A Life In Blood (Chronicles of The Order Book 1) Read online

  “So what do we do next, ma’am?” Lieutenant Tavoy asked, and Corvi sighed.

  “We’ve given them a hell of a bloody nose today, but we can’t rest yet,” she informed us. “We need to start looking for where these people are manufacturing this new chemical, and shut down the production of it - this stuff is a serious threat to my kind, and thus to The Order.”

  Then Corvi gave everyone one of those smiles of hers, the beautiful warm smile that captivated me so much in the beginning.

  “But that kind of search is for others to contend with. We can push that up the chain of command, and we here can enjoy a little R and R for our efforts.”

  There was a cheer from the Omega Company soldiers as a couple of kegs were rolled out from my stores, which honestly I hadn’t known I even had. I’d just assumed I had what we needed for day-to-day survival.

  “Have some fun people, that’s an order!”

  “Are you sure you can’t stay?” I complained, and Corvi shook her head.

  “I’m afraid not, my love,” she replied with a sad sigh. “This information is important, meaning I need to mention it to Her Ladyship myself - the downside of being in command, I’m afraid.”

  Mention of Sharriana reminded me of the issue we had with her and her plans.

  “Speaking of, what do we do now? We’re still no closer to knowing what she’s got planned, so we still don’t know how to stop it. I’m worried, hon, really worried.”

  “Hush, babe,” she said, using a more modern affectionate term for the first time since...I couldn’t remember if she’d ever used one, actually. She kissed me gently, caressing my mind with her soft psychic touch again, calming my fears as she so often did.

  “What happens will happen. If we are ever to rid The Order of her rule, then we may need you to become what she’s trying to make you, just to give us an edge.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Whatever happens, it forces you to become extremely powerful psychically...but I have a feeling that it ruins her ability to see your future. She’s so confident in her ability to control you through whatever means, she doesn’t see the implications of not knowing what you’ll do.”

  “Meaning I can act with impunity, and she won’t see,” I added, a rueful grin forming across my face.

  “Yes, but don’t let that go to your head - she can still see the effects of your actions, even if she can’t see them directly. But it’s still an edge.” She sighed again, and checked her watch.

  “Right, I really must go, my love,” she told me with another kiss. “Please come and see me soon.”

  I promised that I would, and she hugged me tightly one more time. She then moved to my sister, and embraced her as well - which must have been odd, because while Corvi was shorter than me out of heels, Tis was shorter than her, meaning for once Corvi got to hug someone who only reached her chest.

  “Take care, big sis,” Tisiphone told her, and it still surprised me how quickly those two had adopted each other as sisters. Not for the first time, I wondered if Tis knew how much it meant to Corvi.

  “You too, little sister,” my wife told her, before straightening up again. “Make sure you look after this gun-toting fool for me, she’s actually become quite dear to me of late.”

  “Love you too, Reggie,” Lev responded with a cheeky grin, and then hugged Corvi herself.

  Take it easy over there, alright?” she warned. “I don’t want us to come visit and find you passed out from exhaustion.”

  The good-byes said, Corvi finally got into her own car and pulled out of the gate, carrying a copy of all the information Tis had pulled from the hunter’s computer network.

  “Been a hell of a day,” Lev said, breaking the evening silence.

  “Aye. Too many dead for my liking,” I told her. A total of eight dead from a force of seventy might not have been much, but it was more than I wanted.

  “D, this is still a war we’re facing,” Lev reminded me. “People are going to get killed, and they know that - every soldier does. And yet, every single one of them signs up with us willingly, knowing full well what it may mean.”

  “Doesn’t make it easier to bear.”

  “It isn’t like you ordered them to fight yourself,” Tis added, and that at least I couldn’t argue with.

  “No, but I still feel like it’s my fault.”

  “That’s nothing new,” Tis laughed, then suddenly shivered. “Jeez, can we go in now? I’m freezing.”

  As I breathed in, I inadvertently caught the scent of something which told me the real reason she wanted to go inside.

  There were times I really hated my heightened senses. Being able to tell that my sister was horny was kind of at the top of that list.

  “Go on you two, go find a nice quiet room,” I told them, shaking my head. “I’m going to grab a shower.”

  Despite normally enjoying showers, that particular one didn’t last long. I’d washed off the accrued gore of the combat, and made myself more presentable, but after that I got out and got dressed again. I felt...I don’t know. Scattered. Out of sorts. I put it down to the number of deaths we’d suffered, and although I wasn’t directly responsible I still felt I was to blame somehow.

  I always thought that was one reason why I would make a terrible leader.

  I had been walking back to my room when I staggered suddenly, my vision blurring and blood spraying from my nose again. A knifing pain went through my head, followed by a single word screamed into my mind.

  DEIMOS!

  “Corvi...” I breathed in the wake of the psychic cry, and changed direction. I needed Lev. I needed everybody.

  “D, how the hell can you be sure?” Lev asked me, after I’d told her we had to go back to our Home Base.

