The Relentless Warrior

by Rachel Higginson

  Terletov had taken another one of my friends.

  Gabriel looked at me, the light in his flaming eyes flickering as his body weakened. He looked directly into my eyes and with a rasping, barely audible voice he said, “Protect the two. She is key. Citadel… get out of the Citadel…” And then he fell forward at an awkward but limp angle.

  That was it. He was gone.

  I scrambled to collect my senses and raise my weapon. But as I was gathering my courage again, I saw the black box fly through the air. I abandoned my plan and dove for Olivia instead. She was standing behind me, protected by my aggression; nobody could get to her while I had been fighting so wildly. I tucked her into my body and twisted in the air so that she would absorb our fall, but I would take the brunt of the blast.

  Just before the bomb went off, time slowed way down- a trick of one of Terletov’s men. They would escape this way, they would get out.

  But hopefully we were all Immortal enough to survive this particular blast.

  Just before the explosion hit us like a blazing hot train at full speed, I heard Terletov’s last words ring out through the air, “You have two of my possessions now, General. I want your Queen and I want my soldier. We will meet again very soon Jericho Bentley . Be ready, or your regrets will be stacked as high as your priests and your fate just as pretty.”

  I felt a little surprised that he knew my name just a second before the blast took my hearing and sight; the earth quaked and crumbled beneath me.

  I could do nothing more than wrap my Magic around Olivia and hold her as tightly to me as possible.

  But that was all I wanted to do.

  All I needed to do.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Olivia

  I couldn’t move. My entire body felt weighted down like a house had fallen on me. My feet stuck out from whatever lay on top of me and I could wiggle my toes. In the weird, dreamlike place I floated, I imagined myself as the Wicked Witch from the East with my sister cackling over my dead body.

  Only that couldn’t be right because my sister was in a coma in some random Romanian castle and despite my penchant for all things sarcastic and pessimistic, I was not actually a witch.

  Or was I?

  Besides, in this dream, if I was going to be anybody it would be Dorothy.

  As reality came crashing back around me, I tried the whole “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home,” thing, but unsurprisingly it didn’t work.

  I didn’t have a wizard; I had a Gypsy Queen that could see the future. And I didn’t have a cowardly lion or a brainless scarecrow; I had very smart, very dangerous warriors around me that risked their lives to save their friends and mine.

  And I didn’t have Toto… I had Titus, who I just recently learned could apparently turn into a bear.

  What. The. World?

  But most of all, I had Jericho, whose arms were cemented around my torso, protecting me from the still-falling debris. He had tucked me against his towering frame and protected me from an explosion that rocked this place, literally.

  When I was able to lift my head I took in the singed fringes of the jungle: charred, scorching stumps of some exotic trees I couldn’t name, blackened ground that still burned with intermittent fires, a vehicle seared down to the metal frame.

  This wasn’t just an explosion. It was a freaking big one!

  We should definitely be dead right now.

  I marveled at my mostly unharmed body. This had to be the protection of Magic and all things Immortal that I didn’t understand yet.

  How could it be possible to live through something like that? How could it be possible to stand up and walk away?

  “Are you alright?” Jericho’s voice grated like rough sandpaper across my skin, pulling my small arm hairs to stand straight and reaching beyond my skin to some metaphysical part of me that arched and bent to lean as close to him as I could.

  “I’m fine,” I answered, but my voice was weak and shaking. Physically my body felt strong and able, but my brain screamed that I’d just lived through not only an attack where the sadistic monster that instigated it was particularly interested in me, but that I’d also just lived through an explosion. To say I was having some trouble coping would be a slight understatement- said the girl slipping into catatonic shock.

  Jericho maneuvered my body so that he hovered above me and held me up by a strong grip on my shoulders. “You’re too brave not to be fine,” he whispered.

  Strengthened by his words, I struggled to sit up. I sat on the hard, blackened ground with my legs outstretched and my hands numbly limp at my sides. I looked around at the savaged beauty that once seemed so lush and green and couldn’t believe my life had evolved into this.

