by Nora Roberts
the heart of the third.
“I am Kadra,” she shouted, “Slayer of Demons. Guardian of the red sun.”
“You are too late,” the remaining Bok hissed at her. “You are outnumbered. Our king will tear out your heart, and we will share in the feast.”
“Today you go hungry.”
He was faster than the others, and fueled by his grisly meal. This, she knew, would be an opponent more worthy of her skill.
He chose not his claws but the long hooked blade he drew from the sheath at his side.
Steel rang to steel as the screams and the stench rose around her. She knew there were at least three others and she knew now that the demon king, the one called Sorak, was among them.
His death was her life’s work.
The Bok fought well with his sickle sword, and swiped out with those blue claws. She felt the pain, an absent annoyance, as they dug furrows over her bare shoulder. Instead of retreating, she pushed into the attack, into the flashing blue and silver to run him through with a fierce thrust.
“I am Kadra,” she murmured as the Bok smoked to the ground. “I am your death.”
She wheeled to aim her weapon and her gaze on the demon king and the three warriors that flanked him outside the open doorway of a hut.
At last, she thought. Praise the powers of life, at last.
“I am your death, Sorak,” she said. “As I was death for Clud, your father. On this day, in this hour, I will rid my world of you.”
“Keep your world.” The king of demons, regal in his red tunic and bands of gold, lifted a small, clear globe. “I go to another. There I will conquer and feed. There I will rule.”
His handsome face was sheened with sweat and blood. His dark hair coiled, sleek and twisted, like snakes over his elegant shoulders. Then he bared his teeth, and the illusion of rough beauty vanished into horror.
“Where I go, the food is plentiful. There, I will be a god. Keep your world, Kadra, Demon Slayer. Or come with me.” He beckoned with a voice seductive as a caress. “I will give you the Demon Kiss. I will make you my queen and plant my young inside you. We will rule this new world together.”
“You want to kiss me? To join with me?”
“You have shed the blood of my sire. I have drunk the blood of a slayer. We are well matched. Together we will have power beyond all imagining.”
His three warriors were armed. And a demon king’s strength knew no equal among his kind. Four against one, Kadra thought with a leap of her heart. It would be her greatest battle.
“Come, then.” She all but purred it. “Come embrace me.”
She pursed her own lips, then charged.
To her shock, the demon swirled his cloak, and with his warriors, vanished in a sudden flash of light.
“Where . . . how?” She spun in a circle, sword raised, dagger ready, and her blood still singing a war song. She could smell them, a lingering stench. It was all that was left of them.
Women were weeping. Children wailing. And she had failed. Three Bok, and their hellborn king, had escaped her. Their eyes had met, and yet Sorak had defeated her without landing a blow.
“You have not lost them yet.”
Kadra looked toward the hut where a woman stood in the doorway. She was pale and beautiful, her hair a midnight rain, her face like something carved from delicate glass. But her eyes, green as Kadra’s own, were ancient, and in them it seemed worlds could live.
In them, Kadra saw pain.
“Lady,” she said respectfully as she stepped toward her. “You are injured.”
“I will heal. I know my fate, and it is not time for me to pass.”
“Call the healer,” Kadra told her. “I must hunt.”
“Yes, you must hunt. Come inside, I will show you how.”
Now Kadra’s eyebrows raised. The woman was beautiful, true, and there was an air of magic about her. But she was still only a female.
“I’m a demon slayer. Hunting is what I know.”
“In this world,” the woman agreed. “But not in the one where you must go. The demon king has stolen one of the keys. But there are others.”
She swayed, and Kadra leaped forward, cursing, to catch her. Frail bones, she thought. Such delicate bones would shatter easily.
“Why did they let you live?” Kadra demanded as she helped the woman inside.
“It is not in their power to destroy me. To harm, but not to vanquish. I did not know they were coming.” She shook her head as she lowered herself into a chair by a hearth left cold in the heat of day. “My own complacency blinded me to them. But not to you.” She smiled then, and those eyes were brilliant. “Not to you, Kadra, Slayer of Demons. I’ve waited for you.”
“Why?”
“You call me lady, and once I was. Once I was a young girl of rank who took a brave warrior into her heart, and gave him her body in love. He was killed in the Battle of the Singing River.
“It was a great battle against the Bok and the demon tribes who joined them.” Impressed, Kadra tilted her head. She had been weaned on battle stories, and this was the greatest of all. “Many were destroyed on all sides. Many brave warriors perished, as did three slayers. The numbers of Bok were halved, but still Clud escaped and since increased those numbers again to plague our world.
