Haunting Warrior (15 page)

As she looked, her emotions a bewildering infusion of admiration and abhorrence, she saw the blur become a solid form in the gray room. She hadn’t the time to even understand what she saw before a man with a mask over his features and a long wicked blade in his hands leapt straight at them.

R
ORY was in sensory overload. There was the vertigo that came from being forged to his twin by the heat of the woman’s body beneath them. The wild frustration of feeling that layer separating him from her flesh when he was desperate to experience every part of her. The bizarre sense of sharing his thoughts and his feelings with the stranger-twin, coupled with intense awareness of being in a place and time that were both intangible and unreal. Each sensation, each friction-filled movement came to him from a maddening distance he could not overcome.

He looked into the woman’s face—they called her Saraid—wanting to express something—anything—of the chaotic emotions inside him. She stared back at him, confused no doubt by his bipolar behavior. Still she looked as if she wanted nothing more than to hear what he had to say.

Then a sound distracted her, and a flash of color caught the corner of his eye. The twin inside him bounded from the bed before Rory could even look twice.

A man emerged from an alcove that had been hidden by a huge tapestry. He hovered at the end of the crude bed, a scarf tied over the lower half of his face like a bandit out of a western. Above it, muddy eyes scanned the room before settling on Rory and watching warily.

It was the man from the dreams. . . .

On the tail of that recognition came the lash of what his appearance might mean. In the dreams, this man killed Rory’s twin. And right now, that twin was beneath Rory’s skin or perhaps it was the other way around. He wasn’t certain. But clearly the twin and Rory shared a body, and if this man succeeded in killing that body, what then would happen to Rory? Would he awake as he always did, at home in front of the flashing TV, disoriented and freaked out but otherwise whole? Or would he return to that naked, floating nonexistence that had greeted him when he’d followed Saraid to whatever place and time this was?

Or would he simply die as his twin did?

The man glanced from Rory to Saraid and back. She sat on the bed with the blanket pulled up over her bare breasts. Her eyes were wide with fear and something else. It took an instant to understand. Saraid knew this intruder.

“What is it you’re thinking, Stephen?” Rory heard himself ask in the archaic language his father and the others used. “You mean to kill me, is that it?”

“And aren’t y’ the fool for not seeing it coming?” Stephen sneered, though there was bluster in his tone that his tough guy act couldn’t quite conceal. So he was afraid of Rory’s twin. He should be. Rory could feel the tension coiling inside his twin, the aggression that threatened to explode any minute. The body they shared was every bit as big and as cut as the one Rory had left back in the cavern beneath the castle—if, in fact, that’s where it was. . . .

From beyond the curtain wall, a loud cheer went up followed by laughter and applause. Then the sound of lively music began, and it seemed everyone started to sing along.

“What is it y’ think my father will do with y’ once this business here is over?” the twin’s words rumbled from Rory’s lips.

The shock of what he’d said hit Rory hard.
His father? Cathán?

It made him dizzy, this feeling of being plural. This sense of another inside him—of being inside another. He wondered for a moment if the twin was feeling it, too. Did he sense Rory moving beneath his skin?

“What did my father tell y’?” his twin went on.

“He’s my father, too,” the man called Stephen said angrily.

“And he loves y’ just as well as he loves me, I’m sure.”

Those words hovered between them, and Rory could see this Stephen guy making connections that he hadn’t linked up to that point. But Rory still wasn’t clear how going from point A to B suddenly led to his father. Did Cathán know this Stephen planned to kill Rory?

No. He couldn’t.

His twin took a deep breath and smiled. Yet the tension in his body ratcheted up a notch. When he spoke, his tone was hard and derisive. “Are y’ thinking ye’ll find a reward waiting for y’ when I’m dead?”

Stephen’s chin rose, and Rory knew that was exactly what the younger man thought.

“Surely y’ can’t be such an idiot to think that is how it will be. He’s betrayed one son, has he not? What would stop him from turning on another?”

