“Oh, shit.” She shifted the truck into drive and jammed her foot onto the accelerator. The tires spun frantically in the sandy drive as she peeled through the mass of warriors. She jumped as they came at her, wincing when each warrior bounced off her truck as she barreled through them.
Grunts of pain rang in her ears, and she felt the truck shudder from the collisions. Oh, God. Was she killing them?
A machete flew at the windshield directly toward her face, and she screamed, ducking down—
Gideon’s throwing axe smashed into the machete and both weapons crashed onto the hood of the truck. She stared in disbelief as the two weapons sat harmlessly on the hood for a split second. He’d saved her again.
Both weapons flew up into the air and disappeared into the night, summoned by their owners for another attack.
“Go, Lily!” She clutched the steering wheel as she barreled down the gritty driveway, flinching at each clash and bump as weapons slammed into the truck.
The back window shattered. She ducked as glass fragments flew everywhere, but she forced herself to keep the gas pedal floored, to stay focused on the winding driveway. The truck skidded around a corner, and she sucked in her breath as she felt the right wheels come up off the ground.
Lily jerked her foot off the accelerator and the truck dropped back down on all four tires. She hit the accelerator again, and nearly cried with relief when she finally reached the main road. She took a hard right and sped out onto the two lane highway, the sounds of battle finally beginning to fade in the night as she retraced the path she’d taken two years ago when she’d walked into Nate’s house and changed her life forever.
CHAPTER THREE
Gideon grinned with satisfaction as he watched Lily’s Hummer disappear down the driveway. She’d blown off his orders to wait for him, and he was damned impressed with that fact.
She’d decided to save herself, using Gideon for cover while she escaped. She’d done it well, and he had to admit, he admired the fact she’d taken charge of her own destiny. Yeah, he’d be catching up with her as soon as he and Ian had finished taking out the rest of the crew and making sure no one would follow them, but he was still impressed.
He tracked her vehicle carefully as she sped down the road, making sure she got away safely as he instinctively blocked another assailant going for his head. He was well aware of how broken she was. He’d felt her pain, her anguish, her terror. The extent of her exhaustion had been evident in every breath she took, in the trembling of her body and the weariness of her eyes, and yet she’d hauled ass out to that damn truck anyway.
She shouldn’t have had to do that. It was his job to take care of her. Gideon’s smile faded as he recalled the intensity of her pain in that hallway. Her fear of him. Her refusal to trust him.
Anger began to build inside him. How much had she suffered? He’d seen how bad Ana’s condition had been when they’d retrieved her. What had Nate done to Lily? A fierce fury built inside him, intense anger that had no place in a battle that required a cool, controlled warrior.
But he couldn’t help it. He was royally pissed.
Gideon hurled his axe at a warrior coming at Ian from behind, and tried to evaluate his burning need to protect Lily. He needed to understand why he’d responded to her physically, with so much intensity. He’d been so far from all-business in that hallway, it was an embarrassment. He had one job. One goal. One promise to keep, and that was to fulfill Order business every damn time.
It was not to look at a woman and imagine how silky soft her skin would be, to envision what it would be like to feel her body against his, to hear her whisper his name with trust. Shit, just the thought of her now, and he was already getting worked up. What the hell was wrong with him?
Gideon caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of his eye and spun to the right as two Calydons broke from the battle and sprinted down the driveway after Lily’s Hummer, so fast they were mere blurs even to his enhanced eyes.
Adrenaline leapt into high gear. Fuck. They were Runners. They’d be able to catch up to Lily’s truck, and fast. All amusement gone, Gideon hurled both his axes after them. One axe slammed into the back of the Calydon on the right with the deadly precision of an Order of the Blade warrior, knocking him down. But the other warrior blocked the axe with his machete and then disappeared into the night, a dark streak hunting the woman Gideon had come to retrieve.
Son of a bitch. He’d missed. How the hell had he missed? He never missed. But he had, and now the bastard was on Lily’s tail. What the fuck? “Ian! We’re going after her!”
