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

  I flung out cables in all directions, weaving them through the ornamental stone wall. I sure hoped I wasn't desecrating some sort of holy site or shrine. That would be just my luck. But it was too late to worry about it now. I pulled the cables tight, trapping Margil in the center of the stone circle.

  Even with the full moon and my enhanced powers, weaving a snare like this wasn't easy. My strength was quickly draining. I felt each of Margil's thrashes against my snare and knew that I couldn't hold on much longer.

  "We have to bind him here," I said. "I can't hold the snare much longer."

  Not that there was anything Rhys or Shing could really do at this point. Normally binding a Havoc is a two person job, but since I was both Binder and Berserker for Margil, that meant that I had to do both jobs simultaneously. And I had one chance to get it right.

  I secured the lines of the snare as tightly as I could and walked toward the Havoc. It opened its huge maw and roared at me, a force so powerful it staggered me back several steps. But I kept going.

  Once I was a few feet away from Margil, I realized I had dropped my varé and had nothing to cut myself with. Before I could say anything Rhys was by my side, holding out my varé. I took it from him and flicked it open. I held out my left arm and drew the edge of the blade along the skin. A wide gash opened, blood spilling out onto the ground before me.

  But it didn't behave like normal blood. Instead of falling in a pattern of random drops, the blood flowed from my arm, much faster than it should have. Even as it fell, I could feel the power in it. The blood moved and swirled on the ground, never staying still, and giving off a bright red light that normal blood never could.

  Margil thrashed even harder. The strain of draining my own blood and holding the snare was almost too much for me, and I dropped to one knee no longer able to stand.

  And once again Rhys was there – an immovable object in a world where everything else seemed to be shifting. He put his arm around me and helped me back to my feet. Even with his assistance, it took all my will to force my body up. But I did it.

  Margil growled at me, a look of burning hatred dominating his feline face. His eyes radiated malice. I could feel waves of emotion emanating from him.

  I knew what had to be done. Concentrating on the swirling blood in front of me, I forced it into a circle, just as I had done before. Just as the Binder power within me knew was right.

  I reached down and placed my right hand in the center of the circle and pressed down as hard as I could. The blood was cool and felt tacky to the touch. My hand sunk down into the congealed blood, leaving a handprint.

  Immediately, bright beams of energy burst out of the seal, spiraling hundreds of feet into the air and lighting the area around us.

  When I pulled my hand away from the seal, it left a perfect handprint in the blood, no smearing, no running – flawless. It was as if it had been carved there with perfect precision.

  I held up my hand and turned to face Margil. What I saw shocked me.

  Instead of the fierce hatred that I had seen only moments before, Margil's eyes were wide and filled with fear. He trembled violently, struggling to escape.

  That look of fear was enough to make me hesitate just slightly. I still remembered when I had bound Osadyn and had seen myself through his eyes – a fierce, unstoppable jailer. A figure of horror and terror. That had been beyond disturbing. I still dreamed about it from time to time. Where had that feeling come from? I had seen the evil that the Havocs had done. I had lost friends and family because of them.

  Was I just scared? Was I fooling myself into seeing something that wasn't there? No one else ever saw visions or communicated with the Havocs. Of course, no one had ever been a Binder and Berserker before, either.

  "Madison?" Rhys asked, his voice cutting through my thoughts, calming my fears. "What's wrong?"

  I took a deep breath and let it out. "Nothing," I said. "I just needed a second to think."

  I reached out to place my hand on Margil's head, ignoring the look of fear in his eyes. I wasn't killing the creature. I was simply binding it. Removing its ability to kill innocent humans.

  I caught the movement just a fraction of a second before it happened. There's a reason why Berserkers needed to have super speed and strength. Margil's jaws clamped down where my hand had been only an instant before. It had been so close that I actually felt the brush of his lips against my fingertips as I yanked my hand out of harm's way.

