The Reckoning (The Sentinel Series Book 4) Read online

  Suddenly Isaac slammed into Trey so hard, it sent him sprawling across the stairs. ‘You know the rules,’ he roared.

  Trey held his hands up in a gesture of surrender, but Isaac went for him again until he obviously received some kind of silent communication from Eli which stopped him in his tracks.

  ‘What the hell?’ Seth said, not leaving my side but clearly annoyed over Isaac’s treatment of Trey. The sounds of fighting was getting less now, clearly my Guardians were winning.

  ‘You know the rules as well as I do Seth,’ Isaac said. ‘When she’s under attack the only ones allowed near her are you or the members of the personal guard.

  ‘Trey was only trying to help,’ Seth said as Trey picked himself up and dusted himself down. He didn’t seem too bothered though I was.

  I stood angrily, ready to give Isaac a piece of my mind when the fort tipped, as if someone had flipped it on its side. I pitched forwards feeling my stomach lurch with the momentum. I was aware that the Guardians seemed unaffected by the fort’s movements, but then they did have more balance and grace than me. Isaac's eyes slid from Seth's to mine as I cast out wildly for something to grab on to, he moved so quick that my eyes barely registered it as he caught me, swinging me up into his arms

  ‘Maybe you should worry a bit more about your wife and a bit less about your brother,’ snapped Isaac, passing me into Seth’s outstretched arms.

  ‘You look funny,’ I laughed at Isaac.

  ‘Thanks,’ muttered Isaac, rolling his eyes at me angrily.

  ‘I didn’t mean like that, it’s your hair, why is it green?’

  Why was his hair green, the exact shade of his eyes?

  Isaac felt my pulse and turned back to Trey. ‘If you want to make yourself useful go and get Cassidy, her heart is racing and she’s having hallucinations.’

  Eli was suddenly at my side and I burst out laughing. ‘Your head is huge.’ It was too, it was the size of a small car. I saw Trey disappear down the stairs.

  ‘What the hell was in that drug?’ Eli asked, checking my pulse as well, and feeling my forehead.

  Isaac picked up the cloth that Blake had used on me and sniffed it.

  ‘What are you doing? We have no idea what he used,’ Eli said, angrily.

  ‘It’s not going to affect me, is it,’ tutted Isaac, sniffing it again, he shook his head. ‘Some kind of chloroform maybe, then his face fell. ‘Oh.’

  The look of surprise on his face as the drugs kicked in was priceless. I couldn’t help but laugh. He glared at me, but then a smile spread on his face, and he laughed too.

  The noise didn’t seem right, I had never heard Isaac laugh before, but it made me laugh even more. I had just had another attempt on my life, by two of my own and I was laughing, hysterically. Isaac too, seemed to find his laughter funny.

  ‘Excellent,’ Eli muttered, dryly. ‘Let’s take her back to your room until we can find Cassidy, unless you can heal yourself Eve?’

  I couldn’t stop laughing now, it bubbled out of me like a small waterfall. Seth grinned. ‘I know it’s drug induced Eve, but I do love the sound of your laugh.’

  Seth carried me back up the stairs as Isaac and I laughed seemingly at nothing. When we reached the bedroom, I was placed on the bed, still giggling. I cuddled up to my pillow, laughing at Isaac as he sat down giggling in the corner of my room. I closed my eyes, and the last thing I heard before I drifted off was a loud, grunting snore from Isaac.

  *

  I woke later and the room was in darkness, though snow continued to fall outside. The light from the window picked out the shape of my husband lying on the bed next to me.

  He brushed my hair off my face. ‘Hey baby, how you feeling?’ he asked softly.

  The effect of the drugs seemed to have passed, my powers were still there so that was all good, but I was still really tired.

  ‘I’m OK. Is everyone else OK, was anyone hurt?’

  ‘No, nothing major. Cassidy was able to heal any injuries and heal you of the effect of the drugs. Blake and Connor and four others who were part of the attack are dead.’

