are only dead because they got caught up in something that
had nothing to do with them and everything to do with us.
Kal was getting more and more annoyed but he was
trying to keep his external expressions neutral given that
Isabelle had just been through a terrible ordeal and
probably didn't need to add telepathic communication onto
her list of things that Kal could do that weren't normal.
Quit arguing and get moving, Veli instructed,
breaking off contact with him.
Kal took a steadying deep breath and urged Isabelle
towards the car.
For the first time since they collided he watched her
take a deep breath.
"I know what you're thinking." He shut her door and
moved around to drive the car.
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"Oh yes? Do you read minds too?" Although the
comment had been sarcastic, the wary look in her eyes told
him she actually wanted to know if he could do that. He sat
down in the driver's seat and shut the door behind him.
He shook his head. "No, but I still know what you're
thinking."
"What's that?"
"You're wondering how on earth you're going to fit
all of this insanity into your life."
Her mouth opened and curved into the shape of an
O.
"Did I get it right?"
Nodding, she cleared her throat. "How did you
know that?"
"Because I ask myself that question ten times a
day."
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Chapter Six
The abduction and elimination of Isabelle Listora
had not gone as he would have liked. It had failed and there
was nothing he hated more than failure. Sebastian took a
deep steadying breath and tried not to wince as he watched
the scene unfold before him. What good was it being a god
if you couldn't make mortals do what you wanted? He
shouldn't have had to work so hard to kill one little woman
who didn't even know yet that she was powerful.
How completely typical of his life here on this
plane of existence. He took a deep breath and made himself
relax as he twirled the butt of his cigarette through his
fingers. Soon it will all be over and he would be ruling the
ridiculous humans, laughing as they trembled under his
wrath. They could ask the people, if you could call them
people anymore, from the countless other worlds that he
had personally conquered how awful their current
subsistence was.
He lived off of their fear, their suffering, and their
misery—he fed off those emotions. Hell, he laughed to
himself, that's just what demons did. Why should he try to
deny his true nature? He couldn't believe he had gone this
far—letting himself be born into the body of one of these
pesky maggots had been a desperate act. He would admit
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that now, but at the time it had seemed the most efficient
way to put himself amongst the humans and simultaneously
destroy the seemingly endless Outsiders who had made it
so difficult to conquer this dimension. He didn't want to go
home and tell his real father that he had failed. That was
simply not an acceptable option.
Even he, the supreme Evil, had someone left to
fear… for the moment.
He would treat them worse than slaves, and when
he was done abusing them, he would eat their souls and feel
the glory of it. There were just nineteen little Outsiders to
eliminate. Eighteen barely out of their twenties, a blip on
the power screen for an Outsider. The pesky Veli Destrand,
who had proved ridiculously hard to kill for someone who
had seemed so inconsequential when he had been
developing this plan, would be dealt with as well.
Maybe he would make him clean up the mess that
slaughtering the humans would obviously make to his
house. The man could probably sweep.
Who would have thought one lone warrior left from
several hundred would prove to be such a thorn in his side?
Sebastian shook his head to clear his thoughts. He wasn't
going to worry about him now. It had taken time, but he
had managed to do what Veli, in all of his amusing
blundering, had never managed to do. He had found the
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children. In fact he had two of them with him now.
Gabriel Easten and Alexa George had been easy
enough to spot. Moving from foster home to foster home,
they had paired up together, drawn to each other's powers
without even understanding what that meant. They had
caused quite a ruckus in the social services department of
Orleans parish. Who would want to adopt a child who
could blow up your house with just a thought? Well, Alexa
could anyway. Gabriel's gifts were more confusing.
Sebastian had easily convinced his "parents" that
they needed to take in two foster children. By the time he
was ten they were doing what he commanded regularly,
without even thinking about it. His mother had found
herself barren immediately after having given birth to
Sebastian—evidently carrying that much evil in her womb
had sterilized her. Whoops.
