The Crumpled Sword

by Sydney Presley

  “You’re quite the philosopher, aren’t you?” David smiled to show he hadn’t meant to sound snarky.

  But do I even need to show that kind of thing anymore?

  “No, you don’t,” Warwick said. “Not if I can sense what you’re thinking, which I just did. Different to actually hearing the thought, sensing. It’s a weird experience but in a good way, me knowing how you feel. Means I have less chance of pissing you off if you’re in a bad mood or whatever.”

  David found it in him to laugh. “I’m jealous I don’t have the same ability.”

  “Yet. It’ll come. Maybe your subconscious is fighting the bond.”

  “Maybe I didn’t bite you hard enough. I was afraid of hurting you.”

  “A bite is a bite,” Warwick said. “Besides, we have the rest of our lives together to work this out.”

  “Which might not be long if Idaline kills me.”

  “Now here’s where I can teach you a bit about always seeing the bad side of things. Rephrase that in a positive light.”

  David tried different sentences in his head but still came up with the original. “I can’t.”

  “How about: And it will be a long life; Idaline isn’t going to get the chance to kill me because I’ll stop her. How does that sound?”

  “Much better than my version.” David would give it a go, but how could he change thirty-odd years of being who he was overnight?

  “Doesn’t have to be overnight,” Warwick whispered. “Like I said, the rest of our lives.”

  Contentment stole over David. How bloody strange that this morning he’d walked near enough over this very spot, a single man with no one to call his own, and now here he was, his head on a man’s shoulder—his mate’s shoulder—contemplating sharing every aspect of himself. Not even contemplating. It seemed Warwick was able to access every bit of David at will. Or was it coming to him in parcels, deposited as he needed information? David would know soon enough, he supposed, when his mind stopped fucking about and allowed him to hear and sense Warwick’s thoughts and feelings.

  Will it be like an invasion, though? Emotions and memories I don’t want to see because they’re not mine? Will it seem like a privacy issue, me snooping into his mind?

  “Do you feel as though I’m invading your privacy?” Warwick asked.

  “No.”

  “Then stop worrying.” Warwick draped his arm around David’s shoulders. “It’ll be the same way for me. I have nothing to hide from you. There is good and bad inside me, like there is in everyone, and it’s all there for you to view and feel and hear. Maybe we’ll learn to shut each other out in time, to know when to listen and when to back off.”

  “It’s a learning curve.”

  “It is—one we’ll enjoy, all right?”

  “All right.”

  Already David felt more positive. Was Warwick’s arm about his shoulders the reason for that? Was Warwick’s positivity seeping into David bit by bit? If that were so, he’d rather Warwick never stopped touching him. With that in mind, he shrugged Warwick’s arm off and held his hand instead, then turned so they faced the top of the hill.

  “Come on, we have a flower to find,” David said.

  Warwick winked. “That’s more like it. And we’re going to find it, you know. We’re going to succeed in whatever it is we set our minds to. You’ve got your Hail to fulfill, and all the good things in your destiny. And I intend to be by your side when you accomplish everything The Objective has on its pages for you. You and me, David, all the way.”

  Warwick squeezed David’s hand and a burst of energy entered him.

  “Yeah, all the damn way.” He grinned and tugged Warwick up the hill.

  Chapter Six

  Warwick was a fit bloke, but fucking hell, the climb to the top had winded him. He stared down at the lake, which seemed so small now compared to how it had appeared halfway up. Somewhere down there, beneath that innocent-looking water, were three dead shifters. Maybe even more. Or was it like he really suspected? That Idaline had managed to whisk Rachel’s and David’s parents’ bodies away, down through the lake bed and deep into the earth’s core, depositing them in a world much like Hell—Hell for shifters and all other paranormal beings?

