The Dark Blade: Return Of The General.

Chapter 26: The Choice

"Stop!" Jacob's voice cut through the tension like a blade. His hand moved to the amulet around his neck, fingers wrapping around the ancient metal. "I will give you the artifacts. Just let her go."

Diana's finger paused on the button, her scarred face spreading into a triumphant smile. "I knew you would see reason. Love makes people so predictably weak."

Jacob began to remove the amulet from around his neck, moving slowly to avoid triggering Diana's paranoia. Behind him, he heard Roseline shift her weight slightly—preparing for action if an opportunity presented itself.

"All of them," Diana demanded, her voice sharp with greed. "I know you have more than just that one. I can sense the artifact energy radiating from you. Hand over everything you have collected."

"I have three artifacts," Jacob admitted, which was a lie. He actually had two—the amulet and a ring he had recovered from a private collector last week. But lying about the number might buy him precious seconds when he needed them most. "The amulet, a ring, and a dagger hidden in my car outside."

Diana's eyes narrowed with suspicion. "You expect me to believe you left an artifact unguarded in a vehicle?"

"I expected to walk in here and negotiate like civilized people," Jacob replied coldly. "Not find my wife being tortured by her supposedly dead mother."

Anna made a small sound—half sob, half bitter laugh. Even in her pain and fear, she recognized the absurdity of their situation. Her entire life had been built on lies, and now those lies were literally killing her.

Marcus Nico, who had been standing silently beside Anna with his gun still pressed to her temple, finally spoke up. "Father, this is taking too long. Just kill them both and take the artifacts from his corpse."

"Shut up, Marcus," Diana snapped without looking at him. "You have already proven yourself incompetent by letting them get this far into the building. Do not compound your failures by giving strategic advice."

Marcus's face flushed with anger and humiliation, but he said nothing more. Jacob filed that observation away—there was friction between Diana and Marcus, possibly something he could exploit if he survived the next few minutes.

"The amulet first," Diana ordered, extending her free hand while keeping her thumb on the remote's button with the other. "Toss it to me. Gently."

Jacob removed the amulet completely and held it up so Diana could see it clearly. The ancient metal gleamed under the auction house lights, radiating the mystical energy that had been sealed within it for generations. This was the artifact his father had worn every day, the symbol of the Krigg family's authority and responsibility.

Giving it to his father's murderer felt like a betrayal of everything Jacob stood for.

But Anna's life was worth more than symbols or revenge.

He tossed the amulet toward Diana in a gentle arc. She caught it with her free hand, her scarred fingers closing around the metal possessively. The moment she touched it, her entire body stiffened as if struck by electricity.

"Yes," Diana whispered, her voice filled with ecstatic pleasure. "I can feel it. The power. After fifteen years of waiting, finally—"

She never finished the sentence.

The amulet in her hand suddenly flared with brilliant light, so bright that everyone in the room had to shield their eyes. Diana screamed—not in pleasure but in agony—as the artifact rejected her touch violently.

Jacob had been counting on this. The artifacts were keyed to Krigg bloodline specifically. Anyone else who tried to use them without proper authorization would trigger their defensive mechanisms.

In the chaos of light and Diana's screaming, Jacob moved.

He crossed the distance to the stage in three explosive strides, faster than Marcus could track. His hand closed around Marcus's wrist—the one holding the gun to Anna's head—and twisted with bone-breaking force.

Marcus howled in pain as the gun clattered to the floor. Jacob's other hand struck him in the throat, cutting off his scream and sending him stumbling backward off the stage.

Roseline was already in motion, her knives flashing as she engaged the guards who had been hidden in the shadows around the auction hall. Steel met steel as she turned the room into a battlefield.

Jacob grabbed Anna's chair and tipped it backward, dropping them both behind the dubious cover of the stage platform as gunfire erupted from multiple directions. Bullets tore through the air where they had been standing half a second earlier.

"Jacob!" Anna gasped, her voice hoarse from screaming. "My hands! I cannot move!"

Jacob pulled out one of Roseline's knives and cut through Anna's restraints with two quick slashes. The moment her hands were free, she ripped the electrical collar from her neck and threw it away like something poisonous.

"Can you run?" Jacob asked, helping her to her feet while keeping low behind their minimal cover.

"I can barely stand," Anna admitted, her legs shaking from the electricity's aftereffects. "But I will run anyway. What other choice do we have?"

Diana's screaming had stopped. The brilliant light from the amulet had faded. Jacob risked a glance over the stage edge and immediately regretted it.

Diana was still standing, somehow, though her hands were burned black where she had touched the artifact. The amulet lay on the floor at her feet, smoking slightly. But Diana was smiling—a terrible, insane expression that made Jacob's blood run cold.

"It rejected me," Diana said, her voice eerily calm despite her obvious pain. "The artifact recognized I am not Krigg bloodline. But that is fine. I expected this might happen."

She reached into her dress with her burned hands, not even flinching at what must have been excruciating pain. She pulled out a syringe filled with dark red liquid.

"Do you know what this is, Jacob?" Diana asked conversationally, as if they were discussing the weather rather than standing in the middle of a firefight. "This is your father's blood. I collected it the night I killed him. Guardian blood does not decay, so it has remained fresh and potent all these years."

Jacob felt his stomach drop as he realized what she intended.

"If the artifacts require Krigg bloodline to function," Diana continued, raising the syringe to her neck, "then I will simply make myself Krigg bloodline."

"No!" Jacob shouted, but he was too far away to stop her.

Diana plunged the syringe into her carotid artery and pressed the plunger, injecting his father's blood directly into her system. Her body convulsed violently as foreign DNA crashed into her cells. She fell to her knees, gasping and choking.

Then she reached for the amulet again.

This time, when her fingers touched the metal, it did not reject her. Instead, it began to glow—but not with the clean light it had shown before. This glow was dark, corrupted, twisted by Diana's hatred and the unnatural method she had used to claim its power.

Diana stood up slowly, her burned hands healing before Jacob's eyes. The scars on her face began to fade. Her body strengthened, infused with artifact power that should never have been hers.

She looked at Jacob and Anna with eyes that now glowed with unnatural red light.

"Now," Diana said, her voice echoing with power, "let me show you what a true Guardian can do with Krigg artifacts."

She raised her hand, and the entire auction house began to shake.