Blood Stained Tranquility (47 page)

She recognized them by their auras. Cy, Zex, Keiros, Ianthen, Crius, and—

No way.

Even as her brain refused to believe it, her powers recognized who the last one was. She’d never met him, yet her instincts were flashing one word in bold red letters behind her eyes.

Zen came up to a stop next to her. “Hades. He’s actually here.”

Makayla did the same on the other side of Eve.

“He’s considered a friend?” Eve needed to make sure. After all . . . Mavrak.

“Even if he wasn’t . . .”

She squinted, zooming in on the black wolf with its black sparkling eyes. The information download was instant and just as invasive as before. Details playing at breakneck speeds. There shouldn’t have been any way for her brain to catch all of that, but it did. The story played out behind a red lens, and in less than a second, she saw it all.

Hades’ crimes, and what had been done to him because of Crius.

The latter was worse than the former.

“I don’t want to punish him, Eve. He’s been through enough.”

Hearing the God of Vengeance say that was a revelation in and of itself. Looking away, she turned to Zen. “Don’t punish him. Everyone else is fair game.”

Zen spared one last glance at her and Makayla, then disappeared, dematerializing faster than Eve could follow.

Evesse shot Makayla a look. “Listen, when this is all over, I’m going to need to hear how you ended up here.”

Makayla’s lips twisted into a wry smirk. “Yeah, I know. Me, too.”

A portal spiraled open to their left, three blocks down, and a wave of
ceFtuts
rushed out, followed by seven-foot tall hulking beings with dead beige skin that somewhat resembled the frankenmutts. No mouths. Just red slits for eyes. They were almost as wide as they were tall. Their heads, hands, and feet were disproportionately large.

Then they started running, heading for she could only guess where. The
Sesengts
, she finally realized.
There were almost a thousand of them, maybe more, all wearing the same armor Xreak had been wearing. Spread out all over the battle, they took on
ceFtuts
and other beings that resembled Enteax and Lisrn. The tall-as-fuck monsters ran so fast, they sliced up the concrete beneath them, their bodies a blur that cut through the air so hard Evesse’s ears picked up on it.

One
Sesengt
almost got run over. A female. She jumped into the air, her long purple hair flowing behind her. The creature managed to grab her and the sound of her body and armor being crushed seemed to echo above the sounds of battle.

“Wait here!” Eve screamed at Makayla, frantic to get down there. “Don’t fucking leave this
Gnetica
!”

“I got it! Just go!”

Eve didn’t need to be told twice. She jumped off the rooftop, and broke her molecules apart, moving faster than she’d ever moved before. A blink of an eye later, she was crouched on the shoulders of that thing, materializing two swords and sliding both into its head.

It dropped the female guardian it had been holding, its back arching into a deep
C
and its wide hands coming at her. Eve pushed her boots into its shoulders, pulled back on the blades, and dangled her upper body out of reach. The fact that the drag helped her swords slice through half of the creature’s head was just a nice bonus.

Blood gushed as she jumped back down to the ground. Her combat boots hit the cement at the same time the large creature’s body did. Even with half its head sliced open, and its brains spilling out in a wet slushy mess, it flopped around, its hand grasping for her.

A war cry sounded in Eve’s ears just as a large blade came down in an arc, slicing through the creature’s arm. It didn’t stop there, either. The blade glinted in the light, twirling rapidly and coming down on the monster’s neck. One slice, two. That neck was chopped up like a thick roll of sushi, until the head was disconnected and promptly kicked, like a football, out of sight.

The purple-haired
Sesengt
turned and gave Eve a smile, her gray eyes crinkling at the corners. “You’re the new Goddess of Justice, right?”

“Yeah,” Eve called out over the noise, watching as the female’s armor repaired itself, the cracks and dents in it disappearing.

“Cool. I’m Seraphi. These nasty things are the
Refluths.
Killing them is super simple. Take the head off entirely and get it away from the body. Thanks by the way.” With that, she was gone, taking off and jumping into the air.

Another
Refluth
came to a stop before Eve, blasting her with air in the face. Fucking hell. Huffing, she pushed her hair out of her face, and met that red-eyed stare head on.

“What? You got a problem, you piece of shit?”

Its nostrils flared. Too-big fingers flexed, curling into fists.

Eve tilted her head, allowing her senses to expand. The play-by-play she got was just as nasty and wrong as she’d expected. And exactly what she needed to get her powers in gear. The creature slid one leg back, getting into position, looking like a bull ready to go. She didn’t give it a chance. She let loose her powers, condemning it.

“You’re going to pay. You’re going to die.”

Her swords sliced up into the air, ready to finish what her words had started.

Black and red mist collided into the creature like a smoke bomb going off. The wraiths had been lying in wait inside it, and at the moment of contact, they began to shred.

Zeniel.

She flipped around, trying to find him, trying to see above the flying debris and smoke. He was nowhere to be seen, but when she turned back around, the
Refluth
was falling backward, its skin being ripped off by the wraiths, and the mist swirling around it like a typhoon.

There was another one right behind it, running straight for her. She raised her sword, pointing at its head. “Die.”

This time, when the mist hit, the wraiths sunk their shadowy claws into the creature’s back, and pulled so hard its legs went up in the air with the momentum. Its entire body was suspended in the air for a brief moment, its gigantic feet pointing toe-up toward the sky, before all eight-hundred pounds of it met the concrete with the kind of bang that shook whole buildings.

Then the wraiths went happily to work, and Eve realized those fuckers were growing on her. Hell, anything that rushed to obey
her
commands happily deserved a pat on the head, at the very least.

