Arrow to the Soul (6 page)

Rand stepped around Arrow, far enough away but too close. She ground her teeth. Her instinct was to strike out, eliminate the threat he presented. She inhaled slowly, calmed the need to destroy. And then someone else made themselves known by stepping into the small clearing aglow with a half moon. Mr. Collins.

Bullet inclined her head. “
Merci
, Saya.”

The woman in front of her had changed. Arrow held up her hand and Rand stepped in front of her sister. Her smile disappeared. “Do not thank me, Bullet. Tell me, sister, have you grown weak in the face of the challenge?”

A hissed in breath. A flag of red over ivory cheeks. Eyes narrowed, a scoping glance promising death. Arrow ignored Bullet’s reaction. “Joseph’s men even now patrol this area. He’s sent Damon to hunt. I can smell him on the wind. Yet here you stand in the open. What is that if not weakness?”

“She has me. She has Trident,” Rand said and his voice was harsh, deep. “No one can get past the security we have in place.”

“I did,” Arrow whispered.

Bullet put her hand on Beckett’s shoulder and Arrow felt some constriction around her throat ease. It was good she’d found a protector. Because the truth remained that Bullet was broken. Once she’d given her heart to the hard man at her side, she had splintered.

“My loyalty is being questioned?” Bullet’s gaze was hard.

Arrow shook her head. “Not your loyalty, sister. Never that. But you have broken and we would know if you’re able to continue?”

“Only my body, Arrow. Never my honor,” Bullet affirmed. “Our goal hasn’t changed.”

“It is good then. Should you decide in the future to give away my plans, do me the courtesy of a call, yes? I almost killed your Mr. Collins. I can guarantee Bone or Blade will not be so lenient.”

The air stirred and he was behind her. His warmth called to her, his big body a beacon in the cold night. Her gaze met Bullet’s and in them was an awareness Arrow refused to acknowledge. She shook her head and Bullet smiled.

“You came nowhere close to killing me, Saya.” His voice was potent whiskey, shooting straight to her abdomen.

“My arrow at your kidney told a different story, Mr. Collins. Perhaps we can dance again and see who emerges victor?” It was a taunt and Arrow wondered why she felt the need.

This man was nothing to her. Less than that.

Liar
, a part of whispered. Had she been able to locate that part she would have bludgeoned it.

Silence met her words and for that she was grateful. Until heat caressed her nape.

“We could
dance
, Saya. But I think you’d rather fight,” he said at her ear.

It was shocking to Arrow how much sound of the name she’d given herself coming from his lips shook her. Unsettled her. Her forefinger and thumb rubbed together and she tried to calm her rapidly beating heart.

He laughed and the husky sound ripped a hole in that calm, burning it up like fire on silk.

“I think the fight is what you live for, what you crave. You’re like an animal only knowing death and pain. I would offer you a reprieve, but that’s not what you want from me, is it? You want to fight because it centers that piece of you which remains forever out of your grasp.”

His breath was a benediction against her chilled skin. She caught a moan before it escaped. Her body was nearly boneless from his tone and proximity. She’d never felt the like. Decided she hated it even as she found herself leaning
back
into him.

“What piece is that, Mr. Collins?” she asked softly.

“Do not, Adam,” Bullet said in a low voice.

“Your soul,” he whispered.

That one word was a blunt-edged knife to her heart. “You fucked up.”

He leaned against her, his smell taunting, his heat the most wonderful she’d ever felt.

“What did you say?” he asked.

Arrow swore molten fire licked her neck.

She reached back grabbing his shoulders and flipping him over her own. She followed him down and made to strike, pulling the blow right before she pushed his nose into his brain.

She heard weapons being engaged, triggers cocking in the sudden silence. Adam Collins’ ebony eyes watched her and that feeling of being smothered by the darkness returned.

Arrow laughed then. Even to her ears it was an ugly sound. “I said you fucked up. Oh, not in that I’m only an animal knowing pain and death. But that you think I have a soul. It’s a fact, Mr. Collins, I was born without one. It’s why Joseph came for me. It’s why my first kills were made in silence at the age of four. I was reborn from the black swamp of hell, a descendant of the demon child, the greatest warrior in Japanese history. And I have no soul.” She took a deep breath, glanced at the sky, and stood.

