Chapter 5 - The Price

Orion was standing at the doorway to River Way and ran down to approach Oslen's car.

"I saw the missed call. I had a feeling it was you, father." Orion laughed in relief and rubbed the tears out of his eyes at the sight of Oslen. "Thank goodness you're alive. What are you doing driving a car?"

"Where the hell is your mother?" Oslen grabbed his son by the upper arms and shook him. Orion was about 180 lbs of pure muscle, but he quivered and shrank his shoulders at his father's question. Orion's smile faded, and all the relief left his eyes. His sudden fear did nothing to calm Oslen's nerves. "Why didn't you find a way to contact me?"

"She asked me not to," Orion whispered, his voice barely audible. "I-I wanted to go with her. She . . .she said she found a way to. . . to. . . ."

In blinding fury, Oslen shoved his son backward. Orion slipped back and fell into a pile of muddy branches. His shoes slipped on the wet, soggy dirt. It wasn't the shoes or the mud that gave him trouble finding his way back to his feet again. The poor boy was shaking so hard with emotion one could hear his teeth chattering from the doorway to the manor where Ian was standing.

Oslen struggled to catch his breath. The bruises on his side had largely healed, but at that moment, they seemed to break out in explosive phantom pain. He couldn't tell if the pain was coming from his ribs or from his chest. He reached out for the door of the car to brace himself.

He struggled not to place his fist over his chest like a man who was having a heart attack. No, he was absolutely not having a heart attack. It just seemed like the reflexive thing to do when one had pain radiating out of the center of one's chest.

No, that was still an unlikely occurrence for a man of his age. However, his current state of extreme shock might have been enough to set his aging arteries over the edge. His other son, Ian, was staring but made no move to approach. Oslen caught his breath and stared back at the boy. It was all he could muster at that moment.

Oslen saw his own blue-green eyes staring back at him, but that raven-black hair and pale complexion belonged to the boy's mother. Ian fell back a step toward the house as though he had seen enough.

"Father, please," Orion blurted as he broke Oslen out of his momentary trance. "I tried to stop her."

Oslen turned from his adopted son. His chest wasn't throbbing anymore, but his mouth was as dry as the desert. Every word he uttered felt like it was made of sandpaper.

"She's about a mile south of Cairn Castle. There's a cottage just north of an entrance to Mearnox there. She said that if you turned up alive . . . to go meet her there."

"When did you last see her?"

"A m-month ago."

"And nothing since then?"

"No."

Oslen entered the car and slammed the car door firmly shut. Orion didn't step away. Instead, he banged on the glass of the old rusted vehicle.

"Let me go with you, father. I can help you."

Oslen slammed the car into reverse, and Orion jumped backward at the last second to avoid being hit by the rearview mirror. He ran in front of the car and tried to block the driveway with his body. "Please, let me help. I can — I can drive."

Oslen stared down at his son's frantic pleas for forgiveness. For a second, just for the briefest second, he considered driving the car into his tearful son. Then he took a deep breath and cleared his head.

No.

My child.

I'm not a monster. Not even if she were dead inside Mearnox.

Am I?

It was his doubt that Orion saw as Oslen hesitated. Slowly, Orion lowered his arms but didn't stop staring into his father's eyes, who still gripped the steering wheel with both hands. Orion blinked away some tears and looked away.

Oslen knew he should have comforted his child. He should have been the father the boy needed, the father his own father never was. Up to now, he had kept up the act. He had struggled daily to live up to a vision of fatherhood that he himself had never experienced.

He and Melody were the same in that regard. They were parentless children who struggled to be the parents they never had. He had played the part of the loving, sensitive parent while Melody had been the feckless protector. They both found roles to which they were more suited. And within it, they built a strange kind of family.

That family was nothing without her.

At this moment, the illusion shattered, and Orion saw what lay behind the mask. The face behind all that pleasantness was a man desperately clinging to his last chance at a normal life. It was a man who had been broken to the point of madness and senseless destruction, even of the children who had once loved him.

Turning the steering wheel, Oslen drove around his son and into the night. He saw Orion limping toward the underground garage from his rearview mirror. Yes, Orion wasn't giving up. He was going to the City of the Dead to save the father who had only seconds ago considered murdering him.

The trees lining River Way came to life as the old car bumped down the damaged driveway. Even as Oslen's limbs weakened and his eyesight blurred, his power over the strigoi trees only grew stronger over the years. It was an irony of age that as the flesh grew weak, there were other seemingly useless innate abilities that only heightened over time.

The night exploded with branches from the strigoi trees like fireworks made of vines, spines, and prickles. Oslen breathed heavily with rage and shock even as the awe-inspiring sight faded from view. He had never done anything of that sort before. In his youth, he could make trees sway or bark glow. He hadn't created a palace of barbed vines out of sheer rage.

There would be no one else who would be able to leave the manor that night.

Jaduerial wisely stayed out of his head for the rest of the journey to Cairn. The road was deserted as he drove. He closed his eyes momentarily and tried to reach her. The age-old psychic connection between him and his wife, the "bond" or so they called it in the old days, had long since withered and faded with age. Now, he threw the entire force of his being into that long-gone bond that once connected the two of them.

"Vivienne," he begged the darkness to answer, but none came. "You can't be—"

Another lifetime or oblivion. Another lifetime or oblivion. Another lifetime or oblivion.

Jaduerial's words inside Aemon echoed inside his head. What would await him and his wife? Would there be nothingness, or could he plead with Orienne to allow them to be reborn into another life? It was a thought that brought him no comfort. Would Melody one day forget him as his mother did in the body of Ailith Ying?