“I watched the battle in my fire, and in the moment my love was struck down, in that moment of grief, I bore a girl child. She who was born to take up a sword as her father had done. She who would be more than those who made her. You are she. You are my blood and flesh and bone. I am she who bore you. I am your mother.”
Kadra retreated one step. Where there had been pity was now anger. “I have no mother.”
“You know I speak true. You have vision enough to see.”
She felt the truth like a burn in the heart, but wanted only to deny it. “Humans who are not slayers keep their young. They tend and guard and protect them even at the risk of death.”
“So it should be.” The woman’s voice thickened with regret. “I could not keep you with me. My duty was here, holding the keys, and yours was your training. I could not give you a mother’s comfort, a mother’s care, or a father’s pride. Parting with you was another death for me.”
“I need no mother,” Kadra said flatly. “Nor father. I am a slayer.”
“Yes. This is your fate, and even I could not turn your life’s wheel away from it. As I cannot turn it now from where you must go, from what you must do.”
“I must hunt.”
“And you will. Our world and another are at stake. I could not keep you then,” she stated. “I cannot keep you now. Though I have never let you go.”
Kadra shook her head. She was accustomed to physical pain, but not to this hurt inside the heart. “The one who bore me was a warrior, as I am. She died at demon claws when I was but a child.”
“Your foster mother. A good and brave warrior. At her side you learned what you needed to learn. When she was taken from you, you learned more. Now, you will learn the rest. I am Rhee.”
“Rhee.” Kadra, fearless in battle, went pale. “Rhee is a legend, a sorceress of unspeakable power. She is closed in a crystal mountain, of her own making, and will free herself when the world has need.”
“Stories and tales, with only some truths.” For the first time, Rhee’s lips curved in a smile lovely in humor. “The green of Tulle is my home. No mountain of glass. You have my magic in you, and it is you who must free herself. There is great need. In this world, and the other.”
“What other?” Kadra snapped. “This is the world. The only world.”
“There are more, countless others. The world from which the demons sprang. Worlds of fire, worlds of ice. And a world not so different from this—yet so different. Sorak has gone to this world, through the portal opened by the glass key. He has gone to plunder and kill, to gather power until he is immortal. He wants your blood, wants your death to avenge his father. More, even more, he wants the power he believes he will
gain by making you his mate.”
“He will not have me, in this world or any. He would have slain his own father in time if I had not destroyed Clud before him.”
“You see the truth. This is vision.”
“This is sense.”
“Whatever you choose to name it,” Rhee said with a wave of her hand. “But a king cannot rule without vanquishing his most feared foe. Or changing her. He will not rest until you are destroyed by death or by his kiss. He goes through the portal to begin his own hunt. With every death from demon hands in that place, another here will die. This is the balance. This is the price.”
“You speak in riddles. I will fetch the healer before I hunt.”
“If you turn away,” Rhee said as Kadra got to her feet, “if you choose the wrong path, all is lost. The world you know, the one you need to know. There is more than one key.” Rhee breathed raggedly as her pain grew, took another clear globe from the folds of her skirt. “And more than one mirror.”
She waved a hand toward the empty hearth. Fire, bright as gold, leaped into the cold shadow.
In it, Kadra saw another jungle. One of silver and black. Mountains . . . No, structures of great height—surely they could not be huts—rivers of black and white that had no current. Over them great armies of people marched. Over them battalions of animals on four round legs raced.
“What is this place?”
“A great village. They call it a city. A place where people live and work, where they eat and sleep. Where they live and die. This is called New York, and it is there you’ll find them. The demons you must stop, and the man who will help you.”
Though fascinated, and just a bit frightened of the images in the flames, Kadra smirked. “I need no man in battle.”
“So you have been taught,” Rhee said with a smile. “Perhaps you needed to believe you needed no one, no man, to become what you have become. Now you will become more. To do so, you will need this man. He is called Doyle, Harper Doyle.”
“What good is a harper to a warrior?” Kadra demanded. “A fine warrior he’ll make with his song and story as sword and shield.”
“He is what you need. You will fail without him. Even with him there is great risk.”
“Why should I believe any of this? Any witch might conjure pictures in a fire. Any woman might spin a tale as easily as thread.”
“The stone in your crown of rank, those in your sword, I gave to you. For strength, for clear vision, for valor, and last, for love. They were my tears when I gave you to your fate. In my eyes you see your own. In your heart, you see the truth. Now we must prepare.”
Kadra set her hand on the hilt of her sword. “I am prepared.”
