The Relentless Warrior (28 page)

I swallowed against a thousand more fears and feelings I didn’t even know I could
feel. How were my parents so perceptive? How could they see all these things in the
short amount of time we’d been back together?

And how could they ask me to consider something so extreme?

I felt a little betrayed by their conviction over this; but it was buried beneath
the strength of their love and concern for me. I knew they thought they had my best
interest in mind. But Jericho was also the only other Immortal they’d ever met. They
had no idea what existed in the rest of the Kingdom except for Terletov- which was
obviously the exact opposite of Jericho.

Speak of the devil, Jericho finally reappeared in all his devastatingly handsome glory.

He spoke to everyone in that authoritative way he had. “The team’s here. The house
is well protected. I know you have lives to live and all, but I’m going to ask you
to stay here for right now, until we tell you different. We want to make sure that
you’re safe. And the easiest way to do that is to protect one place. We can get you
whatever you need. My lead Guard will introduce himself and he can send someone out
for anything you want if you ask.” My parents nodded immediately and my brother paled.
He did not want to be in the middle of this and I couldn’t say I blamed him. “They
have the house surrounded, and will mostly stay out of sight. But if you see someone
walking around in a black polo, black slacks without a coat, that’s one of our guys.
I trust these men, and I think Liv does to, if that helps make this easier for you.”

“I do,” I agreed quickly.

Jericho smiled warmly at me. “Talbott has a lead if you want to go. You can stay here
if you want, or check this out with me.”

“I’ll go,” I answered quickly. I hated the idea of sitting idly here, waiting for
Terletov to come to us. My parents and brother needed to stay here. But I would go
crazy if I had to wait for him to come to us. “Will we be gone long?”

“Depends on what we find,” Jericho answered cryptically but his eyes sparkled at me,
which made me think this was a good lead.

“Alright, give me a few minutes to get ready.”

“I’ll meet you back here,” he agreed and then left to get dressed and armed.

I turned around to face my parents. I felt weird about leaving their house to go hunt
down a man and try to kill him. I’d lived here since I graduated from high school,
while I went to school, but they’d given me complete freedom ever since I turned eighteen.
Of course, I’d always been a responsible child.

It was hard to get into trouble when you didn’t hang out with anyone other than your
siblings.

But for some strange reason, I felt like I should ask their permission before I left.
Maybe because I was actually searching out trouble this time? Or the consequences
of my actions were lasting and final?

Either way when I raised an inquisitive brow at them they both snorted and waved me
off. “You’re twenty-one, Livie. Time to make your own decisions,” my dad ordered.

“Why do I feel like this message is deeper than it appears?” I backed away from the
table with a smirk on my face.

“Probably because it is,” he grinned at me.

Wanting to escape before I had to listen to another lecture on how amazing Jericho
was, I turned to sprint up the stairs. “Sorry about the mess in the kitchen!” I called.

“You’re lucky I’m so happy you’re home again!” My mom called after me.

I met Jericho ten minutes later by the front door. We’d both changed into “mission”
clothes. He’d packed an extra set of black fatigues and a tight fitting black t-shirt
that I didn’t think could be originally his because of how it stretched across his
broad shoulders. If I didn’t know he was Immortal, I would have been worried about
him freezing to death the minute we stepped outside; but from experience, I knew his
body could handle the freezing temps and the few feet of snow.

“So this is how Olivia Taylor really dresses?” he smirked at me like he was privy
to some inside secret.

I shrugged, glancing down at my stylishly baggy army pants that sat low on my hips
and my scooped neck black t-shirt. I was even wearing my own black pumas. I had to
admit it was not at all like I dressed in the Citadel. The clothes there were trendy,
expensive and refined, but nothing like my normal eclectic, bohemian style.

“I should grab a jacket,” I told him just to break hot tension between us.

“Why?” he almost laughed. “Are you going to get cold? Wasn’t that lesson number one?”

I smiled, unable to hold back. “No, that was not number one.”

He just grinned at me and then took my hand. We both easily ignored the cold weather
and jumped in the rental SUV without saying another word.

