God of Destruction (10 page)

“Be careful,” a thick Czech accent ordered as
the clack of high heels echoed through the room. “Your instructions
clearly said that she was not to be unharmed, did they not?”

“She tried to escape—” the man above her
reasoned.

“She weighs one-twenty at the
most
,
Vilmore. I am
sure
you can handle her without violence,” the
woman growled. “Put her next to
that
one.”

Firelight suddenly illuminated the room.
Russell stood at the entrance where the rope divider had been torn
through, holding a lit torch in his hand as he walked around the
room. Wordlessly, he lit the torches held by the men posted around
the center beam. Claire wanted to scream for answers, but she
couldn’t make the words come to her. A groan in her ear made her
jump, nearly falling over when she turned to investigate.

Alex sat beside her, forehead trickling with
blood. Her eyes were closed.

“Oh my God! Alex?” Claire gasped, getting up
to help her until the phantom hand, now attached to a human arm,
fell onto her shoulder. She fell harshly back to the ground.
“What’re you d…doing?” she finally demanded, struggling to shake
him off.

“Shut up,” the giant man holding her down
spat. “Enjoy the show.”

“Yes,” Natalia repeated, pulling a folded
square of yellow paper from her bra. “Enjoy the show.”

“Natalia?!” Claire breathed. “W…what’s going
on?”

The older woman laughed, pulling her wig off
and letting it fall to the floor as her strawberry-blonde hair
sprung free. “You have no idea how difficult it was to orchestrate
this plan, Ms. Strong. Getting
you
here was all too easy,
though. You are like a child! So innocent. So easily
manipulated.”

Claire’s eyes narrowed. “What do you
m…mean?”

Natalia looked over the stolen page,
especially the pronunciations she’d been given, though she had no
idea what the words meant. She ignored the question directed at
her. “Frankly, I do not understand your appeal. You do not seem so
important to me.”

“What did you d…do to Alex?” she spat,
gesturing to her friend’s unconscious form.

“She was coming to find you, so we took care
of her,” Natalia deadpanned, reading over the paper one final
time.

“What are—” Claire began, but felt a sting
cross her face that sent her reeling, headfirst, to the floor.

“Enough questions,” the gruff voice of the
man who’d held her down snapped as he retracted the hand he’d
slapped her with.

“Vilmore!” Natalia chastised. “She is
not
to be harmed! You know that!”

“Sorry, Natalia. You’re right,” he mumbled,
crossing his arms over his chest.

Claire held her face in her hands, mouth
agape as she stared up at the man who’d struck her. She’d never
been hit before in her life and the shame of it, coupled with the
throb of her cheek, forced tears of indignation to rise to her
eyes. She didn’t ask anymore questions, afraid to breathe the wrong
way in the presence of these people, led by someone she didn’t seem
to know as well as she thought.

“Everyone stand back,” Natalia ordered. “I do
not know how this is going to work, but it should happen right
here.” She gestured to the beam in the center of the room.

Everyone obliged, moving to stand at the
room’s perimeter.

Natalia began to read.

“Claire,” a groggy voice beside her moaned.
“Wha’ happened?” Alex’s eyes opened, taking in the room with shock.
“Where are we?”

“Alex!” Claire choked, hugging her friend
tightly. “Thank G…God you’re awake.”

“Claire, what’s going on?” Alex demanded,
wincing when she pressed her hand to her forehead. She held her
fingers, coated with blood, before her eyes. “I’m bleeding.”

“I don’t know!” Claire whispered.

Suddenly the drone of Natalia’s voice
stopped. “Take flesh from the witch,” she ordered, pointing to
Alex.

“Witch?” Alex snarled, pushing away from the
men reaching for her. “Who the hell are you calling a witch,
Natalia?!”

Natalia smiled unpleasantly. “You have always
been more bark than bite, Alexandria.”

Alex cried out when one of the men took a
knife to her palm, her voice reaching new heights when a square of
skin separated from her hand. Red streamed easily from her hand
into the cup they held out to her, collecting halfway to the top
before they allowed her to tear her hand away from them. They
handed the cup to Natalia.

