Unbroken Bonds (The Bonds That Tie #6)(61)

I stalk back down the hallway, ignoring the challenge in Jericho’s eyes as I do, the way that he leans against the wall separating him from his Bonded.

I hate the whole lot of them.

Sometimes I wish that we could fill this entire space up with gasoline and light a match just to be done with it all. Some things aren't that easy.

I find the god-bond sitting at the small table, his palms flat against the wood as he watches me enter the space. He doesn't try to speak to me or comment on the little display he's just watched. He just stares until finally, with a sigh, I reach out to the Crux, offering him my body in exchange for the information that I require.





The Crux



The god-bond looks too healthy sitting in the seat across from me as I take over my vessel. It looks too well-fed, too taken care of here, too pampered, considering the threat that it is to my Eternal.

I raise this complaint with my vessel, but it gives me the paltry excuses of the human folk, things like ‘the Geneva Convention’ and ‘acts of war’ and ‘setting a good foundation of expectations’ and ‘making us different from our enemy’.

I do not care for any of that.

I especially do not care about the mistreatment of those who would harm us. They deserve death, blood-soaked and gory. They deserve pain and torture before my Eternal eats their souls and turns them into nothing more than a life source for us, something to increase our power and our hold on this earth.

They deserve the worst that we've got.

“I thought you had been here for longer? You're not very good at hiding how you feel yet, or hiding the robot nature.”

I incline my head at it. “We're not here to discuss me. You have information that I want. You can either give it to me without blood and pain or we can make this very fun for me and very unpleasant for you.”

He stares at me for a moment, looking me up and down. “Why do you and the Corvus always look the same? Why are you always born into the same family, untouchable to the rest of us? The Draven bloodline has protected you all for generations. Even when the others tried to stop you from coming, you still found a way.”

They were behind the manipulation of the Bonded Groups, the pairing of Gifted to people who were not right for them in an attempt to stop us from cycling.

All it did was make us stronger.

The vessels that we were born into now are more powerful than they ever have been before. I brought the shadow creatures to my vessel, but they are not the only weapon in our arsenal now. I know that the Corvus has even more abilities lurking within him. I don't know how my brother managed to win over his vessel so quickly, but he has access to it all without there ever being a fight.

The truth of the matter is that my vessel doesn't want me taking over, so I have not learned yet how to act in the way that the Gifted do in this time. I haven't had the opportunity to mimic them. Instead, I have nothing but the long and shifting sands of time under my belt, the old and tired soul who desperately hopes that this is it. That this is the last time I will be here. That this will be the one perfect lifetime that I will get to have with my Eternal before we all go to rest together in whatever comes next, finally finished cycling.

“Are you going to answer my questions or not?”

The god-bond in front of me sighs and shakes his head, muttering under his breath, “You haven't even asked any yet. Do you know how to make friends, or is that too hard for you in this lifetime as well?”

“I don't need friends. I have a Bonded Group and the Eternal. That is all I need. Tell me which gods are awake, which gods are here. Tell me who has already woken and died. Tell me everything you know in this lifetime.”

He sighs again, splaying his hand out on the table and staring down at the scars there as though there are a hundred stories behind them, a whole life that he has lived here on this earth this time along with his vessel.

I care for none of it.

“When I woke, there were six of us. Now there are only four.”

My eyes narrow at it. “Including yourself.”

He nods. “They killed my Bonded, and your group took out another. They were hunting for you from the beginning. They knew you were due back, but none of them guessed that you’d all arrive together. They made a mistake.”

Of course they did, but I cannot blame them.

The Draconis was not due to wake again for another hundred years or so, his cycling taking much longer than anyone else’s. The fact that he has awakened in the first place is a miracle of its own.

“That's why they took the Eternal and didn't just kill it. They wanted to see how far they could push things, what they could force it to do. They really didn't think the rest of you would find it before they had taken their fill.”

The room around me explodes into darkness, the shadows forming so suddenly and completely around us both that the god-bond is choking on them. The black smoke curls around him, smothering him, engulfing everything until there is nothing but perfect night around him, the sort of darkness that is terrifying in its completeness.

“Which one? Which one took it and did that to it? They are all marked for death, but I need to know which one.”

It makes a gurgling sound as the words squeeze out. “Pain. Pain has always been the ringleader. It’s always pulled the strings and done everything it could. It doesn't just wield pain. It is pain. It cares for nothing but suffering for all of us. It doesn't want its Bonded. It wants everything to burn, over and over and over again. While the rest of us search for completeness, it wants nothing but destruction. The last cycle, it killed its own Bonded, and if its Bonded comes back again in this lifetime, I'm sure it will do the same. It wants nothing. Madness like that needs to be dealt with swiftly, or it will swallow the rest of us whole.”