by Nora Roberts
The light had burned so fierce and bright, so violently hot. Yet it hadn’t scorched his skin. He held his hand up, examined it. Unmarked. Unsteady yet, he could admit. But unmarked.
The light had filled him, all but consumed him. It had twined him so truly with Glenna it had been almost as if they’d been one person, one power.
That power had been heady and fantastic.
And it had whirled out like the wrath of the gods at his brother. Struck down the other half of him while the sorcerer had ridden the lightning.
Now he was empty, hollowed out. What power that remained in him was like lead, heavy and cold, and the lead was coated thick with guilt.
Nothing to be done now, nothing to do but put order back into the room. He busied himself, calmed himself, with the basic tasks. When King rushed into the room, he stood still, arms at his sides, and took the blow he saw coming full in the face.
He had a moment to think it was like being hit by a battering ram as he was launched back against the wall. Then simply slid bonelessly to the floor.
“Get up. Get up, you son of a bitch.”
Hoyt spat out blood. His vision wavered so he saw several black giants standing over him with ham-sized fists bunched. He braced a hand on the wall, dragged himself to his feet.
The battering ram struck again. This time his vision went red, black, shimmered sickly to gray. King’s voice went tinny in his ears, but he struggled to follow the command to get back up.
There was a flash of color through the gray, a stream of heat through the iced pain.
Glenna flew into the tower. She didn’t bother to shove at King, but rammed her elbow viciously into his midsection, then all but fell on Hoyt to shield him.
“Stop it! Get away from him. Stupid bastard. Oh Hoyt, your face.”
“Get away.” He could barely mumble the words, and his stomach pitched violently as he pushed at her and tried to rise again.
“Go ahead and throw one. Come on.” King spread his arms, then tapped his chin. “I’ll give you a free shot. Hell, I’ll give you a couple of them, you miserable son of a bitch. It’s more than you gave Cian.”
“He’s gone then. Get away from me.” Hoyt shoved at Glenna. “Go ahead,” he told King. “Finish it.”
Though his fists remained bunched, King lowered them a fraction. The man was barely standing, and blood ran from his nose, his mouth. One eye was already swelling shut. And he just swayed there, waiting to take another hit.
“Is he stupid, or just crazy?”
“He’s neither,” Glenna snapped. “He thinks he’s killed his brother so he’ll stand here and let you beat him to death because he blames himself as much as you blame him. And you’re both wrong. Cian’s not dead. Hoyt, he’s going to be fine. He’s resting, that’s all. He’s resting.”
“Not gone?”
“You didn’t pull it off, and you won’t get a second chance.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Glenna whirled to King. “Nobody tried to kill anyone.”
“Just step away, Red.” King jerked a thumb. “I’m not looking to hurt you.”
“Why not? If he’s responsible, so am I. We were working together. We were doing what we came here to do, damn it. Cian came in at the wrong time, it’s as simple and as tragic as that. If Hoyt could, and would, hurt Cian like that purposely, do you think you’d be standing there? He’d cut you down with a thought. And I’d help him.”
King’s bicolored eyes narrowed, his mouth went grim. But his fists stayed at his side. “Why don’t you?”
“It’s against everything we are. You couldn’t possibly understand. But unless you’re brick stupid you should understand that whatever affection and loyalty you feel for Cian, Hoyt feels it, too. And he’s felt it since the day he was born. Now get out of here. Just go.”
King unbunched his fists, rubbed them on his pants. “Maybe I was wrong.”
“A lot of good that does.”
“I’m going to check on Cian. If I’m not satisfied, I’m going to finish this.”
Ignoring him as he strode out, Glenna turned to try to take some of Hoyt’s weight. “Here now, you need to sit down.”
“Would you get away from me?”
“No, I won’t.”
In response, Hoyt merely lowered to the floor.
Resigned, Glenna went for more cloth, poured water from a pitcher into a bowl. “It looks like I’m going to spend the evening mopping up blood.”
