KICK ASS: A Boxed Set (52 page)

She spun around. This couldn’t be a natural occurrence. Earthquakes could be damned inconvenient, but they certainly didn’t happen on cue. The trees and earth around the pyramid were completely still. Amid the falling rocks and vines, she spotted a man in creased khakis standing just at the edge of the forest, holding aloft what looked like a shiny silver sword.

Who was he, He-man?

She raised her gun, but a bullet from the enemy caused the weapon to fly from her hand.

“Run, Mariah. Hide.”

With a shove, Rafe sent her flying down the side of the pyramid. She spun, uncontrolled, but while the air was knocked from her lungs, she felt nothing as she bounced against the stone. It was as if Rafe had wrapped her in a sheet of plastic bubbles as she fell.

Once at the bottom, she dove into a forest of plate-size leaves, trudging on her hands and knees until she found a fallen tree. Scuttling quickly, she discovered an opening in the rotted trunk and squeezed inside. She caught her breath and tried to decide what to do. She was armed now with only the knife. And while Rafe’s magic would come in handy about now, that pyramid hadn’t started to shake on its own. It seemed like the interloper had some major mojo of his own.

“You’re safe,” Rafe said.

“Not for long,” she whispered back. “He had magic, Rafe. Magic like yours.”

“Seems so,” he concurred.

“You have to fight him. We’re outnumbered and outgunned. It’s up to you.”

“I cannot. Merging with the Mayan magic, making myself solid in the light… I am drained. I expended the last of my energy protecting you from the fall. Talking to you now saps me further. I need to rest.”

She closed her eyes tightly. It figured that a few seconds of glorious sensation would cost her her life—and his.

* * *

The stench of Rogan’s magic clung to the air like death. Rafe was not a soldier. He was not a fighter. But he’d lost two women to Rogan’s evil. He would not lose a third.

He attempted to yet again weave his way back into the Mayan magic, but he failed. The threads were tenuous before, but now they simply melted away whenever he neared them. Filled with rage and fear for Mariah’s safety, he could not access the enchantments born of the land. Violence, even in defense of the woman who’d found him, was Rogan’s realm. The only magic he could use to save Mariah was the same magic that could destroy her.

He returned to the pyramid. Every inch of distance between him and Mariah—between him and the stone—stretched his powers thinner and thinner.

Four men gathered at the base of the clearing. One held a sword and watched while the other two tended to their fallen colleague. Rafe pushed himself closer.

Had he a body at this moment, the recognition of the weapon would have turned his heart to stone. The sword had belonged to Rogan. Rafe, along with so many others in the village of Umgeben, had watched the blacksmith forge it, had heard Rogan’s specific instructions for its design. The twisting golden handle. The thin, double-edged blade. The prominent fire opal embedded in the hilt.

Who was this man?

Rafe attempted again to snag one of the magical threads swirling around him, but it remained out of reach. The darkness he’d sought to deny burbled within him, but not with enough power to protect Mariah. And nightfall was hours away.

“Will he live?” the man with the sword asked his soldiers of the injured man, his tone dismissive.

The men’s clothes were mottled in greens and grays and blacks—shades that camouflaged them in the jungle. One lay on the floor, writhing, while the others wrapped his injury in cloth that had soaked through with blood. Another had a similar cloth around his arm. Mariah had fired off multiple shots. One man was no longer a threat. The other was merely incensed.

“Yeah,” the man with the injured arm spat. “But Juarez never returned when I sent him around back. Should I find him?”

Rafe’s confidence surged. The man named Juarez would not join his compatriots anytime soon. He was still alive, but trussed and gagged with jungle vines and leaves, an action that had cost Rafe a great deal of his energy—perhaps the last of it. That left three enemies to waylay long enough for Mariah to get to safety.

If only he were solid. If only he were not so spent.

The man with the sword stepped away from the cluster of men. He was undoubtedly the leader.

He gave the injured man a cursory glance. “Give him a shot of that whiskey you carry in your pack, Simmons, and get back to looking for the girl. She doesn’t have to die. Yet. I want the stone, but I also need to know precisely what she knows about it.” He glanced longingly at the sword again. “How to use it.”

“Yes, Mr. Pryce.”

