Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Nox
Convincing North to let Oleander walk into the Pain god’s trap with nothing more than our shadow creatures at her side is only the very first of my hurdles.
Convincing the rest of the Bonded Group is almost impossible. Even after Oleander said she was going whether they liked it or not, it came to blows, Gryphon almost taking my head off and Atlas only being stopped by North’s intervention.
I have to come to terms with the vicious, loathing looks that I’m going to receive from each of them throughout this.
It doesn't matter though.
None of that matters, so long as the plan succeeds.
For the very first time, my brother insists that Oleander takes his shadow creature with her. She tucks August behind her other ear after he shrinks down to the size of a penny, invisible to the world and everyone in it other than the three of us.
North has never trusted his bond or the creatures with her like this.
He's never allowed them to spend time with her, especially at such a distance. He's never trusted that side of himself, and certainly not with someone as beloved as his Bonded. Those fears inside of him haven’t just changed, they've evaporated altogether.
There is no doubt in either of our minds that she’s safest with our eyes on her, and if our eyes cannot be there, then our shadow creatures are the next best thing. I would trust Azrael with her no matter what, but there’s also something reassuring about August being with them too.
I’ve seen what North’s most vicious creature is capable of.
Standing at the edge of the Wasteland that I'm sure we're about to be pulled into, my eyes voided out and the hard glares of the Bonded Group on me, I watch the moment the Pain god transports Oleander to the bridge.
I almost second-guess my own plan.
Not because I don't believe that Oleander is strong enough to go through with our plan at the site of her parents’ death, but because the memory of that car ride lives within me just as it lives within her, and a vicious, violent reaction bubbles out of me.
North side-eyes me for a moment, his own eyes black as he watches through his shadow creature, but when the others begin to question what's going on, he's the one to answer.
“The god-bond is trying to get a rise out of her. It’s trying to find a weakness in Oli to get through to the Eternal—”
“And it's not going to work,” I cut him off. Even if he reads the pure truth in my tone, Gryphon certainly doesn't believe me.
“What is the point of a Bonded Group like ours if we're going to just split up the moment one of these things snaps its fingers at us? This is fucking stupid,” he mutters under his breath, checking out his weapons again.
It’s a tic that he usually does when we arrive on a mission to calm himself down, and yet here it is, cropping up as he tries to keep a handle on his emotions.
It's not usually this hard for him, but I suppose this is the first time we've had to do something like this.
We haven't been separated from Oleander since she chased Kyrie to that Resistance camp and got herself sliced to pieces.
The echoes of her pain back then still reverberate in my mind, and my bond seethes in my chest at the reminder.
We won’t let it come to that this time.
“Tell me again why you think this is going to work.” North mutters under his breath, and I take a long, calming breath of my own.
He's not questioning me. He's trying to stay calm. If I keep telling myself that, maybe I won't lose my shit at them.
It’s almost fucking impossible not to.
“They weren't testing Oli at the camps because they wanted to use her as a bomb. The Infinite Weapon program was a smokescreen, a way to convince the underlings to do their work for them.”
The records are very clear about what the god-bonds were really doing during the experiments.
The patterns are there, and it hadn't taken long for me and Benson to figure out that we were looking for a very particular type of experiment within the archives.
They weren't just looking at how to shift souls from bodies, but how to mix some bloodlines for certain types of Gifts.
The Pain god knew that whatever vessel it was moved into, it would gain access to that power, the same way that while the Shadows are an indicator of the god-bonds, it isn't the only thing that we can do.
The Draven line gave me the god-bonds, but my mother's gift of the Madness had given me the Dread that terrifies all of those who hear my name. North’s mother had passed on the Death Touch to him.
The gods have access to these things now, a growing arsenal of weapons, and if the Pain god is able to take over the body of another Top Tier Gifted, it could kill the soul within and take control of the vessel.
It could slowly start to collect whatever powers it desired, and it might just start with Oleander and work its way through our Bonded Group.