Stephen’s face grew red above his mask, and before Rory could fully process the words that had come from his own lips, Stephen lunged. He thrust out with the glinting blade. Rory hadn’t expected it, but his twin had. He jumped to the side so quickly, Rory was only aware that they’d moved after it happened. In the next instant, Rory’s twin charged the masked man, catching his blade hand by the wrist and spinning to slam an elbow hard into Stephen’s spine, splaying him on the floor.

Saraid gave a choked gasp that distracted Rory for an instant. He looked up to find she’d moved from the bed, red blanket tucked around her, and stood watching a few feet away.

“Careful,” she breathed, and Rory turned again to find Stephen scrambling to his feet, sword still clutched in front of him. Stephen jabbed, anticipating Rory’s evasion this time. He wasn’t graceful, but he was deadly accurate. The blade connected, and a lancing pain seared from Rory’s hip to his gut and the hot spill of blood ran down his naked legs. The cut was deep. Rory didn’t have to look to know.

His vision blurred for a moment and his head felt light and heavy at once. Suddenly what had seemed a vivid fantasy, a 3-D illusion that he would eventually emerge from, became real. Very real. And the idea that he might die here hit him like a hammer swung fast and hard.

This was not good.

His twin’s reflexes slowed and his movements became sluggish. Rory felt his twin’s grip on consciousness dwindle, his control over the body they shared slip. Panic caught Rory in a scorching rush.

So not good.

Come on
, he silently coaxed.
Get a grip. Fight.

But the twin was faltering, and Rory realized he was on his own. He took a deep breath, braced himself. And then, without even knowing how he did it, Rory took over.

He’d been caught off guard, off-kilter in a world he didn’t know, but Rory was no pansy. He may not know swordplay and fancy footwork, but he’d fought for his life enough to know how to scrap.

The pain in Rory’s side felt like someone had crammed a burning torch into his gut, but that feeling of distance that had frustrated him while he’d held Saraid in his arms now came in handy. If he could just put that same distance around the fear that his life was draining onto the straw-covered floor, he’d be good to go.

Stephen crouched low, weapon ready, circling Rory as he looked for an opening.

“Not going to happen, buddy boy,” Rory muttered as he weighed his options. Stephen looked at him sharply and with a glimmer of fear. Rory realized he’d spoken English, a language Stephen obviously didn’t understand. It had broken the other man’s concentration.

Rory flashed a smile. “Bugs you, doesn’t it, not knowing what I’m saying.” He stepped forward, and Stephen scuttled back a hasty step. “I could be telling you exactly what I’m going to do.” He lurched again, his grin cold as he watched Stephen’s defensive retreat. “Like I’m going to take that knife and shove it up your ass. I could even tell you how I’m going to do it, and you’d still be staring at me with that same stupid look on your face, wouldn’t you?”

Stephen responded by doing just that, and Rory laughed, liking how Stephen’s eyes went wide with dread. He glanced quickly at Saraid, as if to ask, “What the fuck?” but Saraid didn’t have a clue what Rory said, either. While the two shared their bafflement, Rory went for Stephen’s feet, swiping them out from under him with a low kick that had Stephen on his ass before he knew what hit him.

“Whoops,” Rory said.

Stephen scurried back like a crab as Rory bounced on the balls of his feet, arms loose and cocked. He kicked the sword away, and it slid across the floor to where Saraid stood. She picked it up without hesitation.

“Good girl,” he said, then repeated it in her own language like he’d been speaking it his whole life. He didn’t know how, he just did. Her gaze was startled, but her hand steady as she held the weapon.

Rory turned back to Stephen. “Okay dickhead, whatcha gonna do now?”

Stephen raised his hands in surrender—a fake that Rory didn’t fall for. “Try again, asshole.”

Stephen did, springing up and away with speed Rory wouldn’t have given him credit for. He pulled another blade at the same time, this knife smaller and tucked in his boot. When he charged, Rory braced and curled, protecting vital parts as he hurled himself forward to meet the attack. But Stephen went past him, catching Saraid unprepared and knocking the sword across the room. With a brutal twist, he wrenched her arm behind her and held it pinned while he laid his blade to her throat.

Rory stared for a shocked moment, stunned by Stephen’s precision and speed. He’d underestimated the man. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

“Let her go,” he said in Stephen’s language.

