He hadn’t done anything, not in public. He’d been a devoted and caring father. His wife had been indulgent. Then they’d gone home and Valkyrie had climbed the roof and waited.
It was after two in the morning when the door to his room had creaked open. Valkyrie had been powerless to stop him as she had been powerless to stop the three thugs in the park from harming young girls. But Riley wasn’t bound to the same laws she was.
A door opened and Valkyrie turned to watch as a small face peeked out. Blue eyes shimmered in the light from the window at the end of the hall. They bore into Valkyrie without a shred of fear or question. Almost like she had expected the leather clad woman to be there.
“You’re safe now,” Valkyrie told her. “Go back to bed.”
The girl looked towards the door leading into her parent’s room and Valkyrie expected tears, hysterics even when Riley stepped out, drenched in the blood of one, or both of her parents. But the girl said nothing. She turned back into her room and shut the door.
“We should phone the police,” Riley said. “Someone needs to come get her.”
With a nod that she understood, Valkyrie led them back downstairs. In the kitchen, she lifted the phone and punched in the number for the police, waited until a woman answered before setting the phone down off its hook. They would bring up the number and send someone to investigate. Even so, they waited in the shadows down the street for the police to arrive and for the little girl to get bundled into the backseat of a cruiser. Two bodies got rolled out, one in a body bag. The other on a stretcher.
Valkyrie didn’t ask.
They crossed through the park to return home. Riley wiped as much of the blood staining her chin and mouth as possible, but there was no disguising it. At least the darkness helped conceal most of it.
“Thank you.”
Valkyrie said nothing, because she hadn’t done it for Riley. In all truth, Riley’s dilemma had never even crossed her mind.
“It’s in their eyes,” she said at last. “No matter how big they smile, you can see what they are in their eyes.”
It was Riley’s turn to remain quiet.
Their footsteps shattered the silence. The vicious crack of hers, the soft scuffle of Riley’s, it wove with the whisper of the wind and the shivering rustle of the leaves. Somewhere in the distance, a car drove past. Valkyrie listened to it all and knew the moment it changed.
“Stop!”
She grabbed Riley’s arm, pulling her to a halt. She squeezed when Riley opened her mouth to question. The air stirred. The cold feeling, like the veil of the dead, draped over them. Valkyrie’s grip on Riley tightened to a bruising force, but the girl never complained.
“Get behind me.”
Cool fingers settled over hers and her hand was pried loose. “I don’t think that will work.” The tension in Riley’s voice had her glancing over. “We’re surrounded.”
Sure enough, shadows parted from the trees, peeling away from dark to slip into the pools of light collecting over damp pavement. Metal glinted a split second before Valkyrie grabbed Riley and shoved her to the ground just as an arrow sliced the air where the girl had been standing.
“Stay down!” was the only warning she gave before her own daggers were in hand and she was running.
Steel bit into steel. Its beautiful sound resounded through the park. Valkyrie pushed with her weight, propelling her sister back a step. Serinda drove her right back. The length of her sword put Valkyrie in a disadvantage, but without the weight and distance, Valkyrie was able to get right under Serinda’s arms. The other girl had to take steps away, but Valkyrie followed, keeping in close range.
The fist in the kidneys knocked the wind out of her. She staggered back and Serinda attacked. Valkyrie’s arm shot up just as her sister’s sword came plummeting down towards her head. It edge caught the base of Valkyrie’s dagger and she flung the other girl’s arm away.
“Surrender!” Serinda commanded.
“I won’t!” Valkyrie hissed back, breathing hard. “Not if there’s a chance I could be carrying Gideon’s child.”
“Then you give me no other choice.”
Their blades met, again and again, sending sparks into the night and muffling the cries of others going up against Riley. Valkyrie’s first instinct was to protect the redhead, but Serinda refused to give her an inch. Her sister was insistent and brutal. She drove into Valkyrie the way she used to when they were in training. There was no mercy, no punches held. She was ruthless and she knew exactly the one place Valkyrie was trying to protect most and she used it to drive her back.
It weakened Valkyrie’s defenses. The distraction made her lunges sloppy and Serinda took advantage of every missed aim. There was only one thing left.
“Serinda, please.” Her plea was shortened by the stinging pain of steel slicing into the flesh just above her waistband. Blood bubbled up from the gash on her side and spilled. “Serinda!”
It was too close, too close to her stomach. All desire to fight escaped her and she staggered away from her sister.
“Serinda, no.” Her voice wavered. “Please, don’t.” Serinda lashed with her sword and Valkyrie barely managed to deflect it with her own blade. “No matter what, this baby is your blood, too.”
Serinda lunged. It was by some sheer will of grace that Valkyrie managed to twist out of the way with only a deep gash over her navel as a reminder of just how close that one had been. Her wrist swung upward in an arc, slamming into the hilt of Serinda’s blade and redirecting the assault. Fear and determination pushed her forward. Her mind rang with the sound of her own voice, telling her to fight, to stay alive and protect the life inside her. It no longer mattered if it was too early to tell. If there was even a sliver of possibility, she was going to fight for it.
