Chapter 24 #2
Vlad falls to his knees, the bones of his rib cage already showing through as the flesh, muscle, and sinew is burnt clean off his body. The screaming stops, only because he has no throat to scream with as he writhes in agony.
It’s over quickly enough.
Within another few seconds, he’s nothing more than a pile of blackened, smoking bones on the floor, and only then does the column of blue flame dissipate like a gas burner being shut off.
My father turns his back to the pile of bones, face gentle and amiable as if he didn’t just burn the most intimidating enemy of so many with barely more than a flick of his hand.
“Where were we before that little annoyance?” he asks, spreading his hands wide, as if a magnanimous host. “Ah, yes. Phoenix. My lovely crack in the barrier between realms. When you wormed your way into this world, you created a crack in this dominion that allows it to be a nexus point to all realms. You haven’t even begun to realize the conduit you could become with the right… ”
He grins, showing all his glistening white teeth, “… manipulation. With you, I can finally achieve the perfection I was never able to with my own disappointing children. Born of both worlds, the spirits the two of you birth into this world will be my true perfect creations.”
“Never,” Phoenix spits. “I’ll never let you use me like that. You can turn me into a pile of bones right here. Go ahead!”
“No!” I shout, but my father just laughs.
“Destroy such a perfectly lovely conduit. No. I don’t think so. I have so many intentions for you.”
“Fuck your intentions!” Phoenix says and I have to grab her arms to hold her back from running at my father. She fights me but I hold tight.
His terrifying display a moment ago was only a tame demonstration of the brutality I know he’s capable of.
He found endless ways of tormenting me and my brothers when we were under his control, including pitting us against one another in ways we’ve only begun to unravel these past couple years after millennia of enmity.
He’s a being of poison and manipulation, and I can’t let Phoenix anywhere near him.
Desperately, I look at the shining runes that make up the circle encasing us. There’s got to be some way out. Running is the only sane option when faced with an evil power like my father until we can find a way to regroup.
“What do you really want, deep down inside your soul?” my father asks, his voice as smooth as honey even as Phoenix struggles to get at him.
“I’m on your side, don’t you see? I just liberated you from your tormentor. You and I are the same, aren’t we? Beings from another realm, trespassing here? He told me all about you, you know.”
Phoenix has stopped struggling, all but frozen. My hands drop from her biceps, but I clasp her hand. “Don’t listen to his poison words,” I whisper. “You know who you are.”
But my father is relentless, the worm in the ear of a hundred emperors and kings. “He told me how you’ve always wanted to be anything else but what you are.”
My father’s handsome face gentles with compassion. “You just want a normal life. Isn’t that right?”
I see the shocked truth of my father’s words on Phoenix’s face. Her gaze drops to the floor like she’s guilty at being caught out.
“Don’t listen to him,” I whisper. “Of course you wanted a normal life. Every kid does.”
“Ah but you weren’t a normal ‘kid,’ were you?” my father asks, holding Phoenix’s eyes in a mesmerizing gaze. “You were an immortal spirit from another realm wearing a body you so cleverly stole.
“Although, I wonder, did the baby whose body you stole at conception even have the chance to gain a soul? Or like Ammit here,” he gestures to the blonde woman backing up to the very edge of the circle, shaking her head like she wants no part in whatever this is, “did you just kick it out so you can wear the flesh suit? Don’t they have a saying here about stealing candy from a baby?
You stole the baby’s body, so what does that make you? ”
“Shut up!” Phoenix says, hands shoving against her ears. “I didn’t know! I didn’t understand about humans. I just felt the warmth! I just wanted to be part of the warmth; I was so cold! I was so, so cold.”
A tear slips out of Phoenix’s eyes and I’m through with my father’s manipulations. Burn me to a crisp on the spot if he will.
I step in front of Phoenix to block him from her. “Stop it!”
“And you. The rebellious little whelp.” My father’s skewering gaze lands on me, and I feel it like a knife slicing through my sternum. “The little lonely boy who only ever wanted his big brothers to see him and let him be a part of things. Always so hungry for attention and love.”
“You starved me of it intentionally.”
“I was making you a better weapon,” my father bites out. “I was honing you for obedience.”
“I never wanted to be your tool of destruction!”
