Predator

Chapter 21

Riddick, Tyr, Ares, and the Wielders formed a frontline of defense with Duncan, Dean, Brandon, Brennan, Jesse, and Dorian backing them up. It was their hope that the power Riddick and his 2 teammates now possessed was sufficient to engage Tristan in battle without the risk of death. The Wielders could not be injured by the Phoenix force due to the gauntlets they wore and were safe from anything he could throw at them.

Duncan and the boys would strike out after the frontline had Tristan distracted from a position of safety behind their strongest warriors. Brandon, Brennan, and Dorian were long distance fighters. They could launch their assault from their position without leaving the safety of their cover. Dean’s super speed and flight would allow him to strike with his strength and return to the protection laid out by Riddick and the others.

Ian and Ioan hung back to see what role Alexandra would take in the fight.

Tristan lobbed a couple of energy spheres at the men before him and was surprised when Logan and Scott stepped forward to absorb them within the gauntlets. The Phoenix watched from her vantage point above as the Wielders transferred all the power they intercepted from Tristan to her 3 mates that stood with them.

Ares moved a step forward and engaged Tristan in battle. The fireballs he generated were far more powerful after the transference and the force of them wracked Tristan with pain. His sons took the opening and unleashed their power on him as well with Dean flying in to deliver a vicious punch that knocked their enemy to his knees.

He glanced up at his ally and yelled out in anger. “Are you just going to hover there or do you plan to help?”

“You said that YOU wanted to kill everything she loves. You didn’t say anything about me.” She stated in a matter of fact tone.

Tristan focused his concentration on her rage and took a firm mental grasp on it. Her eyes narrowed on him when she felt him mold it to his satisfaction and force her into the battle. He turned back to her mates and began to fire one blast after another. Riddick and Tyr caught the energy blasts that got past the Wielders in their hands and hurled them back at Tristan after they enhanced them with their own power.

Ian sensed Alexandra’s intention to intervene on Tristan’s behalf and he and Ioan took flight to intercept her. “I’m sorry, my love, but we cannot allow you to do this.” He and his son let loose with their own powers and they were immediately enveloped within Phoenix avatars.

“Ian, do you really think you have a hope of stopping me? We never faced each other in battle before and you’ve never seen what I can do when humanity isn’t holding me back.” She smirked at her cosmic mate and their son. “You both are frightened. I can feel it spreading through your systems like a virus.”

“We are afraid, beloved, but not for the reasons you think.” Ian mentally directed Ioan and they both unleashed waves of cosmic flame at her. He knew her strength had not had time to regenerate yet and was using that knowledge to his advantage. Alex threw up her hands to deflect their attack but the double assault proved to be more than enough to get by her defenses and she reeled from the impact. “This is what we are afraid of. We don’t want to hurt you but you are giving us no choice if you continue along this path.”

“Interesting threat, Ian, but don’t forget who your maker is.” She started to throw concussive blasts at Ian that kept him on the defensive but he noticed that she ignored Ioan’s attack. Every blast he threw made it past her shields and hit her dead center. His assault was hurting her and Ian wasn’t sure why she wasn’t defending herself against it. “I have far more experience using our power than you do and don’t think for an instant that I am incapable of destroying my own creation.”

“Now that is an empty threat, Phoenix. Alexandra made me self-sufficient. I am not an extension of you and neither is our son.” He returned her barrage of blasts with a concentrated spread of his own. “You cannot undo something you gave up control over.”

Ian kept throwing his blasts at his mate but kept a close eye on Ioan’s successful battery on the Phoenix while suffering no repercussions from her. He turned his mental attention to the battle below and found that the Wielders and the Phoenix were slowly depleting Tristan of his stolen power.

Ares and his sons continued to throw fireballs and electric current at Tristan while Riddick and Tyr closed the distance between them. Dean and Dorian flew up from behind and slammed into him. He was catapulted forward into the waiting fists of her two Alpha mates.

Riddick threw a vicious right cross to his face that spun Tristan around. He wasn’t faring as well as he thought he would in destroying Alexandra’s loved ones. They were striking out at him faster than he could react and his power was starting to fade. He glanced up to the Phoenix prepared to call for help when he saw her engaged in a battle of her own.

