Arrow to the Soul (25 page)

Wang stood in his doorway laughing. Her bow was smashed. She took only a moment to mourn before she felt the prick of a dart. Then her world faded as the black rushed up and over and took her under.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“Watashi wa chūdan sa remasen,”
Arrow said aloud.

I will not break.

She’d been in the dark for two days. She counted the seconds, minutes, and hours in her mind and had ticked off forty-eight hours two minutes ago. She’d had nothing to drink and nothing to eat. It was cold in the basement and condensation formed on the bars, so she licked it off periodically. Food she could live without. Water she could not.

Her reality was contrary to the words she’d spoken aloud. She
was
close to breaking. Born of the black swamp of death and she could no longer handle the darkness. She tried to remember Adam’s eyes, but this darkness wasn’t the shiny ebony of his. This dark held scurrying creatures and the echoes of pain.

While she tried to hold him in her thoughts, the black bled through and she was taken under time and time again. How many times had she sat in the darkness and wept for the light? How many times had she begged for surcease until her throat was dry and her voice was gone?

This was different, though. Different from the cell she’d been locked in as a child, different than the cell in North Korea. This black felt like the end.

She’d tasted the light and wanted it back. That she couldn’t have it was destroying her.

“Mōmoku no otoko wa hebi o osorete imasen,”
she murmured as her hands tracked over the wall, looking for weaknesses. The blind man doesn’t fear the snake.

But she did. She was losing this fight.

There was little hope she’d make it out of here, and she needed to make her peace with that. She pushed her fear down. She would meet the end with dignity. And she would take as many with her as possible.

Her sisters were okay. Adam was okay. The boy had three other killers who would never stop searching until they found him and got him to safety. Bone, Blade, and Bullet would carry on when she was no more.

Still she honed a weapon from a one-inch piece of brick she’d found along the wall. It was sharp now. Arrow punctured her thumb to test it and she bled.

Should she get the chance to attack, it would be enough to take others with her when she fell to hell.

She’d learned a long time ago at the hands of her
sohei
how to control the black. At the hands of Joseph Bombardier her will had been crushed. When she’d finally learned to control the waters of her mind and not let the black intrude, he’d placed her in a new room with no light and made her suffer even more.

The screams from that night hadn’t been hers. They’d been another girl’s and they had been
pain
. Arrow endured them as she’d endured countless other punishments. And when that night was done, the girl’s scream dying to whimpers, the world had another killer born to the darkness.

That girl’s screams followed Arrow into sleep. The only time they’d lowered in volume was the night she’d slept with Adam. She’d had peace then. The peace of unrippled water.

She pushed her thoughts away. Longing for something she would never have was insanity. Arrow laughed out loud at that. Breaking? She was already broken. But she had a job to finish.

It pierced her over and over again. Her skin crawled as air weighted with shadows touched every inch of her body. Arrow sat in the darkness, breathing heavily, trying to overcome it and forced her mind to Minton. Who shot him two days ago? Was the bastard was still alive? He was Bone’s to take, but the world was a better place no matter how he left it.

Who shot him? The question played over and over. Bullet didn’t miss and the shot had come from behind Arrow. No, it hadn’t been Bullet. Was it the one who had been in the room with her and Blade in Arequipa all those years ago?

Footsteps sounded outside her cell and thoughts of Minton disappeared. The door opened and Wang stood there, smiling. His teeth shone white in the darkness and she laughed. He was a caricature to her. A tiny man who’d taken innocents and thought himself a god. She wanted to watch him eaten by the
Oni
. She laughed and laughed and he came to her and pulled her up by the hair of her head.

“Shut up, bitch!” Spit flew into her face and even that was funny. “She’s gone mad,” he said to someone behind him.

But the truth was she had not gone mad at all. She was full of rage and after two days in the darkness she could taste the light.

“Come closer,” she whispered through dry, cracked lips.

He pulled her hair harder instead and she palmed her weapon.

“Where’s the boy?” she managed to push past her dry throat.

He laughed again. It was evil. “That’s the question I’m supposed to ask you,” he cackled.

