Entwined

by Elisabeth Naughton

  “Depends on how bad you pissed her off,” Titus said at his side.

  Zander cut his gaze to the guardian beside him, not for the first time hating the fact Titus knew every one of his goddamn thoughts.

  Titus frowned. “For the record, I’m not wild about it either.” He nodded toward the run-down cabin. “You wanna knock or go balls-in?”

  Zander was just about to tell Titus where he could stick his balls when a roar shook the trees, followed by a sharp, shrill, bone-chilling scream. His muscles tensed. The headache he’d been battling the last five minutes dimmed to a passing throb. Instinct ruled as he reached for his blade. “That was Callia.”

  Titus grabbed for his own parazonium. “You sure?”

  Hell yeah, he was sure. He’d know the sound of her voice anywhere.

  “Zander, wait!”

  Zander charged the front door of the cabin and kicked it in with his boot. A blur of red whipped his way. The eyes of the female peering back at him grew so wide he could see the whites all around her black irises. Behind her, Callia lay faceup on a table, her shirt ripped open, blood staining her skin and clothing.

  He lifted his blade, let the rage consume him and charged.

  Atalanta flicked her hand his way.

  “Zander!” Callia screamed. “No!”

  Energy shot into his body and threw him backward, a lot like it had in the cave when Callia had attacked him, only this was ten thousand times worse. He hit the doorjamb hard. Wood shattered around him as he fell out of the cabin and landed with a brutal thump against the frozen ground. Wood rained down from above. Pain ricocheted through his torso and stole his breath.

  Voices echoed from inside. Callia’s? Titus’s? Screams followed by more shouts. Growls and roars erupted from behind the building, followed by the clank of weapon against weapon.

  “Zander! Get the fuck in here!”

  Zander pushed up on shaky hands and knees. Ground his teeth against the pain and hauled his ass forward. He wobbled, caught himself, lurched for the doorway. When he finally got there and looked inside, the scene was something out of a nightmare.

  Titus faced off against two daemons, his blade arcing out and around. Callia darted under the table to get away from a third. Her arm was bloody, her face ashen and bruised. Atalanta was nowhere in sight.

  “Zander!” The daemon advancing on Callia caught her foot and hauled her back and out from under the table. He flipped her to her back. As he brought his blade back, she leapt to her feet and thrust her hands against the monster’s chest.

  The daemon howled in relentless pain but was strong enough to backhand her across the room. She hit the far wall with a deafening thwack and slumped to the floor.

  Sharp points stabbed into Zander’s head all over again, but he charged anyway, swinging his blade out and around to nail the fucker in the side. Blood spurted from the open wound and sprayed over him and the floor.

  The daemon stumbled, righted himself. He swung with his left hand, caught Zander’s shirt with his claws and tore through his flesh. A sword followed, barely missing Zander’s arm.

  “I won’t let you take the princess, Argonaut,” the daemon roared. He arced out again with his blade.

  Zander tried to swivel, but his body wasn’t moving at the speed of his brain. It was like trying to fight in water. The daemon lifted his sword for the killing blow. A growl erupted from the other side of the room. The sound distracted the daemon for a split second, and Zander ducked beneath the monster’s arm. He stumbled out from behind him, lifted his own blade high with both arms. “Go back to hell, motherfucker.” He swung hard, though it took every ounce of energy he had, slicing deep into the daemon’s side.

  The monster shrieked, fell to his knees. Zander struck again, slicing into the beast’s arm, his back, his other side. Blood spewed in every direction, most of it hitting Zander in the face. The daemon dropped to the ground, but Zander kept attacking. Rage consumed him, the kind he never let free, and each time he struck, he saw Callia as he had when he’d stepped into the cabin, laid out like an offering to Atalanta.

  His parazonium stabbed the creature’s back, a sickening sucking noise echoing through the small cabin when he pulled the blade free and attacked again, never once aiming for the daemon’s neck. It was too soon to end the SOB’s suffering. He struck again and again, his vision blurring in a sea of red.

