A Hidden Element (20 page)

Adrian stared at the mirror. He raised the whip higher. Each lash drove pain deep into him. He moaned with his need for it. His muscles flexed. His blue veins pulsed fast, raised on his pale skin. He painted himself with blood as his father had done many times.

Harder. Harder.

He had to make himself stronger than his father. Only then could he be the master of the man who'd terrified him—and the master of his own weakness.

He tried to imagine Laura's face beneath him as he covered her body, but his father's face drove hers away. It hovered over him as he had clawed long ago at the walls of the dank well, shivering in its sludge. He recalled every word.

"Please, Father, don't leave me here again tonight."

"You will suffer for your weakness. It must be driven out of you. No son of mine shall be weak."

"There're things down here, Father. Slimy creatures swimming about. And it's s-s-so cold. Please."

His father had smiled at him then. A terrifying smile holding the promise of pain. The moonlight slashed his face in two. Dark and light. His enormous nostrils flared.

"They are hungry, Son. Your flesh is tasty to them. Embrace the pain they bring. You must endure pain to inflict pain. This is what we Destroyers do. Your brother, Brahm, is too weak. A useless thing. He'll never make a Destroyer but you, Son, have power in you. You are a true Madroc. And you and Feo are my legacy."

"I don't know if I can be a Destroyer, Father. P-p-please." Something brushed his leg and he screamed. Panic raced through him. He grabbed at the slimy rock but kept sliding down. He had tried many times to break down the rock walls with his powers and climb out, but it was too fortified. His father knew this for he had built the well.

"Weakling." His father's robe swirled and disappeared. Only the moon watched him now, silent and accusing.

"Father!" Teeth bit into his legs and buttocks. He thrashed about in the water, screaming. The teeth moved away. His screams became sobs. He stared at the moon. The one light in his prison. He watched it as it watched him.

"I will survive," he yelled to the moon. "I will survive."

The teeth returned. He bit his lip.
Don't cry!
He kept his eyes on the luminescent orb above him. The bites increased. He remained still and let the creatures eat on him. And his hate grew. Hate for his brother, Brahm, who never had to suffer for being weak. Hate for his twin, Feo, who was rarely punished for being weak. If he could have shared the well in punishment with Feo he might have been able to stand it.

They had been best of friends until Feo went to Earth without him. His own twin had betrayed him as so many others.

And in that well Adrian had sworn that he would never again be punished for being weak.

He would come to rule with hate.

As his father did.

As he did when his wife refused to become a Destroyer. She was weak and there was no mercy for being weak and bearing a weakling like Caleb. If Manta had gotten pregnant with his son instead of Tollen's, what would he have been like?
Oh, my love, how could you have betrayed me so?

Manta wasn't supposed to be at the laboratory that night. She was supposed to secretly be with him. But they had fought that day, like too many other days. She refused to leave his brother, Brahm, and resign her post on the mission to Earth. She was part of a select group to start a new life there and message back for the others to come. She was leaving Adrian to go on the mission of his dreams and worst of all going with his brother. How he hated him. Brahm had everything he desired, the chance to lead a mission to Earth—and Manta.

He grasped her arm, but she jerked away. They were alone in her house while his brother worked at the laboratory on the day shift readying the ship for Earth.

"Stay here with me," Adrian pleaded.

She looked at him with a sad smile. "Your wife may be dead now, but I am already married to another Madroc. Why should I stay? To remain your secret lover and give up my dream of going to Earth?"

"We can leave this place. Start over in another town."

"There is nowhere else. Elyon is dying with no sun. An ice age is coming. We have no future here."

He pulled her to his chest. She didn't resist this time. "I have no future without you," he whispered.

"Brahm is a good man to follow. We can find a new place for our people to start over."

"You don't love the good. You are dark inside, like me. Give in to what you are destined to be. You know you want to."

Her tears wet his shirt. She didn't disagree. He moved his hands across her face. He bent down and parted her lips with his tongue as he stroked her breasts, tantalizing her nipples into hard points.

