Beyond the Darkness

by Jaime Rush

“Not from what I saw,” Petra said. “You engage one, the other can come up from behind.”

  “I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

  She leaned against the counter. “You should have a partner. Someone kick-ass who could have your back.” She turned to Pope. “His father is the one who put him on this path. Trained him when he was a kid to kill these beings.”

  Cheveyo said, “It’s my path. I’m here to protect the innocent.”

  She walked over to him, her eyes never leaving his. Her hand was warm against his cheek. “But you’re an innocent, too.”

  He took her hand and lowered it, letting it go. “No, I’m not.” He turned to Pope. “You’ll sense them if they come near, right?”

  “Yes, I can still do that.”

  “How are you with hand-to-hand combat?”

  “I usually blew the enemy apart if I was tasked with that.”

  “Plan B is better, then: grab Petra, teletransport to somewhere else.”

  “One small problem: I don’t know if I have the power to do that right now. Sometimes I can, sometimes I cannot. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to go, much less take her with me.”

  “Which would leave her here alone,” Cheveyo said.

  “And me possibly unable to come back to help her.”

  Fear seized his chest at the thought of that. Her, too, by the way her face paled.

  “I’ll have to fight them,” she said. “I did pretty well back there at the river. You said so.”

  Just the memory of Petra fighting stirred his gut. “Pretty well isn’t going to cut it. As you said, two against one isn’t the best of odds, especially when you haven’t been dealing with these beings most of your life. There’s something to be said about your natural instinct to survive, but it may not be enough against skilled killers.”

  Her veneer of bravery was wilting now that she was thinking it through. He felt her fear, too.

  “I can hide even better,” she said.

  “Not well enough for these guys.”

  The toaster oven dinged. Pope swiveled around and took out the bread, setting two slices on each plate. “What do we do now?”

  Cheveyo took a deep, heavy breath. “I’m going to have to take her with me.”

  Chapter 9

  “Come at me with the knife like you mean it,” Cheveyo said, facing Pope, who looked awkward holding one of the knives from the sacred weapons room.

  Pope obliged, and Cheveyo grabbed his arm and had him on the ground in two seconds. “Now I’ll show you how to do that.”

  Petra sat on the grass and watched them. The cool breeze caressed her as it whispered past, becoming a murmur in the pine forest that surrounded the cabin. She breathed in the scent of sun-heated pine and sap. On a black piece of felt next to her were several more of those knives so Pope could try different ones to see which worked best.

  “What you need to do,” Cheveyo said, “is disable his weapon hand and simultaneously go on the offensive.”

  He wore a pair of tan pants that clung to his body and allowed ease of movement. Or he was trying to torture her, but she doubted he knew what he was doing to her. He obviously wasn’t self-conscious about his scars since he wore nothing else. She supposed he accepted them as he’d accepted being a warrior.

  “The thing about knife fighting is that by default you have to get close to your opponent. It gives you a lot of flexibility but also puts you in proximity to whatever weapon he may have. If he has a knife, always know where it is and be ready to move your body out of the way of a slice. You want to keep moving; never be a stationary target. The best defense is to knock the weapon out of his hand.”

  “What if it’s a gun?” she asked, feeling very much on the sidelines.

  “You take it out from a distance.” He threw the knife toward the edge of trees, slicing off a thin branch before the blade sank into the trunk of a tree just beyond it.

  She didn’t want to look impressed, but holy hell . . . “I suppose you meant to cut that branch.”

  He merely lifted an eyebrow and then walked to the tree to retrieve his knife. “Your opponent may not expect you to use the knife as a distance weapon. If you throw it properly, you can disable him before he gets near you.” He wrenched it from the tree and spun around to inflict a perfect slice through an imaginary opponent.

  Pope looked at the knife in his hand and then a distant tree. “I should get used to handling the knife before I start throwing it.”

  “Definitely. Now, don’t forget that you can use your body to both maneuver and to put strength behind your thrust, as well as evade.”

