*Prequel to "The Death Dealer, Nia" – this is set during the film 'Underworld: Rise of the Lycans'.
The soul of the war bled from this very spot.
Bound eternally in mortal rope and scattered into the ash of eternity.
In the courtyard of immortal ghosts, a voracious clatter resounded against the cobblestone announcing the unexpected descent to the bane of night.
A pair of immortal pale clover and gold orbs trembled as the gravity of what lie at her feet sunk in with a unwelcome derailing ferocity.
Although the scent was faint, there was no mistakening that potent blood anywhere.
As the initial shock started to dissipate, the lone immortal actually felt a chill pierce her from bone to soul as to the why this took place at all. Who gave such an order.
The shield maiden that lie dormant inside her seethed with an unquenchable wrath at the truth. And yet this feeling was not so unfamiliar born in blood innocence from her mortality.
Nia herself felt sickened as though she had mistakenly nibbled on a piece of mortal food.
In her human days, there was only one way her fjord would handle a situation such as this.
Those clover-gold flashed with a steel-like determination upon the gleaming blades lying fallow at the base of the immortal ash.
Somewhere in the great gothic castle, two immortal titans raged for the heart of the war with every cell their inhumanity would bend to.
In a single preternatural blink-and-it's gone action Nia grappled both hilts of the menacing blades with a death artistry that left any shaken with little resistance.
The only exception was this time she was angry.
The last time she felt like this was when she was human. A mere fortnight before she was sired.
Tonight, she would be Death and the end was here. For Viktor.
Without a second's hesitation, Nia flit numb to all immortal carnage in the wake of her path, her senses completely set on the vampire king.
From the crow's nest of the privileged damned, the one that stands forever alone stared poison-tipped arrows down at the road of the dark future.
SLAM! The castle doors cut clean off its hinges as a blinding swirl of scarlet, obsidian, ivory and jade barreled into the main castle grounds.
A familiar scent unparalleled in its potency instantly ceased the death-sure lunge in her tracks.
A pair of exquisite pale-clover and brilliant gold orbs scanned the entire perimeter with inhuman range. The beasts that were once at Viktor's door had currently taken up residence in the lion's den.
Their senses set on her.
A mere whiff of Amelia's blood that flowed pumping in her veins was the very war drum that incited a nearby lycan to arch its back taking a predatorily stance. Instantly, she was surrounded by a troupe of wild lycans baring a set of razor sharp teeth.
It was the last thing she needed right now. Interference...
Besides, it wasn't as though they weren't fighting for what should have rightfully belonged to them.
Still...she'd hate to have to kill the lycans who had mastery of their own beast. They weren't William's infectious breed.
"Hold." a familiar voice, distinguished and haunting in its soft inflection, commanded instantly caging a troupe of lycans ready to pounce.
A halo of rich dark-auburn waves, wild and lush, turned in the direction of this rather unexpected command.
"Lucien." Nia's immortal orbs widened in astonishment, she felt as though she could scarcely breathe as he began to approach "When I saw the courtyard, I thought you were..."
Despite the carnage of the decadent immortals sprawled around them, Lucien had kindness in those haunting dark jades when he looked on her. She had tried to help him free Sonja at great personal risk. Nia wasn't like the others-she had always treated him as an equal and a friend. He often suspected that Nia treated Sonya as a sister. He would never forget that.
"I probably should be. But the fates had other plans." Lucien said a twinge of reed-deep loss seeped into his voice
The trigger of something with a blinding intensity buried deep within the attic of her soul- that human creature that had slit her sister's belly. If only she had only been there but a moment earlier.
"Lucien...I'm so sorry." Her voice broke off, trying in vain to swallow the fresh salty hard lump rising in her throat.
His immortal ears perked at the utter ache in the former shield-maiden's voice, he was rather thrown by the sadness in it. Part of him softened, taking one look in those pale immortal orbs turned their human rich dark cerulean blue and knowing that she knew. That she had lost someone dear to her heart in the blink of an eye.
"I know." Lucien gently clasped her right shoulder and squeezed in a gesture of solidarity, his already soft deliberate speech lightened.
