Rise of Cain (Immortal Mercenary Book 3) Read online

  Yep. My lung collapsed.

  “Our mother came back,” I said. “She tried to take this curse from me, and wanted to kill innocent people to get it done. She murdered several of them, Abe.” My eyes lost focus. “I had to take her out, and I used the curse to do that. It killed her, Abe, and that means it can kill you too.”

  I could barely see him anymore, given how blurry my eyes were. I heard him though, heard the bitter laughter that escaped his lips.

  “Don’t you understand, Brother,” he said and the sound of his voice told me he was coming closer. “I’ve died before. So has Mother. I don’t fear it. Even if this curse killed me, which it won’t, I would understand that it was necessary to advance the greater purpose.”

  My eyelids grew heavy and then closed. I felt my brother over me, and then felt pressure as he pressed something into my palm.

  My hand closed around it, a small, smooth circle.

  “Take this, Brother,” he said, leaning forward and kissing me on the forehead. “You will need it to brave what is coming.”

  With that, sleep took me.

  4

  Instantly, I realized it was not sleep that took me. After countless millennia of sleeping and dreaming, even of passing out after enduring that which would kill any other being on the planet, I knew the drill.

  This was different though. This was something much darker, much deeper than sleep. It reached up, tearing into my flesh and soul, pulling me down into what I could only imagine true death felt like.

  The sensation frightened me at first, which was odder than I would have ever cared to admit. In my long life, I had been surprised many times over, but it had been forever since I felt something I had never felt before.

  This was new. It was strange and, as I let the immense disconnect wash over me, a vision began to appear.

  Suddenly, I was no longer inside my own body. I was no longer in the world or in this reality. The thing that stretched out in front of me was something else entirely. As the vision took shape around me, illuminating with bright colors and vast stretches of near emptiness, I recognized where I was.

  “The Nexus,” I muttered, my heart jumping at the realization. This was the place souls went after death to be purged of their imperfections. This was Purgatory. It was the afterlife. I had been here before, of course. I’d harnessed the power of my name to punch a hole into the fabric of reality and slide through here in an attempt to save Merry, but that was different.

  That was a conscious act. It was a choice, not something done to me. What was happening now was different. It was almost like…almost like I had died.

  Swallowing hard, I tried to make sense of all that was happening around me. There had to be a reason for this. There had to be some sort of explanation. I couldn’t die. The Big Guy told me as much. He looked me square in my murderous peepers and assured me that I would wander for as long as there was an earth to move through. He never went back on his promises. So what was all this about?

  I spun around, feeling lighter than I had ever felt before. This place had been like a water tunnel the last time I was in it. I floated around without anchor or direction, but it was difficult.

  That must have been because I had my body to contend with then because, right now, I felt completely at ease. I could move wherever I wanted, as quickly or slowly as I wanted. I could have done freaking somersaults through the halls of Purgatory if that’s what my damned little heart desired.

  What I could not do however, was find a way out.

  I moved forward, remembering the tears that existed when I punched my way into this realm last time.

  None of them seemed to exist now and, as I ran through an eternity’s worth of supernatural knowledge in my head, I thought I had a pretty good idea as to why.

  With the expectation of earth itself, the other realms in existence were more or less reactionary. Heaven was a glorious place filled with things that would fill your heart with joy and happiness, but it could be tailored to you. It could give you the peace that you desired in the form truest to your heart.

  At least, that’s what the carpenter told me.

  Hell was nearly the complete opposite. It was dark and deranged, and filled to the brim with your worst fears and most horrible nightmares. I had never been myself, of course, but I had known a person or two (my mother included) who’d pulled themselves out of its clutches.

  Purgatory was the same way, albeit a little different. A void, free of any stimulus, this place stretched on for as long and far as you needed it too. It was a tunnel that only ended when you were ready for it to be. Some souls might float around for a moment. Some might float for a millennium. Some, the darkest and most unfortunate, might get lost in here and never find their way out.

  Then there were those like me, the people who didn’t belong here. When I was here before, with the rest of my put upon crew in town, we weren’t supposed to be. We were drifters, stowaways in a place that didn’t appreciate that sort of thing.

  As such, Purgatory took the first available opportunity to eject us. It opened the portal we needed, assured we’d take it.

  There were no portals for me now though. Not as far as my metaphysical eyes could see.

  What did that mean? Certainly I didn’t belong here. There was no way. I was alive. I had always been alive and always would be alive.

  I didn’t die and come back. That wasn’t the way the curse worked. I didn’t die at all. I was immortal; the Immortal Wanderer.

  I pushed myself forward, knowing nothing else to do beside move further down the open expanse of a tunnel, hoping an exit would present itself to me the way it had before.

  A strange thought entered my my mind. If I did find a tear to lead me out of here, what would happen then? Looking at myself, at the glowing aura of energy that I had become, I knew that- for the first time in my impossibly long life- I wasn’t inside of my body. I was a drifting soul, lost and without the anchor of a fleshly vessel to tie me to earth and the plane on which it resides.

  Even if I made my way back, what form would it be in? I would be a ghost, a moving ghoul doomed to haunt halls and whatnot.

