Arrow to the Soul (11 page)

“She’ll die eventually. If not by me, then one of the others he’s sent,” Hunstall bit out.

Adam waited.

“He’ll kill them all.” The crazy man laughed then and it was acidic. “He always kills them all.” Closer now.

“Not her,” Adam said firmly.

“Yes, goddamn it,
her
! He’ll put her in the dark and leave her. She’ll cry and beg and plead and he’ll just…leave her.” Hunstall’s voice was a whisper now. Ten more feet…

What the fuck was the man going on and on about? It made no sense but chills danced along Adam’s arms and there was a warning on the wind.

“Arrow was his favorite for a time. First it was Bullet, then Arrow. And she betrayed him. Now she’ll pay and Joseph never takes half-measure. You could ask Bullet about that,” Hunstall said, and in his tone was the sound of recollection.

Hunstall had been there when Bullet was being harmed. And he’d liked it. Hunstall wanted to be there to see Arrow hurt. Adam slowed his pulse, pushed the anger down, and waited.
Two more steps, motherfucker.

“I see you,” Hunstall whispered.

Adam knifed the man in the calf, barely missing a startled shot from Hunstall as he fell. Adam was on him then, wrapping his forearm around the man’s throat and squeezing. It took ten seconds for the man to blackout. He had the man in flex cuffs and was cleaning his knife when Rand came up on the scene.

“Goddamn it, Adam, you should have waited,” Rand growled.

Adam pointed at Hunstall. “I did.”

“Is he dead?”

“Not yet,” Adam said in a mild voice. Their team called the tone Adam’s kill voice. “Is Dimitry working on her?”

Rand cocked his head. “Yeah. Why do you care?”

Adam didn’t reply, just walked in the direction of the house. The feeling of a hundred bees crawling under his skin had attacked him moments ago and he recognized it was tied to Saya. He had to see if she was okay, the uncertainty, the not-knowing driving him batty.

“Do you want to be there?”

Adam stopped then and breathed in deeply. “Fuck, yes.”

“We’ll house him in the barn,” Rand replied.

“You do that,” Adam said quietly. “But don’t kill him. He’s Arrow’s.”

“Bullet said she can’t handle any more death.”

Adam shrugged. “If she can’t, I can.”

Rand grunted at his words. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Adam. Not with her.”

“I’m not doing anything, Rand. Not one fucking thing,” Adam bit out and stalked away from his friend.

“She’ll take you apart,” Rand said. “Piece by piece. It’s already started.”

Adam kept walking. There was nothing to say to that. She’d stepped in front of a bullet for him. The truth was Arrow wasn’t so much taking him apart as chipping away at something he’d thought belonged to another.

As much as he wanted to hate her, that anger was falling by the wayside. The smell of death was all around. Four men lost their lives in these woods tonight. He should be on the phone handling things like body disposal, and then there was Damon Hunstall to deal with.

One foot in front of the other and his heart quickened—the need to see her, watch her breathe overriding all other necessities. The lights of the house appeared and Adam began to run again. The sooner he got there, the sooner he could berate her.

•●•

A voice as deep as the night that pressed on her called Saya’s name. She tried to push away the offending blackness, but the voice soothed, offering succor if she would just give in and stop fighting. Agony ripped through her as a heated brand invaded her side. Still the darkness reached for her.

“I will not break!” She fought the incessant roil of the shadows and struck, satisfied when her hand met flesh.

The blackness shifted away with a curse.

If only she could curve her hand around her
yumi
and
ya
, then she would pierce the night around her with a hundred arrowheads—puncture the death that called to her and she would have no mercy.

“I will not break!”

Hands held her down now and she fought. They were cold instruments of torture and Saya longed for the warmth of her mahogany crossbow, anything to fight the pervasive iciness of the hands gripping her.

She could not breathe, felt her throat closing, and knew there were limited opportunities to defeat the end that stalked her.

“
Watashi no nikushimi o kanjiru
,” she whispered, and the pain intensified, spreading from her side and invading her mind. “
Watashi no ikari o kanjiru
.” Feel my hate. Feel my pain. She wanted to rail, rip, and rend, but the blackness was oppressive.

Over and over she chanted in the dark, finally acquiescing when the soothing voice returned. She wouldn’t give in to the black, but she could bear it if that voice continued to stroke along her skin.

“Please,” she murmured, the growing tension in her body causing her to tremble. She wanted to rock back and forth, press her hands against her ears, because even as the voice soothed it reminded her of things yet undone.

“I will not break,” she said again, and thought she yelled, hoped her screams made the voice disappear. It offered the illusion of safety, and in the dark there was no safety.

“Saya.” Just her name but it was insidious. She recognized the voice instinctively and wondered why. He’d become a stealthy foe in a war she’d not been prepared for.

She cried then, tears leaking from her eyes as her heart shuddered in her chest. She had no control here. “You will not break me.”

The maelstrom took her over then, boiling her in unbearable heat and taunting her with failure. She gave over because in the end it was the only thing she could do. She must rest now so she could fight another day.

Chapter Ten

The light went from pale pink to bright yellow past Arrow’s closed lids. She was alone in the room, had been for an hour. When the man, Dmitry, finally left, she took her first full breath in what she knew had to be at least three days.

She moved her limbs slowly, cautiously, aware that once she sat up fire would radiate along her side and settle in with pain-tipped claws. Arrow opened her eyes and found herself in an infirmary-type room. Monitors beeped and her left arm pinched at the bite of an intravenous needle. She went to work on that first.

Within seconds she removed the IV and was working on the leads attached to her chest when footsteps sounded from beyond the door.
Bullet
.

Her sister entered and sat down beside the bed. Arrow didn’t glance at her, intent on swinging her legs to the side of the bed so she could stand.

“Probably not wise,” Bullet said in the silence.

Arrow breathed through the pain. She had been through much worse. There’d been a time in North Korea when she’d given herself up to save a child. The child survived, making it across the demilitarized zone. Arrow suffered for her deeds. The North Koreans were nothing if not inventive in their torture techniques. She wore a long, jagged scar on her lower abdomen as proof.

She allowed a smile to curve her lips as she remembered how their cockiness led to their downfall. Her holding cell had been made of wood. And from wood all manner of weapons could be formed.

“You’re smiling. I didn’t realize pain was so precious to you,” Bullet murmured.

Arrow grunted and hissed as she finally stood to her feet. “Pain is fleeting.”

“Yes.” Bullet nodded but on her face was a mask of indifference. “Tell me, sister, why did you come here?”

“Revenge,” she replied as she took a step toward the window.

“It is more than revenge that brought you to this place.”

Anger curled through Arrow. “If you know the answer, why ask the question?”

“I will not let any of you hurt him.”

Arrow turned the full force of her gaze on Bullet then. “You’re a stupid woman for thinking we would. I had opportunity in Arequipa and didn’t harm your precious Mr. Beckett. We have each had opportunity as we watched over you.” Bullet’s gaze flinched for a split second, and then she notched her chin, staring back without fear. “You and he are one now. We recognized the truth of this when you nearly gave your life for him in the water pit. Do you think we would sever his life and hurt you in the process? My God, Bullet, what do you think of us?”

“I think you would hurt whoever you needed to in pursuit of revenge.”

Arrow clenched her hands, digging her nails into her palms. Where was the pain when she needed it? Numbness flowed from her side now when she would have rather it be spitting fire. “We would never hurt you.”

Bullet stood and her blue eyes were fathomless in the morning light streaming through the window. “You won’t hurt Rand either.”

Arrow nodded though Bullet hadn’t asked a question. Fatigue beat at her and demanded she crawl back into the bed and rest.

“I’ll return later and we’ll go see the babies.”

“I want Hunstall first,” Arrow bit out.

Bullet glanced back at her as she reached the door. “How do you know we have him?”

Arrow closed her mouth, unwilling to divulge just how she knew. Not to Bullet and not right now. How could she voice that she recognized Adam Collins was like her? That finding the one who’d harmed her would be paramount to him. From the moment she’d woken and become aware of her surroundings, that truth rebounded through her.

“So it’s like that, is it?”

Arrow narrowed her gaze. “You know nothing, Bullet.”

“I know what I need to, sister. Remember that,” Bullet warned and then stepped out of the room.

Arrow acknowledged her sister had changed. For a second envy bit deep and she smiled. Out of them all, Bullet had the heart for love. After all, she’d warmed Ninka’s hand in the bitter cold of Arequipa’s nights. The rest of them were entirely too hard for such an emotion.

She took a breath, letting it fill her lungs and move through her body. Then she walked around the room, her circles small at first then growing larger. It took five circles for her to be breathless. Another circle, and she found her breath while stilling the ripples in her mind. She pushed the pain down as far as it would go and felt her body loosen as she moved.

Three days was an interminable amount of time when there was a strict schedule to keep. Joseph was moving pieces on the board, and Arrow must to get to China soon or many innocents would die.

Arrow had enough innocents on her conscious. They weighed her down every single day. She’d traveled to Hell before, escaping its clutches on the promise she’d deliver other souls in her place. But her time was running out. She could feel things winding down.

Her side pinched and she sat gingerly in the chair Bullet vacated. She closed her eyes against the unbearable lightness in the room. She couldn’t stand the dark but the light made her heart hurt. Where exactly did she fit in?

The answer echoed in her brain.
Nowhere
.

“You’re up?”

His voice moved through her like a cooling wind but she kept her eyes closed. He’d held her while whoever, probably Dmitry, worked on her. Adam had been her voice in the darkness. Alluring, impossibly deep, and so damn soothing she’d raged against the injustice of it. Finding him now when she had only death to offer was the bitterest thing she’d ever experienced.

“What’s wrong? Are you hurting? Dmitry—”

“No,” she whispered. “I’m not hurting.”

“He should probably—”

She opened her eyes and glanced at him. “I’m fine.”

His pitch gaze traveled up and down her body. “You were shot.”

“I was there,” she reminded him ruefully.

His shoulders tensed. Under the black T-shirt he wore his muscles shifted restlessly. “You took a goddamn bullet for me.”

A corner of her mouth lifted against her will. “I hate to keep saying this, but I was there.”

He smiled then, lips curving up and eyes crinkling at the corners. It did something remarkable to her insides. What passed between them was poignant, possibly the most significant emotion she’d ever experienced. Her breathing eased and her heart slowed, the warmth of his smile making her
crave
something nameless, unspeakable.

“Yeah. You were there,” he said in a gravelly voice. He cleared his throat and his face blanked. “So, you, uh, up to some walking?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“Where we’re headed.”

He cocked his head and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’ve been told you want to make a bow and arrow…a umi and ah.”

“
Yumi
and
ya
.”

He smiled. “That’s what I said.”

“Of course it was.” She glanced back out the window and stood carefully. The stitches pulled but healing was taking place at a rapid rate. Courtesy of the many, many supplements and rigorous training Joseph raised them all with. She measured her words carefully, not wanting to give him too much leverage, her desire for light won out. “I would like to sit in the sun.”

He stepped aside and motioned to the door. “Then the sun you shall get.”

•●•

Her pupils flared at his words and Adam wondered if anyone had ever given her anything. Saya walked past him and her fragrance floated behind, stroking and teasing. He was used to his body’s reaction to her nearness now. He’d spent time meditating the night she’d been shot. He’d stayed until he’d been sure she was out, and then he’d retreated to his room, drawing the blinds, lighting incense, and walking with the spirits.

His ancestors told him nothing or maybe he’d just been too consumed with confusion and worry to hear them. He’d withdrawn from his meditative state with assurance that he was well and truly fucked. He loved one woman but desired another. And he desired her like hell on fire.

Adam followed her, now realizing he had no defenses against the amber of her gaze or the allure of her body. He refused to acknowledge it was more than that which quickened his heart and made his cock hard. He could control both, so they were non-entities.

But her vulnerability pricked him. He shook his head and caught up with her. She’d managed to get ahead of him while he’d been thinking about her. If she was hurt, she wasn’t about to let it show.