  Now that just made me mad. Here I was feeling all sorry for him, while he pretended to cower in fear to catch me off guard.

  With my left hand – I didn't want to smear the blood on my right – I punched Margil between the eyes. Hard. Sure it was left-handed, but I was still a Berserker and even left-handed I could shatter a boulder no problem. I wasn't sure what would happen if the blood on my hand got smeared, but I sure wasn't going to find out.

  Margil blinked hard, his eyes rolling back in his head for a moment before recovering. I probably could have bound him right then, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Rhys drop to one knee, and then fully collapse to the ground.

  I've always considered myself to be a focused person. If I'm concentrating on something, I don't get distracted easily. There were few things that could have broken my concentration that held the snare.

  Seeing Rhys collapse was one of them.

  I watched as the black cables of my snare disappeared into a puff of black mist – instantly gone.

  Margil immediately knew what had happened, and wasted no time taking advantage of it. He lunged forward, jaws gaping wide and ready bite me in half.

  There's nothing like the fear of imminent death to bring your concentration back to where it belongs. Even as I wanted to check Rhys and make sure he was all right, my Berserker survival instincts took over and I leaped up and backwards, just avoiding Margil's snapping jaws for a second time in under twenty seconds.

  Margil's jaws closed with a loud gnashing of teeth right where I had been standing. Fortunately, I was several feet in the air above that location. On my way down, I reached out with my right hand and placed it on Margil's head, right between his two enormous eyes.

  As my palm connected with Margil's head, my vision blurred. Just as when I had bound Osadyn, bits of images flashed through my mind, almost faster than I could register them. I saw myself through Margil's eyes – a hunter come to bind him forever. I could actually feel his fear of me.

  But after my experience binding Osadyn, I had expected this one last attempt to confuse me and cloud my judgment. I wasn't sure what kind of game the Havocs were playing, but I had seen them at work. I had personally witnessed firsthand the kind of destruction they left wherever they went.

  The Havocs needed to be bound. I could feel that truth deep inside me.

  With my hand firmly pressed against Margil's head, I created the mental connection between the seal of blood, and Margil.

  Margil howled as the color drained out of him and he began to fade, becoming insubstantial. His essence flowed out of his physical body and into the seal, slowly turning it from blood red, to bright gold.

  When the last of Margil's essence had left his body, the seal sent up a bright flash of light, too bright to look at directly, so I had to close my eyes and turn my head for a moment.

  When I opened my eyes, the seal had been changed. It no longer resembled a pool of blood. It was now a shiny golden circle on the ground with a bright red hand print in the middle and strange markings running around the outside edge.

  Margil thrashed and howled, but he had faded to a ghostly outline – no solidity or color. He was now a silent ghost, bound to this spot for eternity – or until someone sacrificed me on the seal.

  The immediate threat of Margil taken care of, I rushed to Rhys' side where he lay collapsed on the ground. Shing was already there, attempting to revive him.

  "What happened?" I asked. "I saw him fall, but I didn't see what Margil did."

  Shing paused in
his attempts at reviving Rhys. "I saw nothing done that would cause this."

  I sat down beside Rhys and pulled him into my arms, willing him to wake up and open his eyes. He would wake up. I refused to allow anything else.

  I was vaguely aware of Margil circling around us, roaring silently and making threatening movements, but I completely ignored him and focused on Rhys.

  Who was looking at me.

  Relief flooded through me. I leaned over and kissed him hard, thankful he was ok.

  When I pulled back he managed a weak smile. "I have no idea what that was for, but, uh, it was spectacular."

  "You passed out," I said. "I was in the middle of binding Margil when you collapsed to the ground."

  "I did?" asked Rhys. "That was rather rude of me." He reached out and stroked my cheek.

  "So, what happened?"

  "I have no idea," Rhys said. He sat up and Shing and I helped him to his feet. "I've been feeling a little off all day, but it started getting worse when you were binding Margil."

