The Relentless Warrior
The Star-Crossed Series
Book Six
By Rachel Higginson
Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2014
This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed to give, copy, scan, distribute or sell this book to anyone else.
Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if we use one of these terms.
Any people or places are strictly fictional and not based on anything else, fictional or non-fictional.
Other Books Out Now by Rachel Higginson
Love and Decay, Episode One
Love and Decay, Episode Two
Love and Decay, Episode Three
Love and Decay, Episode Four
Love and Decay, Episode Five
Love and Decay, Episode Six
Love and Decay, Episode Seven
Love and Decay, Episode Eight
Love and Decay, Episode Nine
Love and Decay, Episode Ten
Love and Decay, Episode Eleven
Love and Decay, Episode Twelve
Love and Decay, Volume One (Episodes One-Six of Season One)
Love and Decay, Volume Two (Episodes Seven-Twelve of Season One)
Reckless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 1)
Hopeless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 2)
Fearless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 3)
Endless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 4)
The Reluctant King (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 5)
Starbright (The Starbright Series, Book 1)
Sunburst (The Starbright Series, Book2)
The Rush (The Siren Series, Book 1)
Bet in the Dark (An NA Contemporary Romance)
To Candice,
Thank you for always reading whatever
I send you. Even if it’s in bits and pieces,
Half-finished sentences and you have
To wait for months before you get
The rest of the story.
But more, thank you for loving
My characters as much as I do.
Prologue
Olivia
Worst day ever.
Worst fricking day ever.
The world felt dark around me, and not just because it was nighttime. It was more than the time of day; it was the palpable evil oppressing the air around me, sucking the oxygen out of my lungs…. trying to infect my bloodstream.
To infect me!
How did one simple vacation turn into this hellish nightmare?
I looked down at Ophelia, my baby sister. She was worse off than me. Her sunken-in eyes were closed with unconsciousness and her shoulder-length, choppy blonde hair was matted and plastered to her head with sweat and filth and God knew what else. I slipped my arm around her and used the last of my waning strength to pull her closer to me.
I shut my eyes and prayed for unconsciousness, too. Or death. Death didn’t seem so bad at this point.
From the loud screams that surrounded us it sounded like some people were lucky enough to die. Why not us?
I shook my head. I couldn’t die. I wouldn’t die. And I wouldn’t let O go out this way either.
I was stronger than whatever was making us sick and I was more determined than the bastards that kidnapped and tortured us.
The nuns were deep in communal prayer, clutching their rosaries and crossing themselves simultaneously. Their whispered petitions floated around my head, bouncing off the stone at my back and catching the wind that would float them toward heaven.
At this point in our imprisonment I was honestly surprised that the nuns still believed in God, despite their lifetime commitment to their faith. Even dedicated religious women like them had to know better than that. We had been through too much, seen too much to still be naïve enough to believe that a god existed.
And if He did, He stopped caring about our prayers a long time ago.
Ophelia whimpered next to me and I bent my head down to press a kiss to her matted hair. I promised her two weeks in the Andes while we figured out what to do with our lives, I promised a life-changing, soul-altering experience. I told her it would make choosing a college crystal clear, it would make her decision between staying close to Mom or following her dreams easy. I promised my parents I would take care of her, and that I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
I promised myself we would have the best time of our lives. This was the trip that we would talk about forever. When we were older, fatter, married and moms of gaggles of children we would always talk about this trip to Peru…. remember it together.
Damn it.
I lifted my ear to the suddenly quiet night sky around me. The fighting had stopped. What kind of men destroyed one of the Seven Wonders of the World? Machu Picchu? For real? This would be major headlines across the world tomorrow. They would be exposed and maybe, finally, somebody would know that we were missing and have a lead on how to find us. Our captors had to know the risks they were taking to fight here. So what kind of men would treat this sacred place with such blatant disrespect?
I actually knew that answer. The same kind of men that would kidnap two American tourists and then, instead of trading them into the sex slave industry like any normal mercenaries, they spent the last two weeks torturing us and running ungodly experiments on us.
The same kind of men that would kidnap nuns and destroy churches and kill each other without blinking.
Those were the monsters that had no qualms about destroying ancient artifacts.
Let alone, human life.
The mountain was now eerily quiet. The last of the gun shot had echoed into the night and the sounds of fighting stopped. A shiver slid across my belly, igniting a new fire of fear that burned fiercely inside me.
What now?
Our captors had deposited us here on the ground with orders to stay out of sight and keep silent. As if we could have moved or called out if we wanted to. We were helpless. They had seen to that. Made sure we were forever incapacitated from their torture and experiments.
Holy hell. We were sitting ducks.
