Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) (7 page)

He’d just decided to take them out the front door straight through the flames, when he realized that it could be a trap, sending them straight into danger, just like when he took the trainees to the river. He paused, suddenly not sure whether he could trust his instincts, or whether they’d lead him astray like they’d done by the river. “They’re trying to flush us out.”

“No—” Grace’s protest descended into a wracking cough, and his own lungs began to strain. His eyes stung, and he realized she was right about the illusion: it was physically manifesting its energy to harm him.

And it was taking down Grace as well.

Not allowed.
That illusion was going down
now.

Keeping Grace tucked against the shield of his body, he drew his concentration deep within and began to focus. He applied the centuries of training he’d had learning how to control his body and his senses in an effort to access his instincts more purely. He slowed his breathing and narrowed his mind until he was focused only on his physical senses. Then he turned them off one by one, like turning off a light switch, until he was in a world of gray silence, the place he sometimes retreated to so he could get a clear read from his instincts without the clutter of the outside world.

Now he was blind and deaf. Moving on memory alone. The illusion could not touch him, because it was powerless if it couldn’t prey upon his mind to delude him. He sheathed his sword, then swept Grace into his arms. “Come on.” He strode toward his trap door. “Shut down your senses.” He couldn’t hear his own voice, other than inside his head. He didn’t know if she was responding. Was she even okay?

His concentration shattered as he thought about Grace being hurt, and all his senses roared back to life. He felt a flash of heat, and opened his eyes to see roaring flames reaching up to the ceiling. He smelled the acrid odor of burning rubber, his nostrils stung from the fiery smoke, and his skin bubbled from the heat. Grace twisted in his grip, battling to get free, her panic wrenching at his concentration.

“Stay with me,” he ordered, then forced his mind to slow again so he could focus on his senses, shutting them down so he was once again cut off from the illusion. Then he tightened his grip on Grace and threw them both into the pit beneath his bed. They dead-dropped sixty feet as he fought to control their position in the air so he would take the impact when they hit

Unable to judge the landing with his senses shut off, he hit so hard on his back that the force of the impact snapped his head into the ground, his neck still weak from Elijah’s death blow. His concentration shattered at the impact, but he kept his grip tight on Grace, absorbing the shock so she wouldn’t get hurt.

She gasped, then scrambled to get off him, groaning with pain. His protections lost, smoke cut his eyes and he saw flames licking down the sides of the pit toward them. “Damn shit looks real.” He pointed to a tunnel on the right. “Head that way.”

He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed as he gathered himself, then leapt back up to the door. He caught the edge, grimacing as his fingers fried on the hot steel, then grabbed the heavy steel door and yanked it shut so it looked like ordinary floorboard from the top. Then he dropped, landing easily in a crouch now that he could use his sight to judge the distance.

Grace was huddled against the wall, crushing her head between her hands, flaming rocks crashing down around her. Fear for her safety galvanized him, and he picked her up and locked her down against him. “Hang on.”

She wrapped her legs around his hips and looped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his chest. He wrapped one arm around her waist to make sure she was secure, threw both their packs over his shoulder, then shut down his senses against the flames roaring all around them.

“Hang tight,” he ordered, then he sank deep into his memories, calling up the exact layout of his tunnels, not daring to use his eyesight to find their path until he knew they were clear of the illusion.

He broke into a sprint, hurling them both down the only tunnel that led to safety, ignoring the six that led nowhere, that existed for the sole purpose of distracting pursuers.

Ten steps forward. Turn right.

He counted the rhythm in his head, moving on recall alone, not even able to feel his feet strike the floor. He tripped once on a rock he hadn’t remembered, and then they were off again. He’d practiced this tunnel in the dark, but he’d never tried to do it blind, deaf and without a sense of smell.

He’d sure as hell never done it carrying a woman who scared the crap out of him, and never when he was three days out from an injury that had sent him briefly into the afterlife.

But he kept up a steady pace, his breathing even, his legs moving in a natural rhythm he’d perfected to be most efficient for running long distances. To his surprise, Grace’s grip never weakened, leaving his arms free to block the walls that occasionally had the audacity to jump in his damn way after a missed navigation.

It wasn’t until they’d covered almost thirty miles that he finally took the chance and tested his hearing to see if the illusion was still present.

He heard nothing but the sound of his footsteps, his own heavy breathing, raspy from the smoke inhalation, and Grace’s soft moans of pain. No crackles of flame, no sounds of smoke hissing around them.

He stopped running, and allowed all his senses to flare back to life. It was too dark to see, a damn good sign that there was no firelight giving them romantic ambiance.

Grace was trembling violently against him. All the protective instincts of his Calydon heritage catapulted to the surface, and he enfolded her in his arms to protect her, to hold her tight against him, willing what was left of his strength into her body. “You with me, Grace?”

She let go of him suddenly, and he tightened his grip to keep her from falling to the rocky ground. He eased to his knees with her, his legs suddenly weak as well. He more exhausted than he’d ever been, thanks to his little stint with death. He was not going through that die-and-recover thing again. It was too damned inconvenient to feel like a mortal. He needed a healing sleep, and he needed it soon. “It’s over.” He touched her hair, the brittle, burned ends flaking off in his fingers. “We’re safe.”

“No.” Her protest was a harsh whisper as she slid out of his grip to the ground, curling into a ball, her face resting against the sharp rocks. “Go. You have to go.”

