Dark Warrior

by Rebecca York

  He would start again, slowly and patiently. He would let Sophia set the pace.

  Of course, she’d done it this time. She’d been fast and direct, and he’d responded without even thinking. Until the moment when her mind had opened to him. And his to her.

  He felt a jolt of excitement.

  That mind-to-mind communication had been real. Opened by the sexual intimacy, even though he was sure she would find some way to deny it, until she was ready to accept what the two of them could mean to each other.

  “Careful,” he muttered. “You’ve planned everything else in your life. Don’t let this be the one time you screw up.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RAFE GARRISON NEVER let moss grow under his feet. After the disaster on the road, he’d chewed out his contact at the spa.

  The guy had the skills to do his job at the facility and enough charm to disarm the women. In addition, he was willing to do things for money that most guys would balk at, but that was what made him useful.

  Rafe didn’t like working through a surrogate, but he was stuck with the inconvenience because there was some kind of barrier that kept him out of the spa.

  Not something artificial like he had at home. Something they generated with their psychic powers.

  When he’d tried to get in, he’d almost had a heart attack. So he’d given up and found someone to work for him. Too bad the guy wasn’t the sharpest tack in the drawer.

  The jerk claimed he hadn’t known about the change in meeting plans until after Sophia had come home. Rafe didn’t like it. He was paying big bucks for information, but he understood that the women could make last-minute changes in their assignments, because they served at the whim of the high priestess or the mother superior or whatever you wanted to call her.

  Instead of shouting curses into the phone, he’d gritted his teeth and given the guy another chance to get it right. This time, they were going with a more direct plan. No chances of mistaken identity on the road. And the man knew that if he screwed up again, he was dog meat.

  Rafe went to bed feeling satisfied that the situation was under control, even if he hadn’t made any progress in locating the other Minot. Nobody who fit the profile had moved into town in the past couple of months. But that didn’t mean he was going to give up looking.

  He switched his thoughts back to the man at the spa. He had more control over that situation. As he lay on his soft Egyptian cotton sheets, he amused himself by thinking about ways to punish the guy if he fucked up again.

  He felt peaceful as he’d drifted off. He even got a few solid hours of sleep.

  Then he sank into another one of his damn dreams. The dreams that had dogged him all his life. Well, not when he was a boy, thank the gods. Then he might have grown up insane. The torture had started when he’d hit his late teens, and he’d never told anyone about it.

  In the dreams he was always a Minot. He wasn’t sure how he knew that. But he was sure he was always another man who had lived in an earlier age. And each time the guy ended up with his ass in a sling.

  Tonight’s was particularly bad. In this version of the old story, he was a man named Dean Conrad from an Arizona mining town called Thunder Hill. The year was 1832. He owned the bank, the hotel, and the livery stable, and with the silver mines outside of town going great guns, he was doing really well. He’d moved to the area because he’d been keeping track of the Ionians. And he knew they were in Sedona, less than thirty miles away.

  In the dream, he breathed a sigh of relief because everything was finally going his way.

  He had money and power, and he was plotting how to capture one of the women and take her to a ranch he had out in the desert, where he could do anything he wanted with her.

  Just as he was about to kidnap the next one who showed up in town for supplies, outlaws came riding up the mudhole of a street—and shot him before he could duck for cover. Townspeople killed two of the gang members and chased away the rest. Some of them carried the wounded Dean Conrad to the doctor’s office. But he’d been shot bad—in the guts. There was nothing the doc could do to save his life. He’d lingered on for most of a day, cursing his fate, and died in horrible pain.

  Rafe woke in a cold sweat, still feeling the agony of the massive wound. Teeth gritted, he climbed out of bed and stood naked for a moment, staring at the darkness outside the window, before hurrying down the hall to his office, where he booted his computer and looked up Dean Conrad. As he’d suspected would be true, Conrad was a real person whose life and death conformed to the dream.

  He’d lived in Arizona. Been the leading citizen of a town called Thunder Hill, and been killed by outlaws invading the town. Only in the official version, he’d died fighting them off.

  As far as he knew, that part wasn’t true. He didn’t even have the satisfaction of justifying his death.

  But even if a few details were wrong, how the hell had he dreamed about the man—when he’d never heard of him until tonight?

  Struggling to keep his hands from shaking, Rafe switched to a Word file that he’d been keeping for the past few years and added Conrad’s name and a bit of information about the guy.

  He joined a list of twenty other men who had haunted Rafe’s dreams. Each was a Minot who had done well for himself in the world—then died at the peak of his powers.

  None of them was a figure he’d made up from his own imagination. Each of them was real. He’d confirmed that through computer research, each time hoping that the guy wouldn’t turn out to be a historical reality.

  Stanley Weston was a businessman in Philadelphia in the eighteen hundreds who had been swept away in a flood when he’d gone to inspect a cotton mill he was thinking of buying.

  Will Tilden was a railroad executive at the turn of the twentieth century who had died of some terrible illness. Probably of appendicitis.

