Inferno of Darkness (Order of the Blade #8) (2 page)

A dark, circulating energy surged through him, so intense that he shouted in pain. He dropped to his knees, bracing his hands on the earth, screaming as a thousand shocks knifed through him ruthlessly. With a roar of fury, he summoned all his energy and tried to shield himself from the assault, but he could do nothing to block it. Just an endless circle of pain and hell and—

It stopped.

Gasping for breath, Dante bowed his head, struggling to find strength in his beleaguered body. What the hell had that been?

There was a sudden pulse of energy through him again, only this time, it was warm and powerful. Calling him. Summoning him. His head jerked up, and his gaze went directly to the towering mountain range to the south. Snow caked the summit, and a spiral of black smoke spewed from the highest peak. But his attention was drawn halfway down the northwest side, where the forest was thick and the snow had been replaced by lush vegetation. There.
There.
Something in that spot was summoning him. Something violent. Something powerful. Something...steel. It was a weapon. Not his, not the ones branded onto his forearms that were his to call. A weapon he didn't know, but he could tell it was the same energy that had attacked him moments ago. It had attacked, and then summoned him. Had it been testing him? Deciding whether he was worthy?

Was it the sword that had been haunting his dreams for the last few weeks? Was the image that he'd been imagining actually
real
?

He lurched to his feet, studying the spot he'd targeted. An image flashed in his mind of a sword. Just a faint blurry image that was more of a sense than an actual picture. Calling to him. Demanding he go to it, to that spot, to where it was waiting for him. The urge to respond to the summons was surreal, a command so powerful that he actually took a step. And then another. And then—

He caught the ripple of feminine energy mingled with the sword. A woman.

Dante stopped dead, sifting through the information the wind gave him. She was suffering. In pain. But at the same time, dangerous. Deadly. Sensual. Protecting. The guardian of the sword? Conflicting responses rose fast and hard. The need to find her and protect her. The compulsion to track the sword. The need to—

A loud scream ripped through the night, the piercing scream of death, the sound Dante had heard so many times in his life, the sound that still haunted him every minute of every day, the scream that never ceased in his mind,
ever
.

He knew who caused that kind of suffering. There was only one beast. One creature. One being that did not even deserve to be called a man. A Calydon of the Order of the Blade. The warrior he'd been hunting. The last of his kind.

Dante was too late,
again.

With a roar of fury, Dante whirled around and sprinted toward the sound, the relentless, horrifying wail of suffering and pain beyond what any living creature could endure. It seemed to bounce off the sky and plunge right through his flesh. He ran harder, leaping over fallen logs, stumbling each time his mangled foot hit the ground, but he did not slow. He had to stop him. He had to end this before it was too late.

Tonight, the Order of the Blade would be wiped from this earth, and Dante would be able to die, his job finally finished, his father's legacy finally destroyed, his own destiny wiped out.

Zach burst out of the healer's hut, tearing into the night as the screaming pounded in his ears. Horror congealed in his stomach as he saw his sister sprawled in the dirt in the center of the village, slumped at the feet of a massive warrior covered in blood. "Christina!" Around him were a dozen bloodied bodies, and more people screaming as they tried to run away.

"No!" The anguished roar tore from his throat as the warrior raised his arm to the sky, a bloodied Calydon dagger clenched in his fist. His eyes were red, blood red. He'd gone rogue, and targeted Zach's sister.

Bellowing in rage and terror, Zach sprinted across the square toward the enraged Calydon, trying frantically to draw his attention away from his sister. Unnoticed by the rogue, Zach called out his weapons, tapping into the power of a Calydon to harness the weapons that were branded on his forearms. There was a crack and a flash of black light, and then a sai appeared in each hand. He hurled them instantly as the warrior grabbed his sister by the throat and lifted her up.

"Take me, you bastard!" he screamed as both his sai plunged into the warrior's stomach in a one-two-hit of deadly accuracy.

