Arrow to the Soul

by Lea Griffith

  She gazed at him and again that feeling of sinking into her pervaded Adam’s mind. Would she watch him as he sank into her heat? Would she take his body as completely as she now tried to take his mind?

  He shook his head, denial swift and brutal. What about Aziveh? Had his heart given up on her totally? No, he affirmed silently. Never. But his body was an entirely different matter, a fickle beast. Still he watched the amber-eyed woman before him and knew lust as he’d never known it—became acquainted with the texture and flavor of it. The scent of need rising from her skin permeated his pores. His cock hardened and he was disgusted with himself.

  Killer, his mind whispered.

  Want, demanded his body.

  “Oh, I think you do, Mr. Collins, but make no mistake. As I stand here, Blade and Bone are searching for him, and they will find him. He is ours.”

  Her attestation rang through the shadowed room. Adam believed she meant what she said. But she would not find the child.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked again.

  “Yes.”

  Adam opened the door, intentionally brushing against her in the process. But it was a double-edged sword, the tip of which branded him. “This way then,” he said, and walked out the door.

  Arrow followed him. Every muscle in his body rebelled at having a killer at his back. He could smell her and he hated himself—hated her. He’d sworn to Aziveh he’d return for her. That had been four years ago, yet each time he’d returned he’d been unable to find her. But he would, goddamn it. He would.

  The smell of food wafted from the kitchen, blessedly drowning out the scent of plum blossoms. Carmelita had her hands full feeding the children and the men of Trident, but she did an amazing job with the task.

  “How many people live here?” Arrow asked, the melodic tones of her voice rasped across Adam’s insides, drawing his body tight.

  Goddamn it.

  “Enough,” came the answer from table situated within the nook of the big bay window.

  Arrow snorted. “Oh, an answer within an answer. Goody! Riddles are my very favorite thing in the whole world.”

  “I see Bullet and Blade didn’t corner the market on being a smart-ass. Joseph must give amazing lessons,” Ken said from the head of the table.

  Adam sat at the opposite end. Arrow remained standing, body relaxed, thumb and forefinger of her right hand rubbing together. He’d seen her do that many times. Perhaps that was her tell.

  She glanced at Ken dismissively and something in Adam eased. For some reason he didn’t like when her gaze met another’s. He rejected the reason for that, letting the thought fade away.

  “You’d be amazed at the lessons Joseph gave, Mr. Nodachi. You wouldn’t have survived them, but you’d have been astounded right before the breath left your body the final time.” She laughed and the sound was beautiful, tinkling.

  Wrapped up in the tones of humor was enough pain for a thousand lifetimes. Ancient. He rubbed his chest before he could check the action. Ken saw him and raised an eyebrow. Adam flipped him off.

  “Arrow was there that day in Shanghai,” he dropped into the silence left by her laugh. He poured her a glass of tea and slid it across the table.

  “Was she now? So Blade wasn’t the only one? Interesting,” Ken said.

  Arrow didn’t comment on what he’d said. “I prefer my tea hot,” she directed to Adam with a grimace.

  “You need the sugar, drink up,” he ordered. She glared at him, but to his amazement she sat down at the table, directly between him and Ken, with her back to the door. What kind of discipline did that take? Did she fear nothing?

  She lifted the glass, her long, delicate fingers at odds with her profession, more suited to a piano player. Her gaze met his and she proceeded to down the contents of the glass.

  She coughed afterward and winced. “That’s awful.”

  Carmelita placed a bowl of beef stew before her and Arrow’s hands clenched as the woman stepped close. She was like a feral cat, all sleek lines and wide eyes. Wild. Beautiful.

  He berated himself for noticing. It fucking pissed him off. Try as he might, Aziveh’s face, her voice, everything that visited him in his dreams was fading under the sudden and virulent obsession with this death-bringer.

  “Es guiso. Usted necesita comer, hijo,” Carmelita said, her Spanish lyrical.

  Arrow looked up into the old woman’s face, her gaze iced gold. “I know it’s stew, old woman. And I am not your child,” she bit out.

