The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 2) (33 page)

I looked at my watch, desolate.

"Adriana will be dead by now."

Marion lowered her head, and then stared at the door frame.

"We're locked in, we can't get out," she muttered, very seriously, looking defeated. "She promised to help us, Iago. She told me that she had found her."

"I trusted you," I interrupted. "I knew that I would have to pay a price for following you, but I trusted you."

"Mother is very angry, she's not used to anyone defying her like you have."

"Really!! Well, you can't imagine how angry I am. You can't even begin to imagine," I answered, circling the room like a caged feline.

But Marion was still lost in thought, and I saw terror on her face, a very old terror that, for once, made her vulnerable.

"Who were the white hooded soldiers?"

"They're Guards, her personal bodyguards. They are raised to never leave her side."

"Great," I said to myself. Two against eight.

"Iago, I've been exiled. Mother has exiled me and you have no idea what that means."

"I don't know, and I don't want you to explain it to me right now. She's not going to let me leave, is she?"

"Mother doesn't do things by half and she isn't lenient."

"And how can you be subject to her orders?" I asked, standing in front of her.

"You still don't understand, do you? Mother is a protective umbrella for someone like me, a huge global network of influence, property, money and political, financial and military power. I've always kept to the sidelines as much as I could, paying my obedience taxes when she sent me on some mission. That's why I only go to her if it's strictly necessary, she always ends up demanding favors. How do you think I've survived for six thousand years? Do you really think that I did it all by myself? What I can't understand is your family's situation: barely four or five members, always arguing, splitting up and getting back together like you do, so anarchic. How the hell have you managed to get this far? I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone can do it, however good you may be at survival."

"So I was just a mission," I summed up, sitting in an armchair in front of her and staring into her eyes.             

"That's what it was for Mother. But not for me. Definitely not for me. I came back from Santander with empty hands. I didn't want to spy on you, make notes on what you were doing at night behind my back. I couldn't do it, but I thought that what you allowed me to see would be enough for her. But when I returned to Paris, she made me..."

"She made you?" I interrupted. "I thought that you were Little Miss Independent."

She shut her mouth, tired of giving so many explications and exhausted from the lack of sleep.

You sold me out, Marion, you sold me out. How far does your loyalty to Mother go, how much of this is part of your mission?

I had to get out of there, at least save myself. I'd given Dana and Nagorno up for dead, the best and the worst of the last few millennia.

But I had to find the way to escape, and Marion's cell phone was maybe my only option.

"You're exhausted, Marion. Come on, get some sleep and I'll keep watch."

And I invited her to lie down on the bed. She finally accepted and I sat on the quilt, with my back leaning against the wall and Marion's head on my lap.

She shut her eyes and let me caress her black hair.

"No, Iago, I'm not going to be your consolation prize," she murmured, as she drifted off to sleep.

"Forget about Iago del Castillo for one day. Let me forget about everything, let me go back to being Ely," I said softly.

And there was a moment of real intimacy, of recovered trust, of two bodies who recognized each other and accepted the caresses that they had so longed for.

But reality set in and I continued with my plan.

I patiently waited until she fell asleep, and stretched my hand out to the inside pocket of her white jacket, when I felt a deep sigh on my thighs.

I had to call my father's phone from that position, with my legs trapped underneath Marion. I knew that if I moved, Marion would wake up.

"I'm being held in the mansion on the Belle Island," I whispered when Lür answered. "In a bedroom on the third floor. They confiscated my phone. I've managed to get my hands on this one, but not for long."

"I'm very close," he said. "I'm already in the building. Keep the phone close so as I can locate you."

I glanced at Marion, who shifted slightly, as if she had heard something.

I didn't want my father to find me snuggled up in bed with Marion, but if I turned the volume down he wouldn't find me. Nevertheless, I didn't have time to react, because at that very minute the medieval melody from Marion's phone blasted out and I heard footsteps in the hallway. My father was already on the other side of the door, pushing it and trying to get in. Marion woke up upon hearing the noise and looked at me with a puzzled face.

Someone strong managed to open it, and I will never forget the faces of the unbelievable group that had come to rescue me: my father, my brother Nagorno, my son Gunnarr and my wife, Dana.

Everyone looked uneasily at Marion and I, lying on the bed as we were. Perhaps they picked up on something from that intimacy we shared and that we weren't able to hide. I don't know, I was unable to react.

I ran to Dana, trying to hug her, I was so relieved to find her alive, so relieved to see her again, after thinking that I'd lost her, that I forgot about Marion and the uncomfortable situation in which they had found us.

Dana gave me a look of infinite deception, but we didn't have time to speak.

The eight Guards came into the bedroom and pointed their weapons at us. They made us follow them to the oval library, where Adana was waiting for us. We looked at each other, alert in her presence, but aware of what was in play.

The future of our family was on the verge of being decided.

43

Crossroads

IAGO

The eight white soldiers that Marion had called Guards distributed themselves once more around the library. We were standing in the middle, in front of Mother. To my surprise, Gunnarr stepped forward and began to speak, as if he had no fear.

"You are a woman who scorches everything you touch, but you know that the majority of us here are very difficult to kill."

"I'm listening," Mother replied.

