God of Destruction (26 page)

Taran simply nodded, smiling genuinely for
the first time all day when he envisioned Janie being safe with him
in the next few hours. He didn’t stop smiling even when he got in
the passenger’s seat, waiting for the impending shock.

He wasn’t disappointed.

James was the first to notice the empty
backseat. “Where are they?!”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Northern France; June 30
^th
, 2012

Claire had never run so fast in her life when
she heard the unmistakable sound of James realizing finding them
gone. As she sprinted headlong for the bridge coming into view,
through the fog clouding her mind, she expected her asthma to act
up, or for her legs to get sore, but it wasn’t so.

Her lungs didn’t burn like they usually
would, and her body had never felt better than it did in that mile
dash. She could’ve continued like that for the rest of the night,
until she saw a car come into view, parked against the wall
overlooking the dark waters below. The headlights illuminated them
as she and Alex came closer.

“Claire, wait for me!” Alex screamed,
struggling to catch up.

The blonde couldn’t tell what had come over
her, but she knew that, whatever it was, she liked it. She never
wanted to feel her normal weakness again.

“Claire!” Alex repeated, not knowing who sat
in the waiting car and having her doubts on whether she really
wanted to know, after all. “Stop! Wait!”

Claire didn’t want to stop. She wanted to be
in the catacombs, facing Mainyu and saving the day. If that meant
she had to go through a couple guys to get there, she didn’t
foresee a problem. She reveled in the feeling of invincibility for
another moment as she slowed to a stop, watching for whoever sat in
the van to make the first move. As she did, Alex joined her,
shaking with a struggle to catch her breath.

They stood, mutely, in the glare of the
headlights for a long moment, Alex’s legs wobbling while she
wondered what their next step would be. “What’s your plan?” she
asked, squinting to see through the shadowy windshield.

Claire stood proudly erect, ready to take on
the world. Her black eyes slanted to Alex to tell her so, but, when
their eyes met, Alex remembered the odd color in her friend’s eyes.
“Your eyes.”

Claire’s face twitched, a single word roaring
in her ears.
Witch!

She was suddenly overcome with the urge to
strike Alex across the face, to cause her pain like Alex had done
to her….

She shook her head, remembering. It was just
Alex,
her best friend
. When her eyes met Alex’s startled
stare again, she was breathing heavily, the effects of her asthma
beginning to claim her from the run. Just like that, she suddenly
wasn't feeling so fearless anymore.

The hands she’d poised over the knives in her
pockets fell limply to her sides.

“Claire!” Alex gasped, winding an arm around
the girl’s shoulders. “Breathe. In through your nose, slow.” When
the blonde looked up into her face, Alex was pleasantly surprised
to see the glimmer of blue irises sparkling back at her.

The sound of slamming car doors and a van
door rolling open forced Alex’s eyes upward. She didn’t get the
chance to fight before a bag was pulled forcibly over her head,
along with Claire beside her.

The two of them were thrown unceremoniously
into the back of the van. Claire struggled harder to catch her
breath, given the obstruction of the thick sack.

No one spoke until the car engine roared to
life beneath them. Even then, it wasn’t a voice they wanted to hear
that broke the silence.

“Welcome back,” the thick Czech accent
greeted coldly, too close to Claire than she would have liked.

Alex mumbled a few choice profanities into
the thick material of the bag over her head. Claire heard the
distinct smack of bone on bone when Natalia’s fist struck Alex’s
cheek.

“Perhaps you need to see what is at stake if
you act up,” Natalia murmured pleasantly, tearing the bags from the
captives’ heads.

The first sight that greeted Claire when her
eyes opened was the face of an unfamiliar man, a gun fixed in his
arms. Finding the real world a much darker place than she recalled,
she closed her eyes, breathing in the fresh air and waiting for the
van to stop. She was painfully aware of the weapons she hid on her
person for the entirety of the journey.

After an immeasurably long trek, the van
slowed to a stop. She opened her eyes when she felt a fist clench
the back of her shirt into its grip, the roar of the sliding door
snarling in her ears. Suddenly, the floor of the van fell out from
beneath her. Her body soared through the air.

