The Relentless Warrior

by Rachel Higginson

  The girl I’d seen earlier made a gurgling sound in the back of her throat and flipped Sebastian the bird. “Keep it up, Sebastian. You must want me to kick your ass.”

  “Please,” Sebastian taunted her. “You must want me to kick your ass, please.”

  Roxie opened her mouth to spit something back at him, but Jericho walked into the room at that moment with his hand on the back of another guy. They were speaking in low tones and Jericho seemed to be comforting him. This must be the heartbroken fiancé that had lost his bride-to-be.

  It had to be him, because he was utterly haggard looking. If I thought jet lag had destroyed my youth and beauty, this man’s good looks and vitality had been ripped from him during a violent mugging in a back alley somewhere. He looked terrible. His olive skin was pasty and dull, his dark hair much too long and unkempt. He wasn’t trying to be stylish with how he wore his hair, he was simply dealing with it because it was part of living. His eyes were sunken in black holes of despair and barely restrained rage. His shoulders slumped, his mouth turned down and his hands seemed to be shaking.

  I had been through a lot with Terletov; but somehow this man had been through more.

  “And that’s Talbott,” Sebastian whispered in my ear.

  Jericho looked up then and met my gaze. His expression was soft and pained and while I wished for a moment that it was because he had started to feel bad for the way he was treating me, I knew better. He hated watching his friend suffer; he was in agony just because his friend agonized. That was the kind of guy Jericho was. He would take as much hurt as he could into himself, just so nobody else would have to feel pain.

  Except me. Apparently he’d decided I could handle his ice-out.

  Which I could. I could totally handle it.

  “Sebastian have you introduced everyone to Olivia?” Jericho asked from the other side of the long kitchen island.

  Everyone moved to take a seat at a tall bar stool around the island while Sebastian said, “I was just getting to that.”

  “I’ll do it then,” Jericho said. “Everyone, this is Olivia Taylor. She is one of the humans we found on the mountain last fall.”

  “One of the nuns?” Titus sputtered.

  “What! No!” I suppressed a smile while Jericho cocked his chin back, completely grossed out by that assumption. Apparently he wasn’t up for nearly kissing nuns. Put that in the Plus Column, the boy has standards. “I said human. Her sister is unconscious still.”

  “Oh, those humans.” Titus rubbed a hand over the top of his shaved head and avoided looking at everyone.

  “Anyway,” Jericho continued. “Olivia is with us because she suffered through Terletov’s experiments and did not come out unscathed. He somehow implanted Magic inside of her. She…”

  “Wait, what?” Roxie demanded. “She was human. And now she’s… Immortal?”

  “Yes, she has as much power as any of us. Maybe more,” he added as an afterthought. “Her sister is in a coma currently, but she could very easily wake up just as Immortal. This seems to be Terletov’s plan. He kidnaps Immortals and humans in an effort to transfer power. We’re obviously aware that not all of his case studies survive. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say most of his tests end with death. But for whatever reason, Olivia survived. And her sister, while she is unconscious, is still very much alive. Before we left, she started to improve.” Jericho looked around the room and met each one of our eyes. “We don’t know how many are out there, like Olivia. But if he has succeeded beyond the Taylor sisters, then there are a lot of confused humans out there that suddenly have unspeakable power. The necessity to find Terletov and shut down his operation is greater than ever.”

  “What’s the end game, Jericho?” one of the brothers asked. Xander? Xavier? I couldn’t remember. “What are your plans with the humans that have been pulled into this?”

  “Take their Magic back?” the other brother asked.

  The high planes of Jericho’s face heated and he cleared his throat nervously before answering, “Whatever Terletov is doing to the humans seems to be reinforcing their Magic. We’ve so far been unsuccessful in removing Olivia’s Magic.”

  “Well, sure,” Roxie grunted. “Of course it would be a fight if they don’t want to lose it to begin with.” She glanced at me from the corner of her eye and I immediately stopped liking her.

