Savage Legacy

by Lora Leigh

  SAVAGE LEGACY

  An Ellora’s Cave Publication, September 2004

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.

  1337 Commerce Drive, #13

  Stow, OH 44224

  ISBN MS Reader (LIT) ISBN # 1-4199-0036-6

  Other available formats (no ISBNs are assigned):

  Adobe (PDF), Rocketbook (RB), Mobipocket (PRC) & HTML

  SAVAGE LEGACY © 2004 LORA LEIGH

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without permission.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. They are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Edited by Sue-Ellen Gower.

  Cover art by Syneca.

  Savage Legacy

  Lora Leigh

  Dedicated to Lady Gloria, for all you’ve done.

  But most especially for all your friendship and support.

  Thank You!

  For Suz, for all your help when it looked like I would never figure the plot out.

  To those very special readers who go above and beyond the call of duty.

  And to Roxie! For the late night readings and for putting up with me. You’re the best!

  To all of you, you have my deepest thanks.

  Prologue

  “His legend will be retold as long as the Earth and its protective mother have breath to sustain life…” Her grandmother’s voice entered her dreams and Ariel felt a small smile cross her lips. She had missed these dreams in the past years. Her grandmother had meant everything to her for the short time she had known her.

  Laken Lamont had been half-French, with liquid dark eyes and long black hair. A delicate, fragile woman who looked like the pictures Ariel had of her mother. She had come to her during a time when Ariel knew, if it hadn’t been for her grandmother’s steadying influence, that she would have lost her mind.

  “He is that Savage, but don’t let his name fool you,” she advised her granddaughter. “He is merciless with his enemies, but he is patience and love itself for the one who holds his heart.”

  “Who holds his heart, Grandmama?” she asked, staring up at the frail old woman as she held her snugly on her lap.

  “The Mistress of the Wind holds his heart, Ariel.” She had touched the crystal she had placed around Ariel’s neck that first week she had lived in the sterile home Ariel’s father had provided for them. “The Mistress of the Wind holds his soul. In times of fear or of need, she only has to call out to him, to allow the crystal and the power that connects them, to do as it was meant to.”

  “Am I the Mistress, Grandmama?” Ariel remembered how awed she had been. She carried the stone, she had thought. She would be the one to possess the Savage’s heart.

  “I don’t know, Ariel.” Sadness flickered in the old woman’s eyes. “The Mistress will know great danger. She will know great pain before her warrior arrives. She will have to be strong enough to look past her fears and past the horrors she will see to accept her warrior.”

  “Tell me the story again, Grandmama.” She had laid her head at her grandmother’s breast, closing her eyes, wishing she had a warrior to protect her from the bleak darkness her father often confined her to. “Tell me about him again.”

  “There is a legend near forgotten by time, and hazy to even the oldest memory. A legend that has never been told by those who wield the pen, but lives in the hearts and souls of those who wield the sword. The Legend of the Savage Warrior.

  “When the world was young, and man fought against man in battles of darkness, in forests heavy with magic and the power of the Earth, he rose as one of four. A warrior of strength and justice, one who held the power of the gods. He was as tall as the oak, as mighty as the mountain, and as strong as truth itself.

  “To this warrior, whose heart and soul was most pure, the Earth Mother gifted to him, her most precious daughter. One scarred by betrayal, but one who knew the need for love, for the gentleness of this non-gentle warrior. And they were bound. During the darkest times of history, they clung to one another, each stronger than before, fighting the battle against an unspeakable, dark evil.

  “But evil will have its due. And before Mother Earth could claim victory for her children, a horrible price was demanded by Fate and Destiny for the machinations of bringing together the son of the gods and a daughter of the Earth. So it was declared. As long as the Wind Mistress kept her eyes closed to the power, her ears dead to the Earth and her heart cold from her trials, so then would the Savage roam. Lost, unaided but by his brothers, forever seeking what only the wind shall know. The true heart of the Mistress where his heart was bestowed.

  “But the day will come…” her voice had lowered with a mystic foreboding sound “…when the Wind Mistress shall rise once again. With the strength of the power of the Wind Crystal, her will strong, her heart whole and unscarred by the touch of evil. She will rise, and she will know the truth, the power and the heart laid bare for her to see. But first, she must accept that which she fears the most. She must know that which she has denied the strongest.

  “Until then, she will remember, only in her dreams. She will seek in darkness, and fight without strength and she will know little but the faintest breeze to whisper his name, rather than the full force of the wind which should carry her devotion back to him.

  “Beware Mistress, for in his hands does your fate rest. Beware daughter of the Earth, for there are deceptions, darkness and pain. Seek and ye shall find. Deny and ye shall die…”

  The winds rose around her then. Howling, screaming in fury and rage as her grandmother’s bedroom door opened and her father stood framed in the doorway. She had shuddered in fear. He was angry…again.

  “Ariel, I need to talk to you.” His voice had been rough, filled with his rage. “Now.”

  And she knew what was coming. She would have pleaded with him not to lock her up again, but then her grandmother would know. And if she knew, then Ariel feared her father would make good on his promise to have the old woman locked away, confined forever in the darkness.

