Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5 (30 page)

Not yet,
the mocking voice whispered, creeping out of the darkness that shifted and eddied within me, a molten pit.
Not yet.

And then my chance was lost.

General Som and I battled once more across the canyon floor, but I was flagging—fast it seemed, faster than I should. Now the darkness was lost in laughter, a rich and rolling pleasure that slowed the blood in my veins and weighed down my bones. I could barely lift the sword, and the pleasure of my pain was so bright and full and once again…so strangely familiar that I left my side unguarded, flinching back only at the last moment as General Som’s blade raked across my arm, laying open layers of my shirt and drawing blood.

“
You fool,”
the voice in my head sneered. A familiar voice. My voice.
“You were never the fighter you should have been, never strong enough to make your own decisions. And now you will die for it.”

“No!” I gritted out, bringing the Honjo up to strike at General Som, startling her. She’d seen my blood and could taste the win. “I will not die!”

Som’s eyes flew wide as I spun, moving faster than I could have imagined. I struck and parried and struck again, and she fell back, her eyes shifting, her face flushed, her arms spinning as her hands darted in and out, the magic in her own sword finally coming to the fore.

But my focus was my undoing as my foot struck hard upon the earth and the unsteady terrain shifted beneath me, distracting my attention from our deadly flashing blades. I flailed forward with an ungainly lunge and clipped General Som’s hand, sending her sword flying even as she whipped back at me, a dagger now in her grip, her eyes fierce with loathing.

“You’re already dead!” she snarled, and plunged the dagger deep into my gut.

I fell to my knees, stunned, the Honjo loosening in my grip as the pain and blackness of General Som’s dagger revealed itself as a magical weapon crafted with deadly cunning. Pure evil leached into my bones, but General Som could’ve had no idea that pure evil was there waiting to receive its brethren. When her blade nicked the deep wellspring of Armaeus’s dark power I flung both arms out and back, consumed with the firestorm of energy as I gave myself over fully to the rage coursing through me.

My own doubt no longer spoke in the madness of that roar, no longer taunted me.

But that didn’t mean there wasn’t any voice.

“Sara!” Nikki screamed.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The blade shoved deep within my abdomen twisted sharply as General Som spit a curse at me, and pain exploded in a ball of blue and purple light. I gasped, but there was no more breath within me to cry out, to deny the truth of what was happening. The surge of evil crested, then spilled forth, with nothing left to stem the tide.

Som turned her blade on Nikki, and I realized in a heartbeat that my dearest friend had roared forward with nothing but her fists and the scabbard of my sword—no guns, no storming the castle—against a woman who had no honor, a woman made up more of drugs and hate than magic or sinew and blood.

But I was made of magic, at least for now. I had drawn the darkest power into myself for exactly this reason. I flipped over on my back, agony ripping through me, and reached out my hand toward Nikki as General Som dove at her, pushing everything I had into the burst.

Nikki caught that power full in the stomach, the force of it lifting her off her feet even as she swung the scabbard of the Honjo Masamune at Som. The burst of fire that raced along the scabbard slashed across the general’s face, melting her skin and making her scream. Nikki struck again and again, the fire burning through her but not damaging her that I could see, though my own pain lurched and tumbled around in the great dark hole that General Som had rent inside me, a hole that could no longer contain Armaeus’s dark magic.

I staggered upright as Nikki spun away from Som, but this was not Nikki’s fight to wage. Not her battle to finish.

I held the Honjo Masamune high. “General Som!” I roared.

This time the burst of Armaeus’s power swelling inside me was infinitely bigger, stronger. When Som wheeled toward me, I didn’t hesitate. I had greater forces behind me, before me and above me, and I willed them all to bend to my command.

This battle, it was over. Magic was here, I was here, and General Som would not live to draw another breath. So was it etched in my black-coated bones; so would it be.

The general leapt, and I leapt with her, but in that same movement, I threw the benevolent sword, the Honjo Masamune. This time, it did not evade its target but sang straight and true toward the heart of its opponent. Som lifted her own sword to protect herself, and the Muramasa blade shattered into a dozen shards. Its violent magic crackled through the broken pieces, galvanizing them and turning them on General Som herself.