I should have used this time- their distraction- to escape. I should have gotten my sister and me the hell out of here. The nuns could save themselves. They had religion after all; they had prayer. All I had was a crackling underneath my skin that felt like my blood had been turned into a live wire and an unconscious baby sister who was even worse off than me. I couldn’t have moved us anywhere, but I should have at least been thinking about moving us.
I couldn’t give up now.
Ophelia had been unconscious for three days; she hadn’t even opened her eyelids so her eyes could roll into the back of her head like on the movies. She just kept them closed, shut deep into her own personal hell. She was completely out of it. And I wasn’t going anywhere without her.
I thought about asking the nuns to help me, but they didn’t seem like the get up and run for it types. Especially since they were all ancient and didn’t speak any English. It was hard to say what the nuns were thinking anyway, between the prayer and their own respective bouts of blackout they weren’t really up for conversation with hand gestures and my broken Spanish.
Footsteps clattered on the stone above my head. Someone was rounding the corner, ready to find us. The fear fire spread from my belly to my guts, the metaphysical part of my body that was now quaking in terror. Same bad guys or new ones? My heart pounded against my chest, my pulse rushed against my ears.
My quickened breathing felt magnified and obnoxiously loud as I once again fell into the depthless chasm of terror, my constant companion these last few weeks.
I wasn’t optimistic enough to believe this was some kind of rescue. These weren’t the type of people that drew the attention of the police or anyone in authority, until maybe now. These people operated completely off the grid. I had somehow landed in an all too real, frighteningly tragic spy movie, only there was no box office promise for me. In fact the only box promised was the kind that they submerged six feet under, if I was lucky enough to be buried.
The realization we would never be found had hit me two minutes after I was in their possession.
Still, the promise to my parents to bring my little sister back to them and unharmed bound me like a tether to home. I didn’t know if I called it hope, or blind stupidity, but it was there all the same.
Despite my previous bitterness toward God, I couldn’t stop the small prayer of desperation that left my lips. Please God, don’t let them kill us. Don’t let them kill Ophelia.
I tilted my chin in defiance with stubborn boldness against my weak state and the evil plans for whatever came next. My grip tightened on my sister, I clutched at her clothing with a ferocious determination that no one would take her from me. She was my sister. I was the one who promised to protect her. They would have to get through me first.
Two of their kind came around the corner but I didn’t recognize either of them. I knew my captors faces with perfect clarity. I had memorized every small detail and facial feature in hopes that one day I would be free, one day I would take this unbelievable story and hand it over to the authorities or the press- whoever would be more active in spreading the word. I would remember every single relevant description and I would pass it along. If I could help it, nobody else would suffer at these psychopaths’ hands.
One girl and one guy appeared in front of me. The girl was in my face first, her hands framing my jaw tenderly and huge tears falling from her big brown eyes. She was pained and horrified. She seemed to be Ophelia’s age and was absolutely beautiful in that aristocratic way… clean cut and refined.
I wanted to spit in her face but I couldn’t find the energy.
At least she hadn’t pulled out a syringe to inject in my arm.
That was a pleasant change of pace for us.
“Are you going to kill us?” I whispered through a rasping voice I hardly recognized. My lungs felt like they were going to cave in on themselves with the effort it took to speak. One sentence might as well have been a marathon for the energy it took. Geez. I was screwed. I wanted to believe I would be alright, that there was an antibiotic out there, somewhere out there that could fix me. But in the marrow of my bones I knew the truth; I knew that they had damaged me beyond modern medicine and time. There was no fix for this disease, there was no cure. Whatever had been injected inside of me and made my blood charged like electricity had changed me irreparably.
There was no going back.
“No,” the girl hiccupped on a sob. “We’re not going to kill you. I promise.” And then she was a hysterical mess.
Now instead of spitting on her, I wanted to laugh. Was she serious? I should be the one crying! I should be the hysterical one!
She was replaced by the guy. I had started to fade. I could feel unconsciousness sucking me back into the black depths of nothing. The ringing in my ears had steadily grown louder and my peripheral vision had begun to fade. But the boy was in my face, his eyes anchoring me to the Earth, to here, to now.
He was beautiful.
Even through the blinding fade of sickness and the utter hatred I had for him and the people he associated with, I could admit that he was absolutely the most incredible guy I had ever been face to face with. His strong jaw was set in grim determination and his hazel eyes, more green than brown, held me in place, prevented me from leaving consciousness. He meant something for me, something I couldn’t define or comprehend. But beyond the haze of pain and suffering, I felt his entrance into my life settle deeply in the inner most parts of my bone and soul. He changed everything.
He held my gaze for just a little bit longer, never wavering, but never speaking either, before I slipped into the abyss that claimed my mind and gave me a few moments relief from the painful static bouncing around my veins. And in the darkness I completely forgot his face, what made him so attractive or why I had thought we were so connected.