The warrior didn't even flinch. He just spun around to face Zach, tossing Christina aside like a rag doll. Jesus. For him to shrug off that kind of blow, there was only one explanation. The warrior was an Order member, one that had gone rogue. Jesus. A rogue Order member? How could he possibly stop him?

The rogue hurled his weapons so quickly Zach had no time to react, and they hit him in the throat, in the same one-two strike that he'd done. He gagged and fell to his knees, clutching his neck as the warrior roared his victory and called his weapons back. They tore out of Zach's flesh and hurtled through the air back to his hands.

Zach called his own weapons back, but in an unprecedented move he'd never seen before, the warrior grabbed them as they ripped out of his body, keeping them from returning to Zach, and rendering him defenseless.

His eyes still glowing, he spun around and grabbed Zach's sister again.

Gasping as he croaked his protest, Zach tried to crawl, but it was too little, too late. He would never get there in time. Desperation tore through him as he grimly called upon the one other tool at his disposal, the one he had no control over, the one that he would not try to contain today.

Fire erupted instantly from deep within him, spewing off him in all directions. Zach fell to his side, life draining from him as he held up his arm. Flames streamed toward the sky, a hundred feet into the air, as a fireball formed in his palm, spinning faster and faster, growing bigger and bigger as the bastard aimed his knife toward his sister.
Not my sister.
With a sobbing gasp, Zach hurled the fireball.

It slammed into the warrior's chest, and he dropped Christina again, screaming in agony as the flames ignited his flesh. He spun around, fighting the fire as Zach crawled across the blood-soaked earth, focused only on his sister. Her eyes were glazed with pain, but she saw him coming. She stretched her fingers toward him.

Christina.
He collapsed once, then shoved himself to his elbows, dragging himself over the dirt. He reached for her, his hand outstretched, as if he could drag her away—

A shadow moved above them, and he looked up as the warrior plunged the dagger toward Christina. Zach lunged forward, throwing himself over her, trying desperately to turn his flames away from her, to stop himself from burning her—

The dagger meant for Christina plunged into his back. Beyond the realm of his consciousness, Zach heard new screams, the cries of children, and deeper fear knifed through him. The children. Had they come out of the healer's hut? Had they abandoned the refuge he'd ordered them not to leave? "No!" With a roar of desperate fury, Zach surged to his feet and slammed another fireball at his assailant. And another. And another. Until they were consumed by a blazing inferno, until Zach could see nothing but orange flames and smoke—

There was a sickening, insane cackle of laughter, and then the smoke parted, revealing the face of his assailant. His eyes glowed red with the light of the demon, and Zach went cold with sudden fear. How was the bastard still standing? He grabbed Zach around the throat and hurled him aside. Zach flew through the air and crashed into a boulder, his body shattering from the impact. More screams of innocents being hurt filled the air, wrenching at his insides. Flames poured from his body as he tried to get up, but his body was broken. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't—

"It ends now!" There was a loud cry, and Zach looked up to see a Calydon warrior charging across the square toward the rogue. The warrior was taller than any he'd ever seen, with more muscle. His body was bleeding from a hundred deep gouges. His right foot was blackened and deformed, and yet somehow, he was moving with surreal speed, sprinting through the village. "You die, Louis! You
die
!" With a howl of outrage, the warrior leapt through the air, his body arcing thirty feet above the earth as he hurled his spear.

The rogue spun around to face him, but the spear struck him in the heart before he could throw his dagger. He ripped it out and attacked, and suddenly the earth was shaking from the battle between these two massive warriors. Riveted though he was by the display of strength, Zach tore his gaze off them and searched the square for Christina. He saw her crumpled by the hut of one of the village elders. Anguish tore through him, fueling strength into his devastated body. He lurched to his feet and staggered across the square, collapsing beside her. "Christina," he whispered, his voice torn and raspy from the blow to his throat. There was no response.

No. No.
No!
Zach gathered her in his arms and felt the absence of her spirit instantly. She was dead. "No!" He screamed his grief as he cradled her against his chest, as he felt the weight of her body against him for the last time. Then, he saw two small figures slumped nearby. Two children. White-cold fear knifed through him, horror beyond words. "Liv? Thomas?" he croaked.