Somewhere amongst the troupe of Lycans, Raze scowled and stared never the less at this particular death dealer with distrustful eyes. Lucien had possessed a blind spot for this particular immortal and the idea was completely foolish. She was a vampire and he should hate her on principle for that blood legacy. But there again, this is where Raze and Lucien differed on immortal politics.
"Viktor." Nia roared with contempt, her dark human blues charring their immortal pale clover and gold at the thought, "HE-MUST-PAY."
The end of her blade went up, readying for the kill. Raze tilted his head in surprise at this. Perhaps, he had judged her too quickly.
A firm immortal hand instantly grappled Nia's forearm, pausing her.
"He's gone. I've killed him. Once the coven knows, they'll be coming for us." Lucien said, his piercing dark jades locking with her pale clover.
It was true. Although Nia had never met their international brethren, she knew from Amelia what they were capable of. They would scour every lycan territory until they found and executed him.
"And I'll be ready for them." Lucien said, a keen fire lighting in those dark jades of his
"Lucien." Nia stared at him, knowing that this is what he must do and yet somehow she felt compelled to talk him out of it-but that was against her code from her human life in the Norse fjord. "Becareful."
"I would give you the same warning" Lucien stared at her with a familiarity and a knowing glean in those deep piercing jades "but knowing you, you wouldn't heed it."
Truer words never spoken.
Something tiny and gold caught her immortal gaze, and instantly her peripheral was drawn to a particular almost all-but shattered stain glass window. Oh my God..
Suddenly, it was though all the immortal vibrance nearly drained the striking death dealer's resplendent features. She felt as though she literally couldn't breathe as a derailing ominious thought began to consume and fill her with a dread that refused to go away.
Lucien instantly noted the sheer panic filling those large deep set pale clover and gold. They settled upon him, unable to gain mastery he had grown so accustomed to.
This truly surprised him. He had never not once seen her fret over anything - she appeared visibly shaken, her brow furrowed in trepidation.
"I had only gotten back from the village a little while ago. Might you have seen Tanis?"
Lucien had seen this many times. But it was usually emanating from Tanis himself- little moments that went unnoticed by the blind of heart. Still in the onslaught, he had failed to cross tracks with the historian.
A look of empathy crossed Lucien's alabaster handsome features, he gently cupped the palm of her elegant fingertips in his.
"I'm sorry my dear. I haven't seen him since the prisons."
A lightning rod of emotion suddenly filled those pale clovers as they remanded to their human rich blue.
"Oh my God." She felt her chest quake at this, no no no
She felt Lucien's expectant gaze beckoning her, finally she heeded him.
"Find him. It's what you do."
Aboard the Vessel over Still Waters...
In the very dead of inky night, as the vampire king stepped into the shadows of his coffin, Tannis dare not breathe. Not for a second.
The seconds ticked by like ions as those unnatural electric blue orbs drank him in with that unnerving menace. But there was something else, something new in them. Something he had never witnessed before.
The I'm-Watching-You look ever since that moment earlier. Not until the moment the specially crafted mechanism sealed him from the immortal ruler would he exhale.
Clickity-clickity-clank.
Immortally impenetrable and yet...his body refused him that blissfull release. The very thing that instantly loosened every constriction, every electric twitch and swelling tension at the moment of the sociopathic vampire ruler's slumber refused him heed this time.
Something was missing.
Something he wanted with a need that should be labeled illegal.
Someone he...
A harsh growl, low and intensely menacing, towered just above his shoulder. Dear God..
The smell of death eminent and unmistakable blew like a fog in the winter across the nape of his fair neck.
His immortal heart all but failed him.
His large pale green orbs frenzied with an adrenaline rushing sunset liquid gold - it was as though he saw his whole life flash in front of his immortal gaze in fluid moving pictures. It was short, bleak and unresolved.
A wily gargantuan beast emerged from the depth of shadow, its long snout split to reveal a jagged set of pearly razors-its black eyes glowed fixed for blood.
His.
"NO!" a voice so fatally harsh it bordered on a death threat rallied from the vessel's blind stair case
Tannis instinctively whipped his head at the source, his gold-clover orbs suddenly glimmering with a renewed hope.
There was no way he would forgot that voice - even in the depths of hell would his soul rise to its call.