  Not six months ago I had been in Chicago learning to perfect my Scallop and Leeks Risotto. Now… this? I couldn’t reconcile the two lives.

  “We need to get going,” Jericho pulled me to my feet; I surveyed the stumbling, coughing figures of the rest of our team.

  It seemed we’d all made it.

  Except the two men I didn’t know.

  And not possessing any more Magic, their bodies were now ashes picked up by the humid breeze, scattering across the changed scenery like the after effects of a nuclear explosion.

  I stared helplessly as the cindered bodies drifted through the air. I felt like I should do something, stop them from floating away… stop their physical remains from escaping their earthly confines without a proper goodbye.

  Jericho watched the same horrific scene with pinched brows and tight muscles. “This should not have happened,” he growled more to himself than anyone else. “I should never have let this happen.”

  “You didn’t,” I said quickly. His self-hate pulled me out of whatever isolated place I’d gone in my head. I rushed to reassure him, “You didn’t do this. Terletov did. You can’t blame yourself for fighting against his evil. This is not your fault; this is his fault. It will always be his fault. You can’t feel guilty for fighting against a criminal when you asked for none of this, didn’t want to be part of any of it. He did this. Not you.”

  He turned so that we were facing each other and one of his hands lifted to press against my jaw. It wasn’t a gentle touch, it was rough and aggressive… it was primitively possessive. His mouth opened to say something, but no words came out. His eyes darkened until they were almost black and I knew he would have kissed me then, would have consumed me if we hadn’t been interrupted.

  “Jericho, we have to go!” Sebastian called. He stood where the first man that died had been. Leaning down he picked something out of the wreckage and palmed it before I could see what it was.

  Talbott also leaned over the remnants of the second man and came up with a black-beaded rosary. The religious memento looked wholly untouched by the explosion. He pocketed the necklace and finished the circle of survivors that gathered around us.

  “We have three minutes to make a plan,” Talbott said with his thick accent that sounded just like the Guards from the palace.

  “Orion,” I blurted out immediately. Thoughts, vague memories, confusion began to come together inside my muddled head. I had this distant image of my brother and Terletov. It wasn’t much, mostly flashing images like déjà vu. The memory was there, or the thought or vision or whatever, but I couldn’t grab it. It slipped from my mental fingers as psychological hands reached out to grab at it over and over but missed. “The Gypsy Queen… The man that will hunt the hunter,” I quoted. I looked up and met Talbott’s dark, hopeless eyes by accident. I flinched at the utter despair staring back at me and when my words came out I feared they echoed the hollowness that seemed to be consuming him. “My brother’s name is Orion, like the constellation. It means hunter.” The Immortals around me waved impatient hands as if those were obvious facts and I was wasting time. So I hurried on, “When I met the Gypsy Queen, she told me Terletov would hunt the hunter, meaning my brother. I asked her if Rion was in danger, but she said not yet becau
se Terletov didn’t know what he had done yet. To me. Terletov didn’t know what he had done to me. And today he figured it out.”

  “He must think it’s in your blood,” Sebastian deduced with perfectly clipped words. “All we’ve been finding are dead bodies. Heaps and heaps of dead bodies. What if all of his experiments have been for nothing? What if he hasn’t been able to get them to work yet?”

  “But he has,” Jericho argued. “In some way. The Immortals that fight with him are changed. There is something distinctively different about their strength, but also about the way they die.”

  “True,” Sebastian answered. “But those are Immortals. We’ve found dead Immortals too, but they tend to be Shifters. What about all the humans we’ve found? Olivia and Ophelia are the only humans we’ve found that have survived his experiments.”

  “Is that his plan then? To create Immortals out of humans?” Titus sounded absolutely disgusted and I couldn’t help but share the feeling.

