Excellent strategy.
Expert execution.
Despite Ademordna’s furious resistance, Napolean’s able warriors had won the hasty, life-and-death battle.
Napolean would have expected no less from this group of vampires.
He mentally sighed. Step one was over. Now all that was left was to pray…
Pray for the women to provide Brooke with swift and competent care. Pray for his destiny’s peace. Pray for his unborn child.
And pray that Nachari Silivasi—an incredibly talented, but relatively untested Master Wizard—would win the favor of the gods. For the male was about to engage in the spiritual battle of his life, and everyone else’s future depended upon the outcome.
twenty
Nachari Silivasi reclined against the stiff cot and tried to relax while Kagen hooked machine after machine up to his naked body. He adjusted the tubes that would drain Nachari’s blood from his major arteries onto the ground several times before he appeared satisfied. He ran an IV to the vein in his left arm and lined up several syringe packets next to a set of carefully marked glass vials. He took out another container filled with Marquis’s powerful venom—just in case—and then, oddly, moved Nachari’s thick, wavy hair away from his neck, as if he didn’t want it to come in contact with his blood.
This was not going to be a neat procedure, no matter what lengths Kagen went to, and all of the preparing, double-checking, and rearranging was beginning to make Nachari even more nervous than he already was.
He glanced up at the sky and searched the heavens for courage, praying for the fortitude to do what had to be done. It was around six in the evening, the sun had recently set, and the sky was a beautiful, mystic blue—deep, dark, and enchanting—stars sparkling like jewels in a divine auditorium. It was as if the earth itself knew.
And waited.
Nachari closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing, reveling in the rise and fall of his chest, the simple movement of air flowing in and out of his lungs, such an effortless gift, so often taken for granted. His eyes blinked open, and he regarded Kagen thoughtfully. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn the healer was sweating: His brother’s nerves were completely frayed, and he hadn’t even begun.
He lifted his right hand and clutched Kagen’s forearm, wanting his full attention. “It’s going to be okay, brother.”
Kagen nodded and wiped the back of his forearm across his forehead, drawing it slowly downward. Maybe he really was sweating. “I think everything is ready,” he mumbled.
Nachari forced a smile. “I know it is.” He glanced across the field at the second cot—the makeshift bed holding Napolean Mondragon’s sedated, unconscious body—and reminded himself of why he was about to do this. “Let’s not procrastinate,” he said, hoping Kagen understood his urgency. This had to be done before he lost his nerve.
Kagen reached for a bottle of iodine, poured it on a square, cotton cloth, and cleaned Nachari’s neck just above his jugular. And then he repeated the process on the flat of his wrists and just above the femoral artery at both inner thighs.
Nachari sighed. “Iodine, brother? Vampyr do not get infections.”
Kagen shrugged. “I know, but I just want to cover every contingency…just in case.”
“Kagen.”
The tall, muscular, but lean vampire blinked his dark-chocolate eyes, brushed his soft brown hair away from his face, and nodded. “Yeah, okay.” He lifted a sharp titanium scalpel from a steel tray lying next to the cot and tested the weight in his hand. His eyes met Nachari’s and a thousand unspoken words passed between them.
Nachari nodded and held his breath.
Kagen bent over, gently tipped Nachari’s chin back, and pressed the steel blade against his flesh just above the artery. He gulped and steadied his hand.
“Ramsey.” It was Marquis’s voice that pierced the silence. His firm hand intercepted Kagen’s before the healer could make the incision, and the massive blond warrior with spiked hair, crazy eyes, and the demeanor of a pit bull stalked to the side of the cot.
“What’s up, Marquis?”
“You do it,” Marquis said.
Ramsey didn’t hesitate. He rarely did. He brushed the dirt from his hands, squatted down beside the cot, and gave Nachari a crooked smile. “Sorry about this, friend.” And then in businesslike fashion, he took the blade from Kagen, leaned over, and sliced his throat in one deep, harsh gash.
