Page 34 of Last Hope
“The dark arts are more in Ami’s department. As for me, I would bednoman. Iwouldbed a woman, however, and the coven found that disgusting. They wanted to force me on men, force children on me and I would not have it. I would not become what I was not for the joy of the elders.”
“So you left.”
Anya smiled and squeezed her hand. “So I left.”
For a moment joy coursed through Isis’s blood. If she hadn’t left the coven, she never would have met Anya, would have never known what it was to love someone—however brief or however short a time knowing each other—truly with her whole heart and soul. Would have never known what it truly felt to be Soul Mates. She squeezed Anya’s hand, sending waves of love and affection towards her for words were not a necessity, not when simple gestures proved more than any syllables ever could.
* * *
“Can you track her?”
The tracker waved an amulet made of golden and black stone in front of his face, the movements were almost hypnotic and nearly made Azizi want to close his eyes and fall into a death-sleep. He watched it as it swung back in forth and watched the man’s eyes close lightly, twitching on occasion, as if he were in deep concentration. Azizi hated interrupting but he found this tracker was taking too long and he needed to get down to business.
The amulet suddenly struck the floor, the tracker’s hand was opened outwards with stiff fingers and it fell with a loudclunkthat echoed across the lonely room. The tracker’s eyes opened abruptly and at first they were consumed in only white but his pupils began to outline as if drawn on in pencil until his full color of black was restored.
“No,” he said quietly. “I cannot.”
Azizi resisted the urge to rip the man’s throat out with his bare hands. Instead, he asked between clenched teeth. “Why not?”
The man nudged the amulet away with his foot but leaned back in his chair nonchalantly, a half smile plastered onto his face. “Because someone has shielded her—and very well, I might add—from me. I get absolutely nothing, not even a tingle to let me know where she’s at.” He was full on smiling now.
“So you are of no use to me then.” Before the tracker could even blink, Azizi’s hand was inside of his chest, holding his beating heart. It was warm and slippery in his hand and the tracker’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, his tongue lolled out of his mouth and his body went limp as soon as Azizi wrenched his heart sideways then out, and fell to the floor, leaving behind splatters of blood on Azizi’s shirt front.
He observed the still heart in his bloody hand with distaste and after a second, it joined the tracker on the floor. “Do not underestimate me simply because I occupy a child’s body,” he whispered and then turned to Taylor, who was staring down at the tracker’s body, wide eyed. “Do you care to join him?” Azizi asked impatiently. Taylor shook his head. “Then bring me the machine. We have work to do.”
Taylor bowed his head and left quickly and quietly.
Azizi wiped his bloody hand on the side of his jeans with repugnance. He had never been this way before; had never killed to kill. When he was a human boy he hadn’t had the heart for such things, his sister was the one to catch their dinner or who would gut fish and roast meat over the fire.
And now look what I’ve become,he thought with despair. He wondered, for only a moment because Taylor came back into the room, if his sister would be ashamed of him.
“Sir, everything is prepared for the trials.”
With a brisk nod, Azizi followed Taylor out of the door and down the corridor into another room. This one was larger than the last and bare of furniture except for a table in the center of the room, upon which was a heap of metal and tubes; the device he had constructed. Next to it were vials filled with clear liquid poison and even more vials filled with thick red liquid.
There were people in the room as well, sitting against the furthest end of the wall. Most of them were crying and covered in blood. They began to shake and cry out as soon as Azizi had walked into the room. They were people of all shapes and sizes and genders. He looked them over for a moment before turning to Taylor.
“Leave us,” he said. Taylor nodded and left, closing the door behind him. Azizi went over to the machine and started adjusting knobs and tubes before placing two vials into the contraption, one filled with clear liquid and the other filled with red liquid.
“Do you all know why you’re here?” he asked the people calmly. They looked up at him with fearful eyes, though none of them replied. “You are here to be a part of an experiment that will eventually help human kind for the better.”
“What kind of an experiment?” a young man piped up, staring at Azizi with wondrous fascination and fear.
Azizi smiled at him. “An experiment that will help you all to grow stronger; humans have always been a weak species, so easily taken advantage of. You being here is proof of this. But never fear, for I shall help you grow.”
They started protesting, “Let us go!” he heard someone say. He ignored them and turned the machine on.
After so many failures before, he hoped and he prayed this time it would work. He had worked on this for years, he had stood by Caesareon, had allowed himself to be locked away without contact with anyone all of those years, had broken himself over and over again over the family he would never again see.
He told himself this was for the best; that he was helping these people, as he stepped back and watched the machine whir to life. It made a clicking noise as it lit up. The vials he had inserted drained to nothing and spit out of the machine in vapor clouds. Soon, smoke filled the room, washing over the humans around them.
At first, there was no reaction from them but then they started screaming as the clouds of smoke touched their skin and sizzled it off. They tore at their own flesh and pulled at their own hair, standing up and running around in circles like dogs chasing their own tails. The venom seeped deep into their pores, causing them to bleed. After a few minutes of agonizing pain, they all fell limp to the ground, immobile.
Disappointment gripped Azizi’s chest.
Another failure, he thought bitterly.
He had failed Caesareon and more importantly, he had failed Isis. He had the sudden urge to knock the machine down from the table when a stirring on the floor caught his attention. He looked down, hope now filling his chest as one by the one, they rose from their spots, each one with blazing red eyes.