  Ben Gunderson was a German beer maker who’d come to Milwaukee and cornered the brew market—before he’d gotten killed in an accident at one of his own plants.

  There were more, but he didn’t need to scan the list. He’d memorized it long ago.

  He wasn’t sure how he knew they were Minot. But he was certain of it, all the way to the marrow of his bones.

  To be truthful, he didn’t even know what made a man a Minot—not really. Genetics, he supposed. Probably they had a bunch of dominant genes that were passed down from father to son. They must be sex linked, because he’d never heard of a female Minot.

  Did all of them dream of long-dead men who had come to grief? He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was supposed to learn something from their failures.

  And he had!

  They’d made him realize that he didn’t have complete control of his life. Still, he was determined not to let their failures happen to him all over again.

  He’d like to ask the others about their dreams. The problem was, Minot weren’t real approachable.

  They fought for what they wanted, and that extended to fighting each other. To avoid the conflict that was building between himself and his father, he’d never lived at home after he’d gone away to college and never come back for more than a few days. Even when he’d attended the old man’s funeral, he hadn’t stayed in the house for long.

  Too bad the Minot couldn’t join forces the way they had in ancient times. If they could team up, surely they could defeat the damn Ionians.

  Maybe the last time they’d worked together was when they rescued the Ionians from the barbarians. The way he’d heard it, after the big blowup over the women’s escape, the Minot had all blamed each other. They’d been too angry to work together again, ever. Maybe the damn women had cursed them. And even if they could now join forces, then what? Each of them would want the spoils of victory for himself, and only one of them could climb to the top of the heap.

  Of course, he did have a line on someone who he thought would join him in the current project. A man who’d had reasons to hate the Ionians.

  That made the guy vul
nerable, and Rafe was going to pitch his case to him once he had Tessa safely away from the compound.

  BEFORE dinner, Tessa tiptoed down the hall and slipped into the private library that the Sisterhood maintained. After stepping into the darkened room, she closed the door quietly behind her, breathing in the atmosphere of the room.

  In the public part of the spa, there were books that guests might read, novels or interesting nonfiction.

  But this small room was different. These books held the wisdom of the Ionians. Some explained how to work ceremonies and cure illnesses. Others described psychic powers and how to cultivate them. A few even had information on the Minot.

  Some of the sisters were transcribing the information into electronic form, but she suspected that one book would always be kept in writing.

  It was a volume that Demeter, their teacher in Ionian studies, had shown them in one of their indoctrination classes.

  Tessa hadn’t thought of the lessons that way when she’d been a little girl. Instead she’d been fascinated by the history of the Ionians and the training in using their psychic powers.

  Now she knew that the special schooling had been designed to make the girls want to grow up and take their place as members of the Sisterhood.

  She’d been intrigued by this particular book all those years ago but hadn’t questioned any of the information. Now she thought it might be pertinent.

  After Sophia had come home from the attack on the road, Tessa had asked Cynthia if any of the Ionians had left the order. The high priestess had answered in the negative, but Tessa couldn’t stop wondering if that was really true.

  She turned on the light, then scanned the library shelves and didn’t see the book she was looking for.

  Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to give the room a closer inspection and found a locked cabinet under the shelves opposite the window. The lock might have stopped her, but she was too determined to give up. Again she searched and found a small gold key in a drawer above the cabinet doors.

  It fit the lock. Inside the cabinet was the book she remembered, bound in white leather.

  Crossing to one of the comfortable armchairs, she sat down and began to turn the pages. It was a list of all the Ionians, down through the ages, copied from old scrolls and kept up to date by the order. The first entries were in ancient Greek, and she couldn’t read them. Then they switched to modern languages. Spanish. Albanian. Chinese. Now they were in English.

  As a girl, she’d been thrilled to see her own name and date of birth in the list. And saddened to see the notation on her mother’s death.

  But what if an Ionian had been born into the order who was missing from the sisters at the spa, and there was also no record of her death?

  Turning backward through the most recent entries, she began looking for the births of all the women currently here.

  She could account for all the Ionians now at the spa, until she came to an entry that stopped her.

  Linda.

  Tessa’s heart began to pound.

  Apparently she’d been born in the first years of the twentieth century. According to the book, she hadn’t died. But she wasn’t here, either.

  Which must mean that she had left the group and not returned.

  Unless there was some mistake in the book, which Tessa couldn’t believe, not when all the records had been kept so meticulously.

  So where was Linda? Had she died under mysterious circumstances? Was she AWOL?

  Tessa shivered. Or had something worse happened?

  She kept looking and found another name. Chandra. She had been born in the mid-1940s and never died either, as far as the record was concerned.

  The last name she found was Julia, from the late 1940s. Again, missing in action.

  Who were they? Had they all met the same fate? Did Tessa dare ask about them?

