A smirk lifted one corner of his thin mouth as he raised his hand toward me. “I don’t think so.”
I stood prepared, tapping the energy of the earth that flowed around me, ready for whatever spell the wind clan master was going to sling at me. Instead, he cried out in surprised pain as he fell backward onto his butt once again. Glaring at me, he reached up and wrapped his fingers around the previously unnoticed iron collar around his neck.
“Iron?” he snarled. “You’ve placed an iron collar on me?”
“Because I knew you would not come quietly, and we have a long distance to travel.”
Pushing back to his feet, he circled around me. “Why do I get the impression that you feel a certain amount of joy seeing me like this?”
I pulled my short sword, hoping it might deter him from attacking. “I should have killed you after what you did at Machu Picchu.”
“And how exactly did I upset you at Machu Picchu? We were both in agreement then. We both believed that opening the doorway was our ultimate goal.”
“Not at the cost of Cynnia’s life!” I shouted, suddenly losing my tight grip on my temper. “When you attacked the nightwalkers during the daylight hours at the foot of the ruins, you not only wasted the lives of our people, but needlessly risked Cynnia’s life. You could have come to a compromise, but you are obsessed with destroying the Fire Starter. This personal vendetta will no longer be tolerated.”
“Cynnia formed an alliance with the nightwalker. She deserved what she got. She turned her back on her people and she dragged you blindly along with her.”
Rowe lunged at me from his seated position against the fallen log. I took a step back and held my short sword out to my side, careful to keep from impaling him on it. I needed him alive for now. If he didn’t side with us, I could always kill him later.
The dark naturi plowed his head and shoulder into my stomach, doubling me over as I slammed to the ground on my back. Rowe instantly rolled off me, ripping the sword free from my hand as he moved away. Stifling a groan of frustration at my stupid mistake, I rolled away from him, regaining my feet while palming a knife at my side.
He didn’t hesitate to attack, barely giving me enough time to regain my feet before swinging the sword blade at my throat. I dodged the blow and parried a thrust at my ribs with the knife. A growl escaped him as he continued to launch one slashing move after another, determined to either remove a limb or my head.
A deep calm settled over me as I blocked each attack or slipped away from the reach of a particular thrust. I watched him, his one eye intently focused on me, but something felt off. I knew Rowe and his intense fighting style. I refused to believe that his wounds were slowing him down that much, having seen him in battle with far worse wounds, cutting down nightwalkers as if harvesting wheat. He wasn’t throwing everything he had at me. It was as if he knew I would block his every move or at the very least evade him.
However, that didn’t mean Rowe wasn’t more than willing to leave me horribly wounded and bleeding in the mud so he could go on his merry way. I needed to disarm him so we could resume our flight from the naturi that had been holding him. We were running out of time. Slipping past one lunge, which was an attempt to plunge the blade between my ribs, I slid across the ground under his guard and slammed a foot into his knee, causing the leg to buckle beneath him. The sword he was holding came straight down, aiming for my chest, but I quickly rolled out of the way. As he knelt on the ground, I kicked the hand holding the sword, knocking it loose. The blade flashed in the moonlight as it flew end over end across the open glade.
Rising quickly to my feet, I stood over him, kneeling on the ground, placing the knife against his exposed throat. “Enough wasting time. You come quietly with me now or I kill you, because I’m not allowing you to return to Aurora.”
“Afraid she’ll welcome me back with open arms?”
“Your best case scenario is that she’ll allow you to hunt me down so I can only kill you at a later date. There will be no hero’s return for you when it comes to my sister.”
A smile grew on Rowe’s face, sending a chill down my spine. “It seems you must first save my life.”
I was about to ask what that meant when I heard a creak from the tree above us and felt a trembling in the earth. Claudia and the other members of the earth and light clans had caught up with us.
“Damn you!” I lurched away from him and ran across the glade to pick up my sword.
“Aren’t you going to give me a weapon as well, Nyx?” Rowe inquired in all too innocent tones.
“I’m no fool. I’ll not risk having you stab me in the back while I am protecting you.” I tried to refocus my powers, lightning crackling in the air as the wind rose. “Can you fly?” I demanded as wings sprouted from my back, slick with shining black feathers.
“I seem to have an iron collar around my neck.”
“Try it! I truly doubt that all of your abilities have been blocked. Get in the sky and away from here. I will hold them off until I can join you.”
I started to send my powers away from my body again to get a sense of where the clan members were approaching from when a large tree limb swung down toward me. I dove for the ground, narrowly missing being struck in the chest, only to have a swath of smaller branches rake across my arms and back. Twisting around while still lying on my stomach, I saw Rowe also diving to the ground a few feet away as a pair of darts pierced the night, aimed for his chest.
“Get out of here. I’ll hold them off.”
“Last I checked, protector of the people, I was in command, not you,” he said as he grabbed the knife at my side.
“Then what are your orders, commander?”
“You take this damned collar off me and we kill my last captors!”
“Not likely,” Claudia said, announcing her arrival in the small clearing.
Kill her! Rowe commanded in my brain.
