Hunted Warrior (21 page)

Mal couldn't truly feel what she believed, and he might never be able to trust her, but that moment erased common sense. He petted her bare upper arms. She was shivering, and so was he. Kneeling before him like the foundling she was, seemingly fragile, she was also heartbreaking and enticingly wild. How was she capable of both, so completely blended into one sensual woman? He needed to be rid of her before his infatuation wrecked all sense of perspective, but he couldn't take that risk.

He didn't want to.

Destined.

“Fuck that,” he muttered.

“What did I say?”

He glanced back over his shoulder. “Forget it. We should go.”

Avyi eyed the bow as if it were a scorpion readying its lethal tail. “I can't.”

“You don't have to. I'll carry it.” He nodded back up the narrow tunnel where they'd crawled down into the belly of the crypt.

She let two fingertips hover within inches of the bow's upper nock, where time had impossibly left a string intact. What was it made of? It appeared no more extraordinary than hemp. But Avyi didn't touch it. She pulled her hand back and cradled it in the other. “One step closer. The power of the arrows was more diffused. This is becoming more concentrated with every new event. Each new discovery.”

Unable to help himself, Mal touched his thumb to her chin. A spark flicked between their skin even before they touched. “Each discovery? Or just the ones you believe will take you to Cadmin?”

She took his hand in hers and watched the
pop, pop, pop
of energy as each finger aligned. “I don't know anymore. Is this . . . Mal, is this normal for you? This light and passion?”

“No. Not with anyone.” He kissed her forehead, then slung the bow over his shoulder. “Let's go. I'm tired of feeling like we'll die buried alive.”

They climbed out the way they came. Rocks pitted his palms, and the stench of old, decayed things was becoming a mold in his nose. As much as he'd been carried away by their desperate desires, he wanted to start clean with Avyi. He wanted a soft bed and her body in full light, not grasping for her in the belly of the earth.

He forced unspent desires to the back of his mind. There would be time.

Why did he believe that? Because he wanted to?

The bow slipped and hit the floor. “Wouldn't that cap off our little expedition? To find this thing after countless years and have the Giva bust it.”

Laughter with an edge of mania colored Avyi's reply. “You could always convince the Council it was a sacrilegious item that needed to be destroyed.”

“Do you think they'd believe me?”

“With that temper of yours, you could convince them or kill them.”

Mal's fingertips turned to ice. She couldn't have known how close that comment cut him to the bone.

Voices brought him to full alert. “Shh.”

Rather than find a group of tourists, they glimpsed workmen. They were busy setting up ladders to fix the lights Mal had destroyed. He whispered in Avyi's ear, “Grab the pack. And close your eyes.”

Quietly, he rubbed his hands on his jeans while Avyi did the same against her cargos. It was a start. He gathered that static and added it to the swish and pull of the workmen's uniforms, the strikes of hammers, the swing of tool belts. Energy built and magnified in his body. When the men finally threw a switch to restore power, Mal struck. The light he emitted was bright enough to temporarily blind any human. He reached back for her hand. She already held the pack.

They needed no words as they hopped the barrier and ran past the men who scratched at their eyes and cursed in the Florentine dialect.

He ushered Avyi up the stairs leading out of the crypt. She darted away from him, pushing through a group of tourists who had reassembled after the alarms. Mal followed her up to the main floor of the cathedral, half convinced he'd never see her again. Had he been a means to an end, nothing more? Already she was lost in the crowd. The crypts remained barred off. Mal raced past two guards who stood at the top of the stairwell.

At least he'd thought they were guards.

They were from Clan . . . Garnis?

And they pursued.

Just what he needed. Two members of the near-mythical Lost, with their incredible speed and reflexes, chased him as he hunted a sexy, psychotic woman who believed she could see the future.

He didn't want to hurt anyone. He'd done enough of that in years past. Yet if these Garnis were another part of the plot against him . . . Sometimes a Giva was given no choice.