  “Because she screamed so loud it affected the rest of my brain!” I yelled, unsure if that made any sense to anyone who hadn’t been Blood-Sworn. “She is in trouble Lev, and I am begging you to trust me, and to get our guys and come with me. If you don’t I’m going alone.”

  “Like hell you are,” Tis told me, getting dressed. “Lev, stop being a pussy - if anyone’s going to know something’s up, it’s my brother. Let’s go.”

  Around that moment, I realised my sister was every bit a fighter as anyone else I’d met, and she was also fucking awesome.

  “Thanks for ruining my night, D,” Lev muttered as she also started getting dressed.

  I was too distressed to care at that moment.

  We’d taken one of the Ospreys still sat at my base, in order to cut down the travel time. However, Lorelei had confirmed it with satellite imagery.

  The Oxford base had been attacked.

  Corvi was still alive, I could tell that much - the pain echoing down our link, however, suggested she was hurt, and that made her vulnerable.

  I tried to focus, to think past the dagger in my heart that twisted every time I thought of my wife in pain, but I couldn’t manage it. She was everything to me.

  Tisiphone rested a hand on my arm, sensing my pain, but I barely noticed it. I spent most of the journey trying to keep back the tears that threatened to fall, knowing that they wouldn’t help save Corvi.

  “Don’t worry sir,” Tavoy said to me, and I turned to regard him. “We’ll make those sorry bastards regret attacking us - and we’ll save your wife.”

  Something in his words or his tone affected me. Something allowed me to choke back the pain for a while, replacing it with the rage I needed.

  Yes. They would pay indeed.

  Lev and I dropped into the base grounds from several hundred feet, the lack of small arms fire indicating they had almost no patrols outside the base. They were either
complacent or stupid, but either way it would not help them.

  We ran for one of the main entrances, and there were two guards there - Lev ran in and simply broke the neck of one of them, the other I pinned against the wall with a gun to his forehead.

  “How many do you have, and where are they?” I snarled, and the hunter - little more than a teenager, it seemed - stammered uselessly at me.

  “Don’t waste my time, boy,” I threatened, and was rewarded with the stench of him wetting himself.

  “They don’t breed ‘em like they used to, huh?” Lev asked laconically, leaning against the wall. “Let me tell you something, little man, you really ought to answer my friend, you know why? His wife is inside here somewhere, and if she’s hurt, he’s going to destroy everyone inside very, very painfully. Starting with you. So, pipe up, sonny.”

  At that moment, his radio crackled.

  “Alpha leader to Alpha four, what is your sitrep?” someone asked, and a predatory smile came to my lips. I beckoned for him to pass me his radio, and he complied with shaking hands.

  I held the ‘transmit’ key, and put two bullets into my victim’s skull.

  “Alpha Four is currently indisposed,” I growled down the radio. “I am coming for you, and I am going to end you. Send your best - send everyone. And pray that they kill me, because if they don’t, the last thing you witness will be me, devouring your fucking heart.”

  I threw the radio against the wall, and as our Omega Company squad joined us I kicked the door open.

  Whoever “Alpha Leader” was, he had certainly listened to me - it seemed that everyone he had arrived at that entrance to stop me.

  They failed.

  A hail of gunfire rattled off my body armour as I surged towards them, blade in hand, covered by the gunfire of my squad. In a matter of seconds I was among them like a wolf among sheep, my blade never stopping. Limbs and heads fell separately from their bodies, blood sprayed over the floor and the last of them died with my sword buried to the hilt in his back, my teeth locked around his jugular as I feasted on his blood.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing that,” Tisiphone said, looking a little too comfortable wielding the massive AA-12 shotgun, one of the few designs that was fully automatic.

  “And I won’t get used to seeing you as a fighter. It’s been that kind of week,” I told her, turning on my heel and stalking further down the corridor.

  “There are others. Be on your guard,” I told everyone abruptly. I was not in the mood for being nice.

  I kept moving, always following the strength of my connection with Corvi - the stronger it got, the closer I was. A few times a squad of hunters tried to stop us, and each time I was the first among them, my blade making short work of armour, flesh and bone alike.

  Then, after what felt like an age, I found her.

  I had been in the middle of talking as we turned a corner, and what we saw halted all conversation. Where once there had been a clean, well-kept corridor, now there was an abattoir - dismembered bodies littered the hallway, blood covered the walls and ran across the floor in a river, and a lone figure crouched on one knee amidst the carnage. Her silky black hair was matted with dried blood, her normal grace and calm broken by pain, and the strong scent of spice in the air told me she was bleeding profusely.

  But my wife was alive.

  “Corvi!” I cried out, running to her side, ignoring the flood of gore staining my trousers and boots.

  “I...I got the bastards, my love,” she said breathlessly, as I put her arm around my shoulder and helped her stand.

  “You did honey, and a damn good job you did of it, too,” I told her softly. I escorted her gently to an area where the floor was cleaner, and helped her sit.

  She let out a pained grunt as she slid down the wall, and it was all I could do to keep my tears in check.