I reacted, not contemplating whether what I was doing was right or wrong. I threw out my arm and a bolt of lightning sizzled from the sky, slamming down into Claudia in a brilliant flash of white light. Her blackened body fell over with a sickening thud in the wet, marshy ground.
My soul cringed at what I had just done, but I took my first step toward the remaining three members of the earth clan, and nearly tripped. A root had sprung up from the ground and wrapped itself around my left ankle. It continued to tighten, biting through the material of my pants and into the soft flesh and muscle. A second root shot from the earth then and wrapped its way around my other leg, holding me in place.
I glanced around and saw Rowe engaged with the one male earth clan member, while the two females stood off to the side watched me with grins on their beautiful, elfinlike faces. Raising my right hand, I started to throw my last remaining knife at the one on the left when a third root halted me.
Trapped and certain that they meant to kill me, I had no choice. I tilted my head back toward the heavens, letting the rain pelt my face. A peace spread through my body, as if the water was cleansing me of the act I was about to commit.
The lightning slammed down twice, pounding both of the earth clan members. The scent of burned flesh drifted toward my nose.
This wasn’t what I wanted. I was the protector of our people, a title given to me by my father, the king of the naturi. He had commanded that with every breath in my body I protect the people and carry out the orders of my king or queen no matter what. I was to be their great defender. I was to be the sword and shield my people hid behind in times of darkness. Now I had become the sword that cut them down.
Something sharp prodded my neck, compelling me to open my eyes. Rowe stood before me with my knife point digging into my throat and a stern look on his face. “You’ve gotten sloppy.”
“Not at all.”
“Four naturi were allowed to sneak up on you. Two earth weavers captured you with roots, rendering you nearly helpless. I know that I taught you better than that.”
“You taught
me to fight nightwalkers and bori. Not our own kind.” I pushed back the memories that threatened to intrude. Rowe and I had trained together many years before our people were banished to their cage. We knew each other’s fighting styles. We knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses—or at least we had before we were separated by centuries of captivity.
“All the more reason you should know your enemy, far better than any nightwalker or bori,” Rowe criticized. “You should never have been trapped so easily.”
“I never was,” I said with a slight smile. Lowering my eyelids, I stared past him, concentrating on the flow of the earth around me. I murmured a couple words I had been given by our strongest magic weavers, and the roots quickly unwound themselves from around my body and shrank back into the earth.
The moment his gaze shifted to the roots. I landed two quick hits to his wounded arm and another to the wrist holding the knife, popping it loose. The blade still sliced through my skin, but it was only a minor flesh wound that would heal in time. The important thing was that Rowe was no longer holding a weapon. He was dangerous enough without one.
As the hilt of the blade landed in the palm of my hand again, he ducked and rolled away from me. Coming back up on his feet, he was holding the short sword of one of the fallen naturi. We were once again at a stalemate.
“I guess I was wrong,” Rowe said, smirking.
“It seems we frequently underestimate each other. It’s been too many years. I guess I assumed you grew soft in your years away from the rest of your people.”
“Hardly the case, as I have proven. Now give me the key so I can remove the collar.”
“You’re going with me to speak to Cynnia.”
“Even if I wanted to see your traitorous sister, I wouldn’t do it as a dog on a leash. Free me now!”
“And risk you killing her at first sight, because she is my ‘traitorous’ sister? No, I will have you brought before her with your powers held in check. I am more than willing to give my life protecting her, but I prefer to have the odds in my favor where you are concerned. I am no longer sure of what you are capable.”
“Anything,” he whispered, a dark smile gracing his grim features. He leaned in close to me, the edge of his blade scraping against mine. “I am capable of anything if it means my survival on this rotting wasteland.”
“Then come with me, because right now I am the only one who is willing to protect your traitorous hide.”
“I’ll go, but first give me the key,” he said, taking a step backward.
I smiled at him and bravely shoved my sword back into the sheath at my side. “I don’t have it.”
“What?”
“I don’t have it. Never did. It’s at our final destination.”
“Damn it, Nyx!” Rowe stomped away from me, tightly gripping the sword in one hand while still keeping his sore arm close to his body.
“It was the only way we could be sure you would seek out Cynnia whether I survived the journey or not.”
“So I should just kill you now and go alone to Cynnia’s location?”
“No, because you’ll never be able to defeat the one that captured you in the first place.”
Rowe stopped pacing the forest and looked at me, lowering his sword. “What are you talking about?”
“I find it impossible to believe that Claudia and her little band succeeded in capturing you and wounding you so thoroughly on their own. They were just the delivery. Someone else attacked you, and once it is known that you’ve escaped again, that person or persons will be on your trail. You need me to keep you alive.”
“Bitch,” he snarled.
“Can you fly?” I asked, ignoring his comment.
Rowe looked away from me as he placed the sword in his empty scabbard. He hunched forward and his brow furrowed in concentration. A low groan escaped his parted lips as a pair of leathery black wings sprang from his back. I bit my lower lip and blinked back unexpected tears at the sight of his wings. I remembered when they were white as newly fallen snow and soft as a kitten’s fur. I had been wrapped in those pearly white feathers once, felt their caress. But now they were gone, replaced by something dark and foreboding, as if they represented a stain against his soul.
