Kill them all.
My focus cleared and I felt more naturi. Without hesitation I pushed outward, past the walls of the manor, into the trees surrounding the compound. I set aflame every throb of naturi energy I ran across, pushing the power out until I finally encountered a different feeling of power blocking my reach somewhere miles from the Compound.
Then the energy stopped. Beside me, I heard Danaus drop to his knees, my hand slipping from his to thud against the cold, sticky floor. The room was silent except for his ragged breaths. My body still hurt with an intensity I never thought possible, but my thoughts were clearing, and I wished they hadn’t.
I realized with a startling clarity what I had done. I’d destroyed their souls; wiped them completely from existence. Previously, I had just set their bodies on fire. Yes, I killed them with a certain amount of glee, but their souls had been free to pursue whatever afterlife they believed in. This time there was nothing left. My eyes were closed but I could smell the charred bodies and burned hair. I had destroyed them completely. And not just the ones attacking us. I had obliterated every naturi within several miles of the Themis compound.
Twenty-Eight
The silence was overwhelming. After the heavy pound of footsteps, clang of steel, and screams of pain, the quiet was suffocating. Even Sadira’s thoughts were now hushed. I could still feel her in the room, but there was only a muffled confusion. Did she know what I had done? I hated the naturi with every fiber of my being, but had I known I was capable of such utter destruction, I would never have committed the atrocity. Taking a life is one thing. The body ceases, but something of the creature still lives on somewhere. I had stopped that, done something I didn’t think possible.
But how? It didn’t make sense. I had never done such a thing before. Even at my peak, I should have been able to only flambé the occupants of the room, if even that. There were so many, and I was exhausted.
Something happened when I touched Danaus. Not only had I been able to sense them, which is unheard of among nightwalkers, but I could also destroy their souls.
Slowly, I opened my eyes and turned my head to the right to look at Danaus. The ebony-haired hunter sat on the floor beside me, his body hunched over. His head was bowed, leaving his face hidden behind a curtain of long dark locks. He had been affected as much as I, his breath still ragged and uneven. When he finally looked over at me, I saw my horror mirrored in his blue eyes.
Danaus reached out to touch my arm, but I lurched across the floor, pushing away from him. “Don’t touch me!” I shrieked. I cringed, nearly curling into a ball as a fresh wave of pain washed through my body. It was blinding, but my fear of what had happened was greater. I know it didn’t make much sense. I had crawled all over the man on more than one occasion and nothing had happened, but the memory and pain were still too fresh.
“Mira?” Sadira said, her voice a fragile shade of its normal strength.
“They’re gone.” My words had been reduced to a pathetic whimper. The raw ache was starting to subside at last and my thoughts were coming together in a more logical fashion. I lifted my head and reluctantly gazed around the room. It was a disaster, something from a nightmare, with body parts strewn haphazardly around the small area. But to me, the most garish of these grisly sights were the bodies of those I’d destroyed. After their souls were incinerated, their bodies had been reduced to gray and white ash. Most had collapsed into large heaps, but a few still stood like thin, dirty snowmen. Because of me, the island was dotted with dirty snowmen, empty shells waiting for a breeze.
“Then it’s done,” Sadira said. She was sounding strong, more sure of herself. “The triad has been reformed.”
“So you believe me now,” I said, trying to force a smile on my lips. But it fell short. What I really wanted was to vomit. My stomach twisted in a desperate dance to purge itself of the violence I had been responsible for, but I’d lost too much blood during the past couple nights.
“No!” Jabari roared, his angry voice an explosion in the silent room. “It can’t be him.”
“Him?” My head jerked up to look from Jabari to Sadira, but both of them were ignoring me.
“He’s not even one of our kind,” Jabari declared.
“Apparently that does not matter,” Sadira said matter-of-factly. “You felt the power in this room as much as I did.”
“No!”
“You’d pick Danaus over me to be in the triad?” I demanded. While I was never one to discriminate according to a person’s race, there was something that irked me about asking Danaus—whatever it is that he was—to be in an all-vampire triad of power. Particularly after he’d spent so much time killing us.
Unfortunately, it might not have been the wisest decision to call attention to myself, considering that I could barely remain in an upright position. I wanted to lie down, but the pools of cooling naturi blood and assortment of body parts made the idea unappealing.
“You’re still blind to the truth?” Jabari asked incredulously. He walked over to me, his face twisted with rage. “You can never be a part of the triad, no matter how old you become or how strong you grow.” Kneeling down so he could look me in the eye, he sneered. “You are just a weapon, nothing more than a sword or a gun, a tool. Your true power is in how another can use you.”
“No,” I croaked, but my mind was already turning over the idea. The voice in my head had been a command and I obeyed. I had no choice, couldn’t have stopped what happened no matter how hard I tried.
“The triad focuses its power in you. We used you like a key to lock the door between this world and the naturi,” Jabari explained.
“If I was so important to what happened, why can’t I remember that night?” I asked through clenched teeth. The thought of being controlled by another twisted in my chest, numbing the pain still throbbing in my body. It seemed that from the moment I took my first gasping breath on this earth, I’d struggled for my independence, my ability to control my own fate.
“To protect you.”
A snort of disbelief escaped me as I narrowed my eyes at my old friend and guardian. “I’m beginning to think that nothing you’ve ever done for me was for my benefit.”
Jabari smiled at me, and it was unlike any other I had ever seen cross his face. It was like a mask had finally been lifted, one I hadn’t even realized I’d been staring at for the past five hundred years. I had seen him smile in pleasure and in hatred, but now he seemed formed of ice, cold and unyielding. He put a finger under my chin and titled my head up. I tried to jerk my head away but I found that I couldn’t. The leak of power oozing from him through his finger into my skin was slight, but it was enough to cause my already sore muscles to tense. There was a new presence in my head claiming dominion, but he had yet to speak or command me. For now, he was just staking his claim, proving he had control over me.
“You can’t remember because we didn’t want you to remember,” Jabari stated.
“We?”
“The Coven. We needed to know who could control you. You can be quite an effective weapon.”
I gritted my teeth and tried again to move my head away from his touch, and again I couldn’t, which made his smile widen.
“Sadira can control you,” Jabari continued. “Tabor could, and so can I. Surprisingly, a couple of Tabor’s children could as well, so we naturally assumed that it was a matter of finding the proper bloodlines.”
“There were others?” A new horror dug its claws into my flesh. There were no memories to drag up, but I could easily imagine the scene: me playing the puppet for the amusement of the Coven and its lackeys.
“A few. We ran some experiments. Unfortunately, most of those we found who could control you had to be destroyed. We couldn’t let our little secret out. We also had to make sure you didn’t know. There would always be the chance of someone reading your mind and discovering your unique ability.”