CHAPTER

26

Bree lurked behind the long red curtain, her hands on the hilts of her swords. Fire raged within both blood and breast as her mind worked around the sudden revelation. Her brother crouched next to her, their silver Seraphim wings touching.

I spoke with L’fae, he’d told her. Johan is the shadowborn. He came to her, and she showed me. L’adim. He’s right here.

Every memory of Johan, every word spoken between them flushed her mind. She remembered her unease about him, the fervor in his eyes as he spoke of his hatred for Center. Was she really so blind? Could they all have been so foolish?

He fooled the old world, she told herself in a futile attempt to comfort herself. Don’t be surprised he fooled you.

The doors creaked open. Terror stabbed Bree in the stomach. Was he here? Was this it? She clutched her hilts and closed her eyes, fighting to keep her hands still. She couldn’t make a sound. Couldn’t risk being heard in hiding …

Kael’s hand settled atop hers. His smile eased her calm.

We got this, he mouthed, then gave her a smug grin.

I hope so, she mouthed back.

Johan was a shadow, an unknown demigod from a time long lost to the living. She didn’t know what to expect, only knew that an entire world had collapsed failing to defeat him. Perhaps foolish pride allowed her to think they might defeat him now, but what other choice did they have?

More creaking came from the main entrance. Bree glanced to either side. A dozen Seraphim hid among the curtains or behind doors, all waiting for Avila’s signal. Some looked frightened, others eager, most furious. What little respect Johan had earned for his aid against Center had been washed away by utter betrayal.

“My Archoness,” a voice spoke from the entrance. Bree tightened her muscles, sensing the soldier’s nervousness. “Johan is here.”

Avila sat on her throne, Rebecca Waller at her side. Bree could see a small portion of the raised dais if she peered from around the curtain. Nothing of the Archoness, but Rebecca restlessly shifted her weight from foot to foot.

“Send him in,” Avila said. Bree’s pride in their ruler increased. Avila’s order sounded perfectly normal, if not a bit bored.

“As you wish.”

The door shut. Bree flexed her fingers. They’d been waiting for what felt like an hour, and her muscles had started to tighten. She needed to be ready. Whenever the battle started, it would be sudden.

The door reopened, and it felt like it sucked all the air out of the room. Bree couldn’t see him past the curtain, but she could imagine Johan strolling in through those doors with a little smile on his face. His robes would be immaculate, his hood pulled over his scarred face. Always walking as if he owned the place he inhabited.

“My dear Archoness, I am honored as always,” he said. The proximity nearly made Bree jump. They were positioned near the middle of the room, and what seemed like plenty of distance during setup now seemed a painfully small gap between hunter and prey. “Your messenger spoke of preparing plans for Center’s invasion, and I would gladly offer any assistance you require.”

The doors shut again. Unknown to Johan, they would be locked and barred from the outside. The trap was almost set.

“You have been a valuable asset in our fight for freedom,” Avila said. “Though I would question how much has been to serve your own goals.”

“My goal is a free people,” Johan said, nonplussed by the mild accusation. “Though my anger at Center does contain some measure of personal revenge. I assure you it will not cloud my judgment, nor affect my advice as we prepare for the coming siege.”

Such soothing words. Denying nothing, yet promising any stated fear as unfounded. How many times had he fooled them in such a way? How many of his disciples knew the truth of their prophet? And even if they knew, would they care, or would the desire to punish Center override their disgust?

“And what would you have me accomplish during our invasion?” she asked. “What measures would you suggest I take?”

“You ask how far I think you should go for victory?”

Avila did not answer verbally, but Bree expected she nodded, allowing Johan to continue.

“In this conflict we are the righteous,” he continued. “Which means the unrighteous must be fought to the very bitter end. Accept no surrender until that surrender is complete. No power must remain in the theotechs’ hands. To ensure our freedom we must break the hands of the slave master and cast away his chains so they may never be used again.”

