The Relentless Warrior (22 page)

Eden and Jericho dated? What!

Jericho dated the Queen???

Stupidly those thoughts trumped every other epiphany for the few moments I was allowed
to have them.

“You and I both know that what she gave Kiran was different than what she gave you,”
Sebastian growled. His words made it seem like he was angry about something in their
past, but his attitude pointed to something in our present. I didn’t understand, but
I was too nervous to ask any important questions. “You’ve never played naïve before.
I have no idea why you would start lying to yourself now.”

Jericho huffed out a frustrated breath and shot me a long, agitated glance from his
periphery.

“No big deal,” I shrugged to ease the tension. “I won’t sleep around. That’s easy.”
I held my body completely still in order to keep from glancing at Jericho.

I mean, we’d kissed… for just a few minutes. It was no big deal. And not anywhere
close to what Sebastian was suggesting.

“Yeah,” Jericho echoed me. “Easy.”

Sebastian made an amused snorting sound but got cut off abruptly when Jericho slammed
on the brakes suddenly. My body slammed into the seatbelt and it took me a minute
for my head to clear and for the roadblock in front of us to make sense.

There were at least a dozen men spread out in front of us, armed with swords and guns
at their hips. They were menacing and evil looking and their Magic was super potent-
almost like it was rotten, like spoiled eggs, if eggs could be Magic. Terletov stood
in the middle of them all, a sword raised over his head and an evil, menacing sneer
twisting his features.

On the ground in front of him was another man. His dark skin was painted with crimson
blood and his appendages were limp and broken at odd angles.

The sword was meant for that man.

“Silas,” Jericho’s voice broke on the name, and then we were scrambling out the door
and I was thrown into my very first Immortal fight.

Good thing I was a fast learner.

Chapter Seventeen

Jericho

“Step back.” My hands were shaking and my blood felt on fire with rage. I was an inferno
of intent and fear.

Terletov stood over Silas as he lay on the ground beaten and
broken
. I had never seen him look so utterly defeated before. He couldn’t even keep his
eyes open, although he tried. He kept coughing, rasping gasps of breath that would
rattle his chest and spray sticky, foul-smelling blood from his mouth.

Terletov just grinned at me- sick, sadistic, crazy.

“Step back from him or I will gut you,” I warned him with as strong a voice as I could
manage. It wasn’t that I was afraid of him or that my nerves were getting the better
of me, rather fury seemed to have wrapped around my body in a vice-grip of restrained
wrath. I had just seconds before I would explode and bring down the sword of justice.
My magically-enhanced gun rested in my hand, ready and willing to inflict as much
damage as possible and my Magic tingled at my fingertips, just waiting to unleash
hell.

Silas whimpered on the ground a sound that would haunt me for years to come. Silas
didn’t whimper. Silas didn’t beg or plea or grovel. He was an ancient Immortal-
centuries old
. He’d survived Cedric, Lucan and a revolution. He had kept colonies of people alive
for hundreds of years.

This was not the same man that I’d met in the desert to exchange plans with. This
was not the man that sat on Avalon’s council and kept the reluctant Monarchy in line.
This was not the man that once saved a gypsy village from the wrath of an evil king.

This was a shell of that man.

Red rage blurred my vision and I fought to keep it together until it was time to engage.
I felt Talbott by my side, Sebastian on the other. Olivia had found her way behind
me, which I was more than grateful for. We hadn’t exactly gone over her role should
we engage the enemy, but she seemed to be smart about this. And Sebastian had gone
over the procedure of firing a gun and fighting with Magic on the plane over here.
Not that it was enough to prepare her for this moment, but it would have to be enough.

Hopefully she would stay by my side and be smart, because I could not babysit her
just now.

I would protect her with my life, but I didn’t have time for the unnecessary stunts
and acts of bravery. I understood that Terletov had done unspeakable things to her,
and for that he would pay. But she couldn’t go rogue and expect results.

Not now anyway.

“So you got my message?” Terletov grinned at us. His eyes moved slowly from Sebastian
to mine, to Talbott and beyond. I felt, more than saw, when he found Titus standing
somewhere behind me. His entire energy changed immediately, somehow growing more aggressive,
hungrier, angrier. Titus was our only Shifter. Of course, Terletov would want to deal
with that. “I’m so happy you could join us. Your friends have been waiting for you.”