Her renewed drive sent Serinda back two paces. The streetlamp caught the curve of her blade and shone off the surface of her blue eyes. There was something there Valkyrie almost recognized as the faint glimmer of pride she would only give Valkyrie when a lesson had been learned. But she didn’t need her sister’s approval. She needed her to stop.
Timing her attack, Valkyrie pivoted on her heel. She swung around and ducked under the arm Serinda raised. Her shoulder came up under her sister’s bicep, her back to her sister’s chest. She grabbed the other girl’s forearm and wrenched down while simultaneously jabbing her elbow up between Serinda’s ribs. Serinda’s cry of pain and surprise was shortened by the knuckles Valkyrie drove into her jaw with a powerful turn of her torso. The sword clattered from her grasp and hit the pavement. Serinda crashed down beside it on her back.
Breathing hard, Valkyrie scooped the blade up and stared down the flat steel at her sister’s throat.
“Enough,” she said. “I do not want to harm you. You are my sister, but I will if I must.”
Serinda narrowed her eyes, but it was contemplative. “Father will not stop.”
Valkyrie nodded. “I know and I’ll come with you, but not until I know if it’s true, or not. I will not let Father harm her.”
“Father will not be so lenient, or understanding,” Serinda said quietly. “You have betrayed our people and that child must die with you.”
“No.” She took a step away. “No one will touch her. I will surrender,” she said again. “But only after and with my surrender, Father will leave my daughter alone. She will not be raised like us. She will know love and family.”
“Love is weakness,” Serinda hissed. “You wish your daughter to be weak?”
“I wish for her to be happy.” The sword hit the grass next to her sister. “Tell father my life will be his in exchange for the life of my child.”
Turning on her heels, Valkyrie started up the path to where Riley stood, a dark silhouette of jagged fury. Everything about her form was wrong. She was braced with her feet apart and her arms extended at her sides and each one was tipped with razor sharp nails. At her feet, six figures lay unmoving. Lamplight danced over the crimson puddle poolin
g beneath them. The sight was a definite ding against Valkyrie’s pride.
“Valkyrie!” Her cry came too late.
A sharp splintering pain erupted across the back of her skull. The world danced between splashes of light and darkness. It tilted violently and Valkyrie found herself against the grass. The air was humming. Her tongue tasted like copper. She struggled to push upright, but gravity had become an elephant against her spine. In the distance, there was a snarl of rage and then there was nothing.
“It was my fault!”
The blissful numbness parted to the pleading shout. Valkyrie struggled to push the remaining blanket of fog off, but her body refused to follow the will of her mind.
“I asked her to go with me.”
“She knew better!” came a second voice, louder and fiercely angry. “She did it just to spite me.”
“That’s ridiculous!” said the first voice. “She couldn’t possibly know we would be attacked, or that her sister was such a crazy backstabber. Okay, maybe she knew that last part, but please don’t be upset with her. This is all me. I shouldn’t have asked her—”
The white blanket rose up and smothered Valkyrie back into its cool embrace.
There was no gradual awakening the second time. Reality slammed into her and she was suddenly alert. Her eyes snapped open to the brightly lit ceiling above and with it, every twinge of her throbbing body.
Her groan whispered through the room. Pale, white light skated over walls and the high posts of a bed. The unfamiliar space jarred the remaining bits of disorientation from her mind and she was upright.
“Easy.” Wood creaked on her left and her head snapped in its direction. Gideon unfolded himself from the chair and rose to stand next to the mattress. “You’ve been sleeping for a while.”
“How long?” she croaked.
He drew in a lengthy breath. “Long enough to help taper my desire to strangle you. Mostly,” he added with a jerk of his shoulder.
“What happened?”
Her hand flew to her abdomen where the cold steel of her sister’s blade had bit into her flesh. The area beneath the soft, black t-shirt was smooth once more and absent of even a scratch.
“She came close,” Gideon remarked, watching her hand. “Twice.”
“Is she all right?”
Shadows flickered across his eyes, darkening them. “She?”
“The child!” she snapped, infuriated by his questioning when she needed answers.
“She,” he said again with a slight tilt of his head that could have passed for amusement if the look behind his stare wasn’t impossibly possessive. “Harvesters don’t always have girls.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
With a deliberate slowness that screamed of his agitation, he folded his arms over his chest and braced his feet shoulder width apart.
“Why do you care?”
His response threw her a moment. “What—?”
The sharp glower he cast her, silenced her like nothing else.
“Would it even matter to you if you weren’t? Or was that what you were hoping for when you deliberately ignored my one and only request not to put yourself, or our baby in harm’s way? Were you hoping you wouldn’t be burdened with me anymore, because if being my mate is such a nightmare for you, then just tell me! I’m not asking you to love me, Valkyrie. I’m only asking you to protect the innocent life we created. He had no say in who his parents are. He didn’t ask to be brought into this world.”