Shapeshifting into a dragon with the shadow creatures at its beck and call, the Neuro ability to hack into anyone's brain, and the ability to inflict gruesome, bloody deaths by tearing bodies to pieces, all wrapped up in one crazed god-bond.
I can't imagine anything worse.
If we allow that to happen, we might as well say goodbye to the human race, because the Pain god will just consume and kill and maim over and over and over again until there is nothing left.
This goes beyond just wanting to give our god-bonds the life that they have been yearning for or living a life with our own Bonded Group in peace.
As selfishly as I want those things, this is about whether or not the world is going to be taken over by, quite frankly, the root of all evil.
“What they really want is to be able to shift vessels. They want to live forever, and none of them give a shit about who they live within. They don't care about lifetimes or sleeping or any of that. All they care about is power—”
“But none of them have a Gift to manipulate souls within a vessel,”Atlas finishes off for me, a scowl on his face as he rubs a hand across his chin.
He's been surprisingly quiet about the entire mission, keeping to himself and taking Oleander at her word when she said that she trusted me and wanted to do this.
He hasn't spoken to me or looked at me. He hasn't questioned me in any way, and he hasn't started a fight either, which is definitely a change.
I have no doubt that if anything happens to her, he will be the first person to kill me.
It won't matter if the Pain god comes looking, I will already be a corpse if he has anything to do with it.
It really would be a test of whether or not the Cleaver can take on the shadow creatures, though I suppose that if Oleander and I are wrong and something does happen to her, I won't fight back.
I don't think even the guilt I've had on my brother's behalf will be enough to keep me around if something does truly happen to her. I’ve always felt an obligation to stay here for him, even in my darkest days after he’d found me and killed my mother for what she’d done to me.
“This is fucking stupid,” Gryphon says again, his eyes flashing to white as he lets his Gift kick in.
He scans the area, almost as though he’s developing new techniques to settle himself, and I choose not to say anything about it, not to him or to the rest of them.
I keep my eyes on Oleander, and when the Pain god finally strikes, pushing everything it can at her until I know her bond is forced to take it all, I square my shoulders and prepare myself.
I glance over at my brother. “They're coming.”
North nods, a scowl on his face as he watches the same scene that I do, Oleander’s body slumping down to the ground as the Pain god and the Transporter take her once more, Transporting into the Wasteland before us.
“I want this over with,” he says, and I nod slowly, lifting a hand as the shadows fall away from my body and begin to fan out.
The TacTeam personnel all lined up behind us in neat rows stay calm as the shadows overtake the area.
The original personnel have seen it all before, and the new recruits were warned about how tonight will go.
There’s an air of trust that has never been there before, a preparedness that was hard won.
Tonight.
Everything will be finished tonight, their death or ours.
We feel the moment that the Pain god appears in the Wasteland, moving Oleander’s unconscious body into the impenetrable area they’ve built specifically to keep us out.
The walls of the Wasteland are strong, the strongest Shields that we have come across; which is exactly how I knew that this is where they would end up. Hundreds of Gifted have been brought here to work together to make the entire area impenetrable.
When the scouts came across it, we knew right away that it would be endgame for the Resistance. We spent a lot of time trying to infiltrate it but failed again and again.
Except that was part of our plan as well.
The god-bond doesn't realize the strength that we have taken from our Bonded, the unprecedented growth in our abilities, or the fact that the Draven family has taken in the powers of the gods over hundreds of generations.
Instead of their manipulations of the Bonded Groups affecting us in a way that would weaken us, it has only made us stronger.
It has only made the arsenal of weapons that we have at our disposal even more formidable.
It's given us a way in.
“We need to go now,” North says under his breath, and I nod, glancing over at each of them for a moment just to be sure that they're all as ready as I am.
Gryphon gives one last command to the Tac unit at our backs, and then each of them grabs my arm. The Shield can protect against Transporters that aren't welcome within the Wastelands, but they can't protect from something that's already in there.
The Transporter just let us in.