“I saw him.” Ian swung his flange mace with fierce intensity, taking out a Calydon charging Gideon. “Let’s go.”
Gideon’s axes returned to him, and he sprinted for his truck, oblivious to the battle raging around him. All he could think of was Lily in that Hummer, alone in the middle of fucking nowhere, and that bastard finding her. Gideon swore and yanked open the door, leaping behind the wheel as a dagger flew at him. He swung at it with violent force, driving it to the ground as he gunned the engine. He had the truck in gear and moving before his door was even closed.
Ian leapt in as Gideon peeled past him. The tires spun out on the sandy driveway, then they caught traction. The vehicle leapt forward, leaving behind the eight remaining Calydons who were still alive.
It was against Order protocol to leave a situation unmanaged like they were doing right now. They needed to break down those attackers, find out who they were, and why they were after Lily. Proper strategy would entail taking another five minutes to secure the situation before going after Lily. They were not following protocol, and they both knew it.
But Lily was too important. They needed her too badly to let her go.
They needed her for the mission, yeah.
But as dark tension fueled Gideon’s pursuit, he knew it was more.
Much, much, more.
He just fucking needed her.
*
Lily tensed as the Hummer skidded around a corner and the rear slid out, sending the front end straight toward the ditch.
She hauled the steering wheel to the left as her right tires careened down the incline. The truck bounced back up on the road and shot across the lanes from her overcorrection. She jerked the wheel back to the right, slamming on the brakes as the truck swerved back across the road and skidded toward the embankment. She clenched the steering wheel desperately as the truck slid down the ditch. “Come on!” she shouted. “Stop!”
The truck skidded to a stop, partway into the gully.
For a moment, she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, terrified the earth would give out and the truck would fall the rest of the way into the ditch. The only sounds in the truck were her panicked breathing and the thundering of her heart.
It took a full minute before she finally realized the Hummer had stopped. It was over. She hadn’t crashed. “Oh, God.” She shoved the gearshift into park, her body shaking so badly she could barely make the lever move. “It’s okay, Lily. You’re okay.”
She draped her arms over the steering wheel and dropped her forehead to the cool leather, trying to catch her breath. But it was too much.
The two years of despair and hopelessness that she’d kept locked up for so long broke free. The fear, the terror, the loneliness, she couldn’t hold it off anymore. It welled up and burst out, like a dark night of doom and loss crushing down on her. Gone was her strength, her courage, her rigid control.
Emotions consumed her, stripping away her defenses, piercing her with an intensity she didn’t have the resources to fight off anymore. Lily moaned and pressed her palms to her eyes, rocking back and forth as the sobs shattered her defenses. For two years, she’d never cried, and now that it was over, she couldn’t stop. She cried for all that she’d lost, for all that she’d suffered, but most of all, she cried for how scared she’d been for so long. The relief was overwhelming. After holding on so tight, she didn’t have to do it anymore.
It
was over.
But even as those words she’d been dreaming of for so long filled her mind, denial flooded her with cold warning.
It wasn’t over. She wasn’t safe yet. She had to pull herself together again. No sobbing. No crying. The time for that would be later.
Lily scrunched her eyes shut and took a shuddering breath, willing the loneliness, the fear and the uncertainty back into the box she’d kept it in for the last two years. “Only a little longer,” she whispered. “Just keep it together a little longer.” She fought to find that strong woman she’d been, but it was so hard to go back there.
She didn’t want to be strong. She didn’t want to be brave. She just wanted to cry.
Lily lifted her head and took another breath, this one less shaky than the last. Her throat thick with emotion, she peered out at the dark night. A sliver of moonlight danced in the black sky, thousands of stars sparkled across the horizon, and hundreds of miles of barren Oregon high desert stretched in all directions.
She was stunned by the vastness of the sky and the endless expanse of earth. No fences. No walls. No constraints. Just space to run as far and as long as a person could go. She’d forgotten what it was like to stand outside to walls and breathe in the wildness of nature. It had been so long since she’d had the choice of when to eat, when to sleep, and when to wake.
