Defy (31 page)

She sucked in an insulted breath, fully
prepared to blast him with indignation. Then he had to go and ruin
her efforts with a kiss.

It was quick, hard and done before she
realized what had happened, but it interrupted her tirade like a
bucket of ice water. She stared at him in stunned silence
instead.

“You’re too important,” he said, making her
wonder what he meant. “Don’t argue. You have more than one ability.
We’ll work together to help Tate.”

All she could do was nod.

Zachariah found the alcove where Tate had
slept. It was easy enough to identify after having visited it in
the dream. He also found the garment she used as a cloak. It was
shredded and useless. He imagined her captors had used some of the
fabric to bind her.

He would have.

He spotted her unusual nunchucks and wondered
why they had been left behind. Reaching down, he picked them up. A
surge of some kind of energy seemed to vibrate through his arm.
That hadn’t happened in the dream state. He wondered over it, but
shrugged it off in the interest of time and tucked them under the
waistband of his pants, covering them with his tank top. Although
his skin grew uncomfortably warm and seemed to pulsate with that
unusual energy where the nunchucks touched him, he ignored it.

His eyes scanned the ground as he sought
clues as to what happened and where he needed to go. He spotted
footprints in the dirt made by two males and one female—Tate. It
was obvious there had been some scuffling. Whatever Tate did, it
allowed her a brief escape, something that now had him nodding
briefly in approval.

He followed her prints out of the alcove. He
knew she had run to escape her attackers, and he imagined this had
been what he experienced through her while he gathered his
things.

Her boot prints came to an end quite a
distance from the alcove. A wide patch of flattened earth told him
two bodies had slid along the ground. At the end of the swath, he
found numerous spatters of blood and evidence of an intense
struggle between her and the two males.

She had been tackled and beaten into
unconsciousness. While she was bound.

But she hadn’t gone down without a fight.

He searched for the male boot prints that
sank deeper into the loose dirt than the others, indicating the
male who carried Tate. As soon as he found them, he extended his
wings and flew in the direction they faced.

Ariana didn’t have any choice.

She allowed Eirik to secure the broadsword in
the harness and fasten it to her back once again. Before he did so,
he used the sword to cut the palms of her hands. Deimos began
keening and lurching in her direction rather than toward the fallen
Kynzesti.

“I suppose it is helpful to have a couple of
options for Deimos when I decide he can feed,” he said, holding
Ariana’s gaze as he finished latching the harness.

She didn’t reply. Her bleeding hands
throbbed. She wanted to find the closest weapon she could lift and
run it through Eirik’s evil heart. Instead, she turned to the
lavender path stretching before her and started walking. Behind
her, the male who had carried the other female into the camp was
ordered by Eirik to again pick her up. Apparently the former
outcasts, Bertram and Tycho, had succeeded in working their way
back into the fold.

A stretch of forest rose up on her left. They
had been above the treetops for a while, but now hiked along a
lower part of the mountain pass that wound along the mountainside.
It narrowed to a point where they couldn’t walk more than three
beings wide without risking someone falling.

They didn’t have very far to go. It was in
part because she sensed their proximity to their goal that Ariana
had chosen to stop in the first place. Within the span of fifteen
minutes, they reached the bottom of the path.

It opened up into a grassy clearing
surrounded on one side by trees and the other side by a circular
expanse of mountainous rock. Ariana moved with the large horde
behind her into the clearing, her steps heavy with a sense of
impending doom. Then she frowned in bewilderment.

“Where do we go now?” Eirik asked as he
stopped beside her.

Ariana shook her head, trying very hard to
ignore the inhuman sounds issuing from Deimos. The Mercesti were
taking shifts to try and contain him. Closing her eyes, she drew on
her second power to enhance it as much as possible, figuring she
was somehow misinterpreting what she was seeing. But when she
opened her eyes, she discovered that nothing had changed.

Her power pointed her right to a wall of
solid rock.

Tate fought against the darkness. She felt as
though her head had been cracked like an egg. There were muffled
sounds, like a number of distant voices, but she couldn’t reason
out where she was or what was said. Pain radiated through her,
provoking moans of agony.

Slowly, she drifted back into awareness. Her
stomach hurt and breathing was difficult. She realized she was
settled on someone’s shoulder. When she tried to move her hands,
she discovered her wrists were bound. That was when she remembered
the incident on the mountain with the two Mercesti. They had
obviously bested her.

Tate…

She heard Tiege in her mind. At first, it was
a distant echo. As she drifted closer to full consciousness,
however, his voice grew stronger. She realized he was trying to
reach her.

Tiege
, she thought.

Even as she sensed his immense relief, she
felt the being holding her come to a halt. She did what she could
to open her eyes. One of them wouldn’t cooperate. It felt glued
together. Her vision in the other eye was blurry. She blinked to
clear it.

Where are you?
Tiege thought.

I don’t know. A couple of Mercesti have
me
.

She lifted her head, though the effort sent
spears of pain through her. When she managed to get her head high
enough to see behind her, she caught the eye of a Mercesti. And she
realized as her working eye moved from side to side, there were a
lot more where he came from.

Uh…make that a
huge
number of
Mercesti have me
, she thought as fear rushed through her.

She was suddenly lowered to the ground.
Because they were on a slope, her momentum carried her backwards as
her feet went out from under her. She performed a back shoulder
roll and landed on her feet.

In the process, her non-working eye opened
with a sear of pain. She had to blink back tears that formed as the
red gunk clinging to her lashes got into her eye. It was dried
blood, she realized.

Her gaze moved wildly around the large
clearing. There was some kind of animal making hair-raising noises
just out of her range of sight. The Mercesti male who had been
holding her now eyed her with a mix of hatred and unholy interest.
She couldn’t help but realize with satisfaction that his eye was
also swollen shut.

