Heart of Annihilation (23 page)

Caz
12 minutes pre-RAGE

Electricity crackled out of Caz’s palm and ran the length of the silver, blood-encrusted blade which hung from her limp hand. Her head pounded a rhythm of pain above her left ear, and she pressed a knuckle to the spot. She knew there was no hope of escape. She just needed to see Xander one last time. To know if she’d lost him completely.

The structure before her was gaudy, even extravagant by Rethan standards. Copper covered almost every surface and shivered with occasional trails of voltage collected from the gathering electrical storm. The silver gate stood open, as though it wasn’t there for the privacy of council member Vincent Paliyo and his family. Caz rested her weight against the gate, unable to do more than keep herself standing.

Vin was dead, his family in shambles. Why close the gate when their ruin was already broadcast to the world?

If it weren’t for the support of the gate Caz was sure she would not be on her feet. Her eyes burned from her brief escapade to the hellish Third Dimension, and every muscle screamed in exhaustion. At least the Heart of Annihilation was safe. The marshals would show her no mercy. But her precious weapon, the ultimate creation of her superior intellect, would never be found.

Her thoughts rattled around a never-ending track of rage, revulsion, pleasure, betrayal, and pain, threatening to shred her mind. She was reminded by the dried blood tightening her skin and flaking from her clothing that this was no dream or delusion.

“Xander!” she shouted. The word rasped painfully against her sandy throat and echoed with a hollow twang against the metallic structure. “Xander! I know you’re there! Get your ass out here!”

The house remained dark and silent. The wail of sirens filled the air, warning the entire dimension of excessive voltage fluctuations due to her unauthorized dimensional jump. The marshals would be here soon. They had to know she would come here in the end. Caz stumbled away from the support of the gate. She brushed at the flaking blood on her arm. There was so much . . . so much blood.

“Xander!” Caz screamed. Her voice reached a peak and screeched across the sirens. Spots of light flecked her vision. She planted her feet apart to keep from falling and raised her eyes to the roiling sky. “Xan!”

“I’m here, Caz.”

Xander stood on the steps, his arms folded and his expression lost in the darkness. Lightning scorched across the sky. The handsomeness of his face was obscured behind a black expression Caz was unable to read. Thunder growled from overhead, and the sky suddenly opened. Water deluged her, drawing the collected electricity within her body to the surface and dancing her skin with sparking light. The blood, rehydrated by the rain, streamed from her arms in red, watery trails.

“Xander,” Caz breathed his name. “They’re dead.”

“What in Gauss’s law are you talking about?” His tone sounded off.

“They didn’t listen, Xan.” The pleading in her voice made her cringe. She had to make him understand. “They didn’t realize.”

Lightning flashed across his face again. Revulsion was there. Revulsion and something else. Self-righteousness? Serenity? Attikin’s ass. He’d been dosed with serenity! That made him all Rethan now, the traitor. How would she ever convince him of the inevitability of the bloodshed, of the absolute necessity of her actions?

Caz lifted the blade and pointed it at Xander. “What did they tell you?”

“Tell me? I don’t understand?” He didn’t move. His maddening voice remained neutral.

“I can see it in your eyes. They told you. They told you about the council. They told you about Vin.” Caz’s hand shook. “What did they tell you?”

“Who?”

Caz wanted him to come at her, show his anger, fight and argue his point. This insane composure made her want to take the blade to his throat as well.

“The marshals! Zell, that liar! Or, excuse me,
Deputy
Veella. She told you I killed them, killed them all, slashed their throats.”

“Did you?”

“Did what?” asked a small voice.

Lightning revealed a slight figure standing behind Xander. Caz’s heart constricted in pain so agonizing bile rose in her throat. She dropped the knife to her side. Her shoulders slumped. How long had he been there?

Manny didn’t run to her. He didn’t call her name. He didn’t smile his toothy smile. There were no warm hugs or light kisses. No delight in his eyes—only dread. He partially hid behind his uncle, holding two Pyk Styks in his hands. Caz retreated a step.

“What did Mother do, Uncle Xan?” Manny’s stare pierced her heart.

“Go back inside, Manny.” Xander pushed the boy gently back toward the house.

“I’ll make it like before,” Caz whispered. Rain trailed like tears down her face and spat like daggers from her lips. “Like I never left. Like Vin never left. Manny, Xander, I can fix this.”

“Get out of here, Caz!” Xander took an aggressive step. Caz reveled in the hate in his eyes. Serenity could only take you so far. “You’ve done enough. The last thing Manny needs is—”

“I killed them, Xan. I did.” Caz locked her eyes on Manny. His shoulders stooped, his hands tightening on the Pyk Styk. His small body shivered in the rain. “Killed them all. Every one of them.”

