Desa Kincaid- Bounty Hunter Read online

  Morley began to cough, and each spasm of his body produced a stream of black blood from his lips. The man sank to his knees, gasping. What was going on here? Had Mercy decided to intervene? Did she hear Marcus's prayer?

  Bendarian was on his knees and clutching his stomach. He ripped the knife out of his flesh and then shrieked from the pain of it. “You stupid woman,” he whispered. “You have no idea what I am.”

  “I know precisely what you are,” she countered. “A man whose wrath upon this world is over.”

  Bendarian looked up at her. His face was pale, his eyes glassy. The man was dying, and yet, he somehow maintained a show of defiance. “I told you,” he choked out, “I have found a power unlike any you could imagine.”

  He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were pitch-black from corner to corner. It was all Desa could do not to jump back in horror. The entity that she had seen on the road to Ofalla, the one that had made Morley impervious to every one of her attacks: it had possessed Bendarian as well.

  Despite his wounds, Bendarian stood up. In fact, he didn't seem to be at all troubled by the hole in his stomach. “You thought you understood power,” he said. “You and your little trinkets.”

  By instinct, Desa backed away from him.

  He thrust a hand out toward her.

  Something lifted Desa off the floor and slammed her into the warehouse wall. She croaked as invisible fingers closed around her neck and began to squeeze the life out of her. Her feet kicked.

  With a dismissive flick of his wrist, Bendarian strode forward. Desa went sideways until her shoulder hit a pile of rubble, and chunks of stone fell upon her head. Just as she was overcoming the pain of that, she went flying in the other direction and hit yet another pile. By the eyes of Vengeance...

  Bendarian raised his hand.

  Desa went flying up toward the massive hole in the ceiling. The man brought his hand down, and she was thrown to the floor. She hit hard, lying face-down on her belly. Her body ached from head to toe.

  Summoning all her strength, Desa looked up at him with tears streaming over her face. “What is it?” she rasped. “What did you let in, Radharal?”

  Bendarian's sickening grin was even more horrifying than those dead, black eyes. “That which lies beyond the Ether,” he replied in a husky voice. “The primordial essence that existed before your precious Mercy created this universe.”

  With hands on his knees, he crouched down and smiled at her. “The antithesis of the Ether,” he said. “The Nether.”

  “It will destroy us,” Desa squeaked.

  “It will free us!”

  Desa felt her lips writhe, felt hot blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. She shook her head. “The Ether is natural,” she wheezed. “A part of this universe. What you let in will unravel the natural order.”

  “It will liberate us from the natural order!” Bendarian exclaimed. “Think of it, Desa. We create technology, we refine our Infusions. We exploit nature to better ourselves, to improve our lives! Imagine what we could accomplish if we could write those laws!”

  “No,” Desa pleaded. “We were never meant to have that power.”

  “You're a fool,” Bendarian said. “Trapped by outmoded thinking You-”

  He staggered backward with a hand over his heart, throwing his head back as he shrieked in pain. Bendarian fell to his knees, and suddenly Desa was no longer certain that she was going to die tonight. That would have been a relief if not for the nightmare playing out before her eyes.

  Bendarian's skin shriveled; his cheeks became hollow, and liver spots appeared on his face. His hair grew, turned gray and then fell out. It was like watching a man live out his adult life in a matter of seconds.

  Desa forced herself to stand.

  With a gaping mouth, she blinked at him and then shook her head. “Radharal, what did you do?” she whispered. “Sweet Mercy...”

  She ran to him, ignoring her pains, dropped to her knees and then took his face in both hands. Glassy eyes stared back at her. His mouth moved, but he could not seem to form words.

  “The Nether,” he finally whimpered. “The Nether.”

  Marcus watched his enemy tremble.

  Morley was on his knees in the middle of the road, hugging himself and shivering. Every ragged gasp sounded like the man's last breath. Marcus wasn't sure what he ought to do? If he saw any other man in such pain, he would try to help. Perhaps the best thing to do for Morley was to put the bastard out of his misery. Except every previous attempt to kill the man had failed.