She knelt beside him, dampening cloth, then gently cleaning blood from his face. “I lied. You are stupid, stupid to stand there and let him pound on you. Stupid to feel guilty. And cowardly, too.”
His eyes, bloodied and swollen, shifted to hers. “Have a care.”
“Cowardly,” she repeated, her voice sharp because there were tears welling at the base of her throat. “To stay up here wallowing instead of coming down to help. Instead of coming down to see what shape your brother was in. Which isn’t that much worse than you at this point.”
“I’m not in the mood to have you jab at me with words, or flutter about me.” He waved her hands away.
“Fine. Just fine.” She tossed the cloth back in the bowl so water spewed up and lapped over onto the floor. “Tend to yourself then. I’m tired of every single one of you. Brooding, self-pitying, useless. If you ask me, your Morrigan screwed up royally picking this group.”
“Brooding, self-pitying, useless. You forgot your part of the whole. Shrew.”
She inclined her head. “That’s a weak and old-fashioned term. Today, we just go with bitch.”
“Your world, your word.”
“That’s right. While you’re up here wallowing, you might take just a minute to consider this. We did something amazing here tonight.” She gestured toward the silver crosses on the table. “Something beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. The fact that we did, that we could, should, in some way, bring this ridiculous group together. But instead we’re all whining in our separate corners. So I guess the magic, and the moment, was wasted.”
She stormed out just as Larkin jogged up the steps. “Cian’s getting up. He says we’ve wasted enough time and we’ll be training an extra hour tonight.”
“You can tell him to kiss my ass.”
Larkin blinked, then craned his head around the curve of the stairs to watch her stride down. “Sure it’s a fine one,” he said, but very quietly.
He peeked into the tower room, saw Hoyt sitting on the floor, bleeding.
“Mother of Christ, did she do that?”
Hoyt scowled at him and decided his punishment for the night wasn’t quite done. “No. For God’s sake, do I look like I could be beaten by a woman?”
“She strikes me as formidable.” Though he would have preferred keeping clear of magic areas, he could hardly leave the man sprawled there. So Larkin walked over to Hoyt, crouched. “Well, that’s a mess, isn’t it? You’re coming up a pair of black eyes.”
“Bollocks. Give me a hand up, will you?”
Agreeably, Larkin helped him up, gave him a shoulder to lean on. “I don’t know what the bleeding hell’s going on, but Glenna’s steaming, and Moira’s locked in her room. Cian looks like the wrath of all the gods, but he’s out of bed and saying we’re training. King’s opened some whiskey and I’m thinking about joining him.”
Hoyt touched fingers gingerly to his cheekbone, hissed as the pain radiated to his face. “Not shattered, there’s some fine luck. She might’ve done a bit more to help instead of pounding a lecture on my head.”
“Words are a woman’s sharpest weapon. From the looks of you, you could use some of that whiskey.”
“I could.” Hoyt braced a hand on the table, prayed he’d regain his balance in a moment. “Do what you can, would you, Larkin, to get the lot of them together in the training area. I’ll be along.”
“Taking my life in my hands, I’m thinking. But all right. I’ll try sweetness and charm with the ladies. They’ll either fall for it, or kick me in th
e balls.”
They didn’t kick him, but they didn’t come happily. Moira sat cross-legged on a table, eyes, swollen from weeping, downcast. Glenna stood in a corner, sulking into a glass of wine. King stood in his own corner, rattling ice in a short glass of whiskey.
Cian sat, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. His face was white as bone, and the burns the loose white shirt didn’t cover, livid.
“Music might be nice,” Larkin said into the silence. “The sort you hear at funeral pyres and the like.”
“We’ll work on form and agility.” Cian cast his glance around the room. “I haven’t seen a great deal of that in any of you so far.”
“Is there a point to you being insulting?” Moira asked wearily. “A point to any of this? Slapping swords and trading punches? You were burned worse than anyone I’ve ever seen, and here you are, an hour after, up again. If magic such as that can’t take you down, keep you down, what will?”
