The Warrior

by Kay Camden

  Whoops, I see on his lips.

  This is my fault. I should’ve acted before she woke up. He’s supposed to follow my lead, not the other way around. She’s dying—no ambulance would get here in time. Rex backs away, wipes his knife on the bedsheets. My legs won’t move until he’s next to me, and then I grab onto his shirt and shake him. We weren’t supposed to kill people. This went wrong, so very wrong. He’s looking down at me, saying, It’s okay.

  I shake him again—hard. It’s not okay. I feel like we’re wading through blood. My boots stick to the floor, my feet drag. We back to the door. He takes the pistol away from me, aims across the room and shoots the woman in the head. No.

  No, no, no.

  Rex starts, perking up like he’s heard a sound. I place a hand on the wall and try to isolate my senses all into feeling for vibration. Rex jerks me aside. The door swings into us, slamming his arm which catches me in the mouth. The heat and tingle of the blow tell me I’ve got a bloody swollen lip on the way. One man enters, another behind him. They take in the room; we all take in Rex’s pistol now lying on the ground. One of the men reaches for it; Rex kicks him in the face. The other man surges toward me. I duck, get behind him. Kick him in the back of the knees, rise and elbow jab him in the spine. He grabs my hair. I twist, feeling a slight rip before my knee makes contact with his jaw. Now he’s down, knocked out, and I can do my thing. What I came here to do.

  I look up, directly into Rex’s eyes. With his guy held at gunpoint, he tosses me his knife. I split my victim’s palm. Draw the symbol in blood on his forehead and mine. My eyes are blinking closed on their own—the instinct rears up, impossible to fight since I made it wait so long. The hanging dark energy swirls like a funnel cloud around me, joining me, reaching through me into him, a white-hot light exposing the soot of anger, the char of hate. I gather their pieces like I did that first time with Rex, trembling from the power of it all. I stand above his body, now cured of all of that because it’s alive and fat in my chest. I’m choking, gagging, a backwards vomit until it finally spreads and settles around organs, between mindspace.

  Rex and the other guy are equally mortified. Rex recovers fast, shoving his victim toward me. But the guy isn’t having it. He’s turned to confront Rex with ugly words. Gestures between Rex and me. Points to Rex’s marked face and arm. Spits on the ground. Rex has a glare leveled at him that would make any normal person shut up, but the guy only gets more vicious. Rex takes a deep breath in, lets it out with a slow, sinister calm. The guy points at me again, and Rex grabs him by the shirt collar and headbutts him in the nose. I see the guy making a slight adjustment of his shoulder but it’s too late to warn Rex even if I could—they’re grappling, gunfire flashes, Rex falls away, clutching his shoulder. I leap for the pistol—bad move. Hands are on me, and I’ve been yanked into a bone-crushing body lock.

  I don’t fight. He’s so much bigger and stronger, I’d only waste my energy. He drags me over the dead woman’s legs and shoves me onto the bed. I roll; he catches me, slapping a pillow over my face. It’s too quick to have held my breath. The weight of his arm squashes the remaining air out of me. The pillow presses with more might. I’m now tasting the blood from my busted lip.

  Blind to Rex, I have no idea if he’s able to help and no oxygen to consider it. False bright specks scatter in my vision. I reach for the dark power still looming above us. The lump of gathered hate heats in my chest in response. My amulet blazes, scorching my attacker who’s jumping up from the invisible ball of fire pancaked between us. I knock the pillow away in time to see Rex lifting the guy’s head by the hair, pressing the pistol against his temple, and firing.

  I’m quick to shield my eyes but it doesn’t matter. I’m already coated in blood—mine and everyone’s. Rex offers me a hand, heaving me up despite our slipping sweaty grip. He’s holding his other arm tight against him, bent at the elbow as if in a sling.

  I point to his shoulder. He shakes his head like it’s nothing. There’s a darkening spot in his shirt though. I know that’s something. I go to the wall beside the open door and flatten against it. He sidles against me. As we catch our breath, I try to peel my charred shirt from the burned skin on my chest underneath. The pain goes into my teeth, my gut. My amulet is still hot to the touch but due to the destroyed skin on my chest, I can’t feel it resting there.