My father shakes his head. “Such a disappointment. A flaw I will fix with your incoming brethren. With your wife’s blood and your angelic ancestry, the blood compulsion I will lay upon them will be total and complete.
I will be true god to spirit and human alike.
A perfect culmination of the history of this world and all others coming into a perfect harmony. ”
“So you can perfect your machine of destruction?” I sputter in disgust. Him talking about harmony is the biggest joke I’ve ever heard. “How is that harmony?”
But for the first time since the sacking of Rome, I see a smile of peace and satisfaction on my father’s face.
“It will be glorious. I will raze this so-called earth to ashes.
Then let empires rise again, and right as these willful, foolish humans believe the earth is theirs to conquer and rule, my army will cull again.
It will be the most perfect circle of my everlasting dominion of this world and all others we can discover. “
“Dominion by destruction?” I bite out. “You were the only monster the whole time. You made us believe it was us, but really, it was just you.”
“We’ll never help you,” Phoenix says, squeezing my hand back hard and stepping up beside me. As if the two of us are anything against a power as mighty as my father, when we’re still caught in his trap.
“Don’t you see?” My father laughs. “Today is your lucky day. Today both of you little desperate beasts can have everything you wanted but could never have. Just look.”
He points behind us. Golden runes light up beneath our feet, and Phoenix gasps.
“Layden, look!” Her voice sounds full of wonder.
I don’t want to look. I know the moment I do, my father gets what he wants. She grabs my hand, and I want to yank her away. To warn her of the danger.
But her voice is so insistent when she cries, “Layden!”
In spite of myself, I turn.
For a moment, I see it. The little house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It couldn’t be more perfect. Sea-foam green with white shutters and a white picket fence. The grass is impossibly green, and the sky impossibly blue.
“Oh, Layden, I couldn’t be happier,” Phoenix says from beside me in the vision. I look over, and she’s in her wedding dress.
Except it’s the way it ought to have been. She’s beaming up at me. She’s so beautiful, and so happy. Of course she’s happy. We’ve just come home from our wedding and now we get to begin our wonderful life together.
“I never even dreamed it could be so perfect,” she cries, grabbing my hand to drag me forwards across the grass. “Come inside with me!”
And I want to. God, how I want to. She’s smiling at me like that, open and free and happy. She’s never looked at me like that before.
I can’t help laughing and running to catch up. Then surprising her by grabbing her around the waist and lifting her in my arms. She giggles with joy as she tosses her arms around my neck. I’ve never heard her so happy and light, like all the heavy burdens she usually carries are totally gone.
Life starts here. There’s only now. This moment.
I have everything I ever wanted—her.
The love of my life, in my arms.
Joy like I’ve never felt before wells up in my chest and I drop her back down to the ground. But I still cling to her, because suddenly, a shot of dread pierces the joy and sunshine and perfection of the moment.
Because something feels wrong. The edges of the vision shimmer slightly. The colors are too bright. Phoenix’s laugh sounds just slightly off-pitch. Manic. Like she desperately wants this to be true, too, but feels the off-ness of it.
Because this isn’t real.
I blink, and the vision shatters.
We’re still in the atrium. Still trapped in the circle. Still facing my father, who looks pleased with himself.
“See how easy it would be?” my father says.
“All you have to do is what comes naturally. Live in the beautiful realm I create for you in your minds. Finally normal. You won’t have to remember the sins you committed to get to this realm.
And you, too,” Father turns his gaze my way.
“Instead of alone and starving for love, I give you a union of souls with the woman you love. Be each other’s comfort.
” He smiles as if he’s just solved our problems and can’t we see what a gift this is?
All the happiness and fullness you could ever dream of. ”
Phoenix blinks beside me, still coming out of the vision.
Her hand trembles in mine.
“And all these people you’ve killed?” I ask, looking at the mangled body in the center of the circle. “What about Ammit?”
“Collateral damage,” my father says with a shrug. “Every war has casualties.”
“This isn’t a war,” Phoenix says. Her voice has steadied now, and when I look at her, her eyes are clear. Focused. “It’s a power grab by a megalomaniac who can’t let go of the ancient glory days.”
My father’s smile drops. “Careful, girl.”
“Or what?” Phoenix challenges. “You’ll burn us? You already admitted you need us.