  So she left the peace of her grandmother’s arms, followed her father from the room, down the winding stairs and to the basement where he pushed her into the foul-smelling closet and locked the door.

  “That will teach you to obey me, Ariel. You will always obey me or you will pay…”

  Seconds later he was gone, leaving her in the black nothingness with only her screams to keep her company.

  “The Wind Mistress can call her warrior. No sound is ever gone, Ariel…” Her grandmother’s words had wrapped around her. “They are there on the breeze. For you to hear, for him to know. Call him, and he will always aid you…”

  And she had screamed out his name. Cried for him until in her fury and her terror, a sudden violet light had lit the way, and the faintest breeze had carried his voice to her… Gentle. Comforting. And she had feared then that she was as crazy as her father had claimed… Just like her mother…

  Chapter One

  The winds howled. They screamed in fury, bending trees, stripping the supple branches of leaves and laying young saplings to the ground. Nature in all her glory was ripping through the land, screaming out its rage.

  Clouds boiled into a tempest overhead, swirling in myriad shades of black and gray as the forces of nature converged to spill their anger upon the forest below. Lightning flared in brilliant arcs, rain slashed at the ground below, joining the wrathful violence as it pounded the land.

  Like demons swirling from hell, the screaming winds and spearing lightning joined with the clash of thunder to rock the mountain with a force that only nature could produce.

  Beneath the violently swaying t
rees, amid the flying bramble and leaves, Ariel St. James moved desperately through the storm. She screamed out in furious fear as a thick limb crashed to the ground behind her, and cursed roughly as she stumbled through the gathering winds, feeling it push at her back, forcing her deeper into the surrounding forests.

  She was careful to stay close to the trees, within the shadows, as lightning whipped in the sky overhead. She knew she was being hunted. They had been at the house when she returned that evening, more of them than she could have fought, waiting to catch her unaware.

  But she had smelled them. On the softest breeze, she had smelled the stench of death and evil. She would have gotten back in the car. Would have sped back the way she had come, but the wind and the warmth of the crystal her grandmother had bequeathed her had urged her along a different path.

  This time, unlike when she had been kidnapped, she heeded the strange crystal at her breast and moved quickly into the forest that surrounded her home. She wouldn’t be caught as she had been before, undefended, unaware.

  She shivered beneath the onslaught of the rain. Water saturated her short hair, plastered her linen shirt and jeans to her body and ran in rivulets down her face. But between her breasts, heat radiated through her, dispelling the chill of the storm and the fear as she made her way carefully through the forest.

  All she had to defend herself was the sword she had been carrying into the house, and the matching dagger now tucked into her jeans at the small of her back. Weapons she had taken from the safe at her shop before leaving, filled with an unexplained need to take the priceless artifacts home with her.

  She had never used the weapon she held vigilantly in front of her, yet it felt comfortable in her hands, the hilt fitting into her palm as though it had been created for her alone. It was heavy, but there was no strain to carry it, no hardship to keep it raised in front of her as she ducked beneath slashing limbs and continued the dangerous trek through the foothills.

  They were behind her; she could smell them. The wind itself carried the scent of diseased minds and blood-soaked hands. She could feel the death that surrounded her trackers, feel their hatred and their intention to see her dead.

  She would not die. She hadn’t died when Jonar had kidnapped her months before and she would be damned if she would let them kill her now. He might be the big bad-ass alien terrorist as Alyx Dragon had mockingly called him, but she wasn’t going to let him kill her without a fight.

  The chilling nightmares she had of the brutal beatings she had endured while locked in his Middle Eastern fortress were enough to assure her that he was dangerous. That he was determined. But so was she, determined to live if nothing else.

  Breathing roughly, she paused beside a thick tree trunk, drawing in a calming breath and watching the shadows that twisted around her. She was heading deeper into the forested hills, further away from any added protection that civilization would have afforded.

  Overhead, thunder clashed with such force it shook the land below and dragged a choked whimper from her terror-closed throat. The storm raged with the same desperation as the blood pounding through her veins. It rocked the land as her heartbeat rocked her body, filling her with the warning of violence.

  Move. A voice, not her own, male and filled with fury, echoed in her head. Her father was right, she thought for one incredulous moment. She was insane.

  Goddammit Ariel, run! They are too close! The demand echoed around her, whipped by a wind she knew wasn’t natural.

  She could feel the demand run through her system though, as lightning above her flashed low to the ground, lighting a slender path through the brush and bramble that littered the ground.

  The crystal burned beneath her shirt, a surface heat that would have blistered had it been anything else. She moved carefully, though as quickly as possible, along the path laid out for her, ducking to avoid the flying debris, her heart in her throat as she pushed her sodden hair back from her face and fought her way ahead.

  She didn’t bother to stem the terrified tears that fell down her face or the sobs that tore from her chest. The storm covered any sound she would make, and she was so scared she couldn’t control it anyway.

