Текст книги "Burning Blood"

Автор книги: Pepper winters

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Her shriek tore her words apart and something snapped inside me.

The walls flexed as my heart staggered. The fire stopped burning me and fed off me instead. It woke. Stretched. Stone rumbled as if the mountain couldn’t contain me.

Rook.

Help.

Untangling my hand from the little girl’s, I clawed at my throat.

Without Rook’s ice, the fire kept rising. Gathering. Impatient and wild and angry.

A red film coated my vision as I drank in the horror around me.

This wasn’t just imprisonment or torture...they were breeding people. The scars on their arms hinted they were harvesting their blood—just like they’d done to me.

Another like my son.

The line from my father’s note almost dropped me to my knees.

They were making more.

Creating another...like me.

That was why Marcus wanted my blood. Why he took so much—

My stomach turned. Bile scalded my throat. The cavern lights flickered as the fire stole my control. The prisoners’ chains began to glow.

I tripped backward, my heart pounding, pounding.

Stop.

Don’t hurt them.

Too late.

Fire detonated. The little girl scuttled behind a rock as my skin erupted with flames, lighting up the entire cave. I was no longer the host but the fuel—burning at the stake of my own bones.

Stop!

It spat and sizzled, reaching for the prisoners as if it would be a mercy to turn them into ash.

I choked and closed my eyes.

I couldn’t watch.

Couldn’t stop—

Don’t.

Don’t hurt them.

Free them.

Save them—

My heart tore.

I coughed up blood, clutching the broken vitalsync core that always knocked me out.

For a second, I was grateful. Thankful that I’d never had to fight this level of power. Never had to be at the mercy of such catastrophic annihilation.

The fire enveloped the prisoners. They screamed—

“Don’t hurt them!” Another pulse detonated through my ribs. “Please!”

The fire paused.

It listened...

...another wave blasted out of me like a volcano, tearing through my skin that was never meant to contain such power. Cave walls blackened as incandescent power consumed everything.

“NO!”

Flames swallowed the prisoners.

“Stop!” I dropped to my knees. “STOP!”

The scent of scorched flesh hit my nose just before the acrid stench of melting slag. The fire didn’t slaughter them—it aimed its fury into their chains.

Every link ignited white-hot. The animal enclosures burst open as iron bars dissolved in a shower of metal shards. The cavern filled with burning rust as every shackle melted—plopping off wrists and ankles like mercury.

The fire cracked back into me with a soul-rending punch.

Heat crucified me—purring and murmuring, whispering its secrets that all I had to do was become one. Stop fighting. Sacrifice my life in return for its power.

It showed me what I could become.

Cities reduced to cinders. Mountains turned to ash.

No more cages. No more chains. No more helpless children—

Enough!

Sagging forward, I trembled violently as the fire listened and calmed, giving me time to think about its bargain. I choked on a mouthful of blood and smoke, wincing against the overwhelming wrongness of being trapped. The flames didn’t fit inside me anymore. They were too much. Too strong.

I should never have come here without Rook, but...how the fuck could I let her see this? See this horror and filth and learn that these people suffered because of me?

I almost retched—

“You okay, mister?”

I grunted as the little girl placed her tiny hand on my shoulder. “You can vomit if you want. I can clean it up. I know how.”

The fact that she asked if I was okay.

That her eyes swam with worry even as her belly growled for food.

I couldn’t fucking do it.

Scooping her up in my arms, I shot to my feet.

I needed to get back to Rook. Now.

But...I couldn’t leave without these people.

Clutching the girl close, I ordered, “Get up. All of you. Move.”

The woman giving birth screeched as she delivered in a gush of blood.

Her baby joined her, its tiny lungs the loudest things in the cave.

And slowly, as if waking from a nightmare, the men and women blinked and looked down. Tears glossed their eyes as they noticed they were no longer chained. Nothing else mattered. Not the how or why...just that they were finally free.