  Someone plowed into Zander’s side, knocking him off balance. Zander hit the floor with a sharp thunk. Surprise widened his eyes as he looked up at Titus, then morphed quickly to fury. “You motherfucking son of a bitch!”

  Titus knocked the parazonium out of Zander’s hands. Zander snarled and tried to push himself up, but he was weaker than he thought, and whatever was affecting him was kicking in good now. He tried to get up but fell right back on his ass.

  The daemon behind Titus rumbled and made a move to initiate round two, but Titus didn’t give him a chance. His blade arced out to sever the creature’s head from its body with one fell swoop. Then he swung back toward Zander. “Rein it in, Z.”

  Struggling, Zander made it to his feet. Sweat and blood slid down his face to drip onto his chest as he narrowed his eyes. His heart pounded hard against his ribs. Menace rolled off him in waves. One word echoed through his mind: Kill.

  Titus widened his stance. “Think this through carefully, Zander. I don’t care if you’re fucking immortal or not. I’ll cut you if I have to. And trust me, it’ll hurt.”

  Zander sneered and crouched down ready to strike, his focus zeroed in on the body and blade in front of him.

  “Fuck, me,” Titus whispered. He gripped his blade tighter. “That daemon’s dead, Zander. They’re all dead. And Ata-lanta’s gone. I’m not the enemy here. I’m your friend. Your brother. Trust me, man. You don’t want to do this.”

  It was like looking through a tunnel, with sound and sights on the periphery blacked out. But as Zander focused on Titus, on the way the guardian’s chest rose and fell with his labored breaths, on the sweat pouring down his face, on the way he was fixated on Zander like he was the enemy, a strange sort of realization dawned.

  Slowly, Zander’s eyes swept the room, first landing on the daemon he’d been fighting, dead on the ground beside him, then to the pile of bodies across the floor and finally to where Callia lay slumped unconscious against the wall. Awareness flickered through his head, shifting the boiling darkness consuming him into something softer and far more familiar. And like a balloon suddenly popping, air whooshed out of his lungs.

  “Callia,” he whispered. Eyes locked on her, he rose from his crouch. His energy flagged as he brushed by Titus and dropped to the floor next to her. “Callia? Oh, shit.”

  Titus’s blade clattered to the floor behind him. “Holy Hades,” he muttered.

  Zander tore Callia’s shirt the rest of the way open, saw nothing but faint white lines against her chest. He felt for a pulse at her neck, found a weak thump beneath his fingers. He cradled her head in his hands. “Callia, wake up.”

  She didn’t move. Her head lolled to the side like a rag doll.

  “Callia?” Zander said louder. “Wake up. Shit. Titus!”

  “Skata.” Titus pushed Zander’s hands out of the way and felt for himself. “Her pulse was low but there when I checked a minute ago.” He moved his fingers against her throat. “There. It’s there. She’s alive.”

  Alive. But not for long. Now that the rage had passed, Zander’s brain was working. But that was about it. “I can’t get her back to Argolea.” Panic clawed its way up his chest. “I’m too weak to open the portal.”

  Titus’s intense gaze focused in on Zander. Quickly he pulled something from his pocket, chucked it at Zander. Zander caught the satellite phone with both hands while Titus shifted his arms under Callia and lifted her from the floor. “I can’t take her back to Argolea either.”

  “What? You have to. Look, if this is about earlier, I—”

  Titus headed for the door. “I can’t tak
e her back and leave you here. You look almost as bad as she does. There’ll be more daemons coming.”

  “I can take care of myself.” Zander pushed up, stumbled, would have gone down if the wall hadn’t been there to break his fall. What the hell was happening to him? He paused, sucked in a breath. He’d been through countless battles before, and none had ever left him as weak as he was now.

  “Do you have your tracking medallion?” Titus asked from the doorway.

  Zander reached for the small round medallion all the Argonauts wore that was their one beacon for help when they were in trouble. “No. Shit. I must have lost it somewhere near that ravine. Or in the cave.”

  “I lost mine too.” Titus hitched Callia higher in his arms. “Call Nick.”

