Dark Warrior (35 page)

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Authors: Rebecca York

BOOK: Dark Warrior
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Sophia spoke up. “For centuries, we’ve been protecting ourselves from the Minot. Maybe it’s time for us to figure out how to work with them.”
“Impossible,” Cynthia answered. “They can’t be trusted.”
“Jason can,” Sophia shot back, and his heart leaped to hear her defending him.
“We don’t know that.”
“And you won’t unless you give him a chance to prove it,” Sophia said.
“He could live with us for years and turn out to be a traitor. Like those Russian spies who were in the U.S. for years until the FBI arrested them,” Cynthia answered.
Eugenia entered the conversation. “It may be time for us to think about how we need to change—to exist in the modern world. These are complicated times.”
Cynthia gave her a dark look, and Jason knew she didn’t like being challenged, but she was a practical woman. And perhaps she saw that the order was under new pressures that demanded new solutions.
But Cynthia wasn’t ready to give up. She glared at Sophia, then swept her arm toward Jason.
“You think this Minot wants a warm, close relationship with you. What if he only wants to lift the ancient curse he says the Scythians placed on him and the others of his kind?”
Jason jumped up, determined to defend himself. When he started to speak, Sophia shook her head.
Let me
, she said.
I hope she’ll listen to me.
When he realized she was speaking silently to him, his heart squeezed. They could still do it! She still
wanted
to do it.
As he gave an almost imperceptible nod, she addressed Cynthia again.
“I think he already lifted it.”
Had he heard that right?
How?
“By changing everything about himself,” she continued aloud. “He says his father and mother discovered the curse. I think they didn’t figure out what it really meant.”
Jason waited with his heart pounding. What was she talking about?
“At the cabin, when I was starting to doubt him, he took me back to one of his past lives and let me see what it was like. It was awful. More horrible than you can imagine. His enemies did unspeakable things to him.” She gulped. “But it was as much his fault as theirs. He was leading a violent, immoral life, and that violence came back to destroy him.”
His heart sank. Was she getting ready to walk away from him after all?
She turned to him, her face grave. “But I know that he’s a different man now. He’s proved through his actions that he’s conquered his Minot heritage. And he did it by himself.”
She got up, crossed to him, and clasped his hand, holding tightly to him in front of all her sisters.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about the Minot. Jason believes the curse was only about repeating his mistakes over and over. I think it was also about taking away the ability to change. He’s done that! By himself—because he wanted a different life.”
“You have no proof of that,” Cynthia said.
“Yes I do. Everything he’s done in the past few days proves it. He had the courage to tell me he wanted a relationship with me. He had the courage to show me what he had been in the past. And the courage to ask for my love—not demand anything from me. Then he risked everything to help us rescue Tessa. What Minot could do that unless he’d overcome the curse?”
She stretched out her hand toward Cynthia. “Don’t deny us the chance to show you that an Ionian and a Minot can make peace with each other. Real peace,” she pleaded.
Every muscle in his body was rigid as he waited for an answer.
“We cannot allow him to live here at the spa,” Cynthia said.
Jason’s hopes sank, but Cynthia went on. “I would make a concession, though. He can live near us at his ranch. And you can live with him and come to the spa to work here—and perform your other duties.”
He felt light-headed. Had he heard that right?
He must have, because Sophia pulled him into her arms, holding tight. “Thank you,” she said, and he echoed the heartfelt words.
 
SOPHIA
clung to the man she loved, rocking in his arms, her joy overflowing. Raising her head, she looked at Cynthia. “I know that was a hard decision. A decision only a wise and good high priestess could make. Thank you so much,” she murmured.
Even as she spoke, she understood that some of her sisters would never accept the new order.
Yet she knew she had changed. And the Ionians had changed, too, although they might not admit it yet. The blending of those two truths might be their salvation.
The meeting was over quickly. As many of the sisters gathered around Tessa, Sophia and Jason slipped away. At the spa exit, when the guard raised the gate, she breathed out a deep sigh.
Jason looked at her. “I thought I had lost you.”
“I was frightened, too.”
“I’m glad she didn’t force you to choose between me or your sisters.”
She gulped. “I would have gone with you. Not far away, but to your ranch, close to the spa. I would have kept hoping that Eugenia and Tessa could change Cynthia’s mind.”
The words astonished him. “You would have chosen me?”
“Yes. But we don’t have to worry about that now. And we’ll show them that our life can be a model for the order.”
“It’s going to be a little strange when the Ionians are almost like nuns.”
She laughed. “Nuns with sex.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If you’re thinking about pulling off the road and making love with me, it’s only a ten-minute drive to your house—where we can be comfortable.”
He grinned, clamping his hands on the wheel as he headed for his ranch. “What about Tessa? Will she be all right?” he asked.
“I hope so. She has a lot of healing to do, but our sisters will help. If she comes through this, it will make her stronger.”
“And do you think Eugenia is going to shove Cynthia out?”
“Maybe. It’s hard to say. All I know is that the order isn’t going to be the same.”
“Maybe Cynthia will take a leaf from our book and move in with her boyfriend.”
“Impossible! Not the high priestess.”
He shrugged. “You know a lot more about the order than I do.”
After pulling to a stop in the parking area and cutting the engine, he reached for her, and she came into his arms, clasping him tightly.
“This is what I longed for,” he whispered. “Since I was young.”
“It’s what I never dared hope for. You had to show me what I could have—if I had the courage.”
After a long kiss, he asked, “Do you think she’ll let us marry?
“I hope so, but we’d better take this one step at a time.”
“Starting with a lifetime commitment. Maybe we can have a private ceremony—in that cave of yours.”
“Something creative.”
She hugged him more tightly, overwhelmed with happiness. Until a few weeks ago, she’d been sure of the future laid out for her. Now it was taking a completely different direction. One that she could never have imagined, but one that she would embrace with all her heart.
 