“We will fly east for the next couple hours and then make camp just before sunrise,” I directed, lifting one hand to summon up the winds again.
“We should be moving by daylight. That’s when they will be searching for us. We need to gain as much ground as possible,” Rowe countered.
“True, but I am the one who is defending you, and I am at my peak strength at night.”
He gave a little bow just before he threw out his wings, catching the growing wind. “As you wish, Dark One.”
May the earth mother forsake you.
The old naturi curse occurred to me after he used the nickname that had haunted me since my birth, but I regretted the thought as quickly as it appeared. Looking at Rowe now, I had to wonder if the great earth mother had forsaken him already.
Three
Rowe snapped awake with a single magic word. He blinked a couple times before glaring at me. He had been in mid-rant when I laid a hand on his shoulder and cast the spell, sending him into a deep sleep. Of course, I had a feeling that it was effective only because the iron collar was keeping him weak and he was a member of my own clan. For some reason, the sleep spell I cast only worked on members of the wind clan.
“You put me under a spell, you evil witch!” Rowe snarled.
“It’s not as if I could trust you to sleep beside me peacefully,” I replied, edging toward the entrance of the cave we had found shelter in during the daylight hours. The sun was in the process of setting over in the west, casting the sky in vibrant shades of pink, purple, and orange. I was still waiting for the dark blues and murky blacks to move in before we set off once again.
I removed the barriers and protective shields I had put up as a warning system should anyone get too close to our hiding place. However, I didn’t step outside into the open forest. There was something approaching. In fact, I grabbed Rowe’s arm as he tried to walk past me into the forest, forcing him to stop.
“Something is coming,” I murmured, cocking my head to the side as I tried to listen to what the wind was whispering to me. The Great Mother was constantly talking, revealing her secrets, but only to those willing to listen.
“I sense nothing.” Rowe attempted to jerk his arm free from my grip, but I only tightened my fingers around his muscular forearm. Pulling him down to his hands and knees, I forced him to dig his fingers into some soft earth just at the entrance of the cave.
“You may be willing to take chances with your life, but I am not,” I said. “Now listen to what Mother has to say. Someone is coming.”
“I find it hard to believe that the Great Mother would have anything to say to you, Dark One,” Rowe scoffed.
My temper snapped once again, and I shoved him hard in the shoulder so that he landed on his butt. “Have my skills waned?”
“What?”
“Since we’ve been reacquainted during the past several months, do you believe that my skills have waned from my youth?”
“No,” he said, looking more than a little confused. “You’re stronger. You’re a better fighter, and I did not know you were capable of spell casting until now.”
“Then why do you persist in calling me ‘Dark One’? You gave up that name when we trained together as youths and I proved myself to you.”
“It bothers you?”
“Of course it bothers me!” I paced to the opposite side of the cave and laid my left hand against the wall. “I do not need the constant reminder that I am beneath the touch of the glorious light that comes from the earth and our people. I do not need to be reminded with every breath that my life is an abomination.”
I was an abomination. All naturi babies are born during the light of day so that they can be bathed in the glorious light of the sun and the radiant joy of the Earth. Those fe
w born at night were killed immediately. But when I was born just past midnight with my tuft of black hair and wide silver eyes, my father could not bear to lose me. He fought the heads of the clans for months until he finally convinced them to allow me to live, so long as I devoted my life to the protection of my people. And yet, even with that promise, I was an outcast; never knowing the warmth of compassion or love. Only Cynnia saw me as more than the Dark One or the protector of our people. She saw me as sister and loved me. Only Cynnia.
For a time I thought Rowe had been different. We trained together, fought side by side. He was the commander of the naturi armies and I was his second in command. I thought I had proven myself to him as a warrior.
“Look at me, Nyx. Really look at me!” he said now, drawing my eyes back to where he sat on the ground. “Do you think someone who looks like me has a right to judge you?”
“When I see you, I see someone who made a choice, a great sacrifice for the people he was fighting for.”
Rowe gave a snort and shook his head. “Don’t make it sound so noble. It may have started that way, but my motives weren’t always quite so honorable. Sometimes it was just the fastest way to get the job done.”
I shook my head, but remained silent as I listened to the wind rush by the entrance of the cave. Night was settling in the woods, filling the open areas between the trees with thick shadows, while the moon drifted in and out from behind the clouds.
“What happened to you after Machu Picchu?”
My gaze shifted back to the naturi sitting on the ground with his back to the cave wall. Rowe looked as if he was totally relaxed, but I knew he didn’t relax if he could help it. He was always ready for the next attack, ready to strike at the next enemy. But then, so was I. Too many years with the same training.
“Surprised we survived?” I asked.
He opened his mouth and then quickly shut it, shaking his head. “No, I’m not. You are a strong fighter. You would have defended Cynnia with everything that you are.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, surprised by his words. “We traveled northeast, hoping to head in the opposite direction of Aurora. We initially thought she would remain in South America near Machu Picchu. I thought she would remain there and use the strong power of the earth and the forests to rejuvenate, but I was wrong. Our intelligence indicated that she almost immediately headed northwest into a land called Canada. It was like she was mirroring us.”
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