  The idea of lost souls wandering about down there with the likes of Idaline tormenting them had Warwick’s hackles going up. But they had entered the place by choice, surely, their bad status on Earth meaning they had sins to pay for in Hell. There was nothing he could do about them being there, though. But David could—and that was what David’s Hail was all about. Warwick really ought to tell him, before the bond finally worked for David and he found out that Warwick had kept something important from him. That would hurt the man like crazy—and break the trust that had built up so far between them.

  Shit.

  He sipped some coffee then sat on a jutting piece of rock that was more like a seat than anything. “David, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Oh right. What’s that then?” David plonked down beside him and stretched his legs out, moving his feet from side to side, most probably to ease an ache in his ankles.

  Warwick did the same, and the relief was welcome. His calf muscles burned as much as the skin on his arms and the back of his neck. The sun was a hot bitch today. He damned himself for forgetting to put his sports jacket on for protection before they’d left the cabin.

  “I know what your Hail is about.” Warwick held his breath. Maybe it was to stop the next words coming out of his mouth in the wrong manner, maybe it wasn’t, but either way, those words would have to be set free.

  “Your Angel told you, yes?” David moved closer so their arms touched.

  “Yes. It seems when the Angels try to get into your dreams, they’re unable to. So they haven’t been able to tell you details of your Hail. It seems your mind blocks even them—the Angels, I mean—which is highly unusual. Do you even dream?”

  “Sometimes. Mainly about Rachel and that day, and you could call them nightmares, really.”

  “I see. Perhaps you’re so consumed by her death that it’s literally fucked with your mind. You know, stopped it functioning the way it normally would. I don’t mean to sound nasty, just musing out loud.”

  “It’s okay, and I agree with you. Her death has always been there. If I’m busy, that’s great, I don’t think about her, but when I’m idle? Well, she fills my head and it takes a lot of fighting to get her out of it.”

  “You poor bastard.” Warwick took David’s hand in his. Rubbed the back of it with his thumb. Wished they’d met under different circumstances so he could court him like he was supposed to. They’d missed out on the attraction dance entirely—circling one another, flirting and all that jazz. Unfortunately, with this shit going on, their mating had been rushed, and them getting to know one another would be tainted by their Hails and that bloody cow, Idaline.

  “So. My Hail?” David asked.

  “You have to destroy the shifter underworld.” Warwick hadn’t even contemplated beating around the bush. It was best to deliver news like this in one fell swoop. Harder on the recipient in some ways, but better in others. Less anticipation and the coiling up of nerves while waiting for the hammer to be dropped.

  David laughed. Loud and long. Warwick hadn’t expected that. He’d already come to realize that his mate was a bit of a surly, pessimistic bugger, and Warwick had braced himself for a million or more questions—and him having limited answers to them. David clutched his stomach with his free hand, his head thrown back and tears rolling down his cheeks. Warwick sensed the hysteria that was creeping into David and needed to put a stop to it immediately.

  “David! Enough!” All right, Warwick hadn’t meant to sound so domineering, so abrupt and mean, but it had done the trick.

  David stopped laughing, the stretch of his smile shriveling then downturning. He swiped the tears from his face and opened watery eyes that appeared to have glazed over. What was he seeing? The lake-grave? The sky? The wood
s? Warwick probed to find out, shocked to see David’s thoughts as images—the same way the Angels showed Warwick things in his dreams. Fires of Hell licking at their feet. Demons approaching from the shadowy depths, eyes glowing lime green. David standing there facing them, a wilted flower in his hand—one similar to a white rose, a useless weapon against so many evil beings.

  The fear inside David transferred to Warwick. It was intrusive, convulsing in waves in his body, permeating every bit of them until Warwick knew that David thought he wouldn’t be able to defeat the advancing evil, and he would be devoured along with Warwick. Then the fear heightened—so the bond was working if David was more fearful of Warwick dying than himself.

  “Maybe it won’t be like you’re thinking,” Warwick said quietly.

  David shook his head, and Warwick was glad that those images vanished.

