The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (66 page)

             
A young girl with glowing purple eyes the color of the sky overhead stopped in front of us. Her mother had been clutching her hand tightly but
she had twisted free from her grip. She looked to be about Penny’s age.

             
Penny. I had left her with Elijah, Quinn, Alice and whoever that boy was that had been with Violet when that awful event had occurred.

             
Why had he not stopped her? I would make my dis
pleasure known on my next meeting with him. I would call him a coward for not accompanying her into that dark clearing.

             
The trees were parted overhead and the Pangean sun was glowing in the sky. Yet when we entered that space to fight those things, there
had been only blackness and a crescent moon the color of blood.

             
If Violet died, I would kill that boy. I would destroy him with the animal fury I felt burning in a toxic wave of destruction within my chest.

             
“Adam.” The little girl had approached us witho
ut fear. She pointed to the towering palace that glinted in the fiery orange light of the clouds. “Adam.”

             
“Do not speak to the dark ones, Adina.” Her mother warned before reaching her hand out to draw the girl back to her. With an easy leap, the girl jump
ed onto her mother’s back to be carried off. Her arm was not attached to her mother’s body; she was still pointing to the palace.

             
James and I needed no more instruction. We were running again.

             
The palace was surrounded by a gate fashioned from the moanin
g trees in the forest. Their edges had been sharpened to points. Eight guards stood wearing the airy silver armor that was bordered with the sharp spikes of some creature I did not know. The long sleeves of their uniform were made of the same material.

             
“W
e need to see Adam,” I gasped out as I pointed at the palace, “We need to see him now! My sister is dying! Please let us in!”

             
“No inside.” A guard boomed through lips that barely formed his brutally loud words, “No…”

             
He stopped talking and in the distanc
e, I heard a whispering that raised the hair on my arms. The guards parted to the right and left in perfect unison, leaving a space for us to get through. The large wooden gate swung open. Ahead, I saw the door of the palace open simultaneously.

             
The inter
ior of the man's home was as intricately designed as the paintings in French chapels. Murals that told stories I did not know were painted all along the walls. Ahead of us was a staircase that rose up at a sharp angle out of sight. In front of the staircas
e stood the man who had appeared that night at camp. That event seemed like it had passed so long ago.

             
“Please, will you help her?” I asked immediately, forgoing a polite greeting in favor of immediate beseeching. “There were these creatures in the
woods…”

             
“Shadows.” He answered the question I had not posed out loud. As he spoke, his eyes locked on James's. “They have returned.”

             
“Sure,” I nodded vigorously, “She’s bleeding and she’s dying. I can hear her heartbeat but I can hear it stopping. I can
feel...” I was rambling in my panic, not realizing that I was divulging far too much information, “I can feel her life draining. Please help her. Please, I’ll do anything!”

             
“She was tempted by them. She succumbed to their seduction.”

             
“She was hungry. She
was looking for me and she hadn’t eaten in days…”

             
“It does not matter.”

             
“Yes, it does!” I screamed in desperate fury, “She’s only seventeen! She was acting exactly as most would at her age! She is young and too trusting and stupid! Please, we need your
help!”

             
Violet’s breaths were ragged, interrupted only by soft moans of pain. The scratches were beginning to ooze a green liquid. The sight almost sent my hands flying to my mouth as an urge to vomit seized me.

             
“You are his offspring. Daniel Olivier.”

             
“
Yes, but he does not speak for us.” The words rolled off my tongue before I fully understood exactly what I was saying. Somehow, I knew that was the right thing to say.

             
“I can see. You are of old. He is not.”

             
“This is all irrelevant!” I stomped my foot i
n frustration, “Do you feel it?! I know you can feel
her life leaving her! I am
begging
you to do something!”

             
“It takes great courage to come to the dwelling of an enemy.”

             
What was the point of his inane musings? My sister was dying before his eyes and
yet he wanted to babble on about insignificant details! I could have reached out and slapped him, though I knew I would not live to feel the satisfaction.

             
“Follow me.”

             
The man began to ascend the staircase, gliding effortlessly up its steep steps. We wer
e climbing each one carefully, looking back to see the ground floor getting further and further away. As we walked, I looked at James, knowing he felt the same as I did. We were climbing into the lion’s den. It was not clear whether we would ever emerge fr
om its depths again.

             
We could not worry about that. I would do or say anything to save Violet. Once she was healed, I would claw my way out of that place, utilizing every new skill or enhancement that had overtaken me since landing on Pangea in the proces
s.

             
Adam led us to a room with blankets sewn from the skin of animals covering the floor. The walls were startlingly light-colored and blank; we had only seen those detailed pictures covering the walls from floor to ceiling since we had come inside. Adam b
eckoned to the animal skin rugs and James laid Violet down on them.

             
“Brynna!” She cried out, her blank eyes darting around in the empty space frantically as she searched for me.

             
“I am right here, honey,” I grasped her hand in both of mine and rested my f
orehead against hers, “I am right here with you and I am not going to leave you.”

