Warrior Everlasting (2 page)

He had a girlfriend. Kylin had fought with them in the epic gate-closing battle. And Scout didn’t want to be one of those stupid girls who fell right back into the arms of her ex just because he’d, say, thrown himself in front of a demon for her. They needed to learn trust again. Love wasn’t enough. Not always. It hadn’t been before. So… what, exactly, did one do in such a predicament?

“One sleeps, Princess.”
Ashra’s voice echoed tiredly in her head, and Scout jerked toward her, forgetting about the giant unicorn and her ability to drop in on Scout’s internal conversations.

“You really need to learn to knock first before you come busting in on my thoughts.”
Scout frowned, feeling a blush color her cheeks.

Trey noticed it, too, raising an eyebrow as his lips quirked in the barest of smiles. “Whatcha thinking?”

She shook her head. “I’m thinking sleep is going to be hard to find when we could be attacked at any second.”

“We can smell the Taraxippus if they come even within miles. They aren’t out there. I don’t know where they are.”
Scout could hear the worry in Torz’s voice. Not knowing where the soul stealers were or why they weren’t attacking was nearly as frightening as being attacked by them.

But not quite.

Soul stealers looked like hunched-over skeletons with empty black eyes and skin and rags hanging off their bones. They smelled like a thousand rotting corpses, and they shrieked like banshees, if banshees were real. And maybe they were. If unicorns were real, then why not banshees and werewolves and…

She woke to screaming. The screaming of thousands upon thousands of voices. She sat up, but her movements felt slow, like gravity was working overtime, trying to hold her down. And she was alone. Ashra, Torz, even Trey were gone. The fire was gone. She stood alone in the darkness with the screams.

She couldn’t differentiate between them at first. She could only hear many, many voices mashed together. And then one little voice found its way through.

Lil Bit.

Lil Bit, and she sounded terrified and in pain. Scout tried to race from the cave, but it was so dark she couldn’t see, and she crashed into the walls. She felt her forehead split, and blood flowed into her eyes as she sobbed, reaching blindly to trace the walls with her hands, searching for the way out.

“I can make this easy for you, Scout. I know you’re here. I know you’re coming for me. My Taraxippus are already searching for you. Give me Paradesos, and I’ll let them go. Fight me, and you will watch their souls be torn apart before your eyes.”

And then another voice, quieter, but it wrapped around the first voice, smothering it and bringing a feeling of peace. “It’s okay, Scout. I’m okay. We’ll fight him until you save us. I love you.”

Lil Bit.

Scout sobbed, trying to hold on to the voice, but someone was shaking her, and then the first voice found its way back, hissing angrily before it was cut off completely.

“Scout! Wake up!” Trey’s voice now, real and strong, cut through the darkness, and she grabbed onto it, following it to the light.

“Smack her. That usually works.”

She forced her eyes open, unaware that they were even closed. Trey hovered over her, searching her face. Relief flooded across his strong features when she met his gaze.

“Hey, there you are.”

“I… I guess I had a nightmare.”

“It wasn’t a nightmare,”
Ashra said grimly. Scout twisted her head as Trey pulled her against him, rubbing his hands up and down her arms to chase away the goosebumps. He was so strong. So safe. Torz and Ashra both watched her, horns brighter than normal as if their fire could chase away the fear.

“It was Ariston. He knows we’re here.”

Chapter Two

Even after she went back to sleep, which took hours, Scout didn’t stop shaking. Trey wasn’t sure where their relationship stood at the moment, but he wasn’t going to leave her to face the nightmares alone. He dragged his cloak right next to hers and pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her so she stayed put.

She cried out, and then turned and buried her face against his chest. The shaking stopped, and eventually so did the whimpering.

“He’s using us against her. All of us — her sister, too.”
Ashra’s voice was soft in his head, like she was allowing him to hear her but didn’t want to wake him if he was asleep. He lay silently, wishing he could talk back to her without speaking aloud. If he even breathed wrong, Scout’s whimpers started again. Moving was pretty much out, too.

“You can see her dream?”
Torz asked. He and Ashra both stood at the entrance to the cave, staring out into the night. Watching. Waiting.

