Endure (46 page)

I dashed toward him, grabbing both his shoulders to pull him back, but I was devoured by magic. Blinding flashes scalded my eyes, each bringing a new image and memory. Thousands of people over millennia had come to this tree in search of its blessing. Some were heroes, others monsters desperate for a supercharged gift from the gods. This tree had stood for as long as anything in this world, and now it used its final breath to share with us its life, and its pain.

Blades that once carved themselves into the tree’s bark ripped through my body. Over time it healed, but the scars beneath the surface remained. Healers who had torn flowers from its stems felt like machines ripping my limbs out of their sockets. One demon, whose frustration was ripe, tore into the tree with an axe, and my body became severed. Through the blinding pain and sorrow, tears streamed down my face. The ache was intense and I wondered how any creature could survive such devastating scars.

A sudden force hammered into my side and the visions flashed away, the clearing seeping back into my vision. Vincent’s foot kicked me to the ground, his yellow gaze both angry and concerned, and then he repeated the gesture with Tiki.

Tiki hit the dirt floor next to me, his breath as rapid and ragged as mine. I couldn’t move. Pain scorched my insides, flaming memories cut into my body, and I couldn’t muster a scream. The memory seared my mind and carved memories into my ribs, and like the tree, I would never forget. It was a pain unlike any other. One that did not draw blood or a visible scar. It was a life stolen bit by bit, and I felt every piece of it.

Hundreds of faces crowded around us: some angry, some sad, others confused. A few others touched the tree but there was no response, which only drew more confusion. Finally catching my breath, Tiki and I looked at one another. His eyes had changed, not the color or the shape, but the soul that flickered inside them. He and I had experienced the same thing and judging by the tears on his face, it hurt him as much as it had me.

“She gave it to us—her life….and her death,” he said. His eyes looked up at the sky. The clouds had drifted away, leaving black velvet to hang above us, pinholes of light shining in from the other side of the night’s curtain.

“What?” I sat up. The pain I’d anticipated wasn’t there. Everything I’d felt was instant. A wound torn open and then closed, leaving the scar inside me.

“This tree was not a tree, it was a creature like you and I. She was a life form, she was magic, she was a soul. That soul is gone now, torn apart by dark magic planted inside her. What’s left of it resides in us now. That life, that memory, it must go on, and she chose us to carry it.”

I felt it inside like the other souls, although it did not offer power or magic, it offered memories—a life to never be forgotten. It was a reminder of what a single soul could endure: physical wounds, mental damage, and emotional scars. These were things that could not be forgotten, but they could be overcome with the strength of our will.

Souls gave us life in so many ways: they held our magic, our desire, and our will. As long as people stayed true to their souls, their lives would forever be in bloom, even in times of darkness. In a single moment, the tree passed that wisdom on and as much as it hurt, it enlightened me.

Riley’s soul had been cracked by greed, power, and a lust for something more than what he had. It was that power that allowed the Brothers to corrupt him. His desire to become legendary had left him open to the darkness, and it weaved itself through the crack, spreading like a cobweb across his soul, and now it consumed him.

I had been there once too. My soul had been broken, flaring and expanding with dark emotions, but I had been given a second chance. When Rayna and Marcus found me, I lived and breathed hate and anger. I wanted to destroy everything, but in reality I was destroying myself.

My whole life had been stripped away when Riley exiled me. I loved my mother and she kept me strong. Her love held the darkness at bay, and she fought to keep me in the light, but at times it wasn’t enough. At first I was hurt and confused. I didn’t hate my father, I wasn’t angry with him, I was angry at the world. It made my hatred for demons thrive and when they weren’t hunting me, I hunted them. Later, as Marcus and Rayna showed me what the real world was like, that hatred turned to the Circle and my father. It wasn’t until Willy’s death that I finally understood it. I had to endure that pain and overcome it. It wasn’t a matter of directing my anger at the
right
person; it was a matter of not letting it consume me in the first place.

I didn’t hate my father anymore. I pitied him. He had tried to steal greatness and instead, it devoured his will. Now he was a corpse, filled with the demonic souls of a god, corrupted to believe his dreams were still in reach. A part of me thought I should hate the Dark Brothers too, but I knew better. They loved their father and so they would do anything to have him back. Well, Drake would, I didn’t believe Darius cared for anything more than what he felt he deserved.
 
And Ithreal…he was the demon god responsible for so much of this. There was no reason to hate him. He was the darkness I had to overcome both for me and the world.

For a moment that thought made me sad. The tree had given me her life and it showed me both amazing and horrible things. It helped organize the foreign memories inside me into a timeline. It revealed the Great War and Ithreal’s defeat. I saw the birth of the half-demons, the Underworlders of Earth, and the rising hatred between them and the hunters. And that wasn’t the worst of it. I saw mankind rise and evolve, the world change, and all the evils grow within a person’s soul. Like a movie that flashed through my mind, I felt the pain of thousands of generations, and it was enough to break a man. But I was no longer a man. I was a child of the gods. The thought of hating anything now seemed wrong. I hated everything once, and lying against the ground, staring up at the stars, it felt like a lifetime ago. How could anyone live with an emotion so powerful and soul wrenching? Hate had consumed lives for thousands of years. It had done unspeakable things, and knowing that had almost been my fate gave me the courage to sit up.

Everyone backed away and I pulled Tiki to his feet. An understanding blended inside each of us that couldn’t be spoken or relayed. It simply was, and we both respected that.

Vincent and Marcus stood on either side of us and the crowd had grown restless. There were shouts about where the fight was and what was happening. I felt disoriented at first, and I touched the daggers strapped to my back. They reminded me of my mother and that grounded me.

