Blood Father (Blood Curse Series) (22 page)

His enemy was far too strong.

Their numbers had been far too great.

Yet…and still…it didn’t matter: his life or his death, his certain passing into the world beyond.

All that mattered was his utter failure to do what he had set out to do—to save Keitaro.

To save his father
.

And now, the rivers would never run crimson with blood.

As his mind gave way to defeat, and he tried to brace himself against the coming blow—
his
coming
death
, a small, distant voice whispered tenaciously inside his head, echoing in his soul:
Vampire, y
ou are a healer, a magician, a practitioner of unparalleled ability. Fight
them
with what you have left.

Kagen blinked several times, trying to make sense of the words.
W
ho had spoken them
? A
nd what did they mean?

He turned his attention inward and assessed the situation: He was kneeling on the ground before his mortal enemy. His arms were broken, his throat was torn open, and his organs were serrated and leaking blood. His left foot was barely attached to his leg, and his shoulder was virtually crushed. Within moments, the lycans would rip his heart from his body, and his mortality would come to an end. What was the point of trying to address his wounds now? Of trying to heal so many injuries? As if he had time…

Where would he even start to use his venom?

To use…

H
is venom
?

For reasons beyond his comprehension, Kagen glanced up toward the sky, and that’s when he saw them: the scavengers, the vultures, the vile birds circling all around them, waiting to devour the carrion, waiting to feast on the dead. And although he had never given an imperious command to an animal, tried to use the vampiric power of compulsion on a species other than
human
,
he could sense their collective consciousness, the spark that gave them life.

And he understood it in a way he had never understood it before:

All life was one.

And it was connected at a subatomic level.

The vale grew very dark and still—silent, almost dreamlike—as he all at once realized what he had to do: Kagen Silivasi was a healer, a magician, a practitioner of unparalleled ability
,
and he had to welcome death in order to reclaim life.

A single tear escaped his eye as he focused all of his power in that one, critical moment, as he sought to merge his consciousness with the foreign mind of the birds:
You will do as I command!

He bent low to the ground and pressed his face in the dirt, almost as if he were kneeling in supplication before the enemy, pleading for what remained of his life; and then, he coaxed as much venom as he could out of his fangs and watched as it pooled beneath him. He left a mound of venom collected at his knees, and then he seared the rest of his compulsion into the minds of the scavengers:
You will wait until the lycan
s
are gone; you will dip your talons into this venom; and
then you will retrieve my
heart
and place it back in my chest.

Kagen shuddered as an even more horrified thought entered his mind: What if the lycans removed his heart
and
severed his head from his body?

He quickly dismissed the thought.

If that happened, then nothing he was about to do would matter.

He would never save his father.

He would never kill them all.

And the rivers would never
run crimson with
their
blood
.

Both Teague and the other lycan had already shifted back into human form, gloating arrogantly while Kagen knelt before them, jeering as he appeared to plead for his life.

Teague kicked him ruthlessly in the side, breaking a pair of ribs. “Sit up, vampire! Face your death—and your superior enemy—like a man.”

Kagen swallowed a nasty retort. He swallowed his pride, and he swallowed his fear.

He could do this.

He
would
do this.

And the rivers would run crimson with
their
blood
.

He rose unsteadily to his knees, gasping from the pain in his sides, his torn throat, his crushed shoulder, and his laboring lungs; and he let his head fall forward in a gesture of defeat.

“Link your hands behind your back,” Teague snarled, clearly taking enormous pleasure in forcing the vampire to cooperate with his own execution.

Ah
, Kagen thought, with resignation,
then they do intend to
seize
my heart
.

He didn’t dare resist, lest they become enraged once again and decapitate him.

He linked his hands behind his back—at least he faked it, considering the impossible condition of his broken bones and fingers—and he exposed his chest to his enemy, using his last ounce of strength to raise his jaw and meet the lycan’s stare head-on.
To you, Lord Auriga, I offer my soul, and I pray you will return this sacrifice:
Let me live to save my father. Let me
return
to kill them all. May th
e rivers run crimson with
their
blood!