Nia glared with an unwavering wrath of daggers at this wolf possessing the audacity and the mere thought to tear this historian's head off. The palms of her long elegant ivory fingertips began to uncharacteristically tremble...with undiluted rage.
Even in such a primal state, that unconscious self couldn't even decipher the casym of her anger. The Why.Damn near paralyzing.
All she knew was she would send the recesses of humanity left in the beast to Valhalla if he didn't step the hell off. And yet the Damn beast ignored her command, its black eyes gauging her through the peripheral as thought sensing a sudden shot of adrenaline coarse straight to her heart as it inched closer yet to Tannis.
And yet it was her mere presence that compelled the eternally youthful immortal to fix his gaze solely on her ignoring the wily powerful beast completely. Noo!
Sprinting at immortal speed , a blur of obsidian, crimson-rum, chrome and ivory blurred against the veil of eternal night below deck. A pair of inhuman pale clovers narrowed sharply upon an abandoned chopping axe.
Snap. A clean cold blinding sweep and a large wily wolf head spun off its axis thumping like a carved melon onto the vessel's floor. All delivered with the lethal grace that chilled many a decadent vampire Viktor kept in his pocket.
Fear eclipsed to a blissful shudder as her presence resonated before him a sweet relief etched every contour of those eternally boyish features at the mere sight of her.
Those pale clovers refused to blink, studying him with a intense stillness that remained to his dismay as impenetrable as ever.
"Nia dearest." Tanis's breathing was choppy and shallow, still trying to regain his composure.
What he never saw was the Restraint behind it- until the end of the glimmering axe was tossed expertly root-tipped into the floor.
A split second before he felt a pair of two powerful ivory fists brace him by the collar into the alcove of the vessel - her immortal gaze burning with chaos.
"Damn It Tanis!"
Pressing into him, Tanis finally recognized the depth of the seriousness bouncing up at him, her exquisite features a torrid of unprocessed emotion. Inwardly, Tanis felt his heart still and his breath hitch at this on his behalf. There were times when he caught fleeting glimpses he dare not hope to be true for their intensity scorched him.
Tannis had noticed that they only burned that way on those rare moments in his presence and not for another.
And yet it was his want for her that fed the base of his addiction, needing this with a hunger that went beyond blood. Trying to see her truth was the greatest riddle of his immortal life.
Tonight, that impenetrable iron maiden wall (how often he had wondered what or who had put it there in the first place) lifted.
"Never turn your back from the beast at your front." her voice rattled, his heart tugged at this
Noting the vulnerability etched into the exquisite features, Tanis proceeded delicately.
"Sweetheart it wasn't William's breed. It was Lucien's." Tanis stated, his boyish voice softened, those sunset clovers drinking in every breath taking emotion that materialized before him. Sweet heaven.
Those pale greens glowed with consideration at this. It was true, Nia mused thoughtfully biting on her lush lower lip, with age came power and Tanis had been born to immortality decades before herself.
Something dark burned for the longest deep in contemplation to a place where the heart of her secrets never had audience before. There was something in him that she couldn't bring herself to turn away from. It was as though he alone possessed an answer to a question she was too terrified to ask.
And against all odds, he was okay with that. And yet somehow it was more than that when she gazed on him, and she damn-well-knew it!
Tanis is special - to her. She hadn't figured out how this had happened only that she was okay with this herself.
And yet she couldn't tell him how much she cared, not after...Her resplendent features remained smooth her expression flickered with hints of fluid emotion and tonight those pale clover orbs crackled with unmistakable concern.
"Your swordsmanship needs work."
These words truly escaped him because it held no place in this defining moment between them.
Arching a confused eyebrow down at the stunning former shield maiden before him, Tanis had a gut feeling he must have missed her meaning.
"Sorry love..I'm not quite sure I understand." Tanis said his tone light, his gold clovers attentive and steady upon her intense gaze.
"When we arrive at port. You can't be left to fend like this. You're too (instantly bites down harder on that lush lower lip, pale clovers flashing with alarm as though she had already said too much)..."
A becoming glint instantly manifested in those pale-clover orbs that practically bordered on the sun. Those boyish lips instantly curled impishly into a truly wicked grin that flirted with sinful.
