God of Destruction (32 page)

“
Ziba. So young. So naïve. I’m so sorry
you had to see that,” she whimpered, hugging her sister to her as
hard as she could.

A sob wracked through Ziba’s body and only a
wail escaped her lips. “He killed him. My love! My Bomani!”

Shireen froze. “Ziba?”

“
He knew I was going to run away with
Bomani and he killed him!”

“
You were not! Ziba! The Gods will damn
you!” Shireen shrieked, holding Ziba at arm’s length.

Ziba shoved Shireen away. “The Gods have
already damned me, Shireen! He killed Bomani!”

“
Who killed Bomani, Ziba?” she demanded,
forcing her sister to look her in the eye.

“
It was Angra Mainyu,” she confessed.
Realizing that there was nothing else to lose, and nothing else to
hide, she told her sister everything.

Shireen’s ire only grew as Ziba told her of
the ongoing affair she had had with Bomani without anyone knowing
and cooled only when Mainyu came into the story. By the time Ziba
had finished her tale, tears were falling swiftly down her face.
She clung to Shireen while the older sister tenderly rubbed her
back, waiting for peace to return to the room. Silently, she
thought over some way to help Ziba’s situation.

When the sound of sobs subsided into
hiccups, Shireen mumbled, “I am so sorry you had to go through all
that you have, little sister.”

Ziba curled up into Shireen’s shoulder,
taking deep breaths.

“
I will not pretend that this is any
better than it is, Ziba. You are in trouble in the mortal realm and
damned in the afterlife. You do not have any options—”

“
I will do anything, Shireen, just save me
from him, please!” Ziba interjected, begging Shireen with her
glassy eyes.

Shireen felt her own sadness coming to a
point as she realized what she would have to do to save Ziba from
eternal fire. “Very well then, sister. I will save you from Angra
Mainyu. Just remember that I am doing what I must because I love
you.”

“
I understand.”

Shireen supported Ziba with her shoulder and
led her to the dungeon below to await her impending sacrifice.

Knowing where Shireen led, Ziba squeezed her
eyes shut, biting her cheek until she tasted blood. “Oh.”

They came to retrieve her when the horizon
turned pink with the morning three days later. Fatigue had washed
all color from Ziba’s alabaster skin and her blue eyes were rimmed
with red but she held her head high as she strode toward the stairs
between two of her sister’s priests. Feeling the burn of the rope
against the delicate flesh of her wrists brought on a new flush of
shame; never in her life had she imagined that she would ever be in
this position.

“
My lady,” a quiet voice murmured beside
her, catching the remnants of her focus. Those words were so
agonizingly familiar that it ached in her heart to realize that it
was not in the context or the deep timber that she so desperately
desired. Her love and lordship had not come to see her. Her love
and lordship would not come to see her. As she came to this
comprehension, again, a hand, much smaller than the one she wanted
to see, reached out to hold a bronze goblet before her face. She
took it obediently, inconspicuously surveying the contents before
putting her lips to the shimmering cup. She drank the water under
the scrutinizing gaze of the priests, but, in truth, her most
recent revelation had taken away the entirety of her
appetite.

“
Thank you, Lord Hosrael,” Ziba replied
graciously, emptying the goblet and returning it to the priest. He
nodded in answer and the group ascended the stairs, each priest
grasping the tops of Ziba’s arms so she couldn’t run. Their display
of blatant distrust in her depressed Ziba, as she had been a
priestess in the temple for eight years now, since her seventh
birthday; everyone trusted her, and with good reason, as she was as
guileless as the innocent child she appeared to be. She couldn’t
exactly say, however, that she was surprised by this show of
loyalty to her older sister. As the high priestess, Shireen was
trusted above anyone else in the temple.

The young priestess abruptly collapsed into
the arms of the priests, as they expected, on the way to the altar.
The sedative they had slipped into her drink on the way to recover
her was tasteless, and the darkness had shrouded the green powder
floating in the water. Nevertheless, as detailed to them by Lady
Shireen, the priests had come to do a job and didn’t alllow Ziba’s
inert body to slow them down. Hosrael lifted the girl easily into
his arms, his companion chasing at his heels, and made his way to
their destination. Ziba, for her part, remained blissfully unaware
of just how close to her impending doom she really was.

