CHAPTER 34 RAGNOR
CHAPTER 34
RAGNOR
Anger was an emotion that, when managed poorly, got the better of its owner. It was an irrational reaction, a wild, volatile feeling that could take a person under.
Ragnor had successfully managed his anger for centuries. He’d turned anger into a frozen, obscure emotion he sometimes utilized to deal with his enemies. It had become a habit by now to treat anger as a means to an end and channel it properly so as to control it and avoid allowing it to control him.
But controlling his anger as of late had its limitations, especially when it came to his magic.
So Ragnor did what he very rarely allowed himself to do. He let his walls down, pulling his anger, fury, and rage free from their mental shackles and allowing them to consume him whole.
In the courtyard of the Jinni-infested villa, Ragnor pulled at the red elastic tether that was the ether and flung it at the large mansion. Like the sharpest of blades, the tether cut through the building as if it were only butter, wrecking its entrance and causing the fundamentals to destabilize.
After causing the tether to snap back into place, Ragnor turned around, eyes aglow, and stared at the people who came out of the woods.
The Rayne League Troop had arrived.
Once he’d killed the Jinn in the basement, Ragnor had finally called Magnus, his Lieutenant and the one responsible for the Troop, and told him it was time.
Unfortunately, when he finally got out of the villa in search of Aileen, he found only her friends. Aileen wouldn’t have left them like that. Not after she’d seen what state they both were in.
That meant someone had taken her. AGAIN.
And he was going to take her back.
“Your only job is to kill them all,” he said now, looking back at the villa. “There are a few vampire captives in the kitchen basement and two unconscious vampires in the backyard, near the lake. Take them to Rayne League. See that they get the care they need.”
“Yes, my Lord,” they all replied at once.
After giving them a curt nod, he said, “Go!” and watched as his people clashed with the Jinn streaming out of the building, some of which were morphing midrun into their gigantic, horned, monstrous forms.
But Ragnor couldn’t afford to waste even a moment. He crashed into the building through a side window and let his nose lead him to his target.
The smell of smoke and embers, tantalizing and mysterious yet warm and passionate, filled his nose as he hunted it down. He ran through the hallways, letting his instincts and senses lead him rather than cool logic. This moment was not for thinking but for acting.
He came to a stop at the spacious entry hall, full of debris and dust from his ether attack. He tried to step forward, but his body locked unnaturally, as though he was a marionette and a puppeteer decided whether he moved.
“I had a feeling you’d come here, Lord Rayne.” A melodious voice echoed in the room, followed by a man who came around a corner, a scythe in his right hand, and his left stretched forward, toward Ragnor. “But I’m afraid I can’t let you go any farther.”
Ragnor stared at the man, whose smell was vaguely familiar, though not his face. That mattered not, however; all Ragnor could see were the black horns in his head and the slit pupils in his irises. When Ragnor sniffed the air again, he noticed another layer of scent about the man: the scent of smoke and embers he was hunting, mixed with the shampoo she used that morning, sticking to his clothes and skin.
And Ragnor’s rage multiplied.
But when he tried to move, he still couldn’t. As though he knew that, the man smirked and made a sliding motion with his outstretched hand. Like a puppet, Ragnor’s body followed the Jinni’s order, and he fell down on the floor, his cheek pressed against the cold marble.
Belatedly, Ragnor realized he was dealing with not just a mere median Jinni but a greater Jinni.
The Jinni walked toward him. “Do you remember me?” he asked, cocking his head as though it was an innocent question. “We’ve met before. You killed a few friends of mine.”
A distant image rose in Ragnor’s mind: a forest park in Las Vegas. A hooded man with a scythe telling him to spare him and fleeing the premises. Then another image, a recent one from a prison cell.
And now he was familiar.
As though Ragnor could read his mind, the Jinni smiled. “I see that you do remember,” he said, coming to a stop before Ragnor. He crouched near his face, grinning down at him. “Well, unfortunately for you, we’re going to see this through this time.”
If he couldn’t move, then Ragnor could use other methods to get out of this man’s control. On the outside, it looked like Ragnor was still aware and listening. But while Ragnor’s eyes were open, his vision was not of the smirking greater Jinni but of a dark canvas with spots of lights in all colors.
Every light beckoned Ragnor, begging him to tap them, but Ragnor knew which of the lights he needed. He grabbed the crimson light, one of the darkest on the canvas, and imagined it expanding, as though he was zooming in, until all he could see was the crimson light.
He could hear the greater Jinni scream.
Blinking, he let the black canvas disappear and returned his vision to reality. But he held on to the crimson light in his mind still. He watched the Jinni on the floor, struggling against an invisible onslaught of pain.
Ragnor’s Sacred ability, his aura manipulation, allowed him to inflict phantom pain on others, among different things. By inflicting this phantom pain on the Jinni, he made the creature lose his concentration and thus abandon his magical hold over Ragnor’s body.
Jumping to his feet, Ragnor kept the phantom pain intact. He grabbed the man’s head by his curly hair. “You touched her,” he said now, voice a growl. “You touched my woman.”
The Jinni shuddered and cried out as Ragnor upped the intensity of the pain. But he still heard Ragnor and managed to bite out, “Not your woman.”
Ragnor’s eyes cast a faint blue glow on the Jinni’s horned face. “We’ll see about that,” he murmured before banging the creature’s head against the floor.
The Jinni gasped but suddenly opened his eyes, glared at Ragnor, and let his jaw fall.
Ragnor did not expect what came out of his mouth.
A burst of blinding light exploded in the room, shoving Ragnor off the Jinni and pushing him back. Covering his eyes with his arms, Ragnor planted his feet on the ground, even though the light was almost like a storm, a hurricane trying to blow him away. Then the light thinned and became like a small meteor shower in the hall, except the light raindrops were as sharp as spears and were attempting to cut through Ragnor’s body.
Unable to concentrate with his mind holding the beacon of phantom pain, he released the crimson light and used every bit of his athletic and acrobatic skills to jump out of the way of the spear-like light-filled raindrops, covering his feet with the white aura of enhancement.
When it was over, he found himself face to face with the Jinni, who was now back on his feet, breathing heavily. “You’re a nasty bastard,” he told Ragnor almost conversationally.
Not bothering to reply, Ragnor was about to tap into the black canvas again when a body came crashing through the front doors, ramming into the boulder blocking the entrance. The jet-black hair and turquoise eyes, along with the athletic build, told him the body belonged to Logan, one of Ragnor’s formidable Troop Commanders.
Right after, another man stormed into the room, ice freezing the floor in his wake. When he saw the scythe-holding Jinni and Ragnor, however, he stopped. “What do we have here?” he asked, grinning.
Before anything else could happen, two other figures appeared from the opposite direction. And when Ragnor saw one of them, full of golden hair and pretty hazel eyes, her scent of smoke and embers crashing against him, he was suddenly filled with both relief and horror.
She looked at him and screamed, “Ragnor!” before another flash of blinding light blasted throughout the hall, shoving Ragnor back, farther and farther away from the woman who was his everything.