“I’ve seen how you look at her. How you protect her.” The master. It had to be. His tone was cool and aloof, but underneath I could sense the hungry obsession tinging his words.
The voice seemed to move around me from above—the acoustics causing the sound to bounce. I tried to discern where it was coming from.
“I’ve been using Vivien to find you,” I said, trying to keep him engaged in conversation so I could pinpoint his location.
“No,” he hissed. “You came forher. I understand. I couldn’t resist her either. I’m not sure even she understands, but you do. Jane is special. Her spirit is immutable, and her intelligence is unique. I have taken many a woman, pulled them all apart, and have seen nothing likeherbefore.”
Crane said it with all the disconnection of a professional surgeon or scientist. He disgusted me.
He went on. “But the moment I saw Jane, looked in her eyes, I knew she’d been through fire already. And now she doesn’t fear the burn, the changes that will come because she knows who she is. Do you know how many people actually know themselves?”
My senses stretched outward, as I tried to track where his voice was coming from, but it bounced nebulously in the cavernous space. I tried not to let his words penetrate but I couldn’t help agree. Vivien could survive more than even she knew.
“I have shown so many women who they are, put their beating hearts in front of their eyes and they could not handle the truth. But I’ve seen Jane does not even fear anything. Isn’t that the kind of woman you want at your side?”
“Why are you doing this?” I asked. “How did you know to take the blood of the Original?”
“I told him,” a feminine voice answered. Qwynn stepped out of one of the tunnels, along with three sekhors behind her.
“Qwynn, have you gone mad?”
She shrugged and walked toward me. “Aren’t you tired, Anu? Aren’t you tired of having to care for all those souls? Don’t you want a break?”
She was trying to get me off track. “Where is Vivien? Where is the child?”
Qwynn cupped my face in her hands. “I did this for you.” The usual glint of mischief was missing from her eye. She was serious.
“This shall not be borne,” I said.
“Aren’t you tired of judging souls? For all eternity, judgment is your burden.”
“My responsibilities are important and necessary.”
“Not if there aren’t any souls to judge.” Her eyebrows rose.
“So that’s it. If sekhors return to the world, trapping the soul to the body, you think I’ll, what…have more time for you?”
“Aren’t you tired of living in secret? We are gods, we should rule this world. Yet we are told we must keep our heads down and obey law.” For a moment, the façade slipped as she stepped forward, her hands framing my face as she searched my eyes with naked need. “For us. For love, Anu. I am trying to free you. We belong together in a world where we make our own rules and live eternally as we see fit. Join me, and we can use the sekhors to upend this so-called order and take this world.”
“At least you can finally admit it,” I said, covering her hands with mine. “That you care about nothing except power.” I stepped away, moving her hands off me. “You don’t want me to spend all my time judging souls, Qwynn? I believe that is the only thing you ever cared about. How much power I wield and trying to bend that power to your will.” Letting power flood my voice, it layered and echoed off the tunnel walls. “But it ends now, Qadesh.”
Ice entered Qwynn’s eyes as she pursed her lips and stepped back. I’d destroyed any and all illusions I would be her ally and lover again. “I should have known you would be like this. You could never think outside of the box. Excuse me,” she corrected herself with a snide smile, “the sarcophagus.”
I didn’t respond with words. I released my power, dark tendrils of death surrounding me. I slammed it into Qwynn, sending her flying across the tunnel until she hit the wall with a boom. The tunnels shook with the impact. She fell to her knees in a crumble of concrete. When she looked up with malice shining in her narrowed eyes, there was still a smug smile curving her lips. “You think we haven’t been busy preparing, Anu? Crane,” she said louder, “be a dear and send in our friends.”
Sekhors emerged from the tunnels on all sides, violent, vacant-eyed soldiers, fangs dripping with saliva. I’d fought my way out of the overwhelming number of sekhors at Vivien’s former abode, but there were ten times that amount down here below the city, maybe more. My muscles coiled.
“So sorry, my love,” Qwynn said, getting to her feet, stepping back into the throng of vampires. “They are really all quite hungry and have been told the blood of a god is a delicious ambrosia they can’t miss.” She disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel as the sekhors erupted in a cry, rushing at me with crazed blood-lust.
I was at a great disadvantage as they came at me from all sides. Not waiting this time, I changed into my god-likeness, bones cracking and muscles lengthening and swelling as I shifted into a massive black jackal. With a roar that reverberated through my being and shook the room, I smashed my fist into a group of sekhors rushing me, and they exploded backward in a wave, downing the sekhors behind them. I threw another punch, raking out my claws and severing the heads of several more.
The bite marks had healed from earlier, but my flesh broke again as they all sought to sink their teeth into me and drain me.
In moments, I was buried in vampires. I thought of Vivien, somewhere in these tunnels, so close. She needed me. I could feel it as if she were sending messages on the air.
Power built in me until I exploded, vampires flying off me and back into their own horde.
“I thought you might need a hand, but looks like you’ve got this covered,” Fallon said, entering from the same tunnel I came by.
