Threads That Bind (Havoc Chronicles Series Book 1) (26 page)

Immediately, I felt my breath tightening. I gasped as panic flooded through me. I managed to point to the Jeep and croak out the word “purse”.

Eric ran to the Jeep and grabbed my purse. I fumbled through the contents until I found the EpiPen. By now, great black dots were floating across my vision and I desperately fought to cling to consciousness.

I pulled off the cap and slid the injector out of the tube, but I couldn’t seem to get my fingers to pull off the safety release. The black spots in my vision grew larger and larger until they completely engulfed me.

***

Pain. Searing pain in my thigh.

My eyes flew open, and I saw Eric pull the EpiPen away from my leg. My thoughts were jumbled and confused. Why was I on the ground? Why had Eric used my EpiPen?

And then I ‘zerked.

But this was no ordinary ‘zerking. Horrible burning rage coursed through my body. An anger stronger than I had ever before felt. I wanted to break, destroy, kill. I was like a child on a makeshift raft being hurled along on top of a tidal wave of emotion – I had no control and no way to stop myself.

I leapt to my feet, my Berserk-enhanced muscles feeling tight and powerful. There was nothing I couldn’t lift, nothing I couldn’t destroy. I was power, rage, and destruction in human form.

In the back of my mind I vaguely noticed Eric ‘zerking, but I didn’t really care. I rushed to the trees and ripped up a tall pine as easily as plucking a blade of grass. I swung it into the other trees, watching the wood splinter apart.

I gloried in the destruction.

A hand gripped my arm and in one motion I yanked myself free and turned toward my attacker. It was Eric. Anger surged through me. He was supposed to be my friend, and now he betrayed me?

I grabbed him and lifted him off the ground. With all the force I could muster, I hurled him into the trees hearing the satisfying crack of flesh connecting with wood.

I turned around, looking for something else to destroy.

Powerful arms gripped me from behind, pinning my arms to my waist - or at least trying. With hardly any effort I threw out my arms, breaking the grip of my attacker.

I spun around with my elbow out, catching Eric in the head. He flew across the meadow, smashing through three trees before finally stopping thirty yards away.

He pulled himself shakily to his feet. He shook his head and then charged, tackling me. We slid across the ground, digging a big furrow as grass and flowers were thrown to either side by our passing.

We ended up by the picnic blanket. I turned my head and saw that my purse had been knocked over, spilling the contents on the ground. A bone disc caught my eye. I brought up my legs and kicked Eric off of me. While he flew through the air, I grabbed the disc and pressed the button to open my varé.

Eric lay sprawled on the ground, partially supported by a tree he had slammed into but had not completely knocked over. His eyes widened as he saw me charging towards me. In addition to all the sounds and sensory input, a new smell reached me.

Fear.

I thrilled in it.

I flung myself at Eric, swinging the varé down for a killing blow.

But instead of the inviting feel of my blade slicing through flesh, I heard a hard crack and felt the bone jarring impact of the varé being stopped short.

Eric held his bone staff over his head, blocking my varé. The strain of exertion was etched upon his face. I was stronger than him.

And I would kill him.

“Madison,” he said, his voice breathy and weak. “Please don’t. You don’t want to do this.”

 But he was wrong. I did want to do this. I wanted to kill and destroy.

Didn’t I?

And like a candle guttering out in the wind, my anger was gone. Completely and entirely, without any traces or a gradual calming.

I dropped the varé as the ‘zerking left me and I once again returned to my normal self.

Collapsing to the ground I cried, huge gasping sobs wracking my body. What had I done? What had happened to me?

After a few seconds, Eric lifted me up and pulled me into an embrace. We stayed like that for several minutes before he pulled back to look at me.

“Are you back?” he asked.

I nodded. “I think so. What happened?”

“I’m not sure,” said Eric. “You were trying to use that injector thing and passed out, so I figured it out and injected you. Then you went - pun completely intended - berserk.”

“But the anger and hate,” I said. “I’ve never felt that before.”

“Never?”