With a heavy sigh, Rhee got to her feet. She walked to a wooden cupboard, took out a metal box. “Take this.” She offered a bag of stones. “Where you go,” she explained, “they have great value.”
Kadra looked into the bag of shining stones. “Then where I go is a very foolish place.”
“In some ways. In others, fantastic.” Rhee’s expression was soft. “You have much to see. I will give you what knowledge I can, but there are limits. Even for me.” She held out her hands, gripped Kadra’s before Kadra could draw back.
“The rest,” she said, and glinting tears scored down her cheeks, “is up to you, and the man called Doyle.”
A great roar, like rushing water over cliffs, filled Kadra’s head. In it were words, a hundred thousand words, spoken in countless tongues. A pressure, as a boulder laid on her heart, filled her chest.
The light was blinding.
“Valor and strength you have, my child. Use them on this journey wild. But open yourself to vision, to love, before it’s too late. Gather them close and face your fate. Would I could keep you safe with me,” she murmured, and her lips brushed a kiss over Kadra’s. “But once again I set you free.”
The world whirled and spun. The air sucked her in, tumbled her, then spat her rudely out.
2
SPRAWLED in bed, plagued by the mother of all hangovers, the man called Doyle let out a surprised and pained grunt when a half-naked woman dropped on top of him.
He saw eyes of intense and burning green. Eyes, he thought blearily, that he’d been dreaming of moments before he’d awakened with a head the size of Nebraska.
There was an instant of recognition, a strange and intimate knowledge, and with it a bone-deep longing. Then there was nothing but shock.
He had time to blink, a split second to admire what he was certain was a very creative hallucination, before the very sharp and very real point of a dagger pressed against his carotid artery.
“I am Kadra,” the mostly naked and well-armed hallucination stated in a throaty voice as oddly familiar as her eyes. “Slayer of Demons.”
“Okay, that’s really interesting.” If he’d been drunk and stupid enough the night before to bring a crazy woman back to his apartment, and couldn’t even remember heating up the sheets with her, he deserved to get his throat cut.
But it really wasn’t the way he wanted to start the day.
“Would you mind getting that pig-sticker away from my jugular? You’re spoiling a perfectly good hangover.”
Frowning, she sniffed at him, then used her free hand to pull up his top lip and study his teeth. Satisfied, she drew back the dagger, slid it handily into its wrist sheath.
“You are not a demon. You may live.”
“Appreciate it.” Going with instinct rather than sanity, Harper shoved her, snatched at the dagger. The next thing he knew, she’d executed a neat back flip off the bed, landed on her feet beside it. With a very big sword raised over her head.
“You win.” He tossed the dagger aside, held up both hands.
“You yield?”
“Damn right. Why don’t you put that thing down before somebody—especially me—gets hurt? Then we can go call the nice people at the asylum. They’ll come pick you up and take you for a little ride.”
Disgusted that she’d landed on a coward, she shook her head. But she lowered the sword. “Are you the harper called Doyle?”
“I’m Harper Doyle.”
“We have to hunt.”
“Sure, no problem.” Smiling at her, he eased toward the far side of the bed. Whatever that feeling had been when he’d first looked into her eyes, he was sure now he hadn’t been drunk enough, hadn’t been stupid enough to bring her home with him. “Just let me get my hunting gear and we’ll be off.”
Using his body to block her view, he slid open the drawer in the nightstand and drew out his Glock. “Now, put that goddamn sword down, Xena.”
“I am Kadra,” she corrected and studied the object in his hand. “This is a gun.” The name, the purpose of it were floating in her head, in the maze of knowledge Rhee had given her. The fascination for it, this new weapon, made her yearn. “I would like to have one.”
She looked at him, studying his face for the first time, and found herself shocked that it brought her another kind of yearning.
“I was sent to you,” she told him.
“Fine, we’ll get to that. But right now, put the sword down,” he repeated. “I’d really hate to spoil my record and shoot a woman.”
It was more comfortable to study the gun, and her feelings for an interesting weapon. “The missile goes through flesh and bone. It can be very efficient.” She nodded, sent her sword home. “Perhaps you are a warrior. We will talk.”
“Oh, yeah,” Harper agreed. “We’re going to have a very nice chat.”
His head felt as if someone had spent the night attempting a lobotomy with a dull, rusty blade. He could accept that. In a bemused celebration of his thirtieth birthday—how could he be thirty when he’d been eighteen two minutes ago—he’d consumed a tanker truck of alcohol. He’d been entitled to get plastered with a couple of pals. He was entitled to the hangover.
Having a woman—a gorgeous green-eyed Amazon who filled out her