She hit the ground, narrowly avoiding the
knives in her pockets as she did. As the wind was knocked out of
her, Claire was unable to speak her protests, her lungs caught up
in a vicious bout of coughing.

“No!” Natalia snapped, throwing Alex out of
the van to join her. “You idiots! Pick her up. She is not to be
harmed!”

“Ya, boss,” a man’s voice countered from the
door of the van as the henchmen stepped off the edge of the trunk.
Claire was abruptly lifted by one of the men from the van and set
on her feet, though she was far from free. Hands like iron wrapped
around her upper arms, holding her firmly in place when she tried
to move in any direction but where they were leading her. As her
eyes adjusted to the darkness, she found the entrance to the
Parisian Catacombs glaring down at her, partially collapsed and
ominous.

Claire watched as Natalia roughly tore Alex
off the ground and led her into the catacombs ahead of her.

“W…wait!” Claire pleaded, sliding against the
ground as she tried to fight against the arms binding her.

“Get moving,” the man holding her ordered,
placing a well-aimed shove against her shoulders. Claire could do
nothing but stumble into the doorway, catching herself on the
splintered, wooden frame. It creaked under her weight.
Instinctively, she cringed away, falling back into the arms of her
captor.

Moments later, she was immersed in the
darkness of the tunnels, stuck between Natalia and the remaining
henchmen while they journeyed into the unknown. For a while, that
was all she saw: darkness. It seemed like an eternity they spent
ambling carefully through the underground to the sizzle of faulty
electrical wiring in the distance. Finally, the first hint of light
glowed at the end, the illumination stemming from the circle of
torches she and Alex remembered all too well.

“My Lord!” Natalia called as she and Alex
broke through the final step of pitch blackness. Claire and the
others quickly followed, entering the circular room. If there’d
been any sound being made before their arrival, their presence
ended it completely. Silent. Painfully silent.

If Claire’s eyes hadn’t found him
immediately, she never would have known he was watching them.
Mainyu didn’t breathe, the mortal process unnecessary in sustaining
his supernatural body.

Claire was startled to find his eyes already
on her when she arrived, their gaze flickering immediately to her
face like magnets. She writhed in her captor’s grip, fighting to
run in the other direction. When she couldn’t, and her feet slid
ever-closer to the god, she shook with terror, sinking further into
the chest of the man holding her.

Soon enough, they stood toe-to-toe, the deity
towering forebodingly over her.

“My Lord?” Natalia asked, yanking Alex
forward by the arm. The younger girl fell helplessly to her knees,
sneering up at the god with disdain. “What do you want me to do
with this one?”

Mainyu barely spared a sideways glance at the
mortal girl, his eyes only for Claire while she cowered before him.
He brushed his fingertips up and down her bare arm, gritting his
teeth when she cringed away from him. Narrowing his eyes, he
demanded, “Why do you fear me so, young one? I mean
you
no
harm.”

The emphasis he added made it clear that
Claire couldn’t trust him. Rather than answer, she stared at Alex,
fear evident in her eyes. She tried not to give him any reason to
suspect her next move as she inconspicuously ran her hand over the
knife handle protruding from her pocket. “I’m n…not afraid of
y…you,” she gasped, her stammer revealing itself once more.

He threw his head back in a barking laugh.
“Your voice would say otherwise!”

While his eyes were directed away from her,
she pulled the knife from her pocket with a flourish, forgetting
her reservations for the split second it took to plunge the blade
deep into Mainyu’s chest.

He didn’t move, but his laughter abruptly
dying.

Claire leapt away, waiting for his body to
fall in a heap at her feet. When that didn’t happen, she studied
his face. Many emotions flickered across it, not one of them being
pain, while he stared down at the wooden handle jutting from where
his heart should’ve been. Painfully slowly, he dragged his eyes
upward, finally meeting her horrified gaze.

“My Lord?” Natalia repeated, unmoved by the
mortal wound. She gestured to the human girl beside her
expectantly. Alex couldn’t take her eyes off the kitchen knife,
buried deeply in the god’s flesh, wondering, hoping, if this was
the end of their adventure.

