Dana was dead.
I threw myself at Gunnarr, blind with rage, knocking him to the floor. But Nagorno stepped forward and pulled me off my son with a movement that was faster than mine.
"I'm not going to let you kill Gunnarr," he said, breathing heavily.
He tried to hide it, but I could see the horror in his eyes of having overexerted himself. His heart would soon fail again.
And then... and then I realized that the solution to everything was right there in front of me.
I felt the presence of Mother behind me and turned to look her in the eyes.
"I think that after that," she said, satisfied, "we can now reach an agreement."
She then pushed Dana's body to one side with her foot and came even closer to me.
"I'll offer you a deal," she said, raising her voice. "To all the sons of Lür and their descendants, to the Ancient Family and the generations to come. Your discovery, Urko, in exchange for immunity from the Sons of Adam."
I turned my back on her, looking at my father, at my son, at my brother. Marion was taking it all in, also looking very nervous, waiting to see what would happen next. They had formed a circle around me, ready to fight, each on different sides. I looked at my wife's body going cold at my feet.
Years later they would say that she didn't give in, that she didn't lose her honor, that she fought to the end, when she could have ran away and hidden, stayed to one side, kept away.
I came back to the present. I could see myself from the outside, like an outside observer.
I was at the crossroads, making a decision that would affect so many destinies.
Live under an agreement, yielding to the wills of others.
Die with dignity, like her, an ephemeral, had done.
I chose Death. Lyra, from beyond the grave, helped me.
My right hand began to burn again and the scar began to bleed. We were ready. I could feel a strength in it that I had never had when throwing a spear, a harpoon, a halberd or a pike.
I turned slowly, still distraught about Dana's death.
Mother was tall, her heart was within hand's reach.
I had killed unarmed so many times, I had been a fast animal so many times, just pure instinct.
And that's how I got to her immortal heart, punching through ribs and broken skin. I pulled it out from its nest of veins and arteries. I stared Evil in the eyes, and saw my own Evil staring back at me as Mother's body fell to the floor, like the empty shell of a rotten walnut, on top of Dana's body.
Gunnarr, Nagorno, Lür and Marion reacted before I had even given them an order. Each of them took charge of killing two Guards. When they tried to charge at us, the four longevos' thousands of years of experience at fighting came at them with such force that they didn't stand a chance.
Who could take on a berserker, a Sythian, a monarch and the patriarch of Humanity?
They killed them all, we didn't want any witnesses to what had just happened.
When they finished, my family and Marion turned to face me expectantly. Four pairs of eyes looked in horror at Mother's heart in my hand.
"Here's your longevo heart, brother," I said to Nagorno. “There'll be a war, they'll come after us all. I'll put it on ice and you can have it transplanted into your body in the next few hours if you swear that you'll come over to mine and father's side. We're going to need the best strategy on our side. What do you say, Nagorno?"
For the first time I could remember, he was speechless, pensively looking at Mother's heart in my hand.
"What do you say, Nagorno?" I shouted.
I was no longer myself. Iago del Castillo had been left there, disposed of on top of the bodies of the women. Now I was just a savage.
"Ok," he said in the end. "I'm with you in this war.”
I put the heart in the ice bucket.
"Well get in touch with the best team of cardiologists you know, the best. Tell them to send an equipped helicopter right now. I'll supervise the operation. The heart you've got is no good, but be careful, the one you're about to get isn't that good either."
Then I turned back to Gunnarr, who was staring at Mother's body, as if he'd been put under a spell. I rushed at him with my bloody hand, still wanting to kill him, but this time it was my father who stopped me, wrapping his arms around me from behind.
"Remember that Nagorno also stopped Gunnarr four centuries ago so that he didn't kill you that day," he whispered in my ear.
"Give me four hundred and eleven years, Gunnarr!" I screamed at him in desperation. "I'll need each and every one of the next fifteen thousand days to forgive you. Don't let me see you before then!"
"Father, we should talk..." he tried to say.
"Get out!" I howled. "I don't want to see you before then! I won't be as noble as you, I'll kill you before if I see you!"
"I have to tell you something..."
"Get out, or there'll be nothing that can stop me, Gunnarr! Nothing will be able to stop me. You have no idea of what a bad father I can really be."
I picked up my wife's body and carried her out of that evil place.
I knew that Dana couldn't hear me, but I had I lot of sins to confess.
Epilogue
LÜR
Lür walked outside the private clinic at dusk. The sun had gone down and the garden was cool. He found a bench away from any lampposts and finally sat down to rest.
The team of surgeons had arrived heavily escorted from New York in a helicopter and they had all been transferred off the Belle island. Nagorno had been sure to send a small private army with them in case more Sons of Adam appeared, but nobody came to stop them from leaving.
After several hours in surgery, the transplant operation had been a success. The heart seemed to be compatible, although Lür wasn't sure if he was glad about that or not.
Urko had to be given a sedative to get him to sleep.
Adana was finally dead, but Adriana Alameda was as well. A relief from a terror that had lasted for thousands of years, and the sorrow of a joy that had lasted just one year and would pain him for centuries.
How long would it take Urko to get over that? He thought, concerned.
That was when he heard footsteps and the murmurs of a conversation that was getting closer. He didn't want company right then, so he stood up and went inside the building of the clinic, ready to watch over his two children.
He never knew that the shadows in the garden were Gunnarr and Marion Adamson. And he never heard the conversation they had.
"What happened in there, Gunnarr?" Marion asked. "Why did you have to kill Adriana? Your father is never going to forgive us for this."
"She's not dead. Adriana and I planned it together before we came. I knew that I had to appease Adana's thirst for vengeance, and that she wouldn't let my family go without leaving a body behind. During the flight I gave Adriana some fungus dust, something that a man called Skoll once taught me. Her heart isn't beating right now, but it will start again in a few hours."
They were both silent. They were beyond concern.
"What I wasn't expecting was my father's reaction," Gunnarr continued. “Killing Adana has condemned all the members of the Ancient Family. The Sons of Adam will come after us, and now that you're exiled, you can't do much to help us."
"So you need to beat them at their own game," Marion said. "The Sons of Adam are tied to a promise and they have to fulfill it. You know what that means, don't you?"
"I do, believe me. I do."
"You're in charge now, Gunnarr. And you'll have to decide what to do with that power."
They looked at each other in silence. There was not going back.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eva García Sáenz was born in Vitoria, Spain, in 1972 and has lived in Alicante on Spain’s Costa Blanca since she was fifteen. She is a licensed optometrist and held various positions in optometry for ten years. Then she worked at the University of Alicante for another eleven years. For three years, she wrote in the evenings to complete The Immortal Collection, her first novel. She originally self-published on Amazon’s Spanish website. Thanks to enthusiastic reader reviews, the novel became a bestseller and a literary phenomenon in the social media world. After the book was published traditionally in Spain, it hit the print bestseller lists as well. The Immortal Collection, the English translation, became an international best seller. The author is currently working on her next book of the Ancients Saga.
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Eva García Sáenz, The Sons of Adam: The sequel of The Immortal Collection
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