Stop! José‘s fury exploded through her, and she lost her contact with the plants.
“No, no, no!” She scrambled up the riverbank, and dropped to her knees in front of the plants, laying her hands on the leaves. “Come on, come on,” she begged. She tried to think of Zach again, but José was all over the place in her mind and emotions. She could hear his voice. See his eyes. Feel his cold, dark will entangled with hers.
You don’t get space from me, anymore. You are mine, Rhiannon. All mine.
Tears burned in her eyes as she enfolded one of the leaves between her palms, struggling to free herself from José‘s cold grasp on her mind. She focused on Zach, imagining his kiss. Recalling the sensation of feeling his skin against hers. That magical moment when he’d made love to her—
I do admit, I think it’s hot as hell that you were able to best me. I knew you were worthy of being my mate. A rumble of satisfaction rippled through her, jerking her focus away from Zach. You have proved yourself worthy, Rhiannon. It is time for us to create a son, and my new legacy.
A son? She froze, horrified by his words. He’d killed her daughter, and now he wanted her to bear him a child for him to twist into his depraved world? Never. She couldn’t let that happen! Frantic, she renewed her efforts with the plant, but then, as she watched, the leaf turned brown and crumbled through her fingers.
What? She’d killed it?
José‘s poisonous spirit pulsed through her. That will happen every time from now on. You will slowly kill your precious jungle each time you try to connect with it. Finish your cleansing and return to my side. I am waiting. He pushed at her to get back in the river, and this time she fought it.
She dug her fingers into the earth and bent her head, straining with every last bit of her strength to resist. She thought of Zach. She thought of her daughter. She thought of the son she would doom to a life of hell if she were unable to resist José. She even thought of Jordyn, who possessed the emotional strength to kill her own soul mate. She pictured the banners of her tribe drifting in the trees. She tried everything she could to ground herself in her own identity, but all she could think about was getting in that river.
“No!” She bent her head, fighting as hard as she could, but it was no use. She lurched to her feet, swaying as she fought it. She felt José push again, and she turned obediently toward the water and walked toward it.
When she reached the shore, she found herself reaching for her shirt to take it off. Dammit, no! She was not going to get naked!
And, just like it had for ten years, her mental resistance failed. Within moments, her clothes were in a pile on the shore, and she was walking naked into the river to rid herself of every last remnant of her time with Zach.
Chapter 20
The attack by José‘s Calydons was fast, brutal, and unstoppable. They surged upon him from all sides, attacking with merciless efficiency as Zach stumbled. But as he went down to his knees and felt their blades slice his flesh, all he could think about was the fate that he delivered Rhiannon to. If he died, there would be no one to save her.
Fuck. That.
“No!” He lurched to his feet but fell again, barely even feeling the pain as his attackers blades cut him. Fine. Who needed to stand? He swung with violent, ruthless efficiency from his knees, refusing to die, refusing to give up. One assailant fell after another, but each time, another Calydon took his place, fresh and ready, opening yet another wound in Zach’s body. The ground was soon damp, saturated with the blood of his assailants, as well his own blood, which he really needed in his body and not spewed out over the earth.
Weakness pervaded his body, until he couldn’t even think. All he could do was fight on instinct, willing the strength for one more strike, and another, but he knew he was losing.
He always hated losing, but this time it was unacceptable. “Rhiannon!” He surged to his feet, then gasped in pain as a blade sunk into the back of his leg. This time, as he fell, he knew that there was no respite. He rolled onto his back, using his feet as weapons as he swung with his sai, reduced to fighting defensively and trying to protect his throat. It was hard as hell to kill him as an Order member, but taking off his head would do it. If they decapitated him, it was over.
Someone hit hard, and his sai flew out of his hand. Swearing, he called it back. It streaked toward him just as two of the warriors brought down their swords, slicing through the air toward his neck.