“I take it you’d be happier if I’d gone to ash. I’m happy to disappoint you.”
“That’s not what she meant.” Glenna shoved irritably at her hair.
“And you interpret for her now?”
“I don’t need anyone to speak for me,” Moira snapped right back. “And I don’t need to be told what to do every bleeding hour of every bleeding day. I know what kills them, I’ve read the books.”
“Oh, well then, you’ve read the books.” Cian gestured toward the doors. “Then be my guest. Go right on out and take out a few vamps.”
“It’d be better than tumbling about on the floor in here, like a circus,” she shot back.
“I’m with Moira on this.” Larkin rested a hand on the hilt of his knife. “We should hunt them down, take the offense. We haven’t so much as posted a guard or sent out a scout.”
“This isn’t that kind of war, boy.”
Larkin’s eyes glittered. “I’m not a boy, and from what I can see it’s no kind of war.”
“You don’t know what you’re up against,” Glenna put in.
“Don’t I? I fought them, killed three with my own hands.”
“Weak ones, young ones. She didn’t waste her best on you.” Cian rose. He moved stiffly and with obvious effort. “Added to that, you had help and were lucky. But if you came across one with some seasoning, with some skill, you’d be meat.”
“I can hold my own.”
“Hold it with me. Come at me.”
“You’re hurt. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Fair is for women. If you take me down, I’ll go out with you.” Cian gestured toward the door. “We’ll hunt tonight.”
Interest brightened Larkin’s eyes. “Your word on it?”
“My word. Take me down.”
“All right then.”
Larkin came in fast, then spun out of reach. He jabbed, feinted, spun again. Cian merely reached out, gripped Larkin around the throat and lifted him off his feet. “You don’t want to dance with a vampire,” he said and tossed Larkin halfway across the room.
“Bastard.” Moira scrambled up, raced to her cousin’s side. “You’ve half strangled him.”
“The half ’s what counts.”
“Was that really necessary?” Glenna got to her feet, moved to Larkin to lay her hands on his throat.
“Kid asked for it,” King commented, and had her whipping her head around.
“You’re nothing but a bully. The pair of you.”
“I’m all right, I’m all right.” Larkin coughed, cleared his throat. “It was a good move,” he said to Cian. “I never saw it coming.”
“Until you can, and do, you don’t hunt.” He eased back, lowered carefully into the chair. “Time to work.”
“I’d ask you to wait.” Hoyt came into the room.
Cian didn’t bother to look at him. “We’ve waited long enough.”
“A bit more. I have things to say. First to you. I was careless, but so were you. I should have barred the door, but you shouldn’t have opened it.”
“This is my house now. It hasn’t been yours for centuries.”
“That may be. But courtesy and caution should approach a closed door, particularly when magic is being done. Cian.” He waited until his brother’s eyes shifted to him. “I would not have had you hurt. That’s for you to believe or not. But I would not have had you hurt.”
“I don’t know if I can say the same.” Cian gestured with his chin toward Hoyt’s face. “Did your magic do that?”
“It’s another result of it.”
“Looks painful.”
“So it is.”
“Well then, that balances the scales somewhat.”
“And this is what we’ve come to, checks and balances.” Hoyt turned to face the room, and the others. “Arguments and resentments. You were right,” he said to Glenna. “A great deal of what you said was right, though I swear you talk too much.”
“Oh, really?”
“We aren’t united, and until we are, we’re hopeless. We could be training and preparing every hour of every day of the time we have left, and never win. Because—this is what you said—we have a common enemy, but not a common purpose.”
“The purpose is to fight them,” Larkin interrupted. “To fight them, and kill them. Kill them all.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re demons.”
“So is he.” Hoyt laid a hand on the back of Cian’s chair.
“But he fights with us. He doesn’t threaten Geall.”
“Geall. You think of Geall, and you,” he said to Moira, “of your mother. King’s here with us because he follows Cian, and in my way, so do I. Cian, why are you here?”
“Because I don’t follow. You or her.”