“I don’t think so, Bloodletter. I think I’ll just hold on to the lass until y’ drop dead. It shouldn’t take long now.”

His words drew attention back to the pain throbbing and burning in Rory’s side, compelling him to look at what he didn’t want to see. Blood spilled from the grisly wound at an alarming speed.

“It’s beyond me how yer still standing,” Stephen said with a complacent smile.

As if the words were blades themselves, the pain swelled, penetrating that distance that had cocooned him. Seeing it had made it all the worse. All the more real. Christ, even if there was an ER around the corner, a wound like that . . .

Rory swayed on his feet, sudden sweat stinging his eyes, blurring his vision.

“It won’t be long now, will it?” Stephen said, twisting Saraid’s arm higher on her back, making her yelp with pain. He pressed his lips to the skin behind Saraid’s ear. “I think I’ll share yer rewards before I tell Father the deed is done, though.” With a hard smile, he bent and nibbled at the silky skin of her shoulder.

And made his first deadly mistake.

Saraid bucked her body away and the knife slipped, leaving a thin red line on the pale column of her throat. As if in slow motion, Rory watched a scarlet droplet fall from the shallow cut onto the dusky skin of her chest.

The rage that came over him was instantaneous—hot and red and all-consuming. He could feel his twin rousing inside him, a sleeping dragon who raised cold eyes and snorted a breath of fire. Together, they fought back the dizziness, the sweat of death, the taint of weakness. And before Stephen had a clue that his last breath was about to be drawn, they charged.

Rory grabbed Stephen’s blade with a bare hand, oblivious to the edge that lacerated his fingers as his pulled it away from Saraid’s throat. Given that inch to breathe, she dropped to her knees and out of Stephen’s grasp in a graceful move Rory had only a split second to admire. Still fueled by the fury within himself, within his twin, he tossed the knife aside and grabbed Stephen’s head between his hands, crushing his skull and grinding his eyes into the sockets with his thumbs.

Stephen’s scream was muffled by the merry shouts and singing booming from the other side of the curtain. He tried to pry Rory’s hands free of his head, but Rory and his twin were too strong and too far gone. Stephen’s eyes bulged and then popped like grapes, leaving a hot ooze that made Rory’s stomach roll even as something dark and barbaric inside him howled with joy.

No longer sure if the chaotic rage fired from his own synapses or from his twin’s, no longer certain where one ended and the other began, Rory spun Stephen’s unresisting body, locked his fingers around Stephen’s throat and squeezed with all his strength, all his wrath.

Blood streamed down Stephen’s face, and he made a gurgling sound that finally penetrated the fog of rage consuming Rory. For a moment, one simple sane thought emerged.

But it was too late. Stephen’s Adam’s apple collapsed with a grotesque sound and a last hopeless gasp escaped him.

Horrified, exulted, Rory staggered back and let the corpse fall to the ground. He heard Saraid catch her breath as she stumbled forward, turned, expecting to see her disgust and loathing at what he’d done, but she spared not a glance at the dead man. Her attention was on Rory, and he had a moment to revel in the fear on her face—fear for him, not of him. Then he collapsed to his knees, hands gripping the wound on his side.

Pain defined the moment. It seared and twisted until blackness swam behind his eyes and death seemed like a blessing. Whatever barrier had existed between himself and the twin was gone, and he experienced the full brunt of agony. And then suddenly Rory was free of his twin, free of the anguish, standing once more beside him, naked and invisible, watching as the blood poured from his body.

Saraid reached out to Rory’s twin but there was nothing she could do. The blood gushed, staining the straw strewn over the floor, pooling beneath it. Rory could see gore in the gaping wound.

Saraid snatched Rory’s cloak from where he’d dropped it and struggled to staunch the flow. Blood smeared her body as she tried futilely to hold back the deluge of his twin’s life.

“Do something,” Rory said, pacing around the two.

“I cannot make it stop,” she answered. For a moment he thought it was in response to his demand, but she remained blithely unaware of his presence.

His twin was dying, right here, right now, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.