  I groaned. ‘Why did they think they could get away with it? Even with six of them they couldn’t fight against all the hundreds of Guardians that are still loyal to me. Blake knew he couldn’t win in a fight against Eli or any member of my personal guard for that matter, but he still kept trying.’

  ‘I know. Desperation does weird things to people and as Isaac said, everyone has their price.’

  ‘At least we’ve found out who has been helping the Putarians over the last few days, with them dead we can relax a little.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll ever relax but yes it seems they were the problem.’

  I snuggled in closer to Seth hoping that one day we could all relax and stop looking over our shoulders for a potential attack.

  ‘Was Cassidy OK, Blake said she was injured?’

  ‘That was a lie.’

  I sighed. ‘They really were desperate and the sad thing was I fell for it. They knew I would want to help Cassidy and I went with them willingly. Thank god, Mason and Rhesa decided to come with me. I can’t bear to think about what would have happened had they not been there.’

  ‘Don’t think about it, let us worry about that. Just go to sleep Evie. You need to rest.’

  I closed my eyes again as Seth wrapped his arms around me.

  I had only been sitting on my beach, the place my dreams took me, for what felt like a few minutes when a dark shadow fell over me.

  I looked up and my heart leapt when I saw Adam standing over me. He sat down a few feet away as if we were best friends sitting down for a chat. The protective layer that the Oraculum had placed over me was supposed to stop him from finding me but I guessed with only four members of the Oraculum left alive that was weakened now.

  ‘You don’t need to look so scared,’ Adam said, he smiled though it never reached his eyes. ‘I can’t get to you in the real world. Not yet. But your dreams are easy to find now.’

  I swallowed. ‘We had a deal Adam. You’d stay out of my dreams and I’d stay out of yours. If you come near me, my Guardians and the Oraculum will kill you.’

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you. But I thought we could have a chat.’

  I didn’t trust him one bit but I was prepared to listen to him. It was the morning of the 27th. It was four days until New Year’s Eve and I still believed we had to work together to save the world. If talking to him could mend some bridges then I was willing to do it. Besides, he couldn’t hurt me in my dreams.

  ‘OK. What would you like to talk about?’

  ‘Do you know about the Oraculum’s plans for after you heroically save the world,’ he said, dryly.

  ‘No, though I know I apparently won’t like it. Nathaniel thinks I’m trying to kill off members of the Oraculum because of it.’

  ‘They plan to kill you,’ Adam said, simply. ‘They plan to kill us both, but the difference being that they want to kill me now but they’re going to wait until you’ve done the little job they created you for first before they kill you.’

  I stared at him. I knew he hated the Oraculum so anything he could do to turn me against them was a good thing in his eyes. I had to take what he was saying with a pinch of salt.

  ‘They created us to be the most powerful beings in the world but they created us for one reason only and that was to save the world. Once that job is done, they have no use for us anymore. There is no way they want to leave someone as powerful as you alive. You’re too strong for any of the Oraculum to stop if you did something wrong. So they would have to clean up the mess they made by killing you.’

  ‘And where did you get this idea from?’

  ‘I’m not making this up,’ Adam snapped, suddenly angry. Then he fixed the fake smile back on his face as he tried to calm himself down. ‘I’ve heard them talking about it. This has been their plan all along. Since you were born they planned to destroy you once you had saved the world. But I have a
plan to stop them. We can join forces and kill them all. Kill them before they kill us. Jonah and Nathaniel, I could get to pretty easily but Cain and Leon are harder. You’re close to them, you could kill them before they even suspected what you were up to. Cain is strong but you’re stronger. You could burn them like they plan to burn you.’

  This was crazy. The Oraculum were not going to kill me after I had saved the world. I didn’t expect them to throw themselves at my feet with undying gratitude but I expected that my reward for saving the world would be to be left completely alone afterwards, that I would never have to have anything to do with them again.

  But what Adam said did make sense. Why would they leave me alive? If they were so convinced that the weird cocktail of my DNA would send me mad in the end, why would they risk it? Samuel supposedly had a prophecy that I turned mad and destroyed the world. If the Oraculum believed that then they wouldn’t risk me destroying the world a few years after I had saved it.

