But he couldn’t find her inner spirit. All he could see was poison, pain and fear. It was as if her soul didn’t exist, or that it was blocked from him. He swore as he felt her energy beginning to fade, and he shoved more ruthlessly at her barriers, desperate to get through.
Nothing.
What’s going on, Ian?
Nothing. It’s fine. Realizing he needed help, Ian pulled away from her and redirected his mind toward the earth beneath them, the ground that his ancestor had been buried in. He reached into the soil, and immediately felt the ripple of power from the males buried in the cemetery, males that had been stripped of life before their time. He connected with the power of his ancestors, and it surged through him, vibrating though him.
He called upon it, bringing it into his body. Energy began to flow through him, like hot sparks crackling through his body. He kept pulling it in, more and more, until his entire body was vibrating from the force of it.
He pulled Catherine tighter against him, opened the connection between them as much as he could, and then thrust the energy into her, attacking the shields that were keeping him out. She jerked against him, and her body bowed from the onslaught of power…and it didn’t work.
The walls were still there. Crap!
Ian. It’s not working. Her voice was fainter now, weighted with the agony of her approaching death.
No! I’ll get this— His weapons suddenly burned his arms, a violent warning of a threat.
Ian instantly cut off his connection to Catherine and called out his weapons as he leapt to his feet. His flanged mace exploded into his hand as he spun toward the male who had attacked Catherine in the bar, who was streaking across the graveyard toward them, moving so fast he was almost a blur. His eyes were glowing green, and his entire body was carrying a faint green glow.
“You don’t get to have her!” Ian hurled his mace as he charged Flynn. The male didn’t even bother to duck. He just let the mace hit him in the chest, tore it out of his body and hurled it aside without even breaking stride.
Son of a bitch. Flynn was even stronger than he’d been in the bar. What the hell was he?
The two males collided with a crash that shook the very earth, and Flynn careened across the graveyard, thrown almost a hundred yards by the force of the impact. Ian went down hard, and he grimaced at the pain as he leapt back to his feet. At least three ribs were cracked, and his shoulder had been dislocated, but as he watched, Flynn rolled onto his side, already recovering.
So, this was war, then.
Ian’s mind quieted, and he went into the calm, focused place of battle. His senses zeroed in on the male struggling to his feet, and he assessed Flynn with the efficient vigilance of a warrior who had been fighting for more than six hundred years. He surged past the male’s bulk and muscle, looked past the crazed energy flowing off him, and ignored the green glow that seemed to obscure him almost to the point that Ian couldn’t see him physically. Ian eliminated all distractions until he could feel the essence of his enemy and was attuned to every twitch of his muscles.
He was ready.
Flynn moved suddenly, leaping to his feet to attack, and Ian responded instantly as Flynn hurled a glowing green disc at him. Ian cut it down with a stroke of his mace as he raced toward Flynn. He swung hard with the mace, and Flynn blocked the first blow with a move faster than Ian had seen on anyone except other Order members.
Another stroke, another blow, and the males were locked in battle, dead even, one man focused and sane, the other so insane with fury and violence. “Stand down,” Ian shouted. “I don’t want to kill you.” Ian had one job: to protect the world from rogue Calydons. This male wasn’t a Calydon, so he wasn’t Ian’s problem—except for the fact he was trying to kill Catherine. “Back off,” he yelled.
But Flynn simply roared a challenge and unleashed another disc. Ian blocked it with his mace. “Sorry, man, but I don’t have time to be nice.” Then he summoned all the energy inside him that he’d harvested from his ancestors, let it ignite his muscles, and then he swung his weapon with more force than he’d ever done in his life.
Flynn dropped to the earth with a thud. For a split second, he didn’t move, then he took a shallow shuddering breath. Alive. Not about to get up and attack again, but alive.
Ian was shocked. Flynn had survived that? What the hell was he—
Ian.