Raw, animalistic hope made them stagger upright. The cave filled with the noise of limping, racing feet.

Slinging the girl onto my hip, I followed them.

She broke my motherfucking heart as she linked her skeletal arms around my neck and pressed a kiss to my cheek. “You finally came.” She beamed the most breathtaking smile, complete with blackened teeth. “I knew someone would come one day.”

My throat closed up.

The fire devoured yet more of my insides as she thanked the very man who was the reason for her nightmare.

Had she been born here? Did she carry the R gene like me and Rook? What did all of this mean—?

A scream echoed down the tunnel where people had fled. Hurrying forward, I chased after them. “Wait! I’ll come with you. Don’t—”

The crack of gunfire cut me off.

Hot, lancing pain punched into my shoulder like a giant wasp.

The vaguest acknowledgement that I’d been shot came and went as I spun to my left. A swarm of guards poured into the cave. Two, six, ten, twenty—

They kept coming, appearing from a different pathway, hopefully giving the prisoners time to escape.

Spreading out, they trained their guns on me.

The woman who’d just given birth clutched her newborn baby, while the man clutched her. They were the only two left, including the animals too sick to move. The panther that reminded me so much of Whisper wobbled out of its cage, its shoulder blades almost cutting through its skin as it fought to stay breathing.

“We were told you might stop by.” The guard who’d fired glowered at me. “What a fucking mess you’ve made, but...your timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Mr. Ward is on his way. He’ll be so happy to see you.”

I bared my teeth. The fire grew fangs and the little girl made a sound that wrenched my soul right out of my chest. My gaze snapped to hers. To the hole where her heart used to be.

The bullet that’d lodged into my shoulder had torn straight through her, blending my golden-tinted blood with her muddy-amber life-force.

No...

Her tiny body jerked as confusion arched her eyebrows. Her thick, filthy lashes fluttered. “I’m...” Blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth as her arms loosened around my neck. “...hungry.” Her final word branded my neck with the last puff of air she would ever breathe and...that was it.

Flames no longer waited for me to give them an answer—they claimed me.

A bargain struck.

A life stolen.

Just like all the lives they’d stolen down here.

I sank into the fire and...

broke.

Chapter Sixty-Four

I WOKE SCREAMING.

My body exploded in agony, my heart threatening to burst.

Bolting upright in bed, I clutched my shoulder where I swore a phantom dagger drove right into me.

Whisper leapt to his feet, snarling at shadows as I gasped and hugged my stomach.

More pain crippled me.

God, the agony in my shoulder was nothing.

Nothing.

I’d never felt such pain. Such raging, roaring fury.

It threatened to shatter my bones.

It felt as if lightning gathered inside me.

The bond swelled, scorched, then tore at the seams.

The tether binding me to Lucien became murderous. I felt him pulling. Summoning me, siphoning the cold right out of me, falling into a cyclone of power.

The room warped as frost burst free with jagged faultlines, making Whisper leap off the bed.

“Lucien?” I looked wildly for him, gasping and quaking as excruciating agony kept building, building.

Ice crackled over my ribs, sinking its silver tendrils directly into my heart.

Flickers of despair fed down the bond, clashing with snowy suffocation.

I slipped into his mind.

I saw from behind his eyes—

Surrounded by men. Guns all trained on him. A cave system that reeked of death. His heart incinerated. His humanity disintegrated. He surrendered to the fire and—

“No!”

Whisper let loose a thunderous snarl as if he felt what I did. Felt that Lucien was only moments away from total annihilation.

Why wasn’t he here?

Where did he go?!

The tether in my heart yanked violently. The connection between us went blinding. Fire so hot it burned my blood. Frost so thick it turned the room white.

Prehistoric cold threatened to shatter my spine, answering the breaking in Lucien.

It wanted me to break with him.

It wanted...me.

