Number of the Beast (Paladin Cycle, Book One) (6 page)

With his free hand, Rourn
drew his sword. A deep snarl on his twisted lips. “I bring a grave
message that you must heed.”

Atticus stepped backwards.
“We have trained enough for today. The feast hall will close soon.
You need to eat.”

Rourn scowled. He charged.

Atticus drew his saber,
deflected Rourn’s blade and parried the next thrusting strike.
Swords crossed with a clatter of steel.

Atticus pushed forward,
boots gripping the stone, eyes squinting. “Blazing ghosts! What
foolishness plagues you?”

“
I know you possess more.”
Rourn shoved, causing Atticus to stumble backwards. With one long
stride, Rourn approached him. “You are but one of the great chosen
who can defeat the Beast. You must all be prepared for the
Reckoning.”

Blades crossed with
another shattering clang. Atticus’ arms trembled from the exertion
of holding back Rourn’s broadsword. Searing webs of pain burned his
wrists and shot up the muscles of his arms.

What if Atticus could defeat Rourn?
The thought evoked a smile.

Atticus charged.

Blades sparked and sang with
clamor.

Rourn uttered an
incantation, his blade flashed blue and a coil of electricity
surged through Atticus’ sword and into his hands and
arms.

Atticus jolted backward.
He scowled at his the burnt hair on his forearm. “Groveling ghouls!
You hurt me!”

“
So I did.”

“
Why?”

“
Because I’m not who you
think I am.” Rourn shook his head, sheathed his sword and set the
strange dagger on the wall. An expression of sadness reached his
eyes. “Perhaps it’s only obvious to me and I need to confide in
you.”

In frustration, Atticus
exhaled. “Confide what?”

“
You are as complacent as
a fat bullfrog floating on a sea of gnats. Unless you train in
earnest, your speed will slow, your agility will succumb to
clumsiness and your wit will dull with inadequacy. The sea of gnats
will consume the plump frog.”

“
I don’t understand where
any of this is coming from?”

Rourn stepped toward the
tower’s ledge. The last rays of sunlight shone upon him. A bleak
expression contorted his stoic face. “Despite your ineptness, I
envy you. You will graduate and go on to great and honorable feats.
They will send you somewhere exotic where you will encounter new
people of friend and foe. There you will face the grand Beast—who
is far greater than the villains we imagined as
children.”

“
I will not be alone in
this slaying. We will draw swords against the Beast together.”
Atticus cupped a hand over his eyes, shading his vision from the
descending sunlight.

The buzzard that had been circling the
tower had descended closer.

Rourn leaned over the
ledge. “I would have preferred you not sought me here this
evening.”

Atticus looked over the
ledge. The ground loomed two-hundred feet below. He gave Rourn a
sidelong glance. “Why?”

The shrieking buzzard’s black feathers
were cast in twilight’s glow.

“
Ortho’s vision of my
future is not what it seems,” Rourn said. “The ancient mage is a
fool. I am not destined as one of the Twins you and the Order
believe me to be. There is yet another path I must
pursue.”

“
You speak
madness!”

“
I would have been happier
as a healer, or a teacher—not a fighter.”

Rourn a teacher? Atticus
would’ve laughed if he wasn’t so distraught. “You are a Twin
warrior! It is prophesized. You have believed this to be so since
you were of sword-wielding age.” Sighing, he gripped Rourn’s
shoulder. “What has brought this affliction of melancholy into your
soul?”

Rourn sat upon the wall,
his thighs straddled on either side. The dagger lay between his
legs. “I now see that which has been blind to me until
recently.”

Atticus’ gut twisted while he tried to
make sense of Rourn’s rantings. For the first time he felt an
overwhelming sense of loneliness. Perhaps it was because many were
training in the tower or at the rec hall for the last meal of the
day; or perhaps because Rourn, his brother-in-arms since childhood,
was—at the least—entrapped in a shroud of sorrow and—at the
worst—plagued by lunacy.

