Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) (31 page)

"You're welcome to try."

Josiah laughed. "You are a feisty one. And you present a bit of a dilemma. It was obvious from what happened in Hawaii that you’re somehow immune to the Haze, so going for the diplomatic approach won't work."

"Aren't you a Texas cowboy?" I asked. "I thought trying to kill someone was the diplomatic approach for you."

"A regular comedian," said Josiah. "But we'll see who has the last laugh."

"The last laugh, huh?" I said. "And will I 'rue the day', too?"

Josiah flushed with anger. "I don’t want to do this," he said. "This isn't personal. I like you, Madison."

"Sorry, the feeling isn’t mutual. I view you as somewhere between really bad athlete's foot and dried dog vomit. Perhaps a little closer to the vomit side of the relationship."

"If this act of bravado helps you, then by all means keep it up," said Josiah. "But the truth is I am not the bad guy here."

I laughed. "Really? Because in my book, kidnap, murder, and torture are about as 'bad guy' as you can get."

"We are trying to save the world."

"Funny, because that's what
I'm
doing."

"Your way requires the complete destruction of all the Berserkers and Binders except for yourself. Our way just requires one death – yours."

"Then why did you kill Yul, Onaona, Shing, and Julie?"

"I'm sick of listening to her prattle on," said Arthur. "Let's just kill her."

"Yes. Just kill me. That seems to be the go-to solution. Because once I'm dead everything will be back to normal, right? Isn't that what Nakai and Sunee told you? Only it won't work. What you have all failed to grasp is that your way won't work. The powers have already begun consolidating in me. If you kill me, this problem doesn’t go away and, in fact, you will have killed the entire world by taking away the one hope of saving it."

 "Let's end this," said Josiah. He pulled out his varé and flipped it open. Arthur flipped open a shorter and thinner varé than I had seen before. In his other hand he held a small bone dagger with a wide u-shaped hilt.

They split apart and carefully began walking toward me, trying to keep me off balance by presenting two fronts for me to defend against. Rhys and I had studied this tactic extensively in training. Mostly on how we could use it, rather than how to counter it, but I at least felt a measure of comfort that I knew what they were trying to do.

All that was left was to deprive them of what they wanted.

Before they could attack me together, I rushed at Josiah and began swinging my varé in quick, tight arcs, designed to keep him on the defensive.

He parried my strokes, but took several steps backward as he did so. In the meantime, Arthur maneuvered behind me and attempted to run me through with his short varé. It was only by seeing the movement of Josiah's eyes that I realized what was happening.

I would have leaped over the strike, but the ceilings here were too low for that. Instead I spun in place and positioned my varé to counter the blow. Instantly I spun around again to counter Josiah's next strike that was already on its way.

I was in a bad position. At this point all I could do was counter and try to stay alive. And hope they made a mistake.

After several more counter strokes, I got a feel for how their blows were coming. Neither of them were mixing up their strike patterns like Rhys had taught me. That made them somewhat predictable.

That was the mistake I was looking for.

When the time was right, I dropped to one knee, rolled out from between them, and dashed to the far side of the room, out of the range of their weapons.

"Clever," said Arthur.

"You are only delaying the inevitable," said Josiah. "You can't take us both and you know it."

It was time to change up the game here.

Instead of attacking them with my varé, I reached out and shot snares at them. I grinned at the look of confusion on their faces when they were suddenly lifted off the ground and smashed into the ceiling.

They continued to thrash about, and I smashed them into the ceiling and floor several more times. It wouldn't do more than minor damage to them, but it felt really good. I finally stopped and held them both against the ceiling.

"I don’t want to kill you," I said. "I have no plans to hunt you down and take your lives, even though you both deserve to die. I don't fully understand this prophecy, but I am not going to force anyone to die for it."

A sharp pain shot through me – somewhere. I felt the pain, but I couldn’t seem to attach it to a specific body part.

Josiah dropped to the ground, landing lightly on his feet and grinned at me. The tentacle that had been holding him turned to black smoke and dissipated.

He had cut my snare!

Was that even possible? Apparently so.

"Nice little trick with the snare," he said. "I remember it from Puebla."

