THE MANIPULATION GOD IS HERE.
It’s not the one that I wanted to be dealing with today, but they’re all marked for death at my hands. The Pain god is long overdue for a blood-soaked and violent death, but I suppose we are encroaching on the Manipulation god’s space. The fact that she had cycled into the same bloodline as the Cleaver’s vessel is insult enough, but the idea that she has used that bloodline to build such a long-reaching platform only makes it worse.
The Transporter pops out of the room, taking the mouthy Gifted with him and leaving me alone with my Bonded. I enjoy the sight of them all for a moment as I look around, each of them awake and staring back at me. It has been too long since I looked upon them, and never have I been able to see them all together at the same time.
When the Pain god had woken the Soothsayer up, my mind was still scrambled from the attack, but now I’m thinking clearly. Seeing them all here together is everything I have always hoped it would be.
A hundred lifetimes with these men wouldn’t be enough.
A thousand lifetimes with all of them together would only be the beginning of what I need from them. Even as the situation around us becomes dire, I already know that I would choose this life of ours. This never-ending cycle of birth and rebirth, death and destruction, pain and horror over and over again. I would because it would mean knowing them, knowing the devotion and love that they have given me, knowing the devotion and love that I pour back into them. I don’t know what a peaceful time will look like for us, something that the girl has also questioned, but I find myself eager to figure it out with them.
The Draconis hasn’t shifted beyond his eyes turning black, but the way he moves his head is telling, as is the way he pushes his nose in the air as he scents the newcomers, disgust curling his lip. He never did like anyone but me. He tolerates the Bonded Group, the few times he’d interacted with them, thanks to how long it took for him to cycle.
“They’re watching us, testing us. We should take it alive,” the Corvus says, and I tilt my head at him.
“We don’t need answers. We need it gone.”
The Crux looks between the two of us. “It’s been here longer than us, and there is every chance it’s been searching out the others. It would be useful to know how many we need to find.”
The Soothsayer turns to look at me again, its eyes shining brighter as it calls on its Gift. “We don’t need to question it. I’ll get the information out of it, and then we can kill it.”
The perfect kind of compromise, one where our enemy is still dead at our feet.
I smile at the Soothsayer, happy and relieved to get my way, and then I follow the Crux as he walks back up the set of stairs, letting my power stretch out over the entire building and the street as I take stock of the souls around us.
“Stop.” I speak before the feeling fully forms in me, the extra senses I have beyond those of the vessel coming alight, and the Crux doesn’t hesitate to follow my command.
“What is it?” the Soothsayer asks from downstairs, and I turn back to look over to my Bonded, each of them watching me and trusting that I know best in this situation.
“Something is wrong up there. Something is here for our demise.”
The Soothsayer’s eyes flash into the brightest of voids, and I open up the mind connection between us all so that we can see what he can.
The Manipulation god is up there, though we don’t have much information from it. The Soothsayer is stronger than any other Neuro, especially now that we’ve Bonded, but still, the gods can keep him out of their heads if they’ve been here long enough.
There are other Gifted here with it as well, and the moment I realize what she’s doing, I tear their souls out, but it’s already too late.
As the Flame’s body hits the floor, the building is already alight, the house around her body burning. The shadow creatures move around us, searching for an exit, but the Cleaver shakes his head.
“My vessel has already said there’s one way in and one way out. We need the Transporter back here.”
The Soothsayer reaches out, but I already know what the answer is going to be. “There’s a Shield keeping him in the Sanctuary. They knew we were coming.”
I shake my head. “They’ve had a long time to prepare for our arrival on this earth; this is just the first of the traps they will have planned for us.”
The Corvus nods as well. “They will be prepared for our every move. We need to be smarter than this.”
It doesn’t matter how smart we need to be in the future. Right now, we need to get out of this building before it burns to the ground around us.
I look down at the rest of my Bonded, and they’re quick to start moving. The Corvus, intent on collecting the information his vessel is so eager for, starts making a pile with the rest of the boxes so that when we’re ready, we can get out of here. We can’t take the computer with us, but the paper copies will at least be something.
The vessel is sure it will help, so we will trust him, trust them all to navigate this time period better than we can.
The Crux descends the staircase again, taking my hand and leading me down as the smoke begins to creep underneath the door above us.
“We need to remember that the vessels aren’t all indestructible, so we need to deal with this quickly,” the Soothsayer says.