“No, never.”

“Interesting,” said Eric.

“Interesting? Why?”

“Because anger and hate is what all Berserkers feel. Except you, apparently. I wonder why?”

“If that’s what you feel when you ‘zerk, then I don’t know how any of you do it. How do you keep from killing everyone around you?”

“Like I told you before, the first ‘zerks tend to be the worst, then you learn to think through the fog of anger and to keep your mind clear.”

Eric let me go and picked up his staff, compacting it once again.

“What was in that injector anyway?”

“Epinephrine – adrenalin,” I clarified. “I’m allergic to bee stings and the EpiPen keeps me from going into anaphylactic shock and dying.”

“Adrenalin, huh?” Eric said, his eyes were distant, clearly thinking. “That makes sense.”

“What makes sense?”

“The adrenalin triggering the ‘zerking. Strong emotions always accompany a ‘zerk. It’s possible that a Berserker’s powers are activated not by the emotions themselves, but by adrenalin in the blood. I’ve never really thought about it because our powers seemed more like magic than science. Still, it doesn’t seem like a particularly pleasant experience. I mean, the side effects seem a bit extreme.”

I blushed. “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing how lame it sounded. How could I even begin to apologize for almost killing Eric in a mad fog of hate?

Eric grinned and shrugged. “Don’t worry, it’s not the first time a girl has flown into a rage and tried to kill me. I doubt it will be the last.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. It felt good after the stress of what had just happened. But the laughter quickly turned back into tears.

Eric lifted my chin. “Hey, no crying,” he said. “Besides, look at the bright side – you completely missed the Jeep. Now we don’t have to walk home.”

The final few days before the Solstice flew by in a blur of preparations. Dad and Rhys had selected an isolated hilltop about fifty miles northwest of Woodbridge to set the trap, Shing and Aata were working on some sort of new weapon for me to use, and Mallika and Kara were preparing to cast a snare.

The plan was to put me in an isolated spot in the middle of the woods that would be easily defensible - then leave me stranded by myself. Since Osadyn clearly wanted my blood, we hoped that once I was alone he would come for me. When he attacked, I just had to stay alive long enough for the rest of the Berserkers to come back and fight him.

The real trick was to figure out how to lure Osadyn out of hiding. I had to appear vulnerable enough to be tempting, but avoid the whole blood draining thing.

Rhys still didn’t approve of the plan to use me as bait. At first, his over-protective attitude annoyed me, but the closer we got to the Winter Solstice, the more I began to think he might be the only sane one here.

The day before the Solstice, we all drove out to the site for a walk through. There was no access road to get there, so we parked at a trail head several miles away and traveled in on foot. Mallika and Kara were already at the site casting the snare, so Dad was the only one who couldn’t ‘zerk. I offered to carry him, but I could tell by the expression on his face that the thought of being carried by his sixteen-year-old daughter wasn’t very appealing. He opted to ride with Aata instead.

Together we ran through several miles of dense forest. From the looks of things, this place definitely met the isolated requirement - I couldn’t even get any cell phone reception. There were no paths, tracks, or other signs of human use.

Until we got to the hill.

The hill stretched out a quarter mile and rose about fifty feet in elevation at the highest point. It had once been completely covered by trees, but now they had been cleared away, leaving the top of the hill littered with stumps and holes. The excavated trees had been sharpened like stakes and stuck into the ground at an angle, facing outwards. The base of the hill was surrounded by a large trench and a wall of dirt. It looked vaguely like a sand castle a small kid might make at the beach – only life sized.

We walked over to the trench and climbed the earthen wall. Looking down I could see that the Berserkers had dug the trench seven or eight feet down and ten feet wide. Inside the trench were a series of black rope-like tendrils – a snare.

“The first line of defense is the dirt wall surrounding the hill,” Dad said. “It’s not much, but since we were digging the trench for the snare, we figured we might as well leave it there.”

