“I took the information I needed from him, then I killed him.” It was a lie. Trevyn had left Will Bates drugged and handcuffed to a bed in a motel room in Winslow. If he himself lived out this night he would release Bates in the morning.
Kinnian grunted with satisfaction. “Good. A traitor should always be the first to die. Though I must say you surprise me, brother.” His gaze slid sideways at his sibling. Trevyn felt the pressure of Kinnian’s probing at his shields.
He held fast. “I’m tired of this chase. Time for it to be over.”
“Well said.” Kinnian’s smile spread like ’bot oil over his face. “Grab the boy. Kill the others and be done with it.”
Trevyn gripped his emotions tight. There was more. He waited for it.
“Ah, but Gabriel and his new bride—did I tell you I discovered her name, Trevyn? Yes. Alana.”
Kinnian watched him like a spider. Trevyn refused to move a muscle of his face. He did not blink or swallow. He did not frown or smile or twitch. He merely breathed. In. Out. As if the information was of no interest to him at all. As if he could not care less that it meant that the killer beside him was one step closer to finding the woman who had a hold on his heart, as well as Gabriel’s.
“Alana, Alana, Alana. Tonight I will torture your Gabriel until I am as hard as a bulkhead. Then I will make him watch as I take your mind so you beg me to fuck you over and over again. We’ll do it every night, my darling, until I grow tired of you, then I’ll send the both of you to the mine pits of lzpatra. That will be fun, don’t you think, Trevyn? Want in on the action?”
Trevyn, so sick with nausea he tasted the bile in his mouth, lifted an indifferent shoulder. “Perhaps. I haven’t seen her yet.”
Kinnian howled with laughter. “Ever discriminating, eh, brother?” He slapped him on the back. “You haven’t seen her yet!” He leaned closer, hatred sparking from his eyes. “I tell you I don’t care if she’s ugly as a nuntoc. I will ruin her, body and mind. Just to see Gabriel’s face.”
And yet, with no training at all, this woman had bested him in her first experience of the mindfield. Of course, that was part of the reason for Kinnian’s fury.
“Are you certain you’re feeling completely recovered, my lord? Perhaps I should go in with the troops first to secure the ranch.”
“No!” Kinnian whirled on him. “Gabriel and his bitch are mine! You can see to the boy.” He turned to yell at the company commander. “We go in as soon as it is dark.”
Trevyn’s hand fell to his dirk, sheathed on the left side of his belt. The moves played deep in his mind, behind the barriers that protected his innermost thoughts. Two steps, now three, to bring himself even with Kinnian. A closing of the fingers to grip the weapon, the fall of his arm to bring it to his right side. In the clinch, left arm around his throat, stab to the right kidney to shock, then a killing slice across the throat. He could hold his mind quiet long enough.
And the consequences? To hell with them. He was second in command. If he took the boy and got their payoff, the crew would follow him.
He took a step. Two.
Then across the desert sand, drums began to sound. Kinnian spun to stare at him.
“What the fucking hell is that?”
On the edge of the compound, where the dust of the corrals and the driveways became the scrub of the desert, the drum circle had been established, with a leaping bonfire at its center. All of the Navajos except the very oldest had joined the circle of dancers turning in patterns at the limit of the fire’s light, their voices rising and falling in the ancient call to the Holy Ones for help.
Gabriel stood several paces outside the circle and watched the darkness in the desert beyond the firelight. Lana slid an arm around his waist and waited with him.
He nodded at the last of the purple light fading in the western sky. “We don’t have much time.”
Sam, back on board the Shadowhawk, monitored a force of 60 massed in a shallow draw about a kilometer southeast of where they stood. Kinnian would wait until dark to attack with conventional forces, believing they were defenseless. Gabriel’s strategy was to strike first—in the mindfield.
“The plan is a good one.” Lana squeezed his side. “The Navajos know this land—the canyons and the hills are as familiar to their minds as their faces in the mirror.”
Gabriel shook his head. “These elders may have traveled in the Spirit World, but they’ve never had to fight in it. And Ethan and Asia—”
“Will be with us. And with Jack, who has more power than any of us.”