Lady Shireen, swept through the marble
temple toward the altar like the wrath of God, her blood red robes
billowing out and around her. The green of her eyes was cold,
staring straight ahead and giving away no emotion, but all could
tell how she felt. Anger radiated off her very skin. She felt no
guilt or regret, only the deepest disgust, and all patrons and
priests within the temple hid from the burning rage that they
didn’t want directed at them.

Inwardly, though, Shireen’s mind was in
turmoil. By Sraosa, the god of the afterlife, she’d taken solace in
the knowledge that her sister would be protected, but, as anyone in
her situation would feel, her faith had been shaken. All those to
be brought back from the dead with the Book of Eternity had failed,
and she feared her powers were too weak to return her sister to the
land of the living. Regardless of her lack of confidence, she
didn’t have a choice. Her dominant hand twitched with
anticipation.

The room was large and completely silent;
the various priests scattered across the marble didn’t dare to
breathe. Each man was bedecked in gold robes to stand behind
Shireen for the ritual, but it was evident that they were
reluctant. Use of the Book of Eternity for this purpose had angered
the Gods before and they knew this sacrifice could, and would,
bring the wrath of the God of Darkness and personification of evil
itself, Angra Mainyu, down upon them. Lady Shireen had warned them
all earlier that this was inevitable. Fortunately, the priests were
devoted enough to her that they had agreed to help despite the
risk.

At the far end of the room, a stone table
was organized in the center of a plethora of offerings to the Gods,
from flowers to the preserved organs of rams. The table was grey,
but stained with the remnants of blood from past offerings, all of
which was unseen beneath the long, white silk of Ziba’s robes.

The priests in gold advanced toward the
altar ahead of the High Priestess, beginning to chant the spell in
Old Persian, “Spenta Mainyu who breathes life into you, now take it
away. May our holy sister, Ziba, be held in the safe, merciful arms
of the Gods, and be returned to the land of the living anew.
Deliver her from the lust of Angra Mainyu. Protect her, your
holiest servant. Spenta Mainyu who breathes life…”

Shireen picked up the chanting as she
approached the altar and lifted the long dagger on the altar into
her hand. She stared down at the petite form with an expression
that could freeze an entire ocean, and brought the dagger up with
one hand into position over her sister’s body. One of the
priestesses held the silver Book of Eternity open in her arms for
Shireen to read. Shireen’s free hand pushed passed page after page
until she found the page to bring a soul back from the dead.

As she flipped through the pages, the body
on the stone began to stir and a light voice murmured,
“Shireen?”

When Ziba opened her eyes, she saw
immediately that tears were falling down Shireen’s face without her
knowledge, and Ziba’s face began to match. She so desperately
wished it could have ended differently. She wanted to tell Shireen
that she loved her. She wanted to apologize for all the trouble she
had caused. She wanted to turn back the hands of time so that
Shireen wouldn’t have been forced to kill her. All she could do was
try to infuse her gaze with as much love and forgiveness and
bravery as she could as the dagger pierced her heart.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Paris, France; June 30
^th
, 2012

Claire woke to the roar of bullets flying
across the room and bodies hitting the floor. While she struggled
to catch her breath, the image of the dagger still burning the
backs of her eyelids, she clawed at her chest. As usual, the pain
from her most recent stab to the heart, or Ziba’s most recent stab
to the heart, lingered, claiming all of her attention. Without her
inhaler, she curled up on her side and breathed rapidly in through
her nose and out through her mouth. Shaking her head rapidly, she
opened her glassy, blue eyes and tried to remember where she was
and what she was supposed to be doing.

