Darkness Possessed (Order of the Blade)

by Stephanie Rowe

  Zach had loved. Zach had been loved. It could really exist. Not every man was bad. Not every union between a man and woman was destructive.

  It gave her hope. Hope that life could be more than what she’d been living. Hope that maybe there were things in life that healed instead of hurt. Zach was a Calydon, and yet he was different. He was a good man, and he was on her side. She realized she was whistling, and grinned.

  “You liberate me,” she said, as she glanced over her shoulder at her escort. Zach was only a yard behind her, staying as close as he had for the last hour. He was carrying one of his sai, and his head was turning in constant surveillance of their surroundings.

  He caught her glance, and his gaze narrowed. “Do I?”

  Wow. He sounded annoyed. Apparently, being lauded as a psychological inspiration wasn’t on his list of feel-good activities. Okay…time for a subject change. “So, we’re heading to a place where my tribe stores weapons. There should be a good supply there to help us.” As she said it, a spark of excitement leapt through her. Yes, her tribe had abandoned her, but she was still so excited to reach their cache. What if someone she knew was there? What if she saw a friend? They were far from her tribe’s home base, but it would still feel so good to connect with them. She’d hated them for years. She’d felt betrayed by being sent off to capture José, and then being left there for a decade, without anyone trying to rescue her.

  But now that she was back, the thought of seeing her tribe was so exciting that suddenly, she didn’t care anymore about the past. They were her family, her roots, and the most important thing in her life. Who was she kidding, that they could have rescued her? It would have been a suicide mission. It was so obvious now, but for years, she’d been so bitter that no one had come to save her, that they’d left her to such a horrible fate.

  “Weapons?” He picked up his speed until he was walking next to her. “What weapons work against this guy? He’s a Calydon, right? Talk to me about him. What do you know?” His voice was clipped and intense, all business.

  She shrugged. “Yes, he’s a Calydon. His weapon is a scythe, but he doesn’t fight with it much. He usually uses fire. He’s an amazing warrior.”

  Zach shoved aside a branch blocking his path. “Tell me about the fire.”

  “He can generate flames. He can throw fireballs. He can ignite something a hundred yards away with just the flick of his finger,” she said. An etching on a tree trunk caught her eye, and she stopped. Her heart leapt when she saw the double arrow carved into the tree. “Oh, my God,” she whispered, placing her palm over the mark. “This is my tribe’s mark. Someone was here.” Tears suddenly filled her eyes for the loss of the family she’d once had. Why hadn’t she seen any of them on her flight out of the jungle? God, she was so close to home, the home she’d left so many years ago.

  She realized suddenly that Zach was studying her intensely. Embarrassed, she wiped the tears off her cheeks. She couldn’t afford to be a weak female right now. She had to be the warrior she was trained to be, or José would defeat her, even with Zach on her side. “I’m allergic to this tree,” she muttered. “It always makes my eyes water.” She spun away, hurrying with renewed energy toward the cache. “Fire doesn’t burn José,” she said. “Sometimes he sets himself on fire and walks around, burning up anything he touches just for fun.”

  Zach didn’t seem surprised by the information that José could set himself on fire. “Does water work on him?”

  “A little won’t do anything, but if you completely submerge him in a deep enough body of water that he can’t burn off in time, yes, it’ll shut him down.” She noticed a well-worn path beneath her feet. It was so overgrown she hadn’t noticed it before, but now she saw it. It was the trail of her people. She was on it! Excited now, she broke into a run, barely even noticing the branches slashing across her face.

  Zach loped easily beside her, using his sai to cut them a path as they ran. “You don’t happen to have an ocean with you, do you?”

  She glanced over at him. “No. You?”

  “Forgot it. So, we’ll just have to fight him.” He sounded thoughtful, not overly concerned.

  “We can’t just fight him,” she said. “We need the weapons in my tribe’s cache—” They burst out of the trees into the clearing, and she gasped, falling to her knees in shock at the sight. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

  She’d found her tribe. Every last one of them.