She twisted and the benevolent blade shot by her into the bright sun, while the shards of General Som’s sword buried themselves into her body…

Stealing even her screams.

I sank to the ground, surrounded by utter silence.

I’d won.

I’d lost.

Everything I had wanted, I had gotten, only nothing was good, nothing was right. Because something dark and dead now hung in my bones, refusing to let go. Armaeus had said the darkness would pass out of me when its need was past. He’d said it would go.

It wasn’t leaving, though.

I fell forward, even as the buzzing of a thousand angry hornets filled my ears. In my mind’s eye, I saw the Five of Swords, and my heart shriveled in my chest. A lone warrior standing on a rain-swept field, gathering up his swords as those he had destroyed turned and limped away from him. I had won this battle for the House of Swords. I had kept it from Gamon’s hands.

But there was no victory here.

Gamon was not defeated, only Som was. Lost, broken General Som, a warrior betrayed by her own thirst for war. She was Gamon’s minion, but where one follower failed, another would rise up. And another, and another, until there was only endless battle and endless pain.

“Sara—” A voice cracked over me, and somehow it was Nikki once again. I blinked my eyes open and saw her standing there, her face black with smoke and soot, but there was no blood upon her, no blood. And her mouth was split open into a wild, feral grin.

In her hands, she held the Honjo Masamune—which she brandished toward me. “Get up and take your sword,” she whispered. Her words spoke through me and into me, coming not from her but from the Honjo itself.

I climbed to my feet. Nikki gave me the sword, and everything dark within me screamed in torment, as the lightness of the sword raged against the darkness of Armaeus’s magic. I had won. But I had lost. I was whole and yet still broken. And only madness lay in wait for me. Madness and endless, aching loss.

Without thinking, I turned the Honjo Masamune upon myself and plunged it into my abdomen.

Magic arced through me, and everything inside went up in a fiery conflagration. The benevolent sword did not resist my action, it did not stop but pierced me swift and sure, seeking and finding all that was dark and miserable that had leached inside my soul, and burning it clean.

An eternity seemed to pass as I sagged forward on that blade, as screams and cries mounted around me. I looked deep into the constellation etched on the blade’s surface and saw a path picked out in the stars, as if it was a map.

A map…

“Enough, Sara.”
The voice that spoke to me across the heavens was high and full, the softest murmur beyond the stars. It was a female voice, but something infinitely more than that, larger than a planet, deeper than a void. I felt the gentle touch of a hand caressing my face, drifting back my hair from where it was plastered against my brow.
“There will always be more to suffer. It is enough.”

The whisper of her touch sent a shiver of sensation through me, rippling through my forehead and curling along my spine. The darkness wrenched within me turned to hoarfrost and light, a brilliant winter’s day—

“Sara…”
The word floated over me, the softest mist, and I blinked open my eyes.

In front of me were more people than I would have thought possible.

There was Nikki, of course, the closest. She was clutching the Honjo Masamune to her breast. The sword looked as pristine as the day I had found it, and I frowned down at my stomach, confused. There was no blood. I was no longer wounded.

More sounds rushed in around me. The chatter of people, the shouts and calls of official voices over bullhorns, insisting that we stop, that we desist, that we scatter, that force would be used and that this was private property.

Another wave of noise broke through—a siren, as a battered sedan and an emergency vehicle bumped into the canyon, past the ring of black SUVs and the scatter of people standing beside them.

I smiled as Brody shot out of his vehicle and sprinted across the valley. He ignored everyone, pounding directly up to me, only to stagger back when he got within three feet. “Jesus Christ, Sara, what’d you blow up?” he demanded.

I looked down and only then saw the scorch marks in the earth all round me, radiating out from my body like the rays of the sun. I opened my mouth, but speech wouldn’t come. I stood, and my clothes fell in hunks and pieces from my body, holes burned in so many places that Brody was barking again, and somehow someone produced a reflective blanket. I took a few wobbly steps toward him and Nikki, and half collapsed into their arms, my feet no longer working right.

Nikki steadied me, then bent and slid the Honjo Masamune into its scabbard, the belt also somehow unmarred by fire or blood or gore. She handed the Honjo to me, and I somehow managed to tie the sword back onto my body. I rested my hand on its hilt, my thumb pressed against the guard. As if I had always worn it, always would wear it.

