Donar collapsed behind the bush and tried to catch his breath. How long did they have to keep running? Any normal human would have given up the chase by now. Then again, they weren’t being chased by normal humans.
Soren, his best friend and twin brother, collapsed beside him and took off his boot.
“Did you see them?” Donar asked.
Sonar shook his boot over the ground until a small rock fell out, then slipped it back on. “They aren’t that far back. I think it’s only a matter of time before they find us.” The moon’s rays shone down through the trees overhead and highlighted the small fleck of a diamond in his right ear. Donar wore a matching earring. They had gotten them as teenagers. It was part of a rite of passage into an elite club of assassins and a bonding experience for both of them.
That life was over, however. Two years ago they had vowed to go legit and had been recruited to be part of a secret FBI unit. Working for the government was supposed to bring some stability to their lives, but instead everything got even more fucked up.
“What do we do now?” Soren asked.
Good question. Donar ran his hand over his face. It felt as if they had been running forever. They needed to get somewhere safe, but where?
“I don’t know. There’s a mole somewhere within the FBI, so we can’t go to them, and goddess only knows where Darien is hiding.”
“Shh…” Soren put his finger to his lips and sat up. “You hear that?”
Donar strained his hearing. “No.” Then it was there, a sound off to his left. He widened his eyes. Footsteps. “Well, fuck me.” How could the deamhans find them so quickly?
“I don’t understand why we have to do this in the middle of the city.” Urian’s voice traveled through the crisp, cool air to where the twins hid. Urian had been their teammate, another agent betrayed by the mole within the FBI ranks. Now he was a monster, a deamhan, and his orders were to find and kill Donar and Soren.
“Ah shit.” Soren winced as he grabbed his stomach and shut his eyes.
Donar clamped his hand over his brother’s mouth. “Shh, they’ll hear you.” Please, not now, brother. You’ll get us both killed…
Soren was having another round of pain. The darkness inside them both was eating them alive. If left unchecked, then the evil would consume everything good about them, leaving only emptiness and hate. Then they’d become the very things they hunted, the very monsters that were chasing them now—deamhans.
Deamhans were the things of nightmares, vile creatures of the underworld who wanted to take over Earth and make it as corrupt as their home. Soren, Donar, Urian and the rest of Darien’s FBI team were the only things that stood in their way. That was, until they were captured, tortured and tainted with an evil so strong that none of them could fight it.
Their entire team had fallen. Urian had succumbed to the evil inside of him, Cai was killed, and Darien had vanished. There was only him and Soren left. While his brother was supportive, he couldn’t make decisions if his life depended on it. He preferred to follow Donar’s lead. It was up to Donar to get them out of this mess and to thwart the deamhan’s plans. That was a hefty responsibility for one man. Never before had he felt so helpless and alone.
“FBI headquarters is right around the corner, for fuck’s sake. It’s suicide,” Urian’s voice trailed back to them as Soren buckled over into the fetal position on the ground. Donar covered his brother’s body with his own. If Soren started thrashing, then the noise would alert the deamhans and they’d be both dead.
Donar kept his hold tight on his brother as he peeked around the bush. Three humans, all larger and paler than any normal human he had ever seen, walked in a straight line toward a large tree just off the path.
“Shut your mouth, slave,” the leader shouted over his shoulder to Urian.
Urian’s glowing red eyes narrowed and fisted his hands. His thick, black hair was tied at the base of his neck with a leather strap, and his once olive skin had paled to the color of moonlight. He looked less human, more monster. There was no doubt in Donar’s mind that if he called out to his friend, Urian would kill him on sight.
Donar glanced up at the night sky. The moon had already begun its dip back to the horizon. They didn’t have too many hours before the sun would be back in the sky. The sun’s rays were like poison for deamhans, frying their skin with third-degree burns. Donar and Soren only had to last a little while longer before the deamhans would be forced back into the Netherworld.
He looked down at Soren, who seemed to be in the throes of his episode. Soren was fighting it, but the evil presence inside of him was winning. Donar knew through experience that it would be several more minutes before his twin would find peace.
