Solace

by Raven Dark

  “Sheriff.” He gave a nod.

  I put my back to him, and he sliced the chain on my cuffs. “Maker fuck me, you couldn’t have done that without giving me a blood bath, Sinister?”

  He just shrugged and danced a dance of death with the nearest J’nai.

  Meanwhile around me, about a hundred other things were happening at once.

  With his arms still cuffed behind him, Hawk drop-kicked and roundhoused the J’nai around him. One of the men tried to get up. Hawk rolled onto his back and kicked him in the face, then vaulted onto his feet and got another in the head with a spinning kick.

  A few feet away, Steel had snapped the chain on his cuffs and now had one of the J’nai in a chokehold.

  Pretty Boy rammed his head into the head of another guard, and the J’nai dropped. Sinister sliced Pretty Boy’s cuffs apart, and Pretty Boy grabbed a sword from another fallen J’nai. Sinister cut the chain on Hawk’s cuffs.

  “Sinister.” Hawk broke a J’nai’s neck, snapping it with his bare hands.

  Doc hurried out of the fray, Diamond and Emmy tucked behind him while he beat down anyone who came close with a fury I rarely saw from the club’s healer.

  And on top of a carriage, from where he’d fired the first shot, Reaper stood firing bolt after bolt into the crowd. J’nai dropped like flies.

  I’d just ripped a sword off one of the J’nai and started toward another when I caught sight of two more J’nai headed for Savage. Both came at him with swords.

  Fuck me.

  I ran toward him, but too late.

  While he fought both men, a third man grabbed Setora and pushed her into Damien’s arms. With Savage kept busy, Damien rushed Setora toward his carriage. My heart dropped into my gut.

  With me still more than ten feet away, Damien shoved her into the carriage, and he and two guards piled in after her.

  A roar filled my ears, and it took me a moment to realize it was mine. I raced after her, but the carriage lifted off with a whine. J’nai piled into the other two vehicles and they lifted off as well.

  “Pretty Boy!” I turned to already find him running toward the garage. I bolted after him along with the rest of the men from both crews.

  “I got this, General.” Pretty Boy sheathed the sword he was holding and made a beeline for the carriages in Lord Falnar’s garage, stepping over the dead lord when he got inside.

  Lord Falnar, a friend we’d known and trusted for years, lay dead, having bled out on the garage floor. All about the garage, our bikes had been disabled, those two J’nai having yanked out the batteries, disconnected wires, and kicked the shit out them before the fighting had started. Some were leaking fuel all over the floor.

  Damn. A biker’s ride was like a life-long pet, his best friend, his Old Lady, all wrapped into one.

  I ignored a flash of anger at what the J’nai had done—one nearly as strong as the vengeance I wanted for Lord Falnar—and stalked over to Pretty Boy who stood beside one of Falnar’s flying carriages.

  “You know how to drive one of those things, right?” I indicated the vehicle. He and Steel had stolen one from Damien when they’d taken Setora.

  “I can keep us from crashing, yeah.”

  That didn’t sound good. Besides, I hated these flying fuckers.

  “Wait, where the fuck is Matais?” I glanced around.

  “Right here, General.” Steel came into the garage, holding the lord by the scruff. “Lord Dickwad here was trying to make a run for it.”

  “Put him inside, we’re taking him with us.” I nodded to the back of the carriage.

  Steel tossed him in.

  “Do you know who I am, you pirate?” Matais screamed. “I—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Steel kicked him in the head. Matais slumped against the seat and didn’t move.

  I hopped into the front of the vehicle with Pretty Boy, while Steel and the other men from both crews got into other carriages. How the Brothers of Brimstone had known we needed help, I had no idea, but thank the damn Maker they were here.

  “Pretty Boy, I don’t suppose these things come with some way to force another one to land?” I said, shutting the passenger side door.

  “Fuck if I know. But these things look old as grit. I hope they still run.” Pretty Boy turned the carriage on and it wobbled alarmingly as it lifted off the ground.