  “Nick?” Zander darted a look at the satellite phone in his hand. The one Nick had given each of them before they’d left on their hunt from the half-breed settlement days before. The one he’d thought was useless.

  “Tell Nick how to reach us.” Titus headed out into the snow with Callia. “And haul ass, Zander. Atalanta didn’t just poof out of here for no reason. She wants your girl, and I guarantee she’ll be back. With an army this time.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “There’s nothing wrong with him.”

  “What do you mean there’s nothing wrong? He looks like he’s about to kick it any minute.”

  Voices drifted to Zander’s ears, rousing him from the blackness surrounding him like a shroud. He felt like he was pushing his way through a thick, soupy haze that didn’t want to clear and was fogging both his vision and mind.

  “Physically,” the female voice said again, “there’s nothing wrong with him. I can’t find a single thing that explains his deterioration. But I can tell you this. Every time her vitals dip, so do his.”

  “What are you saying?” a male voice asked. Unfamiliar. Deep.

  “I’m saying,” the female said on a sigh, “they’re linked. In a way I’ve never seen before. Nothing we do to him affects her, but that’s definitely not the case the other way around.”

  Zander strained to listen through the fog.

  “Are you telling me there’s nothing you can do for him?” a male voice asked. This one Zander had heard before. But where? He struggled to make the connection but couldn’t. And why wasn’t his brain working?

  “That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” the female said. “We have to focus on her.”

  “Then focus, dammit,” the familiar male voice said again.

  “We are.” This time the female’s voice held an edge of frustration. “The problem is, you’re not hearing what I’m saying. It’s not the injuries that are killing her.”

  “Then what is it?” another female asked. This one too was familiar, calm where the others were frustrated, and Zander found himself struggling to bring his eyes open so he could make the connections he knew were right on the tip of his mind. He squinted but couldn’t see more than a hazy film.

  “She doesn’t seem to have a will to live.”

  “Skata.”

  Okay, that voice was clear as a bell. Zander knew Ther-on’s voice anywhere.

  On a groan, Zander rolled to his side and pushed himself up to sit. Pain stabbed every inch of his body, but he ignored it. The bed beneath him was firm, more like a gurney than a mattress. He looked up and around as his vision came and went, took in the white walls and bandages and tape on the long counter to his right and realized he was in some kind of medical facility.

  The half-breed colony. Which meant Titus had gotten him and Callia here after all.

  Links, memories, flashes of what had happened in that cave, in that cabin, hit him from all sides. Callia. His feet hit the floor. Almost went out from under him. To keep from sliding to the ground he braced a hand on the bed behind him until he was steady, then slowly followed the sound of voices toward the hall.

  Shit. He was weak. Weaker than he’d been his whole life. Just crossing the room made him feel like he’d climbed Mount Olympus.

  He gritted his way through the pain. When he rounded the corner and looked down the long narrow hall, he discovered he’d been right. A small group was huddled deep in conversation. Theron, Casey, Nick and a female who wore blue scrubs and held a clipboard.

  “Zander, oh, my God.” Casey rushed to his side and tried to take his weight by slipping an arm around his waist, but he brushed her off and leaned one hand against the wall near her head instead. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

  He ignored the king’s daughter, the one who would never be queen because her mother had been human, and looked at Theron. “Where’s Callia?”

  “She’s being monitored,” the female said before Theron could answer.

  The woman was average height for a half-breed female, average weight. Her dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she had nerd written all over her plain-Jane features. She also obviously didn’t think much of him, because the scowl on her face was anything but friendly.

  Zander dismissed her and looked over her head toward Nick, standing on her other side, looking like he had a migraine the size of Mount Rushmore. Join the fucking club. Nick dwarfed the woman in both size and confidence. “I want to see her.”

  “Zander,” Casey cut in with a hand on his arm. “That’s not a good idea.”

  Zander glanced down at Theron’s wife, his eyebrows drawn together, while a strange feeling brewed in his chest. They were keeping something from him. “Why not?”