On the way to the “mission” Jericho explained that Talbott had gotten a tip from some
Immortals that lived in Chicago. A few Shape-Shifters had disappeared months back.
Shifters, apparently, were not known for setting down roots in any one city because
of the oppression they lived under for so many years. They usually moved around in
colonies and stayed off the grid. However, since Avalon and Eden came into power,
the Monarchy had been working hard to encourage them to settle permanently.

It was these kinds of Shifters that had disappeared from the city.

Talbott told Jericho that the Immortals that knew about the disappearances hadn’t
thought anything more than Shifters being skittish about living surrounded by civilization.
They’d assumed the Shifters had gone back into hiding out of habit. That seemed logical
to me as well. The Immortals had reconsidered though after the announcement was made
that Silas and Gabriel had died.

The death of those men was a huge deal to the Kingdom. Jericho said that Gabriel grew
up in the Palace and was very close with Kiran’s dad, Lucan, before Lucan went in
Jericho’s words bat-shit crazy. And Silas was apparently the head Shifter in the entire
Kingdom, and led a colony of his own before Avalon asked him to join his royal council.

They were extremely important men and I could hear the strain and grief in Jericho’s
voice as he told me about them. I desperately wanted to pull him to me and hold him
while he recovered from his pain, but I kept my hands to myself. My parents’ lecture
this morning had more than freaked me out. I just didn’t want to encourage anything
with him until I was certain.

The Immortals living here remembered the missing Shifters as soon as they heard about
Gabriel and Silas and immediately called Talbott.

We happened to already be in the city and so this was a lucky break. But I wondered
if most big breaks tended to be a bit lucky.

Once the backup Guard arrived sometime very early this morning, Talbott and Titus
had driven around the city trying to get a Magical trace, which Talbott could pick
up because he was a Titan. They were assuming Terletov already landed in the city
and went back to his original base of operations. And even if he didn’t have a “lab”
to work from, they were hoping he set up somewhere.

Chicago was obviously huge, but they’d narrowed down the area to some sketchy parts
of downtown. And now as we drove into the city from the small suburb of Wheaton, Illinois,
that I called home, I could see why.

I could feel the same pull to the center of the city. It felt like a hunch at first,
some tiny instinct that nudged me in one particular direction. But the closer we drove,
the stronger the instinct became until it wasn’t just a feeling anymore… until I could
clearly sense the other Magic and where it clustered together.

I didn’t have to tell Jericho where to go, because he already knew from Talbott’s
directions. Talbott and Titus were staking out some abandoned warehouse, waiting for
our backup.

Jericho came to a stop blocks away from where we were supposed to meet up with Talbott.
I originally thought this was so we could manage some kind of surprise attack on Terletov,
but Jericho quickly dismissed that theory.

“He’ll know we’re coming,” he shrugged. “He has as many Titans as we do, or at least
their Magic. I’m parking the car here so that it doesn’t get blown up again. It’s
really inconvenient when that happens.”

I laughed because I couldn’t help myself and because I was extremely nervous. It didn’t
matter if I had Magic or not, my brain could not wrap around the possibility of not
dying.

“Someone might steal it,” I suggested, gesturing around at the area of town we were
traversing. He just shook his head. “Magic, remember? Doesn’t matter how tough they
think they are, every human will be afraid of that car.”

“The car’s Magic?”

“Pieces of it,” he confirmed. “All our vehicles, planes, whatever we own or use regularly,
we infuse Magic into. It not only puts our signature on the item, but keeps humans
far, far away.”

“What if they aren’t afraid? My parents weren’t all that afraid of you.”

He grinned. “Your parents like me.”

I rolled my eyes. “They do not. And if they do, it’s only because they don’t know
you yet.”

“Then we better be quick about this.”

“Why?”

“Obviously, so I can go convince them I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
He flashed me a charming smile that the bastard knew would get under my skin.

“Then you better spend some time trying to convince me of the same thing.” My goal
was to sound a bit bitchy.

But that didn’t work.

