The gold-and-silver mortar and every conductive metal object radiated pain so acutely that he reached his hand out and touched the glasslike blue surface of the ether with his fingertips. His pride in ruins, broken, he would settle for knowing her whereabouts even through the vibrations of another man.
Carlos had befouled his lair, his pool. Cain closed his eyes. Just to know where Damali was, he would link to his Neteru brother who also shared his vampire lineage. He had to know. Seven days was more than he could bear. Her absence had become a viral infection that fevered his mind, drove him to obsession, and had made his body ache with a craving worse than blood hunger.
But the moment he honed his focus to Carlos, Cain drew his hand back as though he'd been burned. The sheets fell away from him as he backed away from the pool shaking his head, going temporarily insane from the knowledge.
"No," he whispered, disbelief robbing his lungs of air. He went to his hands and knees, splaying both palms against the pool's surface, tilting his head, watching, listening-he had to understand. Shecouldn't have done this.
On his feet in an instant, Cain's body transformed into a ripping battle bulk. A war cry filled his chest and he released it like sudden thunder. Lightning arched from each digit on his hands. His eyes went silver, gold, and then black.
"Transgressor! Betrayer! Befouler! Be damned!" he roared, imme�diately materializing armor to cover his nakedness and with his blade of Ausar in his fist.
Capillaries burst in his temples; blood was in his eyes. "Married? You blotted her from my world by a treacherous act of matrimony? In a church? In the Light?You -on hallowed ground? I will behead you and make her a widow!"
With one long lightning bolt that cracked and singed the air as it ejected from the tip of his blade, every marble bench along the edge of the Olympic-sized pool overturned and exploded into rubble. The four-poster, solid gold, king-sized bed flipped over and melted, start�ing a blaze behind him. Eight-foot marble vases hurled against the wall, shattering into shards of marble as though made of glass with a wave of Cain's massive arm. Pillars began to crumble. His guard sphinxes came alive at the front entrance and rushed in to assist him, only to be summarily beheaded, leaving confused, stricken expres�sions that their master had harmed them in their glassy eyes.
The high, vaulted ceiling began to give way, but Cain stood in the midst of the destruction, so enraged he would not even shield him�self from falling marble, boulders, and debris as he decimated his cliffside lair.
"You manipulated her to murder my father, Dante! You took my father's throne in Hell, stole his empire, and then threw it back in his face! You robbed me of my oldest friend after seducing her. You be�set the Neteru Council of Kings against me to seal me in Nod with their shields of Heru! You come to my lair and desecrate my home. You steal my music, my nightingale, after you kept her from compos�ing for one year-my Damali, the detriment of my soul! You break my mother's heart by causing me to cross into your world to seek the voice that I'd longed for."
Cain's eyes narrowed to enraged slits. "Because of you, my world is gone and my kingdom is under civil unrest! Then you betray my beloved's heart, take her body, and marry her away from me? Are you insane? Do you believe there will be no redress? I will have justice, Rivera!"
Pure fury roiled through Cain like a dark tornado, spiking adrena�line to rage in blackout proportions. In a sharp pivot with both hands on his broad sword, Cain sliced at a standing column, and then froze as the blade of Ausar shattered in his grip.
"Noooo... Imposter..." he whispered in utter disbelief, look�ing at the blade handle in his hand and then down at the broken steel at his feet. "Formillennia you have deceived me? My mother's people... those of the Light?" Cain threw his head back and roared. "What game is this, Adam? Did you also deceive Ausar? What con�spiracy is afoot amid the archons-I demand an answer! It is my due!"
Immediately Cain's eyes sought the horizon through the yawning hole in the destroyed lair roof, and his gaze tore around the multiple golden shields of Heru that still covered and sealed the thinning bar�rier between the Land of Nod and Earth.