  CHAPTER NINE

  FRUSTRATION HAD JASON plunging back into the search he’d started for the other Minot. He could imagine the guy was doing the same thing, plowing through property records, looking for the rival who had foiled his plans in the desert.

  But Jason was sure the other guy wouldn’t find him because he’d prepared too well. He’d bought his house five years ago, and rented it out until he was ready to move to Sedona. Which meant that nobody was going to find him in any recent property transfers. And if anybody started asking around town, he didn’t think they’d connect a Minot with the new vet.

  Was the other Minot as methodical?

  Jason had made a list of recent property transfers in the area and also rentals, and he’d been checking out the purchasers and renters.

  So far he hadn’t come up with anything he could take to the bank. But he had lots of time to keep searching.

  Or maybe he should go back to the spa and give all of the horses a physical exam—whether they needed it or not. Maybe Sophia would come down to the stable again.

  If she didn’t, that would be worse than staying away on his own.

  WHEN a light tap sounded at Sophia’s door, she sat bolt upright in bed imagining that Jason Tyron had somehow come to her room.

  But he wouldn’t dare!

  It must be one of her sisters. Quickly she got out of bed and crossed the tile floor. When she opened the door, she found Tessa standing in the hallway.

  “May I come in?” her sister asked.

  “Of course.”

  As Tessa stepped into the room and closed the door behind her, Sophia turned on a bedside lamp.

  Her sister peered at her. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  Tessa scuffed her foot against the tile floor. “I came to ask you a favor.”

  “If I can.”

  “Can you help me see the future?”

  Sophia sucked in a sharp breath. “You know that neither one of us was very good at that.”

  Tessa’s voice took on a note of desperation. “I know. But I’m afraid. I feel like everything’s changing.”

  Sophia understood because it was true for her, as well. She’d been lying awake, worrying about Jason Tyron. Maybe this was her chance to find something out.

  “I want to feel . . . safe,” her sister said.

  Sophia understood that, too. Still, she wasn’t sure they could accomplish anything.

  “The temple would be best, but we can’t go down there alone, and I don’t want to talk to anyone else about this,” Tessa murmured.

  “We can use the altar in here,” Sophia answered, gesturing toward the table that sat in front of the window. Since she might bring a lover to her room, it looked like an ordinary piece of furniture. Opening the drawer in front, she took out a length of fine lace, a solid gold plate, and a fat candle.

  After spreading the lace along the width of the table, she set the candle on the plate and lit it.

  The sisters each knelt on the small rug in front of the table, joining hands and closing their eyes the way they’d done as girls.

  Sometimes they’d felt a flicker of future knowledge, but nothing that had ever helped them or made them feel more secure.

  She felt Tessa tense and knew she was groping for images of events that hadn’t happened yet.

  Although she wanted to know her own future, it stretched in front of her like a great void. But maybe she could help Tessa.

  She couldn’t exactly read Tessa’s thoughts, but she felt a mental joining.

  “Focus on what will be,” Tessa murmured. “On our lives as they unfold.”

  Sophia tried to do as her sister asked, but she could pick up nothing concrete, only Tessa’s desperate desire to discover what was ahead.

  She felt the strain—her own and Tessa’s. She wanted to give up a struggle that was obviously useless.

  Then she picked up something from her sister’s mind. “Who is Linda?” she whispered.

  “You caught that from my thoughts?”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s someone we don’t know.”

/>   Sophia was going to ask another question when an image leaped into her mind. She saw a large building looming in front of her. A church, she thought, but she couldn’t be sure. Smoke billowed around it.

  “What?”

  Tessa gasped, and pulled her hands away.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SOPHIA’S EYES SNAPPED open. “What did you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “A church. Burning.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then why did you break the connection like that?”

  Tessa turned her head to the side. “I . . . don’t know.”

  When she scrambled up, Sophia also stood, then leaned down to put out the candle.

  “Tell me what frightened you.”

  “Nothing specific. Just a vague . . . dread.”

  That was a lie, Sophia knew. There had been something specific. Something that had alarmed them both.

  “About Linda?”

  “I don’t know.” Tessa was already out the door, leaving Sophia shaken.

  She’d been in bad enough shape. She didn’t need to take on Tessa’s burdens as well.

  Sophia couldn’t go back to sleep. Finally, she got up and went to her office, where she struggled to focus on work.

  Did her future merge with Jason Tyron’s?

  Impossible. Her future was with her sisters.

  Yet she was guarding her thoughts from them, lest one of her sisters discover what had happened in the hayloft. She had no shame about enjoying sex with a man and walking away from him.

  It was the other part that worried her, the sense of connection with him that she never should have felt.

  Worse, she still didn’t know who Jason Tyron was. Not really.

  If he was a Minot, he could even be the one who had attacked her in the desert.

  As soon as that idea surfaced, she thrust it roughly away. She might be looking for excuses to mistrust him, but she didn’t have to go that far. She’d have known if it was him. When the attacker had touched her intimately, she hadn’t liked it. But she had liked Jason Tyron’s touch—very much.