Arrow to the Soul

by Lea Griffith

  “Do not kill Wang, Arrow, he can tell us so much.”

  It sounded like Adam Collins. But that was not true. Her ears never betrayed her but maybe her time in this black had broken more than her mind.

  “Do you hear that, Wang?” she asked softly.

  He began to sob again, legs moving restlessly, lost to his pain as much as his eye was lost to his head.

  “That is death,” she whispered. “Coming for you, its footsteps loud…it is death.”

  “No, Arrow, don’t kill Wang,” the voice said again.

  She looked up then, seeing a big man haloed in the weak light at the door to her cell. But she couldn’t hear him over death’s footsteps. She cocked her head, tightened her hands on Wang’s head, and smiled.

  “He. Is,” she wrenched Lei Wang’s head. “Mine.”

  Death rushed in loud and snapping like the bones of Lei Wang’s neck. Arrow hung her head. Another soul escorted to hell. She got up then and moved the corner and waited for the voice to come closer. She was lost, a part of her recognizing she would not make it out of here alive. Then the light shined bright and she saw who spoke to her.

  “Come to me, Saya,” he said to her.

  She cocked her head, seeing but not believing. Her mind was fractured. It was not Adam Collins. He had left. He was safe. Please let him be safe.

  “Come to me,” he demanded.

  She took a single step and then he was there, lifting her, and carrying her out of the cell into the light. Such beautiful light.

  “She’s hurt,” he said, as he placed her on her feet. She looked up at him wondering who he was talking about.

  “You’re safe.” It was the only thing she could force past her throat.

  He stared at her and she closed her eyes against the black of his. So much darkness. “I’m safe,” he said. Long moments passed. “The truth comes in whether or not, once we leave, we return. I came back for you, Saya.”

  She had heard those words before. Had spoken those words before. To him. “I am broken,” she whispered, opening her eyes to stare at him.

  “Never broken.”

  She saw people moving in the periphery, heard the words syringe and she attacked. A shot to a head with her fist, a kick to a knee with her foot and then she was being held down. “Please do not take me back to the dark…please,” she begged.

  Someone sobbed like a baby. The sound of the cries made the death inside Arrow need release…

  The truth hit her like a body blow—she was the one crying.

  “Hush, Arrow. Look at me,” Adam demanded.

  He lifted her hand to his face and met her gaze. His eyes were black. Why did they not frighten her? “I cannot go back to the darkness.”

  “I’m here. I won’t let you. But you’re hurt. Let me ease your pain.”

  She nodded. “No tranqs. Let me stay in the light.”

  His eyes closed, his brows lowered, and he hissed in a breath. Then he nodded and pulled her closer to his body. “No tranqs.”

  She held onto his words. She focused on his face because he had become her gravity’s center. As the Jeep he’d placed her in drove down through the Jundu Mountain, she kept her eyes open on him, watching the light caress the planes of his face. His eyes never left hers and in that was solace.

  “Rest, Arrow,” he murmured.

  She nodded and finally rested her head on his chest.

  •●•

  Adam wanted to scream his rage to the heavens. Her eyes were filled with golden tears, her mind filled with precarious traps, and he wondered if she’d recover from this.

  “How is she?” Dmitry asked from the front seat.

  “Alive,” Adam said through clenched teeth.

  “I’ve got to check her eventually, Adam,” Dmitry said.

  “Not now.”

  Dmitry turned around and faced forward. Rand was driving and met Adam’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Rand wanted to wait until dark to return for her. Adam had nearly gone mad waiting two days. He’d been a mess of his own. A concussion from a pretty fucking severe beating at the hands of Wang’s men, multiple lacerations and bruises and bruised ribs had put him down for a full day.

  Then he’d woken and demanded to know where she was.

  Bullet had been there and her eyes said it all. Saya had been left behind.