She dodged out of the way of a two-foot wide piece of asphalt that came gunning for her head. Looking for her mate in the middle of all that was probably a bad idea, but she couldn’t control it.

One of the wolves landed lightly on its paws behind her. Large golden eyes stared at the
Refluths
being torn apart by the wraiths and—

He popped out of his wolf-form, naked as the day he was fucking born. Evesse’s mouth fell wide open, her eyes getting a good gander at the fact that the male had tattoos in places she
really
didn’t want to know about, and that, obviously, all gods were
way
too well-endowed.

Cy gave a happy
whoop
, fist-pumping the air.

“Ever heard of that little thing called
Ying
and
Yang
?” He yelled at everyone and everything, throwing his head back and giving an almost maniacal laugh. “Yeah, well, it’s about to blow up in your faces, motherfuckers!”

He’d lost his fucking mind. And his dick was flapping around in her face!
 

He
whoop
ed one more time, then took off, morphing back into his wolf-form and going teeth-first for the head of another
Refluth.
The thing tried to grab at him, but Cy ducked, snapping his teeth around its leg. Yet another came at him, but Cy moved faster than they could, ducking, biting, clawing—almost as if he knew what they were going to do before they did it.

Then it hit her. That’s exactly what he was doing. He had the power of Divination. That motherflower didn’t simply predict the future; he could see it as it was going to unfold seconds before it happened. And though his powers had seemed to have taken a leave lately, they were clearly back and working just fine.

Cyake chomped down on the leg of a
ceFtut
, using his big body to build up one hell of a torque, then flung the mutt into the air.

Eve barely flashed out of the way in time.

A blast of dark energy came for her next. Splaying her legs, she slid straight down to the ground, and hey, perfect moment to realize that she could now do the splits.

Another blast almost hit her foot, and she dematerialized two feet to her left, reforming in a crouch. She tilted her head up, locking eyes with an armored human who looked like something out of
Halo
.

His face was masked, hidden by the huge black helmet he wore, but his eyes were visible. She bared her teeth; a warning he didn’t heed. He raised his damn gun again. Fuck that. Eve materialized her new-and-improved
teret
, placing her thumb on the censor as she aimed it at his face.

He froze. Smart boy. She was holding a three foot gun that was lighting up with the colors of her aura, and the buttons on the side were as good as a visual display.

“Level eight, motherfucker. Now, you were saying?” she asked, tilting her head.

The man took a step back.

Dimithinia appeared behind him, and she had him in a backward choke-hold before he could blink. One of her small hands came around and ripped the armor off his neck. She shoved her hand into the gaping hole, pressing against his carotid sinuses until his eyes rolled back and his body went limp as he passed out.

Dimi dropped him to the ground, her wide eyes jumping from Evesse’s gun to her face. “Have you lost your wits? These humans have been tricked! You were going to disintegrate one?”

“I was just scaring him!”

“Some Goddess of Justice you are.”

“Hey!”

“What if it had gone off? You have gone mad.”

Was she blind? Did she not see the hell unleashed all around them?

“I just saw Cy naked. Don’t blame me,” Eve mumbled.

Dimithinia materialized her own
teret
, brows rising high on her forehead. She was dressed in what looked like leather, and a black metal corset covered her from chest to hips. On top of it all, she wore a long black trench coat.

“Oh, be quiet. That must have been a magnificent sight.”

It was, but Eve would never admit it out loud. Her
R’mann
would destroy Cy.

Dimithinia aimed her weapon at a
ceFtut
, turning it into a big pile of nothing. Eve placed her thumb back on the sensor, willing the gun back to almost full power and took aim at another.

She had just shot her fifth frankenmutt when three portals spiraled open, one to the north, another on the south, and the last one hitting the east.

Worst part? The three rapidly expanding black holes were less than ten feet away from Evesse and Dimithinia, which meant they were now surrounded on three sides by inter-dimensional doorways spewing colossal amounts of shit out of them.

With five
Refluths
running directly toward them on the one side that had been open.

Yip-fucking-ee.

They could dematerialize out of there, but there was no way in any dimension, in any part of the fucking Universe, that Eve was running away.

And Dimithinia clearly felt the same way.

Eve felt Dimi’s back slam against hers, and together, back-to-back, they raised their guns. Eve set hers at the highest level, and all nine of the circles on the sides lit up. The hum of Dimi’s gun doing the same reached her ears. Then they waited until the creatures were a few feet closer.

Their guns went off at the same time, pumping out bolts of energy faster than a machine gun on full-blast. They caught one creature after the other, but the open
Kystms
behind them
apparently had a never-ending supply.

“Die,” Eve commanded several of the creatures while taking out the others.

Nothing. No mist. No wraiths.

Panic shot through her, but she tried to tamp it down. Oh God, where was Zeniel? What was happening? Why wasn’t he reacting to her powers?

She forced herself to stay level, telling herself that she would have felt if anything had happened to her
R’mann.

Another guardian came running toward them. She recognized him by his armor. He dropped down and skid across the street, jumping back up to his feet once he reached them.

“Ladies.” He gave them a nod, pulled out what looked like a mini-grenade launcher, and stood with his back to their sides. “Name’s Tolsar,” he said in an Irish-like accent. “Pleasure.”

Eve returned his nod, but didn’t look away from her target. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the guardian had orange-red hair. His face wasn’t something she was curious enough to see, though. All she cared about was keeping the creatures locked in sight. Her
teret
wasn’t in danger of giving up on her any time soon, and she sure as hell wasn’t even close to being tired.

But, the portals weren’t closing, and as long as they stayed open, shit was going to keep coming through.