Mack (King #4) (11 page)

Mack shook his head at the floor. “If I get to you first, then all this starts over again. You’ll be reborn, and I will have to sate my urges.”

I stared at him, trying to grasp what he was saying. He didn’t mean that…that… “You go around killing people?”

“I’m very good at it.”

I wanted to vomit. I didn’t remember my father, this Kan man, but what a jackass. What was he thinking when he’d cursed Mack?

“Great. You’re a serial killer.”

“No. Never that. But there is always killing to be done in this world, Theodora. For my brother, for powerful people, for pride and country.”

I just…I just…
“This is too much.” I stared at him in complete wonder. And awe. And then the lust kicked in.

One corner of his mouth curled into a wide smile.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. You gave me that same look the second time we met.”

“I wish I could remember,” I said.

“Perhaps you simply don’t wish to. Not a surprise, frankly.”

I was in no position to speculate. “Tell me what you remember. I want to know everything.” What I really wanted to know was how to save him. And the devil was always in the details.

“If I tell you, will you do what I’ve asked?” he said.

I couldn’t lie, so I danced around the question. “It might increase your odds of persuading me.”

He shook his head. “Stubborn. You are always so stubborn.”

~~~

MACK

It was the least I could do for Theodora, I supposed. By my estimations we still had a few hours left until King used his gifts to find us and until the deed needed to be done. And I had to admit, spending time with her, staring into her large green eyes (I wasn’t a Seer, so I saw the real her), watching the way she looked at me, it all started bringing back those memories from when she was Óolal and I was simply a stranded stranger in her village.

So yes, even against my better judgment and knowing how much more difficult it would make Theodora’s task of ending me, I found myself unable to resist having these final moments together. There was nothing sweeter, nothing more right in this world than spending time with her. When I wasn’t busy pushing back my urge to kill her, that was.

I cleared my throat, determined to project nothing but confidence. There could be no doubt in her mind regarding how this day would end.

“The second time we met,” I said, “was about five hundred years ago. I had been recently raised from the dead by my brother after his many failed attempts. Not a happy period of my life—King was as tormented, bloodthirsty, and just as violent as I was. And he was strong—something he liked to remind me of.”

I watched Theodora’s expression sour. “He hit you?”

“No. He
beat
me. Severely. But he beat anyone who displeased him. He killed anyone who disobeyed him.”

“Jesus. No wonder you don’t want to see the guy.”

“I admit that I dreamed of killing my brother and taking revenge, but then I learned the truth about him and what he’d given up to bring me back from the dead.”

“Don’t hold me in suspense,” she said with a certain grim fascination.

“He was cursed like I was, but he was a ghost, his soul in constant pain.”

Theodora’s mouth sort of hung open, revealing a bit of that soft pink tongue. I wanted to stroke it with mine along with a few of her other body parts.

I shifted in my chair so she wouldn’t notice my arousal. “I had to hand it to my brother; his sheer will to get back to Mia was a force unlike any other. Though it took him a few centuries, he learned how to materialize for short instances. From there, he began tracking down people—shamans, witches, Seers, anyone with gifts who could help him extend, control and manipulate the curtain that separated him from the world of the living. He got so good at it that no one knew he was dead. He amassed a huge fortune and built a powerful network of very dangerous allies; he could go anywhere he wanted with the blink of an eye. But when he finally found a way to bring me back into this world, he gave up the opportunity for himself.”

“So he could’ve brought himself back to life but didn’t.”

“Yes. He chose me over his own needs. He said that without me by his side, he would never be able to set his life right again.”

“I’m still unclear about how one comes back from the dead and gets a new body.”

I shrugged. “It took him a few thousand years to do it—he found a man who knew how to use a particular necklace he obtained many, many years prior from Cleopatra.”

“How’d he get a necklace from her?”

“He fucked her, gained her trust, and once he got his hands on it, he killed her.”

Theodora’s face twisted with disgust. “Remind me to stay far the hell away from your brother.”