“Chase,” Marcus touched my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

I studied him and saw just how much he’d aged in the last few months. Creases around his eyes and folds in his dark skin pressed into his face. His eyes looked distant and the neutral expression I’d grown accustomed to was gone. He looked worried.

“Yeah, I’m good.”

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I have,” I whispered. “Thousands of them.”

“
Wha
—”

“Can someone tell me what the bloody hell is going on? We’ve got an army here ready to fight, and nobody here to kill.” Vincent sounded annoyed.

All the demons and hunters who had come to join our fight stared back at me, waiting for answers. “They’re down there.” I pointed at the tree, broken and tattered. It looked as though it’d been that way for centuries, and the mere touch of a man could cause it to crumble.

“Demons can’t go down there, remember?” Vincent scowled. “That’s why I sent you there in the first place.

“No, that magic barrier is gone. The Dark Brothers, Riley, Rayna…they’re all down there.”

I pushed my way through the crowd. They stepped back, eyeing me like I was some kind of monster they’d never seen. The red hue that filled my eyes had been lost, but the power inside me was ripe.

I felt a strange vibration of power beneath my feet—dark magic moving up through the earth. With both hands I pressed against the broken wood of the tree. I leaned into it and unleashed a torrent of earth magic. The forest came to life in a way that had once been foreign, but now felt as common as any other sense. I expected the padding of wildlife in the distance, but the forest was vacant. The only living creatures here were us.

The trees creaked throughout the woods and the wind moved in harsh gusts, scraping along their wooden stems. Magic pulsed in waves from my soul. It coursed through the tree’s roots like liquid through a straw, and when it reached the tips, it spread deep into the soil.

The ground shook and the sanctuary below roared in response, but it was a dark magic that pressed against mine. The shaking became violent, and everyone moved to the edge of the clearing, leaving me alone in the center.

“It’s starting,” I said through gritted teeth, fighting the black magic.

“Then get us down there, now!” Jax shouted.

An invisible force burst between the tree and me. I hit the ground and rolled to my feet, tearing both daggers from their sheath. I didn’t have to respond to Jax. His answer was coming. We weren’t late; we’d arrived early. Whatever they had been doing down there was done. The sanctuary was about to open. They were coming to us.

Chapter 36

The dry earth broke with a rock-lined assault into the air. The crack in the tree split a little more with each passing second, breaking the tips of branches against the ground. Trees deep in the woods could be heard cracking and falling, destroying everything in their path on the way down. Some didn’t fall at all, they vanished, sucked into the earth like a giant beast grabbed their roots and tore them through the other side, leaving nothing but a gaping hole in their wake. In minutes, almost the entire southern forest was gone.

Everyone had backed away, carefully avoiding the deep pits that once held trees. Weapons were drawn, breathing had slowed, and knees were bent. Most of them had no idea what would come out of the ground, and the fear in their eyes looked as plain as the moon in the sky.

Just as I thought the tree in the center had taken all the abuse it could, it burst into the flames. Fire reached high into the air and what should’ve taken hours, took seconds. The limbs went first, black ash falling to the ground and smoke billowing upward. Flames crawled along the branches until there was nothing left but the stump. The fire swallowed the ash like a beast consumed its prey, and then there was nothing.

The shaking stopped, the forest grew quiet, and thick smoke curled in the sky. The silence became ghostly and nobody moved. We stared at the center where the tree had been, watching…waiting.

Chunks of dirt rose into the air in a massive explosion of earth and fire, taking with it the ashes from the tree. The ground collapsed, starting in the center and working its way out in a spiral. All our warriors ran back, trying to avoid falling into the pit. The earth slipped beneath my feet as it broke away and I stumbled back to avoid falling. Screams were lost in the rumbling earth as bodies fell into a pit of darkness. When the ground stopped falling into the earth, the temperature dropped. Thick white mist huffed from my breath, and the quiet returned with vengeance.

The sanctuary below looked as destroyed as the forest above. All the trees were dead and broken, the grass burned down to its patchy roots, and below where the statue of the god once stood—where the demons had dug their hole—stood a black stone platform with Riley in the center.

Rayna was in the back corner, guarded by a half-dozen Visceratti. In front of them were a trio of Cyclops and a handful of pure blood vampires. The Dark Brothers stood to either side of my father, chanting words in a foreign tongue. Black, gold, and purple magic moved like liquid smoke around their arms, swirling toward Riley. The magic churned around him like a funnel and as the chanting stopped, the magic vanished in the air.

The ground rumbled and the sanctuary below began to rise. It lifted itself up through the opening with Riley in the center. Brown walls grew taller as the island of land broke through the massive hole of collapsed earth and continued up into the sky. A mountain of earth had grown out of the ground. The sanctuary had been lifted into the sky, its magic destroyed, and my father at the top, awaiting the demon god Ithreal.

A swirl of black and gold magic fluttered off the edge of the mountain. Tendrils of power split off in opposite directions, coiling down like the arm of an octopus, and coming back together in front of me. The mist of power swirled in the air, and its host manifested in front of me, leaving the eyes of Drake Sellowind to stare back at me. His youthful face and square jaw were tilted upward, the moonlight showering him in a luminescent haze. He was a dark angel fallen from the heavens.

“Brother,” he said, gazing at all the creatures around me. “I see you’ve come with somewhat of an entourage.”

“This is only the beginning.”

“On that we can agree,” Drake smiled.

I walked out to meet him, ready to strike at a moment’s notice. The glass sword was strapped to my back, and although it should’ve felt out of place and uncomfortable, it felt warm and inviting.
 

Drake shook his head, lowering his voice to just above a whisper. “There are so many lives here that will be lost if you continue, brother. Do you really wish to be the hand that feeds them to the beasts?”

“They know why they’re here, and they know what’s at stake.”