Except for his eyes. They did not disappear. Their depth and concern stayed with me even while I floated through the vast space of nothing. It was like I was tied to those eyes now, they held the life preserver that would keep me from drowning, keep me from floating away forever.
Brown at first, but then green when you really focused on them. So brilliantly green.
There had been the low buzzing of murmured conversation until one voice made it clearly into
the jumbled mess of my head, “Jericho?” the stranger asked.
It wasn’t the voice that caught my attention.
It was the name.
Jericho.
Instinctively I knew Jericho belonged to the eyes.
And those eyes were not going to hurt Ophelia or me anymore.
Those eyes were going to save me.
Chapter One
Four months later…
Jericho
Stop knocking.
Stop it.
That was the only thing that ran through my head as I flipped over onto my back. I squinted at the clock, trying to make out the time: 3:28am. A string of curses flew out of my mouth in a raspy, tired grumble.
I had been asleep for all of an hour and a half. This just wasn’t fair.
“Jericho, man, open up!” Sebastian shouted out from the other side of the door.
More cursing from deep in my chest. Why me?
“Give me a minute,” I yelled back, the duty side of my brain winning out over the self-preserving, sleepy side.
I sat up slowly and peered through the darkness for my pants. I had stumbled in here, utterly and completely bone-tired after another endless and exhausting day. I started stripping before the door even shut and lost clothes along the way before collapsing face first onto my claimed guest bed. Since this was my routine for the last however many days, my floor was an intricate maze of discarded clothing.
“O’s thrashing again, Jericho,” Sebastian explained impatiently through the heavy wooden door. His voice was all refined British gentleman that belied his mixture of human culture and Immortal. “It looks like another seizure. Olivia is screaming for you. She’s out of control.”
O. Ophelia. One of the human girls we rescued from Machu Picchu. She hadn’t once been conscious since we brought her back to the Citadel months ago, but at least she’d stayed alive.
So far.
A week ago she started having these violent seizures that bruised and battered her body. They lasted anywhere from full hours to sometimes only a few seconds. I hoped this was one of her shorter episodes, because they completely freaked her older sister out. Not that they weren’t scary; even I could admit they were awful to watch and did not bode well for her condition. But with each new symptom that decreased Ophelia’s health, her sister became that much more impossible to handle.
Olivia.
A flood of unpleasant feelings rushed and tumbled my insides. Frustration. Irritation. Disbelief…. Attraction.
That girl knew exactly how to get under my skin. And it was like she loved to live there. Right under it, making me feel scratchy and irritable and…. off-center. She was relentless with her demands and issues, constantly nagging whoever was in charge of watching over Ophelia. And then she brought all her problems and complaints to me! Like I could be the one to heal her sister…. Or like it was my fault they were here to begin with.
I found some athletic shorts buried underneath yesterday’s leftover dinner tray and socks that I was sure were rotten. I gave the shorts a long sniff to make sure they didn’
t smell as awful as the leftover food that had been sitting out for way too long. I needed to send my clothes to be washed, but I hated being a guest in the Citadel, let alone using the servants to carry out my bidding. Even though, technically Avalon was paying them now and servants were now considered employees, being here brought back all the memories of the evil Monarchy I fought against for so many years.
And worse, it brought back every repressed and buried recollection of Eden.
Well, almost all of them.
With a shaky breath and steely determination I pulled on a t-shirt from a different dirty clothes pile and slipped into some running shoes, not bothering with the gross socks. I didn’t take the time to look in the mirror either, while I rinsed my mouth out with mouthwash, and then gave myself the mental pep talk I knew I would need to deal with Olivia for the next…. however long this would take.
I left my bedroom with a silent, pleading prayer to be patient and understanding. I locked the door to my room behind me. I wasn’t worried so much about somebody stealing something from me, but more embarrassed by the volcano of destruction I had turned the elegant room into. I should really use the maid service at this point, but my hesitation had more to do with embarrassment over the filth I was capable of than resistance to change. Plus, I was never in there for more than a few hours at a time anyway. Either Olivia needed to yell at me, Ophelia’s situation was deteriorating or Avalon was on the phone demanding that I carry out his bidding.
This Terletov situation had turned into a nightmare. And with Lilly and Silas still missing, the Kingdom had dissolved into utter chaos overnight. Avalon, Amelia and Talbott were currently scouring the globe for our friends while I was stuck here, in a castle, with an ex-girlfriend and an angry, bitter human girl that hated me.
“How bad is it?” I asked Sebastian when I realized he was waiting for me.
“Not as bad as it has been,” he remarked tiredly, pushing off from the stone castle wall and falling into step with me. “Well, at least, she wasn’t that bad when I left her. I wouldn’t have woken you, except….”