He tried to roll to the side, but it was too late. The blades hit simultaneously and—
The warriors both screamed and flew backwards. Their swords clattered to the ground as they fell. Within moments, all his assailants were shouting and scrambling away from him. Trying to suck in his breath, Zach rolled onto his side as his sai flew back into his hand. He lurched to his feet, staggering for balance as he took in the scene.
Rohan’s team was surging down the sides of the pit, their swords flashing as they took on José‘s warriors. Blue electricity crackled through the air, and the rogues lit up like lightning with each strike of Rohan’s team. The six warriors were evenly matched against the forty attacking Zach, and it was a stalemate of vicious violence, with no one paying any attention to him.
He was so out of there. “Rhiannon! I’m coming!” Zach didn’t hesitate. He bolted for the rim of the pit and scrambled up the side of it. He didn’t even feel the pain from all his gashes, and fresh energy galvanized him. He hauled himself over the edge, then a blade crashed into his skull.
He went numb and started to slide back into the pit, when there was a loud boom. His assailant flew backwards, careening into the pit, as a woman in jeans and a hot pink tank top came out of the bushes carrying a bazooka.
What the hell? He must have been hit harder than he thought. Hallucinations were not a good sign. With a fierce grunt, he hauled himself back over the edge and rolled onto his knees, struggling to stand up.
“You’re Zach?” The woman, who was apparently real, hurried over and helped him to his feet, which he found seriously damaging to his ego. “The one who everyone thinks can stop José?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed his head, trying to stop the jungle from spinning. Behind him, in the pit, raged the sounds of battle, but he didn’t bother to turn around. He needed to go after her…but then he stumbled and went down to his knees. Swearing, he tried to stand and fell again. Of all the times for his body to give in to a few battle wounds, this was not it. “Come on!” He fought to stand, and wound up on his hands and knees, gasping for breath as fluid began to fill his lungs.
“I’m Jordyn, Rhiannon’s’ friend. Do you know where she is?” The woman knelt beside him, her face frantic.
“You know Rhiannon?” His vision was blurring, but he tried to focus on her.
Jordyn grabbed his shoulders. “You’ve met her! Where is she?”
“José got her.” Zach lunged to his feet again, and this time managed to stay vertical. “I gotta go. He took her and threw away her amulet.” He had just taken another step, when there was a sizzling display of blue electricity ahead and then Rohan burst out of the jungle. Because that was what he needed right now, right? Another battle with a pig-headed seer who had betrayed his leader? “Get out of my way.”
Rohan glanced toward the scrum in the pit, then turned his head toward Zach, as if inspecting him. “You need to heal.”
Oh, yeah, that was just precious. “Heal? Really? You think I should lie down and take a little nap while some piece of shit has my woman and Thano gets eaten alive by that black webbing? I don’t think so.”
Rohan strode over to him, and set his hands on his shoulders. “Merge with me, Zachary.”
“No way.” He didn’t trust Rohan. He flipped the man’s hands off his shoulders. “Get off me—”
“Wait!” Jordyn rushed over to them. “Let him help you. Rhiannon needs you!”
Grinding his jaw, Zach shook his head. “If I merge with him, he can control me. I don’t trust him.”
“Well, then,
trust me.” Jordyn hoisted the bazooka onto her shoulders again and aimed it at Rohan. “If he messes with you, I’ll take him down. Rhiannon needs you.”
Zach stared at her. “Are you insane?”
“No, but you’re the guy who can help her.” She smiled, a cheerful grin that was completely out of place in the blood-soaked jungle they were in. “It was in your eyes when you said José had her. She matters to you, and that’s enough for me. You’re the guy she needs, so I’m on your side. If Rohan thinks you can kick José‘s ass, then you probably can, because I’ve already figured out that Rohan’s a bit of an arrogant jerk, but he’s a smart warrior. So, since you can save Rhiannon, and you want to, I’m all over this thing between you guys.” She pointed the gun at Zach. “So, if you don’t let him help you, I’ll shoot you just because I’m pissed.” She then swung the gun toward Rohan. “And if you mess with Zach and keep him from saving my friend, I’ll shoot you, but that will be to free Zach. Plus, I’ll be pissed. So, you guys in or what? Because I need to shoot someone soon.”