We climbed over the wall and walked across the trench on a makeshift plywood bridge that had been laid across the top. We walked in a circle, following the trench until we found Mallika and Kara. Kara was in the trench, her arms out, fingers splayed wide with black tendrils oozing outward, and sweat pouring down her face. Mallika sat outside the trench nearby, looking exhausted. Her face was gaunt and her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. I knew she was much older than I was, but this was the first time I had seen her look old. Rhys hurried over and began whispering to her, his eyes questioning. I wanted to join him and to check on Mallika, but there was something about their whispered conversation that seemed private, a matter between Berserker and Binder, so I stayed back.

Dad continued talking so I stayed with the tour while Rhys assessed her status. “The second, and most important, line of defense is the snare. We will cover the entire trench with plywood and dirt. It should be strong enough to let the Bringers past, but weak enough to collapse when Osadyn tries to cross it. Once he has crossed, he will be stuck in the snare and we can bind him.” He looked back at Mallika and Rhys. “Assuming that our Binder can maintain consciousness?”

“I’ll be fine,” said Mallika. Her voice sounded strong and confident, even if she did look like she would keel over if someone accidentally breathed too heavily near her. “Casting a snare is never easy, and this is by far the largest snare I have ever seen done, or even heard of being attempted.” She straightened and glanced back at Kara, who had her eyes closed in concentration. “But we will be done in time.”

Dad led the way to the sharpened stakes sticking out of the hillside. “The stakes, like the dirt wall are here simply to slow down the fight so you don’t get overwhelmed before the Berserkers arrive. Bone would be better, but since we cleared the top of the hill to give better visibility, Shing pointed out the defensive use of the cut down trees.”

We walked up a little higher, but still a good hundred feet from the top of the hill. Here there was a ring of boxes every couple of feet, circling the entire hill. Each box was made of metal and roughly a foot in every dimension. Holes had been dug into the sides of the hill and the boxes partially buried so that only one side was fully visible.

“These,” said Dad, “are your main line of defense. A little surprise that Shing and Aata developed – a bone bomb. Each box is packed with an explosive charge, but in addition the charge, the boxes are filled with hundreds of bits of sharpened bone. When the charge goes off, the bone will fly forward tearing, whatever’s in front of it to bits.”

“We tested it on a few Bringers this week,” said Aata. “It was beautiful!” He winked at me. “They’ll get the job done, no worries.”

“The optimum range is approximately ten feet,” said Shing. “If you detonate it too far away and you don’t get the proper force, but too close and you will not get a good dispersal.”

Dad held up a small box. “This is the detonator. I’ll show you how to use it later.”

We climbed to the top of the hill and looked out at the surrounding forest. Ignoring the destruction of the hill we were on, the view was spectacular. Because of the heat, the trees had held onto their leaves much longer than usual, and the foliage was just now changing colors.

But tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow this would no longer be a peaceful place of beauty, but a war zone. I was trying to remain calm, but now that the time was almost here, I was nervous. I had felt nauseated all day, and now my stomach felt like it had angry weasels fighting in it.

“And the final line of defense,” said Dad, “is you.” He gave me what I knew was supposed to be a reassuring smile, but it just made my stomach weasels writhe more fiercely. “Your job is to fight off the Bringers until Osadyn comes after you. If all goes according to plan, Osadyn will fall through the covering of the pit and into the snare. Then we can bind him and put all this behind us.”

For the next half hour, Dad and the other Berserkers discussed where they would be waiting and what strategies to use once they arrived. Since it really didn’t require any input from me, I joined Mallika and Kara near the trench. Mallika had traded positions with Kara and was now down in the pit weaving the snare. Kara lay collapsed on the ground with her eyes closed. She was breathing – barely – but that was the only way I could tell she was alive.

I watched Mallika for a few minutes as the thin black tendrils oozed from her fingers. I felt an energy coming from her. It was part of that new sense I had developed that let me know when Berserkers were using their powers, or when Bringers were near. The feeling I got with Mallika casting the snare was different than either of those, but somehow familiar.