  He showed Pope a couple of moves that made Petra restless. What the hell was it about watching Cheveyo fight that got her so hot and bothered? She didn’t even like fighting.

  “Aim for soft, fleshy parts of the body, not places where the bone is close to the surface,” Cheveyo was saying. “Remember, you’re in it to kill. Callorians can take on a human appearance, which means they have human vulnerabilities. Go for the organs.” He pointed to places on his body. “Heart, thrust up like this. Kidneys. Liver. If you thrust enough in this section, you’ll hit something.”

  She relived the moment when she’d sunk her kitchen knife into the dog beast’s leg. She’d felt the blade split through flesh and hit bone. Revulsion washed over her, but triumph followed. She’d been scared, but she took action. Maybe it was dangerous, but she helped in the fight and hadn’t gotten killed. And again, by the river. She’d been an asset, hadn’t she?

  She picked up one of the smaller knives and felt the weight of it in her hand. Curled her fingers around the handle. Her teal-tipped nails looked good against the carved ivory handle. The ivory looked old and genuine and carved in perfection. The scene depicted in miniature was a man and tiger engaged in battle.

  She stood, knife in her hand. “Teach me, too.”

  She was prepared to argue with him, but he nodded. His eyes flared. “You were amazing when we faced both of them at the river. Strong, confident, and fierce. You have to believe you’re amazing, not that you did pretty well. The most important thing to remember is—” He grabbed her from behind, spun her, and dropped her to the ground. “—to never drop your knife.”

  Her gaze went to the knife, now lying a yard away. He hovered an inch above her.

  “You have to be ready for anything. If you had your knife, you could still defend against me. Now you’re defenseless.”

  She could only nod. In so many ways. “I dropped it during my fight with Baal, too. But I got it back.”

  He pushed to his feet and extended his hand to her. “You got lucky, but luck shouldn’t play a part in surviving.” He gave her a look that reminded her of the comment she’d made earlier.

  She jumped to her feet without his help. Not to prove a point but to work on being agile, though she didn’t do it as gracefully as he did. She swiped up the knife. “Teach us more.”

  He stepped easily into the role of teacher. “Imagine this common scenario: your opponent has a lock around your wrist and will either attempt to pry the knife out of your hand or squeeze so hard you’ll have to drop the knife.” His fingers clamped around her wrist. “Shake me off.”

  She brought her knee to his groin, but he blocked her with a swivel of his hips.

  “Nice try,” he said.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He tilted his head at her. “I’ve been through a lot more than this. Do what you have to do to get free. Let me see what you’ve got.”

  He was pressing at a point in her wrist that was weakening her hold, twisting her to the side so the knife would drop harmlessly to the ground. And dammit, it hurt. She shoved her body into his, tipping them off balance and sending them both to the ground. He was on the bottom, taking the brunt. She wasted not a second, taking advantage of his surprise and the momentary loosening of his grip to twist her hand free. She brought the knife down, but he grabbed her arm before the tip even got close to his
chest. He flipped her over him, her legs flying in the air, and before she’d even landed, he had the knife out of her hand and pointed at her neck.

  She was breathless, her back sore.

  He didn’t gloat, at least. He stood and this time didn’t offer his hand. “You put up a good fight, but you’re dead.”

  He turned back to Pope. “How do you usually fight?”

  “My best weapon is—was harnessing my energy into a laser beam of destruction.”

  She jumped to her feet. “Eric said you incinerated the guy who was trying to kill us down in the Tomb.”

  Pope nodded. “I did.” He held his hand out, palm angled toward the ground, his face a mask of concentration. “I feel a tingle, as though it is coming back.” Another few seconds later he shook his head and leaned down to touch the ground. “Not enough to even warm the dirt.” His mouth tightened, giving away his frustration.

  Cheveyo said, “No matter how comfortable you are fighting with your skills, using a knife will be completely different. You have to be ready for that. You’re sinking a knife into someone’s flesh, and you’ll be close enough to see them die.” He included her in that warning.

