“Kane—” She started to reach for him, and then she was hit with violent weakness. It flooded back into her now that the kiss was over, and she lost her grip on his shoulders, her fingers too weak to hold on.
“Shit, Sarah.” Kane cursed under his breath as he tightened his grip on her, holding her securely against him.
“I’m okay.” She leaned her head against his shoulder and squeezed her eyes shut, fighting to breathe. Her lungs felt tight, and it was hard to get oxygen. Kane’s kiss had flooded her with energy and life, but the moment it had ended, the weakness had come crashing back, even worse than before. “I just need the fountain.” Or a kiss, apparently, though that rejuvenation had ended the moment the kiss had. Maybe she needed to kiss him relentlessly and never stop. Maybe that would save her life.
“I’m on it.” Kane gently set her down, and crouched beside her, running his hand gently through her hair. “Stay here. We’ll get the damn thing to work.”
“We?” She leaned her head against the stone, struggling to breathe, to get air into her lungs. Okay, she was no longer amused at how weak she was. This was definitely pushing it a little bit too close. But how was she supposed to know that the water would dry up and some overly-tempting testosterone factory would show up to seduce her with his kisses?
“We. My team.” Kane jerked his head to the left, and she managed to turn her head enough to see what he was pointing to. Two massive warriors were standing beside them. One of them was the dark haired one she remembered from the other night. His pitch black hair was shaggy and unkempt, and his face was dark with fury. Ryland, the one who knew she was an angel.
Fear rippled through her as Kane stood up to face them. “You remember Ryland Samuels,” he said, not bothering to look away from her face. “He has a crush on you, but don’t get too excited about it. He’s a veritable bastard who has never once brought a woman roses.”
Ryland strode over to her and crouched in front of her. “I’m here to serve you,” he said intently. “You tell me what you need, and it’s yours. You honor us with your presence.”
Her heart tightened for the emotion on Ryland’s face, for the raw, almost unbearable pain in his eyes. God, she wished she could help him. There was so much grief and anger within him, so little humanity left inside. “Thanks,” she whispered, her voice so raw it hurt to say any more.
“Hey, enough with you guys trying to impress the girl,” the other warrior said, his dark brown hair cut in a short style more fitting of a guy in a Polo shirt than a male with a long, hooked spear clenched in his fist. “Let her choose between you guys herself.” He winked at Sarah, a cheerful flirt that she knew instantly was designed simply to annoy the other two, and she almost smiled.
Who would dare antagonize men like Kane and Ryland?
“Thano Savakis.” Kane jerked his thumb toward Thano as the three of them strode across the courtyard toward the fountain.
She could feel the determination from all three men to get the fountain working, and the faintest flicker of hope drifted through her. Was there really a chance? Could they do it?
“Thano thinks he’s smarter and funnier than he is,” Kane said as he vaulted over the wall to the fountain. “Don’t get too attached because we’re likely to take him out at any time.”
“You’ll never be able to take me out,” Thano retorted cheerfully. “You’re way too old for a hot youngblood like me.”
“Fuck that,” Ryland snapped. “You’re not smart enough to stay alive. You’ll never make it to a hundred.”
Sarah’s heart tightened with longing at the easy camaraderie between the men as they circled the fountain, talking in low voices as they inspected it. The affection had been evident in Kane’s voice even when he’d been giving them grief, and she could sense the commitment they had to each other.
What would it be like to have strength like that at her back? It reminded her of too long ago, before the people she’d cared about had all died.
Kane turned his head suddenly and looked right at her. Sarah.
His voice was like a warm strength curling through her mind, and she couldn’t stop the sudden burn of tears. What?
You’re not alone anymore. I have your back. Even Ryland does, though I’ll have to kill him if he makes a move on you.
She stared at Kane, at the massive, deadly warrior who dwarfed the fountain that had once been so big, and she felt the honesty of his words and she wanted to cry with relief. She wasn’t alone. Regardless of who he once was, or who he might become, right now, in this moment, she could count on him, and that was an unbelievable gift.
