by Nora Roberts
when you went down, when I couldn’t see you.”
And it had taken Doyle and Bran together to hold him back.
“But I pulled it together. Because I knew you were doing what you were meant to do, had to do. And would do. I need you to trust me, to believe in me. I need that or I can’t do it.”
“If I believe, it helps you?”
“All the difference in the world.”
“Then I believe.” She cupped his face, laid her lips on his, poured all she was into that one moment. “You have all my faith.”
“Then I can’t lose.”
He changed quickly, joined the others.
“You’ll be in the firestorm, and in the deluge,” Bran told them. “I’ll do what I can to send it up, away from you, but it’s going to be rough.”
“I like it rough.” Doyle drew his sword, sent Riley a glance. “Sexual innuendo intended.”
“Good one.” She drew her gun, gripped her knife.
“Keep her minions off me when you can.” Sawyer looked up, realized he didn’t need Sasha to tell him they were coming. Overhead, the sky already thrashed. “If she’s with them, and the seer says yeah, I need to get close enough to pull her in. I may need a toss-up,” he said to Bran.
“You’ll have it.”
The sky cracked open, shaking the world. And the bitter, flaming dark poured out.
“All my faith,” Annika told him.
Then they charged.
He dodged fire that speared out of the sky, lanced into the ground to sizzle. Whatever protection Bran had wound around the villa had that fire bouncing off—like striking a force field. And some of those fiery balls and lances ricocheted into the sharp wings of diving birds.
Yeah, a little of your own medicine, he thought, and took out a swarm with bullets.
Hot, spinning sparks spewed up, and he learned they had a nasty bite.
He fired, fired, slapped in fresh clips, fired. The world was fire and smoke, the blast of bullets, the slice of blade, the whoosh of bolts. And the lightning.
Then came the flood.
He’d been warned, Sawyer reminded himself as the force of Bran’s storm whipped over him. Wind and madly driving rain, lightning jagging through the dark.
He saw Annika’s bracelets flash, laid down a stream of shots over her head to destroy what came at her.
Spears of fire drowned in the rain, and the cool, clean wet soothed his burns. He caught the blur, thought Malmon. Fast, but not as fast as he’d been. Still healing, Sawyer thought as he took aim.
But the ground heaved up, knocked him back into a crawling fog that hissed and bit. He flipped up, for the first time really grateful for the dawn training. He nearly lost Malmon in the haze as that blur arrowed toward Sasha.
He gave a shout of warning, spun to shoot. But Bran’s lightning glanced off that blur, sent it spinning away. He caught a glimpse of Riley charging Doyle, and Doyle catching her foot in his hand, heaving up so she flipped high, firing at a circle of birds.
He wondered when the hell they’d worked that one out, then had no time to think.
She broke out of the dark, shocking the air so he felt the charge of it lift the hair on his arms, the back of his neck. Once again she rode the three-headed beast, but now wore some sort of armor, black as the night.
She heaved thunderbolts, flooded the rain with liquid fire that burned a vicious orange as it fought to slide through the storm.
Focused on Bran, he noted, as the rest rushed to circle around him. Take out our magick, then scorch the rest. The Cerberus screamed in triumph, tongues flicking more fire, eyes as crazed as its rider’s. The world quaked as power clashed with power, and Sawyer braced his legs against it, took aim.
His bullets struck each head, had them whipping back in shock as those triumphant screams went to shrieks of pain.
“It’s now,” he shouted. “Right now! Send me up!”
Shooting his weapons home, he gripped the compass.
He flew, grateful now he’d had the experience with Bran once before or he might have fumbled. With Nerezza fighting to control her beast, with her rage focused on the five, Sawyer put everything he had into the moment.
His hand gripped her flying hair, and with the shock of it rocketing up his arm, he shifted.
Like a tornado, the dark funneled around him, full of sound, burning with her fury. The stinging whip of her power lashed his arm, his face, his body. But he held on.
Then her eyes met his, and her madness smiled.
Inside,” Bran ordered. “Inside now. Be ready. Injuries?”