  They worked through a couple of scenarios, talking through his actions for both their sakes.

  She thrust with the knife in her own imaginary scenarios, getting more used to it. Focused totally on her task, she didn’t hear the footsteps coming up on her. Arms grabbed her and spun her to the ground. She rolled before Cheveyo could pounce on her, jumped to her feet and held up the knife, still clutched in her hand. She gave him a triumphant smile.

  “Good job,” he said. “Next time come up ready to attack.”

  Her smile sagged when she saw that the knife point was facing the ground. “Next time?”

  “I’m going to jump you every chance I get.”

  She arched her eyebrow at him. “Every chance?”

  He met her gaze, a playful glimmer in his eyes. “When you least expect it.”

  Pope walked up to them, his violet eyes shifting from him to her, his head tilted. “I’m picking up another new emotion.”

  They both looked at him and said simultaneously, “Forget about it.”

  For the next two hours, they worked on move after move, Cheveyo playing the opponent for her and Pope in turn. She didn’t want to admit how exhausted and sore she was, bruises accumulating on top of the bruises from their last altercation. As the two men sparred, she dropped onto the scratchy grass and watched. The afternoon sun glistened on Cheveyo’s damp skin. He had the grace of a ballet dancer but the fierce determination of a Native American warrior. And the patience of a saint.

  Pope was getting the hang of it. Twice he had the knife within a few inches of Cheveyo’s throat. Something sparked in those violet eyes as he fought. Pope was a warrior, too. Losing his skills had probably felt like castration to him.

  A few minutes later Cheveyo wandered over and reclined beside her, shielding his eyes with his arm. He released a long breath, letting his body totally relax . . . for about a minute. Then he sat up, rolling up the cloth that held the knives so carefully she didn’t hear the metal clank together once. “Let’s grab showers. Does that knife work for you?”

  She tilted it so the sun glinted off the blade. “Yeah. It’s not too heavy. And it’s pretty.”

  “Pretty.” He rolled his eyes. “Keep it. I’ll see if I’ve got a holster that works with it. You want to have it on you at all times.”

  “You think I’ve got a good handle on it?” Of course, she wanted to hear him praise her skills, amazed that she’d become proficient so fast.

  “I hope so.” He turned to her as he continued walking. “What do you think?”

  “I think . . . I think I won’t be a liability to you.”

  Pope said, “You looked capable to me.”

  She beamed. “Thank you.”

  Cheveyo tucked the bundle under his arm as they reached the front porch and held the door open for her. “Meet me in the Blade Room after your shower.”

  She went to the room where he’d put her things and took a shower. The floor above her creaked. His bedroom. She could well imagine him stripping out of his clothes and taking a shower, because she had seen him do both.

  A half hour later she walked into the room he kept under triple lock. The cabinet in the RV was nothing compared to the scarily amazing room. Knives of all kinds were mounted on the walls in groupings, the corresponding sheath beneath each. The sheaths were often as elaborate as the knives. Three large cabinets probably held more.

  Pope stood near one of the tables covered with an array of knives, holding a primitive looking knife with reverence.

  Cheveyo was polishing one of the blades with a cloth, slow, thoughtful strokes. He slid an impatient gaze to her from beneath his eyelashes.

  Pope took the two of them in. “I shall leave you to your task.”

  As soon as he left, Cheveyo set down the knife he’d been polishing. “Princess, you’ve got to cut your get-ready time by two-thirds.” He took in her dried and brushed hair, made-up face, and probably the scent of her cherry blossom body lotion, since his nostrils flared. “For one thing, you don’t need it. For a more important thing, we don’t have time for glamour.”

  She leaned against the table next to him. “For one thing, I do need it. For a more important thing, I need to have control of something. Right now it’s not my life, my surroundings, or much of anything.” Especially her emotions. “But my getting ready process, which I enjoy, is something I can control.” She tightened her hold on the knife she’d brought down. “And don’t call me princess. My dad used to call me that.”

  “You don’t like your dad?”

