Nothing was behind her except a sliding glass door to a bedroom suite, and a potted palm wafting in the gentle breeze. José wasn’t there. But she couldn’t shed the sudden chill slithering down her spine, like invisible fingers stroking her as a prelude to a sudden attack.
“Well, hello, there,” Philip said, jerking her attention back to him. He grinned, his steel gray eyes sliding over her body with a heated appraisal that made nausea turn in her stomach. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, “but you’re mine now.”
You’re mine now. The hated words ripped through the terror consuming her, jerking her out of her stupor. “I am not!” She lunged for him, moving faster than he could begin to conceive. His eyes widened in shock as she tore the gun out of his hand and leapt into the water. In one swift move, she straddled him and lodged her dagger against his throat.
Neither of them moved as the sound of the gun clanking against the patio below drifted up to them. The water in the designer pool sloshed over the edges, spilling across the tile. She could feel the warmth of the water through her leather pants, like a hot caress against her skin. “Let’s just get one thing completely clear between us,” she said, her voice low with threat. “I belong to no one.”
She could feel the muscles in his sides against her calves, and she had to fight not to pull away from the sensation of a man’s body against hers. Really, Rhiannon? After five years, she still couldn’t bear the inadvertent touch of a naked man? He was her prisoner, not an assailant. Dammit. She was not going to wimp out here! Gritting her teeth and summoning her resolve, she shoved aside her fear. Instead, she narrowed her eyes and let him see her intention. She was not the victim. Not anymore.
But he didn’t shrink in fear. He just grinned with the cocky arrogance of a man who had no clue exactly how powerful a woman could be. “You’re here to kill me? I don’t think so.”
His dismissiveness of her strength made her hesitate, then anger rushed through her, fury at herself for letting his comment affect her self-confidence, even if it was only for a split second. Yes, against some she was impotent, but not against this worthless man. “It doesn’t matter what you think,” she snarled, unable to keep old emotions from embittering her voice. “It only matters what I think. And quite frankly, I think that I can kill you pretty easily.” Which was true. He was a human, after all. See? Start small. Kick some human butt. Develop the self-confidence to tackle immortal fire-wielding warrior. A fine plan, she was pretty sure.
Not taking her gaze off him, she raised her left hand toward the lawn and asked for help. There was a low rumble as if the earth itself was stretching, and then a wind blew across the balcony. His eyes flicked to the left, and then widened.
She couldn’t keep the grin of pure delight off her face as the lawn came to life. How good did it feel to connect with the plants again? It had been so long! The grass was undulating, blowing violently in the wind. The trees were bucking under the onslaught, and even the bushes were screaming with fury. With a loud roar, the vines that were decorating his patio tore from their trellises and raced up the same path that she’d climbed only moments before.
Philip screamed as the plants erupted over his balcony and swept themselves around him in a violent assault, trapping him.
With a loud hissing, they began to pull him down into the churning water.
“Stop it! Jesus! Let me go!” Philip was fighting violently, shouting for help, but she knew any assistance he summoned would come too late.
With pleased satisfaction, she watched him sliding down into the water. Reality faded, and for a moment, she no longer saw the pompous, close-shaven face of a hedge fund trader. She saw only the dark and gritty face of the man who had claimed her so long ago. It was José who was being dragged to his death beneath the water. As she watched, something hardened inside her. Her soul went numb, and she became the cold, hard warrior she had been trained to be, the one she’d had to call upon to survive her years in captivity.
Some part of her, the part of her that used to be humane, twisted and turned in resistance, rebelling against the fact that she was about to kill a man in cold blood. But empathy was so far gone from her that she felt nothing as she watched his chin sink into the water. “You beat your wife,” she said softly. “You’re the bad guy.”
His eyes widened. “Is that what this is about? Jesus. I’ll never touch her again, I swear. I love her! I will never touch her again!”