His own reflexes kicked up a dozen notches. He swerved past what had to be hundreds of people. Each of their expressions turned from annoyance to shock to fear as he pushed through the throng. Screams followed in his wake as the Garnis warriors did more than shove a few bodies aside. They were armed with maces, heavy six-foot chains tipped with spiked iron balls. When wielded with all their reputed force, the Garnis could use their clans' traditional weapon to sever a human in half.

Mal had to get clear, if not just for his sake, but for the countless innocents who might die because of his mere presence. He vaulted over a crying child and charged for the immense bronze doors at a full run. The Garnis were already there. They were so Dragon-damned fast. They both snaked out with the maces. Mal dove into a roll, lucky to escape being trapped by both. His heart thundered.

He burst into full sunlight and began working, working, working his gift as quickly as he could. A single blink later, one of the Garnis stood before him. The man was massive, hewn of muscle, and with hair so black as to rival Avyi's. They didn't have time to square off. The Garnis was too fast. He caught Mal around the ankles with the mace. Nothing stopped his fall to the ground. He smacked the back of his head on the asphalt. He barely kept hold of the bow.

The other warrior closed in at what seemed like quadruple speed, aiming to land on Mal's face. But he hadn't spent four years on a mountain for nothing. Throughout the fight, even having the wind knocked out of him, he'd been absorbing the strength of the sun—those blessed rays of pure energy.

A crack of lightning struck out of a clear blue sky. The man looming above his head bellowed as the bolt shot down from his scalp and through his feet. He collapsed onto the ground, unconscious and steaming.

“Mal!”

He looked up in time to see Avyi jump onto the second warrior's back in that squatting gargoyle pose. She battered him with her knuckles three times before the big man flung her off like a rag doll. Mal had just enough time to free his ankles from the mace. He snatched up the base of the chain, then used the remaining force pulsing through his body to turn the weapon into an electrical conduit. The Garnis who held it jolted and jerked as if he'd grabbed hold of a live wire. In truth, he had. Mal had created one just for his pursuer.

With both men temporarily dispatched, he knew he had mere moments to find Avyi and flee. One lucky escape did not promise a second. And there was no telling how many others might be in the area.

Avyi wasn't where he had seen her tossed into the crowd. He shouted her name, but there was too much panic and confusion to hear a possible reply, only human screams and the sounds of police alarms.

To Mal's trained eyes, she should've stood out among so many humans dressed for a casual day of sightseeing. What if she had passed out? Or was being trampled by so many scrambling feet?

Avyi would be terrified. She'd be ready to hide.

She
would
be hiding. If she wasn't too badly wounded. His heart lurched.

Mal dodged a group of tourists led by a female docent. He wove left and right, doubling back through an alley, until the shouts from the Duomo weren't so piercing.

Mind racing, he returned to the idea of Avyi hiding. She wouldn't run forever—
couldn't
have if her fall was too hard. As casually as he could manage, Mal returned to the scene of the attack. The Garnis were gone, which did his peace of mind absolutely no favors. He searched. He looked, started again, kept searching. The massive eight-sided dome loomed over him. The angle of the sun meant he stood in shadow.

There.

Across the piazza.

Avyi crouched against a low brick wall. Passersby obscured her face every other second. She held the pack's straps so tightly that her knuckles were bone white.

She flicked her gaze from him to the Duomo . . . to him again.

Mal shuddered as if an Arctic winter had settled over Tuscany. He looked up at the massive dome and found himself standing in the middle of a soothsayer's prophecy.

*  *  *

Avyi tipped her head to the east. Mal nodded.

In concert, they slipped between bodies and strollers and sun umbrellas, through what felt like the entire population of Europe shoved into a single piazza. Avyi gathered her breath, tried to stay calm. These weren't rustic villagers in search of witches. They were educated human beings with an eye for culture, history, and art. At least that's what she told herself as she zigzagged between families and a cluster of senior citizens wearing matching hunter-green jackets emblazoned with the words
The Globe Trotters
.