  I knew there was a plan for after I had saved the world, Cain had said that I wouldn’t like it. If killing me was their plan then he had got that right.

  But regardless of the Oraculum’s plan, whether it was true or not, I could never kill them. If they came to kill me or my Guardians then I would kill them without hesitation but I couldn’t kill them now, not without provocation.

  ‘Without the Oraculum, the world would be ours,’ Adam said, a greedy glint in his eyes.

  I couldn’t say no to him and risk angering him but I couldn’t say yes to killing the Oraculum either.

  ‘I need to think about this,’ I muttered and quickly forced myself awake.

  I woke, my heart hammering against my chest. In response to my increased heart rate, Seth stirred. I carefully disentangled myself from his arms and rolled over to the edge of the bed.

  Was it true? Was Adam playing with me? Playing with my mind again. But what if it was true, my beautiful future with Seth snatched away from me. My beautiful daughter would never exist. Would those who had created me really seek to destroy me? Although this wouldn’t be the first time.

  A strong arm was round my waist, pulling me back. Seth swept my hair from my face, and kissed the back of my neck. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yes, I’m fine, just… a weird dream.’

  Seth kissed me again, trying to soothe me back to sleep but that was the last thing I wanted.

  ‘I need to speak to Cain.’

  ‘OK, can it wait until morning?’

  I shook my head. There would be no more sleep tonight if I didn’t speak to him now.

  Seth got up and I quickly got dressed. I took his hand and slid us both to Cain.

  We landed next to him, as he stood on the cliff tops, looking out over the sea. He was the only member of the Oraculum that had opened his mind to me, allowing me to slide to him whenever I felt like it. Clearly the trust that we were supposed to have between us didn’t work both ways for the other members of the Oraculum.

  Cain didn’t even move when I landed next to him, and I realised he had his eyes closed. But he knew I was there.

  I sat down and waited and Seth sat down with me, though I wasn’t going to be patient for long. The hazy sun rose above the horizon, though it would be a few hours until the day was warm.

  I shivered slightly against the chill of the morning and Cain shrugged out of his jacket and passed it to me, I took it and wrapped it round me, as he sat down next to me.

  ‘So you want to know if it’s true?’ he asked, in my head.

  Damn Cain’s mind reading ability. He smirked as he heard that thought too. Still it made any preliminaries unnecessary.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Chapter 10

  I felt sick, all the breath knocked out of me.

  ‘The plan is for you to save the world and then you would be killed,’ Cain said, calmly.

  Betrayal, anger, bitterness burnt furiously through my heart. How could they do that to me? How could Cain do that to me?

  Cain rolled his eyes with exasperation as he turned to look at me and I faltered in the tirade that I had been about to leash on him.

  ‘You… you don’t agree with it?’ I asked.

  ‘Eve we decided long ago, when you were just a child, that we would have to kill you when your job was done, that we could never leave someone with that much power alive. That much strength could only lead to greed, arrogance, corruption, a hunger for fame and glory. It would be too dangerous. I had watched you grow. Almost every day I came to see you, I had… become fond of you, even though we had never met directly, so it was a very hard decision to come to. But I could see their point, when you turned mad, and really it was a case of when not if, with the amount of power flowing through you, when it happened, there would be no one strong enough to stop you, we couldn’t allow it. We had created you for one purpose and once that purpose was completed we would have to take responsibility for our creation, destroy it before it got out of hand.’

  I looked at him in horror. It? He made it sound like I was a monster. But Cain’s eyes were far away now and he didn’t see me looking at him.

  I finally found my voice, pulling him back to the present. ‘And what about my Guardians, do you think they would just stand by and let you do this?’

  ‘Yes actually, we never foresaw them being a problem. Once your purpose had been served, they would no longer care about what happened to you after that, they would be very easily persuaded that it was for the greater good. That was the idea anyway. We never foresaw how much they would fall in love with you. Deus are supposed to be devoid of emotions, to think logically and calculated, not to fall in love with their charge.’

