by J. R. Ward
The magnitude of his death made her furious, not just for what she had been cheated out of, but for all of the suffering he had been born into as well.
At the hands of his father.
At the hands of . . . Chalen.
“Yes,” she said grimly to the Shadow. “I remember exactly where your cabin is.”
32
THIS GOES ALL THE way through.”
Ahmare stared straight ahead as Nexi inspected the shoulder wound. They were back at the Shadow’s cabin, with Ahmare seated on one of the rough-cut chairs, her windbreaker and shirt off, nothing but the sports bra, and the wound, and blood that was drying on her skin.
“What the hell were you stabbed with?”
“A chair leg.”
The Shadow eased back. “I thought I got all of Chalen’s guards.”
“It was Duran’s father.”
“Personal attention from the Dhavos,” Nexi muttered bitterly as she opened a medical kit. “You should be honored what with all his other priorities.”
“He has no more priorities. They’re all dead.”
The Shadow stopped with hydrogen peroxide and gauze in her hands. Her face seemed frozen, as if whatever emotions were going through her had paralyzed her.
“What?” she said hoarsely.
“It was the end of days. They’re all dead. I saw the skeletons.”
The Shadow closed her eyes and shook her head. “I tried to tell them. Before I left, I tried to tell them it was all going to come to a bad end. But you cannot feed the truth to people. They have to see it themselves if they’re going to.”
Ahmare nodded because she agreed and because she didn’t trust her voice. The sight of all those skeletons, contorted from their suffering, was one of those images she was never going to forget.
“Put this under your arm and around your back.” When Ahmare just blinked at the towel, Nexi folded it a couple of times and put in place. “Hold this here so I don’t get the peroxide all over everything.”
“Right. Sorry.”
Ahmare did as she had been told, pressing the terry cloth tight and waiting. As her eyes drifted around the cabin, she decided everything about the place should have changed. So great were the things she had gone through, she felt like everything everywhere should be as different as she was on the inside. Instead, the rough furniture and Duran’s trunk and the workbench for maintaining weapons were all just where they had been left.
She focused on that trunk by the bed. Was it still full of Duran’s things? Probably. And “full” was an overstatement, actually. There hadn’t been much left after he’d gotten himself dressed and armed, and she thought about the clothes and personal effects that the congregation had been forced to turn in as they’d joined the cult.
Things, just things. But they were defining in a way that belied their inanimate nature. They were also a reminder, not that she needed it, that neither Duran nor the cult’s followers would ever need their personal effects again.
“Brace yourself. This is going to hurt.”
There was a pause, like Nexi was giving her a chance to prepare. And then the peroxide hit, cool when it was on the top of her shoulder . . . then like liquid fire as it got into the wound. Ahmare hissed and jerked forward.
“Good, now I can do the back—”
“Wait,” Ahmare gritted out. “Gimme a second.”
She felt as though her entire upper body on that side had been doused in gasoline and had a match tossed into the wound. As her vision blurred and she threw a hand out onto the table, a whiskey bottle appeared under her face.
“Take a swig. It’ll help.”
Ahmare was not a drinker, but the pain made her open to any solution. Bringing the neck up to her mouth, she took two pulls—
The coughing was not a help. Nope.
As her eyes watered and her shoulder screamed and her lungs issued evac orders to the Jack Daniel’s that had breached their shores, Nexi sat down, like the Shadow knew it was going to be a while before they could continue with the antiseptic.
When most of the storm had cleared out, Ahmare looked at the other female. “Why did you come for us? And thank you, because I’d be dead now if you hadn’t.”
The Shadow took the bottle and drank like the stuff was lemonade. And if that wasn’t a commentary on the difference between those who taught self-defense and those who’d actually used it, Ahmare didn’t know what was.
Then again . . . she had seen real fighting now, too—and had the battle wound to show for it.
“I kept thinking about what you said,” Nexi murmured. “About you killing that guy and him reaching through the divide of the raids, getting into your past, contaminating it with the stain of his blood.”
Ahmare took the bottle and tried the liquor out again, going more slowly. “Little did I know what was coming next after I left his body behind.”
No doubt some human had found Rollie’s remains by now, but given the crew he ran with? No one would report the death.
“Your story made me think about my own childhood.” The Shadow sat back, her braids falling over her muscled shoulders. “I guess I decided maybe if I came and helped you, maybe you could be the hand that reaches past my divide—only it makes things better. Like, if I saved you, maybe that’ll be the good thing that changes the bad, the opposite of what happened with you.”
Touched, Ahmare whispered, “I owe you my life.”
The Shadow burst up as if she couldn’t bear whatever she was feeling. “Or maybe I slipped and fell in the shower. Got some compassion knocked into me that’s going to dissipate like a concussion as soon as I get you out of my hair.”
Ahmare reached out and took Nexi’s hand. “I’m sorry that you lost him, too. Duran, I mean.”
The Shadow’s eyes flared peridot, and given the sheen that made them glow, it was clear that under that tough exterior, there was a broken heart.