Movement shuddered from the shadows in the massive yard. Lightning flashed on the silvery hair of the mass of marshals surrounding the grounds. Each held a weapon Caz recognized as one of the first her parents ever developed. Short barreled, black against the white skin of their hands, capable of striking an opponent with a raw charge of electricity to stun them into a moment of immobility. A prehistoric weapon, the likes of which hadn’t been used in decades. In their passive,
serene
society, there was never a need to use them.

But now someone, fearing that Caz’s cleansing river of blood would continue past the walls of the Dimensional Congressional building, had finally raided the ancient Rethan arsenal. A single shot from any of the fifty or so marshals would allow her to live but drop her in her tracks. Fifty would obliterate her.

Zell made her way out of the masses of marshals and deputies. She didn’t carry a weapon herself, only stood with her hands behind her back—the very epitome of a serene Rethan official. Blood showed through the white bandages covering her left eye and half her face. With a smirk, Caz touched the thin edge of her blade, remembering the flash of silver as it sliced across Zell’s eye and down her cheek.

“Cazandra Fisk.” Her voice was detached and cold. “Your brother, Xander Fisk, has witnessed you admitting to the slaughter of one hundred and twenty-two members of the Dimensional Congressional Council.”

Caz shot a murderous look at Xander. He flinched and had the decency to drop his eyes. Her question was answered. She’d lost him. Caz ground her teeth. Glacial rage filled her chest with ice. She glared back at Zell.

Zell raised her eyebrows in question. The bloody bandage wrinkled. Her hand shuddered toward her eye but she went on. “You are also guilty of the murders of twelve marshals in the council chamber and the one hundred and one other Rethans killed today by a device of your making planted in Attikin square. A singular death was also discovered in the portal chamber, bringing the total to two hundred and thirty-six deaths at your hands. By your own admission, your guilt is beyond contestation.”

The marshals surrounded her and Zell in a tight circle. Xander and Manny stood frozen on the porch. Dark resolution locked Xander’s face into a cold mask. Manny buried his face in his uncle’s sleeve; his shoulders shook. Caz forced the pain behind a wall in her churning mind as Zell continued.

“Under the power given me by a committee of your peers, and as acting officiate in this unique situation, you are hereby sentenced under the laws of etiquette and serenity to the Reverse Aging Gateway to Earth, to be carried out immediately.” Zell held up her hand as the marshals moved forward. They halted, and she stepped very close to Caz. She softened her voice to a whisper that was almost lost between the rain and sirens. Her words were meant only for Caz. “However, Caz, if you can tell me where you’ve hidden the Heart of Annihilation we can, perhaps, negotiate your sentence.”

Caz’s eyes roved over the thin lips, the sharp nose, and the one visible eye. Laughter bubbled up her throat. She lifted her knife out to the side and let it clatter to the ground.

“You’ll never find it,” Caz said. “Be prepared to spend your life wondering where it went. Enjoy your years of cringing at every siren with the expectation that at any moment the power of my Heart of Annihilation will be unleashed upon this dimension.”

Zell kicked the blade out of Caz’s reach and then bent to retrieve it. She held it between two fingers as though it would taint her tranquility, passed it carefully off to another marshal, and gestured toward the gate.

The soft whir of a motor whispered beneath the rolling thunder, pelting rain, and wailing sirens. The enormous, portable portal trundled up the walk in all its silvery glory. It came to a halt just behind Zell.

Zell touched her hands to the base of the portal and applied a charge. Any one of the marshals could have done it, but Zell seemed to take satisfaction in the act. Blue light zapped from her skin and the portal whirred to life. Electricity bounced from plate to plate within the perfect circle until it created a solid-looking wall. She gave Caz a curt nod and joined Xander and Manny on the steps. Their figures were distorted through the curtain of rain.

The portal cast intense blue light all round, throwing everything from the white boots of the marshals to the imperfection in the metallic ground into sharp relief.

Caz knew what was coming. She’d known from the first slice of the blade. But this was never about escaping their unfair judgment. This was about what was right. That didn’t stop the terror clawing her insides.

RAGE: the most serene form of torture ever created.

She wrenched at the arms holding her, screaming and screaming. More hands grasped her, forcing her to her knees and then her stomach. Someone grabbed her right hand, splaying her fingers apart, and pressed cold, searing pain into her palm. A brand. Caz struggled to free herself. Silver cuffs clamped onto her wrists and drew out every particle of electricity within her body. She might as well be dying. The emptiness of the moment, the complete absence of a power so essential to her physical and mental state, drained her body and unraveled her mind. Her cheek was pressed into the wet ground. Caz strained to see Xander and Manny one last time. The marshals obscured her view.

Hollow, sick, senseless, Caz’s screams echoed against the metal walls of her home, battering her once beloved brother and young son. She was dragged gracelessly from the ground, where she dangled limp in their grasp. Her traumatized body abandoned her will to fight—to win. The blinding light of the portal distorted her vision. A lurch, and the hands released her. The swooping sensation of falling, and her mind crumbled into darkness.