“Burns, cuts, crap. And more crap,” Riley managed. “The sun’s going down.”
To solve the problem, and because she limped as she ran, Doyle simply scooped her up, carried her like a football into the villa.
“We’ll deal with injuries in Ireland. Let me help you.” Sasha dropped down to drag off Riley’s boots.
“Look, I’m not a priss, but how about averting your— Damn it, no time.”
She tossed modesty away with her shirt.
Doyle unhooked her belt. “You can’t run.”
“I know it, I know it. Sawyer—”
“He’ll come back to us. We have to believe.” Sasha gripped Riley’s hand even as it began to change. “We all have to believe.”
Riley’s only answer was a howl as she rolled to her hands and knees, gave herself over to the moon.
“Can you see him?” Annika knelt down, wrapped her arms around the wolf, pressed her face into the warm fur to comfort them both. “Sasha, can you feel him? Please. Please.”
“No, but I don’t when he’s traveling. He’s strong, Anni, and smart. He pulled her away.”
“She never saw him coming,” Doyle added. “He took her by surprise. The kid’s got balls of steel. He’ll come through. He’ll come back.”
“We’re going to live on the island.” As she spoke it, like a prayer, tears streamed down her cheeks. “He’s going to build a house, and I’ll stay in the sea. We’ll swim together.”
“I know.” Because she felt Annika’s fight not to despair, Sasha knelt beside her, took her and the wolf into an embrace. “It’s lovely. We’ll all come see you, swim with you.”
“He’ll come back to me.” Annika drew in a breath, raised her head. “Just as he did before. He’ll come back to me.”
When he did, he fell at her feet.
“Sawyer, Sawyer.” She dropped onto him, covering his face with kisses. “You’re hurt.”
“Not that bad.” He kissed her back, and hissed as he managed to get to his knees. “Pretty bad,” he admitted. “The disconnect was tricky. She’s got a hell of a grip. I don’t know where I dumped her, or how long we have until she figures it out, but we should get the hell of out Dodge.”
“You’re weak, brother.”
“Not that fucking weak,” he shot back at Doyle, but accepted the hand to help him to his feet.
“I believed in you.” Annika took his bloody hand, pressed it to her cheek.
“I could feel it. Keep it up.”
“You have the coordinates.”
He nodded at Bran, tapped his temple. “Set. I could probably use a boost.”
“You’ll have it.”
“Don’t forget my bike,” Doyle told him.
“Got you covered.” He glanced at Riley. “First time I’ve ever traveled with a werewolf.” And grinned at her low growl. “Okay, gang, second star to the right and straight on till morning.”
“I love you, Sawyer King.”
“Keep that up, too.” He pressed his lips to Annika’s, mentally pulled his battle-scarred friends in close.
With Annika’s arms around him, he took them traveling to where two stars shined quiet, and the third waited to light again.
The mother of lies tumbled through time and space. A storm of wind and sound whirled around her. Worlds rushed by, grazing her flesh with their edges as she fell.
As she bled—bled!—po
wer seeped out of her, drop by drop. She gripped the reins of her fury in hands that burned and burned, gathered all she was, all she had.
Weak, weaker, fading.
She dropped through the world like a comet of ice, and the earth quaked when she fell onto the floor of the cave, by the silver steps she’d created.
She tasted her own blood in her mouth, swallowed it, but had no strength to rise. So she lay, wrapped in pain.
Dimly she heard the click of claws on stone.
“My queen, my god, my love.”
Scaled hands lifted her head, stroked her, while the beast she’d created from man made guttural croons.
“I will kill them all for you,” it promised. “I will help you heal, grow strong. Drink.” It held a goblet to her lips. “Drink, and rest and heal.”
She drank, but the few drops of the seer’s blood barely touched the pain, barely cleared a single layer of mist from her mind.
But she saw now, reflected over and over on the polished stones of the chamber, the beast who cradled her. Saw her garments tattered, torn, singed. Saw a second white streak snaking through her hair.
And the lines carved deep around her mouth.