“Do not presume as though you know me, Maxwell!” she slung back at him. “Despite what you may think, I would never knowingly endanger my—”
“Then what, huh?” He threw his arms open wide. “What were you doing? You told no one where you were going. You left knowing that you were being hunted. You deliberately put yourself in a situation that could have cost you your life. Had Riley not been there...” A muscle twisted in his jaw. “What am I supposed to believe? What am I supposed to think? Is being my mate such a horror? Is the idea of having my children so repulsive to you that you would rather die—?”
“This has nothing to do with you!”
“You’re my mate!” he threw at her in a roar. “Do you have any idea what that means? It means that if anything happens to you, I will never recover. There is no second love for me, or a fresh start. You’re it. You are my heart and without you I will die, do you understand that?” He was still yelling and his words were broken by jagged breaths. “I have loved you for three hundred years and for three hundred years, I’ve died over and over again every time I watched you walk away from me. To lose you forever, would be the end of me for good.”
“Stop it.” The words cracked like fine china in careless hands.
“Why?” he hissed. “I thought Harvesters lived for the truth.”
She glowered up at him through a thick film of tears. “Because it is not the truth. If my life meant so much to you, you would not have turned your back on me all those years ago. You wouldn’t have abandoned me every chance to hunt on my own. Do not speak to me of pain when you have caused plenty of your own.”
“I couldn’t hunt with you, because I couldn’t stand to be around you,” he snarled out through his teeth. “I couldn’t stand seeing you put yourself in harm’s way and not throw myself between you and it. I couldn’t stand seeing your face, knowing you were mine and I could never have you. It might all sound simple to you, but it was hell for me and I lived through it for as many years as I possibly could before it was just too much. Had that night not happened, I would still fight it, because I would rather push you away than have you sit there and hate me for something I can’t control.”
“I have never hated you.”
“Then what is it?” His anger was woven with a frustration the struck her square in the chest. “Why can’t you just let me take care of you? Why do you have to fight me on everything?”
The pressure built like a dam inside her chest until she couldn’t breathe. Her mind geared around his demands, around the questions she herself was unable to answer and still, she could think of nothing to say.
The disappointment on his face was crippling. His arms dropped to his sides with a smack and he pulled away from the bed, away from her with a shake of his head.
“Wait...”
The door clicked shut behind him and she was alone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Valkyrie had always known loneliness. Harvesters didn’t have friends, not even amongst each other. Solitariness didn’t seem so pathetic when everyone else was also alone. In the Maxwell residence, everyone had someone at all hours of the day and night. Valkyrie was the odd man out. She had nothing in common with the women and the men all treated her as though she were made of glass. And since the night of their argument, Gideon hadn’t said another word to her. She barely even saw him. Maybe he was waiting for her to say something, but she had no idea what. Not that it mattered, because she had made it her life’s mission to avoid them all.
The fourth floor had become her sanctuary since there was nowhere else to go. The mindless wandering helped keep her mostly sane and distracted from the hurt of being completely alienated. It was better for all involved. They clearly didn’t want her around. That was made painfully obvious with the trays of food brought to her door every evening. She had no idea who they were from, but she got the hint. She wasn’t wanted and they were too nice to just tell her as much to her face. Well, she wouldn’t force her company on them, nor would she take their food, or anything else they thought to throw her way like scraps to a dog. She may not have had her title, or her strength, but she sure as hell still had her pride.
“Valkyrie?”
She stayed on the window seat overlooking the west and her home. The bay window was the only one not built into a room, but lay hidden in a small alcove, tucked away from everything and everyone.
Riley appeared at the end of the hall, her red hair a halo of fire around her small, pale face. It seemed some
how even brighter against the soft, white fabric of her knitted sweater. She smiled at Valkyrie.
“Hey.”
Not sure what to say, Valkyrie said nothing, but waited for the girl to get on with whatever she was there for.
“Are you busy?”
Valkyrie arched a brow. “Are you going to ask me to go hunting with you again?”
It was a low jab. She knew it the moment Riley lowered her gaze.
“I am really sorry about that,” she said quietly. “I told Gideon it was my fault. I had no idea your sister would attack.”
“How could you possibly know?”
Riley took a few more tentative steps forward. “I just feel really awful about everything. I feel like it’s my fault you and Gideon are fighting.”
“That is irrational,” Valkyrie stated simply. “Gideon and I were fighting long before you were born.”
“I meant right now,” Riley clarified.
“Even then,” Valkyrie said. “We will always have things to fight about. It is what we do best.” She turned her head towards the thick smear of gray outside the window. “We fight.”
“You make it very hard for a person to apologize.”
“Then perhaps you should stop.”
There was silence and Valkyrie could only pray the girl was gone.
“I just really want to be your friend,” Riley murmured after a long stretch of silence. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I don’t have very many of those. The one friend I did have is in Connecticut and, well, you and I have a lot more in common than you might think.”
Gideon's Promise (Sons of Judgment Book 2) Page 39