“I didn’t lose him.” Nexi shrugged. “The truth was, he had me. Not the other way around.”
“But it’s a hard death for you. Either way, it’s . . . a hard death.”
“They’re all hard,” Nexi said in a haunted voice. “Even the ones you pray for . . . are hard.”
That was the last thing Ahmare heard.
Before she passed out.
33
ABOUT THREE HOURS BEFORE dawn, Ahmare approached Chalen’s castle alone. She was unsteady on her feet, although that was clearing up now as she measured those stone walls—and at least she had managed to successfully dematerialize at regular intervals from Nexi’s cabin to the conqueror’s property. As she stopped on the far edge of the moat, she found the drawbridge up tight to the entrance, everything battened down as if an attack were expected.
She waited, her hands in her windbreaker’s pockets, her chin up, her shoulder wound bandaged and strapped up under a flak shirt she’d borrowed from Nexi.
The Shadow had insisted that she take her car keys back, and she played with them under cover, running them through her fingers, the sweet chiming sound muffled.
The drawbridge lowered slowly, the clanking of the metal the big-boy magnification of what was happening in her pocket with the keys.
Two guards stepped out. The one on the right indicated the way inside.
She approached slowly, making sure to walk with no hitch in her stride. Her shoulder was a major liability in a fight, and she didn’t want to give away the fact that she was injured if she could avoid it.
Her guns were tucked in under the jacket. If they wanted to pat her down and find them, fine. But last time they hadn’t checked, and she hoped it would be the same now—
She passed right by the guards.
Entering the hearth room, she looked at the table and wanted to vomit. To think Duran had been on it—
“She comes back alone.”
Ahmare looked over to the arch-topped doorway. Chalen was being brought in on his pallet, the four guards supporting his frail weight halting just
inside the hall, their robes settling to the stone floor in folds, turning them into fluted columns.
“Where’s my brother?” Ahmare demanded.
“Where’s my beloved?”
She brought out the pearl, holding it between her fingertips. “I have what you want.”
The decrepit male’s eyes gleamed in his pitted, wrinkled face. “At last!”
“And you know why I come back alone. You know that the mountain has fallen.”
“Yes, I do.” Chalen was momentarily distracted from his gimmes, his cold smile revealing his broken fang. “Your weapon did not survive. Pity, and we shall have to see about that.”
“The hell we will.”
He brushed aside her comment. “Let me have what is mine—let me have it!”
As he reached out with both clawed hands, he was a young after a toy, all greed and anticipation.
She put the pearl back in her pocket. “Where’s my brother?”
Chalen’s eyes narrowed and he eased back on his tufted pillow. “Where is he indeed.”
Something snapped inside of Ahmare. She’d heard of people using that saying before, and now she knew what it meant.
All of a sudden, she was a different person.
She outed one of her guns without a second thought and pointed it at Chalen’s head. Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Bring me my fucking brother right now.”
“Oh, look. She has herself a weapon. I believe I told you not to bring any with you.”
“Too late, motherfucker. Your guards should have patted me down when they had the chance.”
“Yes.” Chalen glared toward the entrance. “They should have.”
“Bring me my brother, I give you the beloved.”
“But what about my weapon.” That smile returned. “You are not returning the weapon I gave you in good working order.”
There was a whirling of metal chains and then a booming that reverberated as the drawbridge was locked up tight against the castle.
“And now, look at this,” he drawled. “You’re stuck inside here and you have no leverage to get yourself out.”
She took the pearl back out. “Watch this.”
Ahmare bent down and put the beloved on the hard stone floor. Then she raised the steel-reinforced tread of her boot and hovered it three inches over the invaluable object.
“You crush that,” Chalen bit out, “and I will kill your brother.”
“Then we have a standoff, don’t we.”
“No, we do not.” Chalen looked toward the shadows around the now-closed entrance. “Guards!”
When there was no rush of males, no obedience, no answer, Ahmare shrugged. “I don’t think they’re coming. Wait—no, I’m sure of that. Sorry.”
As a blood-scented breeze passed by her left ear, she smiled. Nexi had no doubt liked killing those guards. And now the Shadow was moving through the air as molecules, finding another defensible position.
“Guards!” Chalen barked. “Guards!”
“You have only four. For now.”
Ahmare leveled her muzzle and pressed the trigger. The bullet went exactly where she wanted it to, into the lower leg of the front guard on the left. As the male dropped his corner of the pallet, Chalen tipped and started to fall. In a panic, he reached out and caught the edge of the pallet, his fragile body a weight he would not be able to hold for long.
The other three closed ranks, or tried to, and Ahmare picked them off, one by one, dropping them by putting bullets precisely where she needed them, in shoulders. Thighs. A foot of the one who retreated, trying to leave his master behind—
Chalen dematerialized the fuck out of there: In spite of his bad state, the old bastard was able to get himself away.
“Fuck!”
Ahmare grabbed the pearl and ran to the arch-topped doorway by the hearth—but as she did, a huge stone began rolling down, blocking the way deeper into the castle. Pulling an Indiana Jones, she slid under it in the nick of time and popped back up onto her feet.