“Murderer.” Tristan turned his head towards the direction the growled word came from and found himself face to face with the Nietzchean. A glowing fist struck him under his chin and sent him flying back over 50 feet before he crashed to the ground. By the time he got to his feet, Tyr was already upon him. “You butchered my child!”

“I only wish I could do it again.” He sneered at Tyr and glanced behind him to see Jesse waiting on the second front. “Oh wait I can.”

Tristan teleported behind Ares and the Wielders and grabbed an unsuspecting Jesse. He drew back a charged fist but; before he could throw it; a hand gripped his arm and spun him around. “I don’t think so.” Dorian pulled back his fist and it burst into flame before he drove it into Tristan’s face.

Tyr and Riddick watched Alex’s newborn son flare brightly with the power he inherited from his parents. The brown of his eyes turned red and his whole body was surrounded in crimson flames. “You don’t belong here.” A punch smashed into Tristan’s stomach and doubled him over. “You ruined my family.” A knee drove into his face and snapped his head back up. “You deserve death!” Two flaming fists slammed into his chest and sent him flying back towards the Wielders.

An optic blast struck his back stopping his backward flight and dropped him to the ground at Logan’s feet. “You appear to be losing your juice, bub.” Tristan heard a *snikt* and glanced up to see six claws spring from the back of the mutant’s hands. “You wanna know why?” Logan drove one 3-clawed fist into Tristan’s chest and his inner animal reveled in the scream that tore from his prey’s throat. “She’s draining you.”

“What…are…you…talking…about?”

“You are an idiot. No wonder she didn’t want you.” He pulled his claws free from his chest and absorbed a desperate blast of energy into his gauntlet. “You should have waited until she was at full strength before you pulled this shit. She has a fight on her hands and she isn’t up to par, see?” He glanced up and Tristan followed his gaze.

Two birds of fire were circling one in the middle. They fired at her with cosmic flames and wave after wave of concussive blasts. She managed to evade or deflect some of Ian’s blasts but every single one of Ioan’s made contact. She was on the verge of losing due to her recent struggle in Kortoth and had to tap into the force that Tristan stole from the temple to sustain her.

“She’s sucking you dry, fucker.” Tristan returned his attention to the Wielder. “In her weakened condition, she can’t keep up with an attack from 2 of her own kind so she is taking back her power from you. Oh and I forgot to mention that every time you fire on Scott or I, we absorb that power and transfer it to her mates.” Logan picked him up by his throat and growled in his face. “Between every one here, we are bleeding you dry in a manner of speaking. The actual bloodletting belongs to those two.”

Tristan found himself thrown back to Riddick and Tyr. He rose to his feet and glared at the 2 men before him. “You cannot win this even if she is tapping into my power.”

Riddick smirked and shook his head. “Why is that, Tristan? Do you really think you’re in control of this situation or even in control of her? You might have had the ability to manipulate her dark side for a little while but we’re taking back what you stole.”

“I still have the portion of the Phoenix that bonded with me and that still gives me the power over her.” He felt the last bit of the stolen force ripped from his body and return to the original owner. “She has the rest of it back now and I can force her to destroy all of you.”

“Yeah…about that.” Riddick held up his hand and focused all of his combined energy into it. When it burned bright blue, he drove it inside of Tristan’s chest. “I don’t plan on letting you get that far.” He yelled out over the screams. His charged hand found the spark of familiar energy he was searching for, grabbed it in his palm, and wrenched the last vestige of Phoenix force from Tristan’s body.

Riddick looked at the bright light that he held in his hand. “You’ve been a bad girl.” He held it tight in his fist and used his given ability over the Phoenix to bend it to his will. “Come to papa.” Once he had control over the errant cosmic energy, he absorbed it into himself and it merged with its twin within his body. He looked down at the human at his feet and raised his eyes to Tyr. “He’s all yours.”

Tristan looked into the murderous eyes of Alex’s Nietzchean mate and tried to scramble away from him. “Please don’t.” He held up his hand and tried to fend off the angry male. “I just wanted my wife back. I don’t deserve to die for fighting for something that you fought for too.”

