TARNISHED (Book 5.5, The Caged Series (Novella))
Read TARNISHED (Book 5.5, The Caged Series (Novella)) Online
Authors: Amber Lynn Natusch
TARNISHED
By
Amber Lynn Natusch
TARNISHED Version 1.0
Copyright © 2013 Amber Lynn Natusch
All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN-13: 978-0-9891023-2-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is entirely coincidental.
Published by Amber Lynn Natusch
Cover Design by Dannielle Gleim and Amber Lynn Natusch
Photography by Vella Photography
Editing by Jennifer Ryan
www.amberlynnnatusch.com
More by Amber Lynn Natusch
The Caged Series
CAGED
HAUNTED
FRAMED
SCARRED
FRACTURED
TARNISHED*
STRAYED
CONCEALED*
BETRAYED
(* novellas)
The UNBORN Series
Coming in 2014
UNBORN
The Light and Shadow Trilogy
By Shannon Morton and Amber Lynn Natusch
Tempted By Evil
More Including Release Dates:
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To those with a shady past that strive for a brighter future.
Prologue
The Punishment
How did it come to this?
Centuries passed and I was always his chosen one. His invincible warrior. His most lethal assassin. Now, buried deep below the surface, entombed in the earth, I question it all.
There are lines that cannot be crossed―should not be crossed. That was what he'd asked me to do. To succumb to the darkness that consumed him—again. To lose any shred of morality I had left so that nothing could pull me back. Not even her.
I lay here in my earthen confinement and reflect on what I've done. I cringe instantly, seeing the puppet I was—the puppet he so skillfully crafted, manipulated, and molded to create the soulless immortal that would best serve him and create the world he wanted.
The child that once glorified him is gone. The warrior that idolized him, jaded. The heir he so painstakingly groomed, lost. A wedge driven between us, deep and severing.
I will no longer answer to him.
I will, however, do the task I was charged with: to keep the balance between the human and supernatural worlds at any and all cost—but not because of him. And I will not let him poison my brothers. They will answer to me and me alone—eventually.
I know of things that I should not, and once I escape, I will tell him just how many. He traps me here to make an example of me. He suffers me to live. And I know why. Ares may think he holds all the cards in this game, but I have one.
And mine is trump.
The Beginning
There is no such thing as a childhood when you are born of a god. Age and time mean nothing. I could practically wield a sword before I could talk and was lethal not long after that. I reached adulthood by human standards within just a few years of being born. It was the way of beings as powerful as I.
Everything about my life was predestined, my creation a strategic maneuver. Ares was amassing an army of sorts, an army to carry out what he himself could not do: police the supernatural world by force. I was eventually to be the leader of his soldiers, his most brutal and soulless killing machine.
But I didn't know that then.
It took centuries to see myself for what I was.
When I was young, not yet a man, I idolized my father. I was his champion, his favorite, his
Aniketos
—the invincible one. Above all the others, he counted on me to do the job for which I was conceived. I was his greatest weapon in a war that he could no longer fight. He lived vicariously through me.
His power had fallen with the rising of the true God, leaving him in a position of great irony: to maintain his immortality, he would have to take a passive and non-violent role in keeping the supernatural world at bay, policing its inhabitants so that humans would continue to be ignorant of their existence. It also meant that if he broke the agreement and directly brought death to another, he instantly forfeited his own life. Such was his fate, if he chose to accept it, and he did all too happily. Ares was very much into self-preservation; an altered life was better than none at all.
His limitations left my brothers and me to do the dirty work at his behest. Though peace was what he was charged with keeping, he managed to incite chaos and terror everywhere he went. Everywhere he sent
me
. The Petronus Ceteri had been created long before I was born, with the purpose of killing one of the most nefarious of all supernaturals: Romulus, King of the Werewolves. Once that had been achieved, our numbers increased by the spreading of his seed, and we were dispersed across the land to enforce Ares' will—his legion, as the case may have been.
The PC was entirely fathered by Ares, though with different mothers, all of whom were handpicked for their various traits. The result was a force to be reckoned with by any measure. I was head and shoulders above my brothers. By the time I was an adult, my place as Ares' number one was fully secured.
But he wanted more.
My first kill cemented a feeling in me that I would never be able to fully reverse. I wanted more instantly—more blood, more pain, more death. The need to cause those things washed over me in the most welcome way, and I struggled against it, fighting hard to remain in control. Though the sensation faded slowly after that first encounter, it never disappeared. It awakened a part of me that could never be sedated, and Ares was all too aware of that fact.
That was the true beginning of the end.
I had been born of an angel, but, in her absence, that side faded quickly. With every kill I made, I found myself sliding into a darkness that warmed and welcomed me like an old friend. Like it had been waiting for me to succumb to it for an eternity. When I gave into it fully, I was truly unstoppable. There was nothing I wouldn't do, no being I wouldn't kill. It became harder and harder to arouse me from my blackened haze of blood lust, and very few individuals were capable of doing it. Isadora, the Healer for the Petronus Ceteri, was one of those people.
She had an ethereal nature to her that seemed to call to those final threads of goodness within me. Whenever she was present, my darkness subsided, if only enough to seem more balanced. More the warrior I wanted to be.
“You are more than what you do,” she would tell me, looking at me with her childlike eyes. She was the first Healer bound to the PC, but she had been young when the ceremony had taken place. Though she was centuries older than many of the PC brothers, she appeared a petite and frail teenager, her tight brown curls framing her delicate features. Maybe it had been that innocence that called to me.
The more I fell into the void that threatened to consume me, the more I sought her presence. I found myself with her almost constantly when I was not out doing Ares' bidding. I found a companion in her that I had long needed. She was a balancing force, much like my mother would have been had she ventured to stay and not abandoned me at the first sight of the monster she had created. Ares had long told me of the utter disgust she had displayed only moments after pulling me from within her. I carried that with me, that knowledge fueling my emptiness. It was no wonder the darkness could so easily overtake me.
I had been empty since the day I was born.
But Izzy saw something that few others could. “You have a higher purpose,” she would tell me, taking my seemingly massive hand in her tiny one. “You will see it one day. It will all be clear to you.” Her words were always sealed with a knowing smile that warmed me. She was a light that shone through the blackness—a shred of hope in the absence of any. She was my friend.
I remember clearly the day she was taken from me. The day she was murdered. Someone snuffed out that light I so eagerly sought, and with that action created a warrior devoid of feeling. The warrior my father had wanted from the beginning. No longer was there reprieve from my dark side. I was him entirely.
And the world would feel my wrath.
The Impetus
I felt her distress immediately. Something was wrong with Isadora. In the early hours of the morning, long before the sun would reach the horizon, I ran to her as though a life depended on it. My worst fear was that hers did.
Storming her home, I came to find Izzy lying alongside the bed, convulsing. Foam escaped the corners of her mouth as I looked on, her head banging violently against the floor. I crashed to the ground beside her, gently laying her head in my lap and cradling it to prevent any further damage. Her eyes silently pleaded for my help, but I had little to offer. What rudimentary skills in healing magic I had acquired were inadequate for the job. Healing the Healer simply was not possible―not by anyone.
“Izzy,” I whispered to her, stroking back her sweat-soaked hair from her face. “What happened? Who did this to you?”
Her eyes flashed with fear at my questions, but she was totally incapable of answering. Whoever had come to take her life had scared her horribly, fueling the raging fire of guilt that was ablaze in my chest. An unsettled feeling was in the air that evening. I should never have left her alone.