Throwing the blankets off, I flung myself out of bed. A giant snowflake appeared beneath my feet as the temperature plummeted. The air glittered with extinction—

A great cloud of roaring fire. No longer human. Just power. The mountain trembled and sky split.

“LUCIEN!”

The bond jerked—

then detonated.

Winter swarmed me. The rafters groaned as lightning forked inside.

He tipped his head to the sky. The fire didn’t consume him...it crowned him. His wrath turned tectonic—

A shockwave of his hate punched through me, shattering the ice’s hold. Gasping, I flung myself toward the wardrobe, hauled on the closest clothes, and fled.

Chapter Sixty-Five

SUMMONING HELL WAS AS EASY AS breathing.

The fire stole everything, delivering catastrophic power in return. I choked on blood as my organs turned to ash. I suffocated on air as my body broke beneath the weight of pure anarchy.

All the rage I’d nursed since I was nine years old. Every wish for vengeance. Every promise of revenge. It fed the fire until there was nothing left.

I would never be able to undo this.

Never be able to stop the flames feeding off my feelings—growing stronger with every surge of horror and terror and hate.

I screamed as a concussive blast shot out of me in a perfect sphere of incandescent force. Air ignited. Stone exploded. The cavern’s ceiling blew apart with a shower of molten debris. Flames punched through solid rock, carving a chimney straight to the surface.

My heart caved in with guilt.

Rook.

I didn’t know if leaving her had triggered this breaking or if this was always my fate.

Was she okay?

I’d thought—when she said we might be the key to our survival—that we’d be fine as long as we both existed...but what if it was a proximity thing?

What if I’d just condemned her to—

The guards opened fire.

Turning my back on them, I cradled the little girl in my arms, protecting her from the bullets. Sharp pain tore through my back but...my flesh switched to smoke, allowing pure metal to soar through.

Bullets thudded into the little girl instead.

The girl I was trying to protect.

The girl they’d tortured and killed.

Fire twisted into a vortex, drawing deep into my heart like a planet about to become a blackhole. Every molecule of heat, every thread of anger, every splinter of grief and helplessness and rage, rage, rage gathered into a crushing supernova.

Oxygen bent toward me.

Pebbles danced by my boots.

I coughed up another mouthful of blood as my marrow charred. The power took everything, killing me to keep a promise. A promise to make everyone pay.

The guards kept firing—muzzles flashing, sulphur rising—but the sound warped and slowed as if I controlled time itself. My vision fractured with every bullet. Stalactites dripped like candle wax.

And only once they’d run out of ammunition did I turn to face them.

My arms tightened around the dead girl as I glowered at the men who’d done this.

She was hungry?

Well, so the fuck was I.

Absolutely starving for retribution.

All it took was a thought.

The supernova inside my chest collapsed. Reversed. Boomed.

They didn’t just burn—they vanished. Reduced to carbon shadows and gone.

I summoned hell and hell answered and the fire targeted my mind in payment.

Every heartbeat cost me something.

A name.

A memory.

The pieces that kept me human. The memories I treasured and the moments with Rook all blurred. My childhood shrivelled like burning photographs, erasing my past, deleting the man I’d been.

Staggering backward, I almost dropped the girl as my tendons broke, one by one. My pulse thudded all wrong. My heart fought to keep beating.

The fire was no longer my enemy but my weapon. And mere mortal flesh didn’t stand a chance of containing its wrath.

This was the price.

If I kept going—

There would be nothing left of me.

But if I stopped—

There would be nothing left of them.

Screams hit my ears.

I ran.

The ground ruptured beneath my boots. The earth rumbled, lending me its unimaginable fury as my gaze landed on the woman, man, and newborn. The emaciated panther had collapsed close by, its eyes closed.

All around them fire licked at rancid hay, and stagnant water boiled in the troughs, yet they remained unharmed. She struggled to sit upright, cradling her baby close, yet she didn’t seem afraid of me, didn’t seem shocked by what I’d done.