“Even if it sends Center to the Ocean?”

A soft chuckle from Johan.

“A dark thought, Archoness, but there would be a dire irony to the act. They sent Galen crashing beneath the waves. Perhaps letting her people experience the same terror would be poetic justice.”

Bree heard Avila rise from her chair. When she next spoke, her voice was hard, all semblance of politeness vanished in an instant.

“I’m sure you’d like that,” she said. “Wouldn’t you, L’adim?”

That was the signal. Kael and Bree armed their gauntlets, drew their swords, and stepped from behind the curtain.

Johan stood at a respectful distance from Avila, halfway down the hall. His hands rested at his sides, and he showed no care or fear as Seraphim emerged from curtains with their wings shimmering. More entered from doors behind the throne. Four Seraphs rose into the air and positioned themselves in a square above Johan’s head. No one said a word through it all, not even Johan or Avila. Bree thought he’d be angry, dismissive, or even deny the accusation.

Instead, Johan laughed.

“I see one of you was finally smart enough to visit L’fae,” he said. “Truth be told, this ruse went on far longer than I anticipated, and certainly far longer than I needed. I have already achieved victory, Archoness. This cute little ambush changes nothing.”

“Your influence is at an end,” Avila said as Olivia stepped protectively before her. “After centuries of ruin, you will finally pay for your sins.”

That removed the smile from Johan’s face. His head lowered, his eyes narrowed.

“My sins?” he said. “What is sin, but an act against God? I tell you, I have committed no sins, for there is no God to sin against. No, it is you who will pay for the crimes committed, of your ancestors, and your priests, and your gods. All of your race but you wretched few are bones and ash hidden beneath fields and stone. You are the last splinter of a tree I burned down centuries ago, a tiny bit of grit I have not yet swallowed. Stand tall and proud, but you are a lone piece of fruit on a dead tree loudly proclaiming greatness to the ravens.”

“Enough,” Avila said. “Seraphim …”

Bree tensed for the order to attack given, but the Archoness froze as Johan looked up. His robes were gone, folded into his body to become a sharp blue vest. Hair tumbled into existence. He sneered, an ugly look on a handsome face.

“I watched you cry as I died,” this phantom resemblance of Isaac Willer said. “You were right to cry. The meat of my body broke down. My blood spilled out and my breath ended. I’m nowhere now. No heaven. No soul. Empty nothingness. Your memories are all that’s left of me, did you know that, Avila? Your faded, jumbled memories are all I am, and they too will die. Do you know why, my precious wife?”

Tears trickled down Avila’s face. She looked mesmerized by Johan’s words despite recoiling against each one as if it were a lash across her back.

“Why?” she asked softly.

Isaac reshaped back into Johan, who seethed with pleasant rage.

“Because despite your every insistence, from the very first moment you draw in a wailing breath to the very last death rattle, you are not special. You are not elevated above all creation. You are animals among animals, only unlike the snake and the rat and the pig, you have convinced yourself of a far greater purpose.”

He spun, this time addressing the gathered Seraphim under the guise of Argus Summers.

“The prisms that allow you to wield fire, ice, storm, and stone come from the blood of my fellow eternal-born,” he told them. “Daily you chain them to steel tables and bleed them of their power to make yourself weapons and tools and trinkets. Would you submit a human to such a torture? Would you look upon your children bound in chains and bleeding from slit wrists and declare it a mere requirement of civilization? Or would you rage?”

He turned to Bree and Kael, his face shifting again, a liquid shadow reassuming new form. Bree felt her heart ache as her own mother now stood before her.

“I once tried for peace,” the living lie said. “I begged humanity to reconsider. Let us free these creatures and elevate humanity not through their blood, but through their uniqueness and wisdom, through the building of a new society here on this earth between the eternal-born and the mortal. I said this with tears in my eyes. I said this to my fellow lightborn, who claimed to speak the very heart of God. And do you know what they said?”