Simmons dragged the injured man out of sight. The last man stayed beside Pryce. Though dressed like the others, he stood out from the rest. He was younger and wore a cluster of hoops around the top of his ear and another spiky stud in his nose.

“If she knew how to use the magic, she would have by now,” the young man insisted.

Pryce merely grinned. “Assumptions, Mr. Pyle, are dangerous. Particularly in light of the fact that Mariah Hunter has eluded us this far. I hired Simmons because he knows the terrain, and he and his men were supposed to be crack shots. And yet he missed.”

“I think that weird light blinded him. What was that shit?”

“That
shit
,” Pryce responded, his lip curled as if saying the word were the same as tasting it, “was magic. Unlike any I’ve ever seen, but then”—he lifted the sword and examined the blade as if he’d never truly appreciated the weapon before—”until I found this, magic was nothing more to me than a pipe dream. Now that I have it, I want to know precisely what it is capable of. I made the pyramid shake, but I’m not entirely certain how. I need the girl and that stone.”

“You’ll have them,” the younger man assured him, bowing his head. A flash of black and red at the base of his neck drew Rafe’s attention. He wore a brand of some sort.

A hawk, clutching a red stone in its talons.

The mark of Lord Rogan.

Rage nearly undid him. The instinct to strike out—to turn that cursed sword against the man who held it so cavalierly—nearly overtook him. But Rafe had not the power. He could feel the magic pulsing from the sword, as dark and vile as that which contained him.

Rafe returned to Mariah, hidden in the hollow tree. If she attempted to escape, they would find her. While Pryce might not kill her immediately, he did not seem the sort of man to leave loose ends behind.

“Can you remain out of sight until nightfall?”

The sudden sound of their assailants stalking through the underbrush answered the question for her. “I’m too close. It’ll be a piece of piss for them to find me here. I need to move.”

“Leave the stone,” Rafe instructed. “Bury it.”

Mariah’s eyes widened, but after a moment’s hesitation, she complied, twisting as quietly as she could until she could shove it deep into a crevice within the tree trunk, which she covered with rocks and moss and dirt. She maneuvered back to the opening. Though the men had not yet stumbled into this section of the jungle, they were not far away.

“Now what?” she asked quietly.

Rafe hated what he was about to propose, but he could not see any other way.

“I have just enough energy left to distract them. You must come out of this hiding place and circle around to the other side. Then you must allow them to capture you.”

Seventeen

“He’s not dead,” Gemma gasped, on the verge of hyperventilating. “God, Paschal. Wake up. Farrow’s not dead.”

Paschal forced his eyes open and looked down at his chest, expecting to see an anvil pressing down on him. He inhaled and exhaled in a steady rhythm, hoping the tight sensation was merely an aftereffect of seeing Farrow Pryce not only alive, but using the Dresden Sword to wield dark magic.

Despite the pain, Paschal pushed himself up. Gemma was now pacing the room, her fingers jabbing into her hair, mercilessly tugging on black and blond spikes.

“Did you see him?” she said, whirling on him. “He’s supposed to be dead. You told me he dove off a cliff in California. You told me he died!”

Slowly, the weight on his chest lifted. He wasn’t having a heart attack. Much better news than the fact that Gemma’s ex-boyfriend and Paschal’s nemesis had survived what should have been a fatal fall.

“Seems I was wrong,” he replied.

Gemma slid onto the floor. Not for the first time since she’d convinced him to join her, she revealed her rare but unmistakable vulnerability. The cool seductress she’d pretended to be as Farrow’s mistress had melted away. At this moment, she was raw, authentic—and afraid.

Until he’d proved himself capable of surviving a drop off a California cliff, Farrow Pryce had not scared Gemma. Like every other man in her life, he’d been a means to an end. Now he was a genuine threat.

Neither she nor Paschal had anticipated that Farrow was still alive—and worse, using the Dresden Sword to attack Rafe and, shockingly, Mariah Hunter.

“He can do magic,” Gemma said. “Not piddling psychic shit. Real magic. He made that pyramid thing shake.”

Paschal closed his eyes again, but the images of potential destruction he saw there left him quaking with nearly as much force as the Mayan temple. If ever there existed a man with no business controlling Rogan’s dark magic, it was Farrow Pryce.