  “But maybe it will. Maybe the Angels are getting through somehow, showing me that shit.” David shuddered. “Because I sure as hell didn’t make myself see the underworld and those…people.”

  “Although what you saw wasn’t pleasant, it’s good in a way that you did. If the Angels are getting through now, they’ll help you with your Hail. Guide you.”

  “I don’t get how we’re meant to find our way down to the underworld—if it’s even down. The underworld could be a pocket, some kind of hidden rip that we enter somehow.”

  “Where did the idea of that come from?” Warwick asked.

  “I don’t know, it just occurred to me when I questioned whether it was down—and I got a sense of truth when I thought of it being a pocket or a rip.”

  “So they’re able to talk to you now, the Angels. Good.” Warwick blew out a sigh of relief.

  “Is that how they do it, then? With images and emotions? Make you see and feel stuff rather than us hearing their voices?”

  Warwick nodded. “Yes, much like psychics are meant to work. They don’t get ‘told’ anything, not in the way we think, like a spirit speaking. They get shown, and psychics have to decipher the pictures into something that makes sense. Which is why they’re perceived to have got it wrong sometimes. It wasn’t wrong, the information, just their perception of it. Make sense?”

  “Hmm.” David nodded, too. “So I could misread what the Angels tell me?”

  “I would say so. Your dad did, what with thinking it was Rachel who was a Superior and not you. He believed what he wanted to believe. And remember, we’re not just shifters, we’re also part human, and to be human is to err, to be frail in some respects. We make mistakes.”

  “Crap. I don’t want to read the Angels wrong. I want to get it right first time and not have to doubt my own interpretation.” David stamped one foot—not in a juvenile way but a very manly I’m-fucked-off kind of way. “You saw inside my head. I know you did. What did you make of it?”

  Warwick didn’t have to think about it, but he did hesitate, for once, to say anything. He’d seen himself and David in the underworld, plain and simple, and there had been too many demons to kill by themselves. He said this to David, then, “But you were holding the crumpled sword, so that’s a big clue. Not only do you have to kill Idaline with it, but every other demon or devil, I’m thinking. Which to my mind says that the poison we create from it will be enough—like maybe only one drop can kill?”

  David frowned. “What I don’t get is how we make them drink it. How the fuck do we force God knows how many devil-things to literally sip their own death?”

  “I don’t know. I do know it can’t harm us, though.” Warwick sighed again.

  His mind filled with the images of withered bodies, husks of former people, burned from the inside out. Their hands were arthritic claws, fingers like scorched tree twigs, gnarled and useless. Thighs were drawn up against bellies, the demons in death adopting the pose from the womb, the fetal position reverted to as though a whisper had told them it should be so. Teeth bared, lips charred away, nostrils great cavities, too big for their wrecked, pitiful faces. Eyes non-existent, stark holes where they used to be. And ash. So much ash. What did that mean?

  David gasped, seeming to choke on the air, and Warwick wasn’t sure if what he’d seen originated from David’s head or his own. Did it matter where the images had come from? Warwick’s understanding was that they would succeed in what they had to do, but the good side of him, the side that was sympathetic, hated the idea that they would cause those people, those beings, to end up that way.

  I can’t allow myself to feel pity. I just can’t. Not when David’s life is on the line. He’s all that matters to me now.

  “I saw inside your head,” David whispered. “They weren’t my images—and I know that because I purposely tried to look inside your head, to see if I even could. Christ, those poor people…”

  “Not people, remember.” Was Warwick reminding David or himself? “They’re out to kill you, don’t forget that. It’s you or them. Or me or them.”

  “They can’t have you,” David said. “I won’t let them.”

  “Nor will I. We have to do this, all right? Don’t see them as human, see them for what they are. Evil bastards who wreak havoc. They infiltrate the minds of good people, good shifters, in order to rule over them, to expand their numbers. They deserve what we’ll be giving them.” That information had come from nowhere, but he’d take it.