Mr. Collins remained on the ground.

“It’s the truth, Mr. Collins, I am death.”

•●•

Her eyes glowed in the moonlight. The beauty of her face was surreal, and at that moment what he felt between them was beyond his experience. That he would contemplate her eyes when she’d damn near killed his ass was fucked up, to say the least.

She stood over him, watching, waiting, and Adam’s heart bled. In the starkness of her words was a cry for help. A plea for release. He’d heard something similar to it once. With Aziveh. Married off to an elderly tribal leader, her father bargained his youngest daughter as protection from the war around him. He’d also gotten her away from the American infidel she’d given her heart to.

The memory of Aziveh’s face as she’d told him to leave, the pain and weight of her words, held nothing on Arrow’s. If losing Aziveh that day in the dusty heat of Afghanistan had broken his heart, hearing Arrow call herself death gutted Adam.

And it pissed him off. She was everything Adam struggled not to be. She didn’t value life as evidenced by the fact that she took it so easily. He’d heard Bullet list some of Arrow’s kills. They’d not all been bad people. Some of them just hadn’t fit into Joseph Bombardier’s plans and therefore required elimination.

She had gotten the upper hand on him easily. He really needed to get his shit together and stop trying to smell her, feel her heat every time she came close.

He got to his feet. She didn’t move a muscle, daring him with her stillness and those fucking cat eyes.

“Don’t do it, Adam,” Bullet warned him again.

He glanced at her and nodded to Rand. Bullet lifted her chin and defiantly shook her head. He gazed at Saya then. Her name meant “swiftest arrow.” She wouldn’t get the best of him ever again.

He held a hand up to her and said, “Shall we then?” Then he bowed low.

She didn’t make a sound as she attacked. The woman moved so fast had he not been trained in darkness himself, he wouldn’t have been able to catch her movements. As it was, the very silence of her movements, the lack of sound from her exertions—no whisper of clothing rubbing against clothing or inhalation from breathing—forced Adam to work harder to protect himself than he’d ever worked before.

He landed a punch, which he pulled, but she’d swirled behind him, striking him in the kidney before she stepped away. Adam felt more than heard the men around him moving closer. He held up a fist and immediately their movement ceased.

“You will not catch me. Darkness flows in the spaces light cannot reach,” she taunted.

Adam centered himself, called on the Great Spirit, recognizing this was an important moment for him. Something would change irrevocably in this small clearing tonight. The rush of that feeling moved through him then, sweet and cooling. He closed his eyes and focused, his senses sharpening.

She feinted with a kick then hit him with a back-fist to the jaw. It fucking hurt, but he absorbed the blow by turning and grabbing her other fist in mid-swing. Her next move shocked the shit out of him. With two steps she literally ran up the front of his body, somersaulting backward in the air and clipping him in the chin with first one foot and then the other.

He grunted and shook his head to clear the stars. This would be a dogfight then.

She landed lightly and Adam opened his eyes. White Eagle had never been able to explain the way Adam could see in the dark once he’d centered himself in the Great Spirit. It was his gift, his grandfather told him. It had saved Adam more than once. It would save Arrow tonight.

She was highlighted with a ghostly pale light, as if the moon sought to outline her for Adam. She was fast, faster than Adam maybe, her moves a mixture of various martial arts he couldn’t put his finger on. They were a perfect blend. But he was stronger. There were no two ways about it.

She stood tall then and cocked her head. “You see me?”

He cursed himself even as he bum-rushed her. She cuffed him in the temple and the stars returned, but he managed to get a solid whack to her diaphragm which made air whoosh past his ears.

She spun in a three-sixty, slashing at him with a vicious side-kick that grazed, but then she retreated a few steps. Hurting her made him want to vomit. Acid churned but as she lifted her chin at him and waved him forward, he put his dislike of harming women to the side.

She was a killer. Arrow had to be stopped.

“Don’t, Adam,” Bullet’s voice was soft but he heard it.

“I must,” he responded.

Arrow bent her knees and lifted her hands in a beautiful move that made Adam think of the cougars that roamed the west. It was effortless and deadly. Her preferred weapon was the bow and arrow, but she’d not lied. She was death. From the tip of her ebony-covered head to the bottom of her tiny feet, she was a death-bringer.

