‘I see the hound has not quite left you.’ Elatha smiled slightly. ‘But that is all you’ve ever been, Cú Chulainn. First, the hound of your people, then, the hound of the Wake. This dalliance with rebellion is ending here and now. If not, we might just have to try a replica of our experiment on Alexander on you. It might be fairly invasive, considering divine blood already runs through your veins, but I’m sure my doctors can come up with something. They’ve had to be very inventive in mutating creatures so enough dark beings walk the earth that the Hunt is overloaded. Prime for us to tear open.’
‘People would notice I’m different, other Empyreals—’
Elatha laughed. ‘You’ve secluded yourself from everyone but yoursingle, vapid friend, Callum. I’ll admit, it had the added bonus that you were never influenced by all their talk. You have no idea how easy it was to make people believe Alexander had been dangerous and unruly before we had you kill him. He had all these tiresomequestions.And he was so convincing to the other Empyreals.
‘He was quite like you, you know. Proud. Strong. A shame, really. Now, he’s nothing. No, that’s not quite right. He’suseful,and he follows orders without question.
‘So, you put this aside or two things will happen: I’ll turn you into another Alexander, and if your little Freya copycat doesn’t cooperate, I’ll kill her, like I killed your mother.’
Kyan’s building fury staggered, the feeling in his chest worsening.
‘No, you didn’t. I killed the one responsible myself—’
He could remember it in snatches: the transformation that tore him in two, so extreme it allowed him to kill a god …
‘I came to your mother while the distraction of Conchobar and Medb’s little scuffle was underway and you were running around trying to be a hero. I asked her nicely and explained, like I did to you, the abomination of the Old Gods and their heathen ways. But she didn’t listen, so she had to die. I dealt the blow and had a lesser Fomóir butcher the rest when I was finished.’
All this time, Kyan had thought he’d avenged his mother. But her killer had been walking the earth unencumbered by remorse or age. Had formed the Wake from the ashes of the Druids; making sure they could never contact the Old Gods again to prevent another rise of these Demon Gods.
Elatha killed his mother.
Was going to kill Nicole.
And Kyan had done his bidding fortwo thousandyears.
Pure white rage arced through him, so bright he was momentarily blinded by it.
And then his fist was arcing through the air.
He expected it to meet some resistance, to glance right off a magical barrier forged by the oath, and he did feel something: a burn in his arm unlike anything he’d ever experienced. But there was such emotion in his solar plexus, in hissoul,that it didn’t stop him as his knuckles cracked across the god’s face.
Elatha’s head whipped backwards and the cold of his skin nearsinged Kyan’s fist. There was a terrible moment of stunned stillness, then Elatha turned his face back to Kyan, his pristine hair askew.
The god touched his mouth, and it came away with blood.
That snarling thing in Kyan’s chest only burned brighter.
He launched himself again before Elatha could recalibrate, but the lancing pain of the oath was stronger now, stopping him from doing it again, from doing anything more serious and truly harming one of the Wake’s members.
He roared, surprised at the intensity of it – like it was tearing his skin clean open, racing down his veins with an unnatural, alarming pain.
‘That,’ Elatha said coolly, a flash of real danger in his eyes, ‘was a terrible mistake.’
He threw out his arm.
The floor disappeared as Kyan was blasted backwards, crashing into one of the epic sculptures with a force that stole the breath from his lungs. As the upper part of the sculpture collapsed, he raised his arms in time to stop it cracking his skull, but it still shattered with bone-splintering force over his forearms and shoulders.
He shoved off the rubble. The pain and a dust-choked wheeze rattling in his chest, confirming some of his ribs were broken.
Elatha stalked closer through the dust, a terrible fiery light in his divine eyes. The sculptures of the gods behind him gawked, as if in mockery of all the Fomóiri had done to regain power; of the unseen war that had been raging for millennia and shaped the supernatural world.
‘I haven’t seen a demi-god in thousands of years. It seems you possess some power after all,cú beag.’
Little hound.
Elatha let out some of that varnished power, the radiance of fire and pain, of blinding light and a twisted drive that burned like an unholy brimstone counter to the starlight that birthed Empyreals.
The sight lanced Kyan to the bone.