Closing my eyes, I held out my hands with the fingers splayed apart as I had seen Mallika and Kara do. I concentrated on the feeling I was getting from Mallika and I imagined black tendrils coming out of my hands. After a moment I felt a strong pulsing throb in my fingers.

I opened my eyes. Thick black cables an inch in diameter were shooting out of my fingers. I was so startled that I lost concentration and the cables broke off, dissipating into black smoke. I glanced around, but Kara still appeared half dead and Mallika was so focused on her weaving that she hadn’t noticed my experiment.

I wanted to ask what I had done. Why had I sent out thick cables rather than slender tendrils like Mallika and Kara? What good were thick cables when I needed fine tendrils to weave a net? Clearly I had done something wrong, but I had no idea how to correct it and Mallika and Kara were already so overwhelmed that it would be selfish to ask them to finish the snare
and
train me in my new Binder powers.

Rather than disturb them, I made my way back over to Dad and the Berserkers, who were still going over strategy.

Dad glanced over when I joined the group and gave me a quick smile. “Good, you’re back. Aata is going to show you how to work the detonator.”

I sighed. I loved my dad, but I didn’t like his tendency to get all über-bossy when dealing with Berserker matters. I knew he had my best interests at heart, but when he got stressed he started barking out commands rather than including me in the process.

Aata showed me the small black box that controlled the bone bombs. His explanation was perfectly adequate, but he kept looking over in the direction of Kara and Mallika. I could tell he was worried.

“She’ll be fine,” I said, working hard to keep the smile off my face. It was cute to see how much he cared.

“What do you mean?” he asked, a startled look on his face. “What are you talking about?”

“Kara,” I said. “She’ll be fine. You keep looking over at her. I was just there and Mallika was taking her turn while Kara slept.”

“Well,” he said, clearly unnerved that I had called him out about Kara. “Yeah, I mean, uh, of course she’ll be okay. I was just checking to see the status of the snare.”

“Okay, Aata, the
snare
will be fine,” I said.

Aata fixed me with a penetrating gaze before a huge grin erased his serious look. “She told you, didn’t she?” he asked.

“She may have mentioned something about her feelings for a certain Berserker, but I can’t seem to remember which one she was referring to...”

“I’m worried that Kara and Mallika are extending themselves too far on this,” he said, the seriousness returning to his expression. “I know this is our best chance and we have to put everything into it, but it makes me nervous.”

 We spent the next few hours finishing the preparations. Once Kara and Mallika had finished the snare, the rest of us laid sheets of plywood across the trench, completely covering it. We then piled on dirt, and by the time we were done, you couldn’t tell that there was a trench there at all.

We carried Kara and Mallika back to the cars – Aata conveniently ended up carrying Kara – and everyone went home to clean up, rest, and meet up at our house for dinner that night.

After we ate, Eric pulled me aside.

“I just wanted to thank you for the other day,” he said. “I haven’t talked about that for years, and I appreciated you listening to me.” His lips quirked into a smile. “Even if you did try to kill me.”

Before I could think of a response, he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Then he left. I watched him walk away, my thoughts and emotions spinning around like debris in a hurricane.

If I lived to be a thousand – which as a Berserker didn’t sound so farfetched any more – I doubted I would ever understand boys.

***

The next day was the calm before the storm. All the preparations had been made and there was nothing to do but wait. Shing, Aata, and Rhys came over that morning, while Eric stayed behind to watch over Mallika and Kara as they slept.

I was glad he wasn’t there because I still didn’t know what to do about Eric’s kiss - it was technically a kiss, as lips were involved, even though it was just a peck on the cheek.  Clearly he was interested in me, but I didn’t really feel the same way about him. He was reckless, crazy, irreverent, and arrogant. But all that seemed to be a façade hiding the real Eric who was vulnerable and sweet. I finally got a glimpse of that Eric, but it was just such a small part of my experience with him that it was hard to ignore the brash exterior. 

At three o’clock Dad announced that it was time to go. Everything was already packed, so there was nothing left to do but to say goodbye to Mom and leave.