“I remember saying those words to you.” Tyr slowly stalked after the man scurrying away from him on the ground. “I said please don’t. I even begged you but you killed my child in the womb of his mother anyways.” He stomped his foot down on Tristan’s stomach and watched him writhe on the ground. “I did fight for my wife.”

He bent down and pulled his enemy to his feet. “I had a right to.” He began to punch him repeatedly in his face and followed the battered man across the lawn with each punch. “She didn’t exile me. She didn’t break our bond.” Tristan finally fell to the ground again from Tyr’s assault.

The Nietzchean straddled his waist and continued to drive his fists into his face. “She always loved me even when she wouldn’t allow me to see her. She threw you away. You are nothing! You deserve death for killing my son!” He extended his bone blades and held them at his throat. “More than anything, you deserve to die for warping what we love into the thing she feared the most!” He growled and then yelled at the top of his lungs when he tore his blades through Tristan’s neck. Blood sprayed across Tyr’s face and he watched as the light faded from his child’s killer. He rose to his feet and spit on the corpse on the ground. “Fucking kludge!”

Riddick looked at his friend’s heaving chest, clenched fists and glazed eyes and knew bloodlust when he saw it. He had been in its grip many times for different reasons but none of which were as meaningful as Tyr’s. He had no idea how insane he could become if someone killed Dorian and abused his wife like Tristan had done to the Nietzchean.

They shared a wife but Dorian was still alive and; thanks to him; so was Jesse but his unborn was lost to him. It was his right to take vengeance on the man they all wanted to kill. He looked down at the dead body, extended his hand, and released an energy blast that incinerated the corpse. He met Tyr’s eyes, nodded his head, and walked away.

Duncan, Ares, and the others were looking up at the sky when Riddick joined them. The fight between the three Phoenix entities was still being waged. “Logan.” Riddick spoke to the Wielder to his right without taking his eyes off the battle above.

“Yeah.” Logan responded without moving his eyes either.

“Is she getting to that point yet?”

“No. It’s fucking weird but she has been fighting Ian non-stop since this started but for some reason she won’t raise a hand against Ioan. That is definitely not a sign that she’s gone completely to the other side.”

Tyr walked up beside them with his breathing barely under control and ground out. “Her primary function in life, remember?” They all snapped their gaze to him with wide eyes. “This is what I suspected the whole time he had her. She will not take the lives of her children. She can’t.”

Riddick turned his attention to the sky and focused his mind. ‘Ian!’ He mentally projected into her first mate’s mind. ‘Can you hear me?’

‘Yes.’

‘You need to clear out of there now!’ Riddick gathered Dorian, Dean and the rest of her sons together. ‘Leave her to Ioan! I have an idea!’

Ian broke off his attack as soon as Dean flew in and drove both his fists into his mother’s back. As the force of his punch threw her forward, Dorian and Ioan fired on her again. Riddick positioned Brandon, Brennan, and Jesse around an area of the grounds and gave them instructions as her 3 sons continued their attack in the air. “Ian, I need you to pass on some power to these boys so we can get them up there. They only need the power to fly.”

As Ian transferred some energy to her sons, he spoke to Riddick in an exhausted tone. “I picked up on this earlier. This was Tyr’s plan all along, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. It looks like he had a better grasp on this than we thought.” He replied as he watched his son’s progress above. He could feel the conflicted emotions coursing through all of the boys with this action. They did not want to fight their mother. ‘Boys! Listen to me! You have to do this even though it hurts her. You are the only hope we have of getting her back. She’ll fight us but won’t fight you. You are from her body and Alex will not allow the Phoenix to hurt you!’

The 3 boys on the ground nodded at Riddick and took to the air to join their brothers. Her mates and the Wielders watched from the ground as the boys surrounded their mother and hoped for a miracle.

“So the men have left the fight to the shell’s children.” Phoenix smirked at the boys as she turned a complete circle in the air to glance at each of them in turn.

“Shell?” Brennan asked curiously.

She ran her hand down her chest to her abdomen. “This body is my shell.”

Dorian looked at his mother with his red eyes and could see her power radiate through her body. “That shell is our mother and so are you.” He met her fiery eyes with his red and raised one flame-encased hand. “Look at us, mother! How could you possibly doubt that we are your children, Phoenix? You and Alexandra are one but I know why you have surfaced and she has hidden away within you.”