“Go where?” As good as his night vision was, the total absence of light in the tunnel was more than he could overcome, so he pulled out a small flashlight and turned it on. Then he shrugged off his jacket, lifted her head and tucked the jacket between her face and the rocks. Her skin was blistered and red, and he glanced at his own hands. His fingers were nuked where he’d grabbed the steel door and the burns stung as soon as he looked at them. He’d never heard of an Illusionist who was powerful enough to actually cause harm with the illusion. What the hell were they dealing with?

“Get away from me. I’m too dangerous.” She scrunched her eyes shut, and a tear squeezed out from under her eyelid.

“Shit.” He bent next to her and rubbed the pad of his thumb over her cheek, wiping away the tear that wrenched at his very soul. “We’re out, Grace. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

She gave a shuddering sigh, then cracked her lids enough to look at him. “Thanks for getting me out of there, too. I...I would have stayed. It would have killed me.”

He grinned. “I don’t like having people die on my property. It drives up my home insurance rates.” He brushed off a few small pebbles that had stuck to her cheek. There were burns on her face, her clothes charred, her eyes red from the smoke. He realized the illusion had hit her far harder than it had gotten him. He brushed her hair back from her face, his fingers drifting over the soft locks, soft where they weren’t burned at least. “How did you know it was an illusion, even before it hit us?”

She opened her mouth, then sighed and looked up at the roof of the tunnel, shutting him out instead of answering him.

Quinn ground his jaw. “Grace. You have to let me in. I have to know what I’m dealing with, both with you and your sister.” For Elijah’s sake. For her sake. It was a hell of a lot harder to fix things if he didn’t know what was broken, and he didn’t have time to mess around.

The posse would be after him within hours, and it would be a race to find Elijah before they caught either of them, because he knew he would be declared a liability until they brought him in. “Grace, talk to me.” He let her feel the urgency of his request, needing her to understand that full disclosure had to come.

After a moment, she brought her gaze back down to his face. “Would you kill an Illusionist on sight? Because their illusions could someday kill an innocent?”

“No.” He was well aware that many would have a different answer, however. Illusionists were hunted, and from that fire, he could see why people feared them. They were impressive as hell. “The Order does preemptive strikes only against rogue Calydons. Everyone else can do whatever they want as long as they don’t threaten innocents in my presence. I’m not a police force.”

She nodded, and he felt some of her tension ease. “Okay, then.”

Quinn almost smiled as he watched her gather her resolve. Her expression was so telling, so vivid, allowing him access to her emotions. Order members were trained not to feel. They’d learned that shutting down their emotions was the only way to deal with having to take out friends, family and innocents. After living with his team for so long, it was fascinating to watch the play of emotions across her expressive face. Her brows were furrowed in concentration, and the way she worried her lower lip with her teeth told him she was nervous.

He instinctively touched her hair to reassure her. “Whatever it is, you can tell me.” Her hair was so soft, feminine, the thick curls tangling around his fingers as if they didn’t want to let him go. “I’m an Order member. We’re specifically chosen because we’re so damned trustworthy. We’re like Labradors.”

Grace smiled faintly. “Labradors that attack at will.”

“Yeah, true, but only in a way designed to save society from our own kind. You’re not Calydon, so you’re safe from me no matter what secrets you’ve got buried.”

Grace’s smile faded, and she looked at him. Her head tilted ever so slightly into his hand, a movement so faint he doubted she realized she’d done it. But he’d noticed that trusting move. Hell, yeah, Quinn had noticed.

So he wasn’t surprised when she finally nodded her willingness to share. “I’ll tell you the truth, but no decisions until you hear the whole story.”

“Agreed. I always wait for full information before taking action. No other way to be.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a badass warrior, aren’t you?”

Quinn grinned. “Hell, yeah.” Damn. When was the last time anyone had teased him? Yeah, his teammates did, but that was different from having some female give it to him. He liked it. It made him feel like he was connected to humanity, instead of severed from it and watching it from a distance. It reminded him of his family, of what it used to be like so long ago, before everything had changed. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“I’m too exhausted to summon up the terror I know I should be feeling.” She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, as if to make sure he wouldn’t leave her before she was finished.

Their gazes met as something sizzled between them at the contact, at the heat from her touch branding him. Her grip was strong, but her fingers looked so delicate against his thick wrist. Fragile. Vulnerable. Feminine. He liked it.

Neither of them pulled away. “I can sense an illusion when it’s amassing power,” she explained. “Someone was creating an illusion outside in your woods. It was a dark one, intending to do harm. That’s why I stopped you from going outside.”

Quinn raised his brows. “How do you sense illusions? What did you pick up?” Damn, it would be helpful if his instincts could see through illusions. Was that what had happened at the ridge? Had someone been working an illusion on him? Was that what they were dealing with?

Grace ignored his question. “The fire wasn’t the illusion I was sensing. That wasn’t the one that was building in your woods.” She looked at him, searching his gaze for his reaction. “There were two Illusionists at work.”

He frowned. “Two?” How had he not sensed the approach of so many threats? Had it been his distraction with Grace? Or something else? That was not his style, and he didn’t like it.

Her grip tightened on his wrist, and this time he noticed her fingers were trembling. Her hand was cold, and there was fear in her silver eyes. Not fear of him. Fear of...something else.

Tension rumbled deep inside him, and he had to concentrate to keep from calling out his weapon in defense of her. “Nothing can get through me,” he said quietly, unable to keep the lethal tone out of his voice. “There’s nothing to fear in this tunnel.”

Her grip on his wrist didn’t loosen. “I did it,” she said.

“Did what?”

“I created the fire. It was my illusion. I did it. I tried to kill both of us.”