“He’s untrained.”
“You’ll help him.”
He turned to look at the woman who was bonded to him now for as long as he lived—took in her golden, curly hair, contained in a knot at the top of her head; her green eyes reflecting the flame of her courage; the easy strength in her body; the warmth that lived in her heart and soul. If he could keep her from this fight, safe in some protected hideaway, he would do it. Yet there was no one he’d rather have fighting at his side. Smiling, she sent a wave of liquid heat along their bond. She knew his heart—and felt the same way.
He glanced back out into the desert, unable to shake the bitter awareness of another presence.
Lana followed his gaze and shivered. “He’s here. I can feel him.”
“We’ll be done with him tonight.” Gabriel turned to pull her into his arms and kissed her, gently at first, then with a longing and a need that threatened to crush him before he got it under control.
He broke off and met her eyes. I love you, k’taama. Stay close to me tonight.
And I love you, k’taam. As close as your heart.
He clasped her hand and turned back to the spot near the drummers where Geneva Twohawks, Ethan, Asia, Jack and several others waited. They sat, and Gabriel cleared his mind.
Surrounded by the drums and the smoke, the singing took him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
In the mindfield, no physical coordinates
Bright sun overturned the darkness. Choking heat replaced the cool desert night air. Canyon walls rose on three sides around him, forming a box of jagged stone with a narrow strip of cloudless blue sky at the top, a floor of gritty sand at the bottom and a narrow slit at one end to allow entrance or exit. Shadows slanted across the canyon walls, hiding his people in the ledges and rock falls well above the canyon floor. Below them was the killing field they’d prepared in their minds for Kinnian and his troops.
Gabriel faced the tiny knot of people who would fight beside him. “We’ll only have one chance, a few seconds at most. His crew is connected to Kinnian, just as we are all connected. They will follow when I spring the trap. Do what you can before Kinnian gets everyone out of here.”
Ethan and Lana held automatic weapons. Asia carried a small, but serviceable Glock. Jack was hidden in a tiny niche in the rock, safely out of the path of flying bullets or the laser weapons favored by Kinnian’s crew. Gabriel had explained to the boy that once the trap was sprung his job was to hold an image in his mind of this place filled with Kinnian and his men, reinforcing the “reality” of the setting and keeping Kinnian there long enough for them to do him real damage.
“This is probably the only time you’ll get to use that.” He nodded at Lana’s gun. “Close in and mind-to-mind, they’re too hard to control. We tend to favor bladed weapons or pure energy blasts.”
Lana tilted her head. “That’s what I saw you using against Kinnian before—the lightning?”
He nodded.
“Too bad there’s no time for a little training session.”
He smiled and stood up to wave across the narrow canyon to Leonard Begay. “Ready?”
Leonard waved back. “All set.”
The others set their sights on the swath of sand below, and Gabriel reached deep in his mind to connect with the power he needed. Like a fire in his soul, he felt Lana. He felt Ethan and Jack and the others like a wall at his back. He heard, far away and deep in his blood, t
he drums beating and the Dineh elders singing, feeding him strength. He took a breath and plunged, seeking the thread that would link him to Kinnian. He cut through the barriers that protected them all, seized the link and pulled.
In the bottom of the canyon, Kinnian appeared out of nowhere, surrounded by sixty of his men. A shout rose all around him, drowning out Gabriel’s own order.
“Now!”
Fire and rock and bullets rained down on the men in the canyon, killing a third of them where they stood. The rest scattered and shielded, acting on instinct, seeking cover from an attack that had taken them from the draw where they had been gathering for their own assault to this unknown place. The most experienced and skilled among them returned fire, scoring and blistering the canyon walls with lasers or blasting at the rock with bursts of blue-white energy thrown from their hands.
Only Kinnian stood his ground, looking up at Gabriel with a hatred so black it darkened the sky. He raised a hand and lightning shattered the canyon wall just above them.