She winced.

"Manta, what's wrong?"

He stopped stroking her breasts but still held them as they swelled larger in his hands—and then he understood. "You're pregnant aren't you?'

She pushed him away and looked at him with sad longing. "It doesn't matter."

"Doesn't matter!" Adrian's rage boiled over. "You must stay here now. You can't risk our child's life. I know it's mine. You haven't slept with my brother in months." He gripped her arms. "I won't have Brahm raise my child."

She struggled then went limp, defeated. "Adrian, don't you think I've been living in torment over this? But I'm going on this mission. Brahm will be the father. You will stay here and raise Caleb. He needs you. Someday we'll be together again. I know it." Tears spilled from her lovely green eyes and dripped onto breasts soon to nurse their son—his son.

"It's a boy isn't it?" Adrian raged. He shook her and she cried harder. "You're mine. Mine!"

"It's not meant to be, Adrian."

"If we're both free we can be together. There's only Brahm in the way now. I can take care of him, too."

Manta's face cracked with shocked realization, and she pushed at him wildly. "You killed your wife?"

"For you. For us."

"No, no." She slapped his face over and over. "I never wanted this!"

He grabbed her hands and she hunched over crying. "Let me go."

"Never."

Then her whispered words cut him deep. "It's not yours."

He sensed the truth. "Tollen!"

He shook her and she cried harder, nodding. "Before you."

"Lying wench!"

She didn't deny it. Her final betrayal.

And then a haze fell over him. Her sobs faded. He drew his sword of power. She was his. No one else's. And he would make this child his. He stabbed her over and over. It felt so good and he wielded his weapon, aiming for her core. Her skin was so soft between his teeth. Blood flowed and it fed his thirst. Her scent filled up his every crevice. Deeper he devoured her, claiming his son, and a burning wave of lust and envy and hate crashed through him.

Faint screams floated on the air. They grew louder and louder, igniting him with terror. It drowned out the pleasure that pumped from him with fury.

Her screams shattered his ears. She lay beneath him, bloodied and shaking.

"What have I done?" Adrian withdrew his drained power and stood over her. She curled up on her side, gasping. Blood trickled from his bite marks livid on her skin.

"Get out. Get out!" she screamed between sobs.

He had gone too far. He grabbed his clothes and ran for the woods. It was the first time he ever tried to drive the weakness away himself. He slid down the rungs into the well. The very well he had pushed his wife down into. He left her there to die weeks earlier, lying broken and crooked on cold stone begging him for mercy. He had none to give. He knelt now on the stain of her blood and lashed his back and sides with a sapling branch, striking himself as he had struck the one person he had ever loved.

And when he had punished himself enough he sought her out.

She had to forgive him. She had to stay.

But she was dead—killed in an accidental explosion that afternoon in the laboratory. His brother, Brahm, had just been injured. She must have gone there to lose herself in her work and forget what he had done to her. If they hadn't fought, Manta wouldn't have gone to the lab, she would have been safe in bed with him. Instead he had violated her and drove her to her death.

Harder. Harder.

He flung down his whip and shouted in anger. He didn't want to remember those times.

His wife was dead. His mistress was dead. His unborn child was dead.

And his father was dead.

He had died of old age, a peaceful death for such a tyrant. He had ruled as region leader with ruthlessness and torment, his Destroyer genes and swelling underground uprising hidden from society. His father had been crafty in deflecting his true mission. And innocents suffered unknowingly because of him. It was the law of Destroyers.

They had been crushed once and nearly killed off in a civil war. They retreated in secret, planning to come back and rule all of Elyon someday. They had given in to their Destroyer genes that all Elyon's possessed deep down inside. Most turned away from their true destiny. They did not allow hate to trigger their true fate. But hate consumed Adrian and he faced it full on. He became what he was meant to be, and he was now meant to rule Earth.

But his plan was crumbling. His flock diminished and not all by his hand but by their own will. The humans in the outside world would become suspicious and harder to mind control as their numbers grew. The community elders held an emergency meeting. They planned to send their trusted people out into the human world to gauge human suspicion of the Elyon community.