The one called Teague descended upon him like a thousand hounds from hell.

He lunged at his proffered torso, shifted in midair, and tore through his breastbone with his jaw, wrenching the still-beating heart from Kagen’s chest with a force so brutal it felt like his spine had exploded.

Kagen jolted in sudden, inexpressible agony.

His mouth flew open in a wordless shout, and the breath left his body in a whoosh.

As his eyes bulged in his sockets, his once-powerful physique collapsed in on him, and his limp, eviscerated body slumped to the ground.

Silence.

Darkness.

Stillness engulfed him.

He heard a crisp pop, like the sound of grease sizzling in a pan, and just like that, his soul shot upward, ascending into the sky like a comet spiraling in reverse.

No!
Kagen’s soul shouted defiantly, reaching desperately for the ground.
The rivers must run crimson with
their
blood
!
He repeated the familiar refrain again and again, all the while, seeking his body, holding onto his once-immortal existence by a thread.

Kagen Silivasi haunted his corpse like a ghost.

He clung to his sentience while his spirit hovered about the scene of his death.

He waited like a specter while the lycans gathered their dead and, at last, slipped back through the portal.

He watched while the scavengers descended from the trees, as they dipped their talons in the pool of venom; grasped his heart in their faithful claws; and placed the damaged organ back into his battered chest.

He marveled as his heart began to knit itself back together…

And then he awoke to a pain unlike anything he had ever known in his 521 years—he awoke without any recollection of what had just happened.

He awoke completely absent of memory.

Kagen Silivasi had no idea, whatsoever, what had just befallen him.

He shouted in agony. He tried to draw his knees to his chest, but his ribcage assailed him. He tried to roll onto his side, but his back began to spasm. He tried to bring his hands to his face, to bite into his own flesh in order to counter the pain, but his limp hands and arms betrayed him: His limbs were broken, his chest was saturated in blood, and his throat felt like someone had sliced it open with a razor.

As he writhed on the ground in torment, alternating between retching and extracting his venom, he struggled to start healing his wounds, and he tried—

B
y all that was holy, he tried
!

To remember…

Something
.

What?

It had seemed so vital!

“Kagen!” Nathaniel Silivasi stared at his twin in abject horror. He shook him by the shoulders once again and tried to get through to him with his mind.
Brother…please…
snap out of it
!

Kagen had been
gone
for at least a half an hour, lost in some sort of trance, trapped in some sort of living hell—ranting and raving like a madman, pulling his hair out by the roots, rocking back and forth like a stricken child, and pounding his fists into the dirt. Nachari had tried every spell he could think of in an effort to pull him out of the nightmare—the vision?
T
he meltdown
.
And Nathaniel had reverted to pleading to the gods on his twin’s behalf.

Still, nothing had reached the tortured vampire.

It had been terrifying, ghastly…utterly appalling to watch.

When, finally, the Master Healer had started to vomit and writhe along the ground, as if his body was in unbearable pain, Marquis had rolled him on his side and held him down by his arms and legs. “Kagen,
b
rother
, stop this at once!” As if an implacable order would get through, where compassion, magic, and pleading had not.

“Wake up, Kagen! Please come back!” Nathaniel tried again.

Kagen jolted upright, as if suddenly hearing his brothers’ words. He looked up into the compassionate eyes that were boring into his and blinked with the first, true sign of awareness. “Nathaniel?”

Nathaniel breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Yes, brother.”

“Where am I?”

“You’re in Mhier, Kagen. We all are,” Nathaniel said softly.

“What the hell just happened?” Marquis demanded.

Kagen sat up straighter then. He scrubbed his face with his hands and tried to calm his breathing. He looked around the forest, as if seeing it for the first time, and shuddered. “I don’t know.
I don’t know
.
I just—” His words broke off. “There was something…something I needed to do.
To remember.
Something so very important.”