Turn the page for a preview of a new novel
in Virna DePaul’s Para-Ops series
 
 
CHOSEN BY FATE
 
Available October 2011 from Berkley Sensation!
SEVERAL WEEKS LATER
AN ABANDONED WAREHOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
 
CALEB’S HANDS MOVED
swiftly and efficiently as he set up the mobile radar equipment he’d spread out on the roof. The building below his feet had been swept and a perimeter established. Now all Caleb had to do was determine who was in the room with Mahone and whether Mahone was still alive.
Briefly, he glanced at Ethan Riley, leader of Hope Restored Team Blue, and the four men, skilled in entry and perimeter surveillance, who’d accompanied them here. Only hours had passed since Caleb had left his teammates in the Vamp Council’s chambers in Oregon and, despite the grueling activity of the last few days—which had included parachuting into North Korea, hiking miles in the snow, rescuing several Otherborn, and tracking down what just might be an antidote to the vamp vaccine—Caleb felt the same focused energy he always did when on a mission. “Did you get in touch with the Para-Ops team?”
Riley looked up from checking his rifle. “They’ve detained the vampire Dante Prime. Devereaux tried to teleport here, but he’d depleted his powers in Korea . . .”
Caleb snorted. “No shit.” Although vamps could teleport to and from anywhere in the world, provided they’d been there before, that kind of travel drained them. Before Knox Devereaux and the rest of the team had interrupted the Vamp Council to question Dante Prime for treason and conspiracy to commit murder, the dharmire had spent several hours teleporting between North Korea and the United States. Each time, he’d carried a wounded Otherborn or one of his team members back with him. Beat him how the vamp was even capable of talking at this point. Add everything else that had happened to him—
“Is it true you found his father? And that he’d been turned into a vampire?”
Caleb didn’t even look up. The Para-Ops team had trained with Team Blue’s aerial experts before dropping into North Korea. At the time, Knox’s father hadn’t even been on their radar—and for good reason—since everyone believed he was dead. How the hell news of Jacques Devereaux’s return had spread so fast, Caleb didn’t know. Still, Riley had to know how fruitless his question was. “No comment.”
He sensed Riley wince. “Sorry.”
Caleb shrugged. Just because a person expected a particular result didn’t mean he shouldn’t try to get around it. Caleb was always trying to get a different reaction from his teammate Wraith, regardless of how unlikely that was. For one horrific moment, Caleb felt the same fear that had constricted his chest when he’d realized Wraith planned to blow herself up to get them inside the North Korean compound. It wasn’t easy, but he pushed the feeling away.
Wraith was okay. He’d seen that for himself. He’d felt it when he’d pushed her down and covered her body with his. He’d savored it when she’d kissed him back, right before she’d kneed him in the balls.
Clearing his throat, he returned his attention to Riley and the other man’s apology. “No worries. I’m as human as you, remember?”
Now it was Riley who snorted, prompting Caleb to smile tightly.
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t quite as human as Riley. They shared the same DNA, but being able to communicate with his ancestors, hear the Great Song, and occasionally walk the Otherworld made him a little different.
Different didn’t always mean better.
His fingers moved faster. Almost there. Glancing at his watch, Caleb clenched his teeth. A bead of sweat trickled down his temple. He knew they couldn’t go in blind, but—
“What about your wraith? Was she what you expected her to be?”
Caleb paused for only a fraction of a second before continuing his task. “She’s not my wraith. She’s a wraith who decided to keep the name ‘Wraith’ just to be ornery. And she’s exactly what I expected her to be.” What he didn’t say was that she was also far more than he’d expected. A heinous bitch, yes, but one whose attitude and mouth were designed to hide something textured and complex and—
Disgusted with himself, Caleb pressed his lips together and once again pushed thoughts of Wraith out of his head.
Get Mahone out. That’s all he could think about right now.
“Finally!” Snapping the last wire in place, Caleb flipped on the power and adjusted the radar settings, then scanned the building’s interior until the radar picked up body heat. “Bingo.”
Caleb immediately zoomed the camera in and got a good look at Mahone.
Dear Essenia, he thought, automatically invoking the name of the Earth Goddess to give him strength. Although humans believed Essenia was an Otherborn deity, few knew Earth People—like Caleb’s own Native American tribe—had prayed to the same deity for centuries. Besides, from what Caleb saw, Mahone needed all the prayers he could get.
With his wrists shackled to chains hanging from the ceiling, Mahone looked like he’d gotten into a fight with a chipper machine and lost. His face and body were covered in blood, and what was left of his clothes hung in shreds from his battered body. From his position on the rooftop above, Caleb once again adjusted the settings on the mobile radar equipment. His adjustments made the image on the screen zoom out, losing detail and focus until it captured the entire room, providing grainy outlines of Mahone, a desk, a table, and one other individual whose silver hair, height, and slim build proclaimed him to be a vampire.
When Caleb and the five members of Hope Restored Team Blue had arrived at the isolated warehouse twenty minutes earlier, Caleb had figured Knox, leader of the Para-Ops team, had made a mistake by not sending any Others with him. That, or Knox simply had faith in Caleb’s ability to take down anything that got in their way, human or not. Either way, Caleb was getting Mahone out, and he planned for both of them to be breathing when he did it.

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