  What a little hussy!

  But before I could rip her head off for accusing me of sabotaging efforts to remove my Magic, Jericho stepped in, “Olivia would like nothing more than to get rid of her Magic, believe me.”

  “What did you do to her, Man?” Titus chuckled. “Why’s she so anxious to get away from you?”

  “Trust me, Jericho hasn’t done anything to her,” Sebastian taunted.

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” one of the brothers, obviously the stupid one, mumbled.

  “Is it really so hard to believe that I don’t want your Magic?” I snapped. No matter what the Magic did to my body, my brain and spirit were still incredibly exhausted and I had no patience for this. “I don’t want anything to do with any of you people! If I could give you back the Magic this second, I would. Jericho couldn’t get the Magic out of my blood, but it didn’t have anything to do with me. Believe me, I want it out of me more than anything!”

  “So it’s your fault then?” Titus glared at Jericho but I had to believe there was some humor behind his steely eyes.

  “What are you doing here?” Roxie asked, turning her full, hateful attention on me. “If you want the Magic gone so bad, why are you here?”

  “I also want revenge,” I hissed. “Just as bad as I want to forget this entire nightmare ever happened. And did you not hear him? My sister is in a freaking coma! The sooner I can hunt down this bastard and get a cure out of him, the better.”

  Roxie seemed to size me up before nodding slowly. “Fair enough,” she conceded.

  “So the plan?” Titus asked.

  “We’re checking out my parent’s places one by one. Tomorrow we’ll go to their house closer to Cuiaba. If we find nothing there, then we’ll try their weekender in Sao Paulo.” Jericho looked at the group of people and waited for questions but they just nodded. “And Gabriel? Has anyone heard from him?”

  The sad man lifted his eyes from the floor and let out a weary sigh. Finally, and in a thick Romanian accent that reminded me of the Guards from the Castle, he said, “He’s tracking Terletov’s brother, Alexi. He picked up a lead and said he would call us when he tracked it down.”

  “Good,” Jericho nodded. “Then get some rest tonight and tomorrow we track down our own lead.”

  Everyone nodded and then split up, or mostly moved from the bar stools to gather around Jericho or Sebastian. They fell into easy conversation and seemed obviously glad to see each other. I wasn’t the kind of girl to feel left out, mostly because I didn’t care if I was included or not. I preferred my “loner” status. But this felt like a family reunion of which I was an outsider. Besides that, I was tired.

  I took a few steps back and planned to escape quietly to my bedroom when Jericho called after me, “Liv, you want to talk for a bit? I can explain more of what’s going on.”

  “That’s alright,” I called out over my shoulder. “I’m going to go catch up on some sleep. I’m pretty exhausted. I wouldn’t be a good listener anyway.”

  Jericho didn’t smile or even seem angry; actually he made absolutely no facial expression at all, just stared at me with impassive eyes. “Alright, see you in the morning.”

  “Night,” I said and then made my escape.

  I could tell myself I didn’t fit in with these people all I wanted, but the real reason I was hiding out in my room? Jericho. I knew people respected him from the time we’d spent at the Castle. And he told me he was an important person. But there hadn’t been much of this kind of quiet reverence at the Castle- this devotion and adoration that his kind clearly felt for him. They listened to him with absolute trust and gave him everyth
ing he deserved, even when they were ribbing him.

  And on top of that, he was a good leader. He was a great leader. He knew how to control a room and he clearly felt comfortable at the helm. Listening to him brief his team with authority, decisiveness and compassion all at the same time did funny things to my heart. The meeting had been so short, so these feelings felt one hundred percent ridiculous, but they were there all the same. And I was losing the will to fight them.

