Page 63 of Under a Wicked Moon
Standing here in the lobby of a government-owned building, he felt broken.
Unmendable.
Shattered.
Roman said, “I’ll see her through this. I swear. But she’ll either not remember anything—we’ll give her the amnesia injection—or she’ll be dead. The brain-erase formula is permanent. There’s simply no other way. If she chooses death, it’ll be her choice, but from what I’ve seen of her and know of Nova, she’ll choose life. Are you sure you’re strong enough to evacuate the rest of the relics? Slate could ambush you.”
“Has to be done today while we’re here.” Ky squeezed Roman’s free shoulder. “It’s a mission worth dying over. I’ll make sure it gets done. We can’t afford for any of them to be out there in the world again.” Did he truly want to die? Not sure. Hell, he felt half dead knowing if he saw her again, she wouldn’t remember him or what they’d shared. He wished there was another way.
“It’s not worth losing you over, even if it’s important. If you have to ditch them to survive, I prefer you alive. We’ll get them back, even though it might take us another fifty years. I don’t like that it’s just you alone, but I need Flynn to keep the flight control towers and monitoring off my back.”
Ky lingered on Vivi’s limp form, her long hair hanging in a braid down Roman’s back. Instinct pushed him not to let her go. This…her…everything they’d had in their short time left a huge hole in his chest. And it was about to get permanently erased. She was a survivor, which meant she’d choose amnesia, and in doing so, forget everything, including him.
Maybe the future amnesic her would choose him a secondtime. The brief flare of hope died in the wake of knowing they couldn’t be. Although, what about Nova and Roman? They could be secretive. Hope surged again.
But what if something about him awakened the programming in her head? And Roman being able to be with Nova had been predicated on her actually dying. He couldn’t count on supernatural resuscitation for Vivi.
The two of them together was impossible.
He pulled out every bit of have-it-together to say, “I won’t let any of you down.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
There was no natural light a quarter mile beneath London. One of the fluorescent panel lights flickered where one bulb had long ago burned out and the other threatened to go any time. No maintenance team was allowed into this area. Only Gerard, the monarch, and the Lanzo brothers had access. Ky cared little if the place caved in and became inaccessible, and suspected his brothers felt the same. Gerard might clean obsessively, but if a lock broke or a toilet clogged, it might be six or seven months before he tried to fix it. “Tried” being the operative word, since he sucked at small repair tasks. He viewed maintenance to be too many levels below his pay grade.
Ky scrutinized the depository, the room where they stored the dangerous magical items acquired off maniacal magical creatures over the years while in the Crown’s service. The ones in the locked cases were the ones in need of transport, many of which hadn’t seen daylight in decades. The various jars of random body parts or benign trinkets cluttering the tables and a few shelving units didn’t matter. He could see blank spots from Flynn’s extraction of items.
They’d decided having the collection in plain sight with only him to protect the items during transport was a smaller risk than leaving them in here where someone could pilfer one dangerous relic at a time. More so now with Slate against them.
This was Roman’s attempt at distraction. He fully understood Roman wanted him far away from the temptation of Vivi. Hecouldn’t be there when she elected to either erase herself or die. Deep inside, he would be unable to allow her to do either. The choice had to be hers, and it had to be out of his hands.
He unzipped the black duffel bag, then donned leather work gloves to load items into the bag. Skin to skin with any of these objects was suicidal. Chills zipped down his spine as he wrapped a protective towel around a glass vial. If this broke to release the oil inside, he’d feel the dragon fire scourge. It blasted the ultimate punishment from dark necromancy, which removed the ability to feel pleasure, like someone ripping out a person’s heart and soul. Yet it also accelerated the drive to seek out gratification. In essence, it created a monster ever-hungry for indulgence, hedonism, and decadence, but who never experienced the relief of fulfillment. Any people he touched would also become infected by the scourge.
He repeated the towel wrapping with a second tiny vial of neon purple fluid. The beauty of the fluid was deceiving. The witch who designed the plague formulated it to efficiently wipe out humanity by turning them into ghouls. Nasty stuff.
Once done, he clicked on the miniature holographic projector Flynn designed to buy them time before questions were asked. It created the illusion all the items were still there.
Next, he examined the weapons wall. Hundreds of armaments from various eras hung here, all of them serviceable. He selected three guns and made sure they were loaded with an active in the chamber. He pocketed two boxes of rounds in his tactical pants and loaded a few more into the bag. From the side table, he removed his last St. Michael pendant, one he’d picked up in Rome decades ago. An antique, at least two or three centuries old, it’d been blessed by the pope and melded from the metal of a medieval knight’s sword.
At this point, he needed any form of help. Because his neck tingled.
Whenever that occurred, it was followed by something bad happening to him.
He kissed St. Michael and believed God heard as he whispered, “I could use you on my side for this. A bit of an assist would be greatly appreciated. The world can’t have any of these on the loose. The Curmsun Disc is enough of a disaster.”
How he wished this would be the last time he saw the inside of this room, but he’d be back. So long as the curse band wrapped his wrist, he was chained to these humans.
Duffel bag over a shoulder, he rounded the corner and came face-to-face with Gerard.
“You look terrible,” their handler said.
“Starvation and torture make a crap workout program. It’s whatyousent me in to do. How about you tell me how come it was important I go alone and get caught?” Ky tilted his head, eyebrows trekking upward. “Was it Slate who made you order I surrender and go in? To do it alone without backup?” He felt himself shift to his feral form as anger shuttled adrenaline through him. Muscles expanded, nails sharpened, teeth grew longer and sharper. He became taller and broader as his body readied for battle. Details of his environment came into sharp focus such that he could hear the whoosh of Gerard’s blood through his heart and see each bead of sweat the second it formed along his brow.
Gerard took a step back. Even though he knew himself safe from pain or death, since the Crown had ordered that so, no human could avoid their gut instinct to run.
“What do you have there?” Gerard, now recovered and more confident despite Ky’s shift, pointed at the bag.
“Weapons.”In a sense.