It was time to have Charlie lead with an edict. He needed the flock to believe in the boy because he would change their future. They accepted him, and he would let the flock choose their mates as a new law. Charlie would announce the edict. He would be their savior and they would stay.

He stepped into his shower and washed the blood away. He did not flinch from the wounds.

It was time to call Caleb in. He had a new duty to perform.

Caleb stood before his father in his room. A lonely candle burned. Shadows of gray flame flickered across the walls seeking escape. He eyed his father's whip hanging next to the candle. The idea of whipping himself made him sick. It was enough that his father whipped him.

His father saw him look at the whip and smiled. "You have one, too, Son. It's a shame it's never been used."

Caleb looked him in the eye and muddled his thoughts. "I don't need to whip myself to be strong, father."

"You never will be strong unless you follow my path. You will never rule. You must endure your own pain before you can inflict pain on others."

"Like Charlie will? Your replacement prodigy?"

His father frowned. "Yes, he is a true Destroyer. You, sadly, are like my brother."

"I'm glad. I loved Uncle Brahm. I was sad for him when Aunt Manta died.
Your
lover."

His father smiled again. He stood taller and Caleb felt his powerful wrath radiate from him. "He was an idiot."

"And don't forget, Ben and Laura." Caleb smiled even as fear clung to him.

"Ben is dead." His father moved closer to him and placed his hands on his shoulders, glaring down at him. Passion and fury rolled off his father straight into Caleb's heart. He willed himself to remain still and return his father's stare.

"Yes, I know. I buried him."

"Good."

Adrian moved away and Caleb's heart slowed. How he wished for one moment he was a little boy again being carried home in his father's arms. No fear. No hate. Just love. Those days were long gone. His father had given in to his Destroyer gene and killed the man inside he'd once cared for—the father who'd once cared for his firstborn son.

His father now sat in the chair by the window. It was of wide planks from the largest oak in the woods with arms that gnarled up into giant fists. A chair for a king, a punishing potentate with a thirst to kill.

"And what of Laura?"

"This is why I've brought you here, Son." Adrian gripped the arm's fists. His own fists engulfed them. "She is to be yours…for a night."

Laura appeared to him in his mind, begging him to let her husband stay. He remembered the softness of her hair as he touched her before he left her in grief. He'd raced off to his room then to secretly use her confiscated Elyon communication belt before handing it over to his father. He had to know Rachel was all right. He had found her asleep on a cot in the basement of a church's homeless shelter. She looked so peaceful asleep, and so free. His heart was full in knowing this, and he hid all this from his father who stared at him now waiting for his response.

"Why, Father?"

"She is filled with grief over the death of her stupid human. I need you to soften her grief and prepare her for me. She will be mine and I need her strong again. You have a soft way about you. The women seek you out so why deny them?" He grinned. "Leah certainly enjoyed you."

"And you enjoyed watching didn't you?"

"I did, yes. And I will enjoy watching you with Laura. If she submits with passion and ease you can reward her with seeing her baby. Do your job and I may reward you with what you've been seeking."

Hope and fear swam together inside Caleb. "What do you know about what I seek?"

"Your sons, of course. I will allow them to spend time with you and get to know you."

"You would do this?"

"Yes."

Caleb couldn't trust his father, but the thought of hugging his sons and talking with them filled him with joy. "When do I go to Laura?"

"Tonight. After your training with Charlie."

"But she's just given birth."

"I have healed her body. It's new again for you. It's her mind that needs renewing now. She must be turned to the Destroyer side. She has it in her to become a powerful Destroyer. Her brother had it. Charlie has it. And I do." He smashed his fist down. "As you do but deny it."

"I will go to her tonight."

"Don't forget, I will be watching."

Caleb nodded and left his father on his throne. He saw it on fire and his father in it, strapped down as he had been strapped down and brought here against his will.

The vision gave him deep pleasure.