I swallowed back the raw, animalistic noise wrenching from my throat. All my muscles were tensed into painful knots. Flexed veins stood out on my hands. I lifted tearing eyes, blinking at the stunned expressions of—
Xander—
Xavier and Angie. I pressed my hand to my mouth.

“Did you,” I swallowed and cleared my throat, “Did you ever find it?”

“What?” Xavier’s hand dropped from his mouth.

“The Heart of Annihilation? And the kid. Who was the kid you were protecting when I got arrested?” Manny. My son. I shuddered.

Xander’s face reddened, and his mouth opened and closed several times before he was able to get any words out.

“Don’t you talk about him. Don’t you dare even mention him!” Xander raised himself from his seat, and I thought he might launch himself at me. At a soft touch from Angie he sat back down, his back rigid. “You’re just some criminal. The DCC Slayer. It would be better for everyone if you were erased. From the past, from the present, and I definitely don’t need you in my future!”

My cheeks flamed. I felt like a snarled, fiery ball of emotions that would consume everything around me. And Xavier sat in the eye of the storm.

Sitting there across from me, a glass in his hand, a distasteful curl on his lips, I loathed him and desperately wanted to kill him. I wanted to send hundreds of thousands of volts of electricity through his brain until smoke and fire exploded from his eyes and his face melted from his skull.

Pleasure coursed through me like an inferno.
Melt his face. Kill the traitor!

My head blistered in pain. My hands tremored, and I threw a fistful of electricity at Xavier from behind my bloody hand towel.

Xavier jerked his head to the side. The white sizzling ball punched through the seat where his head was seconds before. The limo slammed to a stop, and the engine ground into silence.

I buried my face in my hands and rocked. Back and forth. The sounds of panic and confusion roared around me. Back and forth. Back and forth.

I’m Kris. I’m Kris Rose. I’m not a murderer. I’m Kris. I’m—

Pressure squeezed my brain.

No,
she said.
You’re me.
Oily blackness sluiced through my mind. Unbearable malevolence. A blur of fury.
We’re the same. We’re murderers.

Thurmond wasn’t here to draw me away from the edge this time. Dad was gone.

I had Caz.

Caz and me. Me and Caz. A single entity of evil. Lost in a world with no understanding of us.
We’re the same, you and I. We’re the same.

Another voice crept across Caz’s. Not so much a voice, rather, but the memory of a voice. Gentle inflections, soft whisperings, and loving words challenged the darkness.

I don’t know a better person, Krissy.
Dad once said.
I hope you can always be yourself. Don’t ever let anyone try to change you from this person you are right now.

The unbearable pressure lifted enough to allow me to crawl my way back to the surface. I rubbed my face and peered between my fingers to find the limo door wide open and the vehicle nearly empty. Xavier alone sat on the seat near the rear window. His legs were crossed, his black leather pants creased to perfection down the front. He draped one arm across the back of the seat, a drink clamped tight in his hand. His other hand caressed the .357 lying on the seat beside him. A smoking hole glared from where he’d been sitting before. White fire-extinguisher foam dripped from the edges onto the seat.

“I’m sorry, Xavier. I didn’t mean—”

Xavier lifted his hand from the gun to stop me. “That’s enough.”

“You have to believe me—”

“There’s only one reason you’re still here right now and haven’t yet been arrested or shot.”

I pulled my knees to my chest and brushed a hand against my wet cheeks. Xavier continued.

“Right now my main concern is for that of Rannen. This commander of yours has had him for almost a week now, and my only connection to find them is you. I’m not a heartless person, and I understand that the fact that Mr. Thurmond is also being held causes you a great deal of distress.” He leaned toward me, swirling his drink. His silver eyes gave off unwavering sparks. “But make no mistake I’m not going to help either of them for your sake.”

“I wasn’t worried about that.”

“I happen to have a replica of the Heart of Annihilation in my penthouse.” Xavier said. “I knew, when I came to this dimension, someone would eventually come to me looking for it. So I had it made specifically for an instance such as this. I only want one thing from you in return for my help.”

“What’s that?”

“After we have gotten your friend and Rannen back, I want you to stay the hell away from me. I don’t ever want to see your face again. I don’t want to answer your questions. I don’t even want to remember we ever knew each other.”

I nodded quickly.

“Anything you want.”

“And I’m warning you—keep that temper in check. You try to assault me again and my bodyguard has orders to shoot to kill. Do you understand?”

I understood better than someone like Xavier Coy could ever comprehend. I understood the feeling of being at the point of a loaded weapon, not to mention the deep and maiming desire to avoid any more pain remotely associated with being shot. I also understood that I couldn’t promise self-control when it wasn’t myself that needed the control.

A cold chuckle echoed inside my head. I drew a sharp breath and gave a dishonest nod.