Now he was Marius Prakt, only his teeth, nails, and eyes were made of gold.

“We are their angels!” he roared, his sudden thunderous voice startling many. “We are their protectors! They compared our own brethren to deer and cattle, and you as their masters. You, you mortal fools stealing from your betters to pretend to be equals. You selfish wretches, who would destroy the world before giving up a feather’s weight of power to your neighbor. Despite all evidence proving you flawed, destructive, hateful beings, we pretended you were something holy.”

Bree felt unease prickling at her spine. Something was wrong. Johan appeared to be almost … glowing. No, not glowing. The rest of the room was darkening. A sensation swept across her akin to being in the presence of the lightborn, only this wasn’t comforting or healing. This was sickness. This was horror. Her stomach recoiled, and she was but one of many who suddenly vomited upon the carpet. Johan returned to his original form and stood with his head high and his hands spread wide, his smile one of purest calm and satisfaction.

“I will slaughter humanity down to the very last child,” he said. “And when that final life dies in my hand, I will know that you were animals. If you were creations of God, he cared not for your existence, nor your survival. You weren’t special. You weren’t blessed. You weren’t beloved. You were meat and blood and bone, and all of it will rot.”

A thin shadow, like a wisp of smoke, floated out from him in all directions. It passed across Bree like an illness, sapping strength from her limbs and flooding her mind with revolting thoughts. Avila staggered away, clutching her chest as if she’d been stabbed.

“Kill him,” she said. It wasn’t the triumphant order she’d no doubt envisioned. It wasn’t even angry or disgusted. The Archoness was terrified.

Johan exploded into action before the first element shot his way. Ice broke against the floor, thick shards chasing a half second behind him as he dashed toward the nearest Seraph. Bree summoned fire across her swords, fearing the damage she might do if she unleashed a spray inside the cramped quarters. The Seraph flung his arm up and flooded the air before him with lightning. It crackled and sparked like a spider’s web, not moving, only waiting to entrap.

But Johan had no desire to reach the terrified Seraph. He stopped just shy of the lightning, spun on his heels, and then lashed his hand in a wave at the four Seraphs flying overhead. Shadow rolled off his fingers, becoming a thin blade of darkness. The Seraphs could only rely on their elements to defend with such little room to maneuver, summoning small walls of flame and ice.

The shadow ripped through them like cloth. Men and women screamed. Bodies fell. The Seraph before Johan abandoned his lightning wall as he pulled back his arm for another blast. It soared just shy of Johan’s dodge and elicited a cry of shock from Bree as the bolt sundered the wall directly above her head.

“We have to get in closer,” Kael said, lifting up his shield. Bree nodding in agreement.

“I’ll lead.”

Johan leapt upon the closest Seraph, tearing into him with hands that now resembled bladed claws. Pale smoke built at his feet, like the first smoldering hints of a wildfire. The other Seraphs blanketed the area with ice, lightning, and flame as the dying man screamed. Johan used the body of his victim to block the initial attacks. The rest he dodged, moving with speed far beyond human capabilities. The carpet ripped and burned, the walls cracking with each errant shot.

“Get the Archoness out of here!” Olivia shouted, putting herself between Avila and the suddenly charging Johan.

Bree crossed the blistering madhouse of chaos that was the holy mansion’s throne room. It seemed no Seraph could draw a bead on Johan, his dodges too erratic, his speed inhuman. Kael used his ice to form a wall separating Johan from Avila, hoping to give her time as a Seraph rushed her to one of the hidden exits. Johan paused before the wall as the Seraphim penned him in.

“Which of you is brave enough to seek the kill?” Johan asked. “Will it be you, Phoenix?”

“It’s over, Johan,” Olivia said, standing atop the ice wall Kael had formed. “At least die with dignity.”

