Immortal Need (12 page)

“Now,” Valerie called across the intercom, and he moved. His blades whirled around him in a dance of death as he cut one man down, then dodged behind a tree when bullets started to fly, only to run back out the next. Blood sprayed over his cool skin, but he didn’t stop. He just slashed on, over and over again, ripping limb from limb. The night became a cacophony of screams, and gurgles of blood-drenched lungs, and bullets. Bodies dropped on the floor. Each slice of his blade sang in the air. He felt free, powerful, even gleeful as he tore apart Ayah’s enemies. Every slice of skin, bone-jarring snap of cartilage, and
crunch
of bone appeased his rage. With every swipe of his sword or flick of his wrist to toss a knife, a man fell. He didn’t stop until there were only body parts falling to the ground with dull thuds, his chest heaving from exertion. He sat there and flicked his blade to disperse as much blood as possible. The night was awash with death, and he could smell it on the air. A storm had begun to brew, lightning streaking though the air, matching his pounding heartbeat. He felt bathed in the rain as it pelted him, soothing the heat of his rage. Dead. They were dead. Just a few more to go. Child’s play and fodder for him. Each of them would die, bit by bit if necessary, to save Ayah. That was all that mattered, all that played through his mind.

“What the fuck?” Valerie said, staring at him in awe. She had not a single drop of blood on her. Sevani frowned at her.

“You just left it for me to do it all?” he growled at her, anger spiking through him. “You know any one of them could have wounded me.”

“Sevani, I didn’t have a chance to,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” he tossed back.

“You. I couldn’t even keep up with you. I was looking at you, and I could barely track you. It looked like a pure white blade was cutting down bodies as if they weren’t there. I stayed clear because I didn’t want to get in the way. What the
hell
happened to you?” she asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. What are you saying?”

Valerie just looked at him. “You really don’t know? Sevani, you moved through these men like a knife to butter. And something is different about you,” she added, stepping closer to him. “Wait a minute.”

She closed her eyes, and he just stared at her, wondering what she was going to do. Slowly a frown marred her face, her eyes still closed. After a moment, her frown deepened.

“I can’t reach you,” she said finally, opening her eyes and looking at him with surprise.

“What are you
talking
about?” he asked again, starting to feel like a parrot, but he was confused. The threat wasn’t over. Lei had a team of twenty men on his side. He didn’t have time for this shit right now.

“I can’t speak to you.”

He just stared at her. “You mean mentally?”

“Yes. It’s like there’s a giant wall in your mind now that wasn’t there before. I’m trying to get through, but I can’t. Try something. I know we need to go help Lei, but I need to figure this out. Try to send a message to me.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do, Valerie. I didn’t know how to do it in the first place. If you hadn’t shown me the path to speak with you, then I would never have been able to do it. All I do is think really hard and fling them in your direction, hoping you can catch them. That’s how we all do it.”

Valerie looked at him as if he were of subpar intelligence. “Exactly. Do it again,” she ordered.

So he did as she asked. He thought to himself that this didn’t making any damn sense and tossed it at her for all it was worth. Valerie blinked at him, shaking her head slowly.

“Yeah. Wow,” she said. “If I had been anything else other than a goddess, I would have been knocked on my ass with that one. You don’t have to push so hard,” she said on a shaky laugh.

Anything other than a goddess,
Sevani thought. It was rare that Valerie ever brought up the fact that she was a goddess when she was with them. To the other three members of the Watchers, she was simply a Watcher, as much a prisoner as the rest of them. He would have expected, as the goddess who could give the gift of immortality, that she would be a leader among them. But she was not. She had no other powers to separate her. She could only be their plaything, their tool. To hear her say it now made him grow cold.

“Ah, I hate to break up the whole information search, but could you get your asses over here? I’m not exactly done with the
twenty
fucking men I had to kill. I killed ten, by the way. Thank you, thank you. No need for any applause,” Lei said sarcastically over the earpiece.

“Get over there.” Sevani shook himself, shocked that he had stopped in the middle of battle just to figure out what was going on. “We’ll talk about this later,” he said to Valerie, and she nodded.