“Something
you needed to do
?” Marquis grumbled, repeating the muddled words. “I believe you just
did
plenty. You have been rolling around on the ground for the last half hour, healer. I thought I was going to have to knock you out.”

Kagen furrowed his brow. He looked up at Marquis and shook his head in apology. “I’m sorry, warrior. I don’t know what happened.” And then all at once, his face went slack, and his stark brown eyes deepened with shadows. “Oh gods, oh gods…
oh gods
!”

“What is it?” Nachari asked, kneeling beside Nathaniel to get closer to Kagen.

Kagen blanched, his skin turning a ghastly shade of white. “I knew,” he whispered gravely, his voice lingering like a soft bow drawn across a bass cello—deep, sorrowful, and filled with regret. “All this time, I knew our father had been taken by the lycans. I knew that he needed our help. I knew there was a portal, yet I did nothing. I said…
nothing
.” His voice vibrated with anguish, and his eyes clouded with tears.

“What are you talking about?” Nathaniel asked, his own voice rough with insistence. “What do you mean,
y
ou knew our father had been taken by the
lycans
? You knew nothing! None of us did.” He met Marquis’s anxious gaze and shrugged his shoulders in confusion.

Nachari drew back, waiting to hear more.

“I remember everything now—
oh, gods
—I was supposed to save him.” Kagen spoke to no one in particular. “Instead, I let them take him. I said nothing. I did
nothing
. For centuries!”

“Brother, we don’t understand what you’re talking about,” Nachari said. His voice radiated with kindness, yet it also rose with fear.

“What do you remember?” Marquis bit out.

“All of it,” Kagen said sadly. “Everything. The night Father disappeared from Dark Moon Vale.” He fisted his hands and pressed them against the ground to steady his body from shaking. “I was there. I saw it happen.”

“You saw what happen?” Nathaniel asked.

Nachari held his hand up as if to silence his brothers’ questions, and then he leaned closer to Kagen and gently touched his cheek. “Brother, you say this is a memory, yes?”

Kagen slowly shook his head. “A nightmare.”

“Can you share it with us?” Nachari asked softly.

Kagen froze—as if trying to decide—and then he slowly nodded his head. “I think that might be best.”

Marquis took a step closer to the circle then. “Send it out in a unified stream, to all of us at once, healer. And we will decide for ourselves if your words make any sense.”

“
Marquis
,” Nachari chastised beneath his breath.

Nathaniel rolled his eyes before turning to regard Kagen with concern. “Are you strong enough to do that?” he asked.

Kagen nodded. “Of course, the strength I lacked was then…not now.”

Nathaniel shook his head, feeling helpless. He placed a firm, reassuring hand on Kagen’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Share your experience with us now, and we will discuss the latter in a moment.”

Kagen took a deep, centering breath and slowly closed his eyes. “Brace yourself,” he whispered. And then he began to send a steady stream of images, thoughts, and feelings to his brothers. He replayed the entire horrific night from front to back like a video streaming in high-definition on a big-screen TV, right down to the very last moment when the lycans removed his heart, the vultures returned it, and he awakened absent of memory, with zero knowledge of what had happened before.

Marquis took three angry paces back, his shoulders heaving in fury and surprise.

Nathaniel placed his fingers in his mouth and bit down hard to stifle a brutal, inappropriate reaction. He wanted to murder every living creature in sight, and since there were only woodland animals and his brothers nearby, it was highly ill-advised. “That night…you came home so late, and you looked so haggard, so lost.
So exhausted
. We thought it was grief. We thought something bad had happened, like maybe you had been in a fight, but I, for one, was in no place to dig deeper, to ask questions. I could barely function myself. We were all consumed with grief and sorrow…and rage. If I thought you’d had a chance to take it out on an enemy, I would have simply envied you. I would have never suspected…” His voice trailed off.

“But why didn’t I make the connection?” Kagen asked sadly. “Several days later, when it started to become clear that father wasn’t coming home, that something had happened—why didn’t I make the connection then?”