Friends?

Was Lilly here?

Please God, let Lilly be here.

“Friends?” Talbott echoed my thoughts.

“Yes,” Terletov sneered. “
Friends.
”

He then kicked Silas in the side and the old Shifter arched his back, contorting in
some kind of unspeakable pain. Movement from their ranks drew my attention off Silas
and revealed Gabriel standing near the back of the crowd. He was handcuffed, beaten
and bloodied, but nothing like Silas. Not destroyed. Not devoid of everything that
gave him life and vitality.

I had Xander calling Gabriel nonstop since Alexi had given up this information, but
he never got through. I know why now. He was already here.

Gabriel’s fiery eyes stayed firmly fixed on his friend. He didn’t even acknowledge
the rest of us.

“Is that my little brother writhing around in the back of your car?” Terletov asked
casually.

“Care to trade?” I sounded equally nonchalant but nothing could have been further
from the truth.

Terletov shrugged, “Keep him.” His eyes narrowed and a sick grin twisted his expression.
“Or didn’t he tell you about our little falling out?”

“I’ll take back my friends one way or another, Terletov. I’m just trying to make this
easy on you.” My words were all bravado. I tried to imagine the point of Alexi bringing
us here while his brother still sold him out. None of this made sense to me.

“This is boring to me,” Terletov announced suddenly. His dark hair hung limp around
his crisp collar and his razor thin mustache had a thin line of sweat beading his
upper lip. He was a sick man- and not just in the head.

The rest of his mean, while strong and capable soldiers, let off a rotting smell that
could only be likened to death. These men were not natural, not even a little bit.
Whatever games Terletov was playing with science and nature, he was losing. Even if
it seemed like success in some messed-up way, this was not right.

They could not last like this.

“Here are my terms,” Terletov continued. “You can have these… men. I will give them
to you. But I want your Queen. She has what is mine. So, if you give her to me, I
will give you what is yours.”

“No,” Talbott snarled immediately. I felt punched in the gut at Talbott’s insistence.
As much as he wanted Lilly, as much as he would do anything to get to her, his loyalty
to the Crown came first. Eden and the rest of our Monarchy would always be his first
obligation- by blood oath. And that killed me for him.

“Not a chance,” Sebastian echoed.

“Then they die.” Terletov glanced over his shoulder and then back at us. “And so do
you.”

“Wrong,” I told him. “It’s you who dies today.”

He looked at me like he just noticed me for the first time. His thick eyebrows raised
high into his wrinkled forehead and his emaciated frame became cartoonishly animated.
“I was hoping for a good…” His sentence trailed off when his eyes flickered behind
me. Instinctively I moved in front of his focus, blocking his view from what had to
be Olivia. “What’s this?” he demanded. “Why do you look so familiar? Step forward,
I need to look at you better.”

“No.” I stepped forward instead.

Terletov lowered his sword so the tip rested in the hollow of Silas’s throat. The
message was made perfectly clear; but I would be damned before I would let this sick
bastard’s attention focus completely on Olivia.

“I want to see the girl.” As sadistic as this man was, this was the first time I’d
actually heard him sound angry. Usually, he held casual tones and spoke with a kind
of elegant but condescending amusement. He was born and raised an aristocrat in a
world where malicious politics ruled. Despite the kind of criminal he’d become, he
didn’t lose the old style of evil that Lucan and his father and his father’s father
had instilled into this Kingdom.

“No,” I repeated.

Terletov put some weight behind his sword and Silas’s neck began to bleed. Silas lay
there, choking and wriggling beneath the tip of the blade while I protected a girl
that was so much more to me than a friend or attraction. Her eyes had changed. Her
eyes were purple.

She possessed all four kinds of Magic, without a doubt. She had to. I had started
to put a puzzle together in my head and Olivia was filling in missing pieces for me.

But beyond that, beyond this conflict, we were bonding. Our Magic was even now entwined.
And I doubted she even realized it. I’d removed my Magic from hers earlier, after
Sebastian started insinuating, well, the truth- that we were connecting, that our
Magic was combining. I’d tried to keep myself separate from her since I realized our
connection could have terrible consequences, but now, in the middle of this, I couldn’t
bring myself to distance myself from her. I needed her, and I needed to know she was
alright.

But this only strengthened our bond- a bond I had never believed could exist until
now.

