Damian's Immortal

Jule looked up. Yully sent lightning into the sky every time she touched Darian and yet was brimming with more magic than he thought possible for her to contain. Her gaze went from Darian to her father, and Jule saw the flash of anger that crossed her face.

Darian got up again, distracting her. Jule looked at the clouds, able to feel the gateway cracking with his newfound powers. Darian's own power seemed to grow every time she knocked him down, and Jule looked at the Grey God curiously.

"Jule," Damian called. "Fix this, or I will."

Jule stepped forward and motioned for Xander to follow.

"Darian, move!" he shouted.

The Grey God grunted as he hit a column and rose. Jule waved him away. Darian's head was spinning, his mind reverberating with the power of the site. Instead of draining his power, the woman was shoving power into him. He staggered away from the monument and lightning connecting the woman with the clouds and dropped to his knees on the other side of the hill.

The strange sensations within him remained. She'd taken power from the Other, from the dead, from the Guardians, and even from the Original Beings, who fed her power in hopes of short-circuiting her. She'd blasted him with it. Instead of destroying him, it made him stronger.

It became his. Panting, he rolled onto his back, unable to regain his balance while his body twitched from magic. The gateway yawned open over the monument. He'd cracked the gateway when Jonny became the Black God, and now, the immortal realm peeked from the clouds into the mortal world.

Darian didn't remember it any more than he remembered much of the thousands of years he spend enslaved by Jonny's predecessor. He recalled agony, and the darkness of his thoughts amplified the pain of the new magic in his blood.

"Darian." The Watcher's voice pierced his confusion. "You don't have much time."

"I can't kill her," he said.

"It's too late for that. The Original Beings will handle her. It's time for you to act."

The Grey God pushed himself to his knees. His body seemed too weak to contain his newfound power.

"The seal will never be whole again," the Watcher said in a hushed tone, his green eyes on the sky. "So be it. You will have to balance the realms in a way we didn't desire."

Gatekeeper. The Original Vamp and Sofi had called him the same thing. Darian wobbled to his feet.

"I'm ready, I think," he said. "What do I do?"