Gabriel dove for the person next to him—it was Ethan, his weapon trained on the last man standing below—and threw him to the ground as the cliff above them cracked and lost cohesion. The landslide he expected arrived as a soft fall of dust on their backs. He raised his head to see Lana grinning at him. She shrugged.
Gabriel turned to check on his people. Asia was gathering Jack into her arms from his hiding place, and though everyone was now covered with a fine layer of red dust, all seemed unhurt.
He turned back to Lana, and in an instant, the sun was taken from the sky, dropping them into pitch darkness. The heat was taken from the air, wrapping them in a fetid, damp cold.
Disoriented, he could only think to freeze and bark an order to do the same. “Don’t move!”
No one spoke, but he could sense them all still with him.
Lana touched his hand. It’s the cave where Kinnian fought you before, isn’t it?
--Yes. He owns this island on Thrane. “We have to go back to Navajo land. There’s a switchback trail leading up a mesa called Laughing Mother. Do you all see it?”
“No.” Ethan’s voice came out of the dark. “Wait. Grab my hand, Jack. Okay, I’ve got it. All these damn trails look the same to me.”
Gabriel focused on what he knew of the trail from old man Nakai’s mind and took them there, even as the black cave they were in began to echo with the sound of heavy boots and the shouts of Kinnian’s men. In a heartbeat, Gabriel and the others found themselves on a broad, flat overlook off the main trail up the mesa, the sleeping desert spread out below them in the silver light of a full moon.
Ethan stood with his arms around his tiny family. “What the hell just happened?”
“Kinnian tried to take back the home field advantage.”
“And we’re supposed to go on all night like that? What if he beams us into the middle of an interstate next time?”
Gabriel grunted. “Not his style, fortunately.”
“Ethan has a point, babe. This isn’t very productive.” Lana nodded at the boy. “Can’t we use Jack to block him?”
Gabriel shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. We risk Kinnian getting a separate hold on him.” And, damn it, I can’t feel Trevyn at all. Where the hell is he?
Lana said nothing, thought nothing, but her heart shared his unquiet. Deep down, he could tell she felt a haunting sadness at the thought of Trevyn that even she did not understand. Gabriel studied her face for a moment, then put it aside.
“There is something we might try, though.” Gabriel paced, his thoughts reaching back to his training, then running ahead to their problem. “With Jack’s raw power, I might be able to deflect Kinnian’s next attempt to move us and land us all somewhere else.”
Lana was there ahead of him. “We need a defensible site.”
“No. We need a battleground.”
Lana met his eyes and, after a second’s thought, nodded. Ethan and Asia watched him, waiting.
He explained. “If we try another ambush, Kinnian will just escape to another venue and try to draw us there.” He glanced at Ethan. “As you say, it could go on all night with no resolution. Or he could catch us in a trap from which we could find no way out. Our goal should be to make him fight—engage him with blades, make him think he has a chance of winning.”
Asia shook her head. “With blades? Are you crazy? He would have every chance of winning!”
Gabriel’s lips twisted in a wry smile. “Thanks for that vote of confidence.”
“I have to agree, Gabriel.” Ethan looked unconvinced. “This isn’t a meeting of the Society for Creative Anachronism. What the hell do we know about fighting with swords?”
“You won’t have to know a lot. I’m going to give you each a weapon to work with and imprint the basics in your minds. Jack’s job will be to disarm your opponents from his hiding place. Lana’s mind already has my sword skills. Her body just doesn’t have the experience of mine as yet—the muscle memory, you might say. If we can isolate Kinnian and bring him to our chosen battleground with a minimum number of his men, we can do this.”
Ethan frowned at him. “And if we can’t?”
“Then I’ll take us out and bring us back here. Keep that option in the back of your minds in case something happens to me.”
He saw Ethan and Asia exchange a look—a glance, nothing more—but it pulled at him in a way he would never have believed possible before his bonding with Lana. Those two, their son, everything they had, depended on him. What if he wasn’t strong enough?
Two are stronger than one, k’taam.