I had loved Eden.
Loved her
.

But we’d never shared this; we’d never even shared a percentage of this.

I’d sort all that out later though- as long as there was a later.

The tip of the sword pushed into Silas’s flesh further and our standstill had only
moments left. It was time to act. Time to finish the chitchat and accomplish something.

“I’m going to kill him then,” Terletov shrugged.

For the first time since he’d stepped out of wherever they had been hiding him, Gabriel
spoke. They’d pulled out his clerical collar and his tattered robes were filthy and
bloody, but he still held the air of authority and conviction that always surrounded
him. When he spoke, his Spanish accent was thick and his voice beyond pained, but
his words rang out clearly. “You’ve already killed him. There is nothing left of him
but agony.”

Terletov immediately bounced back to the happy politician then. Grinning like a crocodile
he said, “As usual, the priest speaks the truth. I did do that, didn’t I? Ah well,
then he probably won’t mind if I do this.” A collective gasp resounded the moment
Terletov’s magically-enhanced sword pushed through Silas’s neck. Crimson red Magic
drifted into the air, blinding, bright and free.

Agony clawed at my throat and disbelief and despair simultaneously clenched in my
chest over and over again. Silas.

Silas.

If Eden were here she could save him, but she wasn’t. And maybe he didn’t want to
be saved. Maybe he had hoped for death for far too long now.

Peace softened his features as his face finally relaxed. A small smile played at the
corner of his mouth and finally,
finally
his body stopped writhing.

I knew that Gabriel was right, that whatever Terletov had done to him had killed him
way before now. At this point, Terletov was granting him a favor by ending his suffering.
But it was the image of one of my old friends and great mentors that spurred me into
action.

A small hand pressed against my shoulder blade and I realized Olivia was trying to
get my attention. I snapped out of my hypnotic state, watching Silas’s Magic leak
into the atmosphere around his dying body and realized the rest of my team had gone
to work on these guys.

It was time to join them.

“Do not leave my side,” I told Olivia. “Stay next to me and use everything we worked
on before.” I handed her the gun. “Do you know how to use this?” With wide eyes full
of fear and anxiety, she nodded. I clicked the safety off for her, just in case she
was too panicked to remember the little things and pulled a dagger from my boot with
the same magical properties as the swords these men carried.

I probably should have brought a sword. I was certainly trained with them, but they
were cumbersome outside of fighting. I much preferred the easy handling of a long-blade
knife.

I wanted Terletov, but I wouldn’t risk getting close to him while I had Olivia next
to me. Besides, it looked like Talbott had already called dibs.

I decided I needed to get to Gabriel first and foremost. He was a wild man at the
back of the conflict. His hands were bound but his feet were not. He kicked and threw
his body around. He used his forehead to connect blow after blow, seeming uncaring
of the blood dripping from his various wounds into his eyes and over his face.

He looked savage and out of his mind.

And I absolutely understood why.

If that had been Avalon… or even Sebastian. Talbott. Xander. Xavier. Titus. Roxie.
Amelia. Eden. Even Kiran… If that had been any of my friends, I would have lost my
mind in vindictive rage.

As it were, I still had the pounding retribution pulsing through me so loud and demanding,
my hearing felt muffled and my vision narrowed into a tunnel of this fight and only
this fight.

I struck out at the first of Terletov’s men I came into contact with. I let the pent
up Magic explode from my palm and strike out at his feet. He blocked me, expecting
my tactic. I adjusted my methods and went to strike out again when a secondary blast
of Magic burst forward and succeeded in knocking him over where I had failed.

Olivia.

She’d taken the opportunity while his attention was on me and used some initiative.

Nice.
 
 

I lunged forward and had my knife through his heart before his body had even fully
taken the impact of his fall. His green, putrid Magic immediately released from his
chest while his entire body seemed to decompress like a punctured balloon.

The thing about these guys was they were super strong, even for Immortals. They seemed
to be powerful beyond anything else. But they were also incredibly easy to kill. If
you could get a blade into them, they just deflated. It was bizarre. But I suspected
it had something to do with however Terletov had enhanced their Magic and the consequences
of tampering with the natural order of things.

I was back on my feet and fighting again before I could even thank Olivia for helping
me. She stayed close to me, just like I asked. It was easy to do until the hand-to-hand
combat. But most of my fighting was Magic blast versus Magic blast.