Donar felt helpless as he peeked back around the bush at the deamhans. They didn’t look like a search party. Instead they strode with purpose, as if they all knew their destination. What were they doing here?
Donar gritted his teeth as his own inner darkness rose up in response to the nearby deamhans. He had to stay in control. If he became as useless as Soren, then they’d both be dead for sure.
The second deamhan slave slithered up to Urian. They whispered to each other as they followed their leader.
Donar would give his front teeth to know what they were talking about.
“Quiet!” Urian suddenly snapped at his friend. His eyes shone bright crimson and his teeth appeared sharp and foreboding. Donar shrank back at the forceful tone in his former friend’s voice, but it didn’t seem to affect the other deamhan. The leader glanced back at the pair, then dismissed them.
“This is all Darien’s fault.” Urian’s voice was just loud enough to hear, and his hatred struck a chord deep within Donar’s soul.
Darien, their fearless FBI leader. Darien, their betrayer—or so Urian wanted them to think. Donar refused to believe that Darien would be so cruel as to abandon them. There had to be an explanation.
The deamhan leader stopped in front of an old oak tree on the far side of the common. The sun had set long ago and the inky black night settled on the city. No one would stumble out to find them—not tonight.
The leader began to chant. Dark clouds swirled overhead as Donar felt the familiar pull on his psyche. He forced his muscles to relax and his thoughts to scatter. The leader was creating a spell to make sure the humans in the immediate vicinity slept. Odd, that. If the deamhans didn’t want to be seen, then why didn’t they just kill the humans in the area? Then again, if those deamhans were half as tired as Donar was after crossing the portal, then they were much too weak to do something like wipe out a city.
He embraced the darkness inside of him and his inner deamhan helped him to resist the temptation to sleep. Donar felt Soren go limp.
“Don’t fall asleep,” he whispered. “It’s a spell.”
“I know.” Soren’s voice was clear, signaling that his episode had finished. Donar straightened and stared at his brother’s eyes. They were still a pale blue, thank the goddess.
Soren sat up and rubbed his temple. “What happened?”
“Shh.” Donar pointed to where the three deamhans had gathered around the old oak tree.
The leader raised his arms and faced at the tree. “Come forth, Great Spirit, and greet your faithful servants.”
An eerie quiet settled over the park. The leader urged Urian and the other slave to raise their arms and kneel to show respect. Donar felt a strong compulsion to follow the deamhan lord’s lead. He resisted the urge to kneel and instead braced himself against a nearby tree.
Thunder boomed overhead as they all silently waited. The air grew increasingly humid, making it difficult to breathe. After a long moment, a column of smoke sprung forth from the base of the oak and swirled around the three deamhans. The smoke had the same crimson glow that Donar had seen come from the deamhan stone many times before. Urian stood and inched back as it passed by him.
“Kneel, you fool!” the leader roared.
Urian knelt back down as the smoke curled and oozed to the center of the semi-circle. Then it rose up to form a tall column.
The leader put down his arms. Urian and the other slave followed his lead. Donar’s head began to throb with pain.
“What the hell are they doing?” Soren asked.
“I have no idea, but whatever it is, it’s affecting my deamhan,” Donar said.
“Mine too. The bastard is running around like crazy in my head. I think there is a presence here that’s calling to it. I sensed it earlier.”
“You could be right.”
The smoke climbed upward, changing colors as it moved from blood red, to a deep blue, to a royal purple, to smoky gray, to finally a brilliant gold.
When it dispersed, a large man—too large to be human—stood before them.
“Ah, finally,” he said. “It isn’t often that I get to venture beyond the ninth layer.”
“I don’t like this.” Soren scrambled to his feet and started to back away, but Donar put his hand on his arm to stop him.
“Just a few more minutes. This looks like it’s important.”
“Do you want to die?” Soren asked.
“We won’t die.”
“But—”
“Shh.”
“My master.” The deamhan leader placed his forehead on the ground, then straightened and threw his arms in the air. “All hail the great Abbadan!”
Donar felt an enormous imaginary hand push down on his head, so that he had no choice but to bow as well. He saw Soren bow out of the corner of his eye.