He reached behind his back, grabbed for the syringe in his pocket, and prepared himself.

Adam took one step toward her, she pivoted, and he swore she flew at him. Her feet didn’t seem to touch the ground, but between one breath and the next, he pushed the needle home in her side.

He’d gotten lucky.

She looked up at him, eyes wide as a ribbon of black slithered through her amber gaze. Fear?

“No honor,” she whispered.

He caught her body as it gave in to the tranquilizer. “No other way,” he murmured against her ear. He lifted her in his arms and began walking toward the house.

Bullet’s voice was harsh in the quiet of the night around them. “She’ll hate you.”

Adam took a deep breath, letting the scent of plum blossoms settle in the pit of his stomach. His hands clenched around her body, and he mentally shook himself. The truth was the truth.

“I don’t care,” he bit out and kept walking.

Chapter Five

Arrow woke with a rough slide into consciousness. Awareness pricked her mind, instincts clamoring to keep her breathing even and deep. She acceded to them, keeping her eyes closed as she assessed her surroundings. Her head pounded and her limbs felt weighted.

He’d tranquilized her, the move dishonorable in a fight she’d accepted with a worthy opponent. Her sisters would mock her openly. Arrow had ever been the fool for a good fight. And this time she’d paid for it.

Cedar and citrus invaded her nostrils, followed by a subtler scent unique to
him
. That he was in the room with her didn’t surprise her. That they’d not tied her down did. And she rested on a bed. Why not the floor in the basement as they’d done to Bullet?

Blade had told Arrow and Bone about the room. Ken Nodachi enjoyed taunting Blade with its presence. Blade had relished the opportunity to visit. Arrow remembered her sister’s face as she’d spoken of Nodachi. When Arrow saw the man in Arequipa, she’d understood Blade’s fascination and hatred. He was a hard man. A deep man with many secrets. Much like the one who watched her now.

“You’re awake.” His thoughts were unfathomable by his tone. But his voice gave away his location. Stupid.

Arrow opened her eyes to darkness. The inevitable fear rose and she pushed it down, down, down, where it couldn’t reach her. She would make him pay for that. “I am.”

She sat up and her stomach rebelled.

“There’s water on the table beside the bed.”

Anger pinched her—a ripple on the pond of her tranquility. “Had you not cheated in a fair fight there would be no need for water.”

“Surely you understand why. You’re a menace. Besides, what you call cheating I call plain old good sense.”

He scoffed at her. So be it.

“What I understand is that I will never trust you in a fight again. And make no mistake, we will fight again.”

“You should never trust anyone in a fight, Saya. How have you managed to become so deadly? All these mistakes you keep making lead me to believe it’s you who’s been lucky.”

She curled her fingers in to her palms and clenched searching for calm as she ignored his question. “Why did you tranq me? What was the purpose? Had Bullet simply asked I would have listened to you.”

He flicked on a light then. Her eyes adjusted immediately. She’d been born with not only a peculiar eye color but also the ability to see in any light, whether bright or none at all. She watched his pupils contract, his body’s reaction to the sudden entry of light and his awareness she’d not even blinked.

“It worked with Bullet. We figured it’d work with you. You have an agenda that doesn’t align with ours. We’d hoped you’d take the time to speak with us.”

He’d not run anything by Bullet then. She glanced at him as she took a sip of the water by the bed. “You knock out all your guests I’m assuming?”

He barked a laugh. “Only Collective assassins.”

She shrugged. “I’m no longer Collective.”

Silence reigned for a moment. Chills danced up her arms.

“Are you Joseph’s?”

How she wished for her bow and arrow. She would skewer him for that question. Instead she remained quiet. So did he, and his contemplation didn’t bother her as much as she knew he hoped it did.

She was naked. Of course they’d removed her clothing. She’d come unarmed and they’d stripped her of clothing. To demean her? Oh, they really had no idea if that was their motivation. Arrow had grown up in Hell. Naked and afraid were her very best friends.

His gaze was tactile and her nipples peaked, sensation shooting through her chest straight to her core. She cocked her head, analyzing the unknown feelings. His gaze fell.