  Liver spots appeared on Morley's cheeks. His mustache went from dark with flecks of gray to pure white, and wrinkles lined his brow. He seemed to have aged thirty years in a matter of seconds. What was going on here?

  Desa felt as if someone had stabbed her through the chest with an icicle. Watching Bendarian's pain was surreal. The man was trembling, reaching for her with a hand that showed long, curved nails. “The Nether,” he whispered. “The Nether.”

  The Nether...Antithesis of the Ether. While the Ether was orderly and predictable, the Nether was chaos made manifest. Bendarian had said so himself. The Nether would allow him to rewrite the natural laws that governed the universe. Which meant it quite literally destroyed the natural order with results that no one could anticipate.

  Gray people, unkillable men, rapid aging: who could say what horrors this force would unleash? Bendarian thought he could control it, but for all the power it offered, the Nether was beyond anyone's control.

  Desa closed her eyes, her head drooping as she let out a breath. “You have to listen to me, Radharal,” she began. “I can take you back to Aladar. We might be able to help-”

  “No!”

  “You can't remain like this.”

  He seized her shoulders with gnarled fingers and shoved her backwards. Exhausted as she was, Desa fell to the floor with a grunt. When she sat up, Bendarian was trying to stand. He managed to rise slowly.

  The face that looked down upon her might have been dignified – the kindly visage of a loving grandfather – if not for its hateful sneer. “I will never...go back...with you,” Bendarian whispered. “Never.”

  He vanished.

  There was no warning, no preamble; one moment he was there, and the next he was gone with only the slight whoosh of air filling the space he had vacated to announce his departure. It was over. After a decade of chasing this man, she had lost.

  Because now he could be anywhere.

  Part 2

  Chapter 16

  Tommy woke up to the sound of his door banging open as Desa Kincaid marched into his room, illuminated by the glowing ring on her left fist. Its fierce white light cast shadows on the wood-paneled walls and the empty bed with its covers undisturbed. So, Marcus was still out.

  Tommy sat up.

  His mouth dropped open, and he blinked at her. “What's going on, Desa?” he asked, shaking his head. “Where's Marcus.”

  “Dead,” she answered. “We have to leave.”

  Gritting his teeth, Tommy winced and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “What do you mean, 'dead’?” he whispered, rubbing the fog out of his brain. “We just saw him a few hours ago.”

  Desa stopped at the foot of his bed, planted her fists on her hips and then shook her head. “We went to confront Bendarian,” she explained. “I told Marcus to distract Morley, and I haven't seen him since.”

  “Did you...Did you find Sebastian?”

  For some reason, Desa's lip quivered, and then her face crumpled with the kind of anguish you only saw on someone who had been punched in the stomach. “I'm so sorry,” she said. “Sebastian is dead too.”

  That felt like a blade in Tommy's chest. He had cried himself to sleep, thinking about the implications of Sebastian's betrayal. He was not naive; he knew there was very little chance of ever seeing his love again. But now...now there was no chance. As angry as he was over what Sebastian had done, it pained him to know the other man was de
ad. “You saw his body?” Tommy inquired.

  “I did.”

  Tommy got out of bed, undaunted by the prospect of Desa seeing him in his smallclothes, and quickly pulled on a set of brown trousers. His shirt came next; he buttoned it with considerable speed.

  Looking up to meet the woman's eyes, Tommy felt his mouth tighten. He nodded once. “I assume then that Bendarian is coming here,” he said. “Will we be moving to yet another hotel?”

  “Bendarian is the least of our problems,” Desa began. “In fact, I don't think we will ever have to worry about him again.” Tommy was just itching to figure out what that was supposed to mean, but he kept his mouth shut. He had grown used to keeping quiet and following Desa's lead. “But Morley might be on his way here as we speak, and even if he isn't, the City Watch will be looking for us.”

  “So, where are we going?”

  “We're going to leave Ofalla and-”

  Marcus came rushing through the door, took two steps into the room he shared with Tommy and then froze. “You survived,” he barked when he saw Desa bathed in the fierce light of her glowing ring.