“You disappoint me, Bathin,” the figure said.
The deamhan lord kept his head to the ground. “It was that human, Darien Lange. He helped the Iatros destroy the stone. This is all his fault.”
“Silence!” the figure roared. “I am all-powerful and all-knowing. You think you could fool me with your deamhan lies?”
“No, sir. I just thought—”
“Enough! Stand up.”
The deamhan lord stood, but still kept his eyes focused to the ground.
“You have disobeyed me for the last time. I have not poured my life—my blood—into helping you forge the stone only to have my plans destroyed by incompetence.”
“Yes sir.”
“That stone was supposed to free me from my prison. Now the power is scattered and in the hands of our enemy. You have failed me, Bathin. As punishment, you will lead no more.”
“But—”
The figure held up his hand. “I have already chosen a successor—someone who knows how the mind of this Darien Lange operates.”
The deamhan leader gnashed his teeth. “Tell me. Tell me his name.”
The figure shifted his gaze over the first slave, then focused on Urian. “Names are inconsequential to you now. He knows who he is.” He turned back to the leader. “I have already planted the seeds of rebellion in his mind.” The figure frowned. “Look at me.”
The deamhan leader looked up from the ground and faced the large spirit. The figure put his hand on the leader’s shoulder. “You are incompetent, but strong. Your power will go into cloaking the new stone I will forge once all five shards are found.”
Bathin’s pale face fell.
The figure laughed. “Consider it a privilege. Not everyone gets their soul fed to the stone.”
“Shards?” Soren asked.
“Shh,” Donar said.
“You’ve disappointed me for the last time,” the figure continued. “Now feel the power that birthed the stone.” He curled his fingers in a come-to-me type of way. The deamhan lord’s eyes went wide with fear as his body seemed to move of its own accord. He whimpered as he walked up to the tree and wrapped his arms around the large trunk.
As soon as the deamhan leader touched the tree, something in the air changed. A loud inhuman cry escaped his lips as his blood poured out of his ears, eyes and every other opening in his body.
“What the hell is going on?” Soren asked.
“I don’t know.” Donar glanced at his brother. “Your jeans are glowing.”
Soren reached down and pulled a small shard of crystal out of his pocket. “It’s the shard we found back in the Netherworld. Do you think it’s part of the stone?”
“Put it away, you idiot. Do you want them to see us?”
Large flames erupted from the ground and surrounded the deamhan leader’s body. The smell of burning flesh stung Donar’s nose. He made a face and turned away, unwilling to watch the torturous display any further.
“What’s happening to Urian?” Soren asked.
Donar glanced back and saw Urian jerked his head up to the sky. A look of pure ecstasy flooded his features. Then he met the figure’s gaze.
“What the…” Donar couldn’t help but stare at the scene before him. What was going on?
The figure’s face softened, and it seemed as if they were conversing, although no words were being spoken.
After a few moments, Urian nodded to the spirit, then stood.
The spirit hesitated and then nodded as if making a decision. Then his fist sliced through the flames and smashed the deamhan leader’s charred skull. Donar shuddered as pain exploded through is body. Both he and Soren fell to the ground and writhed in agony.
Then the sensation vanished. Donar scrambled to his feet and peeked back toward the large oak. The flames had died away, changing into an inky black fog. The cloud swirled in the air, then dipped and circled the pile of ash on the ground.
The spirit’s cry shattered the night sky. The mist swirled and oozed around both the spirit and the deamhan leader’s remains until it covered both of them completely.
Then the mist continued to swirl and rise, going through the entire rainbow of colors as it reached for the sky. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning came out of nowhere. A thunderous echo reverberated throughout the common as the mist caught fire and spread down the column to the base of the tree. A loud crack fractured one of the roots and the column of mist poured back into the tree.
“Let’s get out of here,” Soren said.
“Just one more minute.”
“Donar, this is crazy. We’ll be caught.”
“One more minute.” Donar shook his head, his gaze fixed on Urian. “Something just happened, something important. I want to know what it is so we can report it to Darien when we find him.”
“Assuming Darien is still alive,” Soren muttered.
