Placing Geordie’s head on the ground beside the stump of his neck, I moved the severed ends together then moved away so I wasn’t touching him. His eyes were closed and he looked peaceful and even younger than normal. We waited for something to happen but he remained inert. When his body finally twitched, Kokoro made a small sound of surprise. Both arms went up as he tried to grasp something the rest of us couldn’t see. Then the raw ends of his neck melded together until just a thin red line was left.
Sitting up, Geordie opened eyes that were scarlet with anger and fear. Realizing no enemies remained, he blinked at me in confusion then noticed the rest of our small team gathered around him. “Why are you all staring at me?”
“Do you not remember what happened to you?” Igor asked in a tone that was almost gentle, for him.
Frowning, the teen rubbed the back of his head then his eyes widened. “I remember a pair of really big hands closing around my head and then nothing.”
No one wanted to tell Geordie what had happened so Gregor stepped up to the task. “The Viltaran decapitated you.”
Feeling his neck with both hands, Geordie couldn’t detect the red line that had already almost completely faded. “What does this mean?” he asked, more bewildered than frightened.
“I’m pretty sure you’re all immortal like me now,” I told him.
Dead silence ensued, then Geordie grinned widely. “That is totally awesome!”
.~.
Chapter Forty
M’narl and a few of his people appeared before my friends could fully grasp their new status of being unkillable. Dazed and still grinning, Geordie took the hand Igor offered him and stood. I remained kneeling so the Kveet could chat with me without having to crane his head back too far. Two of his warriors dragged the translator robot forward.
“How many of our enemies now remain?” the elder asked me in his piping voice.
Sending out my senses after the fleeing Viltarans, I found them some distance away. They must have boarded an elevator and zoomed to their new location. “There are only twenty-one of them left now.”
Saddened by his losses, M’narl forced what passed for a smile for his people. “I believe it would be prudent for us to retire to our caves again and gather more warriors.”
I had no intention of quitting the hunt now. “That’s a good idea. You and your people have been a great help and I’m sure they could use the rest.”
“You’re not going to stop until every last Viltaran is dead by your hands, are you?” Luc asked. “You have this strange idea that you and only you can face them. Have you not learned by now that you need us by your side?”
Affronted by his arch tone, I searched for a reply but Geordie beat me to it.
“We work better as a team, chérie. If not for Cristov, you would have remained trapped in that bottle forever.”
“What do you mean?”
“He somehow sensed you were in trouble,” Gregor explained. “He had the overwhelming feeling that you required rescue and led us directly to you.”
“How?” Even as I asked the question, I realized what the answer had to be. “It was because I hypnotized him, wasn’t it?”
Nodding, Gregor flicked his dirty hair away from his face. He was badly in need of a shower, as were we all. “It forged a link between you both that he was able to follow back to you.”
I wished Cristov was still alive so I could thank him for saving me. I wished all of our fallen were still alive. We are seven now. This is the remnant that was prophesized so long ago. If I was correct then we were all immortal now. We were doomed to live out our impossibly long lives on a desolate planet that we didn’t belong on.
“Do you still plan to hunt the rest of the Viltarans on your own?” Ishida asked me almost conversationally. I’d learned to read his bland expression well enough to know he was on the verge of anger.
“We vowed to kill the Viltarans together, remember?” Kokoro said.
Considering how handily I’d been captured, I gave up on the idea of being a solo vigilante. As Geordie had said, we worked better as a team. “Fine. We’ll stay together from now on.”
“Finally, she sees sense,” Luc muttered. It was obvious he was still angry with me. I could see I had a lot of grovelling ahead before I’d be able to get back into his good books.
“What is wrong, Nat?” Geordie asked.
“I’m not sure,” I replied with my eyes still shut. “They’re up to something.”
“Can you be more specific?” Ishida asked with a hint of sarcasm.
Ignoring his tone, I stayed focused on the Viltarans. My frown deepened when they began moving again. They were joined by a vast group of Kveet imps far larger than any we’d encountered before.
Once the two groups came together, they began to move upwards. Neither would be able to survive once they hit the surface and my brows drew together in confusion. Then they suddenly streaked upwards so fast that I lost track of them. Just before they disappeared, I felt another presence amongst them but they moved out of range before I could identify what it had been. Probably another kind of imp, I guessed. I’d sensed several more varieties that we hadn’t come into direct contact with yet stashed throughout the planet.