  He fingerspells, Lost cause, clean up, get out.

  Any more … I point to the dead woman.

  Two fingers. So, two Moores left in the house. Then he looks at the guy who’s unconscious but still alive. He raises the pistol. I knock it away. His brows tighten to an angry line. He points two fingers toward his eyes, then at the unconscious guy, then at me. Okay, if he saw me, then I need to steal his memory. Easy. I think I need him awake for that though. Awake and calm and not trying to kill us.

  Too late. Rex has fired. I took that hate inside me for nothing.

  Now I’m the one with the angry face, and Rex shrugs, wincing from his injury.

  Halfway down the hall we notice light flooding up the stairs from below. Rex stops, takes a moment of contemplation. Dark power writhes in my chest, my head. I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve never been so powered by this fuel, firing up black magic that feels so like my own but has no place to stay. I get an upsurge from my stomach, hold a fist to my mouth to keep it quiet.

  Rex starts kicking in doors. I lean against the wall, my head heavy, my knees weak. I can’t fight people if I’m fighting this energy inside me. I think it wants to come out, but then what? It repowers the hate in this house? Undoing what we’ve done here? Lives have been taken, and they won’t be wasted.

  Rex has a hostage now, a woman, older than me but not by too much. He’s steering her with the pistol against her back. She’s sleepy-eyed, more annoyed than afraid. I trail them down the stairs where we walk into a small crowd of men. Rex said two were left, so this must be their security. This couldn’t be going any worse. I grab Rex’s arm, trying to convey through my face: We should go back up the stairs and escape out a window.

  He’s undeterred. At the bottom of the stairs, he transfers the pistol and hostage to me. An older man steps forward, appearing concerned for Rex. Helpful, even. Wary eyes travel over me. They think I’ve lured their prince to the dark side? That he’s been compromised? Oh, please.

  Now another guy steps up, appearing to negotiate. Rex gives him the finger. Takes out his knife. Raises a hand to me and fingerspells, Shoot out lights as men gather around him.

  I count lights without changing the direction of my gaze because I don’t want anyone clued in. I consider how many rounds should be left. Then I start shooting—chandelier, side lamp, stairwell light, hall. As lights blink out and glass rains down, Rex leaps into action, visible in my sensitive vision even in the dark. Gunfire goes off all around me, but Rex remains in motion. He’s a manic blur of death, handing out lethal stabs and blows, unstoppable.

  The lump of dark power sends tendrils from my chest, reaching for thoughts now so vivid in my head. Images of my dad chained in that crumbling shack. Of him being struck by people who claimed to be his family. Of how he looked when they told him they killed his wife and baby. The thoughts become my present. They add power to my pulse. And every life Rex takes feels like a wrong made right. A necessary vengeance. A score evened.

  This isn’t me. The dark power I consumed is trying to validate itself, make itself a home in my head using my own thoughts as its bedding. I need to close it off like I did before. Separate it from me. But not now. There’s no time.

  I drag my hostage to a rear room and turn her to face me. She’s mildly irritated. It’s so out of place I wonder if she’s gone into shock. I remember Marcas’ face when Dillon Moore took me from my home. The grief, the fear, the instantaneous loss of that innocent and boyish twinkle in his eyes. And I drop the pistol and take hold of her face, draining memories with all I have—my kn
own magic powered by black magic. Reaching high to summon the light of the stars, delving into earth for the life it supplies. I mix all that power with the resident dark power and channel it into my fingers to break through a crust of magic over her mind. The memory of this night is the first to go. Her thoughts press against me then. Freed, when they’d been captive for so long.

  Gratitude leaks from her into me, and I withdraw, seeing it painted on her face instead. Along with a wide-eyed surprise, finally awake after so long. She’s no Moore. She probably married in, and that spell was designed to keep her complacent, to force her eyes to unsee each of their crimes. Well, not anymore.