  “Why us?” David asked.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not capable enough.” David smacked his foot on the ground again. Dust kicked up then settled back down on the toe of his boot, adding another layer to the dirt already there. “I’m not some strong bloke who can shove his way through a crowd or speak up loudly when others speak louder. I stand back, hoping I don’t have to do either of those things. I play it safe, always.”

  “Well now it’s time to play dangerously. You have it in you to do so—you must have, otherwise the ancient Angels wouldn’t have chosen you when writing the future in The Objective.” A thought came to Warwick, then. Lots of thoughts. Lots of questions. “What if this uncertainty in you has been brought on by Rachel treating you the way she did? Think about it. She bullied you on and off for six years—it was all you’d ever known. It’s obvious you’d shy away from confrontation, that you’d do anything for a quiet life.”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “But what if you weren’t born that way? What if you originally had fire in your belly and the will to defeat whatever came your way? What if Idaline, through Rachel, systematically destroyed that part of you because of this very reason—because of your Hail and what you have to do? What if Idaline has been aware all along, since your birth, that you are the one destined to defeat them and she needed to make sure you wouldn’t be brave enough?”

  “Fucking hell… What a bitch.”

  “Do you see how clever she’s been? How manipulative? How cunning?”

  “I bloody do. Shit, I could have been someone else entirely. Someone who didn’t worry over every weird look, every word spoken to me, searching for hidden meanings that might not even have existed. I could have been someone like you, damn it.” David clenched his fist and thudded it against his thigh.

  “You can still be someone like me. The someone you were born to be before Idaline ruined your true self. He’s in there somewhere, you know. You just have to look deep inside and find him. Allow him to come through. Believe in him.” He clutched David’s hand, willing him to ‘get’ what he was saying, to feel some of that goddamn belly fire. “We’re all buried to some degree by what other people have expected of us, what we’ve been taught. We’ve all got parts of us stifled, suffocated because of what other people might think or say. Well, fuck that! Why should we hide our real selves away? That manufactured person you’ve been all your life…he needs to know he isn’t welcome anymore, that he’s a product of some devious bitch. That alone should help you get rid of him, shouldn’t it? To know you’ve been molded?”

  “Christ, when you put it that way…” David shook his he
ad. “I’ve felt that piece of me at times, you know, only I wasn’t brave enough to act on the whispers, the voice that told me I could do this or that. The self-doubt always took over. But you’re right. I have a job to do, and I’m going to enjoy destroying that hag for what she’s done to me. What she did to Rachel and my parents. To you.”

  David stood and darted his gaze over the ground. Warwick felt David’s determination, felt his own spine strengthening, straightening with the mettle that now flooded David’s body. His mate was coming into his own, and blimey, the emotions roiling through David and Warwick were potent.

  “You’ve got this,” Warwick said. “You can do this.”

  “I know I can. And look.” He pointed ahead a little way. “There’s our crumpled sword.”

  Warwick glanced in that direction. Yeah, there was the sword all right. The very same flower he’d seen inside David’s head in the underworld visual.

  A proud rose stood alone, no leaves or thorns, just the naked black stem sprouting from the ground. The flower wavered in a slight breeze, the sun glinting off its white petals, making them appear silver.

  So, they had the weapon. Now they just had to learn how to wield it.

  Chapter Seven

  David stared at the sword on the kitchen table, the petals glittering like the one under the dome in Beauty and the Beast. The flower itself wasn’t white but silver, the petal edges tinged with a brighter hue, which gave the impression they were lit from within. It was a striking sight, and David didn’t want to ruin it by picking it apart and making poison out of it. But pick it apart they must, otherwise…

  Warwick had plucked it from the ground and carried it to the cabin, seemingly unafraid of whether they really were immune from being killed by such a pretty thing. But the truth of the matter was that they were immune—David had touched it himself once they’d got back—and now they had to rely on Warwick’s memory of how to make the poison.