read their actual thoughts he’d need to physically touch their flesh. From a distance he’d know if a man were angry or honest, cruel or honorable, but not where their thoughts or loyalties lay.
“Gods be damned.” Aron cursed at the sky. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the doctor wasn’t in the home. Aron wanted to scream in frustration. He had stolen the man’s energy signature from the female’s mind. Doctor Hansen wasn’t on the property. And neither were the other men that she trusted. Not one of them.
The men in the house below could be anything. Friend or enemy. Ally or traitor to his brother. He could read the men but the gift was worthless now. Honorable men fought on both sides of every war and believed that they did what was right.
Unless he recognized one of the men below from the Timewalker’s memories, he’d have to take one of them and question him, find out how much these humans knew about the Immortals on both sides of the battle, and whose side they were on.
He moved on silent feet toward the house, choosing to circle around uphill and capture one of the perimeter guards. It wouldn’t be easy to get close in his current condition, with the remnants of his chains clinking together where they dragged on the ground behind his ankles and with the scent of his blood a nimbus of death around him. He was certain any being with a modicum of awareness would smell him coming.
He checked the wind and adjusted his course. Uphill and upwind. Better.
A flash of movement caught his attention higher up the hill. Another human guard? A Triscani Scout? One of the bastard Triad soldiers? He had no way of knowing and no time to investigate. He studied the ground, searched the earth, sky and trees for any signs of danger, and saw nothing.
He crept forward, cautious now. The back of his neck prickled and his gut tightened in dread. He was being watched. Triscani or human, he didn’t know. He had to question the human guard, had to find out where the doctor was, or all his planning and pain were for nothing. It couldn’t be for nothing.
He picked up his speed. All he needed was a minute or two. If the man refused to talk, he’d wrap his hands around the man’s throat and steal the human’s memories. He didn’t have time to ask politely. The Triscani were close now, so close he’d swear he could smell the metallic stench of their blood and the dusty decay of their minds.
The human was dressed in dark green combat gear designed to blend in with the mountain terrain. The human was young and healthy, strong. The weapon he carried was designed to kill humans, not the others. Metal and wood. Useless against all the Immortals and their servants. The human weapons would stop neither Aron nor his enemies.
Aron gathered the shadows around him and ordered his legs to carry him to the human. It had to be now.
One step. Two. Three.
Claws raked across his back and black hands grabbed at the manacles around his ankles.
The Triscani Hunters had found him. Two dark Immortal assassins, the forbidden sons of the Itaran Queens, moved silently, like dark shadows. They raced through the trees and dragged him with them by the dark talons buried in his back, away from the human, away from his goal.
“You can’t hide from ussss, brother.” The male twisted his claws in Aron’s back.
Brother. The Triscani Hunters had been handsome men once, tall and ethereal like their mothers, and filled with power. Inevitably those sons turned, consumed the souls of their enemies until their flesh reflected their evil spirits and their once tender skin became like obsidian stones, inhuman and hard. But they kept their power. It grew in them like a dark tidal wave until they were consumed by their lust for more souls.
“I’m not your brother.” Aron twisted, forcing the sharp bladelike fingers to slice through the side of his back, and wrenching out of the monster’s hold. This one was young, and newly turned. He could still talk, and his face, though black as crude oil, still looked human. His eyes had not yet faded into a face that looked covered with plaster and painted black.
He’d seen one of the Triscani Lords in his prison turn an entire room of humans to ash, his hands morphed into crystalline daggers soaked in blood, and on one tip dangled the last of the humans still beating hearts speared like a fish. There had been nothing human remaining of that Lord’s face.
The Triscani could shift their bodies into other forms, fluid as water, light as shadow or hard as stone. Just two tracked him now, but more would follow. He knew a small army hunted for him, and they did not sleep, did not eat food. When they were hungry, the killed. They never stopped, and they were always hungry.
He twisted to face the evil creature stalking him from behind and kicked at the skull of the beast wrapped around his right leg. He had no weapon, no Immortal blades soaked with poison to paralyze them, no light to burn their flesh.
A sickening crack sounded beneath his left heel as the first Triscani’s skull collapsed. The creature laughed at him and clawed at his thigh. Pain sliced through him as the male’s dark bladelike fingers pierced Aron’s thigh above the knee and cut down, shearing off tendons with a horrible popping agony as each layer of his musculature was dissected away from the bone.
The other enemy came at him from his left with his trench coat flapping like flags in a strong wind as the Hunter gathered his power. The creature’s claws arced toward his neck and Aron threw up a hand to block the blow. The Hunter’s brutal strength drove him to one knee as his injured leg gave out beneath him. The Triscani and he were face-to-face, inches apart, sharing breath.
The Triscani’s nostrils flared at the scent of Aron’s blood, and the beast licked his lips as if he could taste Aron’s suffering on the air. His eyes glowed an eerie blue and Aron felt his own power rise in answer to cast a strange golden hue to the Hunter’s hideous face.
