God of Destruction (18 page)

“What the f—” Russell began as he rounded the
corner, coming into Mainyu’s view. Dropping his jaw, the meager man
shook when he raised his gun.

“Jesus,” Kierlan gasped. “What are you?”

The God barely spared him a glance, every
fiber of his otherworldly being focused on Claire. “Ziba,” he
breathed, relief coloring his tone. “I have longed for this day for
eternities.” He reached for her.

Kierlan snapped out of the trance his shock
had cast over him enough to step infinitesimally closer to her.
“What do you want?” he demanded, breaking their uninterrupted
stare. He easily snatched the gun from Russell’s trembling hands.
Gesturing to the distance between the god and the girl with his
chin, he said, “Back off, Ugly.”

Mainyu slowly met Kierlan’s determined, and
absolutely terrified, face as if he was a bug on his windshield.
“Step aside, mortal. Your earthly weapons are of no use against
me.”

“We’ll see about that when I blow a freaking
hole in your head.
What do you want
?”

The god looked away again to step closer to
Claire, who matched his step backward. “I
want
my love
incarnate. She is to come with me.”

James stood beside Kierlan, blocking Claire
completely from view, his palms crackling with blue sparks. Kierlan
and Russell stared dumbly at the energy dancing across his hands,
failing to come up with a rational excuse for it. “She’s not going
anywhere.”

Mainyu laughed. “I have waited for her too
long to bow to a mortal, or any lesser being. Try to stop me.”

He moved fast, hands gripping Claire, too
tightly, around the arms before they could blink. Kierlan’s
reaction was faster around the trigger and, with a twitch of a
finger, the flesh surrounding Mainyu’s left eye blew away with the
bullet. The God snarled at the human man, but kept his grip on
Claire, dragging her toward the window.

“Help me!” she shrieked, using all her weight
to resist him.

James said nothing as he thrust his arms out,
letting bolts of lights spring from his flesh to Mainyu’s chest
with the deafening screech of static.

The God flew across the room like Kierlan had
done earlier, hitting the wall and landing in a jumble of limbs
around his robes. Unlike the mortal who’d suffered James’s powers,
Mainyu bounced back easily, face twisted with rage. He looked for a
weakness among them, but he didn’t stand a chance without his
powers.

With another gut-wrenchingly yearning look at
Claire, he growled, in the voice of the devil, “You will realize
soon enough, young one, that now and forever, you are
mine
!”

Gathering his robes in his hand, Mainyu
inconspicuously looked toward the darkened window before he took
off running, crashing through the glass and vanishing into the
night. Gun-less and practically helpless, Russell went to follow,
standing on the windowsill. He stared down, down, down and wondered
how the last guy had managed a landing that hadn’t left him flat in
the sidewalk. Unfortunately, his wish to be away from the freak
with lightning hands took precedence over his fear of heights. He
readied himself to jump.

James was already running headlong toward the
door to pursue Mainyu when the thought struck him that Russell
might actually do it.

“Stop him!” he threw back over his
shoulder.

Kierlan ogled at the scorch marks on the
wall, courtesy of the lightning that had…
materialized
in
James’s hand. There had to be some kind of explanation. “What the
hell,” he whispered, turning his head every which way, as if seeing
the black ash in a new light would make it appear more plausible.
It didn’t change the fact that he’d just watched a man shoot bolts
of lightning from his skin.

“Cole!” James shrieked, disappearing into the
hallway.

Kierlan shook his head, entering reality once
more. He reacted quickly, shoving the gun into his waistband and
pulling the rat out of the window by the back of his shirt in one
movement, letting him fall clumsily onto the coffee table. He
couldn’t help the wicked smile that formed on his face with the
taste of revenge, especially when the flimsy wood collapsed under
Russell’s weight, leaving him stunned on the floor. Kierlan stepped
over the splinters, stooping down beside the body on the floor.

Frightened eyes stared up at him.

“I think we have some things to talk about,
Russell
,” he sang, weaving his fingers through the man’s
hair and smashing his head into the floor.

Russell cried out.

