God of Destruction (19 page)

Taran pulled over just in front of the
running man, parking halfway on the sidewalk so he was forced to
acknowledge him. The blonde man jumped backward, out of the way, as
the man in the bathrobe escaped around the block. Taran threw
himself out the door, reaching forward to clasp the other man’s
shoulders.

“Help me! Please! I need help!” Taran begged
as James tried to run again. “Do you speak English?” he continued,
putting his face between James and the end of the block. James
found Taran’s face. His arms, trying to push past him, went
slack.

“Oh my God!” he enthused, backing away from
Taran like he was a ghost. His eyes fell on the gun in his hand for
a split second.

Taran waited for him to jump into action, but
when nothing of the sort happened, he growled, “Didn’t you hear me?
I need help!”

“Do you recognize me at all?” James asked,
holding his gaze for a long moment.

“What?” Taran flinched. “Never mind! I’ll
find someone else!” He made to turn and get the attention of
someone walking by.

“Wait!” James yelled, clamping his hand down
on his shoulder. He turned back to face the other man with a scowl.
“I’m sorry. What happened?”

“I was kidnapped—”

“Do you know by whom?” James demanded,
glancing around for the threat he’d set out to find.

Taran couldn’t help but feel suspicious as he
backed away from him. “No,” he lied.

“You have to get inside,” James said,
pointing back the way he had come. “The hotel my friends are
staying at is just back there. It’s not safe for you out here!”

“You don’t understand!” Taran yelled, shaking
him by the shoulders. “My friend is still there, she couldn’t get
away. She’s hurt, bad!”

James pursed his lips, wondering if he also
knew this other friend that Bomani was speaking of. He didn’t get
the chance to ask anymore questions when movement caught his eye
just over Taran’s shoulder. “Please, we’ll look for her later, you
have
to come with me. Now!”

“I’m not going anywhere with you unless it’s
back to Janie!” Taran snapped.

“Bomani, I will explain—” James accidentally
said.

Taran frowned. “What’d you call me?”

“Nothing! We have to—”

An otherworldly snarl ended James’s final
attempt at escaping peacefully. “
You
!”

James shoved past Taran to come between him
and the fast approaching Mainyu

Palms buzzing with blue energy, James yelled,
“Get out, you can’t touch him!”

Taran jumped away from his protector. “What
is
that
?”

The sight of James’s illuminated palms was
nothing, though, in comparison to the walking corpse that shoved
James to the ground.

The flesh of his hands was hanging from the
whole as the corpse reached out to grasp Taran’s neck in his hand.
He didn’t expect the choking hand to be so strong, since its owner
appeared to have one foot in the grave already, but he was easily
held up against the wall while his throat was crushed. Once Taran
realized that this wasn’t a part of his imagination, he flailed his
legs out at his attacker.

The gun in his hand exploded into Mainyu’s
abdomen, blowing a hole through him that didn’t bleed. Taran’s face
contorted with shock but the corpse laughed.

“Your efforts are
useless
, Bomani! I
killed you once, and I will easily do it again!” he vowed, his
breath, the stench of decay, fanning across Taran’s face as he
struggled to breathe. The gun fell from his hand, clattering at
Mainyu’s feet.

“No!” James yelled, throwing the ball of
energy in his hand at Mainyu’s back, singeing his robes. The God
cried out an animal shriek, dropping Taran to the ground.

The young man coughed, feeling the breath of
the corpse burn in his lungs. James formed another crackling weapon
in his hand to throw at Mainyu, but he was already running and
turning out of sight.

“What…was…that?” Taran gasped, struggling to
his feet.

James bent to help him up, supporting him as
they limped back to James’s hotel. “I swear, I’ll explain
everything when we get back to the hotel. What’s your name?”

He wheezed, rubbing the soreness from his
throat. “Taran.”

“Nice to meet you, Taran. I’m James.”

“From what you said before, this isn’t our
first meeting,” Taran accused, trying to infuse some kind of
intimidation into his face. He failed. “What the hell is going
on?”