And why would she.

She was like me.

Bred and harvested, created and farmed.

Holding the little girl tight, I bolted up the pathway—leaping over roughly-hewn stairs and careening around corners as fire feasted on me.

It found my bloodlust. It liked it. It accepted yet another piece of my soul in return for power great enough to unmake the world.

Smoky ember wings erupted from my back, granting inhuman speed as I tore through the mountain.

Chapter Sixty-Six

BRANCHES TORE AT MY ARMS. ROOTS lunged for my ankles.

I didn’t notice or care.

The cold turned into my enemy as I bolted.

All I could think about, all I could focus on, was finding Lucien before it was too late.

Why had he left?

How long did we have?

Didn’t he understand we had to stay close? That distance was killing us? That the longer we spent apart, the worse we would become until our bodies broke?

Run!

I didn’t have much time.

He didn’t have much time—

I clawed at my chest as another icicle stabbed my heart with its icy, awful dagger.

Running hurt. Breathing hurt. I left a trail of frost with every footfall.

I left via the back gate in the Whispering Dragon wall. I didn’t tell Dillon. I didn’t have time. But I left a trail for him to find us, coating the world in white as I ran and ran and ran.

The bond inside me was pulling, tugging, jerking.

Snippets of Lucien kept spilling into my head.

A dead child. A newborn baby. A slaughter.

I had to go to him. Help him.

Run, run, run!

The ice inside me snarled to go faster, faster, faster—pushing me to find Lucien so he could stop my creeping, freezing takeover.

I ran as hard as I could, my bare feet bleeding.

Why hadn’t I put on shoes?

How could I be so stupid?

Whisper raced next to me, keeping me safe as the forest swallowed us. I could barely see, but I didn’t need to. I followed the compass in my soul, urging me to go east, don’t stop, keep going.

I stumbled over a rock—

The panther pressed his massive shoulder against my hip, bouncing me upright before I could fall. My hand landed on his muscular back, finding my balance before streaking ahead again.

An agonising wrenching in my heart as Lucien howled inside my mind.

Losing himself, killing with a simple thought, burning, burning, burning.

The coldness inside me answered—coating tree trunks in hoarfrost. Ice burst from my sliced feet, freezing everything. The world became an ice rink, glittering with icy diamonds. Instead of tripping over branches and fighting trees as they clawed at my hair, my feet skated—skimming over frozen earth, weaving me around obstacles and propelling me forward in a blur of panic.

The bond convulsed.

He was too hot. His heart on the verge of collapse. He harnessed catastrophe only for it to break him—

I cried out as wintery power raged.

He turned his back on me—willingly sacrificing himself to hate.

“Wait!” I screamed. “Fight! Don’t give in!”

The overwhelming horror that I might never see him again sent another blast of ice erupting out of me.

The forest froze.

Leaves halted mid-fall.

Insects paused mid-flight.

Silence crushed me.

I kept sliding with no control—

The world wobbled like glass about to shatter.

I could feel it.

Feel the invisibility of time holding every moment together.

A scream tore from my throat as the frost consumed me—crackling over my throat, my jaw, my head—crowning me in antlers of glacial light.

A blizzard formed, coalescing into a vertical sheet of ice. The huge slab of winter hung suspended right in front of me. The trees behind it warped as if I looked through a deep lake, their silhouettes dancing.

I couldn’t stop.

Couldn’t prevent myself from sliding right into it—

The world splintered.

Silence roared.

Time restarted.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t hear. Couldn’t see.

I coughed up a mouthful of blood as something tore inside me—

But then, everything returned to normal.

Wait...

Not normal.

I skidded to a stop.

Whisper snarled and lurched to a halt beside me.

Something was wrong.

Something had changed...

I tried to get my bearings.

I had no idea where I was or where I was going but...the mountain peak I’d been running toward—the compass needle leading me straight to Lucien—was no longer kilometres in the distance but...right here.

