Prime, p.10
Prime, page 10
part #13 of Nathan K Series
Staying low, Dr. Kempo hustled toward Benton. She might have grown tired of this fight and hoped to escape, or she intended to steal a soul in order to get more involved. Nathan didn’t like either option. Tracking her movements with Maggie, he drew his focus entirely on her. A merciful shot could take her down in seconds, and though she didn’t deserve mercy, he couldn’t indulge in revenge — not when Robin had bullets zipping around her.
Far closer than the lobby gunfight, Nathan heard a shot. Even as the sound of a SW1911 registered in his brain, the impact on his hand caused him to drop Maggie. Another shot in his leg prevented any rapid escape. His confusion dispelled fast. Octavia walked toward him, her weapon held out and ready to fire again.
She kicked Maggie out of the way before wrenching him to the floor. “I said nobody dies. Especially not an Immortal.” Rolling him to his stomach, she grabbed his injured hand, twisted it behind his back, and locked it under her knee.
Corker popped up and took three quick shots. The last one caught Anton in the leg. He cried out and fell. Pressing forward, Benton and Corker took one end while the third soldier swung around the other side of the van.
Nathan strained but couldn’t move. Thankfully, he did not hear another bullet. Robin had to know she was outnumbered. Sure enough, she stepped from behind the van with her hands up.
A few hand signals and Corker was sent into the van. “Clear,” he said as he returned.
“Clear,” the third soldier said after patting down Robin.
Benton helped Anton limp into the open. “Clear,” he said. He spotted Octavia and gave a slight nod.
Strutting like a Roman conqueror, Dr. Kempo stepped forward. “Good work, Mr. Benton. You and your men have captured the perpetrators of tonight’s violence. You’ll be commended and rewarded.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“More importantly,” she turned on her heel to face Nathan, “we have a unique opportunity to achieve our entire purpose for being here.”
As Dr. Kempo sauntered to the center of the lobby, her entire countenance transformed. Each step shed the fighting Immortal she had been and replaced it with the strict scientist that haunted Nathan’s mind.
“No more of this,” Octavia said. “What you are doing was never the plan.”
“Do you really think I would do any of this without Larkin’s sanction?”
Octavia’s knee lightened on Nathan’s back, then pressed in hard — wavering back and forth. “Even if Larkin agreed to your sad excuse for experiments, none of that included the destruction and the lives lost tonight.”
Dr. Kempo giggled — a sound that turned Nathan’s stomach. “You are soft. Nobody important died tonight. And once I take my second soul, nobody important is at risk of dying tonight, either.”
She snapped her fingers at Benton, and with a quick motion, she had him escort Robin closer. Nathan tried to push up, but Octavia’s weight and his numerous injuries kept him from getting anywhere. Dr. Kempo grabbed Robin and hauled her in.
Squeezing Robin’s jaw while holding a knife at her throat, Dr. Kempo flashed a toothy grin. Her tongue slipped out and slowly traced her lips as if she wanted to seduce Nathan. “It’s right there, yes. I always suspected you would not release your true power unless given proper motivation. I’ve searched for that key into your will for months. Every kind of pain, every torment I could think of, yet you still resisted. But her — this one — I had heard about her. I had heard how you have fought so hard to keep her alive.”
Nathan clamped his mouth shut. He wanted to spew fiery hatred. He wanted to threaten Dr. Kempo’s existence. But any display would only confirm her hypothesis, giving her more ammunition against him and increasing the danger to Robin.
“I never thought I’d have the chance to use her against you, though. I had suggested to Larkin on several occasions that we snatch her up and bring her here, but apparently Octavia still has his ear on some things. She had made you a promise, and Larkin refused to break it. We were not to touch your dear, sweet Robin.” She kissed Robin’s cheek before shoving the woman aside. Benton made sure to keep his weapon trained on the hacker. Dr. Kempo went on, “It never occurred to me that this speck of dirt would actually attempt to save you. It would be an impressive display of bravery, if it weren’t such a stupid move. I wanted to steal her, was refused, yet she just comes right in. Delivers herself to me. Isn’t that wonderful?”