Jericho took the challenge and grabbed my hand. He yanked hard, tugging me to him
so that we stopped in the middle of the snow-packed sidewalk, with abandoned metal
buildings rising all around us. He pulled my body into his and his mouth was on mine
before I could fully comprehend how I got here. With a swift, incessant kiss that
left me spinning and breathless, he released me very slowly.

“Okay.” His eyes met mine with promised conviction.

“Okay?” I asked because I couldn’t remember anything before that kiss.

His mouth split into that devilish grin again and my knees actually wobbled under
the force of it. Drawing his words out so that I couldn’t mistake his meaning even
if I tried, he said, “Ok, I’ll spend some time convincing you that you like me.”

Before I could even struggle for breath, Talbott whistled from a block away. Jericho
released my hand and body and then we were jogging across an empty intersection in
order to meet up with Jericho’s teammates and prepare for battle.

Since I was about to fight the crazy maniac that got me into this mess to begin with,
I should probably stop thinking about Jericho’s yummy kisses and get my brain straight.

Ugh.

Chapter Twenty-One

Jericho

The warehouse was as nondescript as all the rest. The windows were all broken, graffiti
colored the gray concrete walls and the heavy, rusted metal door hung off its hinges.
Wind whipped through the broken glass of whatever remained of the plated windows in
a gusting howl that sent ominous goose bumps over my forearms.

I gave Talbott a questioning glance and he confirmed that this was the place with
a nod of his head. I looked at the four of us and hated that there weren’t more.

But with the Guard split between the Citadel, where they were needed most, with Analisa,
Kiran’s mom, Olivia’s house and random hotspots around the world, there wasn’t much
else of an option. If we didn’t have Alexi to worry about, I would have at least had
more of my own people, but necessity had drained us to this point. It was the four
of us against whatever Terletov had with him.

My one consoling thought was that whatever happened to us, Olivia would at least survive.
Even if Terletov managed to drain and kill the rest of us, Olivia, by his own admission,
would live. And she would never become his perfect soldier. He had to be absolutely
out of his mind to think that. I spent all of five minutes with her before I knew
she wasn’t the kind of girl to submit or surrender.

Of course, she’d been trying to claw my eyes out in her tortured, exhausted, traumatized
state. But… I couldn’t imagine Terletov fairing much better.

“Front door or split up?” Titus asked under his breath.

“They know we’re here,” I answered. “Why prolong the inevitable?”

Titus grinned at me and Talbott looked as if he wanted to kill me for hesitating even
for a moment.
 

I gave Liv an encouraging head nod and then we stalked as one unit to the side of
the building and pushed our way through the worn metal doorframe. The door shrieked
on its dilapidated hinges and I had to use Magic to get it to budge, but when we finally
walked into the dim, filthy building we stood face to face with Terletov and fifteen
of his henchman.

“Clever fools,” Terletov greeted us immediately. “I truly hope you’ve come to return
what’s mine.” His eyes traveled Olivia’s length in a slow, leering perusal and I decided
just then that I would gouge his eyes out with my fists before I killed him.

Just to make it fun.

I stepped in front of Liv and met his depraved expression with my own deadly one.
“I doubt that will happen.”

“Pity,” Terletov grunted. His head tilted to the side and he looked at us calculatingly
before he ordered, “Kill them. Except for the girl, of course. But then again, you
can’t kill her.”

Chaos broke out in that exact moment.

Guns, swords, Magic. Every weapon we contained clashed together in a cacophony of
sound and onslaught of aggression. We each had a gun of our own, but they were a dangerous
thing to waste when our time was spent flying through the air in an effort to dodge
bullets.

We didn’t have Eden or Avalon with us, so if anyone of us were hit with a bullet we
would drop and there would be nothing we could do about it. These bullets caused a
magically induced coma that was as deadening as Ophelia’s, except that Eden could
heal us.

Usually I fought with surety and confidence that could only be possessed after years
of winning. Honestly, I was good at this. I could be clinical to a heartless fault
and I could be as ruthless as I needed to be. Maybe it tore me up later, but in the
moment all I had to rely on were my instincts.

And my instincts were brutally merciless.