Nachari jolted, shocked by the sudden invasion and the severity of the pain. And then he instinctively tried to sit up, his free hand going to his throat as he choked on his own blood.
Kagen caught Nachari’s arm even as Marquis held his head in place. “Try to relax,” Kagen said, “don’t fight it.”
Nachari’s eyes grew wild with discomfort and fear. He thought he had been prepared, but he was wrong. Ramsey made quick work of both his wrists, and Nachari felt certain he was about to lose it.
Just then, Nathaniel appeared at his side. “Look at me, wizard.”
Nachari’s eyes latched onto Nathaniel’s like the hands of a circus acrobat latching onto a trapeze two hundred yards above the ground: He was clinging for dear life.
Nathaniel restrained Nachari’s bloody hands—both to comfort and control him—as Ramsey made two swift cuts along the length of his left femoral artery. Despite the sharp pain, the sensation in his thigh was nothing compared to his throat—he still wanted to breathe…
He desperately needed to breathe.
“Can’t breathe,” he gasped, part audibly, part telepathically.
Nathaniel shifted uncomfortably, but held his gaze. “I’m here.” He indicated Kagen, then Marquis with a nod of his chin. “We are all here.”
Nachari nodded rapidly, then steadied himself as Ramsey sliced his remaining femoral artery, and the added pain made him dizzy. Or was it the loss of blood? His eyes shot back and forth from one brother to another; he was searching for reassurance, pleading for…something…he couldn’t name.
Son of a jackal…it hurts! he thought.
Nathaniel’s hand tightened around his own, and Nachari thought he heard strange, distant sounds in the background—like gurgling, choking…stuttering—and then he realized that the sounds were coming from him. His throat no longer worked. It didn’t…belong. It was making everything impossible…so impossible. He couldn’t swallow or breathe—or make the pain stop.
He needed to concentrate.
Shit, he was really about to lose it—something he had never done in battle before—but then, he had never prepared to battle a dark lord before…
Holy deities, he was going to completely—freak—the—hell—out!
Great Perseus, he couldn’t do this! “Stop!” he tried to shout.
“Shhh!” The smooth sound of Marquis’s voice echoed in his mind. “You have lost a tremendous amount of blood…very quickly.” Marquis’s voice was unbelievably steady despite his inevitable emotional turmoil. “It won’t be long now. You can do this.”
Nachari felt his body shaking and wished he could make it stop.
He couldn’t.
It won’t be long now…
That was what Marquis had said.
He could hold on just a little bit longer. Yes, hold on…just a little bit…
Longer...
His skin was sticky and wet. It was so uncomfortable. He thought—absently—that he would really like a shower.
When Kagen’s demeanor suddenly changed, Nachari knew something major had happened. But he wasn’t sure what. He had expected some grand finale—a chorus of trumpets or a bright white light—something to herald the transition from one state of existence to another, but there had been nothing other than the telltale signs of his brother, the healer, going into serious-as-a-heart-attack doctor mode. Kagen was furiously checking the monitors now, rapidly connecting fresh blood to transfuse through an IV…steadily preparing a BMV resuscitator—or Ambu bag—to begin breathing for Nachari.
In
other words, he was in the process of placing Nachari on full life support. Which had to mean it was over.
Nachari had already died.
And his spirit had already left his body.
After all, Kagen would never risk stabilizing him too soon, not after all they had gone through to insure his…demise.
Nachari was momentarily confused.
“Time is short, wizard. Quit dallying.” A crisp laughter echoed through the meadow, and Nachari looked up to see the most brilliant, serene green eyes he had ever seen, shining peacefully in a chiseled face framed by soft blond curls.
“Shelby,” he said, smiling from ear to ear, as all of his pain and fear instantly abated.
Shelby held out what appeared to be a very firm, corporeal hand, and Nachari took it. His twin pulled him straight up—out of his body and onto his feet—where he was suddenly clothed again, and the two brothers embraced like it had only been minutes since they were last together. Side by side, they became reanimated—as males, as brothers—two powerful beings no longer walking the earth, but both vibrantly alive and infused with joy and energy.