“Are you okay?” Claire asked, watching Alex
struggle to stop the bleeding.

“I’m fine,” she growled, scowling at Natalia
as she poured the contents of the cup over the bones collected
around the center beam.

The room went still.

Claire’s hair picked up as a sudden gust of
unnatural wind blew through the room. Alex covered her nose and
mouth, making a face at the stale smell it carried with it as it
blew harder and harder around the room. The bones piled around the
center beam pulled unceremoniously from the walls, crashing to the
floor. Claire and Alex leaned into the wall as the gust threatened
to push them over, becoming so strong that they could see it spin
bones around the room. A tunnel of wind formed just inches from
their feet, collecting bones in it until, finally, it abruptly
ended.

“Claire! Alex!” James’s voice carried into
the room before he did, standing straight as he watched the scene
unfolding with wide eyes.

As the tunnel subsided, a man, bedecked in
dark, ratty robes stood in its wake, searching the room for
evidence of where he’d landed. He was tall and well-muscled beneath
the robe, his skin gold from the sun and his hair grown out into a
long, dark ponytail at the top of his head. For a moment, his eyes
were entirely soulless and black until they dissolved into their
ordinarily red irises.

He took pleasure in his first few breaths,
his first in thousands of years.

His head swiveled in each direction until he
found Natalia, his summoner. Finally, he spoke, in a voice like
gravel. “What place is this?”

Alex went limp beside Claire, losing
consciousness.

The man turned to them, his eyes glowing red.
His jaw dropped when his eyes met Claire, gravity suddenly too
strong under his feet, rooting them in place.

“Mainyu,” James gasped, drawing the attention
of the others in the room.

Angra Mainyu’s attention, however, was fully
transfixed on Claire. “Ziba,” he breathed through a smile, reaching
for her. “Do you remember me?”

Claire could do nothing but shake her head as
her body inclined toward him without her mind’s permission.

James shook his head to clear it and threw
himself into action. “Get away from them!” he demanded, easily
shoving past the weakened Mainyu. “Claire, run!” he ordered,
lifting Alex effortlessly into his arms.

Claire couldn’t move while she was caught in
the mysterious man’s gaze.

“Claire!” James yelled, shifting Alex to one
arm while he pulled Claire up with the other. Mind still foggy, she
stared back into Mainyu’s eyes as her friend pulled her away. As
the distance between them grew, she watched Mainyu’s look of shock
fall into something like rage, fists clenching at his sides.

“No!” a voice like a monster’s bellowed,
shaking the floor beneath them. “NO!”

Claire snapped out of the haze clouding her
mind enough to move out of the way when chunks of the ceiling fell
where she would have just stepped. “James! I can’t see!” she
shrieked, pulling her pant leg out from under the boulder that had
nearly crushed her.

“Neither can I!” he yelled back over the
sound of destruction.

A hand touched James’s back as he reeled in
every direction, looking for an exit. “Come with me!” a man’s voice
ordered. “I’ll get you out of here!”

James knew he couldn’t trust that voice from
the start, but he had no other option. “Get us out!” he begged,
allowing the man, invisible in the dark, to lead them away.

Kierlan had no idea it would be so easy.

Chapter Nine

Paris, France; June 29
^th
, 2012

As her ethereal face left his sight, and the
shock of her sudden departure subsided, Mainyu smiled pleasantly.
She looked exactly like the last time he’d seen her.

Weakness overcame him and he slumped against
the mortal woman beside him, searching his new residence for some
sign of familiarity. He could find nothing that reminded him of the
last time he’d walked the mortal realm. Human bones lined the walls
in neat patterns and the hall was lined with torches as its only
means of light.

Through the dimness, he’d seen her face, a
mirror image from the last time they’d met; only this time, she was
alive and well, if not a bit terrified. He’d so hoped that when he
returned from his banishment, he would find her this way, as her
sister had hoped to make her. He was glad that the High Priestess’s
power had proven itself in the end. He was not, however, glad to
see Shireen, alive but unconscious, as she took part in stealing
his love away yet again.