Atticus pushed from the
wall and took a defensive stance, brandishing his sword. “Battle
with me. I will prove I am prepared.”

“
You have nothing to
prove, at least not to me.”

Atticus lowered his sword.
“What must I do or say to save you from this state of
sorrow?”

“
I will do my part to save
all from the coming Beast and I ask you do the same. Take not your
duty as a Twin nor your role as a Paladin warrior
lightly.”

“
You need not ask. I am
loyal to the Order. I will offer my life for—”

Rourn held up a hand,
silencing Atticus. “I have knowledge of the future, of your future
and it is not as their puppet. They make mistakes. Do not offer
your life to the whims of the Order, no matter the propaganda they
preach.” His voice lowered, eyes darkened. “Promise me.”

Atticus had sworn his allegiance to
the Order long ago and he thought Rourn had done the same. Was his
Twin a traitor?

“
Promise me,” Rourn
repeated.

“
My loyalty isn’t to
myself or you.” Atticus shook his head. “My sword belongs to the
Order of Abel and will do so until I take my final breath. I’m
sorry, but I must follow my heart.”

“
And I must follow mine.”
Rourn tossed his other leg over the wall and
disappeared.

Atticus stared unblinking
at the spot where his blood-brother had sat. “I find no humor in
this magic. What kind of trickery is this?”

The mysterious dagger shimmered on the
tower’s ebony ledge. Atticus reached for it but it suddenly
vanished like a wind-blown mist.

He glanced around the top
of the tower. “Elder Cai? Is this a sorcerer's folly? A
test?”

Silence.

With careful steps, he neared the
ledge and glanced over.

Rourn lay face down in the sand far
below.

Atticus’ body shuddered.
His chest ground against the stone, his head spun. Vertigo gripped
him.

The world slipped sideways.

Then upward.

And the buzzard’s funereal
shrills pierced his soul.

A hand latched onto the
back of his shoulder and tugged. “Damnation, Atticus. Come
away!”

Tears blurred his vision.
Atticus stumbled from the ledge, collapsing into the arms of his
teacher and trainer, Elder Cai. He gripped the elder’s black robe.
“It’s Rourn. Summon Healer Merrick!”

The Elder grimaced. “It’s
too late, my son. It’s too late. He’s in destiny’s
hands.”

After working the morning
shift at Roxy’s, and then all afternoon on her family’s chicken
farm, Carmen longed for liquor, nicotine and sex—not necessarily in
that order.

Well, nicotine had to be
first, for hers and everyone else’s sake, because at the moment she
had a strong urge to smash a claw hammer through someone’s
face.

Outside the last chicken
house, she had stripped her smelly overalls off, grabbed the water
hose—that was curled around a big heap of chicken shit speckled
with white feathers—and sprayed herself down.

No time to waste. Noche
Diablo was scheduled to play at the Rising Bull and she wasn’t
about to miss that killer set. Thoughts of seeing the front man
Bishop Lane in his gothabilly cowboy getup made Carmen tingle. Too
bad he was married.

After tossing the filthy
overalls into the backseat of her ‘96 Camaro, she jumped behind the
wheel wearing nothing but a wet bra and panties, both crimson red.
An oversized shirt that her on-and-off fuckbuddy Derrick had left
in the glove box served as a temporary gown until she could change
into her costume of the night.

Living in a small town, a
girl had to devise ingenious schemes to keep things fun. For the
past few years Carmen had played the “Guess My Costume” game with
all the young—and sometimes not-so-young—men at the local
nightspot. Any fortunate potential lover boy who could not only
guess her costume of the evening, but also answer a few
predetermined trivia questions would win...her.

Bastian, the marionette her mother
handcrafted for her sixth birthday, rode shotgun. A painted red
smile brightened Bastian’s otherwise gloomy face, his expression
caught somewhere between a demented mime and a sad
prince.