Charlie stood in the arena and inhaled Leah's scent. Roses floated fragrant about her. They kissed again. Cool air rushed over them. He awkwardly put his arms around her. She moved into him. He felt her curves soft against him and a jolt rushed through him. Was this love?

He had seen other kids at school making out in the halls and groping each other at dances. He'd wondered what it was like. And this pretty girl wanted him. He wanted to show her off to the jerks at school. But he'd never go back there again.

A leaf spiraled down into her hair. He tugged it out. She pulled away and smiled at him, her hair gracing her face like a framed painting.

"Tomorrow is our day, Charlie." He reached out and took her hand, fumbling. His cheeks felt hot. She laughed. "You're so sweet. Tomorrow will be special with you. More special than any others I've been with."

"What do you mean?" Jealousy filled Charlie. She had other boyfriends? He didn't want to think about it. It hurt too much.

"You'll see. It's all good." She kissed his cheek. "Caleb is coming."

She looked past him. Her smile faded.

"Why don't you like Caleb?"

"I never said that." She let go of his hand and hid her hands in her robe, staring at Caleb. "I'll wait for you over here." She moved toward the end of the arena. A cold gust blew after her. He shivered, cold now with her warmth gone.

Caleb strode toward him, glancing at Leah with a frown. "We have work to do. Adrian has ordered it."

Charlie stepped back. Caleb's anger hit him like a punch to his chest. "What's wrong with you?"

Caleb smoothed his robe down and looked up at the gray sky. "I'm sorry. I'm on edge."

"Is it Leah?" He looked over at Leah who seemed far enough away to not hear them.

"What do you mean?"

"You guys don't like each other."

"That's not true." Caleb looked away. "I like her very much."

Jealousy rose in Charlie again. "I get it. You
like her
, like her."

"I did once. But it wasn't meant to be."

"Yeah, because she's mine now."

Caleb nodded. "And now we must work."

Charlie's anger fled as fast as it arrived. He sighed. "Fine."

"Today you learn a new power."

"What?" He tapped his foot, eager to get on with it and find a hot meal. Using his powers drained his energy. He needed to eat all the time. But he also wanted to prove himself in front of Leah. She smiled at him, waiting.

"How to bring the mortally wounded back to life."

Charlie stopped tapping his foot. That was worth working for. "Can you bring back the dead, too?"

"No," Caleb said, after a pause.

"Well, it's cool anyways. So what are we going to do?"

"We attempt to kill someone first."

Charlie looked at Leah and back at Caleb. "Who?"

Caleb waved Leah to come over.

"No," Charlie whispered.

"Yes," Caleb said quietly.

So that's why she had waited.

Leah touched his shoulder. "Caleb has done this many times before. It will be all right. A person can be brought back before their life drains completely. I trust you won't let me die, will you?"

Charlie shook his head. He couldn't speak. She unzipped her robe. Beneath it she wore a plain white dress. She turned away and hung her robe on the fence. Then she brushed her hand through her hair and stood before them. Her hand trembled. Caleb looked at her. She nodded. Charlie looked back and forth between the two of them.

"Charlie, when I am done you will follow my instructions explicitly. Do you understand?"

Charlie stared at Leah.

"Charlie?"

He nodded. Caleb pulled a leather holder from under his robe. He drew a long blade from it.

Charlie's breath came in quick gasps. "Why like this?"

"I need to show you how to save someone before they die, Charlie."

But he couldn't watch. He turned away. He was afraid of being sick, right there in front of Leah.

Caleb pulled him back. "You must watch. This is the hard that comes with our good."

Charlie felt faint. Leah took his fingers in hers and smiled. "I'm ready, Caleb."

Caleb swung the knife.

Again and again.

Charlie cried out. Leah gazed at him, a soft smile on her face as if it were all okay. He gripped her hand until she closed her eyes and let go. She had never made a sound. She lay crumpled at his feet. Blood seeped scarlet through her dress, branding her in near death. He fell to her, crying.

Caleb stood over him. "Now I show you how we save her before she dies."