  Carmelita began to hum and Arrow stood to her feet, outrage in every line of her body. She picked up the knife at the side of the bowl and began to back away slowly. “Tú estabas allí?”

  Alarm moved through Adam. Her Spanish was flawless, but why was she asking if Carmelita had been there? Been where? He stood, stepping closer to Carmelita in the event Arrow attacked. The assassin vibrated with fury.

  Arrow cocked her head, lowering the butter knife, thumb and forefinger of the opposite hand rubbing against each other. “You hum, old woman. Who are you?”

  “No-nobody,” Carmelita said in broken English. “Am nobody.”

  Arrow stepped closer and Adam tensed. But Carmelita didn’t seem worried.

  “Your name, old woman. I would have it.”

  “Carmelita, hijo.”

  Arrow looked at Adam then, her brow wrinkled, confusion wrinkling her nose. “Where does she come from?”

  “She’s from Mexico,” Bullet said into the tension, her voice quiet, cajoling. “Put the knife down Arrow. She’s not Joseph’s.”

  Arrow didn’t blink. “You are sure, Bullet? She hums.”

  “I am sure. The babies taught her the song. She hums to them now as Juana did before.”

  Between one blink of Adam’s eyes and the next, the apprehension eased from Arrow’s face and shoulders. She sat back down at the table and began to eat in measured bites that spoke of hunger and caution. Wild. Feral.

  Carmelita’s face didn’t show confusion, but pity was there around the lines of her eyes and in the shaking hand she reached toward Arrow. “Do not, old woman. Do not ever touch me,” Arrow growled.

  Carmelita nodded, wiped her hands on her apron, and went back to what she’d been doing before. The tension remained heavy in the air but slightly less so now. Ken missed nothing, cataloging responses, searching for weakness, Adam was sure. He’d been doing the same thing. Bullet sat across from Arrow and Adam wondered where Rand was. Not that it mattered, if anyone were in danger it was he and Ken. Bullet and Arrow individually would be a handful. Together? Probably unstoppable.

  Arrow wiped her mouth and reached for the glass Adam refilled. She drained it and pinned Bullet with her gaze. “The babies are okay?”

  Bullet stared back, unwavering. Adam admired the woman’s courage. “Trident saved them,” Bullet informed her.

  “How many?”

  Adam struggled to hear Arrow now.

  “Ten.” In Bullet’s voice was loss and pain. “The rest remain in Arequipa.”

  “Phina is no more. Joseph killed her for failing to eliminate you. She returned and he broke her. Her mind went first, then her body. She’s in the bone yard now, beside Jesuit. Blade and I buried them with the others.”

  A single tear tracked down Bullet’s face. “Who took their lives?”

  “Minton,” Arrow whispered. Her face went blank, expression wiped clean as she stared at Bullet. “They are safe now. We do what we have to do to survive, Bullet. Sometimes the only recourse left is revenge.”

  “We can only kill them once, Arrow. It won’t be enough to avenge the ones they’ve taken.”

  “But it will prevent him from taking more.” Arrow nodded as if agreeing with herself or coming to some internal decision. Her nostrils flared and she finally unclenched her left hand. Adam took a deep breath. Her pain affected him in ways he didn’t want to consider.

  “Trident needs us, Arrow,” Bullet said softly.

  Arrow drew in a deep breath, the action pushing
her pert breasts against the black cotton of her T-shirt. It made Adam uncomfortable that he noticed.

  “They need us, Bullet? Please,” she scoffed. “We will be tools with them much as we were with Joseph. I will not be used again. My motivations differ from Trident’s.”

  Bullet shook her head and stubbornness gave her chin a mulish cast. “They are the same. Eliminate The Collective. That is what they want, what we want.”

  Arrow slammed her hands on the table and stood to her feet, leaning over the table as her fingers attempted to dig into the hard wood. “I am sick of hearing that! I want chi, Bullet. I want Joseph Bombardier’s blood running in rivulets down my throat, over my body. I want to bathe in it as I watch the life drain from his eyes. They want him dead, rotting in hell. I want to carry his soul there and deposit it for the Oni to feast on forever.” She rose up to her full height, her golden gaze touching on each person at the table to finally rest on Bullet. “So no, sister, Trident does not want what I want. Ultimately, they do not want what you, me, Blade, and Bone want. They want him dead. We want him to suffer.”

