Blood Warrior

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A prickle of urgency climbed the hairs along Tallis’s forearms. He could’ve attributed the sensation to yet another spray of snow and lick of wind. With Kavya at his side, however, that wasn’t likely. Her gift was beyond his comprehension and beyond his senses—or it should’ve been. Instead he’d known when her distress had reached its height, when he’d needed to drag her back to the physical.

When he’d needed to kiss her.

That was becoming more frequent.

But this was trouble. Pashkah wasn’t up the pass somewhere, creeping through the white-out conditions of the Valley of the Gods. The man was single-minded. There would be no broken-down buses and feeling through the snow for an inn. Not for Pashkah.

Tallis used to think of himself as a professional of sorts. He had a job to do, no matter that his occupation paid nothing. Its benefits package included ostracizing him from each of the Five Clans, as well as occasional visits from a feminine entity that seduced him into thinking the sacrifices were worthwhile.

Yet that odd, misguided professionalism had been a point of pride. He discredited, upended, maimed, and, on occasion, killed. He sliced malfunctioning systems into pieces, at one point believing the Great Dragon actually blessed the deeds, and that the Dragon Kings would eventually thank him for his surgical rage. They’d demonize him, but they’d thank him for doing what no one else could.

Pashkah seemed to be under that same delusion. It looked more pompous and ridiculous when someone else wore that cloak.

Besides, Tallis had an ally now.

She was sexy as hell and even crazier than Tallis. After all, Kavya was the one who barged into a hangar and starting pulling tarps off vehicles. She assessed the machines with what appeared to be an eye for their soundness—not that he believed any vehicle could be considered sound in these conditions. They were sheltered by the hangar, but the storm sounded like a dozen growling bears, each of them with a different grudge.

He sheathed one of his seaxes and glanced down at the lock he’d split. “I can feel him, can’t I? That . . . pressure? I don’t know what else to call it. In the valley, when people were curious but peaceful, it was nothing but a friendly tap. Just checking me out. This . . . Bathatéi.”

Kavya flipped on a glaring overhead fluorescent light. The unnatural brightness bleached her skin and added shadows to the hollows of the cheeks. She rewound her chocolate hair. “It’s not pressure for me. He’s beating me across the back of the skull. Soon you’ll be back to having psychic shocks shoved down your spine.”

“I didn’t like that,” Tallis said. “Think I’ll pass.”

“What, go for full berserker from the start?” She nodded to a corner filled with stuffed burlap sacks. “Use it as ballast. If we manage to take off, we’ll need the weight to fight the wind. I’ll find fuel.”

“So bossy,” he said, doing as she’d commanded. Self-preservation trumped pride. “Besides, a berserker needs to be provoked. Not zero-to-crazy. This is good, though. I feel like we’re making real cultural strides, you and I. One day I can talk to others about the Indranan and their capacity for distraction—”

She shot him a nasty scowl, although a blush brightened her cheeks.

“—and you can espouse how sensible the stubborn, uncouth Pendray can be.”

“Sensible? That’s not the first word I’d choose.”

“As long as you don’t use it to describe what you’re planning, I don’t care what you do.” He crossed his arms as she opened the door to a battered four-seater Cessna. “I take that back. I care to avoid getting in that thing.”

“Open the hangar bay and get in. You’re the pilot, remember? Just be prepared to listen to my navigation very, very well.”

The utterly frigid metal of the hangar’s wide sheet metal door stuck to his palms as if coated with glue. He shook free of its unnatural grip and looked down to find a strip of abraded skin across each palm. The wind struck him as it whipped through the open hangar. “It’s amazing you didn’t badger your followers into compliance.”

“Don’t start.”

Tallis jogged across the hangar, stowed his weapons in the scant space among the burlap ballast behind the passenger seat, and climbed in. Kavya quickly followed as he buckled up. “This will not work.”

“Your nickname should be Faithless. Heretics have to believe in something contrary to the common canon. You don’t believe in anything.” With a flick of the controls, Kavya turned on the Cessna’s safety lights. “Let’s dare the Dragon, right here in the foothills of where our Creator was born and died. See if you’re a heretic or a nihilist. In four minutes, you’ll be full berserker and fending off my brother again, or you’ll be praying like you’ve never prayed before.” She grinned. “Maybe both.”

“When did you become so obviously insane? Forget Masks. This is all you, Kavya.”

“And you’re already addicted.”

Tallis smiled right back. “I knew you were unnatural and downright shady, but this is new. Your brother’s in town so you hope to sink to his level of obvious mental degeneration.”

He kicked the engine to life. Propellers swirled with patterns of air, whereas the blizzard made random swoops and threats. Tallis watched, as if out of body, as he wheeled the tiny plane into alignment with the wide, gaping exit.

Vibrations that had nothing to do with the accelerating propellers shook the small craft. The Dragon was angry at their arrogance—the Heretic and the Sun, both of whom were trying as fervently as Pashkah to change the way things had been for generations. What hubris! What gall! The sort of hubris and gall that deserved punishment.