  She remembered the horrifying pain, the nightmares and terror that had gripped her since Jonar had held her captive in that damned dungeon. The beatings had been the worst, merciless, striking at every weakness until she had been certain she would die in her own filth. Cruel, taunting laughter had followed each blow, and haunted her now with the viciousness of the attacks.

  But something, someone had saved her. She remembered the heat that filled her, the strength that flowed through her, but nothing else. She knew that it was then that the crystal had come to life once again, warming her, keeping her alive until her rescue. She knew it, because until those fractured memories of strength and warmth, of being held, comforted, the crystal hadn’t warmed against her since her childhood.

  “Find the bitch, she’s here. I can feel her…”

  She whimpered at the rough sound of the vicious male voice behind her. Deep, filled with wrath and the intent to kill. This wasn’t the same voice that echoed around her moments before. More wisps of air than true sound, this one was evil itself.

  “Oh God… Oh God…” The prayer was litany on her lips as she fought to move faster through the storm, and prayed for a miracle. It would definitely take a miracle to save her.

  Where are you?

  She stopped, flattening herself to another tree as the words seemed to echo through her mind. She shook her head, looking around frantically, certain that she couldn’t have heard that demanding male voice as she knew she had.

  Ariel, talk to me. Let me help you!

  She stared around the darkness in shock. The voice wasn’t in her head, it was in the very wind whipping around her like an elemental cape. Strong, gravelly, filled with…desperation?

  She bit her lip, fighting back the hysteria rising in her chest. The voice was there, yet it wasn’t. It swirled and fractured around her, almost a whisper at her ear rather than the shout it should have been.

  She wouldn’t answer. She wasn’t crazy. There was talking to herself and then there was crazy. This was crazy. Voices didn’t echo in the wind just for her ears. She closed her eyes tight for a second, sending up a quick prayer that she wasn’t losing her sanity. It would be a really bad time for a nervous breakdown. And she didn’t relish allowing her father to win the battle for her sanity.

  She ignored the tears that mixed with the rain, and throttled the choked sob that would have escaped her throat. Gathering her strength, she bent low and raced through the storm once again. The fetid stench of the horror following her was growing thicker, closer. She didn’t have time to feel sorry for herself or to sift through the differences between fantasy and reality, sound and imagination.

  Woman, such stubbornness does not become you. The harsh male voice held a punch of frustration, making her shudder with the latent anger she could feel within it.

  She wouldn’t answer the whispers, the insistent sound on the wind that shouldn’t be there. The middle of a clash of nature with God only knew how many terrorists on her ass was not the place for this.

  But she knew that wasn’t entirely true. She had heard them before, at least this particular one. As a child, locked in the terrifying darkness of a closet, alone and frightened, she had screamed out her pleas for help until her voice was hoarse. Then, lying on the cold floor, wrapped in misery and certain she would die from the darkness alone, the voice had come to her.

  Panic bloomed in her chest now as the stench of evil suddenly wrapped around her, stealing her from the painful memories of the past, gagging her, taking her breath for precious moments as she stumbled, nearly falling, to the rain-slick ground beneath her.

  “You die tonight, Mistress of the Wind.”

  The voice had her freezing in terror a second before she turned, her sword raising to meet the enemy’s steel even as the urge to protest the title he g
ave her vibrated through her mind.

  With a quick turn and an overhead clash of swords, she swerved from the sharp blade before jumping back far enough to avoid another blow. Her wrist twirled sharply, bringing the blade defensively in front of her as she faced death itself.

  His eyes glowed red. He was taller than she, broad and thickly muscled, his smile feral. Did she mention his eyes were red? For God’s sake, people didn’t have red eyes; only demons’ eyes could glow with such savage intensity. And demons didn’t exist, she reminded herself harshly.

  “No enchanted sword can save you, bitch,” he called through the clash of thunder and lightning overhead. “I’ll cut you in two, no matter the power you wield.”

  He came at her again, missing her by less then an inch as she parried the slicing stroke and danced to the side. How did she do that? How had she known to do that?

  “Dammit, haven’t you heard of guns?” she screamed as sparks flew from the clashing steel. She deflected the blow, braced her knees as she gripped the hilt with both hands and faced the sneering enemy.

  Guns were nice, quick and clean, she thought perversely. What the hell was she doing fighting with a weapon she had never handled in her life? Better yet, how the hell was she doing it?

  He didn’t answer her furious question. His sword descended as she met it, fighting the hysterical laughter that wanted to build in her chest as she used a weapon she had done no more than clean over the years. Maybe her father was right. Maybe she was crazy, she thought with brittle calm as she instinctively swung the weapon to strike out at her attacker or parried another of his thrusts. Only crazy people did stuff like this.

  Where had the knowledge come from? How did she know to twist her upper body and parry the thrusts of the stronger foe facing her? To use her smaller frame to throw him off balance, and rather than meeting each blow, dancing away from it as she struck at his undefended body parts?

  Blood stained the terrorist’s chest, his arms, but he kept coming, growling in rage as lightning struck around them and her own screams of anger blended in with clash of nature around her.