In her eyes, where lines, more lines, fanned, a vengeful madness bloomed.
It lifted her.
“You will sleep. I will feed you, and tend you, and bathe your wounds. You will heal again, my queen, and I will avenge you.”
Something stirred inside the pain, the fury, that might have been gratitude. Then as it carried her to her bedchamber, she slept, and dropped into bloody dreams.
Keep reading for an excerpt from the final book in the Guardians Trilogy
ISLAND of GLASS
by Nora Roberts
Available December 2016 from Berkley Books
A man who couldn’t die had little to fear. An immortal who’d lived most of his long life as a soldier, waging battle, didn’t turn from a fight with a god. A soldier, though a loner by nature, understood the duty, and loyalty, to those who battled with him.
The man, the soldier, the loner who’d seen his young brother destroyed by black magick, who’d had his own life upended by it, who’d fought a god’s crazed greed, knew the difference between the dark and the light.
Being propelled through space by a fellow soldier, a shifter, while they were all still bloody from the battle didn’t frighten him—but he’d have preferred any other mode of transportation.
Through the whirl of wind, the glare of light, the breathless speed (and all right then, there was a bit of a thrill in the speed), he felt his companions. The sorcerer who held more power than any Doyle had known in all his years. The woman who was as much the glue who bound them together as a seer. The mermaid who was all charm and courage and heart—and a pure pleasure for the eyes. The shifter, loyal and brave, and a dead shot as well. And the female—well, wolf now, as the moon had risen just as they’d prepared to shift from the beauty and battles of Capri.
She howled—no other term for it—and in the sound of it he heard not fear, no, but the same atavistic thrill that beat in his own blood.
If a man had to align himself with others, had to throw his fate in with others, he could do a hell of a lot worse than these.
Then he smelled Ireland—the damp air, the green—and the thrill died in him. The fates, canny and cold, would drive him back here to where his heart and his life had been broken.
Even as he geared himself up to deal with it, to do what must be done, they dropped like stones.
A man who couldn’t die could still feel the jolt and insult of hitting the ground hard enough to rattle bones and steal the breath.
“Bloody hell, Sawyer.”
“Sorry.” Sawyer’s voice came from his left, and in a kind of gasping wheeze. “It’s a lot to navigate. Anybody hurt? Annika?”
“I’m not hurt. But you.” Her voice was a musical croon. “You’re hurt. You’re weak.”
“Not too bad. You’re bleeding.”
Bright as sunlight, she smiled. “Not too bad.”
“Maybe we should try parachutes next time.” Sasha let out a quick moan.
“There now, I’ve got you.”
As his eyes adjusted, Doyle saw Bran shift, gather Sasha close.
“You’re hurt?”
“No, no.” Sasha shook her head. “Cuts and bumps. And the landing knocked the wind out of me. I should be used to it. Riley? Where’s Riley?”
Doyle rolled, started to push himself up—and pressed a hand into fur. It growled.
“She’s here.” He shifted his gaze, met those tawny eyes. Dr. Riley Gwin, renowned archaeologist—and lycan. “Don’t so much as think of biting me,” he muttered. “She’s fine. Like she tells us, she heals fast in wolf form.”
He got to his feet, noted that however rough the landing, Sawyer had come through. Weapons cases, luggage, sealed boxes of research books, maps, and other essentials lay in a somewhat orderly pile a few feet away on the cool, damp grass.
And of great personal importance to him, his motorcycle stood, upright and undamaged.
Satisfied, he stretched out a hand to Sawyer, pulled the man to his feet.
“Not altogether bad.”
“Yeah.” Sawyer combed his fingers through his mane of windswept, sun-streaked hair. Then grinned when Annika did a series of cartwheels. “Somebody enjoyed the ride, anyway.”
“You did well.” Bran dropped a hand on Sawyer’s shoulder. “It’s a feat, isn’t it, juggling six people and all the rest across the sea and sky in, well, a matter of minutes.”
“Got one bitch of a headache out of it.”
“And more.”