But now I felt assaulted with as much fear and uncertainty as I did drive to win this.
Olivia seemed a natural at fighting, dodging bullets and fighting back with an intuition
that I could kiss her for. But still, the fear that she could get hit, or hurt, or
taken, clung to my bones and gave me a marrow-deep chill that I could not shake.

Damn, this was one thing I wasn’t used to.

Even with Eden, I’d prided myself in being the kind of guy that trusted his female.
If Eden said she could fight, I believed her. If Eden said she could handle whatever
it was we were working on, I believed her.

In this moment, I could see that Liv could handle herself, I could watch her fight
back viciously, and yet anxiety clawed up my throat and ripped at my flesh.

“Behind you!” I shouted at her just in time for her to dive out of the way.

I couldn’t afford the time to make sure she got up again. At least I believed she
couldn’t die.

It didn’t mean I wanted to see her get even a little bit injured, but it would have
to comfort my protective instincts for now.

I dove after some asshole that had run out of bullets and was coming after me with
his sword drawn.

In any other battle, I would have gotten my hands on the guy and drained him of every
last drop of Magic possible. But we’d learned early with Terletov not to take any
of this Magic. It was tainted beyond evil, something sinister and sick that we couldn’t
absorb correctly. We had to gut them, let the Magic dissolve in the air, or we’d suffer
something akin to the King’s Curse with what their Magic would do to us.

Eden, Avalon and their spouses could handle the polluted Magic, but they were honestly
the only ones. We didn’t even know if they could live through it because of their
stronger Magic, or the valve that opened between all four of them. Even though Avalon
and Eden stayed closed-off to each other for the most part these days, now that they
were both married and wanted to avoid the awkwardness of their Magic, it still moved
between them and now included Kiran and Amelia.

I pulled my knife out of the sheath at my ankle and engaged. Another goon joined the
fight and I worked my body into a machine, accurate, precise and deadly. I got the
first guy on the Achilles tendon as I skidded low to avoid a brutal swing of his sword.
He arched his back with a shout and then fell to one knee where I took advantage and
plunged my deathly sharp blade into his spine.

I used Magic to force the tip through his flesh, muscle, bone and whatever else lay
beneath his skin. The slicing, ripping sound resounded in my ears and I cringed despite
the necessity of the killing blow. Before I could be certain he would stay down I
was forced to retract my knife and swing out against his friend.

Our blades clashed above my head, his long sword to my short but sturdy knife. He
kicked out at me at the same time I jumped into the air and curled into a ball. I
released my knife, along with my weight and pressure while his leg swept beneath me,
meeting nothing but air. With my weight gone and his leg not connecting with anything,
he lost his balance and stumbled forward. At the same time my feet found solid ground
again and I raised my knife so that he fell into it. I braced myself for his weight
and took him with a thrust upward, directly into his chest.

This time when I pulled the knife out, I made sure to leave a gaping gash that would
leak Magic like a waterfall. Blood gushed all over my hand and his sickly green Magic
burst into the air around us.

I jumped out of the way and directly into another fight.

The scent of death, the putrid, nose-tingly smell that seemed to follow these guys
wherever they went and the tangy, sharp odor of metal permeated my nostrils and made
this battle infinitely more real.

This was a different fight than Machu Picchu where I’d found Liv. That had seemed
juvenile compared to this blood bath. And in a way that could be blamed on the scenery.
Ancient ruins compared to a gritty, rundown warehouse gave us new reasons to fight…
to kill… to win.

Besides that, in Peru, these guys had some place to run.

Not here.

This would not end until there were a lot of dead people.

I punched out at another wily bastard and connected with the edge of his jaw. I was
aiming for his nose, but I would take any flesh I could find. My knuckles hit hard
bone and I let my momentum carry me through so that his head swung around spraying
spit, blood and one tooth. At the same time I brought my other hand down and sunk
my knife into the curve of where his shoulder met his neck, just above the collar
bone. With no bone in my way my weapon slid in easily enough and I dragged the sharp
blade across the top of his shoulder to make the biggest hole possible.

