“And yet you ssstill come running back the moment I call,” the AllFather taunted.
“I came back for her—for my mother.” Xairn could hear the sounds of battle as the AllFather’s guards clashed with the Kindred warriors but he had eyes only for the foot of the throne. There stood the cage, just as it had in his dream. Also as it had been in his dream, the cage was covered by a black cloth. “And to stop you from ever getting to Lauren,” he added, meeting his father’s burning gaze.
“What makes you think I have any interessst in your little female?” the AllFather hissed.
“You’re still trying to fulfill the prophecy,” Xairn said, still climbing as he spoke. He was nearly to the top step now, nearly to the cage… “You even took girls who looked like her, but they couldn’t fulfill your purpose.”
“On the contrary, my errant ssson, they fulfilled my purpose nicely—sssince my purpose was only to make you think I wasss ssstill interested in Lauren.”
Xairn frowned. “If you don’t want Lauren, then who do you want?”
“You.” The AllFather’s eyes suddenly went pitch black, the red bleeding out of his irises to be replaced by a dark void. “You, my ssson! It is you that I want.”
Xairn was taken aback by the wave of pure evil he felt pouring from his father’s empty eyes. “But…why?”
“You ssshall sssee. But by then it will be too late.”
The AllFather began to laugh and the vast, dark room seemed to swim around Xairn. The green etched throne, glowing with poisonous runes, the black covered cage, the AllFather himself laughing coldly, were suddenly a strange swirl of color and confusion.
Suddenly Xairn felt as though a cold fist was gripping his heart. “No!” he tried to cry out but the word came out as a whisper. He heard Baird and Deep both shouting his name from the foot of the broad staircase but he couldn’t see them—couldn’t see anything but his father’s strange, black-on-black eyes.
And then the draining sensation began.
“I knew ssshe would bring you to the peak of your power,” the AllFather hissed, his arms outstretched as he absorbed Xairn’s life force. “I knew ssshe would caussse you to mature and come into your own. And now your power will be mine—I will live forever when I have drained you, my ssson.”
Xairn tried to answer but he was weak, so very weak… He could feel his will to live, to fight, draining away with every passing second. His fading strength seemed to delight his father.
“You’re ssstronger than I ever dared to dream you would be,” he hissed. “Even with that ridiculousss human DNA grafted to your own, you ssstill have powersss beyond measure. But now the human part of you will be your downfall.”
“What?” Xairn whispered. He was on his knees now, the cryo-knife dangling uselessly from one limp hand. “What…what do you mean?”
“It holdsss you back but ssstill you cherish it.” The AllFather laughed. “Still you cannot let it go.”
Suddenly, Xairn realized his father was right. The human DNA was holding him back—restraining him from using his power completely. In order to defeat the AllFather he would have to release it, would have to allow his Scourge DNA to come to the forefront and supplant it.
But if I do that, I’ll never be able to be with Lauren again. It’s all that keeps my Scourge impulses in check—the only reason I’m able to be with her without hurting her, he thought desperately. Better to keep it, hang on to what little humanity I have, than revert to my former self and come back to her a ravening, lustful monster.
Then he lifted his head and saw that the black cloth covering the cage had blown partially away. A small, feminine hand was clutching one of the bars of the cage and from its depths, he thought he saw a familiar pair of green eyes.
Mother! Determination suddenly surged through him. He hadn’t come here to die, to allow his father to suck him dry and leave a lifeless husk behind. He was here to save her—the female whose face he had only seen in dreams. The one who had given birth to him and had him torn from her arms. The mother he had always longed to know was just a few feet away, being held in the AllFather’s cruel iron cage. He must not let her die!
Summoning all the natural Scourge rage that lay within him, just below the surface of his psyche, Xairn stopped the power flowing out of him. Then, with a strength born of desperation, he snapped the fragile chain of human DNA within himself, allowing the floodgates of his true identity to surge forward.
Immediately his eyes burned and he was flooded with power. With it came cruelty, possessiveness, and a lust he knew he would never be able to control. A monster, he thought as the Scourge impulses rushed through his body like a wildfire, devouring all that was good. I am truly a monster now. He looked down at his hand, holding the cryo-knife. No longer was his skin a smooth, even tan. It had reverted to its natural color of pale, pearlescent gray. Xairn knew without looking that his eyes had gone back to their normal red-on-black as well. He was Scourge again—through and through. There were other things to worry about at the present, however. Such as what to do to his father.