Joseph didn’t have the boy. Relief was a cool, calming wind through the darkened wasteland of her mind. “Come closer,” she said again, a bit stronger this time.

He moved his head closer and she struck then. Her fingers were numb, but the piece of brick she’d managed to hone into a sharp tip sank deep into his left eye. He screamed and released her and she was a whirlwind of fists and feet. He’d come into her cell with only one other man and she took him out with ease. A punch to throat and he lost his ability to breathe. Death followed swiftly.

She turned back to Wang who lay sobbing on the floor, holding his eye.

“I waited for you Wang. Like a patient killer, I waited and here you are. The only thing missing are my
yumi
and
ya
. But that’s okay,” she whispered as she walked to his head and bent down. “I don’t need anything other than my hands to kill you.”

He whimpered and rage poured through her body. Her head heated, her hands clenched and she sank to her knees.

“Hush now, Lei Wang, the pain will go away soon. Tell me something, do you remember Ching Lan?”

“Stay away from me,” he screamed around his cries.

Arrow patted his face and lifted his head, resting it in her lap but never raising her voice. “I’m going to kill you, Lei Wang. Do you know why?”

He cried some more and Arrow tilted her head, the smell of his blood a benediction in the darkness.

“Your life is forfeit because you are not a good man.”

“Arrow,” a voice called to her from the black.

“I’m here, but I have a duty,” she replied softly. Her hands stroked Lei Wang’s hair and she thought of Ching Lan—her head severed from her body, long black hair lying in a puddle of even blacker blood. She thought of her master
sohei
—head severed from his body. She thought of Adam, broken and bleeding on the ground because of the man whose head she held in her lap right now.

“Please don’t kill me,” he pleaded.

“Arrow, don’t do this,” the voice urged.

“I have no choice,” she responded to them both. “He took an innocent. Has taken many more before and after Ching Lan. Lei Wang is mine. Joseph is mine. The boy is mine and I will protect him.”

“What boy is yours?” the voice asked.

She stared at Lei Wang, who stilled in her lap though his hand still covered his bleeding eye.

“The boy Joseph searches for. He is mine, Blade’s, Bone’s, and Bullet’s. He is ours.”

“We will find him. Come to me,” the voice urged.

“You are the light. I will come to you soon, but not yet. Not until I meet the dark,” she said as she lifted Lei Wang’s head.

“Do not kill Wang, Arrow, he can tell us so much.”

It sounded like Adam Collins. But that was not true. Her ears never betrayed her but maybe her time in this black had broken more than her mind.

“Do you hear that, Wang?” she asked softly.

He began to sob again, legs moving restlessly, lost to his pain as much as his eye was lost to his head.

“That is death,” she whispered. “Coming for you, its footsteps loud…it is death.”

“No, Arrow, don’t kill Wang,” the voice said again.

She looked up then, seeing a big man haloed in the weak light at the door to her cell. But she couldn’t hear him over death’s footsteps. She cocked her head, tightened her hands on Wang’s head, and smiled.

“He. Is,” she wrenched Lei Wang’s head. “Mine.”

Death rushed in loud and snapping like the bones of Lei Wang’s neck. Arrow hung her head. Another soul escorted to hell. She got up then and moved the corner and waited for the voice to come closer. She was lost, a part of her recognizing she would not make it out of here alive. Then the light shined bright and she saw who spoke to her.

“Come to me, Saya,” he said to her.

She cocked her head, seeing but not believing. Her mind was fractured. It was not Adam Collins. He had left. He was safe. Please let him be safe.

“Come to me,” he demanded.

She took a single step and then he was there, lifting her, and carrying her out of the cell into the light. Such beautiful light.

“She’s hurt,” he said, as he placed her on her feet. She looked up at him wondering who he was talking about.

“You’re safe.” It was the only thing she could force past her throat.

He stared at her and she closed her eyes against the black of his. So much darkness. “I’m safe,” he said. Long moments passed. “The truth comes in whether or not, once we leave, we return. I came back for you, Saya.”