  "What do you mean off?" I asked. As far as I knew Berserkers never got sick. It was one of the perks of the job. The closest thing I knew of was the feeling of nausea and heat when a Havoc was nearby.

  "I can't really explain," Rhys said, his lips turning down in a frown of concentration as he tried to remember. I did my best not to get distracted by those lips, but it was a losing cause. "I had a mild headache all day, but I really didn't think much about it. I figured it had to do with us being so close to Margil. But when you started to bind Margil the pain became much worse and it became really hard to think."

  "Have you heard about anything like this?" I asked Shing. He was one of the oldest living Berserkers. If this had happened before, he would be the one who would know.

  He shook his head. He was never one to waste words. I knew he was hundreds of years old and perfectly fluent in a dozen languages, but it always seemed he felt uncomfortable speaking. It couldn't be the language. Was it me? That was a thought for later. Right now it was about Rhys.

  "I'm fine," Rhys said. He jumped up and down and did some shadow boxing. "See, I'm fit as a fiddle."

  "Wow. I sometimes forget you're almost two hundred years old and then you bust out a phrase like that."

  I knew I had made a mistake the minute those words left my mouth.

  The smile faded from Rhys’ face and was quickly replaced by a fake version that didn’t reach his eyes.

  Rhys was, in fact, much older than me. Much, much older. He was old enough to be my great-great-grandfather or something like that. Given the fact that Berserkers age so much slower than normal people, it didn’t bother me.

  But it did bother Rhys.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I reached out and pulled him into a hug. “That was just a bad joke. You know I don’t care about that.”

  “I know,” he said, but his hug told a different story. Usually when I hugged Rhys it was the best feeling ever – like being wrapped in fluffy blankets on a cool evening. This time something was off and instead of blankets it was like bundling up with a burlap sack – sharp and prickly.

  I was about to say more, to try and make things right, when lights turned on in a building about a half mile away and people with flashlights started heading towards us.

  Without another word, the three of us ‘zerked and ran down the mountain, away from the flashlights. I could always cast a haze to make any witnesses forget what they saw, but as a general rule we tried to be discreet so we didn’t have to.

  We ran back down the mountain in silence, my thoughts in turmoil. I hadn’t meant to upset him. To me it was a funny joke, but clearly it hadn't been to him.

  Once we reached civilization again, we turned off the ‘zerk and made our way back to the hotel on the MTR – Hong Kong’s subway system. It was really kind of amazing. You could get pretty much anywhere you wanted to go without having to drive and the system was so easy that even without speaking Chinese I could get around no problem. Of course, it might just seem easy in comparison to where I was from. To use public transportation in Washington you practically needed a Rosetta stone to decode the bus schedule.

  I tried to talk to Rhys on the ride back, but he wouldn’t admit that anything was actually wrong.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I know you were just kidding.”

  But his words didn’t match the subtle vibe I was getting from him. There was a feeling of coolness between us – an invisible wall that I couldn’t seem to penetrate – that was still there by the time we got back to the hotel. I was at a loss of what I could do to make it better. We would have to find some time to be alone and talk through this.

  But all thoughts of my relationship with Rhys were put on the back burner when we arrived at the hotel. Before Shing could finish unlocking the door, Dad pulled it open. He pushed passed Shing and threw his arms around me.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right,” he said. He squeezed me tight and seemed reluctant to let go.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  This was definitely out of character for my dad. Sure he wasn’t thrilled when I went out after Havocs, but he never had this kind of reaction before. I was really confused.

  “Why would you think that?”

  Dad pulled back so I could once again see his face. The look of relief was clearly visible, but I could see that something was still wrong.

  “I just got a call from the Binder council,” he said. He took a deep breath. “Thuanar’s seal is breaking.”

  Chapter 2

  Decisions, Decisions

  “What do you mean ‘breaking’?” I asked. Seals didn’t just break. They were permanent – sort of. It took the life blood of a Berserker being spilled on the seal to break one. Not just a drop or two. All of it.

