Arrow to the Soul (12 page)

“Where are we going?” she asked in a soft voice.

He winced. Everything about her tweaked him. “The sunroom. Bullet had something delivered for you.”

She said nothing, but her face tightened and her mouth drew down. It was confirmation that nobody had ever done anything nice for her.

“Follow me,” he ordered.

“This time.”

He sighed even as his heart raced. A challenge from her was akin to a passionate kiss from another woman.
Aziveh, Aziveh, Aziveh
, his mind whispered.
Saya, Saya, Saya
, chanted his body.

He walked through the house, pace sedate in deference to her condition. She’d been right. The shot was a through and through, missing vital organs, and healing, according to Dmitry, at an impressive rate. She was like Bullet in her healing abilities. Good for her, bad for the world. As soon as the woman behind him got well, she was going to jet. It was Adam’s job to stop her. It was his mission to make sure she joined forces with Trident. For her safety and everybody else’s.

They came to the door of the enclosed patio, a sunroom created within the past few weeks especially for Bullet. Rand spared no expense. Bullet loved the light but he’d wanted her safe. The glass that enclosed the room was ironically bullet-proof but allowed the sun to pour in at all angles. It was warm this afternoon, though beyond the glass it was a chillier-than-usual early fall day.

He turned once he entered the room and found Saya at the entrance hovering in the shadows as if afraid the sun’s golden rays would find her. Her face was blank but her amber eyes reflected heat. Adam wanted to cross to her, take her in his arms, and simply hold her.

Saya would never allow that. His mind railed at his body and tried to beat it into submission but it was an impossible task. Adam’s body wanted her. His heart thumped heavily in his chest and mocked him.

“Are you coming out here or not?” His internal struggle made his voice curt. That even that small amount of his frustration leaked through pissed him off. She was nothing to him.

She turned her gaze to his and the joy, the absolute wonder that broke over her face stunned Adam. No matter that she’d killed, in that moment her soul was so pure in her desire to do nothing more than sit in the sunlight he couldn’t grasp it the enormity of it. Joseph had damaged her. He’d broken a tiny child and in its place a woman of unfathomable darkness had risen.

Her yearning for the sun was unconceivable but it was there in the slight uplifting at the corner of her mouth and the sheen of moisture in her eyes.

“Did you hear me?” Again his voice rang with harshness, but it couldn’t be helped. She forced him to feel things he should not be feeling for a killer. Hell, emotions he shouldn’t be feeling for anyone besides Aziveh.

Saya nodded and stepped out of the house into the sunroom. Adam swore the light brightened, streaming around her elegant frame, covetously stroking each contour of her face and body like a lover. A piece of him yearned right along with her. He tightened his hands into fists to stop from reaching for her.

“It is beautiful, this Virginia of yours,” she whispered. She’d walked to the glass and her hands were plastered against the cool glass, her nose almost touching. It seemed she tried to merge with the barrier, immerse herself in it.

“It isn’t
my
Virginia,” he said.

She ignored him.

“Over here are the materials Bullet had delivered for you.”

Saya continued to look out the enormous windows but her shoulders tensed for a second. She’d heard him but chose to remain silent.

“I’ll be in the house. You have free run of the place except the top floor. Rand doesn’t allow anyone except Bullet there.”

She said nothing and he shrugged before walking to the door. He wanted to leave, get away from this woman the spirits spoke to him about in his dreams. Adam stopped at the door and couldn’t keep himself from looking back once more.

Her face was raised to the sun and the smile that played on her lips made his breath catch. He cursed low, turned, and left. He would take a patrol and leave thoughts of her in the woods beyond the house. He had to find Aziveh again and pray he could purge Saya from his blood.

Chapter Eleven

Arrow felt him leave. He’d taken the warmth with him and she cursed herself. She had no right to the heat or the light. She was a killer. She lowered her hands and stepped away from the windows. Tomorrow she would need to run, exercise, and reset her mind to her task.

Today she would craft a weapon.

Killer
.