  She closed her eyes and then bowed her head to him. “As did you,” she said. “May I presume then that Morley is dead?”

  “I don't think anything can kill that man.”

  Desa stiffened at his response. Bracing one hand on the bedpost to steady herself, she let out a breath. “No, I suppose not.” The fear in her voice left Tommy feeling uneasy. “How did you elude him?”

  A grimace twisted Marcus's features, and then he shook his head in disgust. “It was like nothing I've ever seen before,” he replied. “The man...The man aged right in front of me. Consumed by the ravages of time.”

  Rapid aging? What could cause something like that? The little that Desa had told him about the Ether left Tommy feeling certain that Field Binding was not at play. Even taking his scant knowledge of the subject into account, it was clear that if the Ether could do something like that, Marcus would not be reacting with such fear and-

  Why was Desa so quiet?

  Tommy forced himself to look at the woman and found her backing away from Marcus at a slow pace. The fear in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. This was something out of the ordinary.

  Desa sat down on the windowsill, set her hands upon her knees and huddled in on herself with her shoulders hunched up. “It happened to Bendarian too,” she whispered. “I saw it. Right after I stabbed him in the stomach.”

  “You stabbed him in the stomach?” Marcus exclaimed.

  “Yes...Why?”

  Gaping at her in disbelief, Marcus shook his head slowly. “Morley was chasing me through the northwest quarter when he suddenly collapsed from a gut wound.” So, the two men mirrored each other. But what could-

  No, that was wrong.

  The pieces snapped together in Tommy's head. Desa had inflicted a gut wound on Bendarian, but Morley's wound was spontaneous. If their relationship was bidirectional, then Bendarian should have displayed wounds from all the gunfire that Desa had inflicted on Morley, and she would have mentioned something like that. “That's how you kill him. It's so simple.”

  They both looked at him.

  With his shirt untucked and half-buttoned, Tommy came around the foot of his bed and positioned himself between the two of them. “Don't you see?” he spluttered. “Wounding Bendarian hurts Morley.”

  Desa's mouth dropped open, and her eyes widened. “Of course...” She paced over to him, clapping Tommy on the shoulder. “Brilliant!”

  Tommy shut his eyes, his cheeks suddenly very warm. “It's nothing,” he said. “But you might be able to eliminate two problems at once.”

  “First we have to find Bendarian.”

  The door banged opened to admit Miri. Tall and imposing in her faded dungarees and weather-worn coat, she strode into the room with a snarl that made Tommy flinch. “No,” she said. “The first thing you have to do is leave.”

  Miri stepped up to Desa with fists on her hips, shaking her head. “Whatever you did out there,” she began, “it earned you more attention than you would like, I think. The City Watch is on high alert.”

  Tommy noticed Adele in the doorway.

  The woman looked somewhat out of place in a pair of tan pants and an old work shirt that she left untucked. Her long blonde tresses were a mess of flyaway strands as if she had been tossing and turning through a fitful night's sleep. “My uncle has no love for troublemakers,” she said. “You destroyed a warehouse.”

  It shocked him to see Desa blush – he didn't think the woman was capable of it – but there she was, pink-cheeked and averting her gaze. “It couldn't be helped, and...Wait, how do you know about that? Word could not have traveled so fast.”

  “I told you,” Adele replied. “I'm a Sensitive.”

  Desa muttered something under her breath.

  Dropping onto the edge of his mattress, Tommy scrubbed both hands over his face and then ran fingers through his hair. “We have to leave,” he said. “We should be out of the city by dawn.”

  “Glad you caught up to us, Tommy,” Desa muttered. That stung, but he chose not to make an issue of it. “If there are no further objections, perhaps we could be on our way.”

  “I'm going with you!” Adele insisted.

  “No!” Desa snapped.

  The venom in that reaction was a bit more than Tommy would have expected. And it seemed that Adele shared his reaction. The woman seemed hurt. There was something going on beneath the surface, but he wasn't about to pry into that. Not his business. What Tommy wanted was to be away from here. If Desa wanted to dally with the mayor's niece-

  Almighty have mercy...

