Elyon (16 page)

Irksome female. Why did she have to nag at him like that? Johnis’s brow furrowed. “The scout reported carrion. I was looking into it.”

Silvie’s expression indicated she didn’t believe him. She scanned the desert floor. The Shataiki hive was overhead now, and once more they could see little. Johnis rode forward.

“And you saw nothing?” she asked.

“Still looking. My concern was feeding bats.”

“Marak and the priest will be angry.”

He studied Silvie. Shaeda’s talons stroked his neck, tickling his skin. He’d allowed her presence to dominate his since the slip. But she was getting stronger. With all his senses on such high alert and firing in his body, he felt like a madman. He saw her eyes, her beautiful, intoxicating eyes . . .

Shaeda came over him. Her strength became his.

Her will . . . her mind . . .

Johnis’s back—Shaeda’s back—arched. Prepared to strike.

“Johnis?” The brief silhouette rode toward them.

Darsal approached, her torch high. Sweat glistened on her face, streaking morst and exposing smooth, dark skin.

Johnis scowled. Shaeda bristled. His vision turned hazy. They were done with this albino. Shaeda wanted her blood.

But Johnis restrained the impulse first. Not now, not when in a matter of hours it wouldn’t matter who killed the wench.

“What do you want?” Silvie demanded.

The albino’s gaze swept from Silvie to Johnis.

“Help. We’re almost out of time. You really want to kill the Guard? Make an alliance with a Shataiki?”

Silvie’s jaw hardened. “What do you know?”

Johnis narrowed his eyes.

“More than you think.” Darsal’s voice was strained. Desperate. Of course she was desperate. As soon as Sucrow performed the ceremony and Johnis gave the order, she was dead. Johnis would make sure of that.

“Johnis, do you know what the Circle is?”

He snorted, fingered his ring. “My name is Josef.”

“Josef is bound to a Leedhan. You are Johnis. You are Johnis who forgave me. Remember that.”

He saw only a swarm of bats and blood mingling in water.

Shaeda showed her teeth.

Darsal jabbed her finger in his face. “Your mother would not tolerate you killing hundreds of our own people because she was murdered. I didn’t know her long, but I know that much!”

“You know nothing!” Johnis rose up in the saddle. “You don’t talk about her. You don’t even speak her name.”

“The Circle is your mother. It is me. You and Silvie.”

A surge of heat billowed deep in his gut and worked its way up through his chest and down his arms. “You have no business talking to me this way,” he growled. Darsal was in the way of the mission. She’d served her purpose.

Shaeda wanted to kill the albino. Here. Now. Johnis craved Darsal’s blood.

No!

“You are a doomed slave, and I am the next ruler of Middle.”

Darsal drew her horse close and put her hand on his leg. “You can defeat Sucrow without the amulet, without Shaeda. You’ve never needed magic or anything but the brain Elyon gave you.”

She’d grabbed him like that before.

That
Darsal.

He kicked, then swung his sword at her, broadside. She hit the ground and rolled sideways, limbs sprawled, groaning from her injuries. The horse squealed and barely avoided crushing her.

“Go back to your precious Scab. You’re already dead.”

Darsal struggled to rise. “Silvie, tell him! You know it’s absurd to think that siding with Sucrow or the bats is a good idea.”

“Leave her out of this,” Johnis snapped. Shaeda was going to pounce. He was going to tear Darsal to shreds.

“She’s already in it.” Darsal made it to her feet.

“It is my kisses he prefers,” Shaeda said through Johnis’s mouth. Her laughter overtook him.

“Excuse me?” Silvie snapped.

Johnis fought for control. What was she doing, telling the girls that?

But he had liked Shaeda’s kisses, hadn’t he?

Shaeda chuckled.

“She kissed you?” Darsal turned on him, completely stunned. She grabbed Silvie’s reins. “Since when have you let anyone but Silvie kiss you?”

“You’re just trying to divide us. I love Silvie, and that’s final.”

“Final as using black magic to overpower the Shataiki and destroy everything we all bled and died and sacrificed for. Is it that final, Johnis?”

He threw Silvie a look. She jumped off the horse and on top of Darsal, then pinned her, arm behind her back. Darsal wrestled free and struck Silvie broadside. She hit the ground, unconscious.

Johnis snarled.

“You’re as certain as my death that those bats are completely under your control? That they will not and cannot betray you?”