"Yeah, when I used it to save your life."

"Believe me, I am grateful," said Josiah. He strode over to where my snare held Arthur and began swinging his varé. He couldn't see the cables of my snare, but he knew they were there.

"But not grateful enough to leave me alone."

Josiah was almost to my snare. Instead of feeling the pain of him cutting it, I threw Arthur at him. They crashed together and slid across the floor.

Arthur stood up and looked down at the hole in his thigh. He had landed right on Josiah's varé. It wasn't a fatal wound, but it couldn’t have felt good.

"Oh, that's it," he said. He wiped the blood from his hand on his pants and stared at me. "I was just going to kill you, but now I'm going to make sure it hurts." He bent down and picked up his short varé and dagger. "And then when I'm done, I'm going to make your little friend wish she had never been born." He turned back to look in the direction of Amy's cell.

Amy whimpered and ducked out of sight.

Josiah raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Arthur I never knew you had such a nasty side to you." He shrugged. "Works for me. I'm in too."

Hot fury rose up inside me. It was one thing to try to kill me. I could even somewhat understand using Amy to bring me out of hiding. I didn't like it, but I could at least understand it. But hurting her just for spite was crossing way over the line. And that made me mad.

It’s a bad idea to make me mad.

I shot out multiple snares from my fingertips, but Josiah had figured out their weakness as a weapon. He and Arthur blindly swung their weapons in front of themselves and sliced through the snares before they got close enough to grab them.

Big mistake on my part.

The pain was incredible and it felt as if my limbs were being hacked off as they sliced the snares. The pain made me unable to concentrate, and I slipped to one knee as I tried to recover.

Josiah took advantage of the opening and attempted to drive his varé through my heart. I managed to roll to the side just in time so the varé pierced my side instead.

Pain coursed through me as I felt my lung punctured. Unsurprisingly, breathing became difficult with only one fully-functioning lung. Did I even need to breathe as a Berserker? I wasn't sure if I had to, but I knew I certainly felt better when I could.

I scooted backwards as Josiah and Arthur stalked towards me, ready for the finishing blow. My back hit a wall – I had run out of room.

Arthur grinned and raised his varé and dagger. More than anything I wanted to wipe that smug grin off his face.

"Oh, Amy," Arthur said, raising his voice. "It won't be much longer now, luv. You're next."

Another whimper from Amy.

Arthur looked me in the eyes. "I'm going to enjoy every sweet moment of it."

Revulsion, fear, anger, and desperation all vied for the top spot in my emotions. Anger won.

I raised my arms high in the air and channeled that anger. I had no idea what I was doing, but my powers seemed to instinctively know what my subconscious wanted. Red lines of crackling energy arced between my hands and a small ball of energy formed at the apex. In a flash it grew from the size of a baseball to a circle ten feet across.

A giant shape made of black smoke leaped out of the energy circle. The shape landed on six massive feet and shook itself. The dark smoke surrounding it was flung off like nasty black water, revealing the largest Azark I had ever seen. It stood seven feet high at the shoulder with six legs each as big around as my waist. The skeletal head was full of knife-like teeth more than a foot long each. The only thing normal about this Azark was that its skin was black and smooth, like a shadow come to life.

The Azark charged forward, knocking Arthur over and tackling Josiah to the ground. Josiah screamed and tried to punch the Azark, but only succeeded in getting his arms stuck to the monster.

With a single bite, the Azark tore out Josiah's throat and ripped off his lower jaw.

Josiah's screaming abruptly stopped and changed to a feeble gurgle.

The Azark wasted no time and charged after Arthur. Arthur couldn’t see the Azark, but he saw the results of what the creature had done to Josiah and ran for his life.

What had I done? How had I summoned an Azark? And like all my Binder magic this one also seemed to be super-sized. I looked over at Josiah's corpse and was hit with the memories:

– A young boy riding a horse and herding cattle under the hot Texas sun.

– Josiah and Evette arguing in the secluded Dojo by the Manor House. Evette's eyes were filled with tears as Josiah stomped away.

– Josiah watching me with an adoring expression as I used my snare to reattach his leg.