Her face reminded him of his last day walking
the mortal plane before his unfortunate banishment at the hands of
Shireen.

***

He’d been hidden beneath the sand, waiting
for his last spiteful blow to Ziba’s life to sink in. After this,
she would have to finally realize that a life with him was her most
prudent option. Before he knew of her intentions to be rid of him,
he’d been foolish enough to think that it was her only option. When
Bomani’s life had slipped through his vicious claws, Mainyu had
never felt so fulfilled. By the end of three days time, when he
felt her mournful period should come to a close, he would come to
her in the night, assert the full extent of his feelings for her,
again, and bring the young priestess back to his home in the
netherworld, where they would live as man and wife. It never
occurred to him that the mortals in that temple would take fate
into their own hands. That his plans would never come to
fruition.

He could feel it like a stab to his own
heart when he sensed the life leave his mortal love. He’d greatly
underestimated Shireen, and he’d learned since then that it was
something he would never do again.

As he left to intercept her soul en route to
his dwelling, he’d laughed, relishing in the stupidity of the
humans. If they’d thought her worldly death would keep her from
him, they’d been entirely wrong, but, again, he’d misinterpreted
their intentions. The High Priestess, Shireen, had cast a spell
from the Book of Eternity, a collection of writings that shouldn’t
have ever been seen by a human. He’d played a part in its making,
as well as the other Gods, and so the Book should have only been
used by them. That Shireen had spoken a word from it was the
blackest of blasphemy.

A mournful, inhuman snarl escaped him as he
clutched at the chest of the earthly man he’d possessed. Pain was
foreign to him, but he found that its elevating degrees were
anything but friendly these past weeks. The physical agony he’d
dealt with while his self-imposed abrasions healed was nothing in
comparison to the absolute anguish that poisoned him, tearing
through his veins like fire. His screams grew louder and louder,
shaking the ground like the wrath of nature itself. He didn’t
concern himself with a worry that if he screamed loud enough he
would split the Earth in half, too selfish to look past his own
suffering.

He spun once on the spot and erupted
suddenly into a cloud of thick, black smoke. Blowing like hurricane
winds, he shot toward the Temple of Tehran.

Shireen stood beside the stone altar still,
staring down at her sister with tears flowing freely down her face.
Her fingers clutched the knife that took Ziba’s life, but her free
hand reached forward to push her sister’s eyelids over her flat,
blue irises. Color was fast leaving Ziba’s cheeks, but her face was
still the most beautiful in all of Persia. The more Shireen stared
down at the face she’d grown up with, the more difficult it was
becoming to tell herself that Ziba wasn’t sleeping.

One of the priests shrieked, pointing to the
door as it dissolved under the black vapor closing in around them.
“Shireen!”

Shireen tore her gaze away from the body on
the slab to prepare for the attack she’d been anticipating. “Get
away from the door!” she ordered, pulling the Book of Eternity into
her arms and backing away from the altar.

The priests obeyed, collecting in a line
before Shireen so they faced the impending threat.

“
Take the hands of those beside you. If we
die, we died saving one most dear to us,” Shireen announced,
whimpering toward the end as her gaze unintentionally fell, once
more, on the faithful departed.

The cloud that had once been Mainyu ate
through the door before it materialized into a man they’d all
become familiar with over the last few days. He stepped slowly
toward them, muscles flexing under the weight of his rage. He wore
a single, tattered, black robe, loosely tied over his human body
but his bare feet crashed against the ground, dissolving the
flooring in footprint-shaped burns. His once-crimson irises were
black now, swallowing up the entirety of his eyes. The full force
of their startlingly powerful gaze was set on Shireen.

“
High Priestess,” he sneered, bowing
deeply, mockingly.

As Mainyu straightened up, he outstretched
his arm and darkness blocked out the sunrise behind the temple. A
cold wind swept through the temple, all at once blowing out the
torches that had illuminated the temple. Plunged into near complete
the darkness, the humans gathered in the corner could see only by
the grayish glow emanating from Mainyu’s skin.