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Marius felt Lucian’s telepathic stream kick in. Just tell us what, when, and where.
I’m going to stream the stage area for you both. Marius closed his eyes and did the impossible: He sent two sets of images flowing in different directions at the same time. Have you got the locations locked in?
Two affirmatives.
Lucian added, Clear as a fucking bell! Damn, Marius, you’ve got some serious chops.
The words, coming from his brother, pleased the hell out of Marius. In fifteen seconds, the first of Gabriel’s force breaks through. On my mark. Marius started counting down, finally reaching, Three … two … one … Go!
At the same time that the first massive force pierced the cavern above the arena, Marius watched Lucian and Adrien bust through.
Marius turned all his attention to the man who had caused endless pain, death, and destruction through the vampire and human worlds for centuries. He whipped in Daniel’s direction, leaving altered flight and dropping his disguise barely a split second before he plowed into his unsuspecting father.
Off to his right, Adrien and Lucian did the same with Quill and Lev. Several rounds of battle cries flooded the air above the stage as Gabriel and Rumy’s men engaged Daniel’s army.
Game on.
Marius’s momentum took him and Daniel to the arena floor, ten feet away from the patch of sunlight. He landed on top of Daniel and delivered three quick blows to his face.
Daniel used the force of his power and threw Marius into the air, adding a blow to the chest at the same time. The air rushed from Marius’s lungs and he hung in the air working to recover.
Daniel didn’t immediately attack. Instead he stood in the center of the arena floor looking all around him, his lips parted, his eyes wild. He reached for the robe at his shoulders and unclasped it, letting it fall to the floor, the breastplate with it.
To Marius’s right, Adrien and Quill battled high in the air. On the ground, Lucian had his long chain spinning as Lev circled him with one of his own. But his brothers were both Ancestrals, like Quill and Lev, meeting the half brothers with equal power.
Recovered, Marius dropped to the floor twelve feet away and waited for his father to face him.
Daniel moved slowly in the direction of the pool of sunlight. Marius got the point and didn’t care. One of them would end up frying, as good a plan as any for ending Daniel’s miserable life. Marius had waited a long time for a chance to battle his father and because he’d embraced all that he was, power flowed through him as never before. He was something new
and something more.
Like his father.
Against the cacophony of the battle raging through the upper reaches of the cavern, and as more of Gabriel’s troops arrived and tens of thousands of men battled in the air, Daniel’s voice entered Marius’s mind. I see you’ve embraced your power at last. Do you see what you are, know what you are now? What I created you to be? I foresaw this transformation.
Marius began moving closer, slowly, watching the smallest flick of Daniel’s fingers, the slightest shift of his feet or twitch of his eye.
Marius responded, You’re a liar, Daniel. You didn’t foresee anything, or you would have been prepared for this attack. I think you hoped that I might reach, possibly even exceed, your power, but you didn’t foresee it.
And you’ve your mother’s weakness. She had so much compassion but not enough sense. Try to break free of that right now. It’s not too late to join me. Together—here he swept an arm to encompass the arena—we can rule everything.
Marius felt Daniel’s power begin to pulse all around the arena.
Suddenly the battles that raged around him and Daniel slowed, then halted, fists and chains in mid-strike, bodies prone and dying, others gone.
Marius saw what would happen next because he couldn’t move. Daniel launched at him and caught him around the neck, flipping behind him so that he had one hand pressed on the side of Marius’s head.
Marius knew that in this moment, he was dead.
Daniel would snap his neck. He had more power than anyone knew and Marius’s power, so recently arrived, was untried, unproven, undeveloped. He had raw power, but Daniel had been building his for centuries, well beyond Marius’s age, taught by even viler creatures than he himself had proved to be.
This was a pattern in Marius’s family, sons killing their evil fathers. In this case, it would be the other way around.
His gaze strayed to Shayna and he realized she wasn’t immobile like all the others. Her gaze was fixed to his. He didn’t attempt to touch her mind, to communicate; Daniel would know.
She began to levitate. Marius shifted his gaze straight ahead and focused on Daniel. “What do you want?”
“You know what I want: you and your abilities. I’ve always known you could do what I do. One day, with practice, you can do more.”