She strolled up toward Robin again, moving with the sway of a seductress. Nathan struggled once more but could not break free. Robin looked back at him, her eyes shivering. He had seen her scared in the past, but nothing like this. Part of her always held to the belief that he would rescue her. Somehow. But her pleading eyes betrayed her doubt. He saw it all — this time, she thought they had finally lost.
“Not only am I going to kill her in front of you,” Dr. Kempo said, “but thanks to Octavia, I’m currently in need of a second soul. I wonder what that will do to you — knowing Robin’s soul is inside me.”
Dr. Kempo raised her knife to her opposite shoulder and prepared to slice across in a wide arc. Nathan gritted his teeth. No choices left. If there was any other way, he couldn’t see it. And time had run out.
He reached out toward the Darkness, toward that frosty hand of nothing that always hung in the background, open and waiting. When he clasped it, when he pulled the Darkness in and allowed himself to walk aside its emptiness, Nathan K let his fury loose.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the past, when he rode the Darkness, Nathan had no control over the outcome. The only time he ever walked beside the Darkness, he had shared control, but the Darkness led the way. This time, however, Nathan’s desire to protect Robin mixed with his vengeful hatred toward Dr. Kempo. His raw emotion overpowered reason, charging forward and forcing the Darkness to follow.
Empty shadows filled the lobby. As had happened to him times before, the world slowed. Nathan witnessed the confused reactions as the soldiers and Anton tried to comprehend the sudden loss of light when the Darkness became visible to all. But not Dr. Kempo. She knew exactly what was happening. Robin, too — maybe not exactly for her, but she knew enough.
Racing through the lobby, Nathan dispatched each soldier with a crushing blow to the head. Barely had to exert himself. When he reached the end, he turned back and rushed across the room picking up their souls. As each bit of mist entered his system, the world brightened beyond normal sight. Colors grew vibrant, edges intensified — existence under a spotlight.
Nathan let one of the souls free. The bullet in his leg plopped out. His wounds closed, returning him to normal health. No pain, though. No sizzling skin, no cracking bones, no burning muscle.
Nothing but cold.
He stepped in front of Dr. Kempo. She’d only whirled around halfway as the dead soldiers dropped to the ground. Her pupils had yet to widen in shock, the sensory signals still running their pathways to her brain. In the Darkness, Nathan saw the world as a windup toy near the end of its run. Before he would allow those extra souls within him to be free — something they wanted dearly, pressing against him like prisoners in the hold of ship — he had one final act to perform.
He grabbed Dr. Kempo’s wrist and twisted it. Yanking her knife away, he stepped back. Deep in his chest, a clenched ball of energy pulsed. He stared at Dr. Kempo, every terrible minute spent in her presence flooding through him. Days hanging by his arms while she cut pinstripes into his skin. Hours strapped to that operating room table as she dissected him awake. Experimenting on him, killing him, filling him with a new second soul to start again. Electrocution, concussive blasts, flaying him, butchering him like a hog while keeping him alive. All of it an attempt to force him into acting — force him into taking hold of the Darkness so that she could see his power.
Well, here it is.
With the knife held parallel to the floor, Nathan released that clenched ball within and shot forward. He flew by her, his speed blowing against her hair, and he cut across her arm — a deep cut, grazing the bone. Planting his foot, he pivoted back to cut again as he rushed by her.
Back and forth he ran, ribboning her arm into shreds of flesh. Though the Darkness boosted his speed, though Dr. Kempo experienced it all in seconds, Nathan could feel the resistance against the knife in glorious detail. He sensed her skin separating, the muscle tearing, the blade etching the bone. Each time he ripped open more of her arm, he released more of his anguish. But when he paused to find her arm had become a sleeve of blood and shredded muscle, he still had more tortured rage surging through his body.
So, he started on her leg.