  ‘So what? They would have to be killed as well?’

  Cain shrugged. ‘If necessary.’

  I shook my head angrily, turning away from him. Not only was my future bleak, but that of my Guardians as well. I swallowed as I looked at Seth. They would have to kill Seth to get to me. I would have to go to them, hand myself over to spare any more bloodshed.

  Cain laughed, and I turned to face him, angrily.

  ‘You see, it’s that compassion that changed everything, for me at least. Samuel had a prophecy that you would turn mad, though I never believed it. Nathaniel has been convinced that it would happen sooner rather than later, he said it would begin with hallucinations, which would develop into a deep rooted paranoia, a darkness taking over your mind. But I saw your future, I still see it so clearly. You playing on the beach with your children, surrounded by those who love you, Seth, Quinn, your friends. No riches, no arrogance, no insanity, just a normal life.’

  ‘That’s all I’ve ever wanted,’ I said, quietly.

  ‘When I saw what you would become, I knew…’ he trailed off and I looked at him confused. ‘After all our experiments, the mistakes we made, the amount of power we messed around with, the lethal combination of Donum, Guardian, Zeki, shape shifter and the Oraculum DNA, after all our meddling, we actually, somehow, managed to create something… amazing, something beautiful. I knew then that I would fight to the death to stop it from happening.’

  I swallowed.

  Cain looked away frowning. ‘Though it seems that won’t be necessary after all.’

  ‘What do you mean, have the others changed their minds too?’

  Cain shook his head. ‘Before the year is out, all the members of the Oraculum will be dead.’

  My breath caught in the back of my throat. ‘They’ll all be dead… including you?’

  Cain shrugged. ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I just need to make sure I’m the last member of the Oraculum left standing, then I can die in peace, knowing your life will be assured.’

  I swallowed, with a sudden sense of loss. I stood up, feeling anxious, nervous for him. ‘What… how do you die?’

  Cain smirked, as he stood by my side. ‘Are you concerned for me? Surely not. I’m one of them, the Oraculum that you hate so much.’


  ‘You’re not really like the others, Cain, you… care for me, I think…’

  Cain smiled sadly. ‘I do.’

  ‘And I’ve kind of got used to having you in my life, I’ll be sad to see you go.’

  ‘Once the Oraculum are all gone, you’ll be left alone, left to live your own life, with no interference, this is a good thing, surely.’

  I shook my head. ‘I will be sad. I’ll… miss you. How does it happen?’

  ‘Adam kills Jonah and Nathaniel.’

  ‘Leon?’ I asked. I’d be sad to see him die too, I wasn’t as close to him as I was to Cain, but he had always fought my corner.

  ‘I… don’t know.’

  He did but he didn’t want to tell me how Leon died.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘That I don’t know. I don’t even know if I do, but I doubt I will be the only one standing. Adam won’t allow it, or maybe I die fighting for you, I hope so, I hope I die so you can live.’

  I suddenly found myself stepping forward to hug him, he didn’t hug me back at first, but then he did, wrapping his arms tightly around me.

  Cain pulled away. ‘Now if you want to stay for breakfast, you’re both more than welcome.’ He turned away and walked back towards his house.

  I turned to face Seth, who was looking at me with confusion.

  ‘Sorry to keep you in the dark,’ I said, leaning my head against his chest. He wrapped his arms around me. ‘Adam appeared in my dreams, he told me the Oraculum planned to kill me, that after I’d saved the world, they would destroy me. I just needed to find out the truth.’

  Seth held me tighter as if doing so would protect me from them. ‘Is it?’

  I explained to him what Cain had told me, which did nothing to alleviate the frown on his forehead.

  ‘Most of the Oraculum will be dead before the end comes,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the ones that aren’t that I’m worried about.’

  I sighed. ‘I guess we cross that bridge when we come to it, if its Cain and Leon left standing then we’ll be OK. I trust them.’

  Seth scowled.

  I held him tighter. ‘Shall we go home?’