“The only thing over is this game,” Johan said, the cloud of shadow at his feet sucking in momentarily before exploding outward in a wide sphere that swept across the entire room. Bree braced herself at its approach, too surprised and confused to react. Not so her brother. Kael dashed in front of her, his shield raised up and shining bright against the incoming darkness. The haze parted around them, but the others were not so lucky.

Olivia moaned as she collapsed atop the ice wall. Several others stumbled away, their bodies ramming walls as their wings flew them unguided. Others shivered and screamed with unrestrained terror, their eyes glazed over with a white fog. Only Kael and Bree remained standing as the cloud rolled back, dripping into Johan’s feet like a stream flowing into a lake.

“You Skyborn twins are such stubborn survivors,” he said. He walked to the nearest crippled Seraph. Bree’s heart skipped a beat when she realized who it was. Johan seemed unbothered by Kael’s shield or Bree’s fiery swords, his attention focused on poor Amanda. “I know not whether to commend you or mock you for it.”

“I don’t care for either,” Kael said, ice flashing from his palm. Johan dodged the shards of ice, ducking beneath one, sidestepping a second, and rolling his shoulder beneath a third. Each time it seemed the bones of his body moved faster than his skin, the liquid facsimile of flesh and hair and robes flowing after. His smile, however, always remained in place.

“You have no idea the talent I faced when I ripped apart the old world,” he said. A spear grew from his palm. Kael shouted, a larger sphere of ice flying from his palm for Johan’s center mass. Johan batted it aside with one hand. Frost and smoke exploded around him, causing no harm. The other plunged the spear downward, straight into Amanda’s heart.

Bree screamed. She blasted her fire at Johan, setting the wall and ceiling aflame. Johan dropped into a roll, dodging the initial burst and then cutting through the fire to emerge on the other side. Her lungs burned as she gasped for air, her prism temporarily drained. Despite a few black marks upon his skin, marks that quickly healed away, Johan appeared unharmed.

“I fought Seraphim of such skill that your best and brightest are mere children compared to them,” he said. “The world warred without ceasing back then, allowing the gifted in slaughter to rise up and be named heroes. Even those broke before me, as will you.”

He was close now, so close. Bree contemplated releasing a second burst of flame but decided against it. She was already tired. A second release would leave her drained, and she feared how Johan might take advantage of her weakened state. Kael sprayed another wave of ice shards, more to slow Johan than anything, and then lifted his shield. The light shone across Johan’s face, peeled back skin to reveal undulating shadow.

“Do you think you’ve found yourself a weapon?” the monster asked. “Come then. Try to use it.”

Kael’s shield shone its brightest as he charged the shadowborn. Bree followed without hesitation. Her brother would not fight alone, not now, not ever. Johan crossed his arms before his face, his robes fluttering away, the whites of his eyes thickening to bury the irises. It seemed he would meet Kael strength to strength. The shield crackled.

Johan smiled.

Shadow rose up from the floor the moment Kael passed over it, faint, ethereal ghost hands latching on to her brother’s limbs. He halted in place mere inches away. The light seared into Johan, banishing any hint of his disguise. Bree swung at them with her swords in hopes of freeing Kael, but her weapons did nothing to the formless creations performing the shadowborn’s bidding.

“The gift of your blood is incredible,” Johan said. A single finger pressed against the top of the shield, pushing it down. “And wasted.”

His other hand struck Kael square in the chest. He let out a garbled cry as he flew through the air, the light of his shield fading out as it left his grasp. Bree screamed his name, but she could not dare look to see how he fared. Johan was far too close, his smile far too pleased as his flesh and robes returned.

“Little Phoenix, I did not lie when I spoke admirably of all you have done,” he said. His fingers extended from his hands, thinning into bone-white claws when the pale flesh receded. “But the pebbles of the noble few are nothing compared to the mountain of evils that is your race. I will mourn your passing, but I will not spare you.”