“And if you even
think
about telling
them about me,” he continued in a hush, “I’ll make you wish you
were dead!”

Chapter Fifteen

Location Unknown; June 30
^th
, 2012

The woods had gone on forever, leading only
to a silent road, walled in on both sides by trees. The darkness
hid Taran when he broke through the brush, falling on his face in
the dirt while he caught his breath. His dress shirt had lost its
original whiteness, stained by mud, sweat, and blood from Janie as
well as the minor cuts he’d gotten from thorns and branches in the
forest. The sleeves were practically shredded now and he was
shoeless, having taken them off in the cell. But he went on,
striding down the road where he hoped he would find a town.

For her.

A long time ago, Taran had been a team
player, and a damn good one at that. He’d dropped out of High
School at seventeen, escaping a house he’d had no business ever
returning to. Enlisting in the Marines had been easy, training as a
sniper had been hard, but he’d done it. Had perfected it so well he
could stay completely still at his post for days at a time, waiting
for his target. And, of course, his shot was the best of his entire
platoon.

Then, he’d gone sloppy.

Positioned in Iraq and staring at the barren
ground for two whole years had grown monotonous, even to him. As
the dirt and sand swirled behind his eyelids from his high perch,
he’d allowed himself to doze off, gun held securely against his
chest.

He’d been woken suddenly by the screech of
his commanding officer, pleading for his attention. His memory of
the mission clouded by sleep deprivation, he searched the area for
anything suspicious. By the time he realized the commotion echoing
through the city was coming from the building he was posted above,
it was too late.

The floor beneath him collapsed with the
explosion he hadn’t expected.

Ten dead. Three injured, including
himself.

Dishonorable discharge.

Desertion.

AWOL.

Realizing he could never go back to the
military career he’d left behind and without an education, he’d run
out of options. His life was killing and it was what he was good
at. That was when he’d started his life as a murdered for hire. It
paid well and he’d made a good life for himself in the city because
of it.

Then he’d gone sloppy, again.

A week ago, when he was sleeping soundly in
his posh, New York City penthouse, he hadn’t foreseen anything like
this in his future. At the time, his only plans had been in
carrying out his latest hit at the Mayor’s Charity Gala the next
day. Then, he would return home, alone. It had been at least a year
since he’d seen Natalia and five since his desertion from the
military. Natalia, who’d once tried to carry out a hit on him,
seemed to have long since given up and he’d allowed himself to stop
worrying about her lurking around every corner.

Needless to say, he’d been very wrong.

As the CEO of a company he didn’t care to
remember fell dead at his feet, after a long effort at coercing him
into the dark alley, he’d been bound from behind.

Forced against the brick wall.

All his years of training couldn’t get
Natalia off him as she tied his wrists behind his back, this time
with a desperation that was unlike her. She took him and left him
locked up and sedated for three days. Then, when he’d finally
woken, it was to Natalia shoving him into a cell. He staggered to
keep his balance.

There, he’d met Janie.

He was forced out of his thoughts by bright
headlights breaking the uninterrupted darkness, speeding in his
direction. His body warred with the decision to throw himself in
its path, pleading for help, or throw himself into the cover of the
trees. It could have very well been one of the men back at the
prison searching for him. He’d be useless to Janie if he was
captured again and desperately didn’t want to risk it. Before his
brain had come to a complete decision, his legs carried him into
the center of the road.

Waving his arms, he screamed for them to
stop.

The vehicle came to a screeching halt mere
inches before his knees and Taran breathed a heavy sigh of relief,
running to the driver’s side door. Whatever he might have hoped as
he looked through the window, he didn’t find anything positive on
the other side.

He didn’t recognize the man behind the wheel,
but his eyes could definitely recognize the gun in his hand.

The heavy door swung open, colliding with
Taran’s face and chest. He went sprawling to the pavement while the
driver stepped slowly out of the car.

“I’m surprised you got out at all, Taran,” he
muttered, stepping around the young man as he wiped the blood from
his lip. His voice was familiar, the voice of the man who’d last
taken Janie from him. “You’re completely tactless. It’s a wonder
you evaded Natalia for so long.”

