“Eden,” Noah yelled in her ear as fighting broke out among the warriors and the Blessed. “They’re here to help you. Let them!”
Hands gripped her arms tightly and hauled her to her feet. Eden struggled in them, the strongest hold she’d ever felt, and found herself facing a tall, handsome man with mocha skin and chocolate eyes. He was young, perhaps in his early thirties. His eyes were soft on her, amazed. “Eden?” He breathed.
She felt transfixed by him, the noise and violence around them blurring and dimming to a dull thudding as they gazed upon one another. Electricity shot through her body from where he touched and she felt… safe.
“Nooo!” They spun around as Ryan screamed at them, a warrior with a broken neck left in his wake. Eden saw Celine, Stellan and Teagan fighting hand to hand with the warriors. The tall man jerked her behind him and Noah was suddenly at her side, the chains broken but still dangling from his wrists, another man perhaps in his late twenties standing beside him, his sword out as he guarded over them.
Eden was aware of Noah yelling at her but the words were muffled as she watched the man with the safe eyes fight her father. Something treacherous inside her prayed her father would lose the fight. They fought on and on, match for match. Eden was transfixed by them.
“You’re going to pay for what you’ve done!” The man finally cried, a war cry, as he ducked a powerful blow from Ryan.
Her father was sweating, his eyes bright with hatred.
“Ryan!” They glanced over at Celine, who was tumbling back into the room. Eden hadn’t even seen her leave. She threw Ryan a gun.
“No!” Eden screamed.
As Ryan aimed and fired, a bullet shot through the man’s shoulder as he swung around in an arc, his sword hissing through the air with song. He jerked a little at the impact of the bullet, but his arc never changed, never faltered, and the lethal blade sliced through Ryan’s neck, decapitating him. His head rolled from his body, and the body slumped to the ground with a thud, accompanied by Celine’s shriek.
Numb with shock Eden watched the man who had rescued Noah gut Celine from behind before she could fire her own gun at the chocolate-eyed warrior. Blood spurted up out of her mouth in a thick fluid as she dropped to her knees, eyes wide and disbelieving. The man slid the sword out with sick finesse and swung it around with mastery, the blade cutting through Celine’s neck. Eden closed her eyes so she didn’t witness the full decapitation. Unreality made her dizzy and she snapped her eyes back open. What the hell was happening? This couldn’t be happening. Not happening.
“Eden.” Noah shook her, as she gazed around in bewilderment.
The warriors were winning.
The blood of the Blessed splattered walls and chairs and pooled on the floor like something from a fantastical graphic novel. It was a massacre.
Stellan?!
Eden pushed at Noah, who kept a tight grip, tugging her towards the doorway as the chocolate-eyed warrior and the man who had killed Celine, drew towards her, guarding her. They were joined by a pretty woman with auburn hair.
“No!” Eden tried to wrench away from them. “Stellan!” She shrieked.
She caught sight of her brother through the fight, his head swinging around to find her as he heard her cry out his name.
A female warrior with a swishing blonde ponytail took advantage of Stellan’s distraction.
“Eden!” He yelled, turning away from the warrior, to fight his way through the miniature war.
“Eden, no!” Noah tried to pull her back.
“Stellan!” She reached out for him, her eyes widening as the sword came towards the back of his head. “Stellan, noooo!” She screamed.
But it was too late.
The sword cut through him, a sweep of his blood swiping through the air along with the top half of his head.
Agony ripped through her chest and her knees buckled beneath her. She felt arms wrap around her, holding her up as the horrific sight of her brother’s body disappeared from view as she was dragged from the room.
“Eden.” Warm hands clasped her cheeks but she couldn’t see past her tears, or feel anything past the grief that wrecked her body. “Eden, we have to leave. Can you walk?” The voice asked.
“There’s a girl in the basement,” her voice said, detached from her body. “The code is twenty. Forty two. Eighty eight.”
“OK, Eden, we’ll get her.” The warm fingers brushed her cheek. “Can you walk, Eden?”
Stellan was gone. Her chest tightened and she couldn’t breathe; broken sobs, unearthly wailing erupted out of her. Hands slid under legs and arms, and her feet fell away from the floor. She bounced against a hard warm chest, a body holding her up; a body that moved faster than her tears fell.
Her own body listened to the agony she was in, understood the shock and pain was too much, and as the mind does when it tries to protect us from ourselves, it shut down, granting her blissful nothingness.
Chapter Seventeen. Guess I’m Not Me After All
She awoke in an unfamiliar bedroom, the shadow of a tall figure standing beside the window. Eden struggled to sit up on the bed she was tucked into, her movements causing the figure to turn around, the soft light from the lamp near him on a computer desk casting clarity over his familiar features. The sight of the man with the warm chocolate eyes brought it all crashing back in tumultuous wave after wave of nausea.
Eden gasped, trying to draw breath as visions of her parents’ death and Stellan’s collapsed in on her like bricks around a bombed barricade.
Stellan.
The torment of his murder pressed on her chest, her lungs struggling to handle the weight of it. She wanted to scream and shriek and rip everything apart until she couldn’t feel anymore.
“Eden, breathe,” the man said softly, gently.
His words were a switch. Instead of screaming and shrieking, she drew up her knees and began to sob into them. The sounds of her choking, cracking, broken grief echoed around the room. She kept seeing his face before he died. His eyes full of anguish for her. Always for her. The one person she loved and these people took him from her.
The hunger felt the anger and gnawed at it, pushing its muzzle past the grief and snapping at it to make room for it. Slowly, Eden looked up, ignoring her swollen eyes and thumping head, as she gazed at the man with the chocolate eyes. He had pulled a chair up next to the bed and sat as if unsure whether to comfort her or not.
Eden glared at him. “My brother.”
There seemed to be a hint of regret his eyes. “I tried to spare you that pain. I’m sorry.”
Her fingers curled into her bedcovers. She wanted vengeance. She was going to get away from him, whoever he was, and she was going to get vengeance for what had been taken from her. “Who are you?” She asked calmly, shuddering back the grief and tears. Eden knew she had to be focused now. She had to discover what these people wanted from her.
And then what?
Ryan and Celine and Stellan were gone. She didn’t even know what had happened to Teagan.
She had nowhere left to go, she realised.
The man sighed, and leaned back. Eden studied him. He was handsome and young but there was something ancient in his eyes. It was hard to explain… just that he seemed to be a very old man trapped in a young man’s body. “I am Cyrus,” he responded softly, his eyes studying her closely. “I am Ankh.”
“Ankh are Neith right?”
Cyrus frowned. “No. Ankh are not Neith.”
They weren’t? But Ryan had said… “Then what are you?”
“You are familiar with the story? Of Merneith and the goddess Bat?”