“You look well,” Nachari said. He didn’t have any other word for it.
“Well?” Shelby mocked. “I look better than you!” He held out his arms to showcase his magnificently sculpted frame. He positively glowed.
Nachari threw back his head and laughed, his thick mane of hair swaying from the vibration. “I thought you knew, Shelby…”
“Knew what?”
“Nobody looks better than me—haven’t you heard the women talk?”
Shelby’s answering laughter was hearty and unrestrained. “You mean no one looks more girly, wizard!”
The two males collided playfully, arms reaching up to lock each other’s heads in a simultaneous wrestling hold, bodies circling in an attempt to gain physical advantage. They had wrestled like this a thousand times over the years, and there was nothing strange or otherworldly about their coming together now. It all seemed so easy.
So pleasant.
As if Nachari had simply walked from one side of the creek to the other to meet his twin.
There was just no great transition.
And now that the pain and fear were gone, there was no hesitation or regret, either.
They wrestled until they were winded and their ethereal bodies were covered in dirt. Until a pair of distant but distinct—and gravely serious—voices interrupted their play: “Nachari!” The urgent tone grabbed both of the twins’ full attention.
“Oh gods,” Nachari said, chastising himself for getting distracted, even for a moment. He spun around, searching the meadow. “Niko? Jankiel?”
Niko’s voice rose with alarm. “Nachari, Napolean has already bled out! He has already died, and Ademordna has stepped out of his body!” He was speaking as a medium.
Nachari spun around warily. “Where is the demon?”
The grief in Jankiel’s voice was inconsolable. “The dark lord has already reclaimed possession. I’m afraid it may be too late to save our king.”
“No,” Nachari lamented. “No!”
Dear Celestial gods, what had he done?
Nachari scanned the meadow, trying desperately to see what he needed to see: the cot containing the body of his Sovereign. Everything was blurred in subtle, shadowy form. Not dark—just not clear.
Shelby held out his hand. “It is an acquired skill, brother.”
Nachari took Shelby’s hand, and the land around them fell into immediate focus. Together, they jogged to the side of the king’s body. Napolean looked so…still…lifeless.
Harmless.
And then his eyes popped open and a dark, evil presence regarded the twins as two orange balls shone from behind the king’s pupils. “I win. You lose,” the malevolent voice purred.
Napolean’s body sat up on the cot—or at least it did on this side of the world—and he licked his lips as if tasting a delicacy.
“How do you figure?” Nachari asked.
The body laughed, and it was alarming—hearing Napolean’s pure voice being used by such a wicked being. “You’re dead, wizard, and I still have the king.”
Nachari stared at the evil lord gloating before him. He scanned Napolean’s body, taking careful measure of every chakra—the colors of his aura—assessing any breaks or holes in the energy. The dark lord’s essence was firmly planted in Napolean’s body. In fact, it had taken such firm hold that the fit appeared almost seamless.
Almost.
But not quite.
Just below the heart chakra, there was a weakness—a break. A place where the goodness of the male who had animated the body for so many centuries had not completely given way to the absolute and irretrievable hold of the darkness. Napolean’s integrity and his growing love for the human woman, his destiny, were still imprints in his heart, and that was Ademordna’s vulnerability.
Nachari exchanged a quick glance with Shelby, who nodded almost imperceptibly. In the blink of an eye, both brothers extended their fangs, released their claws, and leapt at the dark lord—Nachari from the front, Shelby from the back. They struck his chest with unbridled force. They impaled his breastbone, dug up and under his ribs, and clutched at the black demon heart for all it was worth.
“Now!” Niko and Jankiel’s voices rang out in their ears, and both brothers wrenched back with all they had—twisting the false heart from opposite directions—yanking, turning, and jerking it free from the possessed cavity.