At Catherine’s urgent call Ian whirled around, Flynn’s blood still caked on his mace. She convulsed on the ground beside Augustus’s grave, her body twisting in the final throes of death. “No!” Denial roared through Ian, and the world seemed to descend into a black flaming hell as he threw the mace aside and started running toward her.
Watching her die before him, unable to reach her. Faster. Faster. Faster. He felt like he couldn’t get there, like he was running in quicksand, like he was sinking deeper and deeper in the mire, his feet like clay, sucking him into the depths. “Catherine!” he roared.
Ian. She lifted her hand, a fragile, desperate gesture of farewell.
“No!” He bellowed with fury as he pushed harder, ran faster, his body screaming as he gave it everything he had. “I’m coming!”
Too late. Her voice was faint, so faint in his mind.
“No! Don’t give up!” He finally reached her and fell to his knees beside her, pulling her into his arms. Jesus, her body was ice cold, her lips ashen, her eyes closed. “Catherine,” he gasped. “Don’t. I can heal you—”
I’m not Catherine.
Ian’s entire world froze at her words. What?
My name is Alice Shaw. Catherine is my sister.
Ian felt like the earth had been torn out from under him. But—
I remember you now. You were there when I died.
Which time? Which time was you? Had that woman who’d died at Elijah’s hand, that everyone knew was his soul mate actually been Catherine and not Alice? Was the woman in his arms not his soul mate? Denial roared through him, fierce raw denial. The woman he was holding was his. She had to be. But the woman on the mountain had been his sheva for certain, and there was no mark on Alice’s arm—
A tremor shook Alice’s body, and suddenly nothing mattered but preserving her life. He grabbed her hand, and pressed it to his chest, trying desperately to open the connection between them that would allow him to heal her. Alice. Stay with me—
Too late. Her fingers tightened in his ever so slightly. Her eyelids slitted open, and he saw such pain reflected in them that his heart tore right out of his chest. Find me, Ian. Find me when I come back. You’re my only chance. If I die one more time, it’s over.
Tears burned in his eyes. “Dammit, Alice! Don’t—”
Then she was gone. He felt it the moment her soul left her body. The instant it happened, he was assaulted with the most overwhelming darkness, with pure, raw evil as it dragged Alice’s soul from her body. Son of a bitch. There was no peace for her. She was going to pure, dark hell, and he couldn’t stop it.
Ian roared with agony and hauled her against him, crushing her body against his chest, trying to shield her soul from the hell that was taking her, but she slid away from him, until there was nothing left but the cold, clean air of the night and the body of the woman he was meant to protect.
Despair overwhelmed Ian. The agony of losing her again. The terror of knowing that she was facing something more horrific than he could even imagine. The knowledge that he’d failed to save her.
For the third time, he was unable to protect her.
Or the second? Who had it been that first time? Who was his soul mate?
Alice. It had to be Alice. But she didn’t carry his brand—
Anguish roared through Ian and he surged to his feet, still holding Alice in his arms. He threw his head back, bellowing his loss and his failure to the dark night. Inside his head began the dark chant of the curse, tempting him toward that bottomless chasm from which he would never emerge.
His weapons began to burn in his arms, once a
gain straining to be released. To be used against him.
“No!” He shouted his denial, even as the doom began to circle him. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t succumb. Alice needed him. She was coming back, and this time, he had to keep her alive.
But still the darkness rose within him, stripping away at his sanity, the agony of the loss burning too deep, tearing away at his will. Fighting against the desperation, Ian staggered the few yards across the grave to the headstone of his ancestor.
He fell to his knees on Augustus’s grave, still holding Alice desperately. He stared at the name engraved on the stone, the one he’d visited religiously for so many centuries. No warrior had been as great as Augustus, but the curse had still destroyed him. What chance did Ian have if even Augustus had fallen?
But Augustus hadn’t had Alice to stay alive for.