  This was insane. None of this made any sense. I kept going, further and further and faster and faster through the endless tunnel of nothing.

  I saw them jut around beside me, glowing souls of energy just like me. Was this what I was now? After living through everything this world had to throw at me, had I really been undone by a bullet to the chest by my little brother.

  There was a certain poetic nature about it, I supposed. Killing him was what put me in this situation in the first place. It only seemed right that it would be his hand that took me out of it.

  I wouldn’t have objected under normal circumstances. I had lived far too long anyway. I had been given much more than my fair share of life and, if this was how it all unfolded, I would make my peace with it. I would travel this tunnel until I reached the end, until the Big Guy himself was there to meet me.

  And then I would deal with what he had to say to me. I couldn’t imagine it would be pleasantries, given the way our last conversation ended. I wouldn’t tell him I wasn’t my brother’s keeper this time. That was for sure.

  All of it was beside the point though. I couldn’t afford to be dead right now, even if that’s what I was.

  There were too many people counting on me back there though. In truth, the entire world was hanging by the thinnest of threads and Merry’s daughter was the one inadvertently holding it upright.

  That little girl hadn’t done anything wrong. She wasn’t like me. She didn’t deserve her punishment. That didn’t matter though. She was the Antichrist all the same. I saw it when I healed her, saw the visions of burning cities and dying races under her heel. I had to stop that, and I couldn’t do it if I was a damn ghost in a never ending tunnel.

  Suddenly, I heard a strange sound and, looking back at the source of it, I saw that getting back to earth was the least of my concerns rig
ht now.

  Behind me, floating toward me with the grace and speed of a soul that had been here much longer than I had, was a dark and rotting spirit.

  I recognized what it was immediately. The souls that get stuck here, that get lost in this unending place, they change. It twists them, contorts them into something they never were in life, into a shell of the worst parts of themselves.

  They got out every once in awhile and, when they did, they’d find their way into innocent vessels. People would mistake them with demons, not knowing that real demons have their own forms and therefor have no need to hijack any others.

  “Come back!” the voice screamed at me. It was hoarse and distant thing, almost inhuman as it neared me. “Come back to me! Don't you know me? Don’t you recognize me?”

  My heart probably would have sped up if I still had any connection to the damn thing. As it was, I just felt sick.

  This thing used to be a person, and the person it used to be knew me well enough to recognize my soul after what had to be centuries in this place.

  Someone I cared about had suffered this fate, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  All I could hope was that the same thing wouldn’t happen to me, that I wouldn’t get stuck here and twisted into something else.

  It neared me, and I felt a dark energy pouring from it. I wasn’t sure what it could do to me in my current form, but I knew I didn’t want to test it out.

  I wouldn’t get much of a choice though. It was quicker. It was stronger, and it was right upon me.

  I felt it touch me, it’s spirit burning me as I lurched to a stop. I felt everything about me shudder and start to convulse.

  It was agony so strong that I couldn’t think anymore. All I could do was shake and stammer out an unheard plea.

  I was sure this would destroy me, and then a hand reached down and pulled me out.

  The next thing I knew, I was in chains, trapped in darkness.

  “What?” I asked, and my throat was so dry the words would barely come. “What’s happening?”

  “A lot,” a voice I instantly recognized as Andy’s said.

  Looking forward, I saw him come toward me, walking out of the darkness with a cup of water in his hand.

  “And I don’t think you’re going to like it, Uncle C.”

  5

  My mind spun as I looked at him, my nephew for all intents and purposes. Aside from Garreth, he was the closest thing I would ever have to a son on this spinning blue rock. Though my body ached and my spirit felt heavy and a bit disjointed, just seeing Andy did me good. He was still alive. He was okay. So things couldn’t be too bad.

  Right?

  “Why am I in chains?” I asked, blinking in hopes that my eyes would quicker adjust to the darkness.

  For what it was worth, I could see Andy’s expression and, given the fact that I knew him as well as I did, I knew something wasn’t right. There was a darkness to him, a weight hanging over the way his shoulders slumped and the shuffle in his feet.

  He had told me nearly everything. Since he was a little boy, bouncing on his father’s knee, he always saw me as someone he could trust. So the fact that I saw hesitation grace his features told me that the answer to my question wouldn’t be a happy or an easy one.

  “Something happened to you,” he said, swallowing hard.

  “I know that, kid,” I said, shrugging and feeling an aching in my body with the movement. “I got shot, by my baby brother no less. It hurts like a bitch, but it’s nothing that hasn’t happened to me before. And besides, it doesn’t explain why you felt the need to lock me up like an animal.”

  A flash of hurt ran across Andy’s eyes and- for a second- I felt bad about my choice of words. He wouldn’t something like this to me if he had any other choice. I knew that like I knew the back of my immortal hand.

  “It wasn’t my decision,” he answered. “She told me to. She said we had to, and that you’d understand, Uncle C.” He handed me the cup of water and, with chained hands, I took it. Tipping it backward, I gulped it up greedily, letting the moisture cool my dry throat and run down the sides of my face. “Besides, it wasn’t about you getting shot. It was about what happened after that.”