She found it in her heart to hope they were having fun traveling the world. She would've traded places with any one of them.

But they'd also just witnessed a fight that could have been illustrated on ancient parchment. Dragon Kings fighting in the heart of Florence.

At the far end of a narrow alley, she found Malnefoley rubbing a hand over his hair. In unison they set a quick pace through narrow side streets and wide, crowded piazze. The shift from protected to exposed did crazy things to Avyi's self-control.

“Where did they go? The Garnis?”

“I didn't see. I was too busy scrambling to get free. Are you okay?”

“My ankles are probably hamburger. You?” His roughened voice was etched with concern.

“Bruised. I was more scared of the trampling feet than the Garnis.”

“Different perspective,” he said with a grin. “Those Garnis were Dragon-damned terrifying.”

At least his self-deprecating smile leavened her fear a little. The rest of her concentration was shattered by Mal's long strides and the bow he wore across his back. The bow talked to her now. It sang and screamed and hummed. What she'd been forced to absorb all at once was beginning to align into images and more certain predictions.

And the Duomo . . .

No matter her injuries and fear, she had been hit with the full force of seeing her prediction come true. There was no denying the shock when the mind-blowing accuracy of her gift was reinforced. She swallowed hard, remembering how magnificent Mal had appeared, shadowed by the great dome, with his body fresh from battle, charged up like a thunderstorm, and that golden hair catching streams of sunlight. He was literally a dream come true.

Over the past few days, he'd nearly made her doubt the validity of her gift, but he'd become all the confirmation she would ever need.

They stopped in the doorway of an apartment, where a locked gate harbored a garden for its residents. Another locked door served as the building's main entrance. It was a place to breathe and to let Mal rest his injured ankles. Blood seeped through the denim of his pants.

“You win again.” His voice was grim. “Satisfied? Me and the dome, just like you said.”

His mouth was tight, his expression as powerful as his thundercloud gift.

She eyed him carefully. “Did you make choices?”

“Yes.”

“Did they
feel
like your choices as you made them?”

“Yes,” he said, more angrily.

“You only behaved the way you meant to at the time. It didn't feel contrary, like some marionette pulling strings. It was just you, until you and my vision became one.”

“
No
. This is madness. Life doesn't work that way. You can't simply . . . You can't . . .”

“You're were holding me. We made love. Was that a bad thing?”

He grabbed her shoulders and pushed her into the corner between the brick building and the iron gate. He wedged her there. Kissed her there. His hands were aggressive, his intent obvious as he parted her lips with a forceful thrust of his tongue. Avyi only stayed his aggression to adjust the position of the pack across her shoulder, then dove into his embrace.

“We're caught in this together,” she said, breathless, taking every kiss he pressed against her mouth, her throat. “I don't know where else to be but with you.”

“I'm here by choice.” His insistence was a growl that trembled down her chest and settled behind her sternum. The rhythm of her heart skipped.

“Even better.”

She only knew the feel of his mouth as he took and took, offering no kindness as his lips folded over hers. He caught her hair at the crown, then angled her head to find better access to her neck. He sucked and licked. He nipped and kissed. His primal noises, all possession and need, sent shocks of greedy heat through her body and pooled low, lower in her belly. She ached. There was nothing to compare to being physically worshiped by Malnefoley of Tigony.

She spiked her hands into his hair, so that they wrestled for dominance in determining who kissed what, where, how hard. There was no question of softness. What they'd already done in the heat of passion had not drained the day of its adrenaline.

“I want you,” he rasped.

“You're a fool if that's the only reason you're staying with me.”

“I'm a damn fool no matter what I do.”

She gave his hair a hard shake. “So you might as well sleep with me? Keep making mistakes with the girl you can forget once all this is over? I won't do this again if it's your means of revenge for having been shown a world you don't want to see.”

“You're being ridiculous.” He tried to kiss her again, but she flattened her palm between their mouths and shoved him away. His hold on her hip tightened almost painfully.