No, no, no. It couldn't be.
It couldn't be
. Horror rising to a crescendo, still holding his sister in his arms, he lunged to his feet and ran toward them. He fell to his knees before the tiny bodies lying face down in the dirt. "God, no," he whispered as he gently rolled them over. Staring blankly at him were the faces of his niece and nephew. Dead. His sister. Liv. Thomas. All he had left of his family.
Dead. All dead.

He threw back his head and screamed.

Dante stood, fighting back grief and regret, as he watched Louis stumble and fall, collapsing for the final time. The great warrior, who had terrorized so many, hit the ground with a thundering crash, his massive body thudding to the earth.

For a moment, Dante said nothing. He just stood there, breath heaving in his chest, leaning on his spear as he fought to stay on his feet, barely aware of the screams of the people in the village, of the thick scent of death surrounding him. All he could do was stare into the face of the man who had saved his life so long ago. His leather pants were torn and bloodied, his chest gaping from Dante's blows, his face contorted with pain.

Louis rolled onto his side, his eyes still rogue red, but there was the faintest streak of the brown they'd once been. "You have returned," he said, his voice rough and raw with the contamination of rogue. "You have come back to the Order."

"I have come back to the Order?" Disgust spewed through Dante at the idea, and he walked over to the one Order member he'd thought might have been worth saving. The man who had saved him from his father's lethal attack. The man who had shown mercy to innocents when Dante's father had not been looking. The man he'd waited until last to kill, wanting, wishing, and naively hoping that he might prove himself worthy. Louis had been kidnapped by the Order only three years before Dante, an eight-year-old mentor to the five-year-old Dante, two young boys thrust into merciless training to turn them into the monsters Dante's father coveted.

Louis had once been his friend, and although he had been corrupted by the power of the Order, Dante had never forgotten who he had once been, and he'd hoped that the human being Louis had once been still remained.

But it had been a lie. The blow that had taken Louis down was the seventeenth direct strike to the heart Dante had landed before he'd succumbed. Seventeen times, Louis had survived, granted one more chance to come back to him, to regain control, to be the man Dante had hoped he could be.

Every time, instead of asking forgiveness, Louis had torn the blade out of his chest, and launched another assault, proving what Dante had known all along: that the Order had to be destroyed. Despite the fact he had begun as a good man, Louis had wound up the same as the others, and he had earned the same fate.

"No, Louis. I have not returned to the Order. I have come back to end it." He pressed the tip of his spear to Louis's throat, his hand trembling around the shaft of his weapon. "I've killed everyone else," he said. "You're the only one left."

Louis's eyes widened, and he coughed, splattering blood across the dirt. "Your father?"

"He was the first one I killed." Dante hardened his voice, refusing to replay that moment in his mind. To his surprise, a small smile curved the corner of Louis's mouth, and his body shuddered, almost as if in relief.

"It's over then," he whispered. "Blackthorn's reign of terror is over."

"Yes." Dante pressed the tip more firmly into Louis's neck, knowing the warrior was moments from death. "And now, you die."

"Then it is your turn," Louis said faintly, coughing as blood began to fill his lungs, his injuries too deep for even a Calydon to heal.

"My turn for what? To die?" Dante laughed softly, not even bothering to look down at his decaying foot, at the poison creeping its way up his leg. "I'm dying anyway. Not at your hands—"

"No!" Louis moved suddenly, so quickly that Dante wasn't prepared to react, and Louis got his hand around Dante's arm. "You cannot die," he rasped out. "You must rebuild the Order. You must make it what it was supposed to be."

Dante wrenched his arm free. "The Order is no more! I will never rebuild—"

"You must! Only Order members can save the innocents." Louis coughed again, and what little strength he'd summoned seemed to bleed from his body as he slumped back onto the earth. "Spare us all, Dante," he whispered. "You have the mark. It is your Order now. It is yours. Make it what it should be." And then he was gone, his eyes gazing blankly at Dante's face.