  He’d demanded Dmitry wrap his ribs, and then he’d begun planning. Bullet demanded to be included. Rand shut her out. What was between Rand and his woman was between them, but Adam could be nothing but grateful for her presence. Had she and her sisters not been there when Joseph had arrived at Wang’s home, he would have died and Saya would have had no chance at survival. Bullet assured him Wang wouldn’t kill Arrow because Joseph would return the favor, slowly, painfully.

  But he would turn her over first chance he got and Adam’s need to reach her had gone from urgent to DEFCON 1.

  Her breathing was shallow, shock probably. She’d taken punishment at the hands of Wang’s personal guard. No broken bones that could be seen, but it was her mind that Adam worried about. She was bruised from head to toe, and there were cuts all over her body, but her face when he’d walked into that cell?

  She might have broken.

  She twisted away from him and pressed her face against the glass, fingers meshing to the window as if trying to become one with it. The sun was setting and the tension riding her shoulders told him.

  He reached up and turned on the back seat light. She turned to him, eyes blank, face slack.

  “I have killed many,” she said in a strong voice.

  He nodded but said nothing. He felt the attention of both Dmitry and Rand.

  “I will kill many more. Do you know why I don’t like to kill in the darkness, Mr. Collins?”

  He shook his head this time afraid if he spoke she’d break apart.

  “Because where the people I kill go, it is nothing but blackness. To take a life in the dark brings me closer to hell. So I kill in the light. But today, I killed in the dark, and I can feel my own life straining to leave my body. Do you know what that feels like?”

  Her voice was desperate and his body ached to wrap around hers. But he remained silent.

  “It feels like the end.”

  Adam grabbed her and pressed his mouth to her cold one. She didn’t resist. She didn’t react at all. So Adam licked across her cracked lips, offering himself to her in that moment the only way he knew how. Her mouth finally softened under his and he pulled away, holding her face in his hands, thumbs brushing over her cheeks, reveling in the fact that she was alive.

  Because he’d thought her beyond him and he’d almost lost it.

  “I’m taking you home, Saya.”

  She shook her head. “I am Arrow now. Only Arrow.”

  He pulled her to him and she relaxed against his chest, head tucking into his neck. “Rest, Saya. We’ll argue tomorrow.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Bullet watched Rand walk up the stairs to his room. He had not spoken to her in three days. Her heart hurt. The heart he’d made beat again hurt now. Because of him.

  She followed him up the stairs wondering where the urge to do so came from. If he did not want her surely she could handle that. Why chase after him when he’d made it so apparent he wanted nothing to do with her?

  “I had Juana make up your old room,” he said in a low voice as she entered the room she’d been sharing with him since she woke from her time in Joseph’s water pit.

  “Why?” she asked.

  His shoulders tensed and he stepped to the door. “Be gone when I get back.”

  “Why?”

  His navy blue gaze speared her and Bullet felt it then. Fear. What would she become if she lost him? She hated him because he was her weakness now.

  His eyes widened. “You would ask me that?”

  Her stance went loose and he raised a brow at her before he sneered.

  “I would know why you don’t want me anymore,” she spit out and th
en rubbed her chest. Over her heart where it hurt the worst.

  “You lied to me, Bullet.”

  She closed her eyes against the ugliness of his tone. He’d called her Bullet. “I didn’t lie to you, Mr. Beckett.”

  His eyes widened and disbelief flavored the air. “You said you wouldn’t follow Arrow.”

  She lifted her chin as anger sliced through her pain. “And I didn’t.”

  “Yes you did,” he bit out.

  She shook her head. “I followed you.”

  His mouth opened and closed twice as if the words he wanted to say were stuck in his throat. “I cannot fucking believe this,” he said, and he turned on his heel.

  “I told you, Mr. Beckett,” she called out.

  He stopped in the hall and she stepped out, watching as he turned around faced her.

  “I told you what would happen. You are mine now and nothing touches what is mine. I set up in those mountains because you needed protection. My sisters hold my loyalty. But you, Mr. Beckett, you hold my heart.”