Donar ignored his friend and focused on the scene before him. Urian held out his hand. The fire jumped from the tree to his palm and Urian ground his teeth against the pain.
“Fuck,” Soren said. “What’s happening to him?”
“I’m not sure. It looks painful.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
Finally, the smoke and fire disappeared.
The spirit’s loud voice echoed through the common. “You have been branded in my name and will hence forth be known as the keeper of the stone, ruler over all my children. Now, bow down to your new master.”
Urian grunted and fell to his knees.
“What did that thing do to Urian?” Soren asked.
“I don’t know, but I think I’ve seen enough.” Donar nodded to the swirling circle of color half-hidden in an alley not far from where they hid. “There’s the portal.”
“Fuck, that’s a good two miles from where we entered this world. How does it keep moving like that?”
“According to my research, I learned that the portal comes from a tear in the fabric between hell and earth. The fabric is not stationary, and the tear can move within a certain radius from a power source.”
“By why does it move? And what is keeping it open?”
“For the love of the goddess…Soren, I don’t know. Look, we can stand here and discuss the physics of portal movement or we can get the hell out of here. Can you run?”
“If my life depended on it, yeah.”
Donar snorted. “Let’s go.”
Soren scrambled to his feet and they both sprinted across the last portion of the common, across the street and toward the portal.
“Did you hear that?” Urian’s voice echoed from behind.
“Ah hell, we’ve been discovered.” Donar pushed his brother in the center of his back. “Run faster!”
“Did you hear that?” Urian asked.
“Hear what?” Nergal seemed much more relaxed since that spirit went back into its prison within the tree. The deamhan slave seemed almost carefree and optimistic.
“Maybe it was my imagination.” Urian glanced at his hand, examining the tattoo the spirit had placed there. Three sixes intertwined around a stone. It was a sign. He was the deamhan leader now.
There was that sound again, a rustling of leaves. Were they spotted? No, their former leader had placed a spell over the area. Urian closed his eyes and felt the ripple of magic around him. The spell was still there, but there was something else, too. Urian felt two new shifts in the magic around him. Two energies he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Urian opened his eyes and glanced at Nergal. The deamhan nodded and drew his sword. He had heard it too.
Urian pulled out his blade and crept over to the bushes nearby. He came within about twenty paces when two figures burst from behind a bush and took off into the night.
The twins. “Get them!” Urian started to run.
Nergal swore and followed. “We can’t let them get away. They know too much.”
Urian cursed as he weaved around the trees of the common. They had to silence the twins before they located Darien and told him what they had seen. The last thing he needed was his former boss up his ass. He didn’t want to deal with Darien until he was good and ready.
How the hell did the twins get here? No deamhan can pass through the portal without using the power buried in one of the shards from the shattered stone. That meant…
Shit, they had one of the shards.
“Donar! Soren!” Urian roared. “Stop, it’s me.”
They rounded another corner and the portal into hell came into view. If Soren and Donar crossed that portal in the alley, then he was screwed. There were thousands of places they could hide in the Netherworld, thousands of rips in the fabric that they could cross back to Earth. He had to stop them.
Urian’s strength was growing. He could feel the seductive black magic from the spirit running through his veins. Perhaps he could use it to persuade the twins to his way of thinking. Together they could kill their former leader and everyone Darien held dear.
But first, he had to stop them. Glancing down, his gaze fell to the sword at his hip. It glowed with the power of his fallen enemies, causing a burning sensation in his flesh. A memory flashed through his mind and briefly Urian saw himself and the rest of the FBI team, standing in front of a portal with only a handful of women between them and the Netherworld. He had sensed that they were strong women, magical women, but Darien had immobilized all of them with a flick of the wrist and a Gaelic saying.
Do it. The spirit’s voice echoed inside his head. The voice was heady, persuasive. Urian’s own inner darkness purred with erotic pleasure in response. Saying the words wouldn’t immobilize the twins like it did to the women, but it might freeze the portal and prevent them from crossing.
What was the saying again? As the twins approached the portal, he struggled to remember the words. He had to get it just right, or the spell would do nothing.