  “No, it’s not that. I love him, of course.”

  He regarded her. “But somewhere along the way he let you down.”

  She ran the flat edge of the blade along the thick velvet that covered the tabletop. “No. But if I’m a princess, then he’s a king. He’s not strong enough to be a king.” She pushed away the hurt. “When he remarried, his wife wasn’t thrilled to inherit three motherless teens. I know he was lonely, and it meant so much to have a woman in his life again. He didn’t want to lose her.”

  “He sold you out?”

  She met his gaze, seeing the hardness in his eyes at the thought of that. “Not sold us out. But she chipped away at him, manipulating him into considering sending us off to a private school—one that was about two hundred miles away.”

  “Sounds like selling out to me.”

  “It wasn’t like that. He was just . . .”

  “It’s okay to be angry about it. When you care about someone, you will do anything, sacrifice everything, to keep them safe and happy. Especially your children. He was being selfish, plain and simple.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to be angry at him. I just have a hard time with his weaknesses. And when Darkwell was hunting us down, my dad called the police to report Eric. If I hadn’t heard him, Eric would have been arrested—and killed. Dad didn’t know the danger, and who would believe that kind of craziness anyway, but the man called the police on the boy he’d raised as his son.”

  He was still regarding her in that curious way. “In Cinderella, her father married the wicked stepmother. Didn’t he abandon her or die, leaving her in the clutches of those awful women?”

  Petra frowned. She’d never connected the story to her own life. “She was afraid to tell her father about the cruelty she suffered because he was too cowed to confront his new wife about it. Cinderella thought he might be angry at her instead.”

  “Then she became a princess. I saw the cartoon movie cel at your townhouse. And another of Snow White. Both princesses. Both orphans. As was Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Do you understand why you’re drawn to them?”

  She shrugged. “I like their stories. I always have.”

  “That’s because you are a princess and an orphan.” Before she could object, he added, “And you’re als
o a healer. Those are part of your archetypes, which is what I meant when I said earlier that it was part of your psyche. We all have them, twelve archetypes who guide our journey here. There are almost ninety of them, like Victim, Queen, Knight, Avenger, Warrior.”

  “I suppose you’re a warrior.”

  “And the hermit.”

  She picked up another knife, one with a blade half as long as a sword. “I also love the story of Aigiarm, an ancient Mongolian princess who challenged her many suitors. She put up her virginity to their horses if one could wrestle her to the ground. They say she ended up with ten thousand horses, and not one man won her virginity. I have a painting of her in my dining room.”

  “That’s a good princess to focus on right now.”

  He grabbed her and spun her around. The knife dropped to the floor as he slammed her against the wall, his body pressed to hers. “Always be ready, princess. The big bad wolf is on the prowl.”

  It would be much more annoying if there wasn’t an erotic undertone to the way he pressed her wrists to the wall at the sides of her head, the way he looked at her as though he would eat her up.

  “Maybe I’m not afraid of the big bad wolf.” She kneed him, gratified that he hadn’t been ready for that. He grunted but didn’t buckle.

  “Better,” he said on a tight voice, stepping back in a slow, deliberate manner.

  She grimaced and wanted to apologize, but that sounded more princessish and not warriorish, so she didn’t. “I don’t want to be ready every second.” She picked up the knife and set it back on the table, then picked up the one she’d been working with.

  He walked stiffly toward the display table. “You have to be.”

  “What if I accidentally stab you? Or the knife drops and spears our feet?”

  “I’m watching where it goes.” He opened one of the drawers and pulled out a leather belt. “Most of my sheaths are made to be mounted horizontally on my belt. That’s why I wear loose shirts that hang over my waistline.” He wrapped the belt around her waist. “Too big. I’ll take it into Flag and have the guy who made it put in another hole. I want it to fit tight.” He surveyed what she was wearing, a form-fitting long-sleeved shirt. “Most of what I’ve seen you wear are tight shirts or sweaters, which look great but don’t do much for disguising a weapon.”