Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  Bonds That Break

  Brant Williams

  Copyright © 2014 by Brant Williams

  First Kindle edition published 2014

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Tian Mulholland

  Dedication

  For my wife, Caroline

  who helped me find the will to write again.

  and

  for my children,

  who keep me young at heart.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Hunting the Hunter

  Chapter 2: Decisions, Decisions

  Chapter 3: Plastic Girl and the Barbie Mansion

  Chapter 4: Council Under the Mountain

  Chapter 5: The Calm Before the Storm

  Chapter 6: A Bet of Honor

  Chapter 7: A Meteorologist's Worst Nightmare

  Chapter 8: Acts of Rage

  Chapter 9: Loyalties and Priorities

  Chapter 10: Cold and Comfortless

  Chapter 11: Going Feral

  Chapter 12: Bitter Medicine

  Chapter 13: Needing a Little Space

  Chapter 14: Extreme Measures

  Chapter 15: Wreaking Havoc

  Chapter 16: The Weight of the World

  Chapter 17: Being Shing

  Chapter 18: Shanghaied

  Chapter 19: The Unthinkable

  Chapter 20: The Last Berserker

  Chapter 21: Voicemail From the Dead

  Chapter 22: Is This For Real?

  Chapter 23: My Informant Revealed

  Chapter 24: Origins

  Chapter 25: Nidhogg and Yggdrasill

  Chapter 26: Restoration

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Hunting the Hunter

  I could feel him nearby. A hot, putrid presence. A sickening darkness that made both my stomach churn and my body feel like I was running on the surface of the sun wearing thermal underwear. Margil was close.

  The air in Hong Kong was warm and humid, much hotter than I was used to in Washington. There, the temperature always dropped in the evening. Here, it was after two in the morning and the night showed no sign of cooling down.

  I looked over at Rhys – something I really enjoyed doing – and through the glow of his 'zerk saw an expression of strain on his face. He clearly felt Margil's presence, too.

  On my other side, Shing ran along silently. Not that he was ever exactly chatty. He too was 'zerking and completely focused on the task at hand.

  I couldn't blame either of them for being focused. It had taken several long months to finally track down Margil. He had been too far away by the time we could start searching for him, and the trail had been ice cold. We had tracked him across three continents and were now close enough to have a chance at binding him.

  And I was the only one who could do that.

  Until a year ago, my life had been about as normal and boring as possible. That had changed the day I became a Berserker. It wasn't like I volunteered for the job. It was a random draft with no chance to opt out – except for death.

  There were some seriously cool things about being a Berserker. My senses were heightened, and I could see and hear things better than any regular person could. I had speed, coordination, and Hulk-like super strength. When I 'zerked, I started to glow and was pretty much invulnerable. It was like being a superhero.

  The downside was the fact that people around me tended to die at an uncomfortably fast rate.

  I had spent past ten months learning about my powers and training so I could help fight the Havocs. The Havocs are a group of monsters or demons, or some kind of nasty-gross creature that had been brought to our world thousands of years ago. Berserkers and Binders are the only things that can stop them. A Berserker's blood can bind and free a Havoc. The Berserker provides the blood and the super strength. The Binder casts the spell that traps them. If you want to free a Havoc, you have to sacrifice a Berserker and drain all his blood on the place where the Havoc was bound, and with our powers, let me tell you, that is not an easy feat.

  Rhys raised a hand, signaling for a stop. Shing and I slowed beside him.

  "I've lost him," he said. "I can't feel him anymore. Can you, Madison?" He looked at me inquiringly. His blue eyes locked on mine, causing my heart to skip a beat and my knees to feel weak. Sure, I could derail a freight train with one hand, but a single look from Rhys and I was once again a giddy high school girl madly in love with her uber-wonderful, handsome, powerful, and to be quite honest practically-perfect boyfriend.

  I pushed all that aside. There were times to dwell on how I felt about Rhys and there were times to beat the crap out of monsters. This was the latter.

  "I still have him," I said. We had tracked Margil outside of the main city and were now at the base of a mountain covered with a deep forest. There was a path running up the mountain and a tram above that looked like it took tourists someplace farther up. I could feel the nausea was stronger up there. I pointed in the direction of the path. "That way."

  We started running again, this time up the mountain. I had to admit, running like this was one of the perks of being a Berserker. It was like flying, but on the ground. I never got tired, and I never slipped or tripped.

  Margil had been freed several months ago, when another Berserker, Eric, had gone feral. Which basically means he went crazy. By the time the other Berserkers had tracked him down, it was too late. Osadyn had used his blood to free Margil, and Eric was dead. In the end we had bound Osadyn, but that had come at the cost of Mallika, Rhys' Binder's, life.

  Which goes back to my point about people around me dying too quickly.

  The moon was full tonight. With our enhanced senses the three of us could have easily seen where we were going with only starlight, but the moon rising over the mountain did make for a spectacular view. Not to mention the fact that it would strengthen my Binder powers.