  I slammed the door panel with my palm to steady myself. “Well, figure it out. If Vale gets her to his compound, we’ll have a hundred J’nai to deal with instead of ten. We’ll never get her out.”

  “We’ll have to find another way to bring Damien’s carriage down safely,” Pretty Boy said.

  “I’ll do it.” Hawk jumped in the back seat so suddenly I startled. He’d taken his bow from his bike, I’d guessed, because it was in his hand now. He must’ve picked up his swords too, because both were sheathed on his back.

  Pretty Boy pushed the steering mechanism forward and the carriage shot out of the garage, slamming Hawk and me backward into our seats.

  “Pretty Boy, I thought you said you knew how to drive this thing!” I roared.

  “I said I knew how to do it without crashing us.” He threw a look at me, then back at Hawk. “Both of you better hold onto something.”

  We tore after Damien’s carriage at a breakneck speed. I looked back at Hawk.

  The Captain of the Guard had found ropes from somewhere and was tying Matais’ hands and feet. The lord had a large bruise on his head where Steel had kicked him.

  Matais opened his eyes groggily and tried to jerk away from Hawk. “What do you think you’re do—”

  Without a word, Hawk threw his elbow into the lord’s nose. Matais silenced and flopped onto the seat.

  “Hawk, you wanna tell me how you plan on shooting that carriage down without killing Setora in the process?”

  “Haven’t figured that out yet,” Hawk rumbled, still calm as glass as he tightened the ropes on Matais’ wrists. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of her, General.”

  My head spun with a thousand ways this could go wrong, but Hawk was as good a marksman as Reaper. I trusted him.

  When it came to Pretty Boy and this carriage, on the other hand…

  The vehicle pitched and I grabbed the door again. “Pretty Boy, can’t you keep this thing straight?”

  “Have you ever heard of the expression ‘back seat driver’, General?” he growled.

  “I’m in the front seat.”

  Hawk snorted.

  In minutes, we caught up with Damien’s gold-paneled carriage. Lights flooded from the backs and front of both carriages, solar-powered light that illuminated the night much more than the early morning moon. The J’nai driving the carriage sped up, and Pretty Boy accelerated.

  “Hawk? What’s the plan?” he demanded, glancing back at him.

  “Get alongside,” Hawk said.

  Pretty Boy pulled our carriage forward until it flew parallel with Damien’s. Tinted windows made it impossible to see Damien or Setora inside, but the front passenger’s side window was open, thank fuck.

  Pretty Boy pulled forward enough to give Hawk an angle, and the Captain of the Guard drew his arrow’s fletching to his ear, aiming at the driver.

  The carriage beside us dove down, to within ten feet of the ground.

  “Down. Now,” Hawk ordered.

  Pretty Boy dropped us beside the other vehicle. Hawk fired. Damien’s carriage dropped back behind us fast, and the arrow went wide.

  “You missed!” Pretty Boy shouted.

  “I can see that, thanks.”

  Behind us, Damien’s carriage lifted up, out of sight.

  “Don’t you have some mystical power that makes your aim never miss?” Pretty Boy yelled at him.

  “Hawk,” I drawled.

  “Drive up.” Hawk’s voice was a quiet deadly order directed at Pretty Boy.

  Our carriage shot up. It wobbled and overshot, but then lowered back down. I looked out the window at the ground far below.
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br />   “Hawk,” I snapped. “You hit the driver now and you’ll kill her! We’re a hundred feet up!”

  “I’m not going to shoot him.” He leaned forward in the seat and unsheathed both of his blades from the scabbards on his back, then handed them to us over the seats. “Hold these.”

  I grabbed both swords. “What the fuck are you going to do?”

  “Whatever I have to.” He tossed his bow on the seat between us. Then he climbed over Matais’ prone form, pushed him aside, and leaned out of the window, looking at the other carriage.

  The vehicle was alongside us again, the driver trying to get ahead of us.

  “Go up,” Hawk said. “Get above it. Ten feet.”

  “What?” Pretty Boy fired a look at him. “Why?”

  “Just do it.” Perfectly calm.

  Pretty Boy rumbled in his throat but lifted the carriage upward.