“Don’t feel bad for her. Cleopatra was ruthless and powerful. She had plenty of blood on her own hands.”

“I always thought she died from a snake bite.”

“A myth. She died from having her body drained of blood—something that my brother also wanted since it fetched a high price on the black market.”

Theodora frowned.

“Cleopatra was no ordinary woman,” I explained. “She was so powerful that ingesting just a few drops of blood could make a person look ten years younger.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I have helped my brother run his business, on and off, for centuries.” Ironic, I know. I had been dead set against ever working with him, but some things were simply meant to be.

“What does he do?” she asked.

“He’s a power broker of sorts, but the occult version.”

“I’m definitely staying away from him.”

A wise choice. “Well, the issue is that he and I are linked. Our souls connected as twin brothers.”

I could see the dots connecting inside Theodora’s mind.

“That’s why he refuses to let you die,” she whispered, clearly thinking aloud.

“Like I said, your modern definition of love pales in comparison to mine. Love, real love, when you cherish the soul of another above your own, whether it’s family, friend, or lover, that bond is difficult to sever. It’s why my brother never gave up trying to bring me back. When he failed after hundreds of attempts, he finally understood that my body was the key. Cleopatra’s ankh necklace couldn’t produce a new one, so he had to find a body for me.”

“I really don’t want to know how he did that because I’m guessing I wouldn’t like that story. But, he did choose nicely.” She supplied a weak smile.

I understood that Theodora was trying to make light, but the displaced soul, the young man who used to own this shell, had his life torn away. It was one more pebble on the heaping pile of guilt that comprised my existence.

“The necklace stopped me from aging past a certain point and kept me from dying from that day forward,” I added.

“Wow. That’s a very impressive necklace. Are you wearing it now?”

“No. King made sure it wasn’t easy to remove; I had to pay a very high price to have it taken off.” The Incan chalice I stole from my brother was intended to bring back Mia’s dead brother. Unfortunately, I needed something to barter with so I could get help finding Theodora. I also needed help removing that necklace—otherwise, my body would just keep coming back.

“So you said that you and I met a second time. Where? When?” she asked.

I could tell from the twinkle in her eyes she was expecting a romantic story of two lost souls searching for one another. But nothing could be further from the truth.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

MACK

1512

We were savages. No question about it. My brother, King, was building his empire of power and honing his abilities to walk among the living while he searched for the Artifact—the stone he needed to break his own curse and get his life back. As for myself, I had been resurrected but was going out of my mind after wandering the earth as a tormented soul for more than two thousand years.

Nothing made sense to me except pain and killing. It was why, after I slaughtered his entire household of servants—thirty-three maids of all ages, the youngest sixteen, along with forty-nine guards—my brother had to do something. Not that he cared about my killing his staff. He was more concerned about my drawing the wrong type of attention.

“You need time to get this out of your system, Callias,” King said, pacing the length of his lavish study at his French villa in Marseille that overlooked the ocean. “Meanwhile, I will deal with the cleanup and take care of the local authorities.”

I sat on the cream-colored silk couch next to the fire, dripping with blood. Hell no. I didn’t care about the couch. All I could hear were the screams of my victims and the voice in my head telling me to do it again.

“What have you done to me, Draco?” I growled in agony.

“Shut your mouth, brother. Let me think.”

I stood up, ready to make him my next victim. “Why did you bring me back?” I couldn’t believe what I’d done. The absolute horror of it all. Nevertheless, those brief moments of peace I’d experienced after taking each life had felt like a small piece of sanity. Heaven. Calm. Bliss.

“Must you ask?” He casually tugged on the sleeve of his white blousy shirt. The people of these times dressed so oddly, the men in velvety tunics gathered at the waist and the women in their giant skirts. These were not the free-flowing gowns of my time.

“It was wrong, Draco. Wrong when I took your head. Wrong when I died. Wrong when you brought me back to life.” Though I knew he’d resurrected me for purely selfish reasons, so no, I didn’t have to ask why he’d done it. Nevertheless, “Nothing good will ever come of you or me.”