  She turned then and walked to the doorway, back straight, body wound tight. Her words sank into his brain, grabbed hold, and shredded a part of his heart. How she suffered under Bombardier. How they all suffered and continued to do so. Killers but still women vulnerable to the fears of simple survival, the fears that brought them all together.

  “Saya,” Adam called, unsure what his next words would mean to her.

  She stopped and he was surprised for a moment.

  “You are more than revenge.”

  If possible, she stiffened even more and shook her head.

  “You are wrong again, Mr. Collins. Revenge is what I live for. I think you seek to see something that is not there. I am like a braided rope—good and bad intertwined. But where you would picture the good as something pure and altruistic, I picture it in shades of red and black, the colors of vengeance. I can hear your mind even now questioning—if the settling of scores is good, what is bad?” She paused and fear settled in Adam’s gut. “Bad would be failure to achieve revenge on my enemies. Like the rope, I have been woven with purpose—avenge the ones I failed. And like braided rope I am strong.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him then and his breath froze in his chest.

  “I am stronger than your hope that I might be a good person, Mr. Collins, stronger than your preconceived ideas of right and wrong. There is no good in me anymore. There never was. If I ever prayed at all, I would pray you remember this. It may kill you should you forget.”

  She walked out of the room and Adam stood.

  “Leave her for now, Adam,” Bullet said softly. “She believes what she says. You will not change her mind.”

  “What will, Bullet? Who will?” he asked, wincing at the guttural nature of his voice.

  “It’s the truth I don’t know. She has always been lost. Never broken, but lost. I would warn you, Adam, should you think to draw her to you, change her mind, she will hurt you. Though she never means to, it is who she is, truly what she feels she was born to do. Were we not sisters, my betrayal would have brought her arrow to my throat. But the bond we forged long ago prevents her from harming me. Beware, Adam, that you don’t feel the prick of her arrow’s head.”

  Adam shook his head. Bullet’s words combined with Arrow’s warning had fury pumping through his blood. It was a taste in his mouth, a craving in his gut.

  He would fight her. Knew it would happen again and again. His hands tightened into fists, and he ruefully acknowledged they’d been doing that a lot over the past few weeks. Yes, he would fight her, as many times as it took.

  And by God, he would fucking win.

  Chapter Six

  Arrow concentrated on the Wing Chun dummy and aimed her strikes for the head and torso. She’d bruise from this exercise, but the presence of the training piece piqued her need to release energy. And the dummy couldn’t cheat by sticking her with a tranquilizer.

  Adam Collins’ face floated behind Arrow’s closed eyes and she breathed through her rage. The other emotion he stirred in her she silenced with an elbow strike between the arm slats of the dummy, hoping the pain of her elbow connecting with the wood would center her.

  It didn’t. Sweat poured off her and her arms moved faster, palms striking, knuckles contacting the wood more viciously. Bleed, she thought. Bleed and the pain will be purged.

  It wasn’t working and now her hands were numbing. If she couldn’t feel the pain, she would be lost.

  “Stop it, Saya!”

  Now she was hearing his voice. She ceased her frantic fight with the inanimate wooden dummy and hung her head.

  “Why do you do this?”

  She blew out a heavy breath and raised her head. He stood in front of her, behind the dummy, his black eyes narrowed, confusion a mask over his features.

  “Pain centers me,” she said, and glanced at her split knuckles.

  “Pain is a distraction,” he responded.

  “Kokoro no oni ga mi wo séméru,” she whispered.

  “I don’t speak Japanese.”

  She laughed. It was an ugly sound in the stillness of the room. “You should learn. It’s a beautiful language.”

  “What does it mean?” he asked, throwing her a towel.

  She caught it and wiped her face. “What does what mean?”

