Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) (18 page)
Read Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) Online
Authors: Stephanie Rowe
Then again, romance hadn’t exactly been a part of her life. Maybe, in her world, this was all there was. Maybe this was the holy grail of romance for someone like her. She looked up at Quinn, at his hard jaw, at his dark eyes, and she almost smiled. Maybe this could be enough. It wasn’t like she had lofty goals. A moment of connection. A kiss to remember. A man to help her up when she fell in the mud.
Quinn glanced at her, flashed her a quick smile, then resumed his vigilant watch. She nestled deeper against him and peered below just as Vaughn suddenly looked down at the soggy ground. He stared at it for a long moment, then nudged the decaying leaves aside with the toe of his boot.
Quinn hissed. “Shit.”
Vaughn dropped to his knees and started digging.
I sensed Elijah’s presence there. He left something behind. I was just digging it up when you arrived.
Grace looked at him, sudden disappointment weighing heavily.
His
mjui?
Is that what you found?
She realized she’d adopted Quinn’s thinking, hoping that Elijah wasn’t dead, that there was some answer that could give them all a happy ending.
Quinn’s face was impassive.
I won’t know until I have a chance to examine it. All I know at this point is that something in the ground there has Elijah’s energy wrapped around it. I have to get it.
He unpeeled her hand from his waist and wrapped her hands around the branch above their heads.
Try not to fall off while I’m gone.
Grace dug her fingers into the rough bark, too aware of the slippery moss lining the branches and the rain-drenched bark under her feet. Somehow, she wasn’t feeling quite as stable on her own. Note to self: stay out of trees when solo.
Try not to get killed. You’re my ride back down.
He grinned at her, clearly fired up to go confront Vaughn.
Sweetheart, you can ride me all night long.
Quinn!
She rolled her eyes at him, but the incorrigible bastard simply winked at her then dropped out of sight.
Quinn stood in the bushes, not three feet from Vaughn, yet his quarry had no idea he was there.
He was itching to stop Vaughn before the bastard found Elijah’s object and learned its secrets, but instead, Quinn searched the branches above until he found Grace. She was exactly as he’d left her, firmly holding onto the branch, her face gritted in determination. Reassured that she was safe, he pulled his thoughts away from her and concentrated on the night around him.
He sifted through the sounds of the forest, assessing the smells, then stiffened as he caught the scent of another man, just off to his left. No sound, no breathing, nothing but the faintest hint of...Calydon.
Quinn eased back into the woods, circling around behind where he thought the second man was standing. It took several minutes to pinpoint his quarry, he was so well hidden in the shadows, and he was so still.
The kind of still only an Otherworld being could maintain.
Quinn paused to let his eyes adjust until he could discern the Calydon, all the while listening to the sound of Vaughn digging in the clearing, waiting for the brush of his fingers against the object.
The shoulders of the shadowed man were narrow. His waist was lean. Quinn realized it was the youth who had been sitting next to Grace when they’d first arrived at the bar. The one who didn’t even look eighteen. What was he doing out here? For a second, Quinn wished he had both swords, but it was a useless wish, not worth the energy it took to think it.
Instead, he slipped forward until he was directly behind the kid, listening to him breathe. Hearing the flutter of his eyelashes the one time he blinked. Rookie.
When Quinn finally moved, it was so fast that even a seasoned Calydon wouldn’t have had time to react before being face down in the mud, his arms behind his back and Quinn’s knee in his kidney.
And all in total silence.
Quinn kept the kid’s face pressed into the mud, hoping the boy at least knew enough to stop breathing until Quinn let him up. Quinn extended his left arm and called out his sword. It ripped out of his forearm in a loud crack of black light, and he hurled it. It whistled through the air and the handle bashed into Vaughn’s head just as he was turning toward the sound. Vaughn dropped to the earth, motionless. Quinn held out his hand and his sword shot back to him, returning into his palm with a satisfying thud.
He rolled off the kid, jerked the youth to his feet and pinned him up against a tree with the sword at his throat. “Who are you?”
The youth’s eyes were so wide Quinn could see white all the way around the corneas, and his freckles were standing out, even in the darkness of night. “Did you...did you kill my uncle?”
“I have no idea. Who’s your uncle?”
The kid lifted a shaky finger toward the clearing, toward the man Quinn had just knocked out.
“Vaughn? No, I didn’t kill him. Want me to?”
The youth shook his head quickly. “No. Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt me. Please?”
