Black Moon Draw (20 page)

“She’ll be easier to kill.”

“Challenging her is challenging me,” the Shadow Knight says firmly. “I have defeated many of you in battle already. Do you think I fear two dozen men when over five hundred in each battle have fallen beneath my sword?”

You tell ‘em!
Sexy and strong. If nothing else, I kind of like the idea he’s not going to throw me to the wolves, even when he knows I suck. Jason never would’ve defended me. My heart is racing with adrenaline and I hold my breath, waiting for the response from the men.

They attack him.

“Shit.” I jerk as metal slams into metal. The force of the impact of their weapons ignites sparks that shoot out from the warriors.

Several of the Knights make an attempt to circle the Shadow Knight to get to me, but Wolfie heads them off while the Shadow Knight moves closer to the squire and me with lethal grace.

I watch, unable to follow the milling forms let alone the movements of men like the Shadow Knight and Desert Knight. Wolfie is a damned good warrior as well and I huddle with the squire.

“What does the magic say?” the squire asks nervously with a glance at my hands.

I look.

This is a trial.

“I’ll check back later. Probably good news,” I reply, at a loss as to what the meaning is.

He appears hopeful.

“Witch!” the bellow comes from the madly fighting Shadow Knight. “Come!”

He’s fighting three men, both arms swinging. The chances of me being sliced up are much clearer than my fortune. “Um, no thanks. We’re good here.”

He mutters something I can’t quite make out, his agility astonishing me. His deadly dance grows fast and near. Before I can object, he’s swept me up in one arm the way he did yesterday. I don’t resist this time; this horrible, delicate, lethal dance is something I’m not about to get in the way of. Swords flash within millimeters of my face and head, and I squeeze my eyes closed, gripping the only thing I really can – the strap holding the sword sheath to his back. His arm around my midsection is tight enough that my feet don’t touch the ground. His body shields mine.

The sounds of metal colliding inches from me is terrifying, the sensation of motion exhilarating yet nowhere near what I’d call a good time. The man’s body is beyond incredible, the bunching and releasing of his muscles effortless. I press my cheek to his warm chest and pray that I somehow end up back on the couch at home. If nothing else, I get a good whiff of brownies and man, a combination that heightens my senses and makes me too aware of his body – and our precarious situation.

Abruptly, he stops the battle dance. For a moment, I’m stricken by the idea he’s been stabbed. My eyes fly open and I wait for the finishing blow to find me.

“Let the troll take him,” the Desert Knight says with some satisfaction.

Troll?
They have imaginary creatures in this book? I twist to see what the hell is headed for us and gasp.

The troll is as huge and ugly as I imagined, standing about nine feet tall and built like a tree.

An angry tree, if his glowing orange eyes are any indication.

“Can you take out a troll?” I ask the Shadow Knight, looking up at him.

“Never tried.”

“But you can, right?”

“Quiet, witch.”

I unclench one hand to see if there’s any other message.

This is a trial.

Nope. Just the weird one.

“If you ever decided to use your magic, now is a good time.” The Shadow Knight’s words send a streak of cold fear through me. He’s too stubborn to know fear, but he’s unsettled.

“Let’s just run,” I reply.

“Run
?” he echoes. The boar’s eyes meet mine. They’re light enough gray that they’re almost white. “Leave my family’s honor, an era of struggle and darkness and fog here at the feet of my enemies, condemn the realm to death, and
run
?”

“A simple no works.”

“You are the worst-”

“Don’t start on me!” I snap. “I’m so fed up with you telling me I’m something I’m not. Is it my fault I don’t know how to use this thing” - I pull the medallion from the bodice of my dress -“the way Queen Naia did a thousand years ago? Even with it and all the battles she rode in, she didn’t know her husband was about to die until it was too late! So cut me some slack!”

His boar’s mouth drops open. Nothing comes out. Something I said shocked him. I don’t have the chance to wrench away, grab my squire and run, which is still
my
intention.

The troll issues a roar and charges us.

“Any last words, witch?” The Shadow Knight tightens his grip around me and lifts his axe.

