It’s the antithesis of essence, I realize. Like some kind of otherworldly antimatter.
“It’s all the same deal,” the Cataclysm says.
Reck opens his mouth as if to retort or negotiate.
“You killed my mother,” I say first.
Though my insides are still frozen in remembered terror, my voice is steady, certain.
Everyone goes still around me, including the berserkers.
Even at nine years old, I knew I had to box away the memories threatening to unfold before me now. Now when it really isn’t the proper moment to recall my mother sending Muta to me, of her having my father’s combat mage — Tau — seal us within an armoire with only a keyhole to peer through.
Not the time to remember watching as my mother fought against a foe so much larger than her, bringing him to his knees, but then …
She knew she was going to die, had foreseen it. Yet she still stood between me and him.
No one stands between us now. No one can stand between us. Not without me losing more people I love.
The Cataclysm splays his hands, conciliatory yet utterly mocking. His long fingers are claw tipped, the nail beds blackened. “An unfortunate accident. Certainly not my intent.” He takes a step forward, head lowering, gaze riveted on me. Nothing human in his face or gestures now. “But it drew me to you, and for that I’m … thankful.”
His words are in complete contrast with his mannerisms.
“What the fuck, Zaya?” Reck mutters, thrown yet still vicious. “Your mother?” He sucks in a harsh breath. “But … if you … if he —”
“Yes, son of mine,” the Cataclysm says, still pretending at being a person. “It was such a thrill when you told me of your beloved Zaya … of your soul-bound mate … and how your and your brothers’ places were at her side. My little Zaya. I’d been looking for you.”
“Ever since you killed my mother,” I say, still quiet but not at all shaky. The remembered terror is slowly distilling through my bloodstream.
Though his grip on my arm is harsh, Reck sways on his feet as if he’s pieced something life altering together. Something of our shared past has just clicked together for him?
The Cataclysm bares his teeth in a mockery of a smile, showing off elongated canines. His red-hued eyes are fixed on Reck, almost greedily. “What did you say to me? Oh, yes. ‘You can’t touch us anymore.’ And then you tried to hide behind Disa when I called you on your bluff.” He laughs gratingly.
Tainted energy skitters over me, roiling through my stomach so harshly that I actually struggle to not outwardly react.
“It should … have … I didn’t … know …” Reck stutters, squeezing his eyes shut, then sighing in realization. “You were Disa’s rejected soul-bound mate.”
“Disa was nothing,” the Cataclysm spits viciously. “A vessel. A simple, broken, and badly-pieced-back-together shell. It’s the Conduit that matters. The Conduit that you’ve failed, twice now, to protect. Such potential you had with that magnificent beast. Yet you went totally fucking pathetic, panting after a violet-eyed girl whose destiny was to be the epicenter of the fucking universe. With or without you to anchor her.” His attention and vicious grin shifts to me. “This universe, at least.”
The berserkers stiffen like dogs picking up a whistle — a command — at a frequency the rest of us can’t hear. Energy shifts through their ranks. They quiver with it, salivate with it.
The time for revelations and reflections has passed.
“Kill them all,” the Cataclysm says. “They’ve become more annoying than worthy. Except for the youngest. My other precious girl will come home with us, Zaya. That will make you happy, won’t it, darling?”
I raise my hands, reaching for the threads of fate interwoven all around me, around us.
Reck loses his hold on my arm, either by choice or because he can’t hold me while I wield the power bequeathed to me by my aunt’s death. The power of the Conduit. The power, as is becoming clear, that the Cataclysm is willing to murder his own children to obtain, even if he can’t wield it directly.
All six berserkers lunge across the parking lot toward us. The Cataclysm smirks knowingly. At me.
A grid of all our fates, all of our life force, snaps out before and around me in a web of multicolored threads, intertwined and tangled.
Bellamy releases all the power she’s been building — without actually cutting herself. So she can listen and learn. It explodes in a roughly hewn, powerful but unfocused push.
That push catches all six berserkers, throwing them backward in a wide arc. Two of them slam into Bellamy’s sedan, shoving it all the way back into the small outpost building and crushing the car. Two berserkers tumble out of the parking lot and into the arid landscape beyond.
Moving impossibly fast for his size, the Cataclysm steps to the side to avoid getting hit by two more flying bodies. Those berserkers tumble through the open portal behind him.