Enough seconds of real time had gone that Dr. Kempo’s brain finally recognized it was under attack. Not enough, though, to react beyond an alarmed scream. Her rattling cry became music as Nathan turned her leg into a pulp of horrors. His constant speed heated the blade, searing the flesh as much as cutting through. By the time he removed some of her knee and severed a tendon, the knife glowed dull orange.
As her body crumpled to the floor, he sent a question to the Darkness. An image of what he wanted to do and a promise of delivering an Immortal soul. The Darkness accepted. It created a pocket around her head, let her see into the slowed, frozen world for seconds long enough to recognize her final death approaching.
In that Arctic moment, despite the agony she must have suffered, the corners of her mouth twitched upward. She looked straight at Nathan and said, “How exquisite.”
He whipped by her with such furious speed that the blade melted through her neck. He grabbed her dark hair. Two more steps beyond her body, he dragged her head with him.
Watching Dr. Kempo’s soul mist from her eyes and into the air, Nathan lowered his chin and released a long sigh. As the breath exhaled, the extra souls within him departed. When he settled into the traditional Immortal state of only two souls, the world around him had dimmed and returned to a proper speed.
The Darkness eased back, satisfied with its haul of souls. Its cold emptiness always present but its influence no longer immediate. It simply hung in the distance, a shadow out of the corner of Nathan’s eye, waiting for him to either walk alongside it again or finally die enough that it could claim him forever.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Panting, sweating, like a thoroughbred at the end of a day’s racing, Nathan let Dr. Kempo’s head slide loose. He straightened and faced the living, faced the threats still around. He focused on Octavia.
She stared back, colder than the Darkness, her mouth a slim line of disappointment, a horrified clutch on her weapon. She had seen hints of what he could do before but mostly the aftermath. This was the first time she had seen him embrace the Darkness, pull it into the physical world, and use it to slaughter.
He knew Octavia objected to the killing of Dr. Kempo, but for that, he had no regret. In fact, far more than any person he had ever killed, he felt satisfaction. A rush of pleasure — cold, icy pleasure. Just one more, though. One more and he would be free. One more and he could settle down away from this insanity for good. Maybe live on the warm sands of an island paradise. Maybe —
Anton broke the silence first. He threw up.
Leaning a shoulder against the bullet-strewn hood of the van, he retched whatever remained in him. When he finished, he said, “What are you?”
Nathan kept his eyes locked with Octavia. She pointed her 1911 at his head. “You can’t be like him,” she whispered.
He tried to be understanding. Either she had never quite believed he held the true power she had glimpsed in the past or she knew it well and had denied it. Seeing it firsthand destroyed any resistance to reality she could put up. And while he had just demonstrated that her little pistol posed no threat, she still sought to control the situation, control him. No thought behind it for her, not yet. Just pure instinct.
But time ticked away. To Robin, he said, “Help Anton. Use the van’s first aid kit, if it hasn’t been blown to pieces.”
With a dutiful nod, Robin jumped to the task. Octavia did not interfere. That was a good sign. Perhaps her brain had kicked back in. If so, Nathan thought he could get Robin and Anton to safety while also dealing with Larkin before that helicopter showed up.
“How long have you been like this?” she asked, her gun betraying a slight shake.
Nathan shrugged. “Maybe always. It’s something I didn’t know was there, at first. But over the years, I’ve slowly figured it out.”
“Is it you, though? Or is it …”
“Wondering whether the ability is from my soul or from this Immortal body? Worried it might be in all of you Immortals or hopeful?”
She snarled. “It is not all Immortals. If it were, somebody would have discovered that long before you were born.”
“Guess I’ve got a special soul, then.”
“I doubt that. Something about the combination, though. I’ve known the Cardinal for too long. I’ve seen how dark his world is. What you did just now — that was like him. But your Immortal body is not Prime.”
A new thought left Nathan’s mouth open before he said, “Oh. It’s about this body. Before I took it over, you had a relationship with the man, the previous soul. You loved him. You’re wondering, you’re worried, he might have been something like me. Maybe he wasn’t the man you thought.”
“Be quiet.” Her weapon wobbled as her voice growled.