  “Get closer.” Hawk was leaning out of the window, watching the other carriage under us.

  Our carriage jolted, moving to the left.

  “A little closer, Pretty Boy. A little…stop.”

  Hawk kicked open his door.

  “Fuck, Hawk no!” I reached for him.

  He leaped out of the carriage and into the night.

  Chapter 3

  A Dance with Death

  There is a saying old Yantu warriors tell initiates when they first join the order. My tai dan said it to me within five minutes of entering the temple’s inner sanctum when I was sixteen.

  Death is the companion of all Yantu. If one doesn’t wish to be bound to Death, he will lie beside him at the first strike of a blade.

  It was a long time before I understood what the words meant, that they weren’t merely a phrase meant to weed out the weak initiates. But willingness to court death had never been so much of a necessity in the order as it had since returning to the Legion after five years of training.

  As I dropped toward Damien Vale’s carriage, it occurred to me that perhaps I’d unknowingly taken another oath to become one with death when I’d let Setora into my life. Every new day with her had brought dangers we’d never seen in the Grotto. Peril seemed to follow her like a hungry wolf, and yet, here and now, I knew I’d fight with that wolf for her every day if that’s what it took to keep her safe.

  The whole drop down, I held the image of the steel-walled Fortress around my mind. A place where emotions died like weeds in a desert. I was steel. I was a vessel, without feeling. I was Death.

  I landed on the roof of the carriage with a thud, in a crouch. The carriage pitched wildly, the driver trying to throw me off. Only years of training in balance kept me from falling over the side.

  I glanced down. There was a single four-foot wide hatch in the roof with a steel door covering it.

  Well, fuck.

  I dropped into a sitting position and thumped on the hatch with my boot. Someone would have to open it to throw me off.

  The cover slammed aside. As soon as the inside of the dimly lit carriage was open, Setora’s head jerked up in surprise from the back seat. Damien caged her against him.

  I threw my boot into the face of the J’nai glaring up at me from beside Damien. My heel hit the bridge of his nose with a satisfying, lethal crunch. He slumped. I shoved him aside and slid down, then threw my legs around the driver in the front seat and squeezed.

  I knew there was no move that would allow me to maintain the upper hand, but I was in a far better position to protect Setora in here than I was outside the carriage.

  The driver gurgled. There was a crack of bone, then he slumped in my grip and went slack. I shoved him aside and slid into the driver’s seat.

  In the narrow rear-view mirror, I saw Damien push Setora off him, and with a hand on her throat, he leaned over the seat, putting a knife to my neck.

  “Master!” Setora cried out.

  The worry in her voice made my heart swell, but I barely felt it, a flicker of awareness outside my Fortress walls.

  “What made you think your breaking in here wouldn’t get her killed, warrior?” Damien hissed.

  “If you kill her, nothing will stop me from taking your life, Captain Vale.”

  “But I have you now, don’t I?” He pressed the knife harder to my neck. I hardly felt the sting. “Drive.”

  Having expected this, I put my hands on the wheel and drove the carriage westward, toward a large forest. Now, how to get the thing on the ground?

  “What brave men your pirates are, Little Dove.” In the rear-view, he glanced at her. “Or are they foolish?”

  “Damien, don’t hurt him. I won’t—”

  He took the knife from my neck and grabbed her chin. “Master, slave. You only have one master. Me.”

  Hatred for him spiked in me, but I walled my mind in the Fortress. As long as he was angry and keyed up while I remained calm, I had an advantage.

  While he was focused on Setora, I scanned the area for a place to land. A few miles from Lord Falnar’s estate, a dilapidated castle stood in a clearing. Its high-walled courtyard offered plenty of room to touch down.

  I sent the carriage into a nosedive.

  Setora let out a startled squeal, and Damien unleashed a string of curses. I pulled the carriage upright before it slammed into the cobblestones, landing in the middle of the courtyard. It barely touched down before I grabbed the crossbow off the J’nai lying in the seat beside me. I pointed the already loaded weapon at Damien’s head.

  “Freeze.”

  Halfway out of the carriage with Setora clutched to him, Damien froze.