Bran lifted Sawyer’s hand—the one that had gripped Nerezza’s flying hair while he’d shifted her away. “We’ll fix that, and anything else that needs fixing. We should get Sasha inside. She’s a bit shaky.”
“I’m all right.” But she remained sitting on the ground. “Just a little dizzy. Please don’t,” she said quickly, and pushed to her knees toward Riley. “Not yet. Let’s just get oriented first. She wants to run,” she told the others.
“She’ll be fine. There’s no harm here.” Bran helped Sasha up. “The woods are mine,” he said to Riley. “And now they’re yours.”
The wolf turned, bounded away, vanished into the thick trees.
“She could get lost,” Sasha began.
“She’s a wolf,” Doyle pointed out. “And likely to find her way around better than the rest of us. She changed, but as we were leaving, and needs her moment. Wolf or woman, she can handle herself.”
He turned his back on the woods where he’d run tame as a child, where he’d hunted, where he’d gone for solitude. This had been his land once, his home—and now it was Bran’s.
Yes, the fates were canny and cold.
In the house Bran had built on the wild coast of Clare, Doyle could see the memory of his own. Where his family had lived for generations.
Gone, he reminded himself, centuries ago. The house and the family, gone to dust.
In its place was the grand, and he’d have expected no less from Bran Killian.
A fine manor, Doyle mused, with the fanciful touches one might expect from a wizard. Stone—perhaps some from the walls of that long-ago home—rising a full three stories, with those fanciful touches in two round towers on either side, and a kind of central parapet that would offer mad views of the cliffs, of the sea, of the land.
All softened, Doyle supposed would be the word, with gardens fit for the faeries, blooming wild and free, with the mixed perfumes blown about on the windy air.
Doyle indulged himself for one moment, allowed himself to think of his own mother and how she’d have loved every bit of it.
Then he put it away.
“It’s a fine house.”
“It’s good land. And as I said to Riley, it’s yours as much as mine. Well, that’s my feeling on it,” Bran added when Doyle shook his head.
“We’ve come together,”
Bran continued as the wind tossed his hair, black as the night, around his sharp-boned face. “Were thrown together for a purpose. We’ve fought and bled together, and no doubt will again. And here we are, standing on where you sprang from, and where I was compelled to build. There’s purpose in that as well, and we’ll use it.”
In comfort, Annika ran her hand down Doyle’s arm. Her long black hair was a sexy tangle from the shift. She had bruises on her remarkable face. “It’s beautiful. I can smell the sea. I can hear it.”
“It’s a ways down.” Bran smiled at her. “But you’ll make your way to it easy enough, I wager. In the morning, you’ll see more of what it offers. For now, we’d best haul all of our things inside and settle in a bit.”
“I hear that.” Sawyer reached down, hefted some boxes. “And, God, I could eat.”
“I’ll make food!” Annika threw her arms around him, kissed him enthusiastically, then picked up her bag. “Is there food to make, Bran? Food I can make while you tend the wounds?”
“I had the kitchen well stocked.” He flicked his fingers at the big, arched double doors. “The house is unlocked.”
“As long as there’s beer.” Doyle grabbed two weapon cases—his own priority—and started in behind Annika and Sawyer.
“It hurts him,” Sasha quietly told Bran. “I can feel the ache in him, the ache of memories and loss.”
“And I’m sorry for it, truly. But we all know there’s a reason for it, why it’s here that we’ve been led to find the last star and end this.”
“Because there’s always a price.” On a sigh, she leaned against him, closed eyes blue as summer and still hollow from the battle and the shift. “But Annika’s right. It’s a beautiful house. It’s stunning, Bran. I’ll want to paint it a dozen times.”
“You’ll have time for dozens of dozens.” He turned her to him. “I said it was Doyle’s and Riley’s as it’s mine. It’s Annika’s and Sawyer’s as well. But, fáidh, it’s yours as my heart is yours. Will you live with me here, at least some of the time in our lives together?”
“I’ll live with you here, and anywhere. But now? I should take a look inside and see if it’s as wonderful as the outside.”