“Maybe you should use your sword instead of the axe.”

“If we survive this, witch, I swear you will know the –” His words are lost as the troll reaches us.

Certain I didn’t want to hear them anyway, I close my eyes and hold on for dear life.

The Shadow Knight moves fast enough to knock the air from me, an impossible feat in the real world. It’s more intense than going downhill on a rollercoaster. My stomach drops and my equilibrium is thrown. There’s nothing I can do but hang on.

I feel the troll’s first blow; its force ricochets through the Shadow Knight into me, and my head snaps back. I right myself the best I can in the tornado conditions of the battle when suddenly, I’m torn out of his arms and flying through the air.

Too shocked to scream, I open my eyes and stare down at the roof, a good twenty feet beneath me and closing fast. The troll and knight are deep in battle. I don’t know which one flung me, but I’m falling fast towards the both of them and I have no second thought about who the worst off is about to become.

Guess we’ll find out if I really am invincible in this world.

Covering my head, I don’t have time for my life to flash before my eyes. I brace myself for a very rough landing.

Something winds around my wrist and snatches me out of the air. The Shadow Knight’s whip breaks and then stops my fall.

Gasping, disoriented, I flinch as I bump lightly against the cool stone of the hold’s wall, not quite understanding what happened.

“Quickly. Climb.” The Shadow Knight is wrapping the whip around his hand, winding me up. I’m dangling over the edge of the roof. He’s on his belly, the axe in one hand.

My senses catch up with me. The troll is screaming. My arm and chest are wet with warm blood. I don’t have time to figure out where I’m hit. My whole system is trying to right itself after the speed of the past few moments. I look down my body, unable to identify any injury in the grainy dawn light.

I’m a good hundred feet off the ground, though, far enough that a fall is probably going to kill me good.

“Climb, witch,” he says with some sign of strain.

My focus shifts to the boar head peering over the roof at me. Four feet divide us. At this rate, he’s going to be chopped to bits before he manages to pull me up. There’s a rock sinking into my stomach, and I catch the glimmer of a torch against the raised sword of the troll above him, ready to chop off his head the same way the Desert Knight did his ancestor a thousand of years ago.

“He’s right there!” I cry. “Turn and fight!”

“Come on, witch!”

If he saves me, he dies.

But if I fall, we both have a chance to live. Looking down, there’s no part of me that wants to test the theory I’m invincible.

The image of his ancestor being beheaded stirs a deeper emotion, the memory of the woman who lost her love that day a thousand years ago. I can barely sort my thoughts out about the sexy man trying to haul me onto the roof instead of protecting his head, but I don’t want him to suffer the same fate. It seems . . . unfair for his story to end here. He’s the underdog trying to save the world, the last in a line of mighty warriors, the man most likely to need a second shot at some sort of redemption after all the death and destruction he’s caused.

I don’t want him to die.
The singular thought overrides my fear. Not for any of those reasons – but because I like him. More than I should.

If I truly am invincible in this world, the fall will either kill me or send me home, and it’ll save his life so he can go on and save the world.

My chest constricts so fast, I can’t breathe. The next handful of seconds happens as if in slow motion. The medallion grows super hot and sends a charge of electricity through me, similar to the one I experienced on the battlefield. Purple electricity arcs and shoots through the Shadow Knight as well.

He jerks without letting go. Whether or not I should, I brace one foot against the wall and yank free.

I fall. Air rushes by me. I have the sense of free flying for a short time before terror consumes me.

This is gonna hurt.

“You survived your trial.”

I sit up. I’m neither falling nor splattered in a million pieces.

I’m back at the bridge where Panther-man and the Red Knight found me. I clamber to my feet.

“Omigod. Is it over? Can I go home?” I ask, wringing my hands. I search my surroundings frantically for a door back to my world.

A woman laughs.

I turn, recognizing her. Any hope of this being a trip home smashes to the ground. The long dead warrior queen of Black Moon Draw is petite, with an exotic tilt to her brown eyes and skin the color of honey. She wears a crown on her head, a simple, elegant string of gems with one of them dangling down her forehead.

