Chapter 73 #4
“Immediate Kaori?” Breno called, watching her more carefully. All eighteen serpents rose in unison to stare at him, their small black eyes fixed on him. The boy knew he shouldn't openly examine a gorgon, but he couldn't look away. It was hypnotic. “Is everything okay?”
When she didn't respond, he let go of his brother's hand and reached out to touch her, to ask what was wrong.
But when their hands made contact, Kaori lifted her head from the steering wheel and moved instantly, grabbing his arm with shocking force.
She pulled him close, and in seconds, Breno found himself wrapped in her embrace.
“I've gone too far, and there's no going back,” she whispered in his ear.
Breno knew it wasn't meant for him.
Everything happened so fast he barely had time to think.
Serpents coiled around his shoulders in a hungry embrace, and soon he felt the sharp bite on his neck.
Eighteen of them. He shoved the woman away and she released him.
Breno stared into her serpent eyes—two grayish irises with slit pupils as black as the deepest abyss.
He tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come; he tried to move, but his body wouldn't obey; he heard screams around him, but the world seemed to have frozen.
Kaori watched as he slid down in his seat and collapsed against the closed door, his body as limp as a rag doll.
Breno heard Dominic scream his name and felt the car shaking as Kaori grabbed him too.
In moments, the screams ceased. Breno tried to use his gift, tried to protect Dominic, tried to scream for him to run, but he couldn't do anything—the gorgon's venom flooded his nervous system, paralyzing even his eyelids.
Silence. The world fell quiet while heavy raindrops beat against the metal of the vehicle.
Breno heard Kaori get out. He watched her pass in front of the headlights, the serpents dancing in the white light, and then she circled around the car to his door.
The moment it opened, Breno tumbled out, his face burying in the muddy ground.
Pain flooded his entire body, and soon he heard another door open and another body fall.
Kaori's feet returned to his side, the rain soaking them, and Breno could only see the darkness between the trees. He was still wondering what the hell was going on when lightning split the sky and illuminated the forest around them. For a few seconds, Breno stopped breathing.
They were surrounded.
One of his eyes was covered with mud, but his free eye could see there were many beasts around, and they kept emerging from between the trees.
He tried to scream, run, or just move, but he couldn't even blink.
The carnicels approached, growling and snapping at the air.
Breno knew it was the end—he would die like a rabbit caught in a trap.
He would die without even knowing why. He said one last prayer to any god, asked for mercy for Dominic, and begged for it to be quick, for the boy not to suffer.
The largest beast stopped in front of him, its paw centimeters from Breno's face.
He would have trembled when the monster lowered its head over his body, but even his tremors were frozen.
He wasn't even given the chance to curl up like a worm.
The carnicel sniffed his scent: fear and defiance. Silence grew throughout the forest.
“The package is here. No tricks,” Kaori's voice came from somewhere beside him. He didn't want to believe what he was hearing.
Without warning, the beast crouched in front of him.
Something moved in his peripheral vision, and then Breno felt a bite on his leg.
He tried to scream, but nothing in his body worked.
He was dragged up and thrown onto the back of the crouching monster.
From where he lay, he could clearly see Kaori's face.
She had set her blades on the ground and just watched.
Breno was so shocked he could barely process the absurdity of the situation. Only one question echoed in his mind.
Why?
“Where is Akira?” she asked no beast in particular.
They all stared at her, including Breno—it was the only thing he could do.
One of the beasts walked up to Kaori and crouched down, just as they had done with Breno.
Kaori hesitated, looked at him, then at the beast, then climbed onto its back as if she had done this countless times, as if it were perfectly ordinary.
The monsters rose and Breno was carried away.
As they traveled, Breno wondered how his brother was doing.
He couldn’t see whether Dominic had been carried too.
The uncertainty was eating him alive. He thought he should feel hatred in a situation like this, but no—what had taken root in his body was fear.
He was so afraid for Dominic that he couldn’t feel anything else.
So he prayed and begged the God of Wisdom to help him, but then he remembered a conversation with Kyller: “I prayed, but everyone knows there are no Gods in the forest.” An avalanche of despair washed over Breno.
At some point the carniceals lined up, and Breno once again found himself facing Kaori, whose gaze was fixed on the darkness ahead. Sensing his stare, the woman turned to look at him. Her expression was unreadable—no sign of guilt or remorse.
He wanted to close his eyes, wanted to pretend none of this was happening, but the venom wouldn’t let him.
For hours, he just watched the woman. His eyes red with tears and rain.
He lost all sense of time and space, and when he thought he might fall asleep with his eyes still open, Kaori signaled for the small convoy to stop. She dismounted and appeared before him.
Their eyes met, words trapped. She extended her hand and Breno followed the movement. Finally, an emotion other than fear bloomed in his chest. Disgust. If he could have bitten her, he would have. She touched his eyebrow and he stared at her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but none of it seemed real.
She wasn’t sorry, didn’t care—it was like watching someone apologize to the animal they’d sacrificed for dinner.
Breno understood in that instant that he was just a means for her to get what she wanted.
But why him? Was it the rings on his fingers?
The blocking gift? He thought of Dominic, who was also a blocker and had absorbed a small part of the barrier.
“We agreed on just one,” he remembered her saying in the car. “You said you would take the boy from the center and all the energy he carried.” Breno’s heart raced as the information fell into place—Yugo was the blocker from the center. “Three boys for one?”
“Where is Akira?”
This was a trade. Three blockers for this Akira she had mentioned.
Breno knew of a powerful blocker by that name—the one who had been lost more than two hundred years ago.
But all the rumors said the boy had been killed in battle.
How was it possible that the woman was talking about the same person?
Hatred prevailed over confusion, overflowing.
Breno wanted to kill her, wanted to tear her to pieces.
Tears filled his eyes, slid down his face, and flooded his heart.
His breathing quickened, his throat tightened.
When he thought he would be consumed by terror, the woman closed his eyelids to the world.
The darkness was not welcoming.