Darkness Reborn (Order of the Blade #5) (16 page)

But this time, the tension rippling between the men was so thick she could almost touch it. How in heaven's name were they going to be able to fight?

Because we have one mission,
Kane said.
To protect the greater good from rogue Calydons. Whatever these bastards are, they're a threat against innocents, and we are sworn to protect that. You included. Everything is secondary to that.

Sarah glanced back over her shoulder at Kane, and he flashed her a grim smile. In the shadows of the moon, in the darkness of the night, he loomed huge and muscular, a force powerful enough to destroy anything that came at him. Including her.
How are the scars, Kane?

He didn't look away from her.
They're still fading, Sarah.

Fear rippled through her, and she touched the bruises on her neck. Then, there was a flash of black light and a crack, and Kane's weapon appeared in her hand. She jerked back, startled, and Ryland shot her a look of such agonized yearning that her heart broke for him.

No.
Kane's voice eased through her mind as they neared the edge of the crevasse.
Don't think about Ryland. Don't think about the bruises. Think only about the fact that I made you call my weapon, and you did it. I have the power to resist, and you have the power to defend yourself.

She nodded, her mouth suddenly dry as they reached the edge. One step over it, and the assault on her senses would start.

Kane set his hand on the back of her neck, his touch strong and protective. "Focus only on your strength, Sarah. Trust your team. There is no other way."

Thano raised his halberd over Sarah's head, and Kane did the same with his flail. The weapons clinked as they made contact.
Sarah?
Slowly, she raised Kane's other flail and let it rest against the other two.

They all looked at Ryland. For a long moment, he simply stared into the blackness of the pit. He took a step, one foot disappearing into the blackness. Literally. His foot was gone. Ryland cursed under his breath, then raised his machete and slammed it against the other three weapons. The crash ripped through the night and vibrated all the way down Sarah's arm, but she immediately felt a shift in the air between the three men.

They were a team again, to the death.

They lowered their weapons, then as a unit, they moved forward. Kane slipped his fingers around her wrist, locking his grip in an iron band that she knew nothing would be able to break through. He was making sure there would always be physical contact between them so he could teleport her to safety. She glanced up at him, and he shot her a brief smile before looking past her into the darkness.

Sarah paused as they reached the edge, concentrating on the wetness of her skin from the water and Kane's grip on her arm. Then she took a deep breath, embraced the nightmare that had been stalking her for her entire life, and stepped off the edge into the void.

His stallion's feet were silent on the forest floor, the iron-shod hooves leaving no prints in the dirt. Warwick Cardiff bent low over his steed's neck, the animal's black mane whipping against Warwick's chest. Beneath him, his mount's muscles strained, sweat caked on the horse's neck and shoulders. The power of the beast was extraordinary, and Warwick urged him onward, riding hard, both the mount and the rider exhilarating in the display of strength and power. Deathbringer had been Warwick's mount for over a hundred years, and the partnership was far tighter than simply man and beast. It was an intertwining of souls, the one living entity on the earth that Warwick could trust.

They burst out of the woods, and the animal leapt over the rubble of buildings that no longer stood, his hooves silent even on the rocky pebbles. Before him, stepping out from the shadows was the man...the creature...Warwick had come to see.

Warwick reined his steed to a halt, stopping inches from the man lurking in the shadows. He looked down at the creature whose eyes were like bottomless pits of hell, whose skin was stretched across his skeleton like the burned-out hide of an animal long dead. "Luc," he said, not dismounting. He knew better than to trust these creatures who roamed the woods.

Luc Acostos went down on one knee, bowing to Warwick while Deathbringer danced restlessly, his massive hooves thudding dangerously close to Luc's feet. "My lord," he said. "The pieces are in place."

"You lost him," Warwick said, dripping his disdain over the demonic creature before him. "You had him, and you let him go."

Luc's head snapped up, his eyes glittering dangerously. "Santiago is strong. That's why he's the one I need."

"I don't give a shit about what you need." Warwick glared down at him. "The angel must die. Santiago is the key to that, and you need to make sure it happens." He pulled a rose out of his black cape, crumpled it in his hand, and then flung it at Luc's feet. "Or she will be gone forever."

Luc made a noise of agony, of such distress, that Warwick smiled. He knew that kind of pain, and he knew Luc would do whatever it took to save the woman he loved. Warwick knew it, because that was what had driven him for the last seven hundred years. Redemption for the woman who had died in his arms.

Disgust curled Warwick's lip as Luc gathered the crushed red petals, cradling them in his hands as if they were the greatest treasure known to humankind. "Tonight, Luc."

Tonight was when the Order of the Blade was going to begin to fall. Finally. Completely. Until it was nothing but ashes and smoldering vomit, as it deserved to be.