But even as she began to relax and feel good about trusting him, she felt the slither of something dark inside him, beneath that rugged commitment. It was the kind of evil, tainted darkness that had destroyed so many, so brutally, for so long.
Kane’s eyes narrowed, and she felt a sudden surge of the violence inside him. What do you know about me?
Dear God, what could she say? Was he really Los Muerte? I—
“Got it.” Ryland shouted from the back side of the statue. “This is the spot.”
Kane turned away then, sparing her answers she wasn’t ready to give…for now. But she’d seen from the look on his face that he wasn’t going to let it go. He was going to demand answers, and as she rubbed her hand over the brand on her arm, she knew there were things she simply couldn’t afford for him to know.
Chapter Seven
The darkness inside Kane was getting worse with each passing moment. It had been getting exponentially stronger since he’d first walked into the village of Akara two hours ago, waiting for Sarah’s return. He rubbed the back of his neck restlessly as he knelt at the base of the crumbling fountain, studying the crack in the rocks that Ryland had pointed out. He felt like his skin was peeling off his body, like the scars were made of acid, burning through his skin.
What the fuck was going on?
Ryland set his hand over the crack at the base of the statue. “The air is damp here. There’s water beneath the ground.”
Kane tested the air, and a cold blast of damp air hit him. It sizzled against his palm and he pulled his hand back. Across his palm was a blood-red streak, as if he’d been lashed by a burning whip. “Shit.”
Ryland’s dark eyes met his, and he flipped over his hand, showing Kane that his skin was clear. Not a mark.
“Thano.”
The third warrior placed his hand over the crack. “It feels damp,” he agreed. “Definitely water under there.” He pulled his hand back and showed both of them. Again, not a mark.
The three warriors exchanged grim looks, and again, that cold, threatening energy seemed to swell inside Kane, like a chisel trying to crack his soul. Astronomical pain slashed through him.
Worse now. Getting worse. Why was he different from Ryland and Thano? What the hell was going on? He closed his fist, refusing to get dragged down into fixating on it. His mission was to get Sarah water, and then he could deal with everything else. “Let’s get this damned fountain out of the way then.”
“Wait.” Sarah’s desperate voice interrupted.
“What’s up?” Kane turned to look at her, and the moment he saw her again, he felt like he’d just been sucker-punched by his first sighting of her in over two weeks. She was leaning against the crumbling wall, her face pale and weary, but her eyes were brimming with fire and passion.
Jesus. She was real. Ever since the night he’d met her, he’d had her only in his mind, trying to piece together what she really looked like, trying to figure out exactly what that whirlwind night had been about. He’d seen her only in the dim light, so his memories were of how she felt beneath him and what her voice sounded like. He could still remember the white light fading in her soul, and the beauty of her spirit as she’d flooded him when the darkness had tried to take him.
She’d become almost a fantasy, a phantasm who’d blown into his life in the night and vanished by morning. With each day that had passed,
it had been more and more difficult to hold onto the details of who she was, and with each day, the void in his soul had become stronger and stronger, until it felt like there were a thousand pounds of weight crushing his lungs, making it almost impossible to breathe.
He didn’t sleep anymore, unwilling to relax his safeguards against the onslaught inside him. His only mission had been to find Sarah. He’d been consumed by the need to locate the woman who had wiped out some of the scars on his chest and made him feel alive for the first time in five hundred years. He’d felt pain when he was with her, yeah, and darkness, but she’d also made his soul come screaming to life, and that was worth all the pain and torture in the world.
And now, after two weeks of frustration and dead ends, he’d found her. She was real. Real.
Her hair was ash blond, like the color of sunshine breaking through a storm cloud. Her eyes were an even more radiant shade of blue than he’d remembered. But she looked delicate and fragile, so pale she seemed almost translucent. Her hands were trembling, and dirt was caked under her fingernails. He swore under his breath as the need to protect her raged to the surface, but he forced himself not to move toward her, afraid to spook her before he’d gotten her settled.