“You are no king. You are weak. Afraid. Pathetic. I don’t know why the master wants you back.”
“I’m not going back.” Aron grappled with the Hunter and felt his life’s blood running down the flesh of his back to soak his pants. On the ground, his knee rested in a pool of warm blood. They couldn’t kill him this way, but they could weaken him, force him back to the other side of the Gates between worlds. They could force him to leave Earth once more, to return to the Triscani dimension. They would lock him back up in that fucking cell.
He’d rather die.
Summoning his darkest self, he clamped his right hand down on the shoulder of his first attacker whose bladelike fingers were still lodged in his thigh. He pulled back and let the other’s hand reach his tender throat. He needed both attackers to touch him now, flesh to flesh. The moment the second creature’s flesh touched the bare skin of his neck, he unleashed his power. He took them in, absorbed their evil and their energies, consumed their black souls as well as all the human souls these two dark ones carried with them.
It was a feast of evil that made Aron’s stomach churn and threaten to heave. Aron’s head spun and his vision went dark. He fought to remain conscious as the black swell of their combined energies flowed into his flesh, into a body not meant to contain it. Aron felt stretched too thin, like his skin would split open with the barest whisper of a touch, but he did not stop.
The Triscani screamed, and the sound was inhuman, soulless. He heard the humans at the house scramble and yell at one another as they scurried around like ants trying to rebuild a wrecked nest, looking for the source of the sound.
The humans would never find i
t. Aron soaked up the Triscani evil until their bodies disintegrated into dust. The mountain air carried the dry particles away like flakes of ash from a burned-out fire. The Triscani were no more. The Immortals were gone, destroyed by the one power born to their kind capable of killing them. The forbidden sons were not sent to the dark dimensions out of love, or to protect them, the Immortal queens sentenced their sons to an eternity of isolation out of fear.
Every son born to one of the Angelus Mortis eventually unleashed his dark gifts, and once that evil tasted freedom it was nearly impossible to fight. The power took over the mind, the heart, and the soul until no thought could fill the mind but more, more, more….
“Fuck that.” Aron staggered and fell to the earth. He fought to hold on to his own mind, his own thoughts, fought to stay in control. The humans gathered below him in the open field of grass in front of the house, organizing to swarm the side of the hill. He hadn’t planned on allowing them to capture him, but he had no choice now. He couldn’t stand. The toxic taste of the two Immortals’ energies raked through his insides like blades as his blood soaked into the dry ground.
Chapter 2
“What are you boys up to?” Zoey Williams whispered the question to herself where she lay sprawled across a cold boulder, careful to keep her body flat to the ground. Her forest camo would keep her hidden from the air. She couldn’t afford to create a profile for one of the perimeter patrols to see from the ground.
She’d worked too long and too hard for this story. Tracked one of the soldiers for weeks, followed him, stalked him, and bribed several friends to get his phone and credit card records. The man she tracked was an ex-Navy S.E.A.L.
Some “ex”. The man was still in a uniform. Still carried a weapon and gear and reported to someone at Fort Carson. And most telling of all? He still disappeared for days or weeks at a time.
But, according to the government, the man didn’t even exist. If not for her informant, she never would have discovered him or his team. Her blog had brought her some strange bedfellows, and some terrifying allies.
This time, the file her anonymous friend sent to her had led her here, to this man and this mountain. She’d tracked the soldier for the last few months. Every time something crazy hit the tabloids about alien sightings, portals, other dimensions, or UFOs, this guy disappeared for a while.
He was an asshole. She knew that much. Dropped the F-bomb like it was his favorite verb, snarled at everyone he talked to, and was one of the most self-contained and brutally efficient people she’d ever followed. He was also suspicious as hell. He’d nearly caught her twice.
And in the years she’d spent as a journalist in her previous life she’d become very good at not getting caught. Very good at being a fly on the wall, unseen and unnoticed. Unfortunately, that skill had cost her everything, her identity, her family, her “normal” life.
She’d survived, and this mountain estate was her prize. There was something here, something inside the house that broadcast energy like a radio station pumping out hard metal music. Nothing shy or soft about this place. It screamed to be heard.
The energy pulsed through her body in waves, painful staccato bursts like ice needles piercing her heart.
Zoey ignored the sensation and continued taking photos of the soldiers, the house, the vehicles’ license plates, everything she could document would go up on her blog. The more she had, the more people would believe her.
She needed the world to wake up! A year ago she’d been like the rest of them. Blind. Helpless. Safe in her dream world and ignorant of the truth.
The truth. Such a small word to carry so much power.
Setting her camera aside, Zoey double-checked the antireflective cover on her binoculars and scanned the surrounding hills once more. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something was coming her way. Something powerful and very, very evil.
Movement. There! To her right and a bit farther up the adjoining swell of hillside.
She focused in and her heart froze, skipped a beat, shocked back into a frantic rhythm when she saw him.
God, he was beautiful. Dark hair that fell past his shoulders, a bare chest chiseled to perfection and abs any elite athlete on the planet would kill for. But his beauty wasn’t what stunned her.