He smiled at her, his k’taama, then he set to work, materializing two heavy wooden staffs and two of the curved Pharisian broadsword/dirk pairs he favored for battle. Lana took up her sword and knife with a grin, while Gabriel did what he could to make Ethan and Asia proficient with the staff in a few short minutes.
He held off Kinnian’s repeated attempts to find them through the link they shared, but his little team didn’t have long. As he watched Lana execute a perfect swirling cut-and-thrust combination he felt a strong tug on the link, warning him that his brother had broken through at last. He gathered his troops.
“It’s time! Jack, grab my hand!” The boy touched him just as Kinnian yanked them toward a place of his own dark choosing. Gabriel drew on Jack’s power, felt it like a cauldron bubbling deep inside him, and visualized a sun-dappled grove of aspen and piñon pine at the base of the mesa.
The grove materialized around him, his people in place between the clear, shallow stream that defined its northern edge and the sheer sun-lit rock wall that was the mesa on the south. An instant later Kinnian and five of his men appeared at the western end of the grove, braced for battle. Gabriel stepped out from behind a jumble of red rock and lifted his sword over his right shoulder in readiness.
Kinnian grinned, a flash of white in the center of his black beard. “Ah. The smell of freshly- bonded female. Nothing like it in the galaxy.” One hand slipped obscenely to his crotch. “I can’t wait to have some.”
Before Gabriel could stop her Alana had stretched out a hand from her hiding place in the trees to his right. “I’ll give you some, you asshole.” Lightning bloomed at Kinnian’s feet.
The man sidestepped with a laugh, but Gabriel gave him no more time to trade quips. He closed the distance between them and swept his sword at Kinnian’s neck in a bright blur of motion. The blow met a block raised just in time. Kinnian’s blade slid inside the strike and sliced across the body armor protecting Gabriel’s ribs. Gabriel twisted to catch and deflect the deadly edge before it carved any deeper. With a grunt Kinnian broke off and swung his heavy blade back around toward Gabriel’s head. Shit! Gabriel’s block came up too slow and his arm crumpled under the weight of Kinnian’s superior strength. The two blades pushed closer and closer to his neck—then he dipped his shoulder and struck quick as an adder with the dirk in his left hand. Ah, a hit! Kinnian’s blood erupted over his fist.
&nbs
p; Kinnian cursed and sprang away from him, giving Gabriel time to glance around the grove and check the progress of the fight in other quarters. Lana was very near him, holding her own against two swordsmen whose swords kept disappearing at critical moments. Both were wounded, one was not going to last much longer, and Lana seemed unharmed. Deeper into the grove, Ethan and Asia were back-to-back and fighting off two others who couldn’t seem to keep a sword in their hands. A third man lay unconscious or dead at their feet. Jack was nowhere to be seen, but his effect was certainly being felt.
A flash of light and heat, a concussion of sound and power, took Gabriel off his feet and threw him through the air. The hard ground caught him an unknown distance later. He rolled and came up spitting blood. His hands were empty, his head was spinning. Kinnian was almost on top of him. He struggled to clear his head, to find his feet.
Then he heard her voice in his mind . . . NO! . . . and saw the blue-white glare as Lana ducked under the swing of her opponent’s sword and hit Kinnian with a pure blast of power. His sibling flipped backwards and landed face down in the litter of leaves on the floor of the grove a few meters away, his grip loose on the hilt of his sword.
Gabriel manifested his own weapons and staggered to his feet just as Kinnian began to stir. Lana was dispatching her last opponent; she didn’t need his help. Ethan and Asia were equally secure. His battle was with Kinnian, as it had been from the beginning.
He ran at Kinnian, sword raised, saw his brother stand and turn with murder in his eyes, his own blade at the ready. Then he saw an awful, pitiless grin spread across his brother’s face. The ground began to shake as if the mountain behind them had left its foundation and begun to wander the desert.
The boy hidden in the grove behind him began to shriek. And Gabriel didn’t need to turn to see what had begun to rip and tear at the trees, what had begun to roar with a soul-shattering noise.
VRadkrystion. World Eater. The Nameless One.
Trouble In Mind (Interstellar Rescue Series Book 2) Page 32