He ground his teeth as the larger one, Soren, dove for the portal.
“No!” Urian grabbed his sword and pointed it at the backs of the twins in front of him. “Ní mar a shiltear a bhítear!”
The portal shimmered, then the colorful mist within the large oval stopped swirling and turned gray. Soren crashed into the open hole as if he had slammed against the wall. He griped his head in pain as his brother grabbed his elbow and hauled him up onto his feet.
The portal was frozen, but Urian knew it wouldn’t last. Soon the mist would begin to color and swirl, as if it was a drop of oil in water, and passage could be taken once more. He had only precious moments to capture the twins before the portal would reopen and they’d be lost to him.
Soren shook his head as Donar glanced around. Within seconds he spotted a fire escape and dragged his brother toward it.
“No!” Frustration burned through Urian. They were getting away. Without thinking, he pointed the sword at their backs and mumbled in Gaelic. He didn’t understand what he was saying, but the darkness inside him did. It was driving him now, entwining with his flesh and commanding him like a puppet.
Black mist shot out through the tip of the sword and sped through the air.
Urian’s power slammed into their bodies, tossing them up into the air as if they weighed no more than a feather. A loud blast echoed through the air as the brick wall behind the portal exploded and bits of brick, dirt and dust spread out in all directions. Urian and Nergal were forced to cover their mouths and duck. Dust, dirt and smoke filled the air, obscuring their vision.
“Shit.” Urian didn’t want to kill them, not when there was a chance he could turn them against Darien. He and Nergal continued to run as the air started to clear of debris.
From somewhere far off a siren sounded. All of the noise must have alerted the local authorities. They didn’t have much time before the police arrived. Urian had no doubt he could take the entire Boston Police department, but it would take a lot of time and effort, and at the moment there were more important things to do.
Like seeking out his revenge on Darien Lange.
Urian and Nergal finally reached the portal as the dust cleared. The mist was still frozen, and the portal was still closed. Urian looked around on the ground for the twins’ broken bodies.
“Where did they go?” Nergal asked. “No one could walk away from a blast like that.”
Urian retraced his steps, going over and over the small alley where the portal had been erected. What the hell happened to them?
Nergal stopped his searching and swore as he sheathed his sword.
Urian looked up at his friend. “What?”
“It looks like our twins might have had some help.” He pointed at the ground. “You better look at this.”
Urian crossed the alley and stood next to his friend. There were two large disturbances on the ground, presumably from the bodies of the twins. There were also two unique sets of footprints, once small and slender, the other quite large, larger than the twins, larger than Urian himself. They lead to the fire escape, then disappeared.
“Let’s follow them.” Nergal started for the fire escape, but Urian put his hand on his friend’s arm, stopping him.
“What is it?” Nergal asked.
Urian pulled the shard out of his pocket and stared at it, considering. Who would make those footprints? Why would they help the twins? Was it a trap?
There was a creaking noise off to his right. Urian looked up and saw the portal mist begin to swirl once more.
“Leave them be,” Urian said after a moment.
“Are you crazy?”
Urian smiled. “If we follow them now, we’ll most likely be outnumbered.” He glanced at the fire escape. And if my suspicions are correct, then they will contact the FBI, and our mole will give us their exact location.” He turned his attention back to his friend. “In the meantime, we’ll find a stronger deamhan to help us, one who will ensure that the twins will go back where they belong.”
Nergal nodded. “I know just the deamhan you need.”
Urian raised his brows. “You do?”
Nergal smiled. “Of course. Those two will never be able to resist the killing machine I have in mind.” He placed his hand over Urian’s on the shard. “Victory will be ours, brother.”
Urian knew what Nergal was offering. The slave wanted a prominent place in Urian’s new regime. Everyone wanted something from him. Urian had no interest in deamhan politics. If trusting Nergal meant that he could get Darien’s head on a platter sooner, then he’d do it.
“You have a deal, my friend.” Urian squeezed the deamhan slave’s fingers.
“So be it.” Nergal nodded and let go of Urian. “Follow me.”
Together they crossed the portal back into the Netherworld.