  He went to his knees and she walked to him, cradling his bowed head to her stomach as his strong arms wrapped around her back and squeezed.

  “Do you know what I went through when I saw you coming out of the forest, Gretchen?”

  The pain in his voice made her knees weak.

  “I cannot let them hurt you. If the world burns because I lose you, innocents will die.”

  “Do you think it would be any different if I lost you?” he asked her. “Your body has not had time to heal.”

  “I am a killer, Mr. Beckett. It is all I know, but now I have you. You cannot hold me tighter and expect me to change.”

  He stood then and pulled her his arms. “You have become the reason I breathe, Gretchen.”

  “And I will make sure you continue to do so. Do not ask me to sit at home and wait. My place is beside my sisters, beside you. I have always told you there will come a time when my duty to my sisters will call. But never will my duty to them trump what you mean to me. That is all I can give you. Take it or leave it.”

  He stared at her for a long time, seeming to weigh her words and then he smiled, though not with his mouth…with his eyes. And she knew.

  “Do not break me,” she whispered as he lowered his head.

  “Never,” he said.

  Then he took her kiss and later her body, and Bullet was affirmed.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Arrow came out of the black in a rush of fear. Her body didn’t move, only her mind, flying outward, determining risks.

  “You’re awake, then?”

  Dmitry Asinimov.

  “I’ll get Adam,” he said, and left the room.

  Arrow opened her eyes and sat up slowly before removing the intravenous feed from her arm. She taped a cotton ball over the small wound left by the needle and carefully got off the bed.

  There were unisex clothes in the drawers beside the bed. She put them on and carefully stepped to the door. No footsteps sounded and she opened it, leaving the room and taking the stairs up to the top level of the house.

  She needed Adam. His name was a call in her heart she could not deny. She needed his arms holding her and she needed the light. The sun shone outside, bright in this state of Virginia, and she thought it would be a place she’d like to live for a while.

  If she weren’t destined for death.

  “Saya,” his beautiful voice called from the end of the hall.

  She turned and walked to him. He opened his arms and she stepped into them, shuddering against his warm body, trying to climb inside him. She lifted her leg and he hefted her up so she could settle them both around his waist. He grunted once and she wondered why, but then he turned and walked with her wrapped around him straight to his room. He lowered them both to the bed and turned on his side, continuing to hold her tight.

  “You should have waited. I was heading your way.”

  She inhaled him—cedar and citrus. Her mouth watered. She had killed just days ago. She needed to live even if just for a little while.

  “I have waited my entire life for your warmth,” she said against his neck.

  He pulled her tighter into him and it didn’t matter to her that she was weak in that moment. She needed this. She needed him.

  “I saw you there, hurt, and I wanted to kill them all. I’ve never felt so out of control,” she admitted.

  His hands traced up and down her back, under the T-shirt she’d thrown on. “I came after you.”

  “I didn’t want that. I had a job to do. Another step on the path to destroying Joseph Bombardier. It wasn’t your path to follow me.”

  “You never asked what my path was, Saya,” he said, and she heard the tension in his voice.

  Her heart raced. This man rearranged pieces of her. He rippled her calm waters and sent her running from a truth she couldn’t face.

  Not yet.

  She had too much killing left to do.

  There was a single question she needed answered. “Why did you follow me?”

  “Had you asked me that morning I would have said I followed you in anger. But the truth is much deeper than that and I don’t know that you’re ready to hear it.”

  She kneaded the muscles of his back, trying to pull his strength into her. This man was strong. “Tell me,” and in her voice was her plea.

  “I think I was given to you for a reason, Saya,” he said as he pulled away slightly and brushed her hair off her face.

  She needed a shower, knew she looked a mess, but the mask on his face was one of wonder. Arrow felt beautiful as he stared at her. Her breath locked in her chest because that was her wonder. “Why?”