Zach looked back and forth between the gun-toting chick and the moody seer who had betrayed his leader. Trust them? Not a chance.
But even as he thought it, his legs gave out. He sank to his belly in the dirt, not even able to support himself. He turned his head to get his face out of the dirt, not amused by the smug grin on Jordyn’s face. So, yeah, okay, maybe he needed to examine his options in a different light, given how limited his alternatives were and the fact that Thano and Rhiannon were counting on him. Maybe he should categorize his choices a different way: so, the question was actually, should he go it alone on legs that weren’t actually capable of holding his weight, or try giving his trust to a woman who could blow a Calydon to hell and a warrior who was the most powerful seer Zach had ever met? Yeah, okay, when he put it that way… “Okay.” He wasted no time. He simply dropped his mental shields and opened himself to the one man on the earth that he would never have thought he’d trust again.
Then again, he’d never thought the life of a woman he loved would hang in the balance either. Oh…had he really just thought that? A woman he loved? He had no time to recant his thoughts before Rohan’s energy surged into his brain and took over his mind.
Zach gripped his head against the pain that shot through his skull. His skin sparked with blue electricity, leaping from his fingertips to the ground. He bent over, unable to hold himself still under the onslaught of energy. It wasn’t simply healing energy. It was as if an entire millennium’s worth of life force had been thrust into him so violently it felt like it would rip his flesh from his bones. He gritted his jaw, fighting back the howl of agony, fighting desperately to hold onto his corporeal form and not be shredded by the onslaught.
“What are you doing to him?” Jordyn shouted. “Don’t kill him!”
“If he dies, then that’s what he has earned,” snapped Rohan.
Zach’s eyes rolled back in his head, and his mind began to blacken. Still the onslaught continued, plunging all the way into his organs, ripping through the damage, ruthlessly attacking the injuries with energy so strong that it hurt as much as it healed.
“Let him go or I’ll shoot you!” Jordyn yelled. “Stop it— Oomph!”
“He has to do it that way,” Eric shouted as he grabbed Jordyn’s gun and wrenched it out of her hands, ignoring her screech of protest. “Zach’s too badly hurt! Let Rohan heal him!”
Healing? Was that what this shit was? Because it felt like death by electrocution.
Zach raised his head and looked at Rohan, then sucked in his breath at what he saw. For the first time in his life, he could see Rohan’s face. Beneath the hood, his face shone with blue light, showing high, skeletal cheekbones, haunted black eyes, and a brutal scar that seemed to bisect the right side of his head. A heavy beard covered his jaw, and a gold skull hung from his right ear. He was creepy as hell, but at the same time, he was clearly a man, a man who could be hurt badly enough to scar.
His eyes met Zach’s, and suddenly Zach was flooded with a feeling of anguish and loss so deep that it stripped all hope from him. He realized he was caught in Rohan’s emotions, a suffocating mire of grief and despair, an echoing emptiness that never ended, that stripped all that was good and living from Zach. His lungs constricted, and he couldn’t breathe, gasping for breath under the weight of the doom flooding from Rohan.
Then, just as suddenly, it cut off. Rohan withdrew his energy, and with that, took back the emotional weight he carried. Sudden strength flooded Zach’s body, and he knew without looking that his wounds were healed. Yet, for a moment, he didn’t move. He simply stared into the face of the man he’d never looked upon in the flesh even though they’d known each other for hundreds of years. The weight of Rohan’s suffering was so great that he could still feel it crushing his soul. “What the hell happened to you, Rohan? How do you live with that?”
A faint smile curved the warrior’s lips, an expression so human that Zach almost couldn’t believe it. “We all do what we must, Zachary.” Then the blue light faded, and Rohan’s face descended into impenetrable darkness again.
But Zach would never forget that glimpse of the man he’d hated and distrusted for so long. There was more to Rohan than what he knew. Something deeper to his suffering. Something that he had hidden from everyone all this time, a burden that he carried silently on his own.