“They are bound to the medallion. I could have a throng of them kill you now, right here.”

“Tell me something, O mighty Chosen One. What makes you think that after you destroy the Circle and destroy everyone you hate, they’ll leave the Scabs alone? They’ll do what you command, Johnis, and more, just like last night. They defied the boundaries once; they’ll do it again. And you and Silvie will wind up bat food, like the rest of us.”

Shaeda poured into him. He knew he was transforming. Again. He was becoming Leedhan.

“You’re wrong.”

“I pray to Elyon I am. Remember him? Teeleh hates him. Teeleh hates you too. Tried to kill you once. Open your eyes, Johnis. You’re going to destroy what you love the most.”

She had a point, didn’t she? They were going to use Shaeda’s power to turn tables on the Leedhan, to somehow turn the bats on the Horde . . .

“The albino poisons you,”
Shaeda rebuked. The transformation completed.
“She wishes your destruction. She will destroy our true mission . . .”

“Johnis, you stubborn fool, listen to me!”

Shaeda exploded. They sprang at Darsal and slammed her against the ground. Tore at the albino’s throat. Darsal thrashed from under Johnis, rammed into the horse. She knocked his pack off. Water and food splattered across the desert sand.

“Johnis!” Darsal went into a crouch and sought a weapon. Her eyes found the horse.

Shaeda—inside Johnis—pounced on the albino. Darsal barely dodged her, rolled. Johnis caught her by the shoulder. Darsal clawed at his hand and struck him hard in the face, wrenched loose. She tore the reins from one of the bridles and snapped them like a whip.

Their blood mingled with the water, stained the desert sand.

“Shaeda,” Darsal snapped, “let him go!”

Shaeda hissed. Johnis’s lip curled.

“Kill her.”

“Kill her now and we lose Marak,” Johnis growled. He gasped for breath. Shaeda’s energy taxed him. Darsal had torn a hunk of flesh out of him.

Silvie stirred from the ground. In the end Shaeda would kill Silvie, wouldn’t she? Darsal was right. He was destroying the very thing he loved.

Did his heart really desire to kill the Circle?

Kill Silvie and Darsal?

Shaeda was not rational when she gave way to her hate. Her talons dug into him, punishing his contradiction. And now she knew her pet would never be wholly hers.

Darsal didn’t lower the leather rein serving as her whip. “Let him go,” she repeated.

Hoofbeats pounded toward them from the foothills.

Throaters. Hair on end, Johnis turned. Five of them. His blood ran cold. Why hadn’t he foreseen this? Why hadn’t Shaeda—

Talons tore into him. Leedhan fury bore down on his shoulders, almost knocked him off balance. “Shaeda, what are you—”

“Let him go!” Darsal screeched.

“I do not tolerate weakness,” Shaeda warned between Johnis’s teeth. His knees buckled.

I am not weak!

“You have not given me your heart.”

Darsal turned and met the Throaters head-on. Warryn caught her across the throat with a spear shaft and sent her flying. She hit with a disgusting thud.

“Foolish albino.”

Silvie was throwing a fit. Johnis found his sword and invoked Shaeda’s power. Nothing. The Throaters fell on Silvie and struck her hard across the skull. Johnis lunged, then hit the ground and rolled, medallion in his fist.

Shaeda!

He crossed blades with the Throater. The Leedhan hissed in his ear, all her strength, all her power pouring out of him. As she left, the full weight of everything she had sustained him through bore down on him. He had neither eaten nor slept. He’d ridden for days on end. He’d fought, he’d run, he’d—

Johnis went down, sword clattering. Desperate, groping for the medallion. A heavy boot stomped on his hand and took it from him. The Throater sneered. Someone flipped him on his belly and bound his wrists and ankles.

Shaeda wanted his heart and could not have it. Now she would let the priest have him. Johnis’s mind began to swim.

Heavy fog surrounded him, blurred his vision.

The Throaters were talking, but Johnis could barely under stand them, even as they dragged him up and slung him across the back of a horse as if he were a deer carcass.

“We’ll deal with it,” said Warryn. “Let the general handle his slave.”

twenty- four

D
arsal woke to the end of a spear shaft probing her. She groaned and rolled away from the intrusion. Where . . . ?

Eyes opening, she saw reddish-brown desert and warm blood drying on a rock. Everything came crashing back: Johnis, Shaeda, Silvie, the Throaters, Warryn . . .