  Sebastian snapped his finger and pointed at me excitedly, “Jericho, she’s all four. She’s true. That’s why she survived. And whether he hasn’t figured that out yet, or her changing was different, he knows how to make it work now.”

  “And he’s going to go to her brother first,” Jericho deduced.

  Cold, crippling fear exploded in my body, and my lungs felt as though they turned to ice in my chest. Jericho’s arm went around me again and his Magic seemed to take a tighter hold on my own. He was warmth when I had none; he was courage when I had little.

  “We know where he’s going,” Jericho announced slyly.

  “Will he think that we’re dead?” I looked around at everything else that was dead around us and wondered. Had he intended to kill us all?

  “No,” Sebastian snorted. “This happens to be his favorite farewell. I know he believes it’s rather amusing, but I can’t help but find it a bit obnoxious.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at Sebastian’s flippant attitude. He always seemed so unfazed by everything. I knew he cared for his friends and his Kingdom, but truthfully I couldn’t imagine him dating the girl from back at the castle. She seemed completely opposite of him.

  “So we’ll be racing to the same place,” I said.

  “But hopefully we can get there first,” Jericho said. “We’ll leave now.”

  “How?” I pressed.

  “Our car is untouched,” Titus spoke up. “We parked far enough away.”

  “And ours is drivable,” Xander said.

  Jericho took command again, “Alright, we’ll split up. I’ll take the palace plane and Sebastian can lead in Amory’s old Cessna. Sebastian you’ll have to return the beads to the Citadel along with the news. They’ll want to hold some kind of memorial for both men.” His voice broke a bit and I reached down for his hand.

  “And what about Alexi?” Sebastian asked.

  All of our heads swiveled to a sedan that sat just on the outside of the blast range. Alexi stared at us with wide eyes, mouth gagged, hands bound beneath where I could see. He looked like he’d fallen into shock too.

  “Take him back with you,” Jericho ordered. “I know it’s inconvenient with the dungeon going through the remodeling and what not, but we have to hold him someplace.”

  His comment met snickers and a lot of amusement for the aftermath of what we just went through, but I had to assume that was stress manifesting itself in all of us. We’d just been through hell; all those emotions and fears had to come out some way.

  “I need people with me then,” Sebastian said.

  “Xander, Xavier, Roxie go with him.”

  “Do you want us to have them hold the ceremonies?” Xander asked in a more subdued voice.

  Jericho looked at Talbott and had some kind of silent conversation before shaking his head. “No, it’s alright. Avalon won’t want to wait anyway. Silas might not mean something to the Kingdom at large, but Gabriel will. The people need to feel Terletov’s menace on a large scale.”

  “Right,” the men confirmed together.

  And then we parted ways.

  Before I climbed into Talbott’s sedan, Sebastian grabbed me and pulled me into a crushing hug. His lips pressed into my ear and he whispered words that sent a chill down my already frigid spine. “If you let him get any closer and find a way to escape your Magic, you will kill him, Olivia. Kill him. Do you understand?” I nodded robotically, but he wasn’t finished. “He might already be in too deep. And he is one of my best friends. If there is a danger to his life, I will make sure that you never lose your Magic. I will hunt you worse than Terletov. I will be more of a monster than he could ever be. I have lost too much already. I will not lose my friend.” He released me abruptly and I almost fell over.

  I was shaken to the core at his words. Suddenly the conversation in the car made perfect sense. Jericho’s Magic was uniting with mine and the more time we spent together, the worse the danger became. Sebastian had blamed Jericho for my eyes turning colors, as if our closeness was somehow cementing my changes into place.

  And to some extent that made sense to me.

  Not in the part of my brain that held steadfastly to reality, rather the imaginative side that at some bizarre level accepted all of these impossible things.

  If I understood them correctly, then coming to terms with true Immortality had happened in stages. The first step seemed to be sensing the other Magics around me; this was the Titan characteristic. Then I’d been able to manifest the Magic- Witch. Last night had brought about the Medium step and I could have sworn the images of Terletov and my brother had been some kind of vision.