  Several dark figures stepped out of the trees ahead of us and onto the path. I recognized what they were at once. They were human, or at least they had been human. Now they were zombies. Yep, real zombies. One of Margil's powers was control over the dead. We had met several packs of his creation during our three-month hunt. There must be a graveyard somewhere around here.

  Fortunately, real zombies are magically created, and not spawned from a mutant virus, so we didn't have to worry about a zombie plague if anyone was bitten. They were more of an inconvenience than a genuine threat. Margil liked to use them to slow us down when we got too close.

  Rhys and I both pulled out our varés – bone swords that unrolled from a flat disk. Shing pulled out his twin tiger hook swords – bone swords with hooked ends and spiked hand guards – and held one in each hand. It was time to fight.

  Standard zombie lore had gotten most things wrong. Zombies weren't a slow shambling horde of mindless eating. With Margil in control they were quick, agile, and coordinated in their attacks.

  The one thing they did get right was how you kill them – cut off the heads.

  I counted over two dozen of them, hardly enough to even slow us down. We continued running toward them, weapons out and ready to attack.

  It wasn't until it was too late to run around them that we saw the rest of the horde. There were at least another hundred zombies filtering through the trees.

  This was more than a minor inconvenience.

  We pulled up short and stood our ground. We had practiced this kind of situation before. We stood in a triangle trying to keep our backs to each other and avoid being surprised from behind.

  As the first zombie came into my range, I struck out with my varé and s
liced clean through its neck. I immediately focused on the next creature, not even stopping to be sure the body had crumpled. With this many attacking at once, we needed speed if we were going to keep from getting overwhelmed.

  Rhys and Shing used the same tactic. Watching Rhys fight was always an awe-inspiring vision. He was so quick and graceful that all his attacks looked like a single fluid movement. I had to force myself to look away and concentrate on the zombies in front of me.

  On they came, wave after wave of them. How big was this graveyard Margil had found? Again and again my varé flashed out, slicing through zombies, and I kicked them out of the way as they fell. The bodies began piling up and we had to give ground to simply have room to continue fighting and not trip over undead corpses. Unlike the bringers that Osadyn had used to fight us, these zombies didn't have the good manners to collapse into puddles of black goo once they were killed.

  One zombie managed to sneak up on me and grab my leg. It opened its jaws and tried to bite my calf. While not fatal, I had learned from first-hand experience that a zombie bite really does hurt. Since teeth are bone and were once living, Berserkers are vulnerable to bites.

  Before the zombie could sample my flesh, I thrust down with my varé and pierced through the creature's skull. The zombie shuddered violently and slumped to the ground. I pulled out my dripping varé and whipped it around to get most of the zombie juices off of it. Why did monsters always have to be so gross? Why couldn't we be attacked by fluffy unicorns or ponies that turned to vapor when we killed them?

  I would totally love to take on Rainbow Dash.

  The rest of the fight continued pretty much the same: hack, slash, decapitate, and move on to the next. Zombie killing is just a gross, messy business. I would be glad when Margil was bound and we would never see these things again.

  We left the final seven zombies for Rhys to finish. This was the fun part, to see what kind of amazing moves he would pull off – kind of like watching the super finishing move in a video game.

  Rhys spun around, slicing through four zombies with his first strike, then he somehow caught the final three zombies lined up in a row and drove his varé through their heads in a single thrust, like the world's most repulsive shish kebob.

  I ran over and gave Rhys a huge hug. It probably says something about how messed up my life had become as a Berserker to admit that watching him kill those zombies was kind of hot.

  "No one kills a zombie like you," I said with an exaggerated sigh. I looked up at him, batted my eyelashes, and pressed the back of my hand to my forehead, as if I were about to swoon.

  Rhys rolled his eyes and pulled me in tighter. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard that pickup line before."

  "Ahem," said Shing. He looked up the mountain in the direction of Margil. "We may want to consider moving faster if we wish to bind this Havoc."

  And that was about as close to a direct request to move as we would get from the ever-polite Shing. He was older than almost all of the Berserkers I had met – which meant he was really old. One of the side effects of being a Berserker was that they aged at a much slower rate than regular people. Something like one year for every thirty years that passed. While Shing looked like he was in his late thirties or early forties, he was actually over seven hundred years old.

  We started running up the mountain again, moving quickly because all of us wanted to finally bind Margil so we could go home and rest.

  The path followed the lines the tram took and continued for several miles up the mountain slope. Before we knew it, we had emerged from the woods into what at first looked like a small village, but on closer inspection was more like a theme park. There were wide stone walkways lined with stores and lamp posts. Up above it all was the biggest statue of Buddha I had ever seen. The bronze statue sat on a giant lotus blossom that rested on top on a flat stone building. A massive staircase lined with hundreds of colorful flags led up to it. The sheer scope of it was breath-taking.

  Fortunately, in the middle of the night, the place seemed to be deserted. And a good thing too, for there on the giant staircase was Margil, massive and sinister, eating what looked to be the final bits of some poor security guard.