“I said be quiet,” he barked.

“Or what? You’ll slay me?”

He shook his head and began mumbling. “Never. We are twins, one soul divided into two bodies.”

It was what he believed at the time. Later, we’d evolve. Though we were connected, we were two different souls, two different bodies, one original set of DNA. But science was just as much a mystery to us back then as it was to anyone.

“I’m sending you to find the Artifact,” he said. “You’ll pick up the trail where you last saw it and see where it leads you.”

For all I knew, the Artifact was back in Greece. My guards had shown up right before I’d died, and I’d asked them to take it to Mia.

“How do you propose I get back to…to…the place I died?” Memories of Óolal flashed through my mind. I couldn’t quite make sense of them.

“I have given money to a Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, a Spaniard who has been charged with establishing a settlement on an island called Caobana, not too far from where you perished. You will sail with him.”

“He works for you?” I asked.

My brother smiled. “They work for gold, which I have plenty of. Therefore, everyone works for me. You will tell him you are there to oversee my investment and help locate objects for my collection.”

And so the next day, I set out on horseback to Spain to deliver the letter and travel on this ship to the New World. Four and a half months later, I had arrived to the place once occupied by Óolal’s people, only to find a jungle abandoned long ago. Any traces had been consumed by vegetation. But I didn’t give a shit. Those few months, traveling in this world that was so changed yet so similar to the one I’d left behind, made me feel like a kid in a candy store. Killing was my candy, and there were plenty of people deserving of it. I killed thieves on the road to Spain who’d tried to take my horse. I killed a drunk group of men who were beating a woman outside of a brothel near the port. I killed several men who’d tried to overthrow the ship. It was when I learned how my darkness and willingness to kill could serve another purpose. I was a man who couldn’t die. I didn’t know fear. I was consumed with a need to shed blood. Every time I obeyed that need, it felt like a drug. Then guilt would kick in, and then I’d kill again for relief. Nevertheless, I believed I’d found my calling.

When we reached Caobana, now known as Cuba, it felt like my own personal heaven. The indigenous population was in need of some taming, and I was in need of some killing.

We hadn’t been there more than five days when Diego started gathering men to fight an uprising.

Of course, he asked me to lead. “You’re an animal, Callias. And a fine warrior. You will clear the way for our settlement. Show these heathens no mercy.”

The next morning, armed with swords, myself and a group of men invaded a small village about one mile south of the port. I remember bursting into the first hut, the blood pumping through my veins, calling for my sweet, sweet drug. But when my eyes met those of the young woman kneeling in the corner, wearing only the traditional loincloth, shielding two small children, I froze. My eyes saw Óolal. It was only for a moment, but it was real. And if I’d had any doubts, they were dispelled by the sweet smell of her permeating the small dwelling.

“It can’t be,” I said.

She looked at me, her eyes filled with shock. I didn’t speak her language, but when that familiar voice filled the air, I fell to my knees, my sword dropping with me. Her presence was ten times more potent than any kill I’d ever made.

I don’t know how long we stayed there staring at each other—confused, elated, horrified, and happy—but the screams outside woke me.

“I have to get you out of here.” I held out my hand, and she took it, urging the two children to follow.

I looked outside to scout for the rest of the men, who were off inside the other dwellings, killing.

“Come. Hurry!” I said.

They followed me along the outer perimeter of the hut and into the jungle. Meanwhile my head pounded and spun. Could this really be her?

If not for the noise in my head, I probably would’ve heard the footsteps coming up behind us. When I turned to see why Óolal and the children had stopped following, it was too late.

That day would forever be known as the massacre near Camagüey. But what the history books do not tell is that I was the one doing the massacring. Spaniards, indigenous people, anyone who crossed my path. I was blinded with rage.

When the Spaniards finally caught up with me, I let them kill me. I wanted my pain to end.