Mainyu didn’t look at them. “Put her with the
others.”

Alex knew immediately that her hopes had gone
unheard. “No!” she bawled, diving in Claire’s direction. Natalia
looped her arm around the younger girl’s waist, effortlessly
dragging her toward the other captives while she kicked and
screamed.

She’d promised to keep Claire alive. She’d
promised. As she felt the cold steel of a shackle close around her
ankle, she knew she might fail.

A groan on the floor distracted Alex from the
scene unfolding before her eyes. Remembering Hayden and the girl
Taran had sent them to find, she struggled to turn, instantly
finding the two bodies crumpled on the floor. Her cousin lay across
the room, shackled as well and watching her with weary eyes. A
bruise swelled her cheek, but that was the extent of the damage she
could see on Hayden’s person. Alex breathed a sigh of relief.

Much closer to her, however, was the small
form of a red-headed girl, curled up against the wall, as tightly
as she could with an obviously mangled leg. She was bedecked in a
tattered pair of black leggings and a thick suit jacket at least
five sizes too big for her. In the light of the torches around the
room, she could see the patches of blue, grey, and green staining
her swollen face and, also, that the tiny girl was unshackled.

Mainyu wrapped his hand around the knife and,
with one swift tug, pulled the offending blade from his flesh.
Claire gasped, turning to run when she saw the blade bubbling with
thick black tar. Before he left her sight, she watched the hole in
his flesh close, none of the… ‘blood’ he’d spilled remaining on his
chest.

“Jesus!” she screamed, taking off in the
other direction.

She made it two steps before the back of her
shirt caught in someone’s claws, sending her plummeting to the
floor with a grunt of protest. Her back smacked against the cold
ground, her skull soon to follow. She stared up at the ceiling, her
head spinning with the ache radiating through it. Suddenly, her
view of the dark ceiling was obstructed by the last person she
wanted to see.

Mainyu glared down at her, searching her face
for something that wasn’t there. “You seem to have forgotten the
lesson I taught you during our last meeting.”

He wrenched her to her feet by the back of
her neck, dragging her easily to the stone slab on the center of
the floor. Claire’s eyes widened substantially when they took in
Scottie’s limp body splayed there, eyes open and unseeing, and his
last moments of terror forever replaying on his face. She tried
unsuccessfully to look away when Mainyu reached out a bare foot and
kicked the body easily off the slab. Her stomach roiled with nausea
as she heard Scottie crash loudly against the wall of human
remains.

Mainyu weighed heavily against her back,
forcing her to her knees. “I think it’s time to remind you,” he
bellowed, placing his hands on either side of her face.

“No!” she mumbled, her cheeks pushed together
by his rough palms.

“What are you doing to her?” Alex demanded,
throwing herself toward the slab. Each time, the shackle caught on
her ankle and she fell back to the floor.

Natalia, leaning heavily against the wall,
kicked her into stillness without a second thought. “Silence,” she
challenged, smirking down at Alex when she scowled in
objection.

“Don’t t…touch her!” Claire yelled, hearing
the struggle behind her.

Natalia tore her pleasant face away from
Alex’s glare, fixing instead on Claire’s back. “Do not worry
yourself, My Lady,” she said, as she’d been directed to address
her. “They are here merely as…insurance.”

Mainyu whispered something under his breath,
his eyes going black with the buzzing mass inside of him. Claire
fought against him, her efforts in vain against his otherworldly
strength. She didn’t see him when his jaw dropped, the buzzing
black oozing off his tongue like a snake. She did, however, see the
snake-like mass crawl up her arm and try, fruitlessly, to force
entrance through her mouth.

Groaning in objection, she pursed her lips,
viciously shaking her head.

Finding no sanctuary through her lips, the
buzzing snake split in two, slithering up into her nostrils.

“No!” Claire said, squeezing her eyes shut.
Her nose burned as she inhaled quickly, her breaths becoming slow
and even. The seconds ticked on without change.