“Why are you here, Glenna?”
“I’m here because if I didn’t fight, if I didn’t try, everything we have and are and know, every one of us, could be lost. Because what’s inside me demands that I be here. And above all, because good needs soldiers against evil.”
Oh aye, this was a woman, he thought. She put shame to all of them. “The answer. The single one there is, and she’s the only one who knew it. We’re needed. Stronger than valor or vengeance, loyalty or pride. We’re needed. Can we stand with each other and do this thing? Not in a thousand years and with a thousand more of us to fight. We’re the six, the beginning of it. We can’t be strangers any longer.”
He stepped away from Cian’s chair as he reached in his pocket. “Glenna said make a symbol and a shield, a sign of common purpose. That unity of purpose made the strongest magic I’ve ever known. Stronger than I could hold,” he said with a glance at Cian. “I believe they can help protect us, if we remember a shield needs a sword, and we use both with one purpose.”
He drew the crosses out so the silver glinted in the light. He stepped to King, offered one. “Will you wear it?”
King set his drink aside, took the cross and chain. He studied Hoyt’s face as he looped it around his neck. “You could use some ice on that eye.”
“I could use a great deal. And you?” He held a cross out to Moira.
“I’ll work to be worthy of it.” She sent Glenna a look of apology. “I’ve done poorly tonight.”
“So have we all,” Hoyt told her. “Larkin?”
“Not just of Geall,” Larkin said as he took the cross. “Or no longer.”
“And you.” Hoyt started to hand Glenna a cross, then stepped closer, looked into her eyes as he put it around her neck himself. “I think tonight you put us all to shame.”
“I’ll try not to make a habit of it. Here.” She took the last cross, put the chain over his head. Then gently, very gently touched her lips to his battered cheek.
At last, he turned and walked back to Cian.
“If you’re about to ask if I’d wear one of those, you’re wasting your breath.”
“I know you can’t. I know you’re not what we are, and still I’m asking you to stand with us, for this purpose.” He held out a pendant, in the
shape of a pentagram much like Glenna’s. “The stone in the center is jasper, like the ones in the crosses. I can’t give you a shield, not yet. So I’m offering you a symbol. Will you take it?”
Saying nothing, Cian held out a hand. When Hoyt poured pendant and chain into it, Cian shook it lightly, as if checking the weight. “Metal and stone don’t make an army.”
“They make weapons.”
“True enough.” Cian slipped the chain over his head. “Now if the ceremony’s finished, could we bloody well get to work?”
Chapter 12
Seeking solitude and occupation, Glenna poured a glass of wine, got out a pad of paper and a pencil and sat down at the kitchen table.
An hour, she thought, of quiet, where she could settle down, make some lists. Then maybe she would sleep.
When she heard someone approaching, her back went up. In a house this size, couldn’t everyone find some place else to be?
But King came in, and stood, shifting his weight, digging his hands into his pockets.
“Well?” was all she said.
“Ah, sorry about breaking Hoyt’s face.”
“It’s his face, you should apologize to him.”
“We know where we stand. Just wanted to clear it with you.” When she said nothing, he scratched the top of his head through his thick hair, and if a man of six six and two hundred and seventy pounds could squirm, King squirmed.
“Listen, I run up, and that light’s blasting, and he’s lying there bleeding and burning. Guy’s my first sorcerer,” King continued after another pause. “I’ve only known him like a week. I’ve known Cian since…a really long time, and I owe him pretty much everything.”
“So when you found him hurt, naturally you assumed his brother tried to kill him.”
“Yeah. Figured you had a part in it, too, but I couldn’t beat the hell out of you.”
“I appreciate the chivalry.”
The sting in her tone made him wince. “You sure got a way of cutting a man down to size.”
“It would take a chain saw to cut you down to size. Oh, stop looking so pitiful and guilty.” With a sigh, she scooped back her hair. “We screwed up, you screwed up, and we’re all goddamn sorry about it. I suppose you want some wine now. Maybe a cookie.”