She’d taken off on him once, and he could not allow that to happen again. He needed to handle the situation better this time. Right now, she needed his help, and he was going to give it to her. He needed to save her ass quickly, and then get her alone where he could solidify his position in her life so she didn’t leave him.
“Don’t destroy the fountain,” she said. “It has special properties.”
Kane grimaced at the several thousand pound tower of stone. Not move it? “You like to make things difficult, don’t you, sweetheart?”
She managed a small smile. “You wouldn’t adore me so much if I made life easy for you.”
“Yeah.” Kane eyed the fountain, trying to figure out a solution that didn’t involve decimation. “True, but you’re a serious impediment to my need to be violent and destructive.”
Her smile faded, and he felt a surge of fear from her. “Do you really feel that way? Violent and destructive?”
At her sudden tension, Kane swung around to look at her, dropping the pretense. “It’s part of who we are, Sarah,” he said honestly. “It’s what makes us able to save the damn world on a daily basis. I’m no angel, not by a longshot.” He wouldn’t lie to her about what he was, about the violence that was pulsing inside him, about the life he’d been leading for so long.
She bit her lip, and he felt her sudden withdrawal. The moment she pulled back, the void inside him roared back to life, fighting to consume him. He almost staggered from the force of it. There was no pain this time, just a sense of utter blankness. Death? Son of a bitch. What the fuck was going on? One minute he was consumed with a void that felt like the steady approach of death, and the next minute, there was such violence and pain tearing through him that he wanted to rip off his skin and let the demon loose into the world. Death versus life? Life was a demon, and death was death? Was that what was going on inside him? Because if so, he opted for door number three, whatever that might be—
Another wave of vast emptiness hit him, and it felt like his spirit was getting sucked into an arid dust bath, draining the life from his cells one by one by one.
“God, I love that angel perspective,” Ryland said reverently, pausing with his machete in his fist. “She wants to save every damned thing, doesn’t she? Even an old fountain. Can you imagine living that way? Fucking beautiful.”
Thano raised his brows. “Dude, we need to get you some therapy. There’s no beauty in your world. There’s only violence and bad attitude. You don’t even know how to notice beauty.”
Ryland glared at him. “Fuck off, rookie.”
Thano just grinned and held out his arms. “You can stop pretending you don’t want to hug me. I can do the man-hug thing without losing my raw, manly sex appeal. Everything is beautiful, and all that, right?”
“Thano,” Kane muttered, bracing himself against the pain trying to tear him apart. “Stop fucking around.”
Thano and Ryland both turned toward Kane, and Thano’s grin dropped off. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know.” Kane’s head was spinning, and he felt like he was losing his equilibrium. He braced his hands on the ground and bowed his head, straining to keep his balance and his focus. His skin felt cold, and his muscles felt like they were sluggish and heavy, like he was lodged in a pit of quicksand—
Kane. Sarah’s hand landed on his bare back, and a shock of energy ripped through him.
Don’t move, Sarah. Stay with me. He went utterly still, centering all his attention on the feel of her hand against his bare skin. The softness of her touch. The heat of her hand. The life beating within her. Slowly, ever so slowly, he felt the grip that the void had on him begin to lessen. The world stopped spinning, and his muscles began to fire again. The pain began to start again, but he didn’t give a shit about that. He’d take the pain over what had just happened. Was that death? Was he a sliver away from dying? Because that’s what it felt like.
He took a breath, then turned to look at Sarah. Her face was still streaked with the hairline fractures, and she was so pale that she looked like death itself. Ryland and Thano were each supporting one of her arms, and Ryland’s arm was around her waist, holding her up.
For a split second, the ancient male instinct roared through Kane at the sight of the other two males touching his woman, but then Ryland shook his head once. “Don’t do it, Santiago. We’re saving your ass, so back the fuck off. Control yourself.”