The word cemented in her mind she was here for a reason. Adam Collins was not that reason. She crossed over to the corner where a large box sat on a wooden craftsman bench. Arrow smelled the contents before she saw them.

Rich loam and fragrant wood, the scents grounded Arrow immediately, locking her soul into place as she closed her eyes and let the wood beyond her fingertips speak to her. The bamboo held no particular fragrance, but the soil it grew in reminded her of the before-time.

Before she had gone to Arequipa to become an instrument of death. Oh, she killed in Japan, but those deaths were justified. Outsiders threatened her home. Her
sohei
sent little Saya on a journey in the Tamba highlands surrounding
Akuma no shinden,
the Temple of the Demon and her home. Her priority? Poison and impale the ones who sought to destroy her
sohei
.

She’d become guardian to the
sohei
the moment her mother placed her on their doorstep. Her eyes signified the great warrior monk,
Oniwaka Benkei
, had delivered them a savior.

Saya did as she’d been told. No one expected a child of a mere four years to be a bringer of death. She’d infiltrated their camp with the sound of thunder on her heels. Poison began what her crossbow finished. Their water supply infected with livers from
fugu
, or pufferfish, they had been easy pickings for Saya’s
yas
. Her fingertips had been raw and her arms tired at the end of that rainy night but blood ran like water and her
sohei
were safe.

She returned to her temple and found more death. Saya disappeared and in her place, Arrow had been born.

Sunlight touched her hand, warming her for a brief moment and pulling her out of her musings. The soil smelled of death but it was a sweet, potent scent. She would work with the bamboo first today.

Arrow opened her eyes and began pulling the things her sister obtained for her out the box. Dried bamboo, hemp, silk, a short, viciously sharp knife, over twenty three-inch titanium broad-heads, and peacock feathers nestled in the box. Were she at home in Japan, she would have used bone or horns for her broad-heads, but titanium was an acceptable replacement. A long boiling pot that resembled a feeding trough with a burner underneath was to the side of the bench. The craftsman’s bench was fifteen feet long, the dried bamboo exactly ten feet in length. She would make two longbows and twenty arrows this day and practice with her sister tonight.

The part of Arrow that reveled in death demanded she craft her own tools of destruction. That part of her recognized she was lost and commanded she find peace in the crafting of them. Two sides of one coin, her weapons were extensions of who she’d become. Killing with a weapon she hadn’t fashioned was akin to cutting herself.

Arrow turned on the burner and watched as the water within the trough began to bubble.
Watashi wa kirādesu. Kore watashidesu. Yami wa watashi o torikakomi, sono naka ni namerakana mizu no heiwa ga arimasu.
It was a chant she’d learned from the cradle.
I am a killer. This is me. Darkness surrounds me and within it there is the peace of smooth water.
She took the saw Bullet provided and portioned her wood off, ten feet long by one and half inches in diameter. And as she placed the long pieces of bamboo in the boiling water she repeated them in her mind over and over, letting the ebb and flow of the chant center her mind and hands.

After a time she turned the burner off and removed the heated pieces of wood allowing them to cool for a few precious minutes before she began tillering them. Arrow shaped the many joints of her longbow then held them in place lovingly, joint by joint until the wood conformed to her wishes. She continued to repeat her words, finding succor in the cadence. Once the beautiful curves of the darkened bamboo took hold and stayed, she turned the burner back on, placing another long piece of wood in the trough and repeating the process exactly for the second bow.

How much time passed she did not know. She recognized Adam Collins returned several times through the day, watching for long periods then disappearing. Her skin would prickle and that’s how she knew he was there. Electricity would arc between them and she tasted the static on the air each time he returned but she ignored it, intent on only one thing: death.

The sun shone on her and she wondered why she sought its rays to lighten that which couldn’t be found. Her soul was mired in darkness and by very definition lost. Yet she craved the light as much as she did…his touch.