Torches showed the way forward, but she had no clue where she was going. Her earlier trip to the lower level had not been retained as well as she’d hoped.
Nexi materialized next to her. “I found the stairs. This way.”
They ran together down the stone hallway and took a couple of turns, eventually hitting a set of rough-cut steps that curved around. When they got to the bottom, there were four offshoots, four possible ways to go.
Off in the distance, there was the sound of footfalls. Many. Heavy. Coming at them.
More guards.
Ahmare knew that Chalen had gone to wherever her brother was. And might well be slaughtering Ahlan at this very second. “Damn it—”
A whistle, sharp and urgent, came from the shadows.
She and Nexi trained their guns in that direction.
A guard stepped out of the darkness with both his hands up. With his hood pulled off, his face was showing.
That young face. That red hair.
“You,” Ahmare breathed. “From the forest.”
It was the guard who she had spared from Duran’s wrath, and Ahmare snapped ahold of Nexi’s arm. “I know him. Don’t shoot.”
The guard looked all around, as if to make sure there was nobody other than the three of them. Then he motioned and pointed.
Ahmare glanced at Nexi. “We can trust him.”
“The fuck we can—”
“I saved his life. He owes me.”
The guard stamped his foot and motioned more insistently, his robe flapping. Tightening her grip on Nexi’s arm, Ahmare pulled the Shadow along, and the young male led them over to a grate in the stone wall. Next thing she knew, they were crammed into a crawl space, the metal lattice closed behind them as guards flooded the area from the four corridors, congregating in the torchlight right in front of the hidden passage. Through the holes in the metal weave, Ahmare counted them. Ten. Maybe fifteen.
They were using hand signals, getting a plan.
The young guard tapped her shoulder. Nodded behind himself. And started to shuffle off in that direction.
Ahmare kept her gun out and stayed behind him, squeezing herself through a tight carve out of stone and earth that made her think of Duran’s ductwork.
The young guard stopped abruptly. They had come to another grate and Ahmare pushed her way up to look through its metal links.
It was a dungeon cell, either the one Duran had been in or another just like it, bars welded into the stone floor and ceiling, a steel mesh in place, walls dripping with groundwater, bones on the floor.
There was a male curled up naked in the center of it.
“Ahlan—”
The guard covered her mouth with his hand and shook his head. Putting his forefinger to his lips, he made a shhhh with his mouth, and then reached for the grate, moving his fingertips around its edges as if he were looking for a release.
Ahmare did the same, even though she had no idea what she was going after. All the while, she tried to see whether her brother was breathing: Was his chest inflating at all? Was he dead? His skin was shockingly pale—white, even—
“Bring him to me!”
Chalen’s voice. Off to one side. Out of range.
“I will kill him myself!”
The bars of the cell began to rise up, and guards entered, picking up her brother by the arms and starting to drag him out of view.
No! she thought as she pushed against the grating. No!
As Chalen barked orders, Ahlan came awake in the guards’ holds, his frail body jerking, his head coming up.
“Please . . .” he said hoarsely. “No more . . . no more . . . please . . .”
Ahmare shoved the red-haired male back and got into his position. Like maybe if she tried from this angle, she could accomplish what he could not—and no, she didn’t give a fuck if they were outnumbered. She had a gun. Two. Nexi also had two—
“No!” she shouted.
Her brother started to scream. And Ahmare saw that Chalen was up on his feet, shuffling over, a knife in his hand. Through the tiny holes in the grating, it was a horror movie come to life, her brother thrashing, his bony body flailing.
Ahmare started to pound on the metal lattice, but it was set so solidly into the stone, mounted so well, that there was no noise, just pain on the heels of her fists.
Chalen was laughing now, the sound loud, so loud, so evil. With maniacal eyes, he raised the blade over his head. He had both hands locked on the hilt, as if he needed the extra strength, even though the guards were holding his target still—
The crash came without warning.
From absolutely out of nowhere, the sound of something plowing into the side of the dungeon wall—or was it an explosion?—reminded Ahmare of the detonations in the mountain.
Everything stopped. Chalen. Her brother. Even the guards looked to the sound.
A second impact hit, and that was when the castle’s side started to crumble. In response, Chalen just stood there, frozen, as if he couldn’t believe someone was actually blasting through his fortification.
Except it wasn’t a bomb
It was . . . an old Dodge Ram truck.
And when Ahmare saw who was behind the wheel, she swore her broken heart was playing tricks on her.
“Duran!” she yelled.
34
DURAN DIDN’T HAVE TO hit the brakes on the truck he’d stolen. All of his momentum got eaten up as he broke through into his old cell. Good thing he wore his seat belt, and thank God the airbags were broken.
He was out of that fucking Dodge in a heartbeat, and he left the engine on because he was not staying long.
Chalen’s guards scattered, dropping their fragile, naked payload on the stone floor of the cell, Ahmare’s brother landing in a pile of bones that surely sustained breaks.
Leading with the shotgun that had been so conveniently mounted in the cab, Duran pointed those loaded double barrels at the conqueror.