“He took the Dresden Sword with him when he went over that cliff six months ago. The police searched and found nothing,” he told her. “The magic must have saved his life.”

“How?”

Paschal frowned. The possibilities were both endless and terrifying.

“We’ll sort that out on our way,” he said, hoisting himself to his feet, then reaching out to Gemma to help her off the floor. He glanced longingly at the papers he’d scattered on the dining room table. He’d found references to items the K’vr had listed as missing—items associated with Lord Rogan’s legacy that they did not yet possess. He desperately wanted to explore that register more thoroughly, but their time in the manse had just run out.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To find my son,” Paschal replied, dragging her with him as he assembled what he could afford to take. They were still traveling light. He’d have to choose carefully.

Gemma shook herself free. “No! I told you. I’m cooperating only with you. I don’t trust anyone else, especially not your son.”

Paschal bit back a curse. “Heard the one about the pot and the kettle lately?”

She narrowed her gaze. “I haven’t lied to you. Not once. Can you say the same?”

Their standoff was a waste of time. He shoved the register of lost items into a leather portfolio, then tossed it by the entrance to the secret tunnel they’d planned to use for their escape. “Look, you don’t have to trust Ben, and frankly, you don’t have to trust me. But I’m going to Texas to find my son.”

“Why?”

“Because that woman under attack by Farrow Pryce is Mariah Hunter. She used to love my son, and I’m betting that’s the connection that is about to get her killed.”

* * *

Ben flipped his cell phone shut and glanced at Cat, sleeping soundly amid a tangle of snowy white sheets. As he suspected, Mariah had screwed up, and now he knew, generally speaking, where she was. But as much as Ben and Cat had planned to go after Mariah at some point, riding to her rescue was never a scenario they’d considered.

But his father had been very clear. He was on his way to Texas, with Gemma Von Roan in tow, but traveling would take them a day at the most. Mariah was in a life-or-death situation in a remote part of the Mexican jungle, which Paschal recognized from markings on a nearby Mayan structure. She could also be in Guatemala or Belize, but Mexico was where she’d lost those coins—and Ben had no doubt that the pressure from Hector Velez had sent her back to Chiapas.

And though he was closer here in Texas, he might already be too late. Paschal hadn’t been sure if the vision of Mariah being shot at—or shot—was the past, present or future. But positioned as he was, Ben had to respond. He had his pilot’s license and, thanks to Alexa Chandler, a plane. All he needed now was a plan—and for that, he needed Cat’s cooperation.

Chiapas was vast and Mariah could be anywhere. But Cat could find her. Cat had Mariah’s watch, and while she’d tried and failed to forge a connection and pinpoint Mariah’s location before, the situation had changed. If they took to the air over the jungle, closer proximity might help Cat key into his ex’s psychic energy.

With a mew of contentment, Cat turned over. Bare breasted and beautiful, she made his mouth water. Her dark skin contrasted against the sheets, enhancing her sweet curves. He knew every rise and indentation intimately, but damn if he didn’t want to touch her, taste her, feel her over and over again. His body ached for her—but even more, her very presence made his heart hurt.

Because of the search for his uncles, they’d been together for over a year. She knew him inside and out and she stayed with him anyway. She loved him.

Not that she’d said the words. Neither one of them had crossed that hazardous suspension bridge just yet, even after all this time. And though Ben liked to think they didn’t need a trite phrase to bind them together, he knew that just like Mariah in the jungle, Ben was running out of time. He didn’t need to share her psychic power to know Cat craved commitment. He just didn’t know how he could honestly make any promises until this madness with his family was resolved.

And if Paschal was right, they were close to retrieving yet another Forsyth brother.

If they hurried.

If Cat would help.

Never one to shy away from danger for long, he slid onto the bed and woke her from her late-afternoon nap with a long, languorous kiss.

“Mm,” she said, shifting the sheet down so he could salivate over every inch of her incredible naked body. “That’s certainly better than an alarm clock.”

She slid her hand down his arm, took his hand and guided it toward her sex, which he knew would be wet and ready for him.

Uttering the strongest oath in his repertoire, he pulled away. “Sorry, babe. There’s no time.”