Drake of Tanith (Chosen Soul) (5 page)

Not that it mattered. Asmodeus could see into his soul.

“
I have too much invested in you
,” his father finally said, continuing to laugh as he slowly stood. Drake watched him reach his indomitable height before there was a brief flash and Asmodeus once more stood before him appearing as he had in the Witherlands – more or less human.

Asmodeus studied him in silence for a moment, all that remained of his prior monstrous form the red glowing pupils of his dark, dark eyes. And then he slowly stepped down from the dais around his throne and strode toward his son.

Despite the less formidable change in his appearance, Drake found himself suddenly wary. The air in the throne room was crackling with unspent magic. Asmodeus had been going easy on him. Very, very easy. But now there was a warning to the atmosphere. It was almost as if he could hear music and that music had become decidedly foreboding.

Asmodeus stopped a few feet away and eyed his son with a look that made Drake more uncomfortable than did the fire in the ring around the throne room. In a tone of voice that had also returned to its more humanesque pretense, Asmodeus said, “It is time, son.”

Drake’s head began to ache. His heart rate sped up. His body stung inside and out with the need to transform into the Dark Prince he was. He didn’t need to ask the question; he knew the answer. But he asked it anyway. It was his final defiance. “Time for what?” His normally deep voice sounded distant beyond the blood rushing through his ear drums.

“Oh, I think you know.”

Drake’s vision threatened to tunnel. He closed his eyes and shook his head, forcing back the dizziness, shoving back at his father’s encroaching power. He was being overwhelmed. “No,” he said,
whispered
. There was no strength behind the word.

“You’ve had your fun Drake,” Asmodeus went on. Drake opened his eyes to watch with blurred vision as his father took another step toward him and his black boot echoed menacingly in the warm, cavernous air. “Did you really believe there was anywhere in the realms that you could hide from me?” Asmodeus asked. “You’re tied to Abaddon as no one else is. You left a part of yourself here, Drake.”

A wave of weakness washed over Drake and he was helpless to stop his transformation from beginning. Massive black, leathery wings erupted from his back, spreading to an impressive and glorious span. He felt his vision heat up, shifting into red. His gums began to ache where his fangs threatened to break free.

“You can’t escape who you are, my son,” Asmodeus told him. Another step, another ominous echo of approaching doom. “You can’t escape
what
you are. You are the heir of Nisse, the next king of Abaddon.”

Drake shut his eyes and gritted his teeth as his fangs exploded in his mouth and he tasted iron. His skin burned and shifted, darkening until it took on the cast of night. His strength gave out and he fell to one knee before his father once again. He leaned over, catching himself with a hand that grew deadly metal claws even as he watched.

In front of him, he heard his father stop – and lower himself gracefully to one knee. They were eye to eye as Drake slowly raised his head. His ragged breaths punctuated the brief silence. His father watched him through slowly burning eyes.

“You exist as a fragment of what you once were – what you could be again.” The ruler of Nisse shook his head. “Soon,” Asmodeus said softly, “
very
soon, the devils of Abaddon will bear witness to a proclamation.”

Drake’s heart hammered. His black hair was damp with sweat.

“What this declaration turns out to be is up to you, Drake,” Asmodeus told him. The king smiled, flashing his own fangs once more. “You see,” he said, leaning in until he and his son were mere inches apart. Drake flinched as his father gently grasped his head, one hand on either side, and looked into his soul. “I know about Malphas’s daughter,” he whispered.

Drake’s world dropped out from under him.

Asmodeus continued. “And I happen to think that no other woman in the realms would make a better queen for Abaddon.”

“
No
,” Drake hissed. But he was held immobile in his father’s grip, both physical and magical.

“
Yes
, Drake.” Asmodeus smiled. “So you have a choice. When the devil lords of the Nine Circles come together next week as they always do, you can accept who you are, become whole again and I can introduce my son, my
heir
, and the new king of Abaddon.” He paused, allowing his words to sink in. “
Or
,” he said, and his smile broadened even as the fire in his eyes grew in warning. “I can introduce my new bride, Raven Winter Phelan, daughter of Malphas and Princess of Caina.” He peered long and hard into Drake’s eyes, holding him fast, letting the threat burn. “It’s up to you.”

Chapter Five

“Did it work?” Loki looked up at the sound of Summer’s soft voice at the doorway to the temple.

Summer offered him a hopeful, curious expression and then looked from Loki to the other acolytes who were seated around the orange talc circle they’d drawn on the floor of the temple. Candles that had been lit moments before were now magically snuffed, and long curls of black smoke rose from their extinguished wicks like omens.

“Yes,” Loki breathed. Sweat had coated his brow. He wiped at it distractedly. He was hunched over where he’d been kneeling for the last hour. Now he let his legs curl beneath him and sat back cross-legged, utterly exhausted. “For a moment, anyway.”

“What happened?” Summer asked next, coming all the way into the temple to kneel beside him. She placed her hand on his back and rubbed gently. It felt good.

“I think we were able to get through to her,” he told her.

“But the prince interfered,” another priest spoke up. His voice was tight with irritation. Loki knew that the acolyte was not at all used to someone else’s magic being more powerful than Haledon’s. Loki wasn’t about to tell him that Haledon had nothing to do with it. What magic they used here was their own and they only used it in Haledon’s name. It had always been this way and it was something priests across the realm didn’t seem to understand. People made their own fates, cast their own spells, and chose their own paths. For the most part, and other than the occasional possession by an Avatar in the event of a possible apocalypse, gods merely looked on.

“He and his father broke the enchantment and the connection was lost,” Loki clarified. His voice was as soft and weary as his fellow priest’s was tight. He’d been trying so hard and for so long to get to his sister where she was being held in the castle. It was disappointing to have it end in this way.