Nachari wiped a tear from his eye and cleared his throat. “Grief has a way of catapulting the living into a place of altered perception: The grieved are neither in the spirit world, with the deceased, nor on the earth, with the living, but somewhere in between. That’s why individuals always say that it seems so strange,
so wrong
, that life can continue to go on all around them, that the sun still shines and others continue to go about their menial, everyday tasks: Don’t others know that the earth has stopped spinning on its axis? That nothing is as it was before? That life has, in fact, stopped moving?” He sighed. “I believe the mind shuts down in grief in order to allow the survivors to heal in their own time…and at their own pace. We were not in a position to accurately perceive your turmoil, and you were not capable of maintaining the memory of what occurred in that
place of limbo
beyond the threshold of death. It’s not unusual for someone who
dies
”—he stumbled over the word but pressed on—“to have no recollection of the events that occurred right before their passing. Perhaps it has something to do with the mind, the brain, that suspended time when there’s no oxygen flowing to the cells.”

Marquis waved his hand in angry dismissal of the whole conversation. “You survived!” His powerful voice clashed like a symbol, resounding in the night. “You killed four alpha lycans; you orchestrated your own resurrection from inevitable death; and you survived! That is all.” His harsh, implacable features were drawn tight with fury.

Kagen slowly released his fists. He opened and closed his hands several times in a row, as if trying to gain a grip on the unfathomable. “I walked away from that entire encounter with nothing productive retained. Just enough of my memory left intact to know that a part of me needed to
save
…to heal…to fix something so fundamental…so valuable. And another part of me, absolutely splintered, broken, and destroyed, emerged with an insatiable urge to kill. A burning instinct to forge endless rivers of blood.”

“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Nathaniel whispered softly. “Your need to save the world. Your inexplicable desire to destroy…”

“Well, no wonder,” Marquis muttered.

“I shattered,” Kagen said disgracefully. “I came out of it damaged.”

“No,” Nachari insisted. “You came out of it
alive
. And I, for one, am grateful.”

Just then, Nathaniel shuffled in front of him, still on his knees. He grasped Kagen by both shoulders and gently angled his body to face him, and then he cupped his twin’s face in his hands with exquisite tenderness. “Look at me, brother,” he whispered. He felt as if his heart might just break into a thousand pieces and become one with his twin’s anguish.

Kagen looked up him obediently, his benevolent brown eyes almost pleading for absolution.

Nathaniel’s spine stiffened. “When the spark of life that is you—and the spark of life that is me—first came into being, we were together in our mother’s womb.” He dropped his head forward until his silken mane of blue-black hair fanned out about his face, and his forehead rested on Kagen’s, endearingly. And then he spoke in a voice so pure, so intimate, that Nachari and Marquis took several steps back to give the two some privacy. “And we have been together ever since:
except that night
.” His voice trembled from the depth of his emotion, and he had to steady his hands, which were now firmly planted on both of Kagen’s arms. “The night that my twin died at the hands of the lycans, yet came back to me…somehow. And you have carried this burden,
alone
, for nearly half a century.” He tightened his grip on Kagen’s arms until his fingers cut into his skin in an effort to maintain his composure. “If anyone has failed anyone, I have failed you.” His voice trembled, he felt a fine mist settle in his gaze, and he looked away. When, at last, he had steadied himself enough to continue, he cleared his throat and pressed on. “But I say to you now: You are my brother, you are not to blame, and
you are not alone
. You. Are. Not. Alone.
Never again
.”

Kagen clutched Nathaniel’s wrists and held on for dear life, even as Nathaniel continued to grasp his arms.

“We will enter that arena tomorrow,
together
.” Nathaniel gestured with his hand to indicate all of them, Marquis and Nachari included. “And we will finish what you started. We
will
save our Blood Father; and then we will find Arielle.
Together
.” A deep, primal growl reverberated in his throat, and Nathaniel did nothing to restrain it. “And by all that is holy, I make you this solemn vow, as your brother and as your twin: We
will
kill them
.
We will kill them
all.
And the rivers will run crimson with
their
blood.
”