Nightwalkers

Jacob

Gideon

Elijah

Damien

Noah

Adam

Shadowdwellers

Ecstasy

Rapture

Pleasure

The Gatherers

Hunting Julian

Stealing Kathryn

Other Novels

Drink of Me

Anthologies

Nocturnal

Supernatural

Read on for an exciting preview

of the first book in

Jacquelyn Frank’s new Immortal Brothers series

CURSED BY FIRE

The heat was unbearable, searing and constant, burning his skin until it crisped. He could smell the aroma of cooking flesh and knew it was himself that he smelled. It was all too familiar, singeing and sinking into his nostrils, a vile stench he would never forget. Would never be allowed to forget. As usual the metal around his wrists burned first, glowing a hot red … as though it could melt away or be smelted along with his flesh. But it never melted away … it held true time and time again. He had torn at them, strained against them. Every time the fire came he prayed it would melt his hands away first, allowing him to slip free.

But that was not how things worked here. There was never going to be freedom for him. His was an eternal damnation. He had sinned against all of the gods and they, who usually warred among themselves, had come together to see him punished. That was how deeply he had sinned.

He and his brothers had been chained and entombed in this forsaken cavern, and their immortal lives, the ones they had dared to wrest from the secrets of the gods, were now their curse as they died again and again. Death by fire. Or rather, as near to death as was possible for an immortal. He suffered and singed and crackled to a crisp until his lungs could no longer breathe in the flames, until his marrow boiled within his bones and until his chains held only a desiccated corpse turned mostly to ash.

And then the flames would subside and slowly, ever so excruciatingly slowly, his body would heal. Flesh would rebuild itself along the lines of his bones, cell by cell, one healing piece of sinew after another. Immortality repairing itself, birthing him new again, making his skin supple and whole and preparing him to be fresh and healthy and ready to be burned all over again.

The chains he wore went around his forearms in a gauntlet from wrist to elbow, and for good measure a bolt had been shot through each, spearing through the flesh and bone of his forearms from one side to the next, making certain there was no way he could slide free of them. Not that it was necessary. These were chains forged by gods. If you were dressed in the chains of the gods there would be no freedom from them until the gods decided to set you free.

He laughed, the sound hollow in the echo of the abated flames. But they were growing again, he could hear them with his newly healed eardrums. He had long ago ceased begging the gods for mercy. They had not heard him although he had screamed for it endlessly for hours. For days. For decades. For centuries. He no longer knew how much time had passed and it had ceased being important to him. Nothing was important to him. His lot in this existence was merely to burn and to suffer. Again and again, over and over.

You thought you deserved eternal life. Now see what your ambition has won you. See it. Feel it. Deserve it.

No. No one deserved this. True his crimes were brash and arrogant, but they had been crimes of hubris, not unabashed wickedness. He had never been evil incarnate.

But he dared not think to himself that he was blameless for his lot. No. Nor did he dare blame the gods. Oh, he had cursed them. Screamed their names and damned them. Renouncing them one moment and yet pleading to them with utter devotion mere hours later. Such was the nature of torment like this.

But he had not tried to blame the gods or bargain for his release or promised to be the most devout of men should they set him free. No. He knew that freedom would now be wasted on him. His mind was so scorched, so torn, it was nothing but a wasteland.

No. He would simply sit here and burn. He did not even think of his brothers any longer. How often he had wished he could turn back time, wished that he had heeded Garreth who had tried one last time to recall them from the task they had set for themselves. But by then they had almost reached the mountain’s pinnacle. By then they had already fought and killed two manticores. By then they had almost frozen to death exposed on the face of Mount Airidara and even then Garreth had been dying at their feet and the only way to save him was to continue onward. But all of that had been excuses, for at the heart of it all had been nothing but selfish desire for the power of immortality. As warriors they faced death every day and without fear, but what they wanted was the glory of being invincible. Like the stories of the demigods, the gods own children or special heroes that had been awarded immortality as a prized gift for their service to the gods. And he had first tried to obtain the gift through his deeds. Winning battles and waging war, overtaking heathen lands and building monuments to the gods, teaching their ways to the untaught. They had converted land after land into the lands of the shield goddess or the god of peace and tranquility. But the gods had been unimpressed and had offered no reward for their service.

And now he knew why. He knew it was because they had never really done any of it in the name of the gods. They had done it for their own ends and for no other reason and the gods had seen through them.

The four brothers had grown tired of waiting for the gods to get around to rewarding their so-called faithful servants and instead had researched a tale, told to them all through their lives growing up, about the hero Gynnis, who had climbed a great mountain and had found atop it a fountain of gold and gems and within that fountain had been the waters of immortality. One sip of these waters and they would be gifted with youth, health and life everlasting. The waters would heal all wounds, new and old, they would erase the hardest years from face and form, and again … life everlasting.

And through much work, much research, much capturing of holy scrolls from holy cities, Jaykun had finally concluded that the fountain was on Mount Airidare. It could not be anywhere else for all other mountains had reportedly been conquered by other men and there had never been tales of success of finding the fountain. No mortal other than Gynnis had ever gained immortality by drinking its waters. So by process of elimination and by the use of many signs and landmarks in those holy scrolls they had known it would be there.