Luc looked up sharply. "Tonight? It can't be tonight. Santiago found the river, and Sarah's strong again—"

"He did?" Enraged, Warwick whirled his mount around toward the fountain. It lay in a pathetic pile of crumbled stone, so dry he could taste the dust on his skin. "Where—" Then he saw it. The massive hole in the ground. Furious, Warwick urged Deathbringer over to the opening. Beneath it flowed the pure, clear water that kept Sarah alive, giving life to the angel who had to die.

Warwick reached beneath his cape and pulled out his wand, a supple, pliant stick of highly polished wood from the tree that marked the grave of his beloved Audrey. He summoned his magic into the wand, and violet and silver sparks crackled violently from the end of it. For a split second, he almost hesitated, grimly aware that if he destroyed the river completely, it wouldn't affect only Sarah, but the entire earth would be profoundly impacted.

The he laughed softly at the irony of his thoughts. "Sacrifice one to preserve the greater good," he said bitterly, mimicking the Order of the Blade mission statement that still made fury and disgust burn through him. "No longer," he said. "Today it is sacrifice the greater good to preserve one."

Then he pointed his wand at the river, and he invoked the power of the demons in his incantation. A bolt of light streaked from the end of his wand, and neither he nor Deathbringer flinched when the earth erupted in a shriek of agony, and then collapsed, burying the river beneath a ton of rocks so tainted that they bled black as they fell into the water.

He spun his mount back toward Luc, who was clenching the rose petals in his hand. "Now, it is up to you. Do not dare to disappoint me."

A slow, insidious grin stretched across the face of the creature masquerading as a man. "Have no fear, my lord. It will be done." He turned his head away from Warwick, scenting the air. Then he stiffened and went into high alert.

"Did you find him?" Warwick asked, stroking Deathbringer's shoulder as his mount shifted restlessly.

"I did. He is mine." Then the demon-man dissolved into a tendril of thick, noxious smoke that immediately streaked through the night and disappeared into the woods.

For a long moment, Warwick did not move. He simply closed his eyes and breathed in the silence of the night, the freshness of the air, the freedom of the breeze rippling over his skin. Anticipation hummed through him, and he smiled, the first true smile he'd felt in over seven hundred years.

Slowly, he shoved up his sleeve and looked at the markings on his arm. The brand of his own weapon, the battle axe that he hadn't bothered to call out in over five hundred years, since he'd walked away from the Order and their mission. And there, woven into his own brand was the name Audrey, carved there with his axe the very last time he'd ever called it out.

He raised his arm and pressed his lips to her name, unable to suppress the same well of grief that had been haunting him so relentlessly for so long. But this time, with the grief was the raw, unbridled promise that her death would finally be avenged. After centuries of planning, her time, their time, had finally come.

He raised his arm to the heavens, reaching up toward the stars that mocked him with their levity. "Tonight, it begins, Audrey Beckett. Tonight, it begins!"

Then he grabbed the reins, whirled his mount to the right, and then the two of them galloped into the night, swallowed up by the darkness, soon to be far, far away from the hellhouse, long before the nightmare was unleashed.

* * *

The moonlight vanished the moment Kane and his team stepped over the edge of the cliff into the crevasse. It was total and complete blackness as they skidded down the rocky shale, down toward a destination they couldn't identify. The air was thick and noxious, making it feel like they were trying to breathe a fetid swamp itself.

Sarah coughed, and he tightened his grip on her wrist.
Talk to me, sweetheart.

I'm okay so far. Just hard to breathe.

Kane wrapped his arm over her shoulder and tucked her against him, holding her face against his chest.
Better?

Sarah's body shuddered with relief.
Yes.
Excitement rippled through her.
I've never been able to come in here before.

Kane tightened his grip on his flail as they descended deeper. He reached out with his senses, searching for any sign of life, but he could sense nothing. Just the overwhelming stench that overrode all other smells, and the ominous, deathly silence.
What do you think is in here?

The source of the evil
, Sarah said.
It has to be.

Then we better be ready.
The darkness seemed to pulse and swirl through Kane, a cold, clammy sensation of fingers trying to peel off his skin ever so carefully.

"I don't feel anything weird," said Thano. "What about you?"

"Nothing," Ryland said. "The air is just regular. I'm scenting trees and some scrub brush and rodents. An owl."

"You get the frog off to the right?" Thano asked.

"Yeah, and the fly it just ate."

Kane swore under his breath, straining to pick up the scents that his teammates were smelling, but his senses were overwhelmed with the thick, pungent fumes of sulfur and rot. He could hear nothing, except the sound of his team. Not a single flutter of feet. Not a whisper of an owl. Nothing but silence that was so loud that it seemed to beat at him. Shit. Why was he sensing things the others weren't?
Sarah? What do you smell?

Smell? The woods. Dirt.

Something began to pulse inside Kane, a dark foreboding.
What do you hear?

I hear a whisper, like two giant pieces of sandpaper rubbing against each other.

