Authors: Alexandra O'Hurley
Deviant Knights (8 page)
When he stopped talking, the words ran around in
her head for a few moments and she felt like she’d just tumbled down the rabbit
hole.
“You believe all of that, don’t you?”
She looked them both over, knowing they were
either telling the truth or completely mad.
“You seriously believe you are over seven hundred years old.”
Gabriel picked up his sword.
Her heart began to beat hard, but as he
passed her by, she let out a small breath.
He lowered his body to one of the men on the floor.
“If we don’t take their heads, they will come
back to life, just as I did.
They aren’t
as strong, so it takes longer for them to revive, but it still needs to be
done, and quickly.
Watch closely and
then tell me you don’t believe me.”
Kadence
brought her hands to her mouth to stifle the scream as he sliced
the head of the man completely off, light glinting from his silver sword as it
arched across the space.
He lifted the
mass by the hairs on the head to show her.
Her stomach turned but before she could do anything about it, lightning
shot from the head, piercing Gabriel in the chest.
His whole body illuminated.
She saw the bones inside him light from within
and small sparks of electrical power skimmed the edges of his skin.
Michel rose, lifting his sword as well.
He took another head, the power rushing into
his body as the deed was done.
The man that had held her, the one with a long
blade through his forehead began to stir, lifting onto his knees.
She screamed in response to the man rising
from the dead.
Gabriel stepped close and
lopped his head off, the lightning striking him again.
“You can believe what you want to,
Kadence
, but you are now in possession of a great secret,
one the Illuminati would be willing to kill for.”
She sat there, looking as the bodies of the
fallen began to turn to dust, which began to twist and turn, exploding into a
grayish haze.
The haze moved to her as
if pulled by a magnetic force, settling on her skin.
It then seemed to absorb into her body,
glistening and sparkling on her.
She
rose, trying to dust it off, but it didn’t stop, slowly going in.
Looking to the two men, their eyes were large
and rounded.
“What just happened here, Michel?”
Gabriel’s eyes didn’t leave her as he spoke.
“I don’t know.
I’ve never seen that happen.”
Her gut tightened and she pitched forward on her
hands and knees.
Pure power seemed to
swell inside her, and she felt stronger.
Standing again, she looked into her reflection in the windows
overlooking
She glowed.
“What have you two done to me?”
Before the words left her mouth, the glowing
began to lessen.
Gabriel moved to face her.
“I don’t know,
querida
,
but I think it was your destiny to find us.”
“Where do I go from here?”
Kadence’s
head was
spinning.
“We.
Where do
we
go from here?
We will not leave your side,
querida
.”
Gabriel
pulled her into his strong arms.
Michel
stepped into embrace her as well.
And
she suddenly felt safe.
Complete.
She was where she belonged.
That was her last thought when the blackness
took her.
Chapter Six
Kadence
awoke the next morning on a train.
She was exhausted, sore, and her mind was clouded.
Her forehead rested on the glass as she watched
the speeding landscape swirl past her.
Stomach clenching, she closed her eyes to the rapid visions.
Turning her head, she saw the two men that
had suddenly became her lifelines.
Michel rested across from her, perusing a
newspaper that appeared to be in French from the headlines she noted.
Gabriel was beside her, focused on a small
tablet computer, reading something with interest.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
Michel spoke without looking
at her.
Neither man lifted his eyes from
his reading.
For the first time since
meeting them, she felt insignificant.
And considering life had just gotten a lot more interesting for
her, that
simply was not allowed.
“I asked where we were going!”
She wasn’t sure where the moxie had come
from, but it felt good.
She needed to
scream, to rail, to expel some of the anger and fear that was roiling inside
her.
Michel lowered his paper and nearly glared at
her.
“You’re safe.
We are going somewhere you cannot be
touched.
We need to find out what you
are as soon as possible.”
“I bet a scream from me would get people running
in here and fast.”
She felt her eyebrow
rise as she said the words.
Gabriel lowered his tablet and looked in her
direction.
“We’re in
Specifically, heading to
“How the hell did we get overseas that fast?”
“You slept through the prep and the flight.
About—” Michel twisted his arm to gaze at his
watch and then back to his paper.
“—thirteen
hours.
We came across on my private jet
and then used the train to be less conspicuous for the second leg of the
journey.
A friend has a villa in
We will hide there under his care and
determine what it is you are.”
Michel
raised his paper again after he spoke, as if any response was irrelevant.
It should have pissed her off, but her mind
reeled.
