Аполлион

The smile slipped from his face and then he moved lightning fast. Pain… it was everywhere. Another bone cracked—maybe my leg, or a kneecap, but I couldn’t be sure. My mouth opened to scream, but a wet, warm whimper came out instead.

I… I can deal with this. I had to… I had to.

When he snapped my other leg and then each rib, one at a time, the pain became my world. There was no escaping it—no breathing around it or hiding. Consciousness was slipping away from me and I fought the fog, because when he was done with me, if he’d ever be done with me, he would move on to Aiden and Marcus, to the whole University. He was the god of war and he would lay waste to everything.

But that pain… it rotted me from the inside. It reached down into the tiny part where I was still a person, where I was still Alex, and the pain took over. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t deal with it. My shields crashed down and the cord roared, but the growing hum was overshadowed by the terrible pain, and the growing hopelessness dug in deep with razor-sharp claws and pulled away my entire sense of being.

I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was, or maybe I’d just hit my limit, because I wanted out—I wanted to die. There was no pride in this. There was no purpose. My soul fragmented and I broke wide open.

Ares grabbed hold of my broken arm, dragging me to the center of the room, over broken glass and dead fish and the blood of those who’d already died in here. That fresh burst of pain seemed like nothing in comparison to everything else, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw Ares pick up a dagger.

He knelt over me, lips curled back. There was a blade in his hand, and this was about to get much, much worse. “Say the words.”

I was shattered and I was weak. He had won, and I wanted to die, but I couldn’t, and there was no way—I screamed as the first strike of the blade sank deep.

With another sharp slice, my vision flashed amber momentarily and then reverted, but something…something was different. A foreign sensation wiggled around the broken bones and severed muscles. It wasn’t from me, but it was a part of me. It was cold and it felt like steel and it was fury, dark and endless.

It wasn’t from me, because what little part of me that was left had curled up in a ball and was waiting and praying for this to be over. It had given up, cowering away from more pain like an abused dog. It wanted this to be over. It wanted to taste the peacefulness of death.

But that fury built and, as Ares bent over me holding the red-tipped dagger, I knew that the anger was filtering through the connection between me and the First.

It was Seth.

Was he angry that I hadn’t gone with Ares? Or was it because I was so weak that I wished for death? Or was it something else, something deeper than which side we stood on, because Seth… Seth had to feel this now. He had to know, and that last little shred of my being refused to believe that he would condone this. I suffered, and so he suffered.

The god laughed coldly. “I wonder, if you cut the head off the Apollyon, does it grow back? Guess we could find out, huh? You’d like that.”

Part of me died right then, maybe not a physical death, but on some mental, some emotional level I was good as dead. When all of this was over, I wouldn’t be the same.

Wood and metal splintered, and I knew the door had finally been breached. As the god brought the dagger down, a body crashed into him. The blade impaled the floor harmlessly beside my neck. Before I could take my next painful breath, the three of them moved above me, engaging in a sick, macabre dance of sorts. Ares. Aiden. Marcus. They moved too fast for me to track. The three of them were too close together.

Light exploded, casting the room in white light as bright as the sun. The presence of another god filled the room, and I was blinded. I tried to take my next breath and wheezed. Wet warmth spread along the left side of my body, pooling across the floor like red rain. My blood? Someone else’s? Gods… gods didn’t bleed like us.

There was an inhuman roar and Ares spun around, his attention on whatever was behind me. In an instant, the god of war threw out his arms. A shockwave rolled through the destroyed room. Shattered wood and broken furniture flew into the air, along with prone, lifeless bodies… and Marcus and Aiden.

Red rain seemed to pour from the ceiling now.

My name was called, but it sounded so far away. I struggled to sit up, to see Aiden and Marcus, to know that they were okay, but I couldn’t move and I couldn’t breathe. Hands landed on me, but my skin felt detached. There was screaming in the background, and I wanted them to shut up— to just shut up. My entire body felt slippery as I was lifted, my head flopping loosely to the side.

Where were they—where were Aiden and Marcus?