  Taking her hand, I hurry her to another room with a door to the outside and release her like an animal from a cage. She streaks across the night at a frantic pace, disappearing from view.

  Then I head back into the house to find Rex, hopefully still alive.

  Chapter 22

  Rex

  Sloane catches my arms before I crash into her. I don’t know how she can see in this pitch-dark hall. I sure can’t hear her—my ears are fuzzy from the gunfire, and who knew a deaf girl could move with such stealth?

  “Stage clear.” I know she can’t hear me but it feels better to talk to someone right now. I can’t think about the pile of gore back there. All those bodies I’ll have to answer for someday. Or maybe not, if I can figure out a way to blame it on the Bevans.

  She takes my hand. We both need to be hosed off. My face is dripping and I’ve sweat through my shirt. But her hand—it’s a tether, when a minute ago I was flapping and loose and terrifyingly alone. I won’t admit that out loud though, not even to a deaf girl.

  From the way she’s tugging me out of the house, I wonder if she knows something I don’t. Like my father and uncle just pulled up front. My great-granduncle Martin Sr. returned from the dead to remind me of my place. Prince Rex, not yet a king. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and you’re not yet strong enough, so here, this is what we have planned for you today: a European rally car for your birthday, and a two-hundred-fifty-pound heavyweight waiting for you in the ring to batter you around and remind you who you are. Gifts and punishment all at once just to screw with your head.

  Sloane shoves me into a grove of tall bushes in the backyard, the pointed glossy leaves clawing my arms. As I’m adjusting my jaw—I think one of those guys repositioned it—she latches onto my shirt. For a second I think she’s going to kiss me—scratch that. She’s about to unleash hellfire.

  Which is kind of the same thing, I guess.

  Her war paint has been upgraded by blood streak and splatter. Does that make her cuter? No, Rex, you are seriously messed-up.

  My shirt is stretching tight across my back, my wounded shoulder—oh yeah, I should probably see to that. Impossible right now though because of the twisting grip she’s not releasing and the eyes as latched onto me as her fists, pleading for me to explain what just went on in there.

  “Witnesses. Can’t have witnesses. They see us together? That’s bad. This is why we needed a fucking plan. Don’t look at me like all that was my fault.”

  She rests her forehead against my chest, still holding onto my shirt like her hands have frozen into fists.

  “What do you think would happen if we left any of them alive? They’d contact my father or my uncle. Tell them I’m in Bevan war paint working alongside you. I don’t need that getting back to anyone.”

  Her breath keeps catching on itself. I know she can’t hear me but there’s no stopping my mouth. It’s working without me.

  “If we’re doing this, we need a better plan, one that works for both of us. Otherwise, I’m out. And I’m not leaving you the R5, so you better—”

  My phone’s vibrating. I squeeze it past ammo and suppressors and check the screen. Aaron.

  “Get out of there, Rex. They know.”

  “Who—how?”

  Sloane has finally let me go. She’s lowering to her knees, her head bowed, fingertips going against earth.

  “My dad has someone on the inside. They got a message at the house from the D.C. Moores. Said you showed up out of the blue and they were talking to you. And that Sloane …”

  I don’t remember seeing anyone with a phone, but I guess I could’ve missed it. That’s a damn shame for me though. This goes on my record. Well, I’ll have to play it differently then. Use it as an example. “Okay, okay, I feel you. We’re leaving.”

  “What are you doing there?”

  “Killing a ton of people apparently.”

  “Shit, Rex, is this what you—”

  “No, it blew up in our faces. Noob mistake.”

  “You’re giving me a heart attack.”

  “You’re giving yourself a heart attack. Go back to bed.”

  He mutters something unintelligible and the call ends. Okay. Think, Rex. There’s no hiding this. They know I was here. So I have two options:

  One, blame the whole thing on Sloane. She made me take her here so she could slaughter them all. Now I’ve escaped so all’s good. They’d never believe I’d be such a victim though. And no way in hell I want them to think I’m that easy to whip.

  Option two is full responsibility. This is what you get when you mess with Rex Moore. And by the way, guess who’s in charge now?