Opening my eyes, I discovered I was the centre of attention. “I think they just left Viltar in a spaceship.”
One of M’narl’s warriors asked the question I was dreading. “They have already destroyed the known habitable planets within range of their ships. Where could they possibly be going?”
Remembering the warning M’narl had given me about how the droids were programmed to lie, I knew the answer. So did Gregor, judging from his bleak expression. Robert had told us that he had been unable to configure the way to our home planet but that had been a big fat fib. “They’re heading for Earth.” My tone reflected my dread fairly adequately.
I’d had two dreams now of Manhattan lying in ruins. The first time the city had been enveloped in a poisonous fog. The second time it had been full of human imp clones. It seemed that they hadn’t just been dreams after all but had instead been premonitions. Our planet faced two possible fates now; being turned into an uninhabitable wasteland or the population being changed into grey skinned imp slaves.
It appeared our job wasn’t done yet despite Gregor’s intuition that fate had dumped us here and wiped its hands of us. We had been banished from the world that had rejected us and now we would have to find a way to return so we could save the ungrateful humans yet again.
Not so deep down inside, I was tempted to just let the Viltarans escape and wreak havoc on our home world. Why should we attempt to rush to our former kin’s rescue after they had rejected us so completely? After all they’d done to us, didn’t the humans deserve to suffer a terrible fate?
Reading my expression accurately, Gregor nodded in understanding. “You feel the humans don’t deserve to be rescued for a third time?”
I turned his question back on him. “Do you?” As expected, no one had an answer for me. “After everything we’ve done for them and the horrors they put you through, do you really want to climb up on your white horse and charge to the rescue?”
Ishida and Geordie exchanged amused looks at my metaphor. “What we want doesn’t really matter,” Ishida said. “Whether we like it or not, we have a duty.”
“The humans destroyed your entire island and killed your people,” I reminded him, not that he needed it. I doubted he’d ever forget their treachery. “How can you possibly have any sympathy left for them?”
Eyes that were far too old and wise for his young face stared into mine. “We were created for a purpose, Natalie. After fifty thousand years of our specie’s existence, that purpose has now
become clear. The Viltarans created us and it is our responsibility to destroy them before they can annihilate our world.”
Searching the expressions of my friends, I read the same sentiment on all six of their faces. No one looked particularly happy about it but, once again, we were going to band together to save the world. “Fine,” I said sulkily. “We’ll liberate the Earth from its wannabe oppressors yet again. Does anyone have any idea how we’re going to get off this rock?”
“We will find a way,” Kokoro said with supreme confidence.
Gregor inclined his head in agreement. “It appears that I was incorrect in my judgement that fate has abandoned us. I am certain that it has a plan in place to assist us to escape from Viltar.”
I screwed my nose up at his mention of fate once more shuffling us into position like pieces on a chess board. It had banished us from Earth and now it apparently planned to send us home again.
“I wonder how Colonel Sanderson will react when he discovers that we have returned?” Geordie said reflectively.
The prospect of standing face to face with Sanderson hadn’t occurred to me before the teen had pointed it out. “I will personally make sure the good Colonel won’t be happy to see us,” I told my young friend. Geordie giggled and I grinned at him. Deep in the back of my mind, I started plotting how I was going to murder the man who had killed our kind and had locked the survivors up to be tortured. Whatever I came up with, I had no doubt that it would be slow, horrific and very, very painful. We hadn’t even found a way to leave Viltar yet and I was already looking forward to catching up with the back stabbing soldier.
.~.
Note from the Author:
If you are like me, your time is valuable and I am very glad you enjoyed this novel enough to read it through to the end. As you no doubt know, reviews are an excellent tool to help new readers find my work and decide if the book is for them. I would very much appreciate it if you would take a few moments to click on the link below and leave a review on Amazon:
Death Banishes
Also by J.C. Diem in the Mortis Series:
Death Beckons
Death Embraces
Death Deceives
Death Devours
Death Betrays
Due for release in April 2014: Death Returns
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty