Stephanie Rowe - Darkness Unleashed (5 page)

His eyes met hers. Black, deathly turbulent homes of such horror that she almost screamed. For a split second, she forgot to breathe, so overwhelmed by the magnitude of his presence. His dark hair was cropped tight against his head, as if he wanted it out of his way. Blue jeans sat low on his narrow hips, and his heavy leather jacket showed shoulders so wide it was as if he were twice a man. He was sheer, raw power, but it was a dark energy, just like the man who had stolen her child. Dear God, what did he want with her? Fear tore through her and she leapt back as he lunged for where she'd just been standing.

He sailed past her, his hands grasping only air.

He skidded to a stop and spun around, searching the night for her, but she knew he would never find her, not while she was shrouded in all the deaths that masked her trail. She was undetectable to him.

"Catherine," he bellowed in frustration, spinning around as he searched fruitlessly for the woman standing right in front of him.

But it was too late for him.

She'd won this round. But as she fisted the locket with her daughter's hair, she knew the triumph meant nothing if she couldn't find her daughter.

Ryland spun around, engaging all his preternatural senses as he searched the graveyard for Catherine. He knew she had to be close. He'd touched her backpack just before she'd vanished right in front of him.

"Catherine!" he shouted again. He'd been so close. Where the hell was she? All he could sense were the deaths of all the people in the graveyard. Women, children, old men, young men, good people, scum who had taken their demented values to the grave with them. The spirits were thick and heavy in the graveyard, souls that had not moved on to their place of rest.

They circled him, trying to penetrate his barriers, seeking asylum in the creature that would be their doom. "No," he said to them. "I'm not your savior." Not by a long shot. He was about as far from their savior as it was possible to be.

Dismissing them, Ryland focused more directly on Catherine, opening his senses to the night, but as much as he tried to concentrate, he couldn't keep the vision of her out of his head. He'd finally seen her up close. She'd been mere inches away, the angel who had filled his thoughts for so long. Her hair was gold.
Gold.
It must have been tucked up under a hat when he'd seen her before, but now? It was unlike anything he'd ever seen before. He'd been riveted by the sight of it streaming behind her as she ran, the golden highlights glistening in the dark as if she'd been lit from within.

Her gait had been smooth and agile, but he'd sensed the sheer effort she'd had to expend during the run. Another few feet, and he would have caught up to her easily, but she'd sensed him while he'd still been a quarter mile away, giving her a head start that had enabled her to reach the graveyard first.

Shit. He had to focus and find her. Summoning his rigid control to hone in on his task, Ryland crouched down and placed his hand on the dirt path where he'd last seen her. The ground was humming with the energy of death, but again, he couldn't untangle her trail from all the others. He realized that she'd mingled her own scent of death with those of all the other spirits, making it impossible for him to track her. He grinned as he rested his forearm on his quad and surveyed the small cemetery. "I'm impressed," he said aloud. "You're good."

There was no response, but he had the distinct sensation that she was watching him.

Slowly, he rose to his feet. "My name is Ryland Samuels," he said. "I'm a member of the Order of the Blade, the group of warriors that you protect. I'm here to offer you my protection and bring you into our safekeeping."

Again, there was no answer, but suddenly threaded through the tendrils of death was the cold filament of fear. Not just a superficial apprehension, but the kind of deep, penetrating fear that would bring a person to their knees and render them powerless. Fear of him? Or of the fact he said he wanted to take her with him? Swearing, Ryland turned in a slow circle, searching for where she might be. "There's no need to be afraid of me. I would never hurt an angel."

The fear thickened, like the thorns of a dying rose pricking his skin.

Ryland moved slowly toward the far corner, and smiled when he felt the terror grow stronger. She might be able to hide death, but there was no cover for the terror that was hers alone. He was clearly getting closer to her. "Look into my eyes," he said softly. "I don't hurt angels."

There was a whisper of a sound behind him, and he felt the cold drift of fingers across his back.
She was touching him.
He froze, not daring to turn around, even though his heartbeat had suddenly accelerated a thousand-fold. Her touch was so faint, almost as if it were her spirit that was examining him, not her own flesh. Was she merely invisible right now, or had she abandoned her physical existence completely and traveled to some spiritual plane? He had no idea what she was capable of. All he knew was that he felt like he never wanted to move away from this spot, not as long as she was touching him. He wanted to stay right where he was and never break the connection.

He closed his eyes, breathing in the sensation of her touch as her fingers traced down his arm, over his jacket. What was she looking for? Was she reading his aura? Searching for the truth of his claim that he would not hurt her? She would get nowhere trying to get a read on him. He never allowed anyone to see who he truly was, not even an angel of death.

But even as he thought it, he made no move to resist, his pulse quickening in anticipation as her touch trailed toward his bare hand. Would she brush her fingers over his skin? Would he feel the touch of an angel for the first time in a thousand years? He felt his soul begin to strain, reaching for this gift only she could give him.

He tracked every inch of movement as her hand moved lower toward his bare skin. Past his elbow. To the cuff of his sleeve. Then he felt it. Her fingers on the back of his hand. His flesh seemed to ignite under her touch. A wave of angelic serenity and beauty cascaded through his soul, like a deep inhale of intense relief easing a thousand years of tension from his lungs.

At the same time, there was a dangerous undercurrent beneath the beauty, a darkness that he recognized as death. A thousand souls seemed to dance through his mind, spirits lodged in the depths of her existence. Her emotions flooded him. Fear. Regret. Determination. Love. A sense of being trapped.

Trapped? He understood that one well. Far too well. Instinctively, he flipped his hand over, wrapping his fingers around hers, not to trap her, but to offer her his protection from a hell that still drove every choice he made.

He heard her suck in her breath, and she went still, but she didn't pull away from him. Her hand was cold. Her fingers were small and delicate, like fragile blossoms that would disintegrate under a stiff breeze. A hand that needed support and help.

Ryland snapped his eyes open but there was no one standing in front of him. He looked down and could see only his own hand, folded around air. He couldn't see her, but she was there, her hand in his, not pulling away. "Show yourself to me," he said. "I won't hurt you."

Her hand jerked back, and a sense of loss assailed him as he lost his grip on her. "No!" He reached for her, but his hands just drifted through air. "Catherine," he urged, as he strained to get a sense of her. "I—"

"Ry."

Ryland spun around at the sound of Thano's strained voice. His teammate was a hundred yards back, hunched low over Apollo's neck. On his knees beside them was Zach, who was slumped against a tree. "Shit!" He bolted out of the graveyard and sprinted over to the others. He knelt beside Zach. The warrior looked up, and Ryland saw that the edges of both eyes had a faint orange glow. The discoloration was creeping inward, and Ryland knew that when it took over the entire iris, Zach would die and become a talrak.

Quickly he ripped off his heavy jacket and handed it to Zach. "Put this on."

"Fuck that, I don't get cold."

"The talrak venom is poisoning you. You can use all that fire inside you to burn it up and hopefully slow it down, but if you're expending energy toward keeping warm, you'll lose the battle sooner. Wear the damn coat."

Zach met his gaze, then swore and grabbed the coat.

As he wrapped it around him, Ryland looked up at Thano. "Got space on that horse of yours?"

Zach snorted. "I'm not riding that thing—"

Apollo stomped his foot and swished his tail angrily.

"We need to move fast," Ryland said. "Faster than I'm going to let you push yourself." He looked up at Thano. "Yeah?"

Thano looked at the horse, who snorted and bobbed his head. "Yeah, it's cool with Apollo."

Ryland didn't waste time asking Thano why he was asking permission from a horse. He simply picked up the dying warrior while Apollo went down on one knee, lowering his massive body. Knowing he didn't have time to honor Zach's protests to stay on his own feet, Ryland set him astride in front of Thano, ignoring his muttered resistance. The younger warrior locked a weary grip around Zach's waist.

Ryland realized that Thano looked almost as weak as Zach. Adrenaline flooded him, an urgency to get his team to safety. "You think you can hold him in place?"

"Shit, yeah. Youth is a powerful thing, old man. You forget that sometimes."

Ryland laughed grimly as Apollo stood back up, his well-muscled frame towering above Ryland. They had to hurry. But what about Catherine? Without her, the Order was in trouble. Shit! He quickly assessed his options and came up with the only plan he had time for. He reached out with his mind to Thano.
Catherine is hiding in the graveyard. I need to trick her into going to the village so I can grab her there. Follow my lead.

Thano raised his eyes.
Deception? I love it. Bring it on.

Ryland nodded, then put on a serious expression. "We have to stay here and find Catherine," he announced, even as his instincts were shouting at him to get his teammates to safety immediately. One minute. That's all it would take to get the ball rolling to make sure Catherine stayed safe while he handled his team. "I know she's in the graveyard."
Tell me that Zach's dying and we need to get the hell out of here. Suggest the village to the north. We need to set her up to go there, so we can deal with her after we get you guys fixed. We need her to think we won't be headed there, so she'll decide that is the only place she can go to escape us.

Thano winked, then his face darkened. "You want to stay here and search for her? Fuck the girl, asshole. Zach's dying from the talrak bite. He's our priority, not some woman who we don't even know for sure is the one we're looking for."
Is he really dying?

Not if we can get to the village in time to get the antivenom.
"We've been hunting her for three weeks," Ryland snapped, allowing his true frustration to show. "We're so close. Another day—"

Thano called out his halberd and had it at Ryland's throat. Despite the weakness of his body, his grip was firm, his weapon steady. "Shut the fuck up, asshole. This is about Zach. We're going to that village up ahead to the north, and we're going to get help. You can hunt the woman after we save Zach."
Shit man, this is great. I've been wanting to pull a weapon on you for years. Can I stab you, too?
He pushed the tip of the halberd against Ryland's throat, pricking the skin.

You're a pain in the ass.
But Ryland was amused by the irony that the most easy-going guy in the Order was playing the asshole. Thano was actually pretty convincing, which was a little weird. Thano wasn't supposed to have that element to him.

Ryland called out his machete, but before he could level it at Thano in what he hoped was a convincing show of men being stupid-ass men, Zach swore.

"No. Thano's wrong. You're both wrong." Zach stirred, and with a flash of black light and a crack that split the night, he called out his sai and leveled it at Ryland's heart. His eyes were still at half-mast, but Ryland felt the press of his mind as he joined their conversation.
I couldn't miss out on the chance to call a weapon on Ryland. Why should Thano get all the fun?
"Fuck the village," he snarled. "Too many people there know Ryland. We can't risk it. We're turning back, and we're doing it now."

Ryland narrowed his eyes, well aware that Zach's hostility was not completely faked, and that both warriors were too damned pleased to be holding him at the end of their blades. But he made a show of lowering his machete, even though his natural reaction was to take their threat and turn it on them. He wasn't a man who stood down for anyone, and that included a couple of arrogant bastards like them. But he wasn't going to let anyone die on his watch, and this was the only way to do it. "You both are complete bastards," he snapped.

"I'll take that as a compliment coming from the king of the bastards." Zach flicked his sai. "Turn around, asshole. We're going home, and since you're the only one who knows about this talrak shit, you're coming with us. I haven't survived five hundred years of battle to die today. Move it."

Thano's eyes glittered with amusement, and he poked his weapon further into Ryland's neck. "Yeah, start skipping along, old guy. Get your saggy old ass back on that trail."

Ryland narrowed his eyes.
You bastards are enjoying this way too much.

Thano grinned.
Of course we are. The other guys are going to be so jealous when we tell them what we got to do. Come on, finish it out, Ry. Bow to our greatness.

Zach snorted, and there was no mistaking the pleasure he was getting out of holding a weapon on Ryland.

He glared at them both, and then nodded his acquiescence. "Zach comes first," he agreed, making a show of frustration. "Let's go. I found Catherine once, I'll find her again. We'll circle around. Zach's correct. We have to skip the village."