That last memory was deeply disturbing to me. I had been too focused on saving his life to realize that he had been still conscious and watching me.

I closed my eyes and braced myself for Nakai's memories. It was only a few seconds before they came.

– A small girl eating a bowl of dates and laughing with her mother.

– Nakai as a young woman standing before the binders to give a speech.

– Nakai talking to Sunee about how she learned to use a Haze to control the Berserkers.

When it was over I blinked and breathed deeply. Having Berserkers and Binders die was bad enough, being forced to live through their memories like a voyeur made something awful into something even worse. There were some things I never wanted to know.

By the time I recovered enough to pay attention to my surroundings, the Azark had already disarmed Arthur and pinned him to the ground at the far side of the room. But this time instead of killing him quickly, the Azark seemed to be taking its time. It had already bitten off one foot, and was in the process of gnawing off the second one while Arthur screamed in pain and fought vainly against the Azark.

Why was it doing that? Why didn't it kill Arthur quickly like it had Josiah? The sound of Arthur screaming was unbearable. I wasn't strong enough to even stand, let alone go fight off the Azark. It would be a few minutes before my body would heal enough for that. I covered my ears and tried to shut out the horrible sounds, but my hearing was too good for that.

"Amy," I shouted over Arthur's screams. "Are you ok?"

"Madison? What's going on?" yelled Amy. "Why is everyone glowing? Why is that guy screaming?"

How could I possibly explain any of this? She could see the 'zerking, but she couldn't see what was happening to Arthur. Only Binders could see a live Azark.

"Cover your ears and don’t watch," I yelled back. "You're safe now, but this isn’t going to be pretty."

"What's happening to him?"

"Don't watch, Amy! Trust me!"

"Madison, I'm scared!"

"Duck down in your cell and don't make a sound. I'll get you out as soon as I can."

When Amy didn't respond, I assumed she was following my instructions. I sure hoped she was, for her sake. I didn’t think the Azark would hurt her, but I was afraid that this entire experience would traumatize her for life.

Arthur continued to scream as the Azark slowly tortured him. It had finished with his feet and was working on his hands now.

My strength started to slowly come back as I healed from my stab wound to the chest. It had only been a few minutes since I was stabbed, a remarkably short time, but Arthur’s tortured screaming made it feel like years. I knew he was evil and had planned on doing horrible things to me and Amy, but listening to his screams, I had a hard time hating him. Hate required more energy than I had left in me. I mostly felt numb and just wanted all of this to go away.

I tested my strength and found I was strong enough to 'zerk and stand up. I stumbled over to where the Azark was slowly consuming Arthur.

"Stop!" I shouted.

The Azark turned its head toward me and looked at me with blank dark eye sockets. It held my gaze for a moment, as if daring me to try to stop it, and then began tearing at Arthur's face.

His screams grew even louder.

I had no idea how to control the Azark. It seemed to be operating completely on its own and had its own desires. I realized I was not dealing with a created thing that obeyed my will, like the snare, but a creature that I summoned from some dark place and didn’t understand.

But I did know how to kill it.

I reached out with my hands and shot out tendrils of a snare to encircle the Azark.

The creature howled with pain as the cables wrapped around it. A sizzling smoke burst out of the Azark wherever the snare touched it. The monster leaped off Arthur and thrashed around, vainly attempting to escape from the burning snares that bound it.

I almost felt pity for the Azark as it writhed in the dirt. Almost, but not enough to stop. Instead I squeezed the tendrils of the snare tighter, constricting the Azark more and more, until the snares burst through its skin and sliced it to pieces.

Cut into a dozen parts, the Azark collapsed to the ground. For a moment, each of the chunks continued to twitch, refusing to give into the inevitable. After a few seconds, the chunks finally lost strength and fell still.

The Azark taken care of, I turned my attention to Arthur. I could hardly wrap my mind around what had been done to him. His hands and feet were gone. Ragged stumps were all that remained. His chest had been slashed numerous times and his skin was in tatters. But the hardest to look at was his face. Large chunks of his flesh had been torn out by the Azark and bits of white skull showed through.