Gabriel and Alexa had been resistant to his mind
control. It was the nature of their Outsider heritage. They
had been placed on this earth to defeat him and the
worthless entities that foisted good onto the universe had
given them the ability to resist. For some reason the powers
that defied him had an unusual affinity for these humans.
God's chosen creatures or some such nonsense. Alexa and
Gabriel had certainly proven to contain a radar that made
them naturally resistant to evil and had been suspicious of
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him at first.
Gabriel had regarded him warily for a long time and
had kept Alexa as far away from him as he could get her.
Sebastian had gotten sick of Gabriel's big brother routine
towards Alexa very quickly. He would have liked to have
eliminated him by now but Alexa was still fond of the
stupid man and Sebastian had quickly realized that Alexa
was going to be the key to his success. If keeping Gabriel
temporarily alive meant that he could keep Alexa in line
and out of the hands of her fated intended, then that was
just what he would do.
Sweet and naive she might be, but the girl packed
power like he had never encountered before anywhere. She
just didn't know how to tap it yet. But she was getting close
to it and when she did, he was going to be sure he was right
there to grab a hold of it. He was going to enjoy watching
her kill her own people but he was going to enjoy watching
her suffer after she had done it even more.
It hadn't taken long before he had convinced them
/> that he was just like them—trapped with powers that he
supposedly didn't understand in a world that would never
accept them for what they were. The three of them, he had
told them, would always be different together. It was the
three of them against everyone else.
Truth was that Gabriel was still hard to control.
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Outsider men were, as a rule, surly and difficult to get
along with. Gabriel had proven to be more sarcastic and
harder to get along with than most. If his people had
properly trained him, he would be a force to be reckoned
with, which was why Sebastian was glad he hadn't been
properly trained.
But there was no need to worry about any of that
either. Soon Gabriel would be dead and Sebastian would be
bedding Alexa, using her to destroy the others, and
producing an heir that would be more powerful, more evil
than anyone could ever anticipate. She was, after all,
Abraxas' daughter and combining his great power with hers
would tidy things up nicely. It helped that she was so
attractive; it wouldn't do to have the heir of evil being born
anything but gloriously beautiful.
The first part of the plan he had waited so long to
enact had begun last week. Sebastian smiled at the
memory. The scene had been played out perfectly. He had
come home broken and bleeding. Alexa had tended to him,
nursed him, and after an appropriate amount of time, he had
told them that the Outsiders had attacked him. A demonic
group, he had insisted, bent on world domination. They
wanted to kill everyone who could stand in their way. He
had managed to convince Gabriel and Alexa that they
needed to defeat the rest of the Outsiders, that they were a
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threat to the rest of the planet, and they had believed him,
as they always did, eventually.
Alexa had found the girl calling herself Isabelle by
sending out a simple spell cast that located tiny amounts of
paranormal abilities. The little twit hadn't been properly
shielded—evidently not knowing that she needed to be.
Sebastian had done the rest of the work, taking control of
the minds of Isabelle's boss and that crooked police officer
who had been sampling the heroin from the evidence locker
for quite some time now.
Perhaps he should have had Gabriel transport
Isabelle over space to join them in New Orleans, but it had
seemed too risky. Besides, he hadn't quite figured out how
to convince Gabriel to admit that he could do that. Gabriel
had been concealing that fact for years. Alexa was going to
have to be the one to get him to confess to it, so that could
wait a few more weeks at least.
He hadn't counted on her finding Kal. The dark-
haired warrior had been a pebble in his shoe for years. The
man had the gall to put himself on television where
everyone could see him. Every time he saw him looking
into that camera lens, babbling on about whatever he was
talking about, he knew Kal was taunting him. Come and get
me, he seemed to be begging, I dare you. But every time
Sebastian tried, he found he was too well protected by
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power spells. Marina, he groaned inwardly, didn't even
seem to know that she had done that. Oh yes, he knew
about Marina. There was nothing about the four Outsiders
that he didn't know. He hated watching them. He knew just
where they lived, he could watch them day and night but he
couldn't get to them. Not yet, anyway. Soon Alexa would
let him do that.