"Too what?" Tannis studied those vibrant features carefully delighted to see her gasps at the thought actually grow flustered.
"Absolutely never you mind." Nia said, tone rising not in anger but in a rush to skip the subject as quickly as possible.
"I don't think so my dear." Tanis' grin broadened even more, dare he hope he was on her mind as much as she was on his?
Nia inhaled deeply before locking gaze with the very immortal that sparked an area of her she had not acknowledged since The Night of Terror. Gone in a fortnight as though a dream. But this...this was something entirely different. She had never felt this...even with. And that was a lifetime ago.
Discipline soon won out and she was able to regain her composure once more-with him it was getting harder to fight her will every night.
"Tonight is not an anomalous situation. You were tasked with securing the elders. The war will find us. We must be ready. I could help you there. (takes a deep breath) Allow me to train you."
Tanis studied her carefully, out of everything he expected to come out of those lush wonders, this was the very last thing. He scoped every sublime contour streaked with immortal blood-his searing gaze dipping past the fortified visage to the raw human emotions starting to seep at the surface.
"For honor and duty then?" his voice involuntarily trembled with layers of pent up emotion, "Not something more?"
"Of...(stumbles slightly) of course." Nia added a little too quickly, her dark human blues widened at the hurt beaming down at her. Oh how she had felt that. How it speared her. Cut her so deep she bled in ways she had yet to fathom.
She couldn't bear for him to even Think that.
Watching him swallow hard, his gold wet gaze cast skyward and he turned slightly rebuked from her. Oh .not him.
Her heart fell to the floor as it had that night.
Salty tears spilled at the utter loss and devastation that brought her to the arms she so desperately sought. Thoughts reeling, Nia wiped away at the wounds branded to her soul and strode determinedly forward.
Without a second's thought, her right palm swiftly turned Tanis' heart sickened features (his breath caught in surprise) as her lips tenderly and oh so lovingly made contact with his. Her lips caressed his with such gentle care it took Tanis a split-second to react as that hunger for her and her alone ignited to its zenith.
At some point, Nia glimpsed passion glowing in his gold-clover orbs as he lovingly massaged her lips with his own. The way in which he kissed her. She had never known such passion before. His kiss so hot it brought life to her lips once more and burned them both with its fire.
"Nia." that voice of his, stirred the fractured parts of her mortal soul she once thought dead to shadow, blood and ash. For a few precious moments, she felt life inside her again.
The tips of his thumbs cradled her chin with such gentleness, Nia felt as though she could scarcely breathe as she witnessed the torment die in those suddenly human dark diamonds. This was the 1st time she had witnessed him looking at her with his human eyes. Tanis had always been vigilant in upholding the color immortality had granted him with.
A twinkle of such light beamed tenderly down at her as she fought the urge to crash into his arms all at once. How she wanted to so badly.
As though sensing her hesitance, Tanis made the first move - his heart truly lifted in leaps and bounds in the last few moments with her.
It was as though he could sense exactly what she needed.
"It's alright darling." Tanis wrapped a comforting arm at the base of her back but Nia already met him halfway and collapsed into his welcoming embrace.
The moment he cradled her to him, every built-in defense that imprisoned that ache from the last hours of her mortality came undone. Her svelte frame instantly sighed with relief, as a century's worth of unforgiveness melted out of them. The safety and strength she found in them.
As he gently caressed her back, Tanis felt her start to tremble as Nia held onto the silent terror that continued to torment her.
Someday, Tanis swore someday soon he would get her to tell him.
There it was -that potent decay that spoke of eternity-abruptly filled her nostrils. No more than 3 feet away. A pair of human dark cerulean blues charred pale clover, the heart of vengeance set upon the rather exquisite occupied coffin, glimpsed over Tanis' shoulder. The crux of the artistry etched with a sleek gleaming 'V'.
A wounded elder, a deceived lycan.
Resting her head comfortably against the smooth nook of Tanis' shoulder, only one thought anchored the blood lust ravenously crying out in her chest to do the Unthinkable. His mere touch had such a profound effect on her.
Oh yes, HE-WILL-FIND-YOU. Nia mused
The end is coming.