He used the butt of the gun in his hand to
hit Taran in the face, shoving his head into the ground so hard he
saw stars.

Taran wished he could fall asleep, right
there. His head lolled back, eyes closing of their own accord. When
he could see only a sliver of the greenery between his cracked
lids, he glimpsed salvation.

A thick branch protruded from the dirt,
heavy, sharp, and just within his reach.

He barely needed to stretch, wrapping his
fingers around the limb. He hit the other man in the eyes.

Wailing, Vilmore fell backwards, dropping his
gun as he clawed at the stabbing pain in his eyes. Taran saw red as
he staggered to his feet, wobbling when he tried to approach
him.

He knew the man’s voice, mocking when he’d
earlier stolen Janie from his arms to do God knows what. He’d tried
to break her, returning her to him sobbing, bleeding, terrified,
shirtless…

Taran had never wanted anyone dead so badly,
not even Petrov.

He dropped to his knees on the man’s chest,
enjoying his gasps between cries of pain, blind and bleeding. “I’m
going to ask you a question, and I want you to answer. If you do, I
might not
kill
you! Get it?”

He received no answer.

Rather than exert any unnecessary force to
make him cooperate, Taran wrapped his hand around the branch again
and tore the sharp edges from his eye sockets, ripping
unmentionable gore from his face. He gave a shriek that could have
woken the dead, arching his back off the pavement while blood
spilled over his face.

“Now, before you die, I wanna know
something.” Taran doubted he could hear him over his screaming.
“Shut up, you sick bastard!” he roared. “I got a question.”

He took the whimpering below him as his
cooperation.

“Did you rape her?”

His face twitching around a sob, the man
growled, “Ya. I did.”

Taran shivered, his stomach twisting into
knots. He took him by the hair, pinning him to the ground, though
he knew there was no way he’d be going anywhere in his condition.
“Oh yeah?” he demanded.

“Ya. It was
great
,” Vilmore scorned,
baring his teeth.

Taran smashed his head back into the road.
“Where’s her tattoo?”

“She doesn’t have one,” he spat. “You got a
crush on her or something, little boy? You jealous I rode that
before you could?”

Relief washed through Taran while he
viciously bashed the man’s head into the ground, repeatedly.

When he was sure he was dead, Taran stood,
grabbing the dropped gun as he walked to the car. The keys were
already in the ignition, inviting him forward. “It’s on her hip,”
he almost laughed, ducking into the driver’s seat. Shoving the car
into gear, he stomped on the pedal, bouncing over the body in the
road. Then he continued down the road.

It became clear to him as he drove that
wherever he was, he wasn’t in New York anymore. The signs littering
the road offered no help, being that they were in something other
than English. He was forced to drive down the solitary rode with
only the hope that he would find civilization. He couldn’t be sure
he would make it anywhere, but when he found another rode veering
off this one, he realized it had to go somewhere with people. He
took it, continuing on another solitary rode toward nowhere through
the dark.

Alone with his thoughts, he let his mind
wander.

Images of what they could be doing to his
fellow captive back in that prison cell haunted his foremost
thoughts. The last of the men he’d dispatched hadn’t done it, but
there were so many others. Nothing was stopping them from taking
her from the cell and….

It was hard to believe he’d only met her four
days ago when he’d already adopted a protectiveness for her, fierce
enough to make him tear that man’s eyes from his skull. Killing was
no stranger to him, but he’d never done it for himself before.

He supposed he should feel bad; he didn’t
even have money as an excuse this time. But, the memory of her,
broken and sobbing on the floor, only made him wish he’d made that
pig’s death last longer.

Then he started passing streetlights.

After another few grueling moments, the
lights became buildings, and he whispered his gratitude to the wind
that he found anything. Unfortunately, he was still in an
unfamiliar place and had no idea where to go from here, so he
searched the streets for someone who could help him, except the
streets were relatively empty aside from the odd jogger. The first
he spotted was a man of about his age, sprinting headlong down the
sidewalk a short ways behind someone wearing, what appeared to be,
a dark bathrobe.