  Sebastian...

  Tommy had been so fixated on the news of Desa's skirmish with Bendarian that he had not really taken a moment to note the passing of his love. Sebastian had betrayed them all, but...But Tommy still loved him.

  He closed his eyes as hot tears streamed over his cheeks and dripped from his chin. “Sebastian...” he whimpered. No one seemed to hear him. They were all too busy arguing with each other. He let them.

  Right then, he just wanted to mourn.

  The Nether embraced Bendarian.

  He floated in a storm of endless darkness, not a void but something else entirely, blacker than the Pits of Despair and more violent than a tempest. It felt as though he were being torn apart molecule by molecule. He didn't think he could stand it.

  A vertical seam appeared before him, a jagged crack through which brilliant light spilled. The darkness split apart, leaving him bathed in radiance, a soft glow that slowly faded to reveal the wrecked sitting room of his townhouse.

  Bendarian fell to one knee atop shards of glass, gasping for breath. His head hung, and the few remaining strands of silver hair that dangled from his bald scalp caressed the floor. Every breath was a labour.

  “What did you do?”

  He looked up to see an aged Morley with his shoulder pressed to the door-frame. The man was scowling as he pressed one hand to his belly. Almost as if he were trying to hold his guts in. Unsurprisingly, the knife wound that Desa had inflicted on Benwrth had translated through their bond. But Bendarian had healed himself with the Nether. Which meant that Morley should have been...Well, out of mortal danger at least.

  Bendarian narrowed his eyes, hissing as he drew in a breath. “She is stronger than I gave her credit for,” he whispered. “We must end her.”

  “You're in no shape to fight her.” Morley lifted trembling hands up in front of his face, gnarled hands with liver spots and bony fingers. “And neither am I? What did you do, Radharal?”

  “A minor setback.”

  “A minor setback?” Morley boomed. “You promised me immortality, but instead you take the life from me!”

  Clenching his teeth, Bendarian growled as he shook his head. “I have yet to learn all of the Nether's secrets,” he wheezed. “When I do, I will reverse this...accident and restore us both to full health.”r />
  Morley turned away from him and began shuffling through the hallway with one hand on the wall. He froze in place after only a few steps. “Be sure you hurry,” the man said without looking back. “Because if killing you is the only way to end my pain, you can be sure that I will do it.”

  Radharal...

  Bendarian's mouth dropped open as a low, painful groan erupted from his throat. “No...” he pleaded. “Not now.”

  You aren't holding up your end of the bargain.

  “Please! I must destroy Desa Nin Leean.”

  She is irrelevant. Free me!

  “I...”

  FREE ME! the voice demanded. FREE ME!

  They moved through the city streets under the dark of night, two to a horse, except for Marcus who sat his gray alone. Tommy suspected that was because no one else felt inclined to suffer the man's company; he certainly did not. The process of packing their things and fetching their horses had been hindered by Adele's constant insistence that she would be coming with them and Desa's refusal to budge on that point. The mayor's niece kept blathering on about destiny or some such; Tommy wasn't sure he believed in all that. Deep down, he wasn't entirely sure that he believed in the Almighty, but for all of Desa's protests about not bringing a pampered aristocrat on this journey, Adele had somehow managed to join their group.

  She sat behind Tommy on his father's old brown gelding. From the way she kept fidgeting – and the way she kept looking at Desa and Miri on Midnight – it was clear that she would have preferred other arrangements.

  They were moving quietly down a narrow street lined with small shops on either side. Tommy saw a bakery, a butcher shop, a tailor's shop. Or at least that was what he thought they were. It was difficult to read the signs with so few lamps lit. All were closed up for the night, but he still had this odd feeling as if someone was watching them from the windows.

  “You need me,” Adele whispered behind him.

  On their right, Desa sat atop Midnight with the reins in hand. She turned her head, glowered at the other woman and hissed, “Be quiet! You're no good to us if you wake the whole damn town.”