She jumped into a crouch and spun.

“Easy, albino.” Cassak had dismounted and glared at her, still holding his spear. Behind him his horse stamped and shied, nervous. He spat. “I should have talked the general into executing you.”

“Talked him into it?” How dare he talk about Marak like that. Darsal raised a brow, scanned the ground, heart pounding. This wasn’t the Cassak loyal to Marak—who would spare her for his friend’s sake.

The starry-eyed serpent at his throat seemed to come alive.

“We could find out what he thinks of that.” Her blood and Johnis’s had already soaked into the dirt. The horses were gone. The Throaters, Johnis, and Silvie were all gone. Were they dead? Had Warryn taken them somewhere?

“He knows what I meant.” The captain seemed pensive, though, as if he hadn’t intended it the way it sounded after all. What was Sucrow using him for?

“I really don’t have time to argue.”

Behind Cassak the rest of the expedition party was coming, a black shroud of Shataiki in the lead. All was gray and black, riddled with beady, glowing red.

What had Warryn done to them?

Elyon’s words nibbled at the back of her mind. She felt her heart straining in two. Darsal was being spiteful, and she knew it. At the moment she wasn’t sure she cared. But she loved them, didn’t she? Even Marak’s captain.

She forced herself to soften.
Love the Horde.

“I think you do. What’s happened here?” the captain demanded. He traded his spear for his sword. Darsal kept her palms extended. She’d taken Johnis’s knife, but the Throaters must have taken it away from her, thought her dead. Why didn’t Cassak just run her through?

Because Marak wouldn’t want him to. That knowledge would work to her advantage. Part of the captain still struggled against the enchantment. Her mind raced for an answer.

“I was looking for water,” she snapped. “Is that a crime?”

Easy, Darsal.

Why should she be? This man would kill her were it not for Marak’s orders, and Marak had every intention of allowing the priest to kill all of them.

Return to the Horde and love them for me. For Johnis.

She pushed back the gentle reminder.

“There was a fight,” he said.

“The priest’s Throaters are a pack of jackals.” Darsal’s brow went up again. She crossed her arms, then remembered this captain had hated the priest at one point. She wondered how much he hated Warryn, chief of the Throaters. Maybe if she could get to the bottom of Cassak’s enchantment, she could give Marak his best friend and most trusted officer back.

She had never lied to Marak, and he was impressed by that. Impressed that he could trust her, a sworn enemy. And Cassak and Marak were made of the same cloth.

So she told the truth.

“Warryn attacked us. Sucrow’s making a power play.” She frowned. “Marak doesn’t know about it. Did you?”

Cassak tensed. He rubbed his neck. “Where are Josef and Arya?”

“Tied to a cactus, for all I know. I need to find them before Warryn kills them. Remember Warryn, the one who made you watch him torture your best friend’s family?” Her heart was in her throat
. I’m sorry, Marak. I don’t have a choice.
Darsal thrust out a hand. “Lend me a knife, in case the Throaters come back. I’ll return it.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed.

“I swear by Elyon.”
And on the books.
“And I won’t tell anyone where I got it, either.”

“General would know.”

Darsal stared at him. The man was split in two. One side showed her concern out of loyalty to Marak. The other seemed to despise everything he and Marak once held in common.

“What’s Sucrow done, Captain? Are you really going to punish your best friend for what never was? Turn your back on him to serve a man you despise? That’s what Josef ’s done. And it’s killing him.”

He hesitated. Darsal snatched his knife and ran. Cassak grabbed her collar. “Get back here, you little—”

“So you won’t get in trouble.” She punched him in the face, swung onto his horse, and galloped off.

JOHNIS BUCKLED IN PAIN. THE WORLD SEEMED TO SWIM, and everything was fuzzy. He tried to open his eyes but couldn’t see more than a blur. Tried to move, but his cold, stiff muscles wouldn’t cooperate. Sand kissed his cheek.

“Such a weakling you’ve proven, Chosen One. Such a pity . . .”

“Bloody fool,” said a familiar voice that Johnis couldn’t place.

Another kick to his already broken ribs. His head rose up against his will. A potent drink that smelled like Rhambutan and eggs slid down his throat. Bitter, hot liquid flooded his mouth.

Johnis gagged and tried to spit it up.