No longer in thick forest. No longer buried beneath a thick canopy. I stood on the ridgeline of the very mountain I needed and...

H-How is this possible?

Spinning back to face the icy sheet I’d run through, I caught glimpses of the trees glittering with hoarfrost as the rift healed. The scar sealed with a hiss of steam and my heart stuttered because...I felt it.

A graveyard of moments. A future of possibilities.

I felt time itself—a living, dying, forever changing layer that ruled every creature and person on this planet.

Snow filled my lungs. Ice burrowed into my marrow. Pain tore through my skull as I sank into the devouring hunger of cold.

I felt death everywhere.

In the roots beneath the forest.

In the fox that died three summers ago.

In the bones buried deep inside the mountain.

The bond yanked hard—wrenching me from the agonising trance. Saving me.

I bolted.

My bare feet glided as if I wore ice-skates.

Whisper kept pace.

Closer.

Nearer.

Lucien.

The sky glowed blood-red...

And the night started burning.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

EVERYTHING WAS CHAOS.

The men and women, children and animals all gathered in the bottleneck outside the cave’s entrance. Five guards blocked the broken hole in the fence, weapons drawn, their faces twisted with disgust for the very people they’d tortured.

“Go back into the Crucible. You know what will happen if you step past the fence.”

Tears and wails grew louder as the prisoners tasted freedom and lost their minds to it.

“Go back!” a guard yelled. “Now.”

No one obeyed. Their eyes locked past the rusty fence, drinking in the trees and stars.

“Don’t push us,” another guard shouted. “We will shoot.”

Someone jostled in the middle of the group, making the front row stagger. A little boy broke ranks, sprinting toward the fence.

The guards shot him.

The boy’s father howled and hurled himself forward.

He died alongside his son.

“Stop!” I roared. “All of you.” Pushing through the middle of the filthy, trembling prisoners, I gritted my teeth as people shied away from me, hissing as their skin burned thanks to the fire licking all over my body.

Still cradling the dead girl, I made eye contact with those brave enough to look at me. “I’ll get you out. Just trust me.”

Their gazes went to the tiny corpse in my arms and...they didn’t believe me.

Their sanity switched to survival and they pushed and shoved, their fear stinking worse than their rags.

I planted myself at the front of the group and glowered at the guards. “Let them go.” My voice was thick as tar. The flames hissed and spat. They wanted to kill. Burn their bones. Bubble their blood. Slaughter.

“Take them back inside,” a guard commanded. “And we won’t hurt them.”

“Let them go.” I shook my head from pure violence and pretended I was still human. “And I won’t hurt you.”

“Oh yeah? And how do you plan on doing that?” A short, cocky one laughed. “You and what army?”

“I won’t ask again.” I could barely talk anymore. I had nothing left. No fluids, no heartbeat. The fire was the only thing keeping me standing. Burning, always burning. “Let. Them. Go.”

“No one can let them go,” a slim guard with a missing front tooth said. “If they cross the fence, they’ll die.”

“Not if you die first.”

“Doesn’t matter if we die first or not.” He backed up a little. “There’s a frequency net placed around this entire mountain. Their very blood has been programmed to incinerate if they step past it.”

The other guards smirked as if it was an inside joke, and in the second it took me to decide if he was telling the truth, the mob of prisoners decided for me.

They charged forward with tattered screams—a crowd of complete chaos bolting toward the five guards.

They opened fire.

“STOP!” A lash of fire chased after them but...it was too late.

After a lifetime of misery, hope was far louder than warnings. Women and men ran together, dragging sickly children. Animals bolted in blind terror—goats bleating, dogs baying, all running in the same direction.

A few were shot.

The rest stampeded.

“Don’t!” I chased after them. “If they’re telling the truth—”

They didn’t listen.

I could only watch in horror as they swarmed the guards, shoved past them, and sobbed at the taste of being free.