He slashed for her face. Bree blocked, her swords nearly wrenching out of her hands at the shocking power of the impact. Despite Johan’s thin frame, he wielded strength more akin to a man like Chernor. Fire licked his boney claws, darkening them. He cut twice more, and this time Bree dared not attempt to block. She parried what she could not dodge and fell back with nearly every step. Each parry felt like she was forcing a falling tree to veer along a different path. Twice she attempted a counter, but his speed dwarfed her own.

“Mighty Phoenix,” Johan said. Wisps of shadow rolled off him, his aura growing stronger. Bree’s mind twisted and fought against the despair seeping into her. “Hope of Weshern. Will you not defend your people?”

He was mocking her. Playing with her. Their entire ambush was nothing more than an amusement to the vile being. His every sentence was punctuated with another slash she would keep away by the slimmest of margins.

“Where is your rage?” he asked, hammering both claws down at her. Bree had no choice but to block. Her knees and elbows shook at the impact.

“Where is your fire?”

Three claws sliced across her arm, easily parting the fabric of her coat to cut the flesh beneath. Blood sprayed across the floor as Bree screamed in pain. Johan immediately followed up with another cut, this one across her chest. The buckle to her harness cut loose, her wings collapsed to one side, her shirt ripped open. Blood flowed from a trio of cuts from her collarbone to her waist. Bree dropped to one knee, gasping in hurried breaths as she fought against the shock. More blood spilled with every heartbeat, staining the carpet crimson.

A sharp edge pressed underneath Bree’s chin, gently guiding her upward. She moved slowly, meeting Johan eye to eye as she rose to her feet. The shadowborn was toying with her. His smile relished her vulnerability. She dropped both of her swords to the floor. A mouse in a cat’s paw. A dangling piece of meat before a hungry lion. Johan soaked in every bit of her fear, feeding on it like the demon of hell he was. The edge cut in deeper, a fresh stream of blood trickling down her neck.

“You want my fire?” Bree asked through the pain and tears. “Then take it.”

He stood in a pool of her own blood. Scarlet drops covered his claws. Little rivulets trickled down his wrists. With but a thought, she set it all aflame.

Johan cried out, whether from surprise or pain, she didn’t know. The great gout of flame billowed up from his feet, setting his entire lower body aflame. Bree swung her right hand forward and spread her fingers wide. All she had within her, she released. Regardless of how much blood she had already lost, she would drain the prism dry. Her fire washed over Johan’s upper body, eliciting a monstrous scream. He turned away from her, clutching at his seared face. His body trembled, and his robes became something not quite solid. Bree grabbed one of her swords off the floor and rushed for the kill.

He spun just before she thrust.

“Please, don’t!”

Kael’s face, tears in his eyes. Bree hesitated, not long, not even for a full heartbeat, but it was enough. He pointed toward her, his eyes vibrant orbs of white. The entire room darkened. Invisible claws pulled at Bree’s arms and legs. Johan’s aura was absolute, a pool of emptiness and abandonment drowning her, suffocating her. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. Johan stepped closer. The skin on his hand peeled back to reveal shadow, which peeled back again to reveal another hand, this one small and frail and paler than marble. Bree tried to move but could not. She tried to scream but could not.

The thin, shriveled fingertip, like a bone covered with thin burlap cloth, brushed her cheek in a loving gesture. Only her paralysis held in her scream. Her skin crackled and blackened, dying at his very touch.

“Again you impress,” he whispered. “Perhaps I will let a few of you live on, nurtured under my care. The blood of the eternal-born might yet elevate your existence. What might you become without your gods and scriptures, and instead my touch to guide you?”

Tears trickled down Bree’s paralyzed face. She sensed the rest of Johan’s image loosening. The shadow was peeling back from his hand, his arm, and his face, the enveloping darkness giving way to the truth that lay beneath. Never before had she so desperately wished to leave her body and fly far, far away. That singular stroke of bone-flesh across her cheek left her blood chilled and her innards twisted into knots.