  Or what was left of them.

  Chapter 11

  For a moment, Zach thought it was a festival of kites. More than a hundred white flags were hanging from branches high overhead, fluttering in the wind. On each flag were ancient symbols he didn’t recognize, in different colors. Some had dozens of markings, most had several, and there were a couple that had only a single mark. On the ground in the center of the clearing, was a pile of white rocks, constructed into a pyramid with three red arrows jammed in the top of it, apparently straight through a rock.

  Blue and yellow paint was streaked across the forest floor in frantic, random patterns, splattered across trees, and drifting on the surface of a small pond off to the left. Clearly, some sort of ritual or festival had gone on here. “What is it?”

  Rhiannon didn’t answer. She was on her knees, her fingers digging into the dirt as she stared up at the flags. He realized that there were tears streaming down her cheeks, and her face was white with shock.

  His adrenaline kicked in, and he instantly called out his other sai in a crack and a flash of black light. “What is it?” This time, the question was different. This time, the question was tight and hard, laced with adrenaline. “What’s wrong?”

  “The banners,” she whispered. “Each time one of our tribe dies, we hang a tapestry that details the events of her life. We honor her with a ritual that protects her soul in the afterlife. After we hang the banners, we use arrows to protect her soul. If she dies in battle, we bury her on site in honor of her sacrifice.” She stared up at the trees. “This isn’t our burial ground,” she whispered. “This is new. These are new graves.”

  A cold prickle began to slide down Zach’s spine. “So, every flag represents a tribe member who died on this spot?”

  “Yes.” She stared up again at the flags. “So many,” she whispered, her voice thick with tears she was fighting to hold back.

  There was a sea of flags, but there were only three arrows. Someone hadn’t been able to finish the rituals. He was willing to bet that the last survivors had been struck down as they tried to honor the fallen. “How many people were alive in your tribe the last time you saw them?”

  “Just over a hundred,” she whispered.

  Together, they stared up at the fluttering white flags above them. Well over a hundred of them. No words needed to be said. They had all been here, and they were all gone. Given Rhiannon’s skills, he was willing to bet she came from a tribe of highly skilled warriors, ones who were well versed in the jungle and its dangers. And yet, they had been utterly wiped out. “Who would hunt them like that?”

  She looked over at him. “José,” she said softly. “My tribe had been in this jungle for a thousand years. We were the protectors of the jungle from any enemy. When José came in, he was more than we could stop. So many died trying to defeat him that we retreated. He was wiping us out. There was a prophecy that one could stop him, that one girl would be his downfall.” She held out her hand and pointed to a seven-pointed black star on her palm. “The tribe thought this mark meant it was supposed to be me. I was sent to stop him when I was sixteen. I failed. And now they’re all dead.” Her voice broke as she stared again at the banners, then she sucked in her breath as she stumbled to her feet. “Oh, my God.”

  “What?”

  “That one’s mine.” She pointed to one with a few green symbols on it. “That’s my life story. It stops when I was sixteen.” She looked at him. “They must have thought I died right after I left the tribe. There’s nothing after that.” She shook her head. “No
wonder they didn’t come. They thought I was dead.” She stumbled to her feet. “I have to finish the ritual. I need arrows. I need to free them.”

  A prickle trickled down Zach’s spine as she stepped forward into the clearing. “No!” He grabbed her arm and pulled her back.

  “No!” She tried to twist out of his grasp. “Let me go!”

  “Why is your banner here? You didn’t die here. Wouldn’t yours have been hung in your tribe’s burial ground since they don’t know where you died?”

  She went still, staring at him. Then she spun around, searching the trees. He became aware of an eerie silence in the jungle. “There are no animals around us,” he said quietly. “No insects. Everything has left this area.”