Quinn’s gut told him this kid was all right, not a danger, but damned if he’d let down his guard. He’d also thought Grace was safe in the bar and she’d wound up with a neutralizing band of some sort on her wrist. “In five words or less, who the hell are you?”
In an impressive summoning of courage, the kid pulled his shoulders back and looked him in the eye. “Sir?”
Quinn narrowed his eyes. “Yeah?”
“My name is Drew Cartland. I’m Dante’s son.”
Quinn’s senses went on high alert. “Dante’s son?” The Order leader didn’t have a son, or a family, or anything else that would have made him vulnerable. He had no time for split loyalties. All he cared about was following the Order’s mission, at the expense of all else. “Dante would not have a son.” Quinn pressed the blade into the boy’s neck, not breaking the skin but letting the boy feel a hint of pain. “Try again.”
“I’d never met my dad until a month ago. He just found out about me, I guess.” Drew’s voice cracked. “Now he’s missing.”
“Missing? What are you talking about?” Quinn studied Drew’s face, looking for tells that he was lying, but all he was getting was a sense of gritty truth from the kid. “Dante doesn’t ‘go missing.’ He makes others go missing.”
Drew’s mouth tightened. “I think he’s dead.”
“Dead?” Quinn frowned. He hadn’t felt Dante’s death, but they weren’t blood bonded, so he wouldn’t necessarily have sensed it the way Gideon had detected his. The way he should have felt Elijah’s if Elijah really had died... Shit. If Dante was dead, they were all toast.
“Dante told me that if anything happened to him, I should go to you,” Drew continued, the words tumbling out in a hurry, as if he were trying to plead his case before Quinn chopped his head off. “The last time I saw him, he said you were the only one he’d trust if he couldn’t trust anyone else. After Dante disappeared, I went back to my uncle. But when we saw the report that Elijah had died, we knew something was wrong. I promised Dante I’d come find you, so we’ve been waiting here for you, figuring you’d come to find out what happened to Elijah. We were headed to your house next.”
Shit. If this rookie and his uncle had accurately guessed he’d come here in search of Elijah, so would others. Since when had he become predictable? Why hadn’t he been prepared for that?
Quinn didn’t even have to look up into the tree for the answer to that question. Grace was his distraction, and he’d been thinking about her safety, and her concern for Ana, instead of focusing on his mission. She was making him vulnerable.
Drew fastened his brown eyes on him. “There’s someone hunting me. I can feel it. I need your help. I don’t know who else to ask for help.”
Quinn cursed. “I don’t have time—”
“Dante said you’d help me,” Drew burst out. “I don’t know what else to do!” He reached into his pocket, pulled out something and tossed it at Quinn. “He said to give you this when I found you.”
Quinn didn’t recognize the small black zippered case, so he handed it back. “Open it.”
Drew quickly unzipped it and dumped the contents out on his hand. He held it out without a word.
Quinn glanced at the object in Drew’s hand, then he cursed and grabbed it, holding it up to look at it more closely. It was the ring belonging to Quinn’s uncle Felix, the man whose death had haunted Quinn since the day he’d thrust his sword through Felix’s heart and killed him.
Dante had taken the ring after Quinn had killed Felix, ostensibly to give Felix an honored burial as an Order member, but he’d never returned it to Quinn…until now.
Felix had been Quinn’s mentor growing up, taking over after Quinn’s dad had been killed in battle. Felix had trained him as a Calydon even before Quinn had come into his powers. Felix had been one of the most powerful, most deadly Order members, a man of honor...until he’d met his
sheva
and gone rogue.
Dante had forced Quinn to honor his uncle by being the one to kill him. Murdering Felix had been Quinn’s first assignment as an Order member. To this day, Quinn still saw the look in his uncle’s eyes as life bled from him. The look of sanity, of sadness, of understanding that he’d just lost. The words that slipped from his dying mouth, “Make my death worthwhile, son.”
Rogues had no humanity, which meant that those words proved his uncle had come back from the edge just before he’d died. It meant his uncle hadn’t had to die. Dante had refused to alter the Order’s standing order to assassinate all rogue Calydons on sight. He’d claimed it was too risky to play “wait and see” based on some unproven claim by Quinn that he’s seen sanity in his uncle’s eyes just before he’d died.