With a force of will beyond what he’d ever had to exert before, Ian set Alice on the dirt and released her. Her fragile body was so pure and innocent in front of the headstone that marked the life of such a deadly warrior. Ian braced his hands on his thighs, staring into the face of the woman whose spirit was suffering some unimaginable hell somewhere, because he hadn’t managed to keep her alive. Because he hadn’t been able to bond with her.
The enormity of his failure fought to consume him, and Ian’s upper lip raised in a snarl of defiance. “Fuck you,” he said to the curse. “I have a job to do. This isn’t over.”
Slowly, Ian reached for Alice’s arm and lifted it. He pressed his lips to the unmarred skin, then raised her hand to the heavens. “I will not fail you,” he promised. “I swear on my ancestor’s soul that I will stay alive, and I will find you when you come back.”
But even as he said it, despair loomed up inside him, and he felt the raw power of the curse that had consumed the strongest, most powerful warriors again and again and again. Men far stronger than he.
He knew then, that he couldn’t do it on his own. Alice was the force to drive him to his grave, but she was also the only thing strong enough to keep him out of it. With a sharp crack, Ian called out his mace. He angled one of the blades across the hem of Alice’s shirt and then sliced a long strip off it.
Determination and focus pulsing through him, Ian stretched the piece of fabric between his hands. The white fabric was stained with blood from the wound that had killed her, a grim reminder of what would happen if he succumbed to the curse and failed her again.
He couldn’t truly blood bond with her while she was dead, but he was going to do it anyway. He would honor her with the promise of a Calydon to his mate, and create a connection that would hold them together until he could find her again.
Ian sliced the tip of the mace across his forehead. The cut oozed with his lifeblood as he set the strip of fabric across his forehead. He positioned the part with Alice’s blood on his wound and let their blood merge together. There was no magic, no hum of connection the way there would have been in a true blood bond, but it didn’t matter. Their blood was mingled, and it was done.
As he tied the ends of the fabric around his head, he gave her the promise that someday he would offer her for real. In person. The ritual words of the blood bond between a Calydon and his mate. Mine to you. Yours to me. Bonded by blood, by spirit and by soul, we are one. No distance too far, no enemy too powerful, no sacrifice too great. I will always find you. I will always protect you. No matter what the cost. I am yours as you are mine.
Rightness rippled through him, and power flooded him.
Alice was in his soul now, and he was keeping her there.
Ian took one last look at the woman lying on the grave of his ancestor. I will find you, Alice. I give you my word.
He touched the tips of his fingers to the bloodstain on his headband, a salute to both the woman at his feet and the grave that cradled her, and then he turned away, striding across the grass toward his motorcycle.
This time, he would not look back.
This time, he was only looking forward, to the woman he would find before it was too late.
This time, he would triumph.
And he would make her his.
Ian’s full-length novel, Darkness Arisen, will be available late 2012
Sneak Peek: DARKNESS REBORN
(Order of the Blade, Book Five)
(dark & sexy paranormal romance, available late Summer 2012)
Even with his chest heaving from exertion, his weapons burning in his hands, steam rising from his bare torso from the humidity, and the very earth itself ruthlessly torn up from the battle, Kane Santiago wanted more.
He needed more. He needed to keep going until sheer, raw exhaustion clawed at him and dragged him ruthlessly into the sleep that wouldn’t come, until he was so drained that he couldn’t think any more.
Kane had been driving himself relentlessly for eleven days straight, but it hadn’t been enough to chase away the gaping void trying to consume him. It had been coming at him for months, this great pit of hell, stalking him at every moment, but now it felt like his entire soul had been sucked from his body and thrust into a bottomless void of blackness.
He didn’t know what was coming for him or how to stop it. He didn’t have answers. All he had was a scarred body that looked like an artist had used his flesh for a canvas and a knife for a paintbrush.
Kane’s skin looked like ancient designs had been traced into it, but no one on this God-forsaken earth could explain why he had them or what they meant. Kane’s memories of his life began five hundred years ago, the day Dante Sinclair, the Order of the Blade’s former leader, had hauled him out of the gutter. How old had he been that day? Thirty? A hundred? Two hundred? How had he ended up there, covered in body art of the most brutal kind?