It was a horrifying thought that one day they could both inhabit different bodies in a different place and time. They could walk past each other without ever recognizing each other. A stranger on the street could be a woman for whom he had once sacrificed every last fiber of his being.

Perhaps he would be reborn into the body of a man who lived a life that had nothing in common with the one he inhabited currently. Perhaps that man would stare into the mirror and see brown eyes or a head of black hair before him. Could the recollection of his current life linger like an unwanted ghost continents and lifetimes away? And what comfort would such a memory be? With a roll of the dice, he could be reborn into a body not unlike those of the children he once killed in Remin.

If I found you in another lifetime, would you still want me then, Melody?

For the first time in a long time, Oslen felt fear sharp as any blade. For all the powers, money, and influence he had at his disposal, he had no power against death. As the pain in his chest reminded him earlier, all mortals die.

Even one such as he.

The spires of Cairn finally came into view. Oslen drove south in the grassy fields punctuated by rocky heaps. The abandoned cottage came into view, and Oslen stopped the car beside it. He could sense the demons nearby. By now, he knew Black Waters's smell better than his morning coffee's scent. Mearnox wasn't far.

Jaduerial appeared as Oslen went south toward that smell. Some would say the smell was eerie and sicky-sweet, but for many years Oslen found that scent strangely soothing. Now, he felt as though he were greeting an old friend.

"If she is dead, it is Grismal that killed her," the spirit offered helpfully, cheerfully. "Enter Mearnox, destroy the gemstone called the Blood Star, and this nightmare will end."

"Whose nightmare?" Oslen whispered. "My nightmare has no end."

"Rubbish. Look at me. Humanity can be saved. The boy I remembered would have chosen to give humanity a gift of eternal sunshine even if he would never walk in it. Isn't that what you always wanted? To end suffering? That's why you created Tercel, because, underneath it all, you wanted to save people."

People? Oslen couldn't help but laugh. Oh, you damn fool, you are so very wrong. I never created Tercel to help the nameless masses. I did it to help myself. I did it to win the woman I loved, to inspire fear in those who opposed me. I never did any of it out of some illusion of goodness.

Oslen reached into the bag he carried with him. Inside he had a dagger, one that was capable of killing the gods. It had fallen into his hands several months ago, a gift that the late Charlie Liang had acquired. He left it to Oslen with the promise that Oslen would watch over his daughter Angela Liang. Oslen hadn't thought of using it until now because Jaduerial was constantly vigilant, and he never ventured far from Oslen's body.

Now that they neared Mearnox, Jaduerial was floating a distance away, tethered to Oslen by a long shimmery cord. It was as though Jaduerial was afraid to enter those doors into the land of the dead. Perhaps, there were for horrifying places in the world than Aemon.

Oslen's hand tightened around the handle of the blade inside his bag. Oslen's jaw hardened. This wasn't a wise move, but he lacked the will to care. In his lifetime, he had often been described as shrewd, manipulative, and crafty. At this moment, he wasn't any of those things. He was desperate.

"You must destroy the rock called the Blood Star," Jaduerial continued. "Because if your wife were lying dead in those dark watery depths, her soul is trapped there. Do you want her to be a prisoner of Grismal's for eternity?"

"And what will I destroy this thing with?" Oslen retorted. "Should I stomp on it with my heel?"

"Sunlight," Jaduerial said. "It can only be destroyed by the light of morning. The sun will rise soon. Grismal sleeps by day, and he wears it around his neck. If you can retrieve it by then, we can destroy it before Grismal knows it is missing."

Turning toward the caverns in the distance, Oslen smiled faintly.

"You won't enter this cave with me?"

"No. I'll wait for you here."

Oslen stepped toward the cave and put a yard of distance between himself and the spirit. He turned around and smiled. "This reminds me of the day my father died. Do you remember?"

"You did so much to save that mortal man, Sebastian, in Aemon," Jaduerial said with a gentleness that was unlike him. Slowly, the spirit took the shape of his late father again. "My kind, sweet boy. You don't have to kill Grismal, your brother. Only recover the gemstone. I know you never enjoyed the act of—"

The creature stopped in mid-sentence. Oslen's hand was on the dagger, which protruded from the center of the spirit's chest.

Jaduerial's expression was of pure horror. His form started to falter, but it was as though he couldn't believe it. An immortal god began to die.

"The act of killing?" Oslen hissed between clenched teeth as he drove the dagger deeper into the spirit's chest. The creature's form started to shake and tremble with rays of light. Oslen yanked the blade out of the spirit's chest and sheathed it. He slipped it into his pocket and watched the spirit's light fade into the cold, still night. It seemed wrong for a god to die in silence on a grass field in the middle of nowhere. "Oh, I enjoy it very much, father."

Oslen spoke up as the light twisted and turned, desperately clinging to existence. It was not unlike how a human died, sputtering and coughing, gasping for that last breath of air.

"I know, I know. Without you, no one will guide the souls in the afterlife to rebirth. That was your role. You think I'm a fool for this. But I never wanted to be reborn. This is life is all I have ever wanted."

He left the spirit to fade out alone in the field. Its embers were still glowing faintly as Oslen walked away and entered the cavern.

There will be consequences for murdering a god.

Oslen knew this to be true but lacked the will to care. He was drunk on grief and pain. If Orienne and her like came to avenge the God of Rebirth, they could come. They'll find his soul in Mearnox, the land of the dead. Oslen walked into the cavern with no intention of emerging from it.

To be continued in "City Of the Damned."