Hell, yeah, he’d prove it. Quinn had spent the next five hundred years doing his best to prove that he hadn’t imagined his uncle’s words and the sanity gleaming in his eyes, that a Calydon turned rogue from the
sheva
bond could be redeemed.
He had failed every time. No rogue had been turned. Every last one had needed to be killed. But Quinn hadn’t given up. It was what drove him, what haunted his every thought and every choice, his mission to make his uncle’s death worthwhile.
And now, Dante had given the ring back. Why now? Quinn turned the ring over in his fingers so he could read the inscription in the band.
Honor shall prevail.
Honor hadn’t prevailed for Felix, not once his
sheva
had come into his life.
He ground his teeth as he thought of Grace, the ring a reminder of what was at stake for both of them. He recalled how it had ripped him apart to sink his blade into his own uncle, watching the life flow from the man who’d basically been his father and best friend. He closed his eyes against the swell of grief, emotions he hadn’t felt since that day, when he’d learned how to shut down and do his job.
By simply showing up on his doorstep, Grace had made him feel again, and now things were crashing hard and fast. Felix, Dante, Drew, Grace, Elijah... Shit. He couldn’t afford empathy and regret. No warrior could. He had to get it back under control. Shut it down again.
Quinn closed his fingers around his uncle’s ring and returned his gaze to Drew. “Where did you get this?”
“My dad. Dante. He gave it to me a week ago. Told me I might need to come to you for aid soon.”
“A week ago?” That would have been four days before Elijah had gone rogue. Had Dante known something was going to happen? “What did he say—”
A pulse of awareness shot through Quinn and he lifted his head, scenting the air for Grace. He located her behind a large fir tree, about twenty yards off to the right. Of course she would have found her way out of the tree and come down to check on him. “Grace. Come on out.” There was no point in her hiding. He had no doubt Drew was who he said he was. The ring proved it.
She stepped out from behind the tree.
“This is Drew.”
Grace looked over at Drew, and Quinn was gut punched by the sadness on her face. He realized she’d heard Drew talk about his father’s death, and it was bringing up her own grief at losing her parents.
He held out his arm to her, keeping his weapon at Drew’s throat. Even though he believed Drew was Dante’s son, that didn’t mean Quinn could trust him, not after what happened with Elijah. He would wait until Grace confirmed there were no illusions working them over.
Stepping carefully through the mud, she walked toward him, giving Drew a considerable berth. She stopped next to Quinn and held out her wrist, the one with the band. He ignored the band, threw his arm around her and hauled her up against his side. He pressed his lips to her head.
I’m sorry for your pain, Grace. I’m sorry being with me is making your losses haunt you.
Her hand went to his chest, and she let herself lean into his body for a moment. “The losses haunt me anyway,” she whispered. “At least with you around, I’m not alone.”
Desire pulsed through him at the feel of her breath against his neck, and he held her for another minute, keeping his eye on Drew, but needing to feel her body against his. She slid one arm around his waist and held up her wrist. “Take it off, please.”
He gave Drew a threatening look, then dropped the sword from Drew long enough to slice through the band. He immediately returned his blade to the kid’s throat, not daring to take any chances with Grace by his side, even though he was pretty damn certain the rookie wasn’t a threat.
The band fell off into the dirt, leaving behind a brutal red channel on her wrist. Anger roared to life inside him at the sight of her injury, but before he could react, she put her hand on his chest. “We don’t have time for that right now. It’s enough that you care.” She smiled and touched his cheek, making his body tighten.
Growling softly, he threaded his free hand through her silky hair, cupping the back of her neck as she faced Drew. He couldn’t stop his fingers from sliding through her curls, feeling the softness of her skin under his rough hand. She was feminine and soft, but she was strength and comfort as well.
She shifted, leaning into his touch, and he caught a scent of her arousal in the air, making his groin tighten instantly. “Stop distracting me,” she whispered.
“Sorry.” But he didn’t remove his hand. He couldn’t. He needed to touch her. She was grounding him after his slide into the past, into the memories that unraveled his focus.
She set her hand on his. He felt a faint vibration in the air, as if she were sending out energy, and he knew she was checking for illusions.
Drew’s eyes were wide with astonishment, sweeping over Grace as if she were an angel. She smiled at him, then turned to Quinn as he let his hand slide down to her shoulder. “There are no illusions around us.”
He turned his attention to the environment to do one last check to make sure nothing was amiss. Satisfied, he sheathed his sword.
Drew’s legs buckled with relief and he fell to his knees.