He had no idea, but the story carved on his body and the enormity of the blackness overtaking him made it clear that there was shit he needed to know about his prior life, and he was running out of time to do it.
The air in the southern Oregon woods was thick with moisture, rich with the scent of earth saturated by the rain that was too cold for this time of year. Steam was rising off the warm moss, and thick fog was rolling in fast, sucked in by the dance of the heat and cold. The very air Kane was breathing was alive with vibrant energy, and yet all he could feel was the endless freefall of his very soul into the bottomless chasm of darkness.
“These guys were serious shit.” Caked with sweat and blood from the battle, Ryland Samuels crouched beside one of the two rogue Calydons they’d been hunting for the last six hours, deadly bastards that had put up a hell of a fight before Ryland and Kane had taken them down. Usually two-on-two battles were weighted so heavily in favor of the Order of the Blade that they lasted less than a second.
These two rogues had kept Ryland and Kane at max capacity for over two hours before the good guys had won, which was bizarre as hell because the rogues had been so underdeveloped physically that they couldn’t have been more than eighteen. No rookie should ever have been able to put up that kind of battle against elite warriors who had been saving the world for over five hundred years.
Ryland hooked his machete under one of their wrists and raised the dead warrior’s hand. “What’s with the manicure?”
Kane swung his head around to look. Ten-inch claws protruded from the tips of the Calydon’s fingers, still covered in Kane’s blood from when it had tried to cleave his heart out. “Maybe they came up from Hollywood. You know how these fancy Californians are all bailing up to Oregon nowadays. How the hell would I know what his deal is?”
Ryland narrowed his eyes at Kane’s aggression. “You seen it before?”
“No.” Kane shifted restlessly, unable to settle now that the battle was over. He was on edge, his instincts still ready for more action. He knew they needed to figure out what was up with the strangers who had invaded their territory, but he couldn’t focus. All his senses were on overload, telling him that something was deadly wrong. He scanned the woods, hunting for a clue, but came up with nothing.<
br />
Ryland dropped the kid’s wrist. “What’s your deal, Santiago?”
Kane whirled around to face his teammate, his adrenaline leaping at the tense undercurrent in Ryland’s voice. “What?”
Ryland flashed him a grin that didn’t reach his pitch-black eyes. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be on the edge of going rogue, not you. You planning to snap so you’re the next one who has to be cut down to save the world, instead of me?”
“I’m not going rogue.” Most Calydons went rogue only after bonding with their soul mates, but a rare few turned into mindless, killing machines on their own. Expectations were high that Ryland fell into that category, but Kane had his shit together. “I’m fine.”
Ryland rose to his feet, his well-muscled bulk innately aggressive, accented by his black jeans and t-shirt, shredded mercilessly from the fight. “Don’t lie to me, Santiago. There’s no room for that shit between us.”
The brands in Kane’s arms burned, and he fisted his flails, the spiked balls spinning on the ends of the steel chains. The clang of the metal balls cracking against each other jerked his attention to them, making him realize what he’d been about to do. Hell, he was ready to strike first against his own teammate? Kane swore and sheathed his weapons. They vanished into the air, returning to the brands on his arms that were an exact match for the weapons they housed. He held up his hands in surrender. “Stand down. I’m good.”
Ryland raised his brows, and he sheathed his own weapons, taking the temptation away from them both. “Shit, man. You’re off, big time.”
“I—” A sound caught Kane’s attention, and he turned sharply. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” Ryland went still, and the air hummed as both Calydons reached out into the night with their senses.
For a moment, Kane heard nothing but the skitter of rodents’ feet, the hoot of owls, and the crackling of the earth as it drank in the moisture from the night.
Forever in Darkness (novella) (Order of the Blade #4) Page 6