“This is a dream,” I whisper. I’m in the dress I woke up in when this nightmare started, standing in the knee-high grasses.

This time, there’s no fog on the Black Moon Draw side of the bridge, and the trees’ branches overflow with green leaves. The forest is alive. It’s a beautiful, sunny, clear, warm morning. Birds sing happily in the forest nearby and the scent of flowers is thick upon a light breeze.

“It is,” the warrior queen of Black Moon Draw confirms. “This is where I came through, too.”

I frown. “If this is a dream, then . . . are you real? Because I’m really confused about what’s going on right now.”

“The battle-witches leave each other messages in the form of dreams, the ultimate way to pass a secret with no one finding out. My creation,” she says proudly. “When I was little, my parents took me to Disneyland, and I swear I dreamt of that place for a year after. It seemed so real . . . I thought it was a really good way to ensure certain messages were passed down to women like us.”

“Women from the real world.”

“Every book is its own world. They’re all real, if you believe in them.”

“No. I can’t handle that.”

“You’ll understand,” she says gently.

“Is there a way home?”

“You gave your life for the Shadow Knight and want to go home?” she asks curiously. “You don’t love him?”

“Love
him?” I laugh. I can’t help the heat in my cheeks or the way my heart skipped a beat at the thought. To know the love of a man that fierce and protective . . . I shake my head. “I barely know him and he despises me. Says I’m the worst battle-witch he’s ever heard of. He’s also engaged to another woman. I figure I’m invincible so why not swan dive off a fortress if it helps him?” Is she buying it? I’m not sure I am.
No matter what my body says and the way I’m drawn to him, there can be nothing between us. It’s simply impossible.

“It takes some time.” The warrior queen smiles. She doesn’t seem discouraged or disappointed.

“You drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you?”

“Hindsight.” She winks. “You see things differently through the rearview mirror than when you’re in the middle of the road.”

Ugh.
This isn’t going the way I want, even for a dream. “So what’s the secret, if not a way home?”

“Every battle-witch for a thousand years has contributed part of her magic to that medallion, the Heart.” Her gaze goes to my chest, where the worn necklace hangs. “Its power is beyond anything you can imagine. A thousand years of magic, all lying dormant.”

“Is it going to electrocute me?” I ask, lifting it uncertainly from my chest.

“It can do much more than that. But as my successor, it’s yours to control.”

“A little birdy told me the Heart is what everyone’s after. Ohhhhh now I get it.” That’s why the messengers are birds
.
The subtle cliché hits me, and I applaud LF for once instead of cursing her.

“It is. But it’s not what you think.”

“Care to explain?”

“The Shadow Knight is the last of his bloodline. If he dies, so does the magic. My curse did more than I intended. The medallion, the Heart, is all that keeps the fogs of Black Moon Draw from devouring their world. I condemned everyone, even those I was trying to avenge.” Her voice grows soft.

“So if he dies, the magic dies, and their entire world goes with him. If the era ends, and he fails, their world ends.”

She nods. “And if the Heart falls into the wrong hands, it, too, has the power to end their world.” As she speaks she approaches and picks up the medallion off my chest. Her whole face lights up.

“Triple whammy. That’s quite a curse.”

She nods. Her eyes are filling with tears. They aren’t sad ones – but happy tears, if the joy on her face is any indication.

“Why is it called a Heart?” I ask.

She swipes at her tears and lowers the medallion, stepping away. “’Twas the nickname my husband gave me. I was his heart, his love, his queen. This was fashioned as a wedding present. Magic molded this gem, but our love gave it power.”

“Wow. That’s insanely romantic,” I murmur enviously. “And you used the magic to destroy the world. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

She laughs. “That’s why you’re here! You can fix it.”

I shift feet, not really liking where the conversation is headed. It sounds like she expects me to stay here instead of leave like I want. “How?” I venture tentatively.

“You have to keep him from dying.”

“He’s a lot better at this battle thing than I am.” I point out.

“You have the magic of an entire world, one that’s depending on you.”