  Margil was the third Havoc I had seen. Each of the Havocs looked different from the others. The two that I had previously seen were more reptilian in nature. Margil, however, seemed to be more like a cat than a lizard. A giant cat with curved tusks, six legs, and some sort of hard spiked shell on its back – like a horrific cross between a turtle and a saber tooth tiger, mutated and blown up to the size of a bus.

  As I looked closer, it bore a strong resemblance to Gamera from the old Godzilla movies I used to watch with my dad. Too strong to be a coincidence. Yes, Margil was feline rather than reptilian, but I couldn't help but wonder if the creator of Gamera had somehow seen Margil when he had been unbound.

  Shing, Rhys, and I lined up facing the Havoc. We had to be careful. If we were too aggressive, Margil would run away. We had to engage him without frightening him off. Havocs were especially likely to run if they knew the Berserker and Binder that could trap them to the location were both there.

  It just so happened that I was both.

  Until I came into my powers, Berserkers had always been boys and Binders had always been girls. By virtue of the fact that my mom had been a Binder and my dad a Berserker, I had somehow inherited a mutant version of the powers and was both the Berserker and Binder for the Havoc Pravicus.

  That was bad enough, but it turns out that every time a Berserker or Binder died, instead of a new one developing powers somewhere in the world, I somehow got the powers. I was now the Berserker and Binder for not only Pravicus, but Thuanar and Margil too. And after Mallika sacrificed herself when she couldn't arrive in time to help bind Osadyn, I also became the Binder for Osadyn.

  I wasn't exaggerating about people dying around me.

  Margil reared back on two legs and roared a challenge at us. Shing took him up on it and rushed forward, hitting the exposed underside of Margil and flipping him onto his back.

  Margil thrashed around trying to right himself. He really did look like a turtle that had been upended. Surely it couldn't be that easy.

  And of course it wasn't.

  Margil managed to flip himself over and turn back to face us, more angry than ever. His long fangs dripped with a really gross-looking juice that I was sure wasn't something I wanted to touch – ever.

  Rhys and I both rushed forward to attack Margil from either side, but he leapt over both of us and ran down the stairs.

  Fortunately, Shing had already anticipated this, and after hitting Margil had swung around and doubled back behind us, cutting off Margil's escape.

  Margil hesitated for just a moment as he tried to move his massive bulk in a different direction to go around Shing. That hesitation was all I needed. I leaped from the stairs and landed on Margil's shell, doing my very best to avoid impaling myself on one of the spikes. We were hard to kill, but not immortal.

  The Havoc thrashed about as it felt my weight land on it, trying to throw me off. But I wasn't going to allow that to happen. I reached around his neck and grabbed a handful of fur and pulled back with all my strength.

  Without warning, everything around me changed. It was like falling into a waking dream that completely blotted out the world around me. Jagged images and bits of scenes flashed around me. This was not the first time I had experienced something like this when dealing with a Havoc.

  Once again I saw the muscular man with long hair obscuring half his face and the single eye that seemed to pierce through me. I also saw two men. One was big and strong, with biceps the size of my thighs and a metal glove on his hand. I had also seen him before. This time he was pacing back and forth before what appeared to be a cave entrance. The other man was new to me. His hair was dark and he was as thin as the other was muscular. He had a clever-looking face, with wide eyes that at first appeared innocent, but when I looked deeper seemed to b
e dancing with mischief. He stood by the cave entrance watching the gloved man with a look of calculating appraisal.

  And with that I was out of the dream, or vision, or whatever it was. I wasn't sure how long it had lasted, but it couldn't have been long since I was still on Margil's back, holding my varé and a handful of the creature's fur.

  But not for long. The vision had dazed me, and I loosened my grip on his fur just enough to have it slip through my fingers as he bucked and tossed me into the air.

  I managed to find my bearings and rotate just perfectly so I landed on my feet, facing Margil. Without thinking, I dropped my varé, extended my hands, and cast a snare. Black cables flew from the tips of my fingers and wrapped themselves around Margil's massive shell, constricting and securing him tightly.

  A snare is a special power that only Binders have. Most Binders can only make thin threads and have to weave them into something stronger. It's a tedious process and takes hours, or even days, depending upon the size and strength of the snare. For whatever reason, my snare was supercharged and thick enough that I didn't need to weave it.

  Margil thrashed against the snare, desperate to free himself. Fortunately, tonight was a full moon. During the full moon the powers of a Binder are magnified and so my already enhanced Binder powers were even stronger than normal.

  I held tight, pulling with all my strength. Gradually he began sliding down the stairs. Rhys and Shing circled back behind him and began pushing, making my job of pulling much easier.

  At the bottom of the stairs was a large plaza filled with three concentric stone circles ringed by elaborately decorated walls about three feet high.

  The perfect place to weave a web to hold a Havoc.

  Margil must have figured out what we were doing and he began to thrash even harder, growing stronger in his desperation. But three Berserkers are a force to be reckoned with, and after several minutes of struggling we were able to drag the massive Havoc into the center of the circle.