“Thirteen hours?”
Kadence
didn’t ask
the question of anyone in particular.
Looking back to the window, she felt pulled by the streaming scene.
She was slowly losing it, her mind swirling
with more questions than she could voice.
The lack of firm answers, of knowing her place in the world, made her
feel weak.
Yet, she felt stronger now than she’d ever
felt.
****
Michel watched her over the top of the newspaper
as she returned from the lavatory with the small bag of toiletries they’d
scavenged for her.
He was careful so she
wouldn’t feel his eyes.
She was lost in
thought anyway, her eyes straining to see the sights as they whirred past the
ultra-modern train.
He felt compassion for her.
She’d been through a lot in the day she’d
been awake and had handled it well.
Other women he’d known in this era would have broken down and been a
sobbing, frantic mess.
Not
Kadence
.
She’d
watched death and called it a fake, railing against them for some imagined
slight.
If only she’d been right.
If only it were mere theatrics.
But this was his and Gabriel’s life.
The small band of immortal warriors were
scattered to the edges of the earth in sets of two or three, guarding specific
treasures from getting into Illuminati hands.
Time passed slowly when it was never-ending.
Michel had often thought that it would have
been easy had he not been saved all those years ago.
He had lived through most of modern history.
Knowledge was power, and power corrupted.
Knowing the ebbs and flows of the civilization around him, he’d soon
learned how to spot the patterns.
Nothing was random anymore.
People were so incredibly predictable.
History surged in circles, caught in a vicious cycle.
The more things changed…
His eyes drifted to
Kadence
.
She brought a mystery and set it in his
lap.
Nothing had astounded him in a few
hundred years.
She was a constant
surprise.
Her dreams of a Templar Knight
had brought them together.
And then
she’d absorbed evil into her body after the killing blows had been struck.
Was she evil?
Like attracted to like?
Would she
spell the end of him, Gabriel, potentially the Order?
He sensed no malice from her, but no one was
to be trusted in the circles he traveled in.
Yet, he was still aggressively attracted to
her.
Even now, his cock was hard in his
tailored trousers.
He looked down at the
bulge as it grew under the fine silk, hidden behind the newspaper.
He wanted this woman unlike anyone he’d ever
wanted.
But she could be the enemy.
She was light, vibrancy.
He’d felt it the night they’d met, needed to
reach out and touch that part of her to feel like he was living again.
It had been part of the reason he’d wanted
her as much as he did.
Now, he had doubts.
And he needed to hold back until he found out
what she was. He hoped for both their sakes that it wasn’t what he
thought.
His fingers itched to touch her
skin.
His mouth burned to taste her
flesh.
And the lusty light in her eyes
had not yet faded.
Even in her eagerness
to piss him off, she’d pushed him in an attempt for attention.
She demanded his response, cried out for it,
and he so wanted to give it to her.
He hoped he would survive until they got to
****
Gabriel heard the soft snoring coming from
across the private car.
Michel was fast
asleep for the first time in days.
His
friend needed the sleep.
As did he.
Even so,
he couldn’t seem to find any rest with the woman sitting beside him so
close.
Nor could he focus on his
research with the sawing noise transverse from him. He put down the tablet and
pinched his nose, fatigue settling in deep.
The frantic trip to get
Kadence
out of
They’d
narrowly escaped the airport, another set of Illuminati fast on their
heels.
Fortunately, they had the pilot
turn in a bogus flight plan.
No one else
knew where they were headed until they were in the air.
It wouldn’t take long for their archenemy to
have scouts in every major airport across the globe, so they stopped on a small
strip they’d found in the German countryside just outside
The SS had probably used it back in the
forties to ship goods and spies in and out of
good for once.
Kadence
had been dead to the world, sleeping through boarding and de-boarding,
then a hayride to the local train station.
They’d then boarded a Rail Europe car bound for
of it.
He’d breathed a sigh of relief
when she had finally awoken.
Guarded,
he wasn’t sure how to react to her now.
He and Michel had whispered conversations about what she was while she’d
slept.
But they hadn’t expressed too
much, afraid she would awaken at any moment and hear the darkest concerns.
Hopefully, the Illuminati thought them to still
be in the air.
Or at their final
destination, at this point, because he didn’t think he had the mettle in him at
this point to fight.
Nor did he have the
wherewithal to consider the what-ifs of
Kadence
.
His instinct told him to pull her into his
arms and hold her close.
His mind told
him to stand back.