The only true wrinkle in his plans for Isabelle had
been the emergence of Kalmari. They were soul mates,
destined for each other, and together they would be more
powerful than either one could be alone. Together they
would become a Unit, a concept he was sure not even the
Outsiders understood. Veli, if he understood it, hadn't
explained it to any of them. Yet.
It was more likely that he didn't know about it and
that's why he couldn't teach it. That was fortunate for
Sebastian and that was why he needed to get a hold of
Abraxas' journals before they did. Too much could be
revealed in them. If Sebastian couldn't touch them, he could
at least keep them in the dark.
Individually, not one of the puny mortal Outsiders
could stand a chance against him but nine paired Units of
soul mates would be a cause for concern. It was a good
thing he had eliminated all of the other Outsiders because
more than nine Units was almost a guarantee of his defeat,
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unless he could find the scrolls. If he really got into trouble
he would go after the scrolls and then no one stood a
chance.
All of this was nonsense, of course, because there
was no way the leftover Outsiders could complete even
nine paired Units. He had two of them here with him, and
soon only one would be left. They couldn't have nine pairs
without Gabriel and Alexa and they were fortunately not
each other's soul mates.
He was drawn out of his reverie by the sound of
honking on the street. Gabriel was back from his run in
Audubon Park and they were all supposed to go to one of
the Rebuilding New Orleans benefits that were taking place
all over town. Hurricane Katrina had been an easy
opportunity to eliminate his parents and acquire their great
wealth without having to work very hard for it.
Too bad they had drowned, really, he felt terrible
about it.
He stepped out onto the front porch of their newly
acquired mansion. It had made sense to buy the house of
the local horror story writer when she had put it on the
market. Something about the irony of that had appealed to
him and certainly it was big enough that if he stole a child
from the local middle school next door or a drifter from
underneath the interstate to eat their souls and feed off their
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fear, then neither Alexa nor Gabriel would hear their
screams.
Alexa was standing on the porch waiting for him
and he smiled down at her, noticing how her blonde hair
sparkled in the late afternoon light. When he had taken her
as his own she would need to cut all of it off.
"Any luck with the witch?" Alexa asked casually.
"Did you speak with her boss and have her arrested for
child abuse?"
Witch and child abuse, he laughed inwardly, so easy
to manipulate their puny little brains.
"She got away by finding another of her kind. His
name is Kal. If you can find Kal, I can have them both
taken care of. Can you do that when we get home?"
Sebastian asked sweetly.
&nbs
p; "Maybe Gabriel should transport them here," Alexa
suggested.
"Is Gabriel capable of that? Two people at the same
time? He's never told me that." Sebastian stalled. "And
besides, we want the local authorities to handle them, don't
we?" Buy it, he willed her. Believe I'm a good guy.
Alexa smiled and nodded. "Yes, of course."
"But if you can find them, maybe we'll have Gabriel
transport them, assuming he can actually do that,
somewhere they can wait, trapped, until the police can get
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to them." He dug his fingernails into his hand. Sebastian
desperately wanted to suck into Alexa's mouth and feel her
soul enter his body but once again he restrained himself.
She was more useful to him this way, for the moment.
"I'll get working on it when we get back, Bastian."
Alexa grinned at him again, having no idea that Sebastian
was already manipulating things so that Isabelle Listora
would have nowhere to go back home to, no choice but to
make things nice and easy on him. He was already bored
with her. He was going to be done with Isabelle soon, Kal
after that, and then he'd be one step closer. Soon he would
contact his father.
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Chapter Seven
Isabelle and Kal drove in silence for the first few
miles before she finally spoke. Kal could only assume that
she had needed the time to get her mind cleared enough to
ask him where they were going. When she had let him
drive, she told him it was highly unusual for her to let
anyone else operate her car. Not even her brother, she had
rambled before settling down into the strained silence. Kal
hoped he was handling himself pretty well and not breaking
too many traffic rules. A little speeding was acceptable