  With the water gone, I dropped the cup and looked at Andy. If there was a hint of hesitation in his face before, now the damn thing had practically turned into a stop sign. My eyes narrowed as I tried to read him and, like a truck plowing into me without so much as tapping on the brake, the memory of what I’d just went through collided with my head.

  “Purgatory,” I muttered, thinking about it and wondering why this injury had been so much different than the others. I had gotten hurt worse than this before. I had had every bone in my body broken, been burned so badly that my body was a crackled mess. If not for a few helpful witches over the centuries, I’d have definitely been worse for wear. Still, in all of that, I’d never experienced Purgatory. I’d never experienced what it must have felt like to die.

  “What did you say?” he asked, almost in a gasp. “She said you might go there. She said that was definitely a possibility after what happened to you.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, kid?” I asked, standing upright and pulling at my chains so tightly that they strained against the wall. My body sung in pain, but it was worth it. I needed to get out of these constraints or, at the very least, let Andy know how ridiculous it was to have me in them in the first place. “And would you go get the key to these things? This is the height of insanity.”

  “I can’t do that,” Andy said, shaking his head. “Not until she checks you out and says you’re all clear.”

  “All clear of what?” I asked, anger evident in my voice. “And who the fuck is this ‘she’ you keep deferring to?” I swallowed hard. “I don’t like the sound of this, Andy. You’ve always been independent. Hell, you’ve been stubborn enough that you’ve made me want to smack you on more than one occasion. Who is this woman who’s pulling your strings? Whose got you taking up against me?”

  “I would never take up against you, Uncle C,” Andy answered, his hands balling into fists at his sides. “You know that. We’re family. Aside from my girls, you’re all I’ve got in this world. Nothing in heaven or hell is going to change that.”

  I winced because I knew how literally both of us would have to take that idea. In truth, anything in either heaven or hell could have very likely found its way to this plane of existence. It might have even used me as a funnel of sorts. Maybe that was what this was about. Maybe that as why I went to Purgatory. The question still remained though. How did that happen?

  “When he shot you, you died,” Andy said, his voice shaking.

  I looked up at his quickly, my eyes widening as I took the content of his sentence in.

  “That’s not possible,” I said instantly, remembering the words the Big Guy spoke to me. I was to wander for all time, for all eternity. No one could kill me, no matter what they tried.

  “I know it’s not possible, and I know it doesn’t make any sense, but it happened.” Andy shook his head. “Your pulse stopped. Your heart stopped.”

  “That doesn’t mean a damn thing for someone like me,” I answered, though- in truth- there were no people like me. I was a one of a kind and, as such, I played by my own set of rules…even if I wasn’t the one in charge of them. “I can see where that would have been scary for you though. I can see where it would have been confusing too. A stalled heart is a hard thing to wake up from, but I would have woken up eventually. Hell, I did,” I said, looking around.

  “I’m not a pissy little kid anymore, Uncle C.,” he said loudly. “I know what it looks like when you go under, when the stuff that should kill someone happens to you. God knows I’ve seen it happen enough. This wasn’t that. This was something different.”

  “Different how?” I asked, my chest tightening as I looked over my nephew. “What happened?”

  “You healed,” he said in a quiet voice. “You healed up enti
rely in the span of a few seconds. I thought it had something to do with the bullet at first. I figured maybe your brother wasn’t really trying to hurt you. Maybe this was some kind of weird Old Testament test or something.”

  “It kind of sucks how much sense that makes,” I answered, remembering the sacrifices and such that we’d perform for the Big Guy back in the day.

  “I thought maybe I wouldn’t need to bring you to a hospital. Maybe I’d just have Kyle look you over once we met back up with him, Merry, and Amber.”

  The thought of those two women; the woman I was sweet on and her daughter who would be the Antichrist, sent another shockwave of worry through my heart.

  I needed to get to them before someone or something else did. I needed to keep them safe, and here I was, chained to the wall like a dog and I still had no idea why.

  “Then you came back though,” Andy answered.

  “What?” I asked, my body tensing all over. “I woke up before this?”

  “Yeah,” Andy said. “You did. You were speaking a different language though and you wouldn’t stay. I tried to hold you back, thinking maybe you had hit your head when you fell and you had a concussion or something. You were acting so erratically. You wouldn’t listen though and, when I tried to-”

  “Did I hurt you?” I asked, my heart skipping a beat as the idea. This didn’t make any sense. For all the time I had spent in the world (and I had spent way more than my fair share) I had never lost any of it.

  “Not much,” he answered. “Not as much as you could have.”

  I looked him up and down, ready to scream and punch myself square in the face. So many people had gotten hurt by being near me over the years. Hell, I had sent this entire thing into motion because I wanted to save Andy from a death he endured because of me. The idea that I’d hurt him now, conscious or otherwise, was like a dagger in my eye.

  “You held me here after that,” I said, nodding firmly. “So I wouldn’t hurt anyone else.”

  “It’s not that simple,” he answered. “I tried to find you. I used all my contacts, used Ralphie. I even had Aria and Clint track your scent. It was no use. It was like you had disappeared from the face of the earth.”