  The only thing left to do was shift into an animal and finalize the process.

  Or apparently get closer to Jericho.

  One or the other would cement my Immortality

  Terletov had sworn there wasn’t a reversal.

  So if there wasn’t a reversal then my complete change was inevitable. And then the only thing left to decide was whether or not I let Jericho complete the process. Which would mean choosing him. As in forever.

  I liked Jericho. A lot.

  I could admit that.

  But did I want to marry him? Or whatever the Immortal equivalent of that was? Because, in truth, my human idea of marriage was something entirely different than spending the rest of literal eternity with the same man. How could I even begin to decide whether I was ready for that kind of relationship? Or whether Jericho was that person or not?

  Sure, he was in the forefront of the proverbial race… but that was only because there wasn’t anybody else for him to compete with!

  I shuddered at the finality of Sebastian’s threat. I wouldn’t hurt Jericho no matter how much I didn’t want this life. I wouldn’t.

  I owed him so much more than my life. And so if worse came to worst, then what? Could I commit myself to him forever on some shaky feeling of loyalty and gratitude? Was there enough of the other stuff, the attraction and affection, to make something lasting and eternal?

  I barely knew him.

  In fact, I knew exactly three things about him: One, he was a good man. Caring, loyal, sacrificing… he’d taken care of me before he really knew me and he’d encouraged me to become strong again, demanded I let go of the trauma from my time with Terletov and grab hold of myself again. Two, he and I were in some way already connected. Since the moment I saw him, my body reacted before my mind could catch up. There had been an easy friendship between us and an even easier attraction. I didn’t always want to like him, but I couldn’t help it. And I didn’t like that many people. So this was a big deal to me. And three, he was a hell of a kisser. Logically, I knew I couldn’t engage in that delicious behavior ever again, not if I wanted to leave this Kingdom behind some day. But physically… my body was already reacting to the idea of touching him again.

  And I wouldn’t have trusted him so completely with that part of me, if there wasn’t already some link between us.

  So what now?

  “Are you alri
ght?” Jericho asked quietly from the seat next to me. We were back in the private plane, on our way to my home-town. Talbott had asked to fly so that he had something to occupy his hands. And his mind, I assumed. If Talbott was the result of united Magic being severed, I did not want to experience that. I did not want to risk ending up like him with a lost his fiancée, who I assumed was in worse shape simply because she was imprisoned by Terletov. “You’ve been quiet since we left Brazil.”

  “I’m just thinking,” I told him and tried to smile, although my lips wobbled pathetically instead. “A lot’s happened in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “That’s saying something after the state of the rest of your life.” He nudged my foot with the toe of his boot. Yesterday he’d been all vacation-casual, in preppy, expensive clothes. Today he looked like the military leader he was with black fatigues, black long-sleeved t-shirt, black boots. His unruly hair as characteristically out of place and what little exposed skin he had was scrubbed clean since we took off a few hours ago. He looked like GI Joe, if GI Joe was my ultimate fantasy embodied in a man.

  “Do you really think there’s no cure for this?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  He didn’t say anything at first, but he did take my hand and pull me onto the luxurious couch he’d sprawled out on. We were alone back here. Titus had offered to co-pilot the moment after Talbott asked to pilot. Titus had exchanged a look with Jericho and was jumping up front directly after. I knew he’d gone up there by Jericho’s order, but I didn’t know if Jericho sent him up there to keep an eye on the seemingly-unstable Talbott or if Jericho wanted to be alone with me.

  I was okay with one of those reasons, since it was important to me to get to Orion instead of crashing somewhere in between.

  “Liv, I’ve doubted there was a cure for this from the beginning.” He put a comforting arm around me but it did little to alleviate the pressure hammering down on my chest. “I will help you look for one until we can say that for certain. I will help you in any way that I can. But the chances of reversing this are slim, I think. And the consequences of stripping your blood of Magic now might be fatal.”