He shot a sharp look at her, but it was too dark to see her face.
Merge with me.
He reached out with his mind as they continued to skid down the shale slope. Sarah instantly opened to him, and he wove their minds together, enabling each of them to see and hear what the other was experiencing.

Oh, God, Kane. That silence is horrible.
Sarah put her hands over her ears.
It hurts.

He heard the rasping that she'd mentioned, and it sent chills rippling down his arms and over his spine. He jerked suddenly, realizing that he could feel it on his body, that the scratching sound was from something that was rubbing against him. He swore and slapped at his arms, trying to clean them off. Thick black sludge peeled from his skin, tearing from his flesh like glue that had adhered to him.

Sarah jerked back, her face barely visible. "What's that?"

"No idea." It was creeping up his legs now, like tendrils of black smoke wrapping around his legs. He kicked his foot, and it got even thicker around him.

"What the hell's going on?" Ryland slashed at the black vines with his machete as they tried to grab Kane. He tore through them with his blade, but even as he did it, more seemed to come out of the air, wrapping around Kane.

"Shit." He scraped more of it off with his flail, and then Thano was attacking it as well, all three warriors slashing at the black smoke that kept wrapping tighter and tighter around Kane, like living tattoos sinking into his flesh.

"Shit." Thano finally stopped, leaning on his halberd. "It's faster than we are."

Sarah's eyes were wide with horror. "Does it hurt?"

"No." But Kane could feel it seeping through his skin, like thousands of microscopic needles piercing his flesh. The malevolence was thick and tainted, and his skin crawled from the sensation of it closing around him. "Let's keep going."

Thano raised his brows, but didn't bother to question him. Ryland just nodded, and they began to move forward again.

Kane swatted at the back of his neck, and he felt something fall off his skin and drop to the earth. "Shit. Something bit me."

"I'm not getting anything," Thano said. "I always thought you looked like you tasted better than the rest of us." But his voice was grim, with none of the levity he usually had.

"Let's speed this up," Ryland said. "I'm getting a bad feeling about this."

As a unit, the team broke into a jog. Kane kept his hand on Sarah's back, letting her set the pace and keeping her close. The skin on the back of his neck prickled, and he jerked around, searching the darkness, but finding nothing. "We're being hunted."

"I know," Ryland said. "I can feel it."

"Stupid bastards," Thano muttered. "Don't they know that we're the good guys? We do the hunting."

"It's the Calydons," Sarah said. "They're hunting me."

"They're hunting all of us," Kane replied. His brands were burning, warning him of the danger coming in all directions, and he clenched his fists, his mind rapidly assessing their situation and trying to come up with a solution. "Sarah," he muttered, stepping in front of her. "Get on my back."

Without a moment of hesitation, she grabbed his shoulders and leapt up, locking her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck, after handing him the other flail. He made sure she was secure, then he muttered one word to his team. "Run."

The three of them broke into a dead sprint, racing down the hill at a speed very few living creatures could match. They leapt over rocks and crevices, tore past boulders, and raced deeper and deeper into the crevasse. Silent, the three massive warriors were like streaks in the night, in high conceal mode as they sprinted down the hill. Sarah was secure on his back, holding tight, giving them the freedom to cover ground at a pace she could never match.

They ran for eleven minutes. Eleven minutes straight down into the earth at breakneck speed, until Kane felt a lessening of the sensation of being watched. "We're losing them," he told the team. "Keep going."

Barely breathing hard, they upped their speed, their muscles contracting with fierce intensity, their legs churning so fast that most eyes would not be able to track them. But even as he ran, Kane felt his muscles stabbing with pain, as if the black sludge on his skin was eating away at his body. Swearing, he dug harder, fighting to keep up with his team—

Suddenly there was a loud-pitched scream, and a black shadow sprang out of the earth directly in front of Thano. Thano shouted and swung his halberd as it swooped around him. It jerked him off his feet and began dragging him along the earth.

"Shit! Thano!" Ryland and Kane sprinted after him, as Thano hacked at the shadow with his weapon, but the blade was going right through the black smoke, as if it wasn't even there.

"Fuck!" Thano's muscles were bulging as he fought, as his body tore a furrow through the rocky terrain. "Let me go you bastard!"

Ryland and Kane ran harder, but Thano was moving faster than either of them could go. "Teleport," Ryland shouted. "Get the bastard!"

Kane swore, and tore Sarah off him. "Keep her safe!" He tossed Sarah at Ryland, not breaking stride. He started to teleport even as she flew out of his arms—

The moment he wasn't touching her, agony ripped through him. He bellowed with anguish even as he dematerialized. He reformed ten feet in front of Thano, his body screaming with agony as he spread his feet to block the path of his teammate. Kane reared back with his flail as the tentacle neared and brought down his flail with tremendous strength just as the black streak moved between his feet.