  Her hand went straight to her dagger, just as he would have expected from a warrior. “It’s a trap,” she said quietly. “For me. José knew I would go out there to finish the ritual.”

  “You think he didn’t really kill everyone? That they aren’t dead?”

  “No, he definitely did.” She shook her head. “Those are our banners. Someone in my tribe made them. I would bet that everyone did die here, and then José found mine and moved it here.” She closed her eyes. “That means that he knows where our home is. Was.” She looked at him, with heavy grief in her eyes. “If he found our home and was able to steal my banner, then there’s nothing left of it. No one was left to defend it.” She bit her lip, as if to contain emotions she didn’t want to feel.

  She looked up into the trees surrounding them, and he followed suit, searching for something out of place, like a sniper perched on a branch, a net ready to drop on them, or any other kind of trap.

  He saw nothing out of the ordinary that was cause for alarm. “You see anything?”

  She shook her head, still searching, just as he was. “He would want to trap me, not kill me,” she said quietly. “He would want to detain me until he could get here.”

  He ground his jaw, trying to decide what to do. A part of him wanted to trigger the trap and get a sense of how powerful this fire god was. But he wasn’t completely without a functioning brain. It was a fool’s move to walk into a trap and have no idea what it would be. “We skip it. We go around.”

  “No.” She pointed to the center of the clearing, just to the right of the pyramid of stones. “The weapons cache is in the ground out there. We need the weapons that are in there. Without them, we have no chance.”

  He shook his head. “No. Not worth it.”

  Rhiannon glared at him. “I understand that you have no clue how powerful José is, but I do. If you want to save Thano, then you better listen to me. We need those weapons, or else José is going to kick your ass, and you’re going to die. And if you die, then Thano dies. So, stop being an overly macho jerk and listen to me. We need those weapons!”

  Zach ground his jaw, but finally he inclined his head in agreement. “Fine. We’ll get the weapons.” He leveled his sai at her. “That was uncool to play the Thano card, though.”

  She used the tip of her index finger to point the sai away from her, almost managing to keep the smugness out of her smile. Almost. “Men are so easy to manipulate,” she said. “All you guys want is to be the hero.”

  “On that one you’re wrong.” Zach eyed the clearing, trying to assess the best, most unpredictable way to access the cache. “Fuck heroes. I’m so done with that shit.” He realized he hadn’t kept the bitterness out of his voice when she shot him a surprised look. “A hero is a dumb shit who will betray those who count on him,” he said, before she could ask. “Fuck heroes. Just fuck ‘em. I tried to be a hero once, and my family died for it, so don’t pull that card on me. Stay here. I’m going to get the damn weapons.” Before she could protest, he gripped his sai and walked straight out into the clearing.

  He made it almost all the way to the pyramid when all hell broke loose.

  ***

  He heard it before he saw it.

  An almost silent crackle and spark, barely audible. His skin prickled, and sudden heat plowed through his stomach, searing his flesh from the inside. It took a split second for him to register what he was feeling, because it had been so long since he’d felt it. Fire from within.

  Then he felt a sudden pressure beneath his feet, as a massive amount of energy surged through the earth. No, the fire wasn’t from within. It was coming from below. The air suddenly became empty and barren, a complete void so dry that his lungs burned in protest. Jesus. There was no oxygen in the air. Holy crap. He knew what that meant. He used to make that happen. Fire was sucking oxygen out of the atmosphere. It had to be a massive fire to drain the air like that. Massive.

  He was so shocked that for a split second, he couldn’t move. It was as if he had been catapulted into the past, into a world that had once been his. It felt like his soul was lunging for what was coming for him. Every part of his body screamed for release, his need so strong that his cells felt like they were already on fire. Yes—

  “I can’t breathe,” Rhiannon gasped from right behind him.

  Her gasp jerked him from his stupor. “Fire’s coming!” He spun around, scooped her up in his arms in one swift move, and bolted for the trees. The earth was searing hot, burning through the soles of his boots, and the air was utterly dead. The noise began to crescendo around him, a screaming, roaring fury as if they were already surrounded by flames.