These knives were not common, even among the Kingdom. But after Peru last fall and
what happened in the Omaha club, I’d had the Witch at the Citadel make it specifically
for me.

And thank God, I did.

It was coming in very handy.

Olivia had been outfitted with a gun we’d picked up at Terletov’s Hungarian estate
around the same time last fall and a sharp blade that was Talbott’s. While the same
principle applied to her blade as it did to mine, I swear, there was nothing better
than my knife. The blade was insanely sharp, cutting through bone like it was butter.
Even the tip could cause lethal damage.

I was in love.

With the knife.

And also, probably Olivia.

Nothing had ever pulled my hungry attraction like watching her fight to bring down
a mutual enemy with grace, poise and savage instinct. She was created with this inhuman
perception and awareness from even before she was Immortal;
 
I had to believe it was no accident that she survived the transformation. Honestly,
this girl was so goddamn sexy, even covered in blood and sweat, I wanted nothing more
than to finish this battle and then make her mine.

The thought alone spurred me into more action.

But more than the physical attraction that seemed to rule my body, there was this
strong emotional connection with us that bonded our Magic and brought us together
in some kind of unbreakable tie.

Our Magic had been united since last night, never leaving each other, never separating.
And now in the heat of battle, we were both empowered by the strength of the combination.
She made me stronger; she made me faster, her Magic made me invincible.

There was a reason my kill count was climbing so quickly. I had never been a greater
warrior than in this moment.

I believed for some time now that I was born into the fate I belonged. I was a good
killer. I was a good fighter. And I had honed and perfected my skills into a talent
that was almost unsurpassed.

Yet, nothing had been a bigger boost to my talent than absorbing Olivia’s Magic.

She was like steroids, amphetamines and bones made out of titanium all in the same
injection.

And I think I was addicted with just one hit.

At some point during the conflict, Terletov moved to the back of the “arena” and seemed
to be enjoying this show. Titus, who had refrained from shifting until the bullets
were gone and we were only using blades, had shifted to full-bear by now and was backed
into a corner. It was one thing to fight as a Shifter when only Magic was in play.
But when we were fighting with weapons as dangerous as these, his bulking size and
less than accurate movements were not working in his favor.

On the other hand, Talbott was a killing machine. The man had a vendetta and he was
not afraid to murder everything in his way. I could relate to his desperation to get
to Lilly now that I had Olivia in my life.

I’d been reluctant to compare what I shared with Olivia to what Talbott and Lilly
had. They’d been a couple for years and their relationship reached depths that I could
barely imagine.

Still, I knew that if someone or something took Olivia away from me, there would be
nothing that would stop me from getting to her. I would do anything to reach her,
to save her, to keep her.

And as I realized those confirming thoughts, I started to grasp the depth of my feelings
for her.

“Enough!” Terletov screamed out, sounding like a true mad man. “No more, or I will
slit her throat and let her pretty purple Magic bleed out all over this floor.”

No.

I looked up and sure enough, Terletov held a limp, unconscious Lilly by her curly
red hair. Her body drooped like a lifeless ragdoll and there was not so much as a
breath in her lungs moving inside her body.

Talbott stilled immediately and because he was our brother in more important ways
than blood, Titus and I also stopped. I had my knife hovering over another nameless/faceless
throat and Titus dropped a man he had his meaty paw around. In another moment Titus
was human again, fully-dressed and still covered in blood. The Magic in Immortals
meant that Shifters didn’t have to shred their clothes like in movies; they stayed
magically suspended in the place between human form and beast.

Olivia also stopped exactly where she was, in respect for us, although she’d never
met Lilly.

Terletov’s grin became sadistic as it twisted across his face. “So for this girl,
you’ll do what I say? How excellent!”

“Let her go,” Talbott growled with the promise of brutal violence. His chest heaved
with the force of adrenaline in his body and his Magic pushed against everything in
this room. Even I could feel the barbed sharpness of his anger in the electricity
filling this large, empty building. Or maybe that was my connection to Olivia that
had opened me up to the foreign Magics surrounding us.