  Theron pushed away from the wall where he’d been leaning to stand at Casey’s side. “Because she’s not doing well. And neither are you. You’re in no position to…”

  Zander’s gaze jumped to Theron, and warning bells went off in his head. What was Theron doing here? If Titus had gone to Argolea and brought him back, and Casey had come with him, it meant something wasn’t right. These days Casey stuck close to the castle for Isadora’s sake.

  “Don’t fuck with me, Theron. Did she wake up? How long has it been?”

  “It’s only been twenty-four hours,” Theron sighed.

  Zander cut a look at the healer, then refocused on Theron again. And he knew his temper flared in his eyes, but he didn’t give a rip. “Twenty-four hours? Why the hell haven’t you taken her back to Argolea if they can’t do shit for her here?”

  “Watch it, hero,” Nick mumbled from across the narrow hall.

  Zander’s eyes whipped to the leader of the half-breeds.

  “Don’t piss him off,” the female muttered to Nick. “You saw her scars.”

  “What the hell are you mumbling about?” Zander glared down at her. “And who in Hades are you anyway?”

  “Lena,” Nick said behind her, straightening from the wall himself. “One of our best healers. So ditch the attitude, or I’ll put your ass back in that bed myself.”

  Zander’s jaw ticked, and that familiar feeling of rage pushed against his chest. The only thing that kept him from losing his cool was the palm of Theron’s hand now pushing against his sternum.

  “Everybody chill out for a few minutes,” Theron said. He glared down at Lena. “And cut the digs. Tell him what you just told us.”

  The female heaved out a breath like she didn’t want to tell him anything, but finally said, “Do you know anything about daemon poison?”

  “Daemon what?”

  “Poison,” she said louder, challenging Zander with her eyes in a way that made him wonder what the hell he’d ever done to her. He was 100 percent sure they’d never met. “An archdaemon’s claws are filled with a poison. Even if the wounds heal, the poison destroys healthy tissue one cell at a time. If it gets into the bloodstream, it travels to the organs and does the same, though at a much slower rate.”

  “What are you saying?” Zander asked.

  “She’s saying Callia’s infected, Zander,” Theron said. “Titus told us what happened in that cabin. Atalanta sealed Callia’s wounds, trapping the poison inside.”

  Zander looked from face t
o face, trying to make sense of what they’d just told him. “I’ve been cut, bitten. All the guardians have been wounded. You—”

  “You’ve never been cut by an archdaemon,” Theron said.

  “Odds are good none of you have tangled with an archdaemon,” Nick cut in. As Zander glanced his way, Nick frowned, the expression doing shit to settle the unease in Zander’s gut. “The archdaemon doesn’t usually fight. He commands. We’ve seen this before. Certain victims my scouts have come across have had the festering type of wound Lena described. We didn’t know what it was until we found a female, alive, with a similar wound on her leg.”

  Lena looked down at her feet, pursed her lips as if she’d heard it all before, but Zander didn’t miss the revulsion sliding over her features or the way she refused to meet his or any of the others’ eyes.

  “She was pregnant,” Nick went on. “In a great deal of pain. She’d been raped. Repeatedly.” Casey gasped, and Nick rubbed a hand over his forehead, like just the thought sickened him as well. “We tried to help her, but she wouldn’t let us. She begged us to kill her.”

  “From what we can tell,” Lena finished for Nick when it was clear he didn’t want to go on, “the archdaemon is the only one who can reproduce. We think he uses this poison to immobilize his victims and keep them alive long enough to give birth.”

  “Dear God,” Casey said, covering her mouth with her hand. At his side, Theron slipped an arm around her waist and drew her close.

  “The rate of gestation seems to be severely amplified for daemon offspring,” Lena continued. “A month, maybe two. We’re not entirely sure. We haven’t been able to study it.”

  “Study it?” Zander snapped. “Like a science experiment?” His thoughts ran back to Callia. To the way she’d been laid out on that table before Atalanta.

  “We did find one of these offspring shortly after birth,” Nick said, flicking Zander a warning look before focusing on Theron. “Dead. Its body looked human, but there was something about the eyes that wasn’t right. And the internal organs—”