“Soon, Taran.”

Chapter Sixteen

Somewhere in Northern France; June
30
^th
, 2012

Hours went by seeing Janie against the wall,
staring across the room with her knees pulled to her chest. Her wet
hair hung in her face, soaking through the jacket wrapped around
her bony shoulders. She didn’t know why she was still alive, having
given up the photo, and, frankly, she didn’t care. The memory of
Taran’s face in the light was fresh in her mind, lit with a
determination to get her away from hell.

Now that she was alone, she pictured him in
the dark. It was easy to pretend he’d never left when she could see
nothing beyond her own eyelids. She took to mumbling to herself,
knowing there would be no answer. She didn’t care.

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” she
whispered, rocking back and forth the way he’d done with her.
“It’ll only be a few more hours before he comes back with help.
He’ll come back. He promised.”

The pain radiating through her hip had
intensified since she’d last been dunked in the tub, this time
entirely. She didn’t know what floated in the water around her when
she was submerged, but, whatever it was, it was in her gaping wound
now. The newest man to deal with her hadn’t asked questions, merely
shoved her to the concrete bottom until she inhaled water, then
wrenched her to the surface to expel it, forcing vomit into the
water as well. The water had turned immediately red around her when
she was forced to sit up, disturbing the cloth around her hip and
tearing her wound open anew. Now, she was without it and blood
trickled from her skin, uninterrupted.

She’d refused to let herself succumb to
sleep, waiting desperately for the feverish steps and fervent
commands of police on the other side of the door to take her home.
She didn’t dare close her eyes, for fear she would miss the light
filtering in when they threw the steel door open. So far, nothing
of the sort had happened, and she was beginning to feel the effects
of her fatigue and blood loss. She’d snapped awake so many times in
the last few—minutes? Hours? She couldn’t tell—she’d lost count.
The silence was beginning to scream in her ears, pounding behind
her eyes. “I have to stay awake,” she growled, rubbing viciously at
her face.

Running out of ideas, Janie kicked around the
tray her most recent meal had come on, watching the plastic skitter
across the floor, crashing into the wall. There wasn’t a morsel of
the slop left on it when she did, since she’d licked the tray clean
hours ago. She felt better than any other day in here that she
could remember, despite her session in the tub earlier that day.
The crippling pain in her stomach had been reduced to a dull ache,
aside from the injury she had sustained from the last man’s knife,
and excitement hummed through her chest. Taran was coming back. Any
minute now…

She hated to admit it, even to herself, but
she’d expected help to arrive hours ago. She knew he must have
gotten lost, and she comforted herself with the knowledge that, for
all she knew, he could’ve only been gone an hour. A minute felt
like an eternity in here as it was and she’d stopped counting after
one thousand, two hundred, and thirty six. There was also the
undeniable chance that the guards could’ve found him. Her heart
raced, her mind finally entertaining the thought that help might
not have been coming after all.

“He’s coming back,” she chanted, returning to
rocking back and forth. “He’s coming back.”

The echo of voices in the hall snapped Janie
from sleep before she realized that her eyes had closed. She
couldn’t stand but she threw herself on her stomach, scraping her
bulbous shin against the floor as she crawled toward the door. She
stared up into the abyss where she knew the door would be, waiting
for the police to crash through it and whisk her away to a place
with food and people who loved her. When the steel portal swung
open, her jaw dropped, a wail of joy gathering in her throat.

Two indistinct forms fell into the room, one
crashing to their knees on the floor and the other falling in a
similar manner onto Janie’s back. Curling into herself, she rolled
away from the new arrivals, coughing away the tightness in her
chest. The door swung shut quickly, screeching violently as it
locked. Janie visibly deflated, her skeletal figure collapsing in
on itself while she fought off the disappointment threatening to
drown her. When she’d sufficiently gathered herself, she
straightened up and searched the darkness for the people wiggling
on the floor. Muffled screams broke the calm.