She closed her eyes at his screamed promise. His terror of impending death scraped across her bones. She felt his desperation, and she knew that this man who had lived his life never feeling fear, was terrified. He had heard her. He would live in terror of her forever, and that terror would deliver change. It had worked. She had to stop.
But she didn’t want to stop. She wanted to destroy him, like how she’d wanted to destroy the man who she hadn’t been able to kill. The man who had kept her captive and—
No. She couldn’t think about that. Her past was over. This man was all that mattered.
She gazed down at him as his mouth and nose slipped below the surface of the water, his eyes begging for the mercy he’d never shown his own wife. She narrowed her eyes, a bitter hardness clenching around her heart as she watched him suffering…scared…trapped…his own wants and needs meaningless…feeling every emotion that he’d made his own wife suffer for so long.
“How does it feel?” she whispered, crouching lower, so her face was next to his, her chin brushing the surface of the water. “How does it feel to have no control over your body or your wants? To be at the mercy of someone who doesn’t care one bit about you? How does it feel?”
His eyes widened, and she saw in them something else, a fear of who she was as a person, a realization that he was at the mercy of someone so messed up that there was no chance for humanity ever to prevail.
It was how she had felt for so long, how she had looked at the man who had done the same thing to her. Dammit. She wasn’t José. She wasn’t like that.
She had to stop.
With an agonizing effort, she wrenched her hand down and released the plants. They fell silent at once, and the vines went limp around him, floating harmlessly in the pool, as if they were an artistic element designed to create a magical atmosphere.
He jerked upright, sitting up so his face was out of the water, sucking in oxygen with such desperation that she felt her own lungs burn with the ache she remembered too well. Red lines streaked his body, marks from where the vines had gripped him so tightly. “Who the fuck are you?”
She lowered herself further into her crouch, taking over his personal space, the dagger still against his throat. Her feet were still on either side of his hips, which brought her crotch just above his naked pelvis in an intimate position that made her want to leap up and run away. But she had to make sure his wife was safe. She had to make sure he understood.
“I protect women,” she said in a low voice, letting him see the deadly intention in her eyes, just as she used to do back when she was a kid, and she’d been protecting her jungle. “I know when they need me, and I will come. You don’t get two chances. Never hurt her again. Not with your hands. Not with your voice. Not with your actions.” God, there were so many ways for a man to hurt a woman, especially his wife or any woman that was bound to him in that way. “Do you understand? Give her a large bank account with her own money so that she can leave whenever she wants. Give her the freedom to make her choice.” That was the only thing that mattered. Freedom to make her choice. That was the gift she could give his wife.
Philip nodded. “Okay. I swear I’ll do it.”
Rhiannon leaned even closer to him. She caught a whiff of his aftershave, and something clenched in her belly when she realized that he smelled good. Dear God. How could she think a man smelled appealing? Fear struck her hard as she realized she was still vulnerable, that a man could still get to her. If this man, with whom she had no connection, who was complete scum, could make her notice his
aftershave, then what about—?
No. No. No. José was dead. Dead. He wasn’t coming for her. It was over. Over. But her breath became shallow, and she had to fight to keep herself from running…because she could never be certain that her ex-husband was actually dead.
Her hand started to shake from fear she couldn’t suppress, and she knew she had to leave before she fell apart. She felt her connection to the plants fizzle away, and they retreated back to their places of rest as if she’d never called them. She knew she wouldn’t be able to call them again, not with the panic and fear hammering through her.
“Don’t make me come back. Because I will.” Somehow she managed to keep her voice steady, despite the panic starting to grip her, despite her growing terror that she was in danger, that she couldn’t keep herself safe anymore, that José was hunting her and would find her.
No! She couldn’t think like that! She had to make Philip think she was still the woman who had almost murdered him with a snap of her fingers, and not let him see that she was nothing more than a pathetic, damaged woman who knew how to do nothing but run and hide anymore.
“I won’t.” He nodded, and his gaze flickered nervously to the vines creeping back across the lawn to where they belonged. A few leaves floated in the water, brushing up against his knee. “What are you?”
