The Impossible Future: Complete set Frank Kennedy (freenovel24 .TXT) 📖

coupled fists at the center of James’s diamond defense. Every bone in his right wrist shattered. Simultaneously, Valentin’s other leg kicked low, landing in James’s gut like a steel mallet.

Even as he convulsed in sickening pain, James flew on the instinct of the Jewel and hurtled his left arm into a blocking maneuver that caught Valentin’s left leg before it retreated from James’s stomach. He allowed his mind’s eye to repeat the motions Ignatius taught him on the beach. Grab, spin, flip. The proper pressure applied quickly, nimbly. Valentin’s feet came out from underneath him. He crashed on his back, his head smacking the floor.

Valentin grunted, recovering in an instant as James fell dizzy with agony, his right hand limp. The peacekeeper winced as he touched the back of his head, a small patch of blood discoloring the floor. His brother’s disorientation lasted a second; he leapt, fists at his vanguard. He attacked first where James had no defense. Valentin’s sweeping left hook landed in the jaw, snapped back, repeated the blow.

Warm blood surged inside his mouth as James drove his left arm upward according to design, catching Valentin at a vulnerable spot at the base of his ribs. He’d bruise the soldier, a minor blow to ego. Yet this was all the hope he ever had for direct combat. Ignatius never said it, but James realized: The first blows served only to enrage Valentin, to motivate him toward maximum brute force. The peacekeeper threw relentless fists at his brother. Left, right. Both jaws cracked, nose deformed, blood spraying.

James stumbled in silly retreat, amazed when he did not fall right away. The pain became less defined as his disorientation blossomed. James sensed no difference when Valentin grabbed his right arm and snapped it at the elbow. He did not offer resistance when the soldier wrapped both arms around him, lifted him skyward, and carried him toward the nearest wall.

“Abomination,” Valentin shouted. “You have no place here.”

James flew. The air was light, his flight path steady and certain. He could do nothing to stop the inevitable. Ignatius already warned him of this moment, of the decimation he must face. James closed his eyes a split second before he crashed full-on into the wall and fell limp to the floor. He grabbed on to the tiniest flicker of life, his lungs crushed and his desire to breathe all but surrendered.

However, his ears worked. He heard his brother’s feet close in. How far might Valentin go? Would he dare check to see the job was done? Dare risk a final, desperate twinge from the interloper who could kill with a touch? Or was he as sadistic as James imagined?

James remembered himself a daily earlier, standing on the outcropping of rocks, freeing himself from life as Agatha Bidwell aimed and fired. Those eight bullets tore apart his innards, and James recalled dying before he fell into the brush down below.

“Been there. Done that,” he told Ignatius when warned of what would happen at the edge of Valentin’s victory.

“Yes, and you defied the laws of nature,” Ignatius said as they practiced maneuvers. “You found fuel in your love for Samantha and Michael. This time, you must be selfish. You will never finish your mission unless you show Perrone exactly what he wants.”

“Do you think Valentin and me ever had a chance as brothers?”

Ignatius looked away into the fading sun. “You ask an unnecessary question. Think only of yourself, James. Allow the Jewel to consume you as intended.”

“What of the dark? The hunger will never die. The things I’ll do.”

“Will be justified if your mission succeeds. You have the luxury for neither conscience nor morality. Kill Valentin and give yourself the benefit of another day.”

James lay on his side, his body mangled, bones turned to shards, organs hemorrhaging. A sharp kick to the spine – Valentin delivered more insult than injury. Now two kicks, now three. James surrendered to the Jewel’s peculiar rhythm and waited to live again.

The moment began as a tremor. His bones rattled and his muscles tightened, as the bow extends before the archer releases. Unnatural undulations twisted, curled, and repositioned his body’s skeleton and connective tissues. A protective sheathe wrapped itself around his damaged organs and invaded them at a cellular level. All inside him took orders from a reconfigured DNA, falling in line to the lyrics of the Jewel of Eternity’s everlasting song.

They struck all at once; invisible flames raged through his long, sinewy frame, blinding James. The earthquake left him writhing about the chamber floor like a dying animal in agony. It so consumed him that James lost all sight and howled a long, low, and barbaric screech. In this sudden darkness, James saw the Jewel at work, stretching his muscles toward more real estate, snapping his bones back together and pushing into new cavities. Yet even at the height of this staggering pain, he remembered Ignatius.

“You’re becoming, James. Almost there. When your eyes open, do not hesitate. He will not understand what you are.”

It was over seconds later, and his sight returned. The unfathomable pain vanished, replaced with a vigor and a thirst he never experienced together. He sensed Valentin but a few steps behind and wondered how confused his brother might be. James left nothing to chance.

He bounced up, balanced himself on one hand, and swung both feet around in perfect symmetry. He cut Valentin’s legs out, and his brother smacked his skull against the floor a second time.

James smelled the dismay, even the slightest twinge of peacekeeper fear, and pounced wolf-like upon his brother. He returned an earlier favor and leveled a pair of driving hooks into Valentin’s cheeks. The soldier retaliated, but those hits into his side barely registered. James kept no compassion, no limitations, no moral ambiguity as he pummeled his brother. Blood from the nose, the ears, the busted lips and