  He grunted. “What you said. What does it mean?”

  “The body is tortured only by the demon of the heart.”

  “You’re possessed then?”

  She stared at him, shaking her head. “That would require a soul. And I have none, remember?”

  He nodded and sat down on a workout bench. “Ah yes, the ever present lack of a soul. That would definitely rule you out to demonic possession. So tell me why you would beat a wooden dummy to death.”

  She cocked her head. “Because you weren’t available?”

  He snorted and the smile cracking his solemn face was beautiful. It took her breath and she wished she’d never opened her eyes.

  “I didn’t think your mean ass had a sense of humor,” he said.

  “I can laugh, Mr. Collins,” she responded without heat. She did laugh, frequently, if for no other reason than to remember the mechanics so she could duplicate them when necessary.

  She could smell him. Citrus and cedar, the blend suited him though she detected no cologne and assumed it was his natural scent. Did the smell grow stronger when he was aroused?

  “What has your mind right now?”

  His gaze was piercing and she realized she was staring at him.

  “You.” She would have winced, decided it was a wasted effort.

  Truth was the only pure virtue she’d been blessed with. Better she utilize it because time flowed endlessly, and each of them only had so much of it until death found them.

  Adam stood then and walked to her. It was only a few feet, but he prowled much like a panther, his grace inherent and making her long for the texture of his skin beneath her palms, the feel of the muscles gliding under his bronze flesh.

  “What about me?”

  He didn’t touch her. He didn’t have to. His presence commanded her body in that moment. Her breath hurried in and out of her lungs, pumping her blood furiously through her veins and bringing a flush to her cheeks. Were her eyes bright with the moisture her mind refused to shed?

  She wanted him. And it fucking hurt. Never had Saya wanted so badly. And he was within her reach. Yet he would shun her because she was nothing more than Arrow. Please, let him shun her. A killer, he’d said and it was truth.

  “What about me?” he asked again, and his voice was velvet stroking along her unsettled nerves.

  She stepped back, retreat the better part of valor. He could have her and it wasn’t okay. It could never be okay. She must right this ship, calm the waters of her writhing tranquility.

  “Tell me about Aziveh,” she whispered.

  His face hardened in a split
second, turning dark in his fury.

  Her arrow met its mark. Her heart sighed while her mind rejoiced. It was a small victory in the face of a looming defeat. She’d live another day then.

  “You speak her name; obviously you know what she is to me.”

  Oh, his voice was horrible. Gone was the lovely cajoling depth of it, replaced with bottomless menace and hate.

  “But I don’t know who Aziveh is.”

  Yes, she did. She was the Afghani woman Adam Collins had given his heart to. Then she’d been married off to an elderly tribal leader and lost to him.

  “Don’t say her name,” he growled.

  She nodded. “There is power in a name.”

  “It has nothing to do with power and everything to do with her beautiful name coming from the mouth of a murderer.”

  His words scored her and she wondered why she was so weak with this man. She’d never shied from pain, hadn’t been lying when she’d told him it centered her. But this hurt was more than others—it was different. He’d drawn blood with his scorn.

  Arrow stepped around him and threw the towel to the floor, wrapping her hair once again in a knot atop her head. She ignored the red stains on the towel, made a blade with her hand, and placed just her fingertips against the wood of the dummy. She concentrated with all of her might, pain and truth roiling in her gut, and she aimed her thoughts at the Wing Chun dummy. Power was infinite and as long as your mind was strong enough to control its flow, you could wield it and strike, killing whatever stood in your path.

  Arrow did so then, her gaze narrowing as if a target lay beyond her yumi, only this time there was no ya to send flying. This time, her weapon was her fist. Her shoulder relaxed and her breathing slowed. The power prowled under her skin like a snake about to strike and then she did. Between one breath and the next, she poured that power through her body, let it center in her arm, and with the speed of a cobra, fisted her hand, striking the dummy. Over and over she settled her fingertips against the smooth wood only to let the power flow through her right fist to strike the inanimate object. She closed her eyes, opened herself up to the pain focusing on each blow.