“You know, maybe it’s a parable.” He felt happily sardonic and that contradiction was reflected in his tone. This was merely another reckless step in an otherwise misguided, risky, worthless life. No, this was a cataclysmic leap. “Maybe we’re meant to crash where the Dragon died. Swords forged in the Chasm, fire, tons and tons of lava.”

“You’re talking, not flying.”

“Is this where you said I need to concentrate really hard?”

“Yes.”

“Without telepathy?”

Kavya shot him a prickly glare. “One set of controls, but two sets of eyes and two sets of everything else. We can make this work if we work together. Don’t sit there making jokes about reading minds. You’re the one always espousing the virtues of living in the physical world and being one with the earth.”

“One with the earth. Not plummeting toward it.”

For all his protests, Tallis didn’t hesitate anymore. The pressure against the top of his spine was becoming more like how Kavya described it: the pounding of a mallet, only that mallet had been studded with nails. He resisted the temptation to touch the back of his neck, where he was sure he’d find dots of blood. At that moment, there were so many ways to risk death and dismemberment.

He went all in with the Sun’s method of choice.

“Aw, fuck it. Let’s do this.”

She slid him a sideways grin. “About time.”

Throttle back, he navigated the plane out of the hangar. Almost instantly a gust of wind caught beneath the wings and tipped the cockpit starboard. Kavya gasped. Her skin had paled, but she bit her molars together so hard that Tallis saw the bulge of muscle and determination along her jaw.

“I got the steering,” he said. “You watch . . . the other stuff.”

The blizzard was a complete and total sonofabitch. Tallis fought the controls with his whole body. Layer upon layer of white made him curse the lack of color. He wanted green and blue and bright sunny yellow—anything but white, or the orange and red flames of a fiery crash. He angled the nose of the little plane toward the runway, which was surprisingly clear. The wind hadn’t allowed snow or ice to accumulate across that long, flat surface. The snow had no building walls to settle against. Instead the runway looked like a winter desert where the sands flew right to left. There was more consistency without the interference of structures from town.

A straight shot.

Him against the wind.

Could be worse. He couldn’t think of an example of how, but he was sure there had to be one.

Judging the direction of the gale and the way the plane pitched, he adjusted the flaps to compensate. They weren’t taxiing straight. More like a sidewinder. Rear wheels skidded and slipped. A sneaky gust lifted the nose off the ground.

“They’re coming,” Kavya said, almost in a trance. “At the hangar. Snowmobiles.”

“Then airborne it is.”

He pulled back the throttle and begged the little two-seater to gather her nerve. More speed. More.

Kavya cried out, clutching her temples. She shook in her seat, as if whipped side to side by unseen hands.

Tallis didn’t dare let go of the yoke, but he needed his copilot. He needed Kavya as his partner.

“You’re a lying bitch, goddess. You hear me? Get your ass back here so I can tell you what I really think of you. I want the chance before we smash into the Beas.” He risked a sideways glance. “I mean it. I’ll slap you in the face right now. And if we do get out of here, you won’t believe what I have planned. You get to strip next time. I want a show like you’ve never given another man. Don’t piss me off or I’ll be the one to rip off your Dragon-damn clothes.”

She shivered again, then nodded. Her voice was an ancient album that had been scratched to hell. The song was still there, but obscured by damage. “Promises, promises, Tallis. Now fly this lonayíp thing.”

—

Kavya fended off Pashkah by distracting him with her own vulnerability. She imagined herself a child of only twelve. You should’ve killed me then, you monster.

The pain kept coming, but better to aim it at her than at Tallis. He was operating at the highest mental function. Total concentration. That meant he’d be vulnerable to Pashkah’s psychic attacks. She couldn’t let that happen, when flying in the storm required as much brawn as skill. She focused on Tallis’s verbal tirade. He kept taunting her, saying things that no longer rang true, but that served as an escape route.

Escape. Again.

She wanted to turn around and face her brother once and for all. That wasn’t possible.

Not yet.

She took refuge in watching Tallis work. The tendons along his neck tightened, as did the set of his jaw. He was a rubber band about to snap. Except for his hands. She fended off the agony that bored into her bones by watching his hands. His knuckles were white with the pressure of gripping the yoke. Every vein stood in relief. The light dusting of hair across the backs of his wrists seemed exotic. She wanted to touch him there. She wanted to touch him all over.

“Kavya, Dragon damn it!”

The plane suddenly slid to the left. “I’m here.”

“Don’t know where the fuck you went, but don’t do it again.”

“I’m trying to keep him out of your stubborn, perverted head.”

“I like my head a little perverse, thank you.”

“A little?”

“Hush. Hold on.” He grimaced. His nostrils flared over lips taut with concentration. Blue eyes had narrowed to laser beam intensity.

