A blurred form darted past my ankles—your cat. I glanced back to see Lucian gesturing wildly, pointing across the desert, to a monstrous figure all in black. And thrown over his shoulder was a body whose slight frame caused the blood to drain from my face.
I threw the flame thrower to the ground and sped off to overtake the masked figure. Straight through the fire I sprinted. I turned my ankle in the soft sand but kept going. My eyes stayed trained on the thief’s back, and I saw a glimpse of your silver hair. Your attacker must have incapacitated you. But how could anyone have gotten into the mine with Lucian and Lena blocking it? And the beastborn guarding you from inside?
Unless they’d been in there the whole time.
I ran with all of my might, but the figure was hurtling up the ramp and into the waiting chopper, its blades already turning with deafening ferocity. Its black body lifted off the ground with the trap door still open. I shifted my attention to its nearest counterpart, prepared to chase your kidnappers through the sky.
But Imperium soldiers were setting the other two aircraft ablaze. They hadn’t been retreating but ensuring there was no way for me to follow. All along, the mission had been to capture you. In the distance, my own helicopter was already burning. It was a sea of flame interrupted by hunched black figures, beetle-bodied whales moored on the hot desert sand.
They’d taken you from me.Mine.Much like my ambush against my own Roman soldiers, I lost my conscious mind, and set to slaying every being in sight.
IT TOOKLucian’s seduction to subdue me, and the beastborn’s inhuman strength to force the weapons from my blood-slick hands. My entire body was covered in gore with entrails hooked around one ankle. Bodies lay broken all around me, victims of my wrath.
“Henri,” Lucian said, directing my attention to his ashen face. “It’s over.”
It wasn’t over. It had only just begun.
“Killing these Nephilim won’t bring him back,” he said. My bloodthirsty brother was attempting to appeal to my better nature. But there wasn’t one. It had been stripped from me when that figure in black stole you away.
I shrugged out of Ashur’s hold and swung around to direct my fury at the beast. “You were supposed to protect him.”
“I found him unconscious, Henri,” Lucian said. “He’d been struck from behind.”
A section of the beastborn’s crown was matted with blood, and more of it dripped down his face.
“They were waiting in the mine,” I said.
Lucian nodded. “We’ll get him back.”
“Will we?” I surveyed the wreckage that surrounded us. At some point in my rampage, dawn had broken. I didn’t see dead and dying bodies, I saw collateral. To Ashur, I said. “Can you operate a motor vehicle?” He nodded and I pointed. “Run as fast as you can in that direction. There’s a town. Steal a container truck and bring it back here. We’re taking them with us, dead or alive.”
“For what purpose?” Lucian asked.
I ignored Lucian and addressed the wounded. “Who among you can walk?”
A lone soldier staggered to her feet, bleeding freely from an injury in her upper thigh. I must have stabbed her at some point.
“Administer that one first,” I told Lucian. “She’s the only one not coming with us.”
I strode over to where she leaned heavily to one side. As I approached, she stood straighter, though it took some effort. A soldier at attention
“Tell your master the bloodborn declare war on his Imperium. I know your safehouses, and I know your fortresses, and I will hunt down each and every one of you until Vincent is returned to me.”
To the rest, I roared, “Your master has left you here to die. He ordered your own transport vehicles destroyed. That’s how expendable you are to him. That’s your reward for your centuries of loyalty and service. I don’t take pleasure in harming you, my brothers and sisters, but your master has stolen something precious from me, and until he is returned, you are prisoners of the bloodborn.”
My anger blazed like a comet as I directed my rage at Lena.
“This is your fault.” I gestured all around us. If it hadn’t been for Vincent’s empathy towards her, we never would have found ourselves in this hopeless situation. I recited her own words back to her. “Anything can be used as a weapon, Andronicus. Even kindness, even compassion.”
And then, in a single flash of clarity, her plot and all of its intricacies revealed itself to me… from taming the tiger to the loving portrait of motherhood to the sad opera of her starvation. Only in her weakened state would she be able to manipulate and lie to us without you using your powers to uncover her true intent. Had she orchestrated this entire scheme?
No, she couldn’t have accomplished this deception alone. She must have had an accomplice, which was how Azrael had known we were here. Why he’d sent only a fraction of his soldiers to contain us, even though he knew my capabilities. He’d wanted to minimize the casualties. Did his soldiers know this was a suicide mission?
“You planned this, didn’t you?” I seethed at her. “You took a soul who was good and true and used him as a bargaining chip to regain your freedom. You knew this was a trade all along.”
“I thought we could defeat them,” she said, feigning weakness.
“Don’t lie to me,” I roared.
