Hunted Warrior

by Lindsey Piper

  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 wa
s 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.

  “Do you know what holding this bow reveals to me?”

  “Magical fairies, crypt keepers, and a few Minotaur.”

  Avyi stood to her full height. Mal blinked, reminding her how rarely she permitted her body to unclench from its crouched, defensive position. “No, my dear, deluded Giva,” she said, never looking away. “I saw through Cadmin’s eyes the person responsible for the attempt on your life. She was aiming her arrow into the crowd, not at the Sath and Tigony Cage warriors charging at her in battle. At someone in the crowd. How she knew … I don’t know. Dr. Aster was there, too, enjoying the bloodshed.” Again she swallowed back an unexpected flood of emotion. The killer’s features were obscured, as were Cadmin’s. Avyi only knew what it was like to see the world through her eyes. “Your would-be assassin will be at the Grievance. So will a cache of captured rebels who will be slaughtered.”

  “The rebels? The ones who helped bring down Asters’ labs?”

  “Among them, yes.”

  “Hark and Silence? Leto and Nynn?”

  “I don’t know who exactly. But those who gather will die.”

  “Yet how and when and why—no clue. No picture of who will try to kill me. No reason why the rebels will be there.” He glared. Frustration shimmered off him in powerful waves Avyi could physically feel. He grabbed the wrought-iron gate with both hands and sent shock waves of electricity up to the sky. Light radiated out from spearlike points at the tops of each bar. “You don’t know a Dragon-damned thing.”

  “You speak of the Dragon, Giva. Be careful what you say.” She lifted her chin. “Because there at the Grievance, I saw a dragon, too.”

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Mal gripped the iron gate and squeezed until pain radiated up his arm in a slow burn. “A dragon.”

  “Yes.”

  “At the Grievance.”

  “Four days from now.”

  Avyi glanced away, toward where water flowed beneath a grate at the side of the cobblestone street. No traffic here. Few people. A residential area where human beings left for work in the morning and returned home at night. Ordinary lives. They would never have any idea that he stood there trying not to demolish the whole neighborhood in a flash of frustration.

  Giva. He was the fucking Honorable Giva.

  And it didn’t matter what he did. Never had? Choices that weren’t choices at all.

  “I saw its shadow. The shape of wings and limbs—maybe a tail, a head. But it was a dragon and it was furious. Flames everywhere.”

  “There aren’t dragons, Avyi. Even if you buy into every myth and ancient tradition about the Great Dragon and the Chasm, you can’t believe a random dragon will fly over the next Grievance. It’s insane. Time’s up. Adventure over. You need to come with me, back to Tigony lands.”

  He grabbed her arms. She tried to fight, with her vicious weapons and her wildcat determination, but he was stronger and more resolved. A brief shock of electricity to her arms flared her eyelids wide, so wide that he could see the whites around bright green-gold irises.

  So damn beautiful.

  Why her?

  Why some half-crazed woman who spoke about the future and meant it? A woman who might be so irreparably damaged by her years with Dr. Aster that every word she’d uttered to Mal was an unconscious falsehood—or an outright lie. She’d taken whatever scant certainty he possessed and pounded it beneath her killer boots.

  “I’m not going back to your prison,” she said viciously. “I will not be held captive and interrogated. I will not be doubted when so much is at stake.” She stared at him with murderous accusations tinting her eyes nearly black. “I’m free now. Do you really believe you could get me back to Greece, let alone keep me there? You couldn’t keep me there before, and you sure as hell won’t keep me now.”

  He realized how tightly he held her arms, and how many shocks rocketed between them. When he held Avyi, he wasn’t immune to his own twisted, nerve-jolting power. It hurt. It was unnerving. But it also fueled the dangerous impulses that charged his body—not his gift, but his body. He’d been kissing Avyi. Now he was brawling. They twined together in a heady cocktail.

  “You’ll do exactly what I want,” he growled.


  Avyi stilled. She touched his cheek, then lifted on her toes to kiss the corner of his lips. “Let me go. You know what I believe will happen. Do you really think your threats and bluster do a thing to dent my confidence?”

  He exhaled heavily. “No.”

  “You’ve seen how this works, even if you turn away from what I’ve lived with my entire life. After all that, do you finally believe me? Please, Malnefoley … I need you to believe me.”

  Holding her waist, he rested his forehead against hers. It took more strength than he would’ve imagined to admit what had been building in him for days. But denying it now would be pure stubbornness in light of all that had happened. Turning away from the unknown wouldn’t do anything to dissipate the gathering storm. If there was any chance that what Avyi predicted would come true, he needed to act.

  “Yes,” he said in a whisper. “I believe you.”

  She let out a cry and flung her arms around his neck. “Thank you. Oh, Mal, thank you.”

  He held her as she shuddered and shook. “What is this?”

  “I’ve never …” She looked up into his eyes. “Do you know what that feels like? Maybe not. Maybe you can’t know what this feels like. I never would’ve doubted myself for a moment had I known this day would come.”

  Mal was flooded with emotion he didn’t know how to process. His only certainty was that Avyi clung to him with all of her considerable strength. She wasn’t crying, but her body still trembled. His belief meant that much to her. In truth … it meant that much to him, too. A weight lifted from him as he held her petite body. When was the last time he had believed, truly believed, in another person?

  “Come on,” he said against her hair. “Let’s get out of sight.”

  He used a quick zap of electricity to open the gate’s lock, then ushered her inside. The private garden was even quieter and more secluded than their hiding place on the quiet residential street. Avyi angled her chin toward the vibrant sun of late afternoon. Summer in Italy. It wouldn’t be dark for hours.

  Once inside, he scrubbed his eyes with his palms, then ran his hands through his hair.