  There’s no contest, really.

  I fire off a text to my father: Might want to send a clean-up team to D.C. I made a little mess.

  Them trying to figure out why I’ve snapped and what I’ll do next is bonus material. And here’s something weird: Normally we dispatch that crew to houses full of slaughtered Bevans. I’m not sure how I feel about this change to protocol.

  When I look down at Sloane, all I see are the tears dripping into the trimmed grass. The image of it creates a drain on my system so tragic I have to lock my knees so I don’t collapse beside her. I’m afraid seeing her break now after surviving that shitfest just might break me.

  With effort, I unlock my knees and stoop, taking her elbows to draw her up. She spells with her hand, So much death.

  I hand her my phone. “No choice. They saw us together.”

  We could’ve …

  Instead of finishing, she looks up at me. I need to find out which one bruised her cheekbone and deface his corpse so it’s unfit to return to the elements.

  “This is why we need a plan.”

  She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, turning to look off into the distance. She’s never looked so preoccupied. So haunted.

  “I mean, a better plan. We mark this as a fail and learn from it.” Wow, is that me trying to make her feel better? Making it sound like it’s not her fault?

  All those people. Your family, Rex.

  The use of my name sends a surge through me almost as piercing as when she spells it with her hand. When I usually hear my name, it’s such a loaded sound. Except when it comes from Aaron. Sometimes Emily. Emily never again.

  Sloane’s hands snap to her chest and she bends, shoving the phone at me and staggering away between the bushes. She’s coughing, choking. I follow her and find her vomiting tarry viscous liquid that reflects the light from the night sky in a strange, grotesque way. We stare at it together, her more stunned than embarrassed, me suffocating under a blanket of doom.

  Nerves. That’s all it is. Grief? Who knows. Don’t read anything into it, Rex. Vomit is vomit even when it doesn’t look like vomit. She just witnessed a mass execution. Of course she’s going to react. It would help if she knew more about what kind of people they were.

  “Those two guys in the bedroom.”

  Her attention moves to me. I hand her the phone.

  “They just found some Bevans in Nova Scotia. Husband, wife, three kids. Decided they were sick of working around kids, so they blocked the doors and torched the house at night when everyone was sleeping.”


  Her eyes narrow. Mouth wants to frown but she keeps it tight.

  “That first woman? She gave me this.” I show her the burn scar on my forearm. “She kept doves to sacrifice in rituals. You’d have loved her.”

  That’s a crime against our magic.

  “I’d say you could go in and tell her, but she might not be open to advice right now.”

  Where are the doves?

  Good question. I turn to face the house. Don’t be an infant, Rex, you could totally go back in there if you wanted to. “I’m guessing basement.”

  Whoa. Head rush.

  And I’m on the ground.

  Sloane’s ripping the neck of my shirt. Cool night air swells against the hole that should’ve clotted but maybe didn’t clot and if not, I’m so very screwed. A poke into the open wound—oh god, no, not a poke, a fucking icepick. Wiggling, tugging fingers, her fingers, digging out a bullet she slides into my pocket. The stars swirl behind her. I’m seeing time-lapse photos of the night sky in real time, and she’s lowering her face, her lips against my wound like a dream and I drift away.

  *

  I open my eyes. Pointy-leaved bushes standing guard around me. Endless universe above. And doves, flapping past, landing on limbs, cooing into the night. I watch them scatter, hundreds of them it seems, until Sloane pops into my view.

  She’s a perfect mod to this dream. I want it to last forever. She smells like gunpowder and blood. Her mouth is art, her eyes are the payout of a wish I never knew I had. If only she’d stop nudging me I could enjoy this.

  Nudging me? Oh god, we have to get out of here. I’m up—too fast, my head spins. She gets her shoulders under my arm, and we hobble down the sleeping street, a gauzy moon lighting our way until we reach the edge of the woods we crossed through. I expect her to slow down because the canopy makes it impossible to see, but she pushes through like it’s daylight. I need to ask her about her messed-up night vision. And by messed-up I mean kick-ass and so fucking useful.