She realized he’d changed his question. No longer was he asking “who” she was, but rather, “what” she was, as if she were some freak who wasn’t even a person. As if she wasn’t even a woman anymore, as if her years with José had somehow robbed her of all that made her who she was. She shook her head, startled by the tears suddenly burning the back of her eyes. “I hunt bad men, and I will be back.” Then, before she could fall apart, she tore herself away from him. She vaulted over the railing, landed on the patio two floors below, and sprinted across the yard.
She scaled the fence, dropped onto the sidewalk beyond, and then ran through the shadows and into the night.
She tried. She really tried. She thought of ice cream. She sang her favorite song. She pictured the adorable face of a Labrador puppy with its floppy ears. She even envisioned unleashing a contingent of mutant ninjas onto the jungle to track down José while she sat on a tropical beach enjoying a sunny, perfect alibi. In desperation, she even tried to remember what it felt like to put on a pair of pants that used to be too small, but now fit. She thought of everything good she could possibly manufacture, but in the end, nothing worked.
She didn’t even make it two blocks before the tears won.
Chapter 2
The air was oppressive and blazing hot, as if a thick sludge of humidity was crushing the earth. The moisture clung to Zach Roderick’s flesh, suffocating him. Tall trees stretched endlessly up toward the sky, their bare trunks a stark contrast from their plush canopies. Streaks of sunlight filtered through the branches, like dust-filled beams fighting to survive the darkness of the jungle floor.
Relentless, almost violent buzzing pounded at his head, and huge, black insects circled around him, hunting him. Wild calls of tropical birds and grunts of hidden animals echoed around him, nearly concealing the rasping sound of a massive snake sliding through the branches. Zach could smell the oppressive stench of a river, but the foliage was so dense he could see no more than a few yards in any direction. It was a place of wildness and untamed danger. Even the ground was so thick and moist, Zach felt like it could suck him right into the earth in one ruthless move. The weapons branded on his arms burned and vibrated, ready for him to call them out and use them to protect against the danger he could sense in the air.
He clenched his fists, unwilling to arm himself with his three-pronged sai until he knew it was time to fight. Too many brutal lessons had stripped him of his desire to strike a lethal blow unless he had no other option. Unfortunately, in his line of work, he didn’t get his first choice very often. As a member of the Order of the Blade, an elite group of Calydon warriors tasked with the mission to protect innocents from Calydons who had gone rogue, his job required him to cut down men who had once been sane, some of whom had once been his friend or teammate. Sometimes, he’d even been responsible for killing the women who had driven them to such insanity.
He hated it all, but he saw no other alternative for what he needed to accomplish.
Right now, he wasn’t on duty to hunt rogue Calydons. His only job was to find a way to save the life of his teammate, Thano Savakis, and that’s why he was here in this jungle, swatting at bugs and prostrating himself to a team of Calydons he knew he couldn’t trust.
Moments ago, his team had been in a wooded forest in southern Washington, fighting for their lives against deadly beasts outside the entrance to the nether-realm, the doomed, deadly realm that bred creatures worse than demons. They’d been fighting side-by-side with a group of unknown Order members, led by Rohan, a powerful warrior Zach knew from many centuries ago, a Calydon he didn’t trust for one minute. Rohan had not appeared to recognize him, but Zach didn’t believe it, which had made him even more suspicious of the situation.
Shit had gone down, and Thano had gone rogue, descending into the maddening hell that stalked every Calydon at every moment. It was a hell from which there was no recovery, to which the only answer was to slaughter the male before he could kill too many others. No rogue had ever reclaimed sanity in a thousand years. To go rogue meant the complete destruction of one’s humanity, and the utter, irreversible capitulation of one’s soul to pure, merciless evil.
And yet, Rohan and his crew had claimed they could save Thano. Zach and his team had allowed them to take action—which had resulted in Rohan’s crew almost killing Thano. He was alive now, but unconscious, trapped in the thrall of the magic that Rohan and his team had used against him. Even unconscious, he was still consumed by the deadly insanity that stripped him of all humanity, the curse of going rogue.