Janie fumbled for something to hold onto so
she could help them, but there was nothing, as usual. Her hand met
the rough exterior of a potato sack and the person within shook
harder, trying to free himself from his bounds. Janie tore the sack
from his head, throwing it against the wall. “Shh, shh, it’s okay.
I’m not gonna hurt you,” she promised, feeling along his face for
the tape covering his mouth. “Okay, I lied. This is gonna hurt a
little.” She got a good grip under the corner and tore it from his
mouse with a
riiiiiip
. A man’s voice cried out from the
sting.

“Who are you?” he rambled. “Where are we?
What do you want?”

Janie felt along the floor as she crawled to
find the other captive and worked at freeing her in the same way.
“I didn’t bring you here. I was kidnapped.” The girl shrieked when
the tape came off.

“Hayden!” he bellowed. “You okay, baby?”

“I’m fine,” she sniffled. “My arms are tied.”
Janie felt around for a rope, but all she found was a plastic tie
around the girl’s wrists.

“I can’t get it off, we’d need scissors,” she
apologized, carefully placing herself back on the floor. “My name’s
Janie.”

“I’m Hayden,” the girl mumbled, flopping onto
her back.

“Scottie,” the man grunted, moving himself
into a sitting position. “Where are we?”

Janie hissed as she stretched her leg out,
the way Taran had told her, to keep the rebroken bone straight. “I
have no idea. They don’t say anything about the outside in here.
How did you guys get here? Was it Natalia?”

“You know Natalia?” they demanded in
unison.

Janie shivered against the memories. “More
than I’d like to.”

“You know about Mainyu, then?” Hayden
pleaded. “Are you a…what’d he call it…a Spiritii, too?”

She just stared in the direction the other
girl’s voice had come from. “A what?”

“How many others has she got here?” Scottie
snapped, trying uselessly to make out Janie’s face as he changed
the subject.

Janie frowned, forced to remember once again.
“There was one more—”

“What happened?” Hayden interjected, thinking
the worst. “Did she…?”

She refused to allow herself to think that
that had been Taran’s fate, but the mere insinuation had her
wrapping her arms around herself, feeling herself begin to fall to
pieces. She wanted someone to hold her like Taran had done while he
was here, a luxury she’d taken for granted when he was still beside
her. Holding herself could only fill the void for so long.

“No, he got away,” she choked out. “I don’t
know when, it might have been today, maybe yesterday. We tried to
get away and he got out. I got caught.”

“What happened?” Hayden inquired.

“They dragged me back in by my hair when they
found me. I couldn’t fight them, my leg’s broken, among other
things,” Janie explained. “He’ll be back, though. He promised he’d
get me to a hospital.”

“What did they do to you?” Scottie wondered
aloud.

The face of her near-rapist flashed behind
her eyelids, forcing tears up to wash it away. “I don’t wanna talk
about it.”

“How long have you been here?”

Janie swallowed her sadness. “Six
months.”

“Jesus!” Hayden gasped. “Why?”

“They kept me for something that was recently
resolved. I think they’re going to kill me soon,” Janie deadpanned.
“I don’t know why they’ve kept me so long.”

They said nothing for a long time. “We have
to get out of here,” Scottie finally said, working tirelessly to
pull his bound arms under his legs.

“There’s no way you’ll get out,” Janie said.
“After Taran got out, they’ll be prepared for it.”

“What do
you
suppose we do about it,
then?” he roared, finally giving up on his bindings.

Janie scowled into the blackness, wishing she
could make him feel how angry he was making her. “Why don’t you
tell me about how you got here, first?”

“How do I know we can trust—” Scottie
began.

“You wouldn’t believe us if we told you,”
Hayden explained, the edge in her voice making it clear she didn’t
appreciate the way her boyfriend was acting.

“Try me,” she challenged.

Hayden bit her lip, wishing she could drop it
so they could think of a way back to Alex, Claire, and the others.
“I…I really can’t tell you, Janie. I don’t know how.”