She had heard those words before. Had
spoken
those words before. To
him
. “I am broken,” she whispered, opening her eyes to stare at him.

“Never broken.”

She saw people moving in the periphery, heard the words syringe and she attacked. A shot to a head with her fist, a kick to a knee with her foot and then she was being held down. “Please do not take me back to the dark…
please
,” she begged.

Someone sobbed like a baby. The sound of the cries made the death inside Arrow need release…

The truth hit her like a body blow—she was the one crying.

“Hush, Arrow. Look at me,” Adam demanded.

He lifted her hand to his face and met her gaze. His eyes were black. Why did they not frighten her? “I cannot go back to the darkness.”

“I’m here. I won’t let you. But you’re hurt. Let me ease your pain.”

She nodded. “No tranqs. Let me stay in the light.”

His eyes closed, his brows lowered, and he hissed in a breath. Then he nodded and pulled her closer to his body. “No tranqs.”

She held onto his words. She focused on his face because he had become her gravity’s center. As the Jeep he’d placed her in drove down through the Jundu Mountain, she kept her eyes open on him, watching the light caress the planes of his face. His eyes never left hers and in that was solace.

“Rest, Arrow,” he murmured.

She nodded and finally rested her head on his chest.

•●•

Adam wanted to scream his rage to the heavens. Her eyes were filled with golden tears, her mind filled with precarious traps, and he wondered if she’d recover from this.

“How is she?” Dmitry asked from the front seat.

“Alive,” Adam said through clenched teeth.

“I’ve got to check her eventually, Adam,” Dmitry said.

“Not now.”

Dmitry turned around and faced forward. Rand was driving and met Adam’s gaze in the rearview mirror. Rand wanted to wait until dark to return for her. Adam had nearly gone mad waiting two days. He’d been a mess of his own. A concussion from a pretty fucking severe beating at the hands of Wang’s men, multiple lacerations and bruises and bruised ribs had put him down for a full day.

Then he’d woken and demanded to know where she was.

Bullet had been there and her eyes said it all. Saya had been left behind.

He’d demanded Dmitry wrap his ribs, and then he’d begun planning. Bullet demanded to be included. Rand shut her out. What was between Rand and his woman was between them, but Adam could be nothing but grateful for her presence. Had she and her sisters not been there when Joseph had arrived at Wang’s home, he would have died and Saya would have had no chance at survival. Bullet assured him Wang wouldn’t kill Arrow because Joseph would return the favor, slowly, painfully.

But he would turn her over first chance he got and Adam’s need to reach her had gone from urgent to DEFCON 1.

Her breathing was shallow, shock probably. She’d taken punishment at the hands of Wang’s personal guard. No broken bones that could be seen, but it was her mind that Adam worried about. She was bruised from head to toe, and there were cuts all over her body, but her face when he’d walked into that cell?

She might have broken.

She twisted away from him and pressed her face against the glass, fingers meshing to the window as if trying to become one with it. The sun was setting and the tension riding her shoulders told him.

He reached up and turned on the back seat light. She turned to him, eyes blank, face slack.

“I have killed many,” she said in a strong voice.

He nodded but said nothing. He felt the attention of both Dmitry and Rand.

“I will kill many more. Do you know why I don’t like to kill in the darkness, Mr. Collins?”

He shook his head this time afraid if he spoke she’d break apart.

“Because where the people I kill go, it is nothing but blackness. To take a life in the dark brings me closer to hell. So I kill in the light. But today, I killed in the dark, and I can feel my own life straining to leave my body. Do you know what that feels like?”

Her voice was desperate and his body ached to wrap around hers. But he remained silent.

“It feels like the end.”

Adam grabbed her and pressed his mouth to her cold one. She didn’t resist. She didn’t react at all. So Adam licked across her cracked lips, offering himself to her in that moment the only way he knew how. Her mouth finally softened under his and he pulled away, holding her face in his hands, thumbs brushing over her cheeks, reveling in the fact that she was alive.

Because he’d thought her beyond him and he’d almost lost it.

“I’m taking you home, Saya.”