  I worried these conflicting thoughts of Jericho and my beloved single status would keep me up all night. But once I was safely tucked away in my own room, with the sultry breeze floating in through the opened windows and patio door, the ceiling fan making a soft, soothing lullaby accompanied by the distant sounds of the rain forest, put me flat on my face. I collapsed in bed, my head thankfully landing on the pillow and I was out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jericho

  “You’re sure you’re up for this?” I asked Talbott first thing the next morning. We were the only ones in the kitchen so far, but I could hear the activity in the rest of the house. They had ten minutes to get out here before I left without them.

  I probably wouldn’t leave without them, but they needed to live in fear that I would.

  “It’s not a question of whether or not I’m up for this,” Talbott ground out. If possible, he looked even worse than the night before. I wondered if this was how all his days were, one shade darker than the last. “We find her today. That’s the only way I keep going, Jericho, by believing that this is the day I find her.”

  I nodded but couldn’t find the right words to speak. I averted my eyes from his slumped over frame and let him stare down at the marble countertop with his head in his hands in peace.

  Talbott and I had never been the closest, but there was a mutual respect between us and I admired what he had done for the Resistance over the years. What he had done for Lilly, Avalon and even Eden. Hell, even me. He was a good guy and did not deserve the special kind of hell he was suffering through.

  Nobody did.

  Olivia invaded my memory. Not the way she was now- strong, glowing with life and healthy; but the way she was the night on the mountaintop. Machu Picchu. That place was magical- or supposed to be. But the battle that night with Terletov’s men hadn’t been my first bad memory of the place.

  The first time I’d been there, I was the one that was beat up and broken. Eden had saved me that day, with some help from Talbott and Kiran, even if I still felt reluctant to admit it.

  But by far, the worst memory there had to be finding Olivia and her sister. Even though she still had the fight and determination to live and protect the sister that she loved so much, she’d been so very damaged.

  My stomach turned at the memories of her lying on the ground, bloody, beaten… broken. At the time I felt abject horror and disgust that something like this could happen to someone so innocent. She didn’t deserve that kind of treatment; she shouldn’t have been pulled into our mess. But even then those feelings had been detached and clinical. I’d looked at her with an assessing eye and gone into soldier-mode immediately.

  Now, thinking back to those moments, an unfurling rage, so hot and demanding that I felt the vibrations of it throughout every muscle, consumed me. I hated that she had been used by Terletov. That her body had been violated and changed, all because some madman wanted to create something that shouldn’t exist in the first place. I loathed that she had suffered anything, only made worse because of how deeply she’d suffered and because of how much she was still suffering. This girl was something more to me now than a stranger on the side of a mountain that had been treated unfairly. This was now Olivia, my Olivia, and the man that hurt her would have to pay.

  “Jericho, you’ll warn me if you decide to blow this place up, right?” Talbott asked with the tiniest bit of humor in his dead voice.

  I snapped out of my angry craze and went back to digging through the refrigerator. I shrugged, but didn’t know if Talbott was still paying attention to me.

  “So, Sebastian was right?” Talbott continued. “You and the human?”

  I grunted at a glass bottle of milk. “Not exactly.”

  Ignoring me, Talbott warned, “Just be careful with her, Jericho. Don’t ever let her go. Never let her go. He’ll take her the minute you do. And you might never get her back.”

  The bar stool Talbott had been sitting on scraped as he pushed it back and stood to his feet. I felt his presence leave the room, but couldn’t pull my head out of the fridge. Talbott’s words had sent ice slicing down my back and dread curdling in my stomach.

  He was right. The minute Terletov found Liv and discovered what she was capable of, he would do anything to get her back in his custody. Those were real, hard facts and they affected my judgment in a way I didn’t think possible.

  Because while there were some security risks and precautions I needed to take, the most lucid thought running around my head was how I would never let that happen. I would never let her be taken away from me, not in any circumstance. She belonged with me, by me, at my side. She wouldn’t go anywhere else. She couldn’t.