The Cleaver turns his head from side to side as though preparing himself to fight. “Not all of them, but some are, and I am more than ready to face our enemies.”
My net shifts over the Manipulation god, an invisible force ready to take it out. Soon. I will kill it soon, rid the earth of its evil and carve out a new way of living for us all.
I shake my head. “I don’t want to be split up like that.”
The Soothsayer glances over at where the Crux is now helping the Corvus with the information, both of them working seamlessly together as though they are cut from the same cloth.
The Soothsayer looks back up the staircase to where the smoke is now starting to come in thick around us, assessing every little thing before he turns back to me. The air is heating up, and we’re quickly running out of time.
“Come with me, Bonded. I might not be able to reach the Transporter, but you can.”
I let my eyes slip shut as I push into my Bonded’s mind, following along with him as he reaches out to the Transporter. The Shield is still in place, but it’s then that I find out what the power boost of the fully Bonded Group has done for me. Thousands of miles away, without ever seeing his face or knowing his name, I tear the Shield’s soul out of his body.
Together, we are indestructible.
I LIKE THE TRANSPORTER.
Even if he didn’t belong to the Flame and the girl didn’t adore him, I would like him. As he appears in the basement with us that is quickly being filled with smoke, he seems cool, calm, and confident, on the outside.
On the inside, he’s shitting himself.
It’s a subconscious thing, something that any living creature would feel when they know they’re in the presence of a predator, a pack of them really, and any wrong move will be their last. I’m sure that in his years of service to the Gifted, he’s had many opportunities to stare down monsters, but none quite like us.
“I will get you all out of here,” he says respectfully, dipping his head in the Crux’s direction as he glances over his shoulder at the Soothsayer.
The Corvus starts directing everyone to grab boxes, getting the last of the information together as we leave the building. The Cleaver compiles a small mountain, balancing the boxes precariously as he lifts them with ease. I tuck a single box under my arm, the only one they will allow me to hold. While they never doubt my abilities or my power, they’re still protective of me, as though some paper might strain me.
Thousands of lives together and still they love me so purely.
We appear back in the Sanctuary in the rooms that the Crux’s vessel claims as an office. The moment we set the boxes down, I place my hand back on the Transporter, smiling when he flinches.
Silly little Gifted.
“Take me back to where you first dropped us off. I have some words to share with the god-bond there.”
He nods without hesitation even as his eyes race over the other god-bonds, but none of them question me. They merely step back up to him and hold their hands out, waiting for his arm, ready to fight and face whatever may come in the hopes of building a life together.
The Transporter glances around at them, and the girl pushes me to reassure him from where she watches in the corner of my mind.
It seems petty and trite to do so, but I speak for her. “I will not let that god-bond kill or harm you in any way. I understand that you are important to our vessels, and no harm will come to you.”
He doesn’t look very reassured at my words but he Transports us all the same.
I do like an obedient Gifted.
If we’re going to set down roots in this world and live here permanently with each other, at least we’ll have these types of Gifted around us.
With an inferno of flames consuming it, the house is quickly falling apart.
The Transporter brings us to a small park across the road from the house, a few feet away from the danger. There’s already a crowd of humans huddled around the area, murmuring and whispering amongst themselves. Their thoughts and opinions on the matter mean nothing, they’re only here as a distraction, something to stop me from finding what we came here for.
My eyes settle on the god-bond.
Its vessel is a woman in her forties, a short, severe haircut and a slash of red lipstick across her lips. She’s attractive and well put together. She looks like a rich woman with no concerns over a house burning down.
Only we can see what lies within that empty shell.
The Crux speaks. “Go back to the Sanctuary, and wait for us there. The safest place for you is far away from here.”
This time, the Transporter hesitates, glancing between the Soothsayer and I. I feel irritated at the delay, but the girl whispers to me quietly.
“The vessels are safe. I won’t let them die any more than I will let one of my Bonded die,” I say as I turn back to the god-bond. She’s waiting, watching, and preparing to speak with us across the road.
I don’t wait around to see whether or not he needs any more encouragement, my eyes glued on the god-bond across the way. Even though it’s watching us, it doesn’t make a move to leave. I take it as a warning, a caution that it could know more about what’s going on here than we do.
“Take it slowly, my Eternal,” the Corvus says, but it’s the Cleaver who moves first, stalking towards the woman whose vessel looks so much like his own.