Her knife slipped as she notched the ends of her
yumi
. Blood welled on her knuckle and she licked it, the taste of copper familiar and comforting. Perhaps when she was finished with this longbow she would gift it to the one who’d held her attention throughout its creation.

Would Adam Collins appreciate such a gift? Would he understand that he’d managed to do something no one else ever had? Probably not, but she determined she would gift him with it anyway. It was the least she could do for a warrior such as him.

Once the ends were notched she began to sand the bamboo, loving strokes along the wood that smoothed giving sheen to the light wood. Bamboo was a tensile wood that bent with ease but could break after time. The power in the wood lay in the creator and the art of crafting. Use weighed the wood with elasticity thereby making it less than what it was when it had been crafted.

Arrow’s longbows never became less. Her wood remained strong, giving her arrows the needed velocity to reach their targets. Maybe the lives she took absorbed into the wood itself. Arrow fancied it was simply her desire that the wood remain strong that it did so. Though death destroyed, her wood brought justice.

She hummed lightly, the song Juana taught all of First Team when they’d arrived in Arequipa. She hummed as she cut the silk and the hemp in long strands. She hummed as she attached the hemp to the notches in the
yumi
and the silk to the grips.

She hummed until her throat was dry and the longbows were completed. Then she started on the
ya
. By the time darkness blanketed the sky, she was finished. And she was cold.

So very cold.

•●•

Adam watched her throughout the day. He’d called her name at dinner time but she hadn’t responded. Bullet said it would be that way—that once Arrow began crafting she would be silent until the end.

But she hadn’t been entirely silent. She’d hummed to herself and the notes of her sad song reached into Adam’s soul and squeezed. He’d returned to patrol and mentally kicked his own ass for letting her achieve that depth.

He ran a hand over his head and wiped it down his face. Fatigue rode his body right now but his mind turned over and over endlessly. How dare she enter his life and turn his emotions on end? How fucking dare she. He’d loved Aziveh for years, and though she’d been lost to him, he’d never stopped loving her. All of his attempts to find her met failure, but he would never stop. Certainly his lust for another woman could be overcome by his love for Aziveh.

Yet those words rang false, and try as he might, he couldn’t make them true. As his patrol ended, he sought Saya out again. She was still on the porch, her hands once again palming the glass. What did she stare at, this woman who hated the dark but became one with it so easily?

His heart turned over, stupid fucking organ, as her scent slithered to him and wrapped around his nose, invading his throat with the taste of honey. Her skin shone opalescent in the rising moon and he wondered how in the hell he was going to shake this woman’s hold on him. Her smell dominated even that of boiling wood, hemp string, and metal.

“Did you need something, Mr. Collins?”

Her voice whisked through him, touching with a light caress and stroking along his nerves. Would her hands do the same thing as he moved in and out of her body? Would they grab and knead the muscles of his back as his hips glided between her thighs?

He grunted but held back the words that threatened, saying instead, “It’s time to eat.”

She nodded and turned her head toward him. Her eyes were piercing, seeing things he’d rather keep hidden. “I could eat.”

He turned at that and felt more than heard her presence at his back.

“You do not like having me at your back,” she said softly. No humor, just a simple acknowledgement.

“I do not like having anyone at my back,” he responded in a hard voice. “Much less a killer.”

She tsked, clucking her tongue against the edge of her teeth. “If you keep on, Mr. Collins, I will get the impression you don’t like me.”

He laughed then, and like her there was no humor in the tones of it. “I don’t like you, Saya.”
But I want you like I want my next breath.

“This I know well. You don’t like me but your body calls to mine.”

Her words stopped him in his tracks. Between one breath and the next he had her against the wall, her throat in one hand and her wrists in the other. Saya’s startled gaze met his, something passing in the golden depths that could be the promise of death or desire.

“What did you say?” he managed past clenched teeth.

Her nostrils flared, and there was that something again, a whisper of black in the amber glass of her eyes. She lowered her gaze then and he took a deep breath. The hardened tips of her breasts pressed against his chest and he exhaled harshly.
Goddamn her.