The plane skittered and slipped and insisted that it would never get off the ground. The small Cessna didn’t have enough speed, but the wind had enough power. An upward surge caught the wings about a hundred yards from the end of the runway. Tallis didn’t miss the chance. He hauled up on the controls until the nose lifted and the rear wheels left the ground.

Kavya screamed, partly out of triumph. Tallis’s grin was maniacal and transformed his entire face. Mad, but in the best way. Mad in a way she wanted to share—without fear and without regret.

She sent a parting psychic shot back toward her brother. She wasn’t a trained fighter, and she didn’t have his twice-cursed power, but she had a moment of pure adrenaline. Fused with her hatred, she flung her worst back toward the man who’d warped her life for too long. She pictured his joints. Knees. Shoulders. Hips. Elbows. She burned fire into each one. There was no way to hear his bellows over the sound of her heart, the storm, the propellers, but his telepathic scream resonated behind her breastbone with a satisfying rush.

No wonder he sought so much power—heady and dangerous.

She broke from that seductive trance by reveling in the intoxicating thrill of the elements. The storm played games with the little plane, up and down and listing like a rowboat in a froth of whitewater.

“Shit,” Tallis grunted.

The craft spun twice. Kavya was dizzy and nauseated. “What in the name of the Dragon was that?”

“We either spin with the wind, goddess, or see what happens when our wings sheer off.”

“Spin, then.”

“Only when the storm says so. Surprisingly, it doesn’t respond to your bossy orders.”

“You’ve taught me to cope with that disappointment.”

He grinned again, although his knuckles were still bone beneath skin. No blood and no color. “Does that mean I’m a force of nature? I could get used to that.”

“As infuriating as one,” she said.

“Bollocks. You like it. Besides, I obeyed you when I climbed into this— Whoa!”

The plane rolled again. The wind-tossed waters of the Beas were all Kavya could see out of the front cockpit windows. The g-force against her face meant gravity wanted them. The earth wanted them. And the storm didn’t want them sharing its sky.

Tallis’s desire to live trumped them all.

He steered the Cessna out of its downward plummet. He growled with what sounded like Pendray curses. She joined in using the Indranan tongue. Somewhere in time, however, they crossed from those separate languages and slipped into the mutual language of all Dragon Kings. Like the humans’ story of Babel, the Five Clans had fractured, too, each with its own means of communication. She liked sharing what might be their final words as if speaking directly to the Dragon—prayers and curses mixed, in complete understanding.

A headache that had nothing to do with Pashkah’s mental bullying pierced her temples. She rather liked that. Physical pain, not mental. But not too much pain. Crashing would mean agony beyond imagining. She and Tallis would wind up as he’d described: stuck in useless, broken bodies, unable to die. She’d obliged Nakul’s final wish, yes. This would be different. Their minds would remain intact. She might have the strength to put Tallis out of his suffering, although the idea of lobotomizing him added a layer of gut-wrenching sadness to her fear.

She wouldn’t be able to do it to herself. Endless suffering.

Hating her helplessness, she gripped the armrests until she thought her arms would splinter. She was panicking, and that was never a good thing for an Indranan. If Tallis was holding his fear response at bay—the berserker that almost certainly wanted to overrule his thinking mind—then she could.

“You threatened to strip me.” She grinned to herself, knowing Tallis would be smiling, too. “Think you can manage?”

“I’ll manage just fine.”

“A lot of experience in that department?”

“A lot more than you.”

She wanted to wipe the sweat off her brow but couldn’t find the courage to let go of the armrests. “You think you can handle seducing a virgin?”

“Seducing? We were talking about the forceful removal of your clothes.”

“That’s part of it, I’m sure,” she said with a shiver. The adrenaline, the physical anguish, the absolute terror—they were blending with their ribald conversation until her body felt molten. She was a bundles of nerves contained within too-tight skin. “But I don’t respond to violence.”

“Says you. The right kind can be amazing.”

He said that last with a gasp—sexy and breathless—as the plane righted and swerved sharply to port. Had they been any nearer to the ground, the wing on Tallis’s side would’ve shredded into the earth.

“We’re lucky to still be airborne,” he said after a hard, telling swallow.

“Every second is a victory.”

“We’re agreeing on so much, goddess. You’ll come around. I know it. Strip. Kiss. A little rough play—you’ll enjoy my definition of seduction.”

“Can a man be that assured and actually manage to be amazing?”

“Kavya, right now I’m flying a paper airplane in a turbine.” His neck was rigid with tension. “That means I can spin straw into gold and level mountains. Pick what impossible deed you want me to accomplish next.”

“Make me feel safe enough to sleep beside you.”

Where in the world had that come from?

Tallis glanced toward her, eyes aglow with hot blue fire. “Safe. With me. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Fine.” She returned her attention to the window and tried to ignore the creaking protests the plane made—and the sudden frost in Tallis’s bearing. “Just stick with calling me by my name. Not goddess. I’ll consider that miracle enough.”