Jiao stepped away from the knot of police cars, leaving two other generals who stood in respectful attention before the gesticulating cops. She seemed not to notice the scorched earth as she came to stand by me. I looked around but could see nothing of General Som’s body.

She followed my gaze and gave me a deferent nod. “We have already created a story that will suit any seeking an explanation, Madam Wilde,” she said. “The technology that Gamon had set in place to blank this section of earth from satellite view was attached to General Som’s body with a set of transmitters. She was the center, for where she was, you would follow, whether she engaged you here or in another location. The box canyon apparently was not a good choice. The unit overheated, exploding in a highly concentrated blast that disintegrated her body and much of the surrounding earth.”

Jiao gestured to the blackened ground, as if I needed any further explanation. “She died instantly.”

“She—” I swung my gaze to Jiao, shaking my head. “Her sword,” I managed.

“A fierce blade, to not have succumbed to the blast.” Jiao held up a hand, and a man stepped forward, proffering the sword. General Som’s Muramasa sword—no longer shattered into a dozen pieces, but pure and clean. Jiao touched the hilt with appreciation. “For centuries, a blade has guarded the shrine of Buddha in Angkor Wat, it would seem. It is fitting that a sword crafted for brutal death should seek its rest there, at last. It is our hope that this gift of faith to the temple will benefit both the shrine and the sword, each according to their needs.”

She turned back to me. “We came as soon as we could.” Her smile faltered. “General Som had given me coordinates for the usurper’s attack on the other side of the city. Even in her last act, she deceived me. And there is no telling how much further her deception went.”

Except, I already knew that. Knew what Som had done to the house, to Annika.

I stayed silent.

“We need to get you to a hospital,” Brody broke in, his words gruff with anger. “And then probably to jail.” He scowled over at Nikki. “You attacked four cops, Nikki. Four cops who were wearing regulation LVMPD uniforms.”

“They so weren’t cops,” Nikki said, reaching ou for me again, her touch ginger. I pulled the blanket around me, grateful for the barrier between me and the rest of the world. “I bet you haven’t found those guys either, have you?”

“We have not. As far as we know, they crawled off and died somewhere, making you both the subject of a homicide investigation.”

Still, Brody’s voice held no heat, and Nikki pushed him on the shoulder. “You’re just mad because you missed the fight.”

“A fight on national park lands, utilizing possible illegal weaponry and advanced tech weapons that are going to be lighting up the desks of every law enforcement agency from here to DC? Yeah, I think that’s a fight I’m awfully glad I didn’t see with my own eyes. Especially since we don’t have any bodies.”

I winced. There may not have been a body for them to collect, but I knew the truth. I knew the reality behind the spin Jiao had set in place to cover what had happened here.

Nikki’s grip firmed on my shoulders. “We’ve got one body right here, Detective, and that’s the important one.”

Brody turned, flustered, but I shook gently free of Nikki’s hold. “It’s not over,” I said. “No one saw it. No one saw General Som die.” No one had seen the burst of magic that had come out of me, channeled through sword and sky, a dark strength so profound that I would swear it still lurked inside me, though Armaeus had told me it would not … It could not.

Nikki grimaced. “Well, about that—”

“Sara.”

I turned, and Jiao was in front of me again. Beyond her, the cops were arguing, but the generals were beginning to disperse toward their vehicles. “There is much to discuss tomorrow, after you are released from medical care.” She tilted her head toward Brody as he glowered, effectively negating his argument before he could make it. “If you will come to the mansion, we can formally complete the succession process.”

“I will come,” I said. “We have much to discuss. And to settle, once and for all.”

Jiao blinked at me, but I turned away. She had seen what she thought was a battle fought with swords and fire. But I had fought a different battle these past several days. One that had tested my deepest convictions. One that had brought me to this killing field, where I had so quickly embraced a dark power that I could not control—only barely escaping it in the end. That fell magic was not who I was, not truly. There were other paths I would walk instead, other swords I would lift. I knew my place in this war, finally, though it was not the place I’d thought it to be. I had won, but I had lost.