They share the same coloring, the same definition in their faces, the same strong jawline. We’ve never been born so close together before, not to the other gods, and not even to each other. We’ve always been spread out and forced to search for each other.
It’s not some twist of fate, though.
They designed it that way, the Crux whispers into my mind. They wanted to own us before we found each other. They wanted things to be different in this lifetime.
They failed, the Soothsayer sends to us as we move to follow the Cleaver over to where the Manipulation god awaits.
I slip my hand into the Draconis’. He’s still wearing the skin of the vessel, not yet shifted. I can tell that he is struggling with that, itching to truly come out and play but aware of the dangers of doing so. If history has taught us anything, it’s that the non-Gifted really don’t like it. The Gifted even struggle to comprehend the beauty of him in full, scaled form.
Soon. If it’s not needed here, we will head home and change there. We will set you free of these bindings when we can, my Bonded.
His hand flexes in mine as he sends back to me, Mine.
The Manipulation god does not attempt to leave or flee or even attack us as we approach. It stands at the edge of the growing crowd of people, the only person still focused on anything other than the house slowly falling apart on the street behind us. It stares at us as though it has no concerns about its impending death.
It truly doesn’t seem to care.
It has to be a game or trap of some kind, the Corvus sends to us.
“How carefully you hid yourself from us,” it says as it stares the Cleaver down, disgust curling at its lip.
It’s been awake for a long time. It’s been here long enough that there’s no doubt in my mind that it has already killed its vessel and taken over fully.
“You did this,” the Cleaver says. “You’re the one who started the breeding plan.”
It turns its head curiously, a tell of the god inside. The way we don’t quite act as the Gifted and non-Gifted around us do is a glaring sign of what lies beneath the surface.
“I had hoped to catch one of you in your next lifetime. To have you and be able to get rid of you before the others awoke. We knew this was coming. Too late for that now, I suppose. Now we’re simply working against the clock.”
A slow smile stretches across my lips, and the Draconis flexes his fingers in my hands, yearning to shift and kill this woman. To snap her body in half with nothing but the brute force of his jaws.
“You used your chance, and you failed. That’s it for you, I’m afraid,” the Crux says, stepping toward her as the shadows begin to fall from his body.
The Gifted and non-Gifted around us gasp and step away from him, some scrambling and others staring as though they can’t quite look away. You know which ones have heard the Draven name, the legacy of the bloodline that my Death Dealers are born into. Those people have a knowing fear in their eyes as they stare at the wide sets of jaws that form in the shadows.
Perfection.
“You haven’t been awake long enough to be able to take someone like me out of the running this quickly. I suppose we’ll meet again in a few years, if one of the others doesn’t trap you first. But they will, you know. We always find you. We always kill you. Some things will always be.”
It moves to turn its back only to find a shadow waiting for it there as well. When it lifts its hand to attempt to move, the shadow grasps it by the wrist, wrapping around it like a vine. Dozens more stream out of the Corvus to wrap around the god as well, until there’s no chance of it escaping.
The god turns its head and its eyes flash black, power blasting at us but not strongly enough to truly touch us. Its eyes widen, and I can see when the realization finally hits.
It’s going to die here.
The Cleaver steps up once more, a hand wrapping around the god’s throat as it squeezes. “You’re underestimating the power of the Bond and the power of my Eternal. Though I slept in safety, others did not and I have their power now.”
The god sputters, clawing at that hand as it blasts out more power but it’s like kicking at a brick wall. The Cleaver is indestructible and doesn’t feel a thing, the power it has now thanks to our completed bond means that there’s nothing this god-bond can do to any of us now.
The shadows look hungry, eager to consume the god, and I find that though the Cleaver offers its soul to me, I do not want it. I don’t want the taint of that twisted god touching me at all. It’s more than just power, and I want nothing to do with it.
It’s not that easy though.
It never is.
There’s a satisfying crack sound as the Cleaver snaps the vessel’s neck, which is always the weakest point on any god, and I press my eyes shut to feel as the life force of the god slips away.
It’s going to enter back into the cycle. Don’t let it, the Corvus whispers into my mind. Don’t let it come back for us. End it here, my Eternal.
I reach out and take the soul.
I don’t want to consume it, but if it can stop the cycle from continuing and the gods hunting us… I would do anything for my Bonded.
I take it into myself, consuming and consuming until it’s gone. Nothing left to come back, nothing left to haunt us now. One less monster out there to kill us all.