“Yes. So far, only darkness. And screaming. It’s classic horror movie crap
.” She was quiet for several minutes and then said,
“Do you think this is what Iros goes through every time he sleeps?”

“Havik says he is plagued by nightmares. Ariston shows him Aella. She’s still alive.”

Ashra swiveled her head, her horn glinting in the darkness as she watched her rider’s troubled sleep.
“Scout plans to save her.”

This was news to Trey. He knew Scout was here for Lil Bit. The bond between the two was nearly a physical thing. He knew she would save her parents if she could, because that’s what a good daughter would do. He was here to protect her and save his own family. He thought that was the extent of it.

Apparently, Scout had other plans.

Of course she would try to save Iros’s long-lost girlfriend. He shouldn’t have been surprised. “She’s going to save them all, isn’t she?” he asked without meaning to.

Scout stirred, whimpered, and settled quietly against his chest. Her breath on his neck did crazy things to his blood pressure, and he had to remind himself that they were in a dire situation.

Ashra sighed loudly, the air exploding in frustration around her.
“I believe so.”
She turned to Torz, whapping him lightly with her wing.
“Why did I get the hero rider? Why couldn’t I get the rider who worries only about staying alive herself?”

Like Kylin. She had refused to fight alongside them over and over. Refused to train, refused to even acknowledge that the unicorns were saving their lives.

But in the end, when they had needed her, she’d been there. Screaming, bloody, ruining her five-hundred-dollar outfit, and helping them fight the soul stealers. The sight of her had shocked him so much he had nearly fallen off his unicorn.

Of course, that had been after she’d told him if he tried to save Scout, she hoped he died along with her. Pretty much ended their relationship, if anyone asked Trey. Which they hadn’t. He glanced down at Scout, pressing a kiss against the top of her head. They needed to talk — big time. But having a serious heart-to-heart with the girl you’d been in love with for half your life was difficult with two unicorns who could hear your thoughts.

Torz was talking again and distracted Trey from the conversation he was having with himself.
“You would never have bonded with a rider like that. You bond with the rider your soul speaks to. A hero, like yourself.”

Ashra snorted in disgust.
“I’m no hero.”

“Scout believes otherwise,”
Trey told Torz, since he couldn’t talk directly to Ashra, and he’d learned his lesson trying to speak aloud.

The big unicorn nodded, relaying the message and adding,
“It is true. Scout believes you are a hero. That is enough.”

Again, Ashra turned to watch Scout. She was hard, mean, and sarcastic. Scout was sweet, funny, and sarcastic. The two personalities shouldn’t have melded so well, but they did. One seemed to balance the other, and they bonded more over mutual pain. Ashra’s mate had been killed by Iros’s brother, the master of the soul stealers — Ariston. And when her mate had died, so did her foal. The entire line of Corste unicorns had died out, in fact. The red unicorns had once escorted souls to heaven on the rays of the sun. Now, all that remained was the reminder of their beauty in the sunsets.

Scout’s entire family had been taken by soul stealers, but before that, Trey had nearly killed her in a car accident, and then abandoned her because of guilt. While she lay in a hospital bed for months on end, he had watched from the main entrance. It was as close as he could get. She had never forgiven him.

Until last night.

All it had taken to prove he still loved her was throwing his soul in front of the Taraxippus — soul stealers — to save hers.

****

“Get up, Scout!”
Scout felt something smack her none too gently, and she rolled across the cave floor. She squealed, bouncing to her feet almost before her eyes were open.

The smell hit her first. She knew that smell.

“Soul stealers,” she whispered.

In the mouth of the cave, Ashra’s horn already lit the darkness, her battle armor sliding into place in the dim light. Scout raced across the cave, stooping as she ran to scoop up her cloak. Ashra’s magic covered her, warm and tingly like when she sat on her foot too long and it went to sleep, and Scout’s battle armor clicked into place, the helmet snapping over her head.

“Where’s my scepter?”

“I got it. Hurry up already!”
Ashra snapped.

Scout jumped, sliding across Ashra’s back. It had taken her at least a thousand tries to be able to do that, given how big Ashra was and how tall Scout was not. But adrenaline seemed to give her the boost she needed. Adrenaline and sheer determination not to look stupid as she fell off.