Nathan put up his hands. “I’m not trying to taunt you. Just trying to understand.”
“Stop talking. I need to think.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t wait for you to figure this out. We’re done with this chat. You need to lower your weapon. You can’t do anything with it but slow me down, and even that won’t be significant. I don’t want you to accidentally shoot Robin or Anton, either. So, please. Holster your weapon, and don’t get in my way.”
The muffled but distinct opening riff to Soundgarden’s Spoonman played out only to cut off several bars in and repeat. Everyone held still. Nathan looked over at Robin but received a shrug in reply. Raising an eyebrow, he turned to Octavia again.
“Keep your mouth shut,” she said, digging her phone out of her pocket. After accepting the call, she said, “Yes, sir.”
Nathan could not hear the other party, but from the frustration flowing across Octavia’s face, he had a strong suspicion.
“Nathan,” Robin said in an urgent hush. When he glanced back, she added, “Company.”
He looked beyond her and spotted movement outside. Soldiers. A lot of them. Setting up a perimeter around the entranceway.
Wonderful.
“He wants you to listen.” Clearing her throat, Octavia held her phone face out toward Nathan. “You’re on speaker, sir.”
With great clarity, Larkin’s voice filled the room. “Allow me to begin with an apology. I am truly sorry things have worked out to put us in this predicament.”
“We can end this right now,” Nathan said. “Come down here in person.”
“I know you want to see me, and if these next few minutes go well, you will get your chance.”
Octavia lowered her weapon, then holstered it. She must have seen something on Nathan’s face that said he would hold still, that he would listen. The small army outside may have had something to do with it, too.
Larkin continued, “This is really a rather simple matter. Octavia will escort you, Robin, and Anton to see me. Provided you remain calm, courteous, and nonviolent, we should have no problem. If, however, you continue to seek vengeance, then your two mortal friends will never see the end of this day.”
“I take it if I refuse your offer, then I have to face your men outside?”
“I’m afraid so. I say that knowing full well that you are capable of dismembering all of them before they shoot a single round. I just witnessed you tear apart three fine men and Dr. Kempo, after all.”
The corners. Security cameras mounted in the corners of the lobby. Nathan had failed to give them a second thought — he must be exhausted. Not thinking clearly. Perhaps too focused on Larkin that his situational awareness had become myopic.
“Of course,” Larkin went on, “I have noticed that you’ve held back until now to display these abilities. You’ve had plenty of opportunity before and suffered greatly for withholding. I can only surmise you lacked the proper motivation in the past. With Dr. Kempo dead, I wonder if that motivation is gone.”
“Are you threatening to torture me? I dare you to try.”
“You mistake me. I merely suggest that to attempt leaving this building would require you to murder a lot of young men and women. It was one thing to do so in order to escape captivity, another to help your mortal friends, and yet another to enact revenge against Dr. Kempo. But these soldiers outside have no idea who or what you are. They are simply doing their job. Do you really intend to kill them all when they won’t harm you unless you attempt to leave? I think not. I think as much as you don’t want to bring Robin and Anton up here, you will do so. It’s the least damaging way to conclude this matter. Plus, you’ll finally get to see me face to face, and isn’t that what you’ve wanted for quite a few years now?”
Nathan’s fingers rolled into bone crushing fists. His jaw set firm. With the frozen fever of the Darkness still pulsing his nerves, he could feel it edging closer again. It wouldn’t take much to clear a path for Robin and Anton.
He could do that. One last time.
“Nathan. Don’t.” Robin’s voice came quiet and gentle.
Rolling his head towards her, Nathan wondered why she wanted to stop him. All around, their lives were threatened. He had the power to protect her. Why not?
But her eyes cut through the chilling thoughts in his brain — her brimming eyes and the open shock of her mouth. Dr. Kempo’s remains coated the lobby floor along with her soldiers, and Robin stood amid it all. Not just corpses, but vile destruction of human beings. Staring at that death, Nathan felt cold. Empty. Too much like the Darkness.