“Get away from her, you goddamn lunatic!”

Kael barreled in, his shield a shining white missile. Bree felt the light pass across her, banishing the invisible hands that held her. She dropped to her side and rolled, making way for Kael’s charge. Johan cried out, shadow lashing from his hand. The attack crumbled against the brilliance of his shield, flaring away into mist and air. Kael’s shield never connected with Johan’s body, for the shine of its light alone flung him against the wall as his illusion of flesh roiled like a disturbed lake surface. Bree craned her neck to see, praying against all hope that the hit had been lethal.

No. Not lethal. Johan shoved Kael away with strength far beyond human. Her brother slammed to the ground and then rolled onto his shield. The disturbed shadow hardened around Johan’s body, but it didn’t look quite correct. His clothing appeared faded, his skin burned. Many parts were missing entirely, little swirling swaths of shadow where there should be flesh and cloth.

“You think you can hurt me?” he said. His voice rumbled, deep like stone, far deeper than his Johan persona had used before. Darkness pooled at his feet, seemingly made up of his own essence. “You think you can endure what I possess?”

The shadowborn’s entire being exploded outward in a rolling wave of materialized hate and anguish. Bree gasped against it, her eyes slamming shut against their will. Foreign thoughts and desires assailed her. The wrongness of it, the violation, sickened her to her core. She felt hatred toward those she loved most. She saw faces of family, friends, and wished them mutilated and dead. All of it at a distance. All of it falling away from her, leaving her in a solitary pit of abandonment and isolation.

Bree clutched for anything that was separate from the invasive foulness. Something to anchor her to reality. The cold steel of her swords. She could feel it against her fingers. It would have to be enough. She remembered its touch. She envisioned the fire burning, and she let that fire encase her mind. Flames hid the images of death and despair. A roaring inferno drowned out the words of hatred and ugliness. She pushed away the horror. She denied the disease eating at her mind. Warmth flowed across her skin. The image was no longer merely mental. Her sword blazed before her, pulling her back into the throne room, carrying her mind into her body and unifying it under her own control.

Eyes opened, sword aflame, Bree stood alone and faced the shadowborn.

“I’m still standing,” she said with labored breath.

Johan knelt before her, hands holding himself up. The shadow retreated into his body, swirling back into him and forming into pieces of cloth, hair, and flesh. All of it looked hazy, as if he were hidden behind a faint fog. The blue of his eyes had turned black, the whites rippling with a gray liquid like smoke.

“You fight a mere pittance of what I am,” he said, rising to his feet. His upper body sagged. His left arm clutched at his chest where the light of Kael’s shield had seared a permanent black scar across the illusionary form. “I am the shadow that swallowed the world. You fight but an echo. Your frail defenses mean nothing to my combined might.”

Bree refused to break his gaze. No one else had endured the explosion of shadow. The rest of the Seraphim lay upon the floor or against the walls, still writhing, incomprehensible mutters and denials escaping their lips. If she broke now, all of them would die.

“Come prove it, then,” she said, lifting a flaming sword and pointing it toward him. “Break me if our defenses are so frail.”

Bree tried to read the furious expression across Johan’s face. So much of it was rage, but she saw, or at least hoped she saw, an inkling of fear hidden behind it.

Johan let out a guttural scream. Bree braced for battle, but he charged for the door instead, smashing it open with a strike of his hand. Bree watched him go, the fire about her swords rippling in great waves. The moment he was gone she banished the flame, unlocked her joints, and collapsed.

I am the shadow that swallowed the world, his voice taunted inside her exhausted mind as she lay there on the carpet. You fight but an echo.

The rest of the Seraphim and soldiers stirred, distant conversations starting up as Bree’s mind and body finally relented to the damage Johan’s shadow had dealt to her.

Perhaps, Bree thought, and she closed her eyes to the inevitable sleep. But your echo fled, you bastard. You fled, not us. Not us …