Beyond the cave, Trey and Torz were just rising into the sky. Scout ducked low as they escaped through the opening, then raised her eyes, searching the skies for the hordes of soul stealers she knew were coming.

They weren’t there.

“Where are they?” she yelled.

Ashra didn’t answer, instead snapping out her big wings. Flames erupted from the feathers and her bright horn shot sparks. Scout’s pretty unicorn had just morphed herself into a terrifying demon-killer.

Scout grinned.

They leaped into the sky, Ashra’s mane holding Scout in place as they darted through the pale clouds. Still, Scout couldn’t see the Taraxippus, but she could hear their screams. “A little help here!” she called.

Ashra used the smoke-like tendrils of her mane to plug Scout’s ears against the noise. Otherwise, it would split her skull. She didn’t have time for a headache right now. Or a shattered brain.

“There.”
Torz voice found its way into Scout’s mind as he and Trey flew next to them. She followed where he pointed his horn, squinting into the rising sun — which was blue, like everything else. There were only seven creatures on the horizon. Not the hundreds and hundreds they had faced when they had been outside Aptavaras. Only seven.

“Piece of cake,” Trey said, but Scout shook her head.

“Look at their eyes. These ones have souls!” Most soul stealers had no soul. That’s why they couldn’t get into Paradesos. Their eyes were empty. It also made them easier to kill, because their only goal was to steal the soul within. They were drawn to it the way zombies were to brains in all the bad movies Scout had ever seen. But these ones, these creatures they were facing, their eyes glowed red with evil. They were faster, smarter, and stronger than regular soul stealers.

Scout remembered too well the darkness in Iros’s voice as he explained the Corruption.
Ten thousand souls equal one soul stealer’s soul. They tear the good souls apart and piece them back together to create one evil soul. When my brother has an army, then they will march on Paradesos.

She felt Ashra tense beneath her and braced herself for the bone-shattering burst of speed she knew was coming. Ashra pumped her powerful wings up then swept them down hard. They shot forward, past Torz and Trey, straight at the soul stealers. The wind ripped past them which made her eyes tear up, and it was impossible to speak. Scout was grateful for the ability to speak to Ashra in her mind.
“After everything we’ve been through, you’re still so anxious to kill me.”

“It keeps life interesting, doesn’t it? If I never tried to kill you, this whole adventure would just be boring.”
Ashra flicked an ear back toward her, which Scout decided was the equivalent of raising an eyebrow. Since unicorns didn’t have eyebrows.

Scout was in the process of trying to convince her tired, terrified brain to focus when they hit the first demon. She forgot her internal conversation and jerked her scepter up, throwing her arm out as fire writhed with sparkles shot from the glowing orb at the end. It found Ashra’s attack, winding around it, giving it power, and together they raced toward the soul stealer. But it moved at the last second, so the attack only glanced off its skeletal ribcage. Scout’s jaw dropped in horror. These things were fast. Way faster than soulless Taraxippus.

“Less quality, more quantity!” Trey yelled as Torz soared past them. Trey held his scepter like a gun, shooting bursts of fire at the soul stealers as Torz dipped and dived away from the sharp claws. Their attack knocked the soul stealers back, and Scout could see it was physically weakening them, but not fast enough. There were seven of them, and only two unicorns.

“Fight, Scout! Sitting here in terror isn’t going to do anything but get us killed!”

Scout jerked out of her own head, swinging her scepter like a bat as the nearest demon dove at her. She smacked it in the jaw and nearly gagged as the bone broke off and fell to the mossy blue ground, hundreds of feet below. Ashra pumped her wings, and they danced across the air backward, strands of her misty mane sweeping out to blind the soul stealer. But they were attacked from behind.

Ashra screamed as the claws dug into her flanks. Scout whirled in the saddle, swinging her scepter and willing it to attack. The flames exploded from it, and she shoved it viciously into the soul stealer’s chest. He exploded from the inside, bits of bone and rotted cloth covering Scout’s face. She squealed and frantically brushed it away as Ashra roared, diving forward with her horn glowing. The Taraxippus in front of her dodged out of the way, but a glowing rope of fire dropped over its head. Scout raised her eyes, full of soul stealer bits, to see Trey and Torz pulling the demon backward. But it wasn’t slicing him through like it should have.