Rohan had said they would take Thano to heal him, and Zach had followed when they’d begun to vanish into thin air. There was no chance he was leaving Thano’s life in the hands of the man who had betrayed his own leader so many centuries ago.
And now, it appeared that Rohan had taken them to a tropical jungle, one that Zach had never been to, and he wasn’t liking it one damn bit. With his instincts screaming in warning, Zach moved closer to the massive black stallion on which his unconscious teammate was strapped. He readied himself in a protective stance as Apollo and Thano finished materializing, shimmering as they completed the transformation from incorporeal to living flesh. Their grounding was barely complete when four other Calydon warriors appeared out of thin air.
A split second later, as if he’d delayed his appearance to arrive last, the leader of this other Order materialized. Rohan shimmered into flesh, his hooded cloak obscuring his face, while the dark brands of swords almost glowed on his skin. He was taller and broader than the others on his team, pulsating with energy that seemed to ripple outward from him and coat the atmosphere with magic…the kind of magic that would slither into a man’s bedroll while he was sleeping and strangle the life from his soul without ever awakening him.
The five Order members dominated the clearing with their bulk and strength, and Zach’s weapons burned even more fiercely in his arms. Usually, one against five were odds that didn’t make him blink an eye, but these warriors were Order, like him, which meant they were as powerful as he was. He couldn’t afford to fight them, not with Thano’s life at stake, and not when he was stranded in some remote jungle, a world where Zach had no foothold, no teammates to back him up, and no idea what was going on.
Zach studied Rohan, the mysterious warrior whose face was hidden behind his hood, just as it had been so many centuries ago when Zach had known him briefly. He’d thought Rohan was long dead, and he’d figured the world was a better place for that fact.
But he was alive, and as ominous as he’d ever been. “Where are we?” he asked.
Rohan turned his head toward him, his face nothing but a black shadow beneath t
he hood. “We’re in a jungle.”
Zach didn’t bother to look up at the thick canopy of trees dripping with moss and vines. “I can see that. Where are we?” He repeated the question, unwilling to let the other warrior duck his interrogation. “South America?”
Rohan shook his head in refusal, shutting down Zach’s request for information. “We need to make camp before dark. Fortify our defenses.” He nodded at his team, who silently disappeared into the woods, ostensibly to set up camp.
Rohan began to move toward Thano, but Zach stepped in his path to block him. “No one touches Thano except me.”
Rohan snarled, and a blue light crackled from his fingertips.
“Don’t even think about it.” Zach immediately called out his weapons. With a crack and a flash of black light, the sai that were branded onto his forearms leapt into reality, exploding into his hand. He pointed the blade at Rohan’s throat, and the older Calydon went still.
“Put it away,” Rohan commanded.
“What the fuck did you do to Dante?” The question burst out before Zach had even realized he was thinking it, but the moment he asked it, he knew he wanted an answer about what had gone down between Rohan and the leader of Zach’s Order, Dante Sinclair.
Many centuries ago, Zach, Rohan, and Dante had been a team. Led by Dante, they had resurrected the Order of the Blade, reassembling the only force in existence strong enough to slay Calydons who had succumbed to the demon blood that ran hot in their veins, men who had once been good, and now were destined to destroy all that was worthy and deserving in their lives. Back then, Zach had left the team briefly for personal reasons, because he’d met—
The image of the raven-haired woman he’d loved flashed into his mind. Grief and anger flooded him so violently that he didn’t have time to block it, and his knees almost buckled at the assault of emotions, at the anguish and guilt that was as raw as the day that it had all happened. He gripped his sai, fighting desperately to regain control of his thoughts, to shove aside the visceral self-loathing and terror that flooded his body, and the sense of failure that had almost destroyed him completely.
Darkness Possessed (Order of the Blade) Page 2