  “You’ll...you’ll be alright, sweetheart, we’ll get a medic, or someone you can feed from-”

  “Sythan’en,” she said firmly, and I knew what she was going to say to me. I couldn’t hold on to them any longer, and finally my tears began their steady course down my cheek.

  “Deimos...I’m dying. So you have to promise me-”

  “No!”

  She slapped me, and the weak strike was telling by itself.

  “Promise me, Deimos, that you will finish what I started,” she heaved, summoning all of her remaining strength. “The other commanders...I helped unite them. If I’m gone...the bastards, th-they’ll try and run. Don’t let them.”

  “Corvi, don’t, we can get you some help, please...”

  “There’s only one way you’re helping me now, beloved,” she whispered to me. “I won’t...I won’t let them be the ones who killed me. End me, Deimos. Grant me peace.”

  “No!” I screamed again, pulling her close, kissing her desperately. “Corvi, I can’t, I can’t do it without you...”

  “It is your duty!” she snapped. “You are my husband. You swore a vow. My pain...is your pain. You’ll ease it as you can, remember?” She thrust my sword to me, but I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to let her go.

  “My path is yours,” I sobbed. “I walk...where you walk.”

  She choked back her own tears, and swallowed hard.

  “Not today, dearest one.” She pushed my sword back to me again. “ End me, Deimos. Give me peace,” she repeated, and my tears flowed faster as I finally gripped Black Terror’s hilt.

  Corvi moved herself into a kneeling position, and pulled her hair out of the way, leaving the back of her neck exposed. My sword felt like a lead weight in my hands as I stood over her, still wracked by sobs at the knowledge of what was to come.

  “Do not think, my love. Just act. And please...make it clean. Otherwise I’m haunting your sorry backside.”

  Typical. Even facing death she was laughing.

  I rested the edge of my blade against her neck, and forced my eyes closed.

  “I love you, Corvi,” I whispered to her.

  “I love you too, Deimos. Ithka’raen devahn kosai.”

  I hesitated for the slightest moment, before finally summoning every ounce of courage and strength I had, fuelling one single, massive downward swing.

  Funny that the single surest, cleanest strike of my entire career would be to kill my own wife.

  Agony tore through my mind as the psychic bond was severed completely, the mental feedback screeching through my skull like a banshee. I screamed like a tortured animal, from pain that was at once physical, mental and emotional, dropping to my knees beside the body of the woman I had treasured above every other living soul on the planet.

  Someone called my name. Other people were speaking. Someone mentioned “over-ridden the lockdown protocols.” Someone, maybe my sister, rested a hand on my shoulder.

  Slowly, by steady degrees, my senses returned. My mind felt scoured of everything good that I had ever felt, leaving nothing but a pit of cold, seething rage, pure and unquenchable. I could feel the force of my wrath coiling through my veins, driving me to hunger for blood and death.

  I rose slowly to my feet, my movements mechanical, as if controlled by someone else.

  “Sir? What should we do?” Someone asked, and I didn’t take my eyes from Corvi’s body, even as a red haze settled over my sight.

  I gave two orders. Just two.

  “Burn the body,” I ordered, my voice sounding as hollow as I felt. “And stay out of my way.”

  What followed I can only recount from splintered memories, compiled security footage and the reports of those with us. I was too lost at the time to comprehend.

  I strode down the corridor and stood before one of the massi
ve security bulkheads, a vast door of five-inch thick armoured steel, and gestured as if grasping something in the air. Blood spurted from my nose once more as I made a lifting motion, and the door’s mechanism groaned as I started to pull it out of place with nothing more than my own will.

  With a roar of bestial fury I forced the door to open, sparks spewing from its inner workings as I pushed it back into its housing.

  More hunters were waiting for me on the other side, and they opened fire at me-

  - only for their bullets to miss me entirely, as I projected my will outwards to deflect them. I thrust my hands outwards, curling my fingers in a gripping motion, and two of the hunters screamed as they were crushed into a bloody pulp. As I let them go, more hunters filled the corridor, and this time I focussed all of my mental strength and flung my arms wide.

  Eight men and women were smashed against the walls, reducing them to bloody ruin as every bone in their bodies shattered. I strode on through the gore-soaked hall, and two more hunters died as I willed their chests to collapse and their hearts to burst.

  Someone lunged at me with a blade, burying it deep into my gut, but I barely felt it. I seized his arm, locking him against me, and gripped his jaw to force him to look at me. I focussed, turning my rage into a white-hot flame, and willed his body to burn from the inside. Smoke rose from his mouth as he shrieked in agony, his eyes melting shortly before flames licked out from his sockets. I dropped him to the floor, the stinging pain in my gut telling me the knife had been coated with the same chemical they’d used on Maria and Corvi.

  My Corvi.

  My rage built anew, and the walls themselves shook as I sent a wave of psychic force towards the next three hunters that dared to stand before me. These ones were simply reduced to paste, a bloody smear on the floor and the wreckage of a few weapons all that remained of them.