“Wow.” Jordyn’s voice jerked him back to the present. “That was super impressive.”
Zach leapt to his feet, his senses clear and vivid, as powerful as they’d ever been. He could hear every sound of the forest, even the whisper of insect wings and the slither of a snake in the distance. Jordyn had apparently wrested the bazooka back from Eric and was now aiming it at Rohan. Eric was standing between the gun and his leader, using his body as a shield to protect him. Eric was not wearing his cloak, and Zach was pretty sure that his brands were in a slightly different place than the last time he’d seen him. What the hell?
Not that he cared. All that mattered was finding Rhiannon—
Rohan caught his arms. “Retrieve the staff, Zach. Not the girl. The staff.”
Zach pulled his arm free. “I know—”
“No, you don’t.” Rohan’s fingers tightened around Zach’s arm. “José is the only one who can power the staff. If you kill him, the power of the staff dies. Thano will die. You cannot kill him.”
Zach stared at him in disbelief. “What?” He was no fool. He’d seen José. There was no way he could be allowed to live if Rhiannon was going to escape, and he also knew that there was no way he was going to get José to run through the jungle zapping rogue Calydons with his staff upon request.
“Yeah, what?” Jordyn appeared at his elbow. “You can’t keep José alive. He’ll kill Rhiannon. Don’t you understand?”
Rohan met his gaze. “My teammate must live.”
“So must my friend,” Jordyn snapped, in an imitation of Rohan’s overly proper speech that would have been funny if the pile of shit they were in wasn’t so deep.
“Not today.” Before she could react, Rohan reached out and touched her gun. Blue electricity sparked through it. She yelped and dropped it. It crashed to the ground, and shattered into a thousand pieces, fragmented by Rohan’s power.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, falling to her knees. “How could you do that? That was the only way to stop him! Don’t you understand how powerful he is?” She lurched to her feet, her fists balled. “You’re such a bastard! All you care about is your stupid prize. You honored me because I killed Walter, but he would never have honored you.” Her voice dripped with disgust. “Men suck,” she snapped.
Eric walked quietly up behind her, and touched her shoulder. She whirled on him, and then her body relaxed when she saw it was Eric. As Eric’s fingers tightened on Jordyn’s shoulder, he looked over at Zach. He gave one silent nod, and that was all Zach needed to know. No matter what Rohan decreed, Eric had his back, and he knew he was going to need it.
For ten minutes, he ran blindly, leaping through the jungle. He couldn’t sense her at all, but he was going on instinct, following the path that his gut told him to follow. But still, he couldn’t pick up any trace of her. What if he was going the wrong way? Swearing, he finally stopped. He went down on one knee and thrust his hands into the earth. His fingers closed around a vine clinging to the dirt, and he gently pulsed energy into it. “Tell me where she is,” he whispered. “Tell me.”
There was no response from the vegetation. He couldn’t channel her connection to the plants. He ran his hand through his hair, wiping away sweat. “Rhiannon,” he bellowed. “Where are you?”
The only response was the pulsating sounds of the jungle.
He looked down at his arms, at the runes etched into his flesh that blocked the sheva connection. He remembered when Dante had carved his own, similar wards from his body so he could bond with his sheva. Zach hesitated. What if Rhiannon was his sheva? The moment the thought went through his head, he knew she was. The connection between them was too intense, his need for her too overwhelming.
She was destined to be his.
Intense rightness surged over him, and possessiveness raged. Rhiannon was his woman. He knew it in every fiber of his being. It didn’t matter that she was José‘s sheva, because she was also his, and his connection with her would triumph because it was mutual. He studied the runes, adrenaline racing through him as his mind subconsciously tracked each passing minute that Rhiannon was under José‘s control. What if he could connect with her by taking down his safeguards? They’d made love, which would satisfy one of the stages of the sheva bond. They’d shared their darkest secrets, which would satisfy another. They’d done enough that the bond would have begun. He might be able to reach her telepathically!
Darkness Possessed (Order of the Blade) Page 24