Together the two streaked around the home, on opposite sides, dodging behind trees. As he neared the back of the home, Sevani could hear the slight whistle of bullets as Lei continued to provide cover fire for them. He moved, hiding behind trees and skirting the return fire of the mercs. His blade, once again, sung as it escaped its sheath. He held it in one thick fist, dread coursing through his body suddenly. Something was wrong. He had to kill these men as quickly as possible and return to the house. He held his blade in one hand and reached for his throwing knives. He tossed them to the men around Valerie. She fought viciously, twirling with kicks and punches, and she turned one man’s head entirely before grabbing the next one and snapping his back with breakneck speed. The feeling of unease spread through him, and Sevani kicked into overdrive. He tore a rifle away from one man and then kicked him. The man flew through the air, his body hitting a tree with a sickening
thud.
Sevani whirled to the next, mentally counting the three men who were left. Valerie grabbed one, shielding herself with his body when another shot at her. Bullets riddled the body of her human shield before she tossed him away as if he were a fly. Another bullet whizzed through the air, nicking her thigh, but Valerie didn’t stop moving. Sevani matched her by grasping the shooter by his throat and skewering him with his sword in one well-placed thrust. He twisted the blade and pulled it from the man in a down-and-out motion. He was left holding the top half of a body. Sevani dropped him without a thought. In no time at all, those men were gone too. All except one.

“Valerie, don’t kill him,” Sevani commanded when she raised her fist to bash the man’s face in. “Bring him in for questioning. We have plenty to talk about.”

Valerie nodded solemnly and then coldly broke the man’s arms so he couldn’t reach for his weapon. She dragged him by the scruff of his shirt, kicking and screaming, toward the house. Sevani led the way inside. Lei sat looking at him with a stupefied expression similar to the one that Valerie had earlier.

“Man, what the…?” Lei began.

“Save it. Valerie was saying the same thing. We’ll talk about it later. For now I need to know exactly where those thugs, and these trained men, came from.”

“’Kay, but did anyone else see what I saw?” Lei asked, looking at Valerie. She shook her head at him.

“Like he said, we’ll talk about it later.”

It didn’t matter. Everything in Sevani still felt the sense of dread, stronger now that he was in the house. He scanned it. He roared in disbelief, and he screamed. His howl reverberated through the house. There, at the bottom of the stairs, lay Ayah, blood pooling under her body. She lay still.

“What happened?” Sevani yelled, rushing toward her.

Lei spun around. “I never heard her. I was keeping lookout, and no alarms went off at the front of the house. I focused on you guys. I swear to the gods,” he explained.

Sevani wasn’t listening as he reached her. He ran terrified hands over her body. If she had died, if he had failed, he would cease to exist. His heart plummeted between his feet. He could not lose her—not when he had just found her.

“Wh—” He started, but couldn’t finish. His hands were covered in blood, and he couldn’t find where the wound was. She moaned when his hand brushed the side of her stomach. He growled, hoping the wound hadn’t entered into her stomach. A gut wound was death for mortals, and he could not imagine having lost her. He had failed in protecting her. He peeled her blood-soaked shirt from her stomach, preparing himself for what he may see. He gave a gasp of relief when he saw the graze wound on her side. It lightened his heart to know that she would be okay. Ayah had said she had never been in trouble before, had never had evil intentions. If that was the case, then the pain from the graze would have been enough to knock her out.

“That hurt like the dickens,” he heard her whisper and looked up to see her eyes were cracked open. Anger replaced the fear as soon as he knew she was okay.

“Didn’t I tell you to stay in your room? Why would you come out? Why did you disobey?” He shot the questions at her in rapid succession.

She frowned, her brows scrunching together as she watched him. “I heard gunshots. I wanted to make sure you were okay,” she whispered. “Stupid decision, I know. I don’t need you yelling at me to make me feel any worse.” She moaned again when she shifted. “I just had to know you were okay.” Tears came to her eyes, and he sighed. His anger faded just that quickly.

“I am fine,” he assured her.

“But you’re covered in blood,” she said, lifting her hands, but they fell to her sides listlessly, as if it were too much work. “Ugh, my head is spinning.”