When
she’d first received Bastian, she’d flung him across the room much
to her mother’s chagrin. But her mother told her that Bastian would
be her
anjo sonhar
—dream angel. Carmen kept the creepy guy around and
eventually he grew on her.

Smiling, she straightened
his brown robe. “Hey sweetness.”

He peered at her through sorrowful
eyes, eyes circled by blackness. Rosy dots blushed his cheeks. He
held a red carnation in a stained wooden hand.

Carmen stopped singing
with the radio to thank her lucky stars that the Reap’s general
store parking lot was vacant. She raced inside with a plastic
Wal-Mart bag containing her fresh clothes.

Reap’s
was the local family-owned gas station, general store, liquor store
and fried food haven of Buckeye and was only a few blocks from the
Bull. Without so much as a cursory glance at Paul Reap, Carmen knew
his eyeballs were bulged, as they always were when she made a
bat-out-of-hell dash to the bathroom wearing nothing but a long
shirt. Paul would overlook the
No Shirt,
No Shoes, No Service
sign every
time.

Moments later, she exited wearing a
black strapless sequin mini-dress, rimmed-glasses and a black
cowboy hat plus her mainstay gold hoop earrings. Approaching Paul,
she placed a six-pack of Bud down. She clicked her credit card on
the countertop while Paul took his time on the register. It was an
old-fashioned metal box circa
nineteen-fucking-twenty-something.

“
What’s it tonight?” Paul
asked. “Disco diva?”

Smudges from his chubby fingers
spotted his glasses. His amber, scraggly hair was coated in grease.
Probably from the deep fried fish, potato skins, taquitos and
whatever else they disguised as food.

“
I’m Betty Boop, you
idiot,” Carmen said.

Paul loomed over the
counter, a heated glance up and down her body. “Betty Boop doesn’t
wear a cowboy hat or glasses.”

Carmen sneered. “Tonight
she does. A pack of wine, wood-tipped Black and Milds,
too.”

Paul reached behind. “My
shift is over in ten. Want to catch the midnight showing of Rise of
The Mages?”

“
Sure thing, Paul. Just
let me check outside and see if there’s any pigs roosting in the
trees.” She gave him a playful wink and silently admired his
determination as she left the store.

Outside,
Carmen shoved the beer in the backseat next to her overalls and red
high heels. In the front seat, she cracked into the thin cigars as
she drove from the parking lot. Her phone rang. Carmen glanced at
the display.
Shane.

She put the phone to her
ear. “What’s up, cockbrain?”

“
Suck it,
bubbletits.”

She let out a clipped laugh between an
unlit cigar. With the phone tucked in the crook of her neck,
steering with her knee she fished a Zippo from her
purse.

“
Love you too.”

Part of her did love the jerk, loved
him like that annoying brother who knew how to press her buttons.
Shane was the only hot man in her life she didn’t want to sleep
with.

“
I need a favor,” Shane
said.

Holy shit, the man had a
super sexy voice. Too bad they were just best buds; a dead canary
and a rotten squash had more chemistry. Carmen shuddered at the
memory of their one and only kiss back when they were both crazed
juniors at Buck High. Skid Row on the radio, pot in the air, and a
hot sweaty Texas night near a riverbed.

“
Lemme guess,” she said.
“Amy’s having another meltdown?”

“
I think she’s seriously
spooked this time. Drop by and check on her.”

A sigh. “But I was just
about to hit the Bull.”

“
Take Amy with you. Don’t
let her sit around the trailer by herself.”

“
You do realize the type
of guys who go to the Bull, right?” Carmen tapped the cherry into
the car’s ashtray.

From the beginning, she had warned Amy
to steer clear of Shane. But that was years ago and, as far as
anyone knew, Shane had been true, proving Carmen and most everyone
else in town wrong. But sometimes Carmen had her doubts. The man
was a hopeless flirt.

“
That’s why you’re not
going to take your eyes off her.” A threatening edge lined Shane’s
tone.