“You are the newborn and you think you have some insight into my mind, youngling?”

“I do.” He hurled the energy sphere at his mother and it impacted dead center in her chest. He generated another and as soon as he threw it his brothers all fired at Alexandra.

The men watching below shielded their eyes from the explosions above. When the blinding lights faded, they saw their wife plummet to the ground. While the dust from her impact settled, her sons drifted down to the surface and stood around her body.

Phoenix slowly rose up onto her elbows and glared at her children. “Is that any way to treat your mother?” She smirked at them through bloody lips. “So Dorian, is this what was in my mind?”

“No mother. I just wanted to get you back on the ground so our fathers could hear what I’ve learned from the moments that I’ve been in your presence.” Dorian crouched down on one knee to look her in the eye. Her mates came up and stood behind their sons while the Wielders took up a defensive stance on either side of her.

“So enlighten me, child.”

“You are trying to fool us into believing that you are a separate entity from Alexandra and I’m not buying it. I know the Phoenix is capable of good and evil but those traits do not come from two individuals. They come from you…Alexandra the Phoenix.”

He drew in a shaky breath and did not flinch from her glare. “Every living being has a dark side. It just so happens that yours is capable of massive destruction. Your dark side emerged when Tristan killed your baby. It is understandable. It was a horrible tragedy and he took advantage of your grief.”

“I attacked Ian! How could I do that if I was his mate?” She screamed at him and began to show some emotion for the first time since Tristan turned her. “I was prepared to kill you all!”

“You fought with Ian but did not raise a hand against Ioan. You didn’t even defend yourself against his attack. We attacked you and still nothing. Do you want to know why?” He waited for an answer but all he received was a furrowed brow and clenched jaw. “You were hurt! You were angry that they did not protect you like they said they would and you lost your child!”

Her mates felt like an anvil hit them in their hearts. Dorian was right. They did not protect her when she was incapacitated by her loss of strength. She decided to carry a child for the first time like a human and left herself vulnerable to attack. They told her that they would take the responsibility of looking after her family and failed within hours of making that promise.

Her bottom lip began to quiver and he could’ve sworn he saw tears of fire run down her cheeks. “They promised you and they let you down. You weren’t at full strength to defend yourself in their absence and you failed your primary function in life. You couldn’t stop someone from killing one of your children and it tore you apart.”

He watched her resolve crack and her shoulders began to shake with her sobs. He touched the side of her face and sensed his father’s tension behind him. “Mother, you need to forgive yourself. You are only one being with limits that you placed upon yourself.”

Her eyes turned back to their normal black color and regular tears flowed freely down her face. “Everyone here knows that you are an amazing woman and the fiercest warrior in creation. You survived hell to rescue one of your mates and stayed alive to give me life. You wouldn’t even let yourself heal normally just to protect me from pain. I want you in my life. Please don’t give up on us yet.”

She looked into the pleading red eyes of her newborn son and held her arms out to him. Dorian threw himself into her embrace and hugged her to him tightly. “Dorian…” She whispered in a shaky voice. “You are everything I thought you would be. Will you and your brothers take me home?”

“Are you talking about the stars?” He asked with concern in his voice. He knew from the archives and his father that she considered home to be the stars. “Mother…”

“I was thinking more like my room.”

He let out a sigh of relief and his eyes returned to their brown color when he smiled at her. “It would be my honor.” He picked her up in his arms and turned towards the palace.

His brothers and her mates began to follow. “Dorian, wait.” He stopped in his tracks and looked at her quizzically.

He remembered her words before she had a chance to say anything and turned to her mates. “I apologize for my insolence but she asked for me and my brothers to take her home. She did not request your company.” Dorian left her husbands standing there slack-jawed as he and her other sons escorted her inside.

“We got lucky today.” Riddick said as he worked past the lump in his throat. “She needs some time but at least we got her back.”

“Did we?” Duncan asked as he watched the boys disappear into the palace. “I can feel her heart, remember?”

“What are you saying, Duncan?”

“She is broken, Ian. I don’t know if she will recover from this.” He stated as he walked solemnly into the palace. His words left the others feeling as alone as they felt when she was lost to them.