“It’s not my blood. It’s the blood of the men who came to kill you,” he explained to her and lifted her gingerly in his arms. “I’m going to get you back to your room. Valerie, come with me. We have to patch her up.”

Sevani didn’t know how, but he had felt that something was wrong. He’d felt the wrenching in his soul, and he had done everything he could to get back to the house as quickly as possible. He wondered if the knowledge that something was off had been attached to Ayah. If that was the case, then what had occurred with them in the bedroom meant more than he had realized. He couldn’t imagine seeing her hurt. The very thought of her dead had nearly broken him into pieces.

As he carried her fragile form up the stairs, careful to hold one large palm over her side to help stanch the blood flow, he couldn’t imagine not having her. He knew it was just a day or so ago that she had come into his life, but she was important to him. She meant damn near everything. Over the years, as he’d grown used to no longer having Nila at his side, he had survived with the single-minded belief that he would have a second chance. It had been all he had been able to think of to sustain him through a torturous existence. He thanked the gods for giving him a more pleasurable, and much lighter, reason to survive. This woman, Ayah, she was beautiful, caring, passionate, and loyal. Not many who had never tasted danger would have braved it for another person. It was strange, he supposed, but he had learned over the years that life-and-death situations had strong effects on people. There were several instances he could remember where the women he had saved professed to want him, and even love him on some rare occasions. They had seen him as their knight in shining armor, no matter how guilty they were in their involvement in their own attempted murders or how morally askew their lives were. He was a man they wanted at their side to protect them and keep them safe. He had to turn several away. Now things were very different. He looked at Ayah and knew now, with certainty, that he wanted her to be like those other women, insofar as he wanted her to profess interest, feelings, or love for him. He wanted her with a driving need that surprised even him.

Whatever had happened between them in that room had also altered him. He had thought that he felt faster and stronger before, but the ferocity that he used to cut down her enemies had surprised him and the other Watchers. He had moved faster than even their immortal eyes could detect, and killed with a viciousness that was not his signature. Something had changed. He sent his senses inward, pulling Ayah closer to him, as he stepped into her room. He closed his eyes. His soul felt…complete. That was the best way to describe it. Wait, his soul?

He’d felt the large, gaping hole where his soul should have been when Freya had first taken it from him. He had learned that she had been right. Without his soul, he had become a cold-blooded, merciless killer who would follow her orders. Again, it was the way he had tried to survive. He hadn’t cared about the men he killed. He rationalized that they were evil anyway for wanting to kill their sister, daughter, wife, or niece. At times, he hadn’t cared that a husband had wanted to kill a spouse, who he found cheating on him, in a passionate rage when any other time he wouldn’t have hurt a fly. He was not affected by any of the other circumstances that had walked a thin line between who was right or wrong, or who deserved to die or live, for that matter. He simply killed. There were many times he had wanted to kill the woman he was made to protect as much as he wanted to kill the man who was coming after her. But he had ignored it all, trying his best to eke out some sort of life until he found his own end game.

But now he was whole. He could feel warmth suffusing his body in a way he could never have imagined. It was as if Ayah had given him back, and anchored him to, the piece of his humanity he thought had been lost. There were feelings inside him he had not experienced in so long. For so many years, all he had known was rage, shame, and regret at his circumstances. The only ones he had felt some sense of bond or loyalty with had been the other Watchers, and even that had taken years to cultivate. They all appreciated it because of its rareness. Now he knew that Ayah had done more than give herself to him physically, or shared with him a smile that he couldn’t give up. No, she had given him something he could never return or thank her for.

Sevani opened his eyes and carried her to the bed to lay her down. Valerie had already grabbed towels and brought them quickly to Ayah’s side to hold the blood.

“I can use at least enough of my aura to heal her. She may be a little out of it for a time, but she’ll be healed. She will be fine. We will make it,” Valerie said, and Sevani nodded, holding Ayah’s hand. He watched as Valerie’s hair turned pure white and her eyes flickered with power. Her skin resembled the bark of a tree. It always unnerved them to see her in her true form. It reminded them too much of the goddess who tortured them and took their souls. That was what her shift had always represented. But now he saw it as the way to save Ayah, and all he could do was appreciate it.