"You want to make someone pay, punish Lür for having created the family you have before you now. But all of us are here with our own ideas of revenge. My Uncle Nagorno has his reasons, and I have mine, no less powerful. Maybe what I'm going to do now will satisfy all of us here who feel that they have been wronged by Lür or by one of his descendants.“

And with that, he put both his hands around Dana's neck, lifted her above his head and strangled her, Sythian style. Then he just dropped her, and her lifeless body fell to the white rug with a dull thud.

Lür covered his face in horror, and a groan of pain escaped from his mouth that pleased Mother.

I rushed towards Dana's body, unable to believe what I was seeing.

Irreversible.

Definitive.

"It can't be, it can't be, it can't be..." I whispered in disbelief, checking her pulse. I couldn't find one. There was no heartbeat.

Dana was dead.

I threw myself at Gunnarr, blind with rage, knocking him to the floor. But Nagorno stepped forward and pulled me off my son with a movement that was faster than mine.

"I'm not going to let you kill Gunnarr," he said, breathing heavily.

He tried to hide it, but I could see the horror in his eyes of having overexerted himself. His heart would soon fail again.

And then... and then I realized that the solution to everything was right there in front of me.

I felt the presence of Mother behind me and turned to look her in the eyes.

"I think that after that," she said, satisfied, "we can now reach an agreement."

She then pushed Dana's body to one side with her foot and came even closer to me.

"I'll offer you a deal," she said, raising her voice. "To all the sons of Lür and their descendants, to the Ancient Family and the generations to come. Your discovery, Urko, in exchange for immunity from the Sons of Adam."

I turned my back on her, looking at my father, at my son, at my brother. Marion was taking it all in, also looking very nervous, waiting to see what would happen next. They had formed a circle around me, ready to fight, each on different sides. I looked at my wife's body going cold at my feet.

Years later they would say that she didn't give in, that she didn't lose her honor, that she fought to the end, when she could have ran away and hidden, stayed to one side, kept away.

I came back to the present. I could see myself from the outside, like an outside observer.

I was at the crossroads, making a decision that would affect so many destinies.

Live under an agreement, yielding to the wills of others.

Die with dignity, like her, an ephemeral, had done.

I chose Death. Lyra, from beyond the grave, helped me.

My right hand began to burn again and the scar began to bleed. We were ready. I could feel a strength in it that I had never had when throwing a spear, a harpoon, a halberd or a pike.

I turned slowly, still distraught about Dana's death.

Mother was tall, her heart was within hand's reach.

I had killed unarmed so many times, I had been a fast animal so many times, just pure instinct.

And that's how I got to her immortal heart, punching through ribs and broken skin. I pulled it out from its nest of veins and arteries. I stared Evil in the eyes, and saw my own Evil staring back at me as Mother's body fell to the floor, like the empty shell of a rotten walnut, on top of Dana's body.

Gunnarr, Nagorno, Lür and Marion reacted before I had even given them an order. Each of them took charge of killing two Guards. When they tried to charge at us, the four longevos' thousands of years of experience at fighting came at them with such force that they didn't stand a chance.

Who could take on a
berserker
, a Sythian, a monarch and the patriarch of Humanity?

They killed them all, we didn't want any witnesses to what had just happened.

When they finished, my family and Marion turned to face me expectantly. Four pairs of eyes looked in horror at Mother's heart in my hand.

"Here's your longevo heart, brother," I said to Nagorno. “There'll be a war, they'll come after us all. I'll put it on ice and you can have it transplanted into your body in the next few hours if you swear that you'll come over to mine and father's side. We're going to need the best strategy on our side. What do you say, Nagorno?"

For the first time I could remember, he was speechless, pensively looking at Mother's heart in my hand.

"What do you say, Nagorno?" I shouted.

I was no longer myself. Iago del Castillo had been left there, disposed of on top of the bodies of the women. Now I was just a savage.

"Ok," he said in the end. "I'm with you in this war.”

I put the heart in the ice bucket.

"Well get in touch with the best team of cardiologists you know, the best. Tell them to send an equipped helicopter right now. I'll supervise the operation. The heart you've got is no good, but be careful, the one you're about to get isn't that good either."

Then I turned back to Gunnarr, who was staring at Mother's body, as if he'd been put under a spell. I rushed at him with my bloody hand, still wanting to kill him, but this time it was my father who stopped me, wrapping his arms around me from behind.

"Remember that Nagorno also stopped Gunnarr four centuries ago so that he didn't kill you that day," he whispered in my ear.

"Give me four hundred and eleven years, Gunnarr!" I screamed at him in desperation. "I'll need each and every one of the next fifteen thousand days to forgive you. Don't let me see you before then!"

"Father, we should talk..." he tried to say.

"Get out!" I howled. "I don't want to see you before then! I won't be as noble as you, I'll kill you before if I see you!"

"I have to tell you something..."

"Get out, or there'll be nothing that can stop me, Gunnarr! Nothing will be able to stop me. You have no idea of what a bad father I can really be."

I picked up my wife's body and carried her out of that evil place.

I knew that Dana couldn't hear me, but I had I lot of sins to confess.

Epilogue

LÜR

Lür walked outside the private clinic at dusk. The sun had gone down and the garden was cool. He found a bench away from any lampposts and finally sat down to rest.