Chained Read online

  “I don’t know.” Lissa frowned. “There’s something…different about him. Something other. Even Salix says he doesn’t act or speak like the male he met when he came to get you.”

  “Maybe he’s crazy with grief over Maggie leaving him,” Nina said reasonably. “In which case, I think we should bring her over.”

  Lissa frowned. “It’s very dangerous but I don’t know what else to do. Saber and Reddix are getting ready to face him now. If he cuts them down with his beams…”

  Maggie didn’t feel a bit drunk now. “I’m getting on the next Kindred shuttle. You girls call the Mother Ship and tell them to fold space for Tarsia. I’ll see you soon!”

  “Wait, Maggie—shouldn’t you tell your family first?” Nina protested. “They already lost you for more than six months and that wasn’t even a whole month ago.”

  Maggie shook her head. “It would just worry my mom. And really, there’s nothing to be worried about. Kor always said he would never hurt me—I still believe that’s true.”

  “I hope you’re right,” murmured Lissa. “Come, then, Maggie. And please for the Goddess’s sake, hurry.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  “Kill them! Kill them all!” the dark voice drove Therron on, though he scarcely knew where he was. The last thing he remembered was the proximity alert warnings of his spaceship as he descended to the surface of the Black Planet…

  “Warning!” the ship had bleated as he took it down through the burning atmosphere. “Warning! The surface below is pure superheated Titanium Dioxide. Proximity alert—the shields can hold for less than fifteen solar minutes at these temperatures. Stepping outside the ship will result in immediate termination of all life forms.”

  Kor had ignored the warnings contemptuously. He had known by then that he was different…special. And, the dark voice had promised him unlimited powers as soon as he breathed the thick black fumes that rose from the cracked crust. As soon as he touched its surface and called it home. More importantly, it promised to end his pain, to wipe all memory of Maggie from his brain forever. Kor wanted that—wanted it more than anything.

  When he stepped out upon the black, sere surface, the soles of his boots cracked and melted and a stinging wind filled with choking black dust coated his body. The heat was incredible—unbearable—and yet it didn’t hurt him. In the howling wind that whipped around him, he heard thousands of deep, inhuman voices. Sensed the presence of a mighty hoard striving to break free.

  “Back!” the dark voice ordered. “The male is my flesh—my vessel to fill and none other shall have him! Breathe, ” it ordered Kor. “Breathe, deep!”

  Kor had taken a deep breath, inhaling pure evil, drawing utter chaos and corruption into his lungs. The Black Planet seemed to waver around him and he heard the thousands of voices howling and screeching…and then he knew no more.

  When he woke again, he was back aboard the ship he had stolen from Lady Pope’nose and they were high above the planet. The dark voice, which had been speaking to him from the moment he had dived into the Pool of Remembrance to rescue Maggie at the Lo’thian spa, spoke again—but this time instead of whispering, it came out as a deep, harsh sound.

  “We shall set a course for Tarsia,” it said. “So I have promised the witch. There we will sow destruction among the ones who wronged her and feed upon their life force.”

  With a shock, Kor had realized that the deep, growling words were coming from his own throat. The dark voice was inside him now, somehow and it was using his body to act and his voice to speak.

  What is this? he thought in confusion. What happened? Where am I?

  “Worry not, Therron. I have indwelled you. You are a worthy vessel, my son, and together we will cause destruction such as has never been seen across the universe!” the voice promised, still speaking out of his mouth. “We will kill those who stand in our way and hurt all those that have hurt you in the past.”

  The past? Kor blinked, trying to remember anything—anything at all about his past. I was a fighter—I remember blood and sand and the roar of crowds in the arena. I killed my master…I was marked for death. But instead I was bought and chained, held in a dungeon where I thought I would surely die. Until she came.

  But who was “she?” Though he struggled to remember, there seemed to be a veil over his memory where the mysterious female was concerned. All Kor—no, Therron—could remember was caring for her. Caring so deeply it hurt and then…nothing.

  “She is gone, my son. She will trouble you no longer,” the dark voice assured him. “You are host to a Shadow Demon now. Death and destruction are your birthright. You will no longer feel pain—you will only deal it out. This is my promise to you.”

  The demon had kept its promise. When the ship had touched down upon the surface of Tarsia, on the edge of a huge swamp, a female had come to meet them. A female with yellow eyes and fingers too long and yet she looked on him with fierce pride and something that seemed to pass for a twisted kind of affection.

  “My son. My Therron,” she had cried, caressing his cheek. “At last you have returned, so many years after you were taken. And together we will have vengeance.”

  And so they had…

  “Kill them all!” the demon within commanded, as Therron strode onwards over the ruined fields. He saw a tall tree behind which some of the enemy—those filthy Kindred who had stolen him away and sold him—were hiding. A red veil dropped over his vision and he blasted it, leaving nothing but a burning stump as the ones who had taken shelter scattered in all directions, screaming. One, however, did not run. He lay on his face, not moving, not breathing.

  “Ah,” shouted the voice from Therron’s lips. “Yes, fresh life essence. At last, after so many years without!” Therron’s lungs inhaled, pulling in the reek of death, sucking away the male’s soul…and then he strode onward, toward the capital where there would be many more souls to suck, much more life to devour.

  * * * * *

  “Oh my God, Kor did all this?” Maggie stared at the viewscreen in horror. The large, flat screen which was hung in Lissa’s house was displaying a ruined village. Most of the buildings were flattened or on fire and here and there she saw wounded people groaning and crying, unable to move. “This…this is terrible! It doesn’t seem like something Kor would do at all!”

  “It isn’t.”

  Maggie looked up in surprise. Lissa’s voice sounded…different and the Kindred girl’s eyes had turned a sudden brilliant green within green color—so bright they were almost glowing.

  Maggie nudged Nina in the ribs, the destruction on the viewscreen forgotten.

  “Uh, Nina?” she whispered. “I think something’s going on with Lissa.”

  Nina turned from the viewscreeen to look at her friend.

  “Oh!” She put a hand to her chest. “Oh, look—I think she’s going to have a vision from the Goddess.”

  “A what from the who?” Maggie demanded.

  “Be quiet!” Nina clamped a hand on her arm. “Lissa is a priestess—just listen.”

  “My children…” Lissa’s green-on-green eyes seemed to glow with benevolence. “Listen to me. The male calling himself Therron—the one known to this little one,” she nodded at Maggie, “as her beloved, Kor, is truly not himself. He has been indwelled by a Shadow Demon of the Black Planet. One who feeds on death and destruction and the life force of those he kills. But the creature cannot kill unless it finds a vessel. Alas, in Kor, he has found one and a strong one, too.”

  “But…excuse me your holiness, uh, I mean, your Goddesship,” Maggie said. “If he’s been possessed…”

  “Not possessed,” the impossibly beautiful, rich voice coming from Lissa’s lips corrected her. “Indwelled. There is a difference little one—a crucial difference which may yet save the people here.”

  “What difference, Mother of All Life?” Nina asked softly—clearly she knew the proper way to address the Goddess.

  “One who is possessed is completely taken over