The blood turned thick and gooey, and worms began to crawl along Nachari’s arms, each maggot sinking sharp, jagged teeth into the wizard’s skin like a frenzied parasite. The demon lord shouted his rage as his form broke free from Napolean’s body, and a pure, pink heart began to grow—and beat—in the place of the diseased one.
As Napolean’s pure heart took firm root once again in the body of his birth, the possession came to an end.
And then suddenly, they had a much greater problem.
Napolean Mondragon, the sovereign lord of the house of Jadon, was free once again to return to his people, his destiny, but Nachari Silivasi was still in the spirit world, standing face to face—toe to toe—with the unrestrained, immortal demon, Ademordna. The maggots, which were microscopic fragments of the dark lord’s blackened heart, leapt from the hands of the twins—back into their familiar, immortal, shadowed form; and then the shadow grew in height until it stood at least ten feet tall, the evil growing darker…and darker…until, at last, it shimmered an inky, iridescent black.
Ademordna’s features were so repugnant that it burned Nachari’s eyes to look upon them; and then the dark lord’s tongue began to slither about his mouth, like a snake on a vine, wagging its tail in some gruesome, erotic parody. He was hideous yet handsome at the same time—clearly not human or Vampyr.
Nachari instinctively reached for Shelby, using their familiar telepathic line of communication, but there was no answer to his call. He spun around, his senses flaring out. “Brother!”
Still no answer.
“Shelby!”
The demon cackled loud and abrasive, and the meadow shook. The surrounding trees grew arms in place of their branches and began to reach out for the wizard, clawing at his flesh with jagged fingers.
Nachari fell into a low, fighting stance, rotating to the balls of his feet—he was ready to strike or defend at will—and then he closed his eyes, calling on his second-sight to see what was truly there.
“Your brother is no longer beside you,” the dark lord hissed on the cold tail of a foul wind. “What did you think would happen once you made things right—as it were—dear wizard?” The words dripped with venom. “You returned the king to the land of the living, and myself—the dark lord Ademordna—to the throne of the abyss.” He groaned, and fire shot out of his mouth in a steady stream like the red-hot flames of a blowtorch.
Nachari felt for the truth of the dark lord’s words—demons were notorious for lying—but this one was telling the truth
.
“Shelby is dead…despite your pitiful desire to believe otherwise,” Ademordna purred with satisfaction. “His eternal soul has been retrieved by the Valley of Shadow and Light”—he rubbed his chest as if the words suddenly brought enormous pleasure to his wicked heart—“and good for him, really. He was such a generous soul…when he lived.” He whistled a discordant tune, and the notes fell upon Nachari’s ears like fingernails against a chalkboard, the reverberation crawling up and down his spine like blades cutting into the vertebrae.
Slowly, incipiently, Ademordna reached out with a sharp claw to scrape the underside of Nachari’s chin. Nachari tried to avoid the demon’s obscene touch, but it was as if he were powerless to move. It was like being caught in an awful nightmare, where every step is mired in quicksand, and any effort to move or resist becomes herculean…and pointless.
“Ahh.” The demon lord rolled his head back and forth on his shoulders, allowing long locks of oily hair to sway back and forth, each strand undulating like a writhing serpent along his shoulders. “How I wanted the king…” He sucked wind between rotting teeth. “How I wanted his sons…” he moaned. “But to feed for all eternity on the light of a Master Wizard—a soul so pure it would trade its life out of duty for another…” He gyrated his hips against the oppressive, humid air. “Mmm, yes. It will do.”
Nachari swallowed a lump in his throat and looked around, warily.
Shit.
And more shit!
Ademordna wasn’t lying.
Nachari had died on that cot, despite the fact that his body still breathed. And the world between worlds—where Shelby had met him, laughed with him, and helped him to exorcize Napolean’s demon—was no longer where he stood.
He felt the ground beneath him ooze.
Demonic power gushed about his feet, and, as the sludge passed over, his skin, his toes, and ankles—even his bones—collapsed beneath its weight…disintegrating, painfully decomposing…only to regenerate and break again.