  I shook my head out and demanded my brain to start functioning normally. She hated me right now and for good measure. And despite what my loco brain wanted to think, I was keeping her at a distance intentionally. We weren’t right together and there was no future between us. If I started to feel possessive of her now, I would ruin everything.

  All she wanted to do was get home and I was on a mission to help her. We’d be separated in no time and then she’d be free to live out her life as she pleased. And I would stay here, on this side of reality and help run the Kingdom like I was supposed to.

  That was my future.

  And I was fine with it.

  But then why did I feel so disappointed with the direction my life was headed?

  Everyone started filtering into the room then, wide-eyed for the task ahead, but reserved in an uneasy way. Their nervous glances fell on Talbott briefly before finding something else to occupy their attention. I knew they weren’t just wary of Talbott and his volatile moods, but truly concerned too.

  We had to get Lily back to him.

  We had to.

  Olivia was the last to enter the kitchen and as soon as she appeared I took a calming breath. I hadn’t realized how anxious I had become standing there in the tense silence, but she seemed to smooth away some of my own fears just by being close.

  I gave her a tentative smile before I remembered I’d been a right bastard ever since Romania. She did not return it.

  Sebastian gave some last minute instructions, I explained the layout of my parent’s villa and then we walked out to the gravel drive. The Benz that brought us from the private air strip on the other side of Cuiaba was parked out front, but we decided to keep it out of the action today. Instead we filed into two different BMW M3’s- compact, light, fast.

  “Liv, you’re with me,” I called over the roof of the car after watching her try to slip into the other vehicle with Titus and Sebastian.

  She wavered for only a moment before joining Talbott, Xander and me. Doors slammed shut, engines revved and we were off. Sebastian followed closely behind us while I navigated the familiar roads to one of my parents many South American properties.

  I drove in silence and no one in the car seemed anxious to break the blanket of quiet that had descended on us. We gradually put our game faces on and fell into the appropriate moods to deal with whatever we would come across.

  I tried not to think about that too much, even though the success of our mission somewhat depended on me anticipating what we would run into.

  That was hard to do though, when the enemy we might face could be my own parents.

  Before I could change my mind and turn the car back around, I was pulling to a stop at the end of a hand-paved stone driveway. The extravagant Spanish-styled villa sat nestled on the edge of a cliff and seemed as ominous and foreboding as our mission.
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br />   I turned the car off and stepped out. I stared at the red tiled roof and cream stucco siding broken up by stone detailing and picture windows on nearly every wall. The rest of my team stood behind me, waiting for my command.

  I looked around for Olivia and registered surprise when she already stood next to me. Her big blue eyes blinked up at me and her delicate face pinched with determination.

  “This is my parents’ house,” I said unnecessarily. I winced at how afraid I sounded, at how weak I was being. Especially because everyone else crowded around me, listening to my embarrassing insecurities.

  “Should we see if they’re home?” She asked casually at the same time she slipped her hand into mine.

  I narrowed my eyes on her and asked her to explain her kindness. She had been livid with me for treating her the way that I had been. And good for her! I deserved it. But at the same time, I felt utterly relieved to have her here with me.

  She gave me a tug and led the way to the front door. This was wrong; she was human and not a permanent part of our team. But she took the initiative and we followed behind her.

  She wasn’t really in charge, and if the situation had been any more dangerous there was no way I would let her walk out in front. But as it were I stood in awe of her fearlessness, her endless courage.

  “Do we knock?” she asked on a nervous laugh.

  I shook my head, still too stunned to speak. I gripped the iron door handle and let my Magic infuse the lock. It clicked free without a fight and the heavy wooden door swung open.

  The interior of the house gave nothing away. The lights were off and even the sunlight form outside seemed to be unable to break through the gloomy shroud covering the house.

  I stepped into the familiar but different home and let the tense stillness of the empty place settle over me. The rest of the team followed behind me and Sebastian clapped his hands at the same time turning on all the lights with his Magic; he was showing off and thought he was funny… typical.