At least he’d finally managed to reach her. He’d felt that he was able to temporarily clear her mind of the spell the prince had cast upon it. Now it was up to her.

“You need food and drink and rest,” Summer told him, standing once more at his side. “I’ll head back home and father and I will prepare a meal. You’re all welcome to join us if you’d like.”

With that, she left and Loki stood as well. The other acolytes began cleaning up the components of the spell, packing candles into bags and emptying bowls of sacred water. He ignored them and moved to the front of the temple, where the axes he’d used as Haledon’s champion hung once more on the wall.

He hadn’t told his fellow priests this, but there had been times since he’d replaced them on the wall a month ago that he had tried to pull the weapons down again. He’d failed every time. As he stared up at them now, he was overwhelmed with a sudden, staggering sense of helplessness. And betrayal.

As Haledon’s champion and then his avatar, Loki had been privy to the thought processes of an actual god. He’d known what Haledon was thinking, what he was feeling. He’d learned, in those moments, more than most humans would care to know. He’d realized what humans actually meant to the gods – what the gods thought of them – when they thought of them at all. And it had hurt.

He couldn’t help it if he’d reacted, on the inside if not outwardly. It had confirmed what he had always suspected but chose not to believe. Haledon didn’t really care about the human race or the Terran realm. He’d interfered with Cruor because Cruor was once more becoming a god. And that would have affected… well, the
gods
.

It wasn’t that Haledon was evil or that he was even cruel. He was simply a being so powerful and so far removed from the tiny creatures that roamed the surface of the Terran realm, he was literally incapable of feeling what they felt or understanding what they went through.

It was like a human caring about a single insect.

There was a lot of inherent and even involuntary apathy involved with being a god. Some humans – just as some insects – were cute and some were amusing and some were even beautiful when they took wing. But they were basically crude and incredibly simple and most of all, they were devastatingly short lived.

So it was to be like this. Those axes would stay up there and probably wouldn’t come down for another two thousand years – when some other insane magic user or beast decided to threaten the gods and Haledon chose another unwitting champion.

Until then… the world was on its own.

Of course, Loki had kept all of this to himself as well. As far as the acolytes and priests of Haledon’s temples were concerned, Loki was now and always would be Haledon’s champion. Loki didn’t bother correcting them. He needed them. The world was fickle and two-faced and the one person in the world he knew he could trust – the one person in the realms he had wanted to confide in as this harsh and cold knowledge had taken seed in his spirit – was being held prisoner by a very powerful enemy.

Loki missed his sister horribly. He was worried sick about her.

The priests of Haledon possessed a decent amount of cumulative power and he needed that magic in order to reach Raven. As he had finally managed to do today.

“Priest.”

Loki spun at the sound of the gravelly voice behind him. He was alone in the temple – other than the newcomer in the doorway. He hadn’t heard the other acolytes leave. They must have assumed he was praying and wanted to give him the privacy the “champion” deserved.

In the doorway, framed by the light of the high sun behind him, stood a humanoid creature with green skin. He looked to be about six feet tall, had tusks that extended from his bottom jaw over his top lip, and long brown hair that was braided on either side behind his ears. One of those ears was pierced and decorated with some sort of metal and gem hoop.

He was the ork from the battle with Cruor a month ago. He’d been Drake of Tanith’s companion, Loki remembered that much. He thought his name was….

“May I come in?” the ork asked, looking around the room a little nervously, as if afraid that Haledon would not want an ork in his temple and would set him on fire if he stepped foot past the threshold.

“Of course,” Loki responded. “Grolsch, if I remember correctly?”

The ork nodded once, curtly, and came into the room. He bore weapons, but they were sheathed and his hands were easy at his sides. “I need to speak with you,” the ork said, his tusks and the color of his skin at odds to the genteel manner in which he addressed Loki. “About your sister.”

The ork shrugged. “Work with Drake of Tanith long enough and things rub off on you,” he said. And then his look hardened into one of stark resolve. “I want to help you get her out.”

“Easy,” came a soft voice. Raven opened her eyes, but slowly. The lids felt heavy, as if weighted down. The world beyond was bright but blurry. “You got hit with a double dose,” the voice continued. Raven felt someone brush her hair from her face, but her eyes had closed again. “My brother and father didn’t exactly go easy on you.”

“Zeta?” Raven’s voice cracked when she spoke. Her throat felt unused.

“Yes,” Zeta said. “Just go slow. The effects of the sleep spell will wear off shortly.”

Raven tried to move her legs, but her limbs felt like lead. The bed she was on was so soft, so comfortable, she simply wanted to go back to sleep. She could sleep forever, in fact. Why was she fighting it?

“No, no,” Zeta said softly. “Don’t let it take you under again,” she advised. “Just don’t rush things.”

Make up your mind, Raven thought crankily. Was she supposed to wake up or not?

She decided that she was and opened her eyes once more. This time, her surroundings were a little less blurry. She blinked a few times and the space around her cleared into the details of a palatial room, connected through archways to several other rooms beyond. Everything was white marble shot through with veins of precious minerals. As was everything else in Eidolon, it was unnaturally beautiful.

“Here, let me help,” Zeta offered, grabbing her under the arms and fluffing a number of plump, plush pillows behind her. The bed was massive and Raven knew that Zeta rarely slept alone in it. That made her feel somewhat strange, but she kept it to herself.

“I want to apologize,” Zeta finally said after she sat back and dropped her hands once more into her lap. She sat on the edge of the bed, a tall, slim and regal beauty in elven finery. She appeared so perfect and polished and powerful there, Raven couldn’t help but feel just a tad messy in comparison.