And...nothing happened.

The bottleneck broke as they streamed into the forest, cries of pure joy echoing against the moon. I ran after them, the little girl bouncing in my arms, fire replacing my insides with restless serpents.

But then—

A pulse rippled over their skin as if something triggered in their veins.

And they fell.

One by one.

For a blissful second—maybe the only second of their lives—they were free.

And then...they were dead.

I stood there in horror.

I fought bone-breaking despair and hate hot enough to melt the entire mountain. But then the emaciated panther appeared in the cave’s mouth.

Its eyes were so dull compared to Whisper’s. Its coat matted and patchy. Its majestic tail smashed and broken.

With a soft hiss, it limped toward the fence.

No. Please no.

Placing the little girl down, I streaked toward the panther.

I was too late.

Its ruined body broke into a lope, slipping through the hole in the fence.

Hope clawed out my heart as it kept going. Kept living.

But then...just like every animal and human before it, it grunted, seized, and collapsed.

Dead. Useless. Gone.

The guards got to their feet where they’d been run over by the frantic mob. One kicked the closest dead woman. “Stupid idiots. We told them. They knew. How are we supposed to tell Mr. Ward that his precious Requiems are gone?”

I tried to control myself.

I tried to stay human—

A blinding corona of flames detonated out of me, turning the guards to soot before they could scream. The water in the earth vaporised, turning the night hazy. A column of heat shot into the sky, roaring like a dragon made of fire. Flames spiralled in violent helices. The moon threatened to melt.

All of it cost me.

But I couldn’t stop it.

The tax I’d paid was almost complete and the fire raged.

Turning to the little girl, I returned to her and dropped to my knees. With the rest of my mortal strength, I dragged her lifeless body onto my lap and kept her safe.

I protected her as the world broke.

A deafening crack split the heavens as the earth collapsed. I bowed in the middle of a smoking crater as the final trade of my life for power began.

Flames tore through what was left of my soul, consuming every droplet of guilt and grief. These people had been in a cage...like me. They’d been trapped for years...like me. Yet, unlike me, they’d lived in squalor and sickness and I hated myself.

I hated how wronged I’d felt. How powerless I’d been. How I’d had it so fucking easy compared.

Rook had given me my freedom, but them?

I wasn’t enough.

I failed—

Bowing over the dead girl, I tore at my wrist with my teeth.

My lungs filled with glass as the dregs of my ashen blood welled. Not much left, and completely gold—as if the fire alchemised my life-force into pure flame.

It was barely enough for a spoonful.

I couldn’t heal anyone but Rook, but...I had to try. Had to hope.

“Drink.” I pressed my wrist to her slack lips.

My skin split with tiny fissures, criss-crossing my arms to reveal glowing muscles beneath. My mostly dead heart strained against the pressure—remembering how to beat...just for a little while.

I choked on a sob that I’d never see Rook or Whisper again.

I’d chosen this path.

Vengeance destroyed me.

But the girl never drank.

She never opened her eyes and the fire kept building, building.

Curling over her, I coughed up a mouthful of blackened blood. Not gold or even crimson; it splattered against the earth like old oil.

I was dying.

I knew that.

I could feel it creeping, claiming.

And I hated that I regretted my decision.

I was selfish enough to want to reverse time and never leave Rook’s side. Never put her in danger by leaving her. Never be so arrogant to think I could survive.

I failed.

Failed her.

Failed everyone.

Gathering the little girl into my arms, I rocked her as if lullabying her to sleep.

All of this suffering was because of me.

No matter if Marcus had other mountains like this one—if he had more cages and chains—I could end everything with a single swipe.

He needed me.

Whatever he was doing all hinged on my blood.

So...if I no longer existed...he’d lose everything.

My death was the only mercy I could give.

Rook.

I’m so sorry...

Flames darted down my throat as if they’d been waiting for my final decision.

They poured.

They tore.

My heart stopped—