  He didn’t release her gaze. “Because you fear the dark and I can walk it with ease.”

  She remembered fighting with him the first night she’d come to this place. She’d wondered how he could see her move so easily. She’d always found the darkness a smothering blanket. She moved in it out of necessity, but it took a piece of her every single time.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am of the Sioux tribe. It is my belief that The Great Spirit grants each of his children gifts. From the time of my first spirit walk, I could see in the darkness. I think He gave me that gift because of you.”

  Arrow couldn’t stop the tears from leaking then. They fell with abandon, whisking away her heart and giving it to the man who lay so strong beside her.

  “I do not believe in God or your Great Spirit, but should I meet Him in the afterlife, I’ll thank Him. Because He placed you in my path, I’ll bend to my knees and thank Him,” she said solemnly.

  He inhaled sharply and then grabbed her chin, angling her head up so his lips could take hers.

  It stung. Her lips were cut, chapped, but his were a balm against them. Her tears continued to fall.

  “You saw me kill Wang?”

  “I did.”

  She nodded and rested her head once again in the curve of his neck and shoulder. “Would that I could have made him suffer for what he did to Ching Lan.”

  “Perhaps your Oni are handling that for you,” he murmured at her hair.

  She smiled. “What do you know of the Oni, Mr. Collins?”

  “It’s a long flight to Beijing. Lots of time to read,” he answered, and his own smile was in his voice.

  Arrow didn’t have a response for that so she sighed instead, feeling the weariness crawl up her body. “I need to sleep.”

  He wrapped her tightly against him. “I will hold you and keep the darkness at bay.”

  She didn’t respond, but as sleep covered her, she knew one thing irrefutably: she trusted Adam Collins.

  And as much as a killer could love, Arrow did.

  •●•

  Adam waited an hour until her breathing settled into a deeper rhythm and then tucked the covers tight around her and headed down to the library. He needed a drink and answers.

  “I’ve already poured you a scotch,” Rand said from the window that ov
erlooked the front of the enormous house. “She’s sleeping?”

  Adam nodded, threw back the snifter of amber liquid, and felt the burn down to his soul. “She walks a line I’ve never come close to,” he told his friend.

  “Bullet does as well,” Rand responded. “I want Bombardier’s heart in my hands.”

  Adam nodded once again. “I want to kill him over and over and over. You didn’t see her in that cell, Rand. There was nothing I could have done to prevent her from killing Wang. And she fucking did it with ease. It about destroyed me.”

  Rand glanced at him, pity riding his gaze. “I talked with Ken earlier.”

  “I think he has the boy,” Adam said as he poured another glass of scotch.

  Rand’s eyes widened. “Goddamn it,” he breathed out.

  “But I have no idea where he’s hidden him. I don’t know who that boy is to them, but he’s important and if Ken has him, they will kill Ken to get him back.”

  Rand grunted. “No more than the son of a bitch deserves. Why would he have the boy?”

  “That day in Beijing, you didn’t see him. He was insane. Wang’s guard was coming and Ken was questioning the woman. She refused to tell him who the child was, said she didn’t know. And then Ken disappeared, the woman was killed and I was left to clean up the mess. That mess was Blade. Ken didn’t come back with us. He met us at the airport once we landed in Virginia. I have no idea where in the hell he was immediately after we captured Blade.”

  “Why do you think he has the boy?” Rand asked.

  “A feeling,” Adam answered. “Nothing more than a feeling.”

  “Any idea who the boy is?”

  “None. But he has importance to Bombardier and all of First Team. That’s all Arrow speaks of—‘the boy is mine’, ‘the boy is ours’, it’s a constant refrain. I think she’d lay down her life to get him back.”

  The thought of her doing that made rage bubble inside Adam’s gut.

  “You’re invested in her?”

  Adam remained silent.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Rand said.

  Adam took a deep breath. “I would kill for her.”