  Since Aata had died, and I had taken on his powers, it meant my life blood was needed to break the seal.

  And as far as I could tell, I was still alive.

  Dad pushed the door open and shooed us all into the hotel room before closing, bolting, and then flipping the u-shaped security lock as well. Clearly he didn't want to be disturbed.

  The hotel room had a completely different feel than hotels I had stayed at in the US. There were two queen beds in the room and a desk, which was normal enough. The television was a large flat screen that had been hidden behind a sliding panel with a large photograph of the Hong Kong skyline at night printed on it. It had taken me several minutes to find the TV after checking in. Not that it really mattered. I couldn't understand anything that was being said. But it had been entertaining to watch some of the shows and make up my own storyline to go with it.

  All the doors in the room slid open instead of pulling out. The entire room seemed to be a mixture of traditional Chinese and ultra modern design. And I loved it.

  Rhys and I sat down on one of the beds, Shing on the other, and my dad pulled out the chair from the desk and sat down.

  "How is it even possible for a seal to start breaking?" I asked. "I sure don't feel dead."

  "I honestly have no idea," Dad said. "I've never heard of anything like this before."

  "How do they know it’s breaking?" Rhys asked.

  "I don't know all the details," Dad said. "But it seems that Araceli has seen flashes of Thuanar and the seal."

  The Binder Council assigned people to watch the location where each of the Havocs was bound. Their job was to be on the lookout for people who seemed to be scouting out the area, attempting to pinpoint the location of any of the seals. And also attempt to prevent any Berserkers from being sacrificed on the seals and breaking them. Araceli was one of the women assigned to watch Thuanar's seal in Mexico. We had met her when we had gone there last spring break to investigate some suspicious activity.

  "So, what, he just suddenly appeared in front of the cathedral?" I asked. "Shouldn't I have at least felt something? Had some sort of advanced warning?"

>   "Again, I don't know," Dad said. He sighed and leaned back in the chair. "We're in completely uncharted territory here."

  Shing nodded. "I also have never heard of anything like this before. It defies all that we know."

  "There has to be a reason for it," said Rhys. "I know this is magic that we're dealing with, but it's had order for thousands of years. It has rules and laws. It can't just decide to change for no reason."

  "Like suddenly having a girl Berserker?" I asked.

  Rhys squeezed my hand. "That's different. That wasn't necessarily a change. It was just the first time it happened."

  "But that's just my point," I said. "Things are changing here, and they have ever since I came into the picture. You know what Mallika wrote in her note. The magic is corrupting."

  My words were met with a thundering silence.

  Several months ago, Mallika had discovered that there was a Binder prophecy that said the Berserker magic would one day begin to corrupt and that all the powers would eventually consolidate in one person.

  Which, apparently, was me.

  She had written me a letter explaining what she had learned shortly before taking her own life so that I could have her Binder powers and bind Osadyn.

  I still had difficulty thinking about it without starting to cry.

  What I hadn't really dealt with yet, nor discussed with Rhys, was the implication in her words that all the other Berserkers would eventually have to die for that prophecy to come to pass.

  Which meant him as well.

  Every time I let myself think about it, I felt completely nauseated and wanted to throw up. What good was it to have these powers and live for a thousand years if I had no one to share it with?

  "We don't know for a fact that it will happen," my dad said. His voice sounded strained. I could tell he was trying very hard to keep calm. He still had a hard time dealing with the fact that I had been pulled into the Berserkers' world.

  He had once been a Berserker until a freak accident had stopped his heart. For several minutes he had technically been dead. Fortunately, the doctors had been able to revive him, but his heart had stopped beating for so long that it severed his connection with whatever source the Berserkers' powers came from. One of the more horrific parts of being a Binder is that when a Berserker died, the Binder died with him. My mother had been the Binder for my father, so when he died, she died as well. And she wasn't lucky enough to be taken to a hospital and revived.