  But they weren’t. Not yet. Where the fuck was the fire? He knew it was going to explode at any second, and it was going to rip the hell out of them. Rhiannon was gasping in his arms, her hands clutching her throat as she tried to suck oxygen out of the air that had been robbed by the fire.

  And then he saw it.

  Ahead of him, a faint golden light glowed beneath the earth, forming a ring all the way around the circumference of the clearing. Shit! The fire was coming up from beneath the earth! He put on a burst of speed and leapt into the air just as the flames exploded out of the ground, shooting straight up toward the sky in a fiery inferno. He tucked Rhiannon’s head against his chest, using his body to shield her as the flames exploded past them. For a split second, they were trapped in the flames, surrounded on all sides, and then his momentum carried them through it.

  He landed twenty feet past the flames, hitting the ground hard. Rhiannon spilled from his arms. She screamed, slamming her hands down on the flames licking away at her pants. He lunged for her, tackled her, and then threw himself on top of her, using his body to try to smother the fire.

  The flames burned against his flesh, and it hurt like hell. Swearing, he wrapped himself around her, cradled her head, and rolled them both across the jungle floor, whipping them in a frenzied logroll across the earth. As he rolled, he tried to pull the flames into his own body and steal them from hers and from their clothes. It should have been easy and automatic to absorb the fire into his own body, but he couldn’t do it. It was as if the flames were no longer a part of who he was. “Shit!” He whipped them into a faster roll, slamming them across roots and rocks until finally he could detect no more fire.

  He rolled another few yards just to be sure, and then finally stopped. For a moment, neither of them moved. Rhiannon’s arms were around him, her face was buried in his neck, and their legs were tangled together. He had one hand behind her head to protect it, and the other arm was locked around her waist.

  They were both panting, and he could feel her chest heaving against his as she sucked in air. He lifted his head, and they looked at each other. Then, as one, they both turned to look toward the clearing.

  The ring of flames reached at least two hundred feet into the sky. It was an impenetrable wall of fire, a prison from which she never would have escaped. The flames were orange, red, blue, and white. So hot, so fierce, so impressive. A flicker of envy went through him at the sheer magnificence of what José had created, but it was instantly chased away by the grim reality of what they were facing.

  “No weapons for us,” Rhiannon said. “We’ll never get in there.”


  “No.” Not only did they not have the cache of weapons she’d been so certain that they needed, but now Zach fully understood what they were up against. No weapons would defeat José, no weapons short of the fire that he commanded.

  Even in his heyday, Zach wouldn’t have been able to produce what José had created without even being present. Yeah, Zach had to admit he’d been pretty good. He’d been the kind of warrior who could erect a wall of fire strong enough to deflect a volcano, turn himself into a fireball, and use his fire to defeat Rohan. Not only had he been able to generate fire from within himself, but he’d been able to walk through a wall of fire for days and never so much as singe an eyebrow. Those skills weren’t enough to defeat José, but at least he might have had a chance.

  Over the last few centuries, he’d been aware that his fire capacity had been diminishing, but he hadn’t really believed it was truly gone. He’d assumed it was just because he didn’t want to use it, and that it was still there for him if he needed it, until the last few days when it had completely disappeared.

  In that split second before the flames had erupted, he’d felt something inside him, something hot, something like the man he had once been. For that second, he’d had hope. He’d thought that facing death was going to bring it back to life.

  But it hadn’t.

  Once he had been a fire warrior.

  Now? He looked down at his arm, and saw that his flesh was blackened and disfigured, burned to a crisp from the fire.

  Now, he was nothing more than a man who would burn.

  They were in trouble.

  Rhiannon moved in his arms. “José will see that fire,” she said suddenly. “He’ll be on his way here. We need to get out of here.” She pulled out of his arms, and leapt to her feet. “We need to go.”