Inhaling the clean air into her starved lungs, Lily rolled down the windows. She closed her eyes as the cold desert breeze tickled her face, sweeping across her skin as if it were wiping away all the sweat, grime and fear. Fresh air. Owned by no one. At liberty to fly wherever it wanted.
This was what freedom felt like. This was what she’d craved so desperately for so long. Yes, she’d missed her family. She’d longed for her home, her career, her books. But more than anything, Lily had burned for the simple ability to choose for herself.
And here she was. Sitting here. Enjoy the desert air. Simply being.
It was a gift.
Something moved in the bushes, and Lily jumped when a shadow darted across the road. Its striped tail dragged as the furry creature waddled across the asphalt, pausing to study her with its little masked face. Lily groaned softly and leaned back against the headrest, trying to calm down. “Okay, Lily. Chill out. It’s just a raccoon.” Not a Calydon, ready to drag her back into hell. Not yet, at least, but she knew they were coming.
There was no safety here. She was less than twenty minutes from Nate’s. Not far enough. She still had to get over the mountains and back to western Oregon. More than eight hours from home.
Until she was home, until she was truly safe, it wouldn’t be over.
Then grim reality began to set in. Would she even be safe at home, or would Frank find her there? Would she ever be safe again, or would this nightmare haunt her forever? How would she know when she was free?
Exhaustion crept over her again, and suddenly Lily felt like it was too much effort to pick herself up and slog onward. She had so little energy left to fight with. So little chance by herself. Maybe she shouldn’t have left Gideon. Maybe she would have been better off trusting he would survive—
A gaping loneliness swelled up inside her at the thought of Gideon dying in that battle, and she fisted her hands on the steering wheel, dragging her thoughts away from the warrior who’d unsettled her so badly. “Come on, Lily. You have to pull yourself together. You can do this. Just take it one step at a time. Drive the truck. That’s all you have to do right now. You can do that.”
Yes, she could do that. That much she could manage.
Lily wiped her sleeve resolutely across her damp cheeks, and winced at the sharp pain. Her whole body started to hurt, pain shooting through her. She realized that she still had glass in her back, hands and feet. Adrenaline had kept the pain at bay, but now… God, it was excruciating.
“Get over it, Lily,” she ordered herself.
It was no worse than anything Nate had done to her. She could handle it. It was almost better that way, to be reminded about how bad everything would be if she didn’t keep it together. A little glass in the back was such a helpful kick-in-the-pants. Thank goodness for small favors, right?
Right.
Rolling her eyes at herself, but feeling stronger now, Lily sat up straighter to keep her back from touching the seat. She shifted the truck into drive again and started to pull forward, the tires spinning as they tried to fight their way out of the muddy ditch. Her heart tightened, but she clenched her jaw and she shifted into four wheel drive. She rocked the truck back and forth, then the tires found solid ground and the Hummer popped up out of the ditch with a lurch.
Tears of relief pricked Lily’s eyes, and she pulled out onto the road, forcing herself to keep to a safe speed.
There was no way she was going to crash the damn truck and make it easy for them.
She simply wasn’t that agreeable of a person.
*
Gideon’s truck catapulted down the driveway, his body coiled with rage at the thought of the Calydon finding Lily.
The image of that Calydon pinning Lily to the floor kept racing through his mind. The look on his face…fuck. Gideon knew what that look was. He’d seen it on the faces of too many Calydons when they’d gone rogue, when Gideon had pulled the battered and bloody body of the innocent out from under them, too late yet again.
Rogue Calydons were warriors who had, at one point, been men of honor. Then they’d succumbed to the darkness that pulsed in all Calydons, reduced to beasts who destroyed the innocents they’d been born to protect. If Gideon had arrived a minute later, Lily would have been just like those other innocents, and now she was unprotected again. “Fuck!”