  “Release her.”

  “You won’t get away, Yantu. There are more of my J’nai in those other two carriages. You and your pirate brothers won’t get—”

  “Now!” I barked.

  Damien released her and raised his hands slowly. “What will you do now, Hawk?”

  I knew why he was asking. The humming of other carriages drew close, along with the one Pretty Boy and Sheriff had been in, that one lowering beside us. Another with Doc, Diamond, and Emmy landed behind it.

  Sheriff and Pretty Boy were getting out, and I caught their eye, shaking my head at them. They stayed back. Doc stayed in his carriage, guarding the women.

  “Setora,” I commanded.

  She looked at me. Her face was ashen, her terrified gaze flicking toward Damien.

  “Come here, Kitten.” While keeping the crossbow trained on Damien, I reached into the carriage, then popped open the compartment beneath the console. I ripped the wires out, rendering the vehicle inoperable. No need to give Damien a way to escape.

  Setora remained frozen in place, as if afraid to move and risk her life or mine.

  “Don’t be afraid of him, come to me.”

  But Setora didn’t get the chance to obey.

  The J’nai’s carriages landed and the men swarmed Sheriff and Pretty Boy, engaging them in a second battle of fists, swords, and bolts. One J’nai drew within distance and shot at me.

  I turned and caught the bolt in my fist. Unfortunately, that meant I had to take my eyes off of Damien. It was only for a second, but it was enough.

  “Too slow, Hawk.” Damien was already racing with Setora toward the doors to the main building, four of his J’nai in tow.

  Damien disappeared inside the castle with Setora and his men. I raced after them, along with Sheriff and Pretty Boy. Men—Legion and Brimstone both—shouted amid the clash of swords and the thwacks of fists.

  Two J’nai came at me, swords swinging, forcing me to roll away from the castle doors and into a two-on-one battle.

  A battle that took me further away from the woman I was ready to die for.

  When I turned to block a swing from one of the J’nai, I caught sight of Steel finishing off another a few feet away.

  “Steel!” I yelled.

  But he’d already punched the J’nai out and raced toward the entrance, after our woman.

  Wings of the Maker, I prayed we’d somehow get her back safe.

>   This dance with Death was far from over.

  Chapter 4

  Busting Them Up

  The moment I saw my Setora disappear into that piece of shit castle, my world rocked.

  Fifteen years ago, I’d lost my family in the mudslide Mount Dire had shaken loose. My mother and brother had died, drowning in its path. Since then, over the years I’d spent pummeling the life out of people, drugged up with Staminine and driven half-mad with the bloodlust it created, I’d refused to let anyone close. Except for my Brothers who’d brought me back from the brink, no one could get past the wall of steel that surrounded my heart. Especially not anyone with a pussy.

  Then, thanks to Pretty Boy, Setora had practically fallen into my lap. The little Violet, with her unbreakable sweetness and perfect smile, had somehow gone from being just another slave with a gorgeous ass, to a woman who could bring me to my knees with a single word.

  Master.

  Now as that fuckhead Damien dragged her away, it felt like he was taking away more than my slave. He was taking away the woman I would make my wife, even if I had to chain her to me for life to do it. He was stealing a part of my soul.

  I took one desperate look around me at the others, checking my friends’ and Brothers’ positions.

  Everyone was occupied, fighting J’nai, except Sheriff. One of Hawk’s swords in hand, his face and his blade covered in blood, he raced after me toward the entrance, swinging at the J’nai who came at him.

  “Go, Steel!” he roared. “Get her!”

  But I was already tearing across the darkened, crumbling Great Hall. The fight from outside started spilling inside; I could hear men from both sides shouting and fighting, voices echoing in the huge room.

  When I was halfway across the room, I heard Setora scream for help and Damien snarl something at her. The voices drifted from what sounded like a stairwell across the room, beyond a large wooden door.

  “Petal!” I tore after her for the door. Fuck, it was locked. I threw my shoulder into it.

  The door thudded but didn’t budge.

  “Steel, Master, help!”

  I threw myself at the door again.