His heart thudding with the need to attack his friends, Kane looked at Sarah instead, focusing on the intensity of her blue eyes. Ryland was right. They were holding Sarah in position so she could touch Kane and bring him back. Why did her touch make the void disappear and bring the pain and the darkness to life? What are you doing to me, Sarah? Why do I react like this around you?”
Uncertainty flickered in her eyes, and she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
She was lying. He knew she was, and that realization burned through him like acid. “No lies, Sarah. No damn lies.”
She stiffened at his tone, and Kane saw Ryland move closer, trying to put his body between Kane and Sarah to protect her. Thano touched Ryland’s arm in warning when Kane tensed, and Ryland froze, partially blocking Kane’s access to Sarah.
No one moved, the tension so thick that it felt like one wrong breath would make everything snap. Violence rolled through Kane, a raw need to rip Ryland apart and make him pay for being too close to his woman. Kane felt his upper lip curl into a snarl, and Ryland tightened his fist on the machete. Kane immediately called out his flail, and Ryland raised his blade.
Thano swore and slid his arm over Sarah to pull her away, and Kane instantly pressed his flail to Thano’s throat. “Don’t fucking take her away from me,” he growled. His voice was harsh and raspy, almost unrecognizable, and he felt Sarah suck in her breath.
Black spots began to dance through his vision, and Kane called out his other weapon. Ryland and Thano instantly did the same, and then all three men were armed, with Sarah in the middle.
“I think you should go, Sarah,” Thano said, his voice grim. “There’s something seriously fucked up happening right now.”
But Sarah didn’t move. She just looked up at Kane, searching his face desperately as if trying to understand. Then suddenly, more quickly than any of the men expected, she darted in front of Thano, putting her throat right in front of Kane’s flail.
Kane swore and sheathed his flail instantly, jerking his hand back as Ryland and Thano grabbed for her—too late, because Kane would have already killed her by then if he’d wanted to.
“Jesus!” Thano grabbed Kane’s arm and shoved him back, while Ryland grabbed Sarah and spun her away, shielding her with his body.
Darkness rolled through Kane at the sight of Ryland y
anking Sarah away from him, and he lowered his head, glowering silently at his teammate as Thano set his hands on Kane’s shoulders and shoved at him, ordering him to stand down.
Kane ignored him, his gaze riveted on Sarah as she turned in Ryland’s arms. She raised her chin and met his gaze, her blue eyes blazing with audacity and…something else. No longer fear. Smug satisfaction. Relief.
“I knew you wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, her voice full of such relief it went right to his core and peeled away at some of the darkness inside him. “I knew I could trust you.” Then she smiled, her face so radiant that it felt like he’d just been blinded by heaven’s rays.
“Jesus,” Ryland muttered. “That’s why you did that? To test him?” Ryland looked almost ashen, which was astounding for him. “Sarah, he’s a bastard on the edge. We all are. He was right when he said he’s not an angel. Don’t believe in us, and sure as hell don’t test us by jumping in front of our weapons to see if we’ll pull the blow.”
“Speak for yourself,” Thano said. “I’m completely angelic. It’s the new wave of the Order.”
Kane didn’t reply to the banter, stunned by what had just happened. He was still shocked by that sight of Sarah on the other side of his flail when so much violence had been streaming through him. He stared at Sarah, trying to comprehend what had just happened. Why did you do that?
I had to know.
He still didn’t get it. Know what?
Her smile faded. Whether you were going to try to kill me now, or whether we have time. Grim reality darkened her eyes, and she began to sag against Ryland, as if it had become too much in her weakened state. You can’t fake instinct, so now I know.
I would never hurt you, Sarah. Never. The words burned inside him, a raging ferocity that tore him out of Thano’s arms. He strode across the rubble toward Sarah, ignoring Thano’s attempt to restrain him and Ryland’s warning to back off.
Darkness Reborn (Order of the Blade #5) Page 10