It was the blood. And the chains. And the fact that he was moving straight toward her at an inhuman pace.
That and the terrifying creatures she spotted moving like dark water down from the higher terrain behind him. They glided like dark shadows weaving through the pine trees, so dark and fast a normal girl would’ve convinced herself they were nothing more than tricks of shadow and light.
Those things. Here.
Holy shit. She was in serious trouble.
“Careful what you wish for, Zoey-girl.”
The memory of her sister’s laughing voice echoed in her mind and brought the pain of the last few months screaming to the surface. Those things were not going to take one more life, not while she breathed. Not while she had blood in her veins and a knife in her hand.
Scrambling to her feet, she forgot all about hiding. She pulled her knife free and raced toward the bleeding man. Why didn’t he run or yell for help? Maybe he hadn’t seen them yet.
Oh, God. They were on him.
“Look out!” She shouted a warning but knew he’d never hear her. The man’s desperate roar filled her legs with an extra shot of adrenaline. The surge was just enough to overcome the paralysis of the memories that followed on the heels of the creatures’ sickening screams. Farther down at the base of the slope the guards sent up the alarm, she felt them scrambling and running. None of them were close enough to help the chained man.
Only her.
Running all out, she leapt over rocks and dodged thirty-foot pine trees. Rocks and twigs rolled beneath her feet and twisted her legs as she ran. Dried pine needles cushioned her steps and the hard branches of wild brush tugged at her clothing, tangled and yanked at the hair threatening to escape her knit hat and scratched her hands and face as she shoved her way through them. She ignored the sting and ran with her forearms raised in front of her face to protect her eyes. Faster. Faster. She had to help him. Those things couldn’t kill him. She wouldn’t watch them kill another human being. Not again. Not today.
Terror clogged her throat but she ran. Her camera and binoculars bounced painfully against her chest and back like forgotten baggage. She lost sight of him behind a clump of trees and pumped her arms and legs harder, racing around it. Faster. She had to go faster.
Eerie silence greeted her as she skirted the last tree and caught sight of the man up ahead. Beneath his grip, the last remnants of what she assumed were the alien creatures floated away in the wind like soot from a fireplace. Dust. They were no more than dust. And he had destroyed them with a touch…
The man didn’t turn to look in her direction. He flexed his hands and stared at the blood that covered his arms. Deep lines creased the corners of his eyes, not from age, from suffering. He looked young and strong, gorgeous as a god, except for those haunted eyes. The manacles rubbed him raw at his wrists and feet. Around his neck, another thick band wore his flesh away. Dried blood mixed with fresh beneath the metal restraints and remnants of the red fluid coated his body.
He looked like he’d just escaped from hell. Literally.
The man moaned in pain and collapsed, unconscious, his large frame crumpled to the ground like a pile of human rubble.
Zoey raced to his side but hesitated to touch him. What would happen to her if she did? Would she turn to dust, too?
She hovered and examined his body. Head to toe, he’d suffered. Manacles and chains. Spliced open and bleeding from too many wounds to count.
The creatures wanted him dead. That was enough for her. If she turned into dust and disappeared, it wouldn’t really matter. Not many people were left alive to miss her.
Decision made, she gently tugged on his arms and legs, straightening them into something that looked mor
e comfortable. Still alive and dust free? Yes. Okay, she was good.
But he was heavy, his limbs muscled and thick. Strong. Strong enough to kill those things with his bare hands.
She pulled his head into her lap and studied his face. Straight nose. Black hair. Full lips she had the odd desire to taste. His brows arched aristocratically over eyes she’d had the barest glimpse of, but she knew they were dark and intense. This was not a playboy or an accountant. He was a warrior. And if he was hunted by the creatures that took her sister, she was definitely on his side.
His eyes opened slowly and she cradled his head in her lap, stroked her fingers softly down the side of his face. “Shh. They’re gone. You killed them.” Those eyes. Green and dark, like grass under moonlight, and glowing with pain.
“What are you?” Two things flashed instantly to the front of her mind. One, the man wasn’t human. Human eyes did not glow. Human skin did not have swirls of black sliding and coalescing beneath his skin like oil and water flowing together and fighting for space beneath a microscope slide.
Two, he’d killed two of those creatures, turned them to dust. If he could kill them, she’d do anything to save him. Anything.
And just plain bizarre? The swirls seemed to retreat from her touch, like they were alive…and afraid of her.
“Move out!” The soldiers from the house were organized now, barking out orders and preparing to swarm the rising slope where she held the man. She had to get him out of here. If those bastards got ahold of him and discovered what he could do, she’d never see him again. She needed him alive.
“Shhh. Stay quiet.” Reluctantly, she lifted her gaze from the man to study the troop movement below. She peered through the brush as about twenty men massed at the base of this mountain. They’d hit this hill and find him for sure. If she hurried, she might be able to drag him along behind the tree line and get him out of here, back to her truck. If she hurried, and they got lucky.