             
Adam had his eyes closed. I should have wanted to shout at him to get on with the life-saving but I knew that he was calling out to someone. The doors opened only a minute l
ater and a girl around my age walked in, pulling with her by a leash made of vine one of those hissing, snarling creatures. Its nonexistent lips curled back to reveal the rows of long, jagged teeth. Its blank, unseeing eyes rolled around disturbingly in th
e rotting sockets.

             
“What are you doing?!” James exclaimed in a rage as he jumped up to his feet.

             
“Do not question me, Protector,” Adam held his hand up to silence him, “You know not of our healing ways. Please ask your woman kindly to step away.”

             
“I am
not going to step…” I started to say.

             
“I know that you will not do it on your own. You will not do it even if I tell you that remaining where you are could put your life in danger. You are very stubborn and your love for this girl blinds you to any pain o
r threat that could befall you. Perhaps if your mate suggests kindly that you move away…”

             
“Come on, Brynn.” James was lightly grasping my shoulders now and tugging me away from Violet.

             
“No!” I exclaimed and shook him off.

             
“Baby, just let them do this.”
James urged me gently. I looked at Violet, who was fading before my eyes. I looked at Adam, who I could not possibly trust. But James’s hands on my shoulders kept me grounded. I trusted
him,
certainly. If he felt that the situation was under control, then
I would force myself to believe the same. I let him pull me away.

             
“Do not bring that thing near her!” I screamed at them as the girl led the creature over to Violet.

             
Adam held up a tightly wrapped bundle that he began to patiently unroll. Once the fabric
had been pulled away, I saw that he was holding a dagger.

             
“What are you doing?!” I was desperately trying to get to Violet now. I would not let him hurt her. I had brought her there so that she would be saved. Now, he was going to kill her because she wa
s, as he said, my father’s offspring. Or perhaps it was because, as
I
had said, she had been so very stupid and thus undeserving of his pity and even her life.

             
No. I would never allow him to take her life for simply behaving as most her age would have. I
would lose my life trying to end his if he tried to take Violet from me.

             
A look passed between James and Adam. After a short hesitation, James’s hands tightened on me from behind just as the dagger was plunged deep into Violet’s stomach. She let out one l
ong exhale of air before clenching her teeth together tightly. I could not hear the sound she made because the scream that exploded from me bounced off of every blank wall and reverberated around the large room deafeningly. I was sure that she had screamed
, too.

             
“Stop it! Let me go!” I shrieked furiously. I was trying in vain to claw and bite my way out of James’ grasp. I kicked him, swung my fists back to punch him, and sunk my teeth down into his arm three times before he curled his hand around my neck a
nd held my head up against his shoulder. His free arm wrapped around my middle to lock my arms to my sides.

             
“James, let go!”

             
Adam moved the dagger into my sister’s stomach, allowing the blood to fully saturate the blade.

             
“I need a willing sacrifice of b
lood from one that possesses a heart that beats for her.”

             
What in the name of all deities and Gods I did not believe in was that supposed to mean? Just as I acknowledged that I had no clue what he was suggesting, I thrust my arm out, understanding perfect
ly. He frowned at me in consternation and said curtly:

             
“I do apologize.”

             
He cut into my arm with a quick motion that left a deep, spraying cut. I watched in horrified fascination as my blood on the knife’s blade mixed visibly with Violet’s. Our blood was
dripping off of the dagger as Adam brandished it above his head, moving on his knees closer to the enraged creature. It snapped its jaws at him, gargling and snarling as it lunged forward.

             
With the same swiftness, Adam plunged the knife into the waxy, wh
ite flesh of its chest. It put up far less of a fight before its death than I had been expecting. Immediately upon being stabbed with the blade doused in my blood and the blood of my sister, it crumpled.

             
When it hit the ground, it erupted into a blazing,
perfectly formed inferno that stood on end. I watched, eyes wide as it burned into nonexistence. Adam reached forward into the fire, allowing the flesh on his arm to burn as our blood and the blood of the creature was singed into a hard crust on the blade.
Once the blue blaze had snuffed out, he pressed the dagger to each wound on Violet’s body.

             
James had released my hands and I was squeezing his arms that were wrapped around my neck. I could feel his forehead pressed against the back of my head as he whis
pered soft assurances to me that I was finally able to hear.

             
“I promise you, everything’s going to be alright. I’m not going to let anything happen to her. I promise you, Brynna. I promise.”

             
The burning of Violet’s skin brought about more pain in me than
it did in her. She hardly jumped, though I assumed she had lost consciousness. With each press of the blood-caked blade on her wounds, I could hear her heartbeat growing ever closer to its normal speed. I could hear her lungs clearing as sweet breaths of
perfect air filled them to their capacity.

             
I wanted to cry. But I had believed for years that my tear ducts no longer worked, so the tears I would have shed were forced to drip, unused and unwanted, back into whatever recesses they used as their dwelling
inside my body. I turned to James and wrapped my arms around him, my entire body trembling as though I had just reached up to grasp an exposed wire while standing in a puddle. My body tingled with the same uncomfortable shock that I would have received in
that case. His lips pressed to the soft skin of my neck twice, gifting me with that warmth that soothed me always. They traveled up to press to my cheek and then my forehead. I closed my eyes and just let him kiss me like that. I needed all the comfort I c
ould get after such a harrowing event.