When the burn of tears subsided, the sight
before her came into focus, revealing the bare feet of the god of
destruction before her. She tried not to make a sound while her
eyes flickered around the room, finding Alex on the floor first,
not two feet from Mainyu, and staring up into his face with terror
while he approached her. Claire blinked and, instead of the knife
reflecting back at her behind her eyelids, she saw something
infinitely more gruesome. She remembered Bomani lying on the floor,
gone and stained with black death; she could feel exactly how Ziba,
she
, had felt when she found him like that. She didn’t know
how she would suffer through it if he did that to someone else she
loved.

Not Alex, her Shireen.

Claire didn’t know much anymore; between the
warring feelings of Ziba and Claire inside her, she didn’t even
know who she really was at this point. On the one hand, Claire
wanted to run far away from the threat of Mainyu and never return.
She wanted to put her worries in James’s hands and hope that all
went well. After all, there was nothing else she could possibly do
to help them.

On the other hand, Ziba wanted revenge. She
wanted Mainyu sent back where he’d come from like her sister had
done once before. She wanted him to pay for what he’d done to her,
Bomani, and all these other people.

“I knew you’d come back!” a voice both Ziba
and Claire were unfamiliar with yelled from across the room. She
looked for the sound for a split second, but wished she hadn’t when
her eyes finally fell on someone she thought she would never seen
again.

She saw
him
, her love and lordship,
Bomani, standing in the doorway of the room they occupied.
Immediately, she couldn’t help but smile enormously, reaching out
for him as her lungs prepared to scream his name and tell him she
loved him. But, something stopped her.

She let her smile fall when she realized her
love wasn’t returning her smile, or even her gaze, as if he didn’t
realize she was there in the first place. He grinned down at
another girl, an emaciated, average-looking girl. Kneeling to the
floor so he could lift her gingerly into his arms, he cradled her
carefully to his chest, eyes shooting in every direction in case he
walked into the crossfire.

“Bomani?” she whispered, absentmindedly
reaching for him. Of course he couldn’t hear her, and it was a far
cry from the screaming complaint she wanted to attack him with, but
she wanted so badly to say
something
. She wanted him to look
at her and realize that what he was doing was wrong. He shouldn’t
be holding that other girl. He shouldn’t be smiling at that girl.
Ziba had risked everything to love him, and now, he wouldn’t even
look at her.

Claire, somewhere hidden inside the shell
that had once been her body, exclusively, felt nothing as she
watched Taran lift Janie into his arms and escape into the tunnels.
While they looked around the room, she settled their eyes on
Kierlan when he ducked in and out of the room’s entryway, the gun
in his hand blazing. Claire couldn’t help but think that she had
never seen him look as attractive as he did in that moment.

Blue lightning streaked across the room,
dazzling anyone occupied in the gunfight, except for Kierlan, who
managed to shoot the final three mortals on the other side while
they were distracted. The crackling energy crashed into Mainyu’s
back with the zapping sound of electrocution. His body convulsed
until the lightning had run its course, then, practically untouched
by the crippling assault, he turned to face the doorway where James
stood with his arms outstretched. His hands still glowed with blue
energy, waiting for the god to attack first, but his determined
face was marred with concern. Alex lay on the floor, shaking with
the terror of Mainyu’s invisible attack and waiting for someone to
rescue her.

Temporarily forgetting his target on the
floor, Mainyu smiled menacingly at the angel he’d seen only once
before. He opened his arms wide, thrusting his chest out while he
narrowed his eyes, aiming for James. Instead of the blue lightning
he’d been hit with, Mainyu retaliated with a storm of blue wind
that exploded from the center of his chest, blowing swiftly and
loudly toward the doorway. Eyes wide, James whipped his hands in
Mainyu’s direction and winding chains of blue lightning sprung from
his fingertips, hitting his own attack that Mainyu used against
him.

Sparks spit from the white connecting point
of the two energies, fighting back and forth as neither of them
gained the upper hand. Eventually, the blue lightning and the blue
storm cloud dissolved in a shower of flaming embers. James shielded
his face with his arm, backing away from the sudden, extreme heat
in the room. Mainyu did the same, stepping backward and,
accidentally, stepping on Alex’s leg while she cowered on the
floor. Her instinctive cry of protest reminded Mainyu of his first
intentions and, smiling once again, he stared down at her.