Ian was perched on the edge of his seat, a flange mace clenched in each hand, ready. The three-foot long steel staff was ringed with a spiked ridge on the end. The weapons were humming with energy, primed for their owner to set them free against the enemy. “Try not to crash the truck. I just got it waxed.”
“Fuck off.” Gideon didn’t question his raging terror at the thought of that Calydon finding Lily. He’d didn’t waste time trying to understand his driving need to get to her, a compulsion far deeper and more powerful than the mission that had brought he and Ian in search of her. Gideon simply knew, without question, that he had to reach her in time.
There was no other option. Do whatever you have to do to stay alive until I get there, Lily. He shouted the words in his mind as the truck peeled out of the driveway and he opened it up on the main road, somehow knowing, with absolute certainty, which way she’d gone.
*
Lily rounded a corner and yelped when she saw a dark shape looming in front of her in the middle of the road. A man? She slammed on the brakes, then saw the moonlight glint off a blade in his hand.
It was a machete. The same machete that would have taken her out if Gideon’s axe hadn’t intercepted it? He’d beaten her here. He’d come to take her back to Frank.
Terror screamed through her at the thought of going back to that hell after being so close to escaping. No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t do it. She hadn’t come this far to lose her chance for freedom now.
Before she could register what she was doing, she jerked her foot off the brake and gunned the gas, the truck skidding as she tried to straighten it out, aiming right for the Calydon. Her mind recoiled in horror as she bore down on him, but she couldn’t make herself stop. It was as if something else was compelling her, her need to survive driving her to do something out of her own worst nightmares, as if she’d finally snapped. As if Nate had finally turned her into the demon he was. “God, no, don’t let me kill him.”
Her fingers clenched on the wheel, she stared at her target, horror rising in her throat at what she was about to do. Then he shifted into a ready stance, and too late, she realized she was doing exactly what he wanted.
The truck careened across the road as she tried to swerve away from him. She was going too fast to redirect! He sprang onto the hood and smashed his mac
hete through the windshield.
She screamed and slammed on the brakes, but he grabbed the frame as the truck spun out. Then the tires caught and the Hummer flipped, sailing through the air. It landed on its roof with an agonizing impact that whipped her head back and skidded across the asphalt as the earsplitting shriek of metal being ripped apart rent the night.
Hanging upside down in the inverted truck, Lily fumbled with the seatbelt, her numb fingers struggling to push the release button. “Come on!” How close was he? Was he still on the truck? Had he been thrown off? The scenery was spinning too fast as the truck whirled. She was dizzy, disoriented, and nauseous. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to regain her equilibrium as she frantically worked on the seatbelt.
She found the button and jammed her thumb into it, the truck still screaming its protest as it spun across the road on its roof toward the ditch. The seatbelt released with sudden force and Lily dropped out of the seat, thudding onto her shoulders, her feet tangled in the steering wheel. Frantically, she tried to free herself. She had to hurry. She knew he was still out there. Please, God, give me time to get away.
With a fierce kick that sent pain spiraling through her knee, Lily finally got her foot untangled from the steering wheel. She hastily rolled to her knees and hunched low to peer out the windshield, searching desperately for her assailant. The trees were rushing past, the white lines on the pavement whipping like undulating snakes, sparks leaping off the road as the truck tore its way across the asphalt. There was no way she could get out while it was still moving. Damn it! Where was he?
She peered up toward the front bumper, trying to see him. There was a shadow near the right headlight. His foot? She leaned closer, straining to identify it—
He swung down from the left front wheel, hanging by one arm, inches away from her, like a beast sprung from the night, his teeth gleaming in the darkness. His eyes met hers, and for a split second, she was overwhelmed by the ruthless promise in his dark eyes. They were the windows into the soul of hell, a bottomless pit of violence and death, without morals, ethics or humanity. He wasn’t rogue. He was simply a monster. And he was after her.
Darkness Seduced (Primal Heat Trilogy #2) (Order of the Blade) Page 4