There are hundreds of Mercesti, Tiege
,
she thought as her heart tried to escape her chest.
You can’t
come after me. Stay away from here
.

Shut up, Tate
, he argued.
Open your
thoughts to me so I can find you
.

It wasn’t worth fighting over, especially
because she knew she would have said the same thing if their roles
were reversed. So she did what she could to open her mind to him
even as she looked around to figure out why everyone was just
standing there.

A soft gold glow drew her attention. Turning
to the left, she realized that the attention of the Mercesti was
split. Some of them stared at her, and others stared at a second
female. Just beyond the female was the source of the glow, but Tate
couldn’t see past the beings surrounding her to identify it.

“What do you mean, this is it?” asked the
large Mercesti standing next to the female.

He was enormous. His wide torso was covered
with a furred vest that left his huge arms exposed. Thick leather
bands adorned his upper arms just above his bulging biceps. Black
leather pants and boots showed an equally muscular lower body. His
long blond and red-striped hair was worn in a spiked half-ponytail
on top of his head. It gave him the look of one of the barbarians
she studied from human history.

When his red gaze shifted to her, she had the
brief thought that she was looking evil right in the eyes.

“I mean that this is where my senses have led
me,” the female said with rather impressive vehemence. She turned
to glance up at the male. When she noticed him looking at Tate, she
also looked at her. Her lavender eyes lighted with panic and she
looked again at the male. She spoke quickly. “Perhaps there’s an
entrance somewhere to gain access to it.”

Tate couldn’t shift her gaze from the male’s.
He stared at her as if trying to steal her soul.

Tiege
, she thought. Her heart pounded
so hard in her chest that she felt it in her throat. She
instinctively felt for her nunchucks and realized they were
missing.

We’re coming, Tate. Be strong
.

His tone was calm, but she felt his fear for
her. She struggled against her bonds, but they had no give. Hoping
she could loosen them, she produced a bit of water and got the
bindings wet. Praying no one noticed the liquid trailing from her
hands to the ground, she rubbed her wrists raw as the water soaked
into the fabric.

A surge of activity to her right finally
broke her eye contact with the barbarian. The animal sounds got
louder. A group of Mercesti cursed and shoved at something in their
midst. Whatever it was also caught the barbarian’s attention. He
stepped closer to the group of Mercesti holding the creature at bay
and snapped a few words. The sounds diminished.

When the barbarian moved, Tate saw what
caused the gold glow. Not even twenty feet from the other female
was a pedestal housing a sheet of parchment. The entire pedestal
glowed with gold light.

Holy crap
, she thought as she stared
at it.
What’s that?

I think its part of the Elder Scroll
,
Tiege replied, concern filling the thought. She had almost
forgotten about their connection.
Alexius just told us about it.
Believe me when I say we don’t want them to have it
.

She was distracted by the fact that the
barbarian was striding toward her. His face was a cold mask.
Backing up would have been ridiculous. A wall of Mercesti stood
behind her.

“Who is your father?”

She didn’t know what to say. Should she be
honest? Would it help her or put her in greater jeopardy?

Silence stretched between them. It seemed the
safest avenue. Then his fist came at her face. She instinctively
ducked and struck back at him with her foot in a move she had
practiced hundreds of times throughout her life. Her aim proved
true. His knee buckled.

Unfortunately, even as he regained his
footing, the Mercesti soldiers behind her grabbed her and held her
in place. The look on the barbarian’s face hadn’t changed, but she
felt his fury pouring off him as he neared.

“I no longer care who your father is,” he
said in a low, hard voice.

Then he reached out and grabbed a fistful of
her hair, using it to drag her closer to the other female. Even as
she bit back a cry of pain, she realized her efforts to free
herself from her bindings were working. They were definitely
looser. When they stopped next to the Lekwuesti, the barbarian
yanked her head back by her hair and held a blade to her
throat.

“You had better hope there is an entrance to
access the scroll,” he said to the other female. “Or you will be
the reason this Kynzesti dies. Slowly and painfully.”

Tate hadn’t even swallowed her rising terror
when another voice responded, “If she dies, it will be at my
hands.”

And Sparky strolled right into the Mercesti
camp.

Harold commanded his Waresti to remain a fair
distance away from him as he investigated the alcove where he
believed Tate had slept. He didn’t want anyone disturbing the area
and possibly destroying clues as to the direction they needed to
travel.

He recently heard from Donald, who was
tracking Quincy and Sophia. His lieutenant had connected with
adelfos
James,
archigos
Knorbis,
archigos
Jabari and the Waresti who traveled with them. About ten minutes
ago, they came across a location where it appeared Quincy had
treated Sophia for an injury. They found discarded bandages and
some blood. Then it seemed the couple had taken flight, something
that concerned Harold.

Donald and those with him even now flew in
pursuit of the pair. Harold instructed them to split up and create
a net to make sure they didn’t lose them. It would also help in
what would inevitably be a confrontation with the Mercesti.

Moving on foot because the fanning of wings
could disturb dirt and debris on the ground, Harold carefully
studied the boot prints and blood spatters both in the alcove and
outside of it. It didn’t take him long to reason out what had
happened to Tate. It helped, as well, that Tiege had connected with
her. He had been able to share information about her location with
Alexius.

Harold knew that Tate had been incapacitated
by and carried into the hands of the Mercesti. Based upon the
location update he had just received from Donald, his lieutenant
was tracking the very same group of Mercesti who now had Tate. They
needed to get airborne to join Donald in the coming
confrontation.

He was studying what appeared to be a third
set of male boot prints when Celine interrupted his train of
thought.

“Commander.”

He looked up. Celine stood over a segment of
rock about twenty feet away. “Yes?”