My Soul to Keep (27 page)

She slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her scream.

Her only thought for Jonah, she dropped her hand and inhaled shallowly, peering around him to where the sword penetrated his back. There was no sign of his killer. She winced, her mind shying from the word. He was not dead. Not
killed.

Silver nitrate might be poison to them, but they weren't lycans. It didn't have to be lethal. He could recover. It was possible. He could regenerate. He would—if she had to breathe life back into him herself.

At first she thought whoever had stabbed him had turned and fled … but then she saw the sword's leather grip turn, twisting as it drove deeper, harder into Jonah, pushing, pushing …

Jonah cried out, his throat arching. She choked on a sob at the low, pained sound.

Fury fired through her … and awareness.

She lifted her blade and let it fly, stabbed it through the air. She heard the thud, felt her knife make contact. For a moment, her weapon
appeared to have suspended itself in midair, in nothing but space.

Jonah dropped to his knees. She tried to catch him, to hold him up, as though that might keep him well and with her, keep him from being seriously hurt.

At the sound of a wet gurgle, she looked up, flicked a glance toward her suspended knife, to the boy who was there but invisible to the eye.

Gradually the fog receded in the arena, melting like fast-fading smoke. As it did, Phillip appeared. Dead, impaled with her knife.

S
ORCHA POINTED A SHAKING
finger at Phillip. “Tonight's kill,” she called out, her warning clear. She hovered over Jonah, clutched him close, not about to let anyone pry him from her arms and live.

“You're protecting him?” Sheppard cocked his head at a dangerous angle, glaring at her.

Her fingers flexed around Jonah, running through his hair. She'd missed him too much. She wasn't going to lose him.

“Well, that's pretty evident.” Mila kicked Phillip's lifeless body. “She killed for him.”

“Are you fucking him or something?” the rogue hunter asked, but in a way that made her think he didn't really care. It was just an idle question.

He looked from her to the jeering crowd, his dark eyes shifty, nervous in a way.

Jonah growled. A quick glance down revealed a feverish light burning in his eyes. “Jonah,” she whispered.

“Sorcha, don't risk yourself. Move away from me—”

“Shut up,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Ah, so touching,” Mila mocked with a roll of her eyes. “Spare me.”

Over Jonah's protests, Sorcha blocked him from the others. He was too weak to stop her. She did it unthinkingly, with no hesitation, her heart full and deep with love, desperate for him to live, to avoid another attack … even if it meant losing her own life. And that was the humanity she craved, the soul, she realized in a flash. It was love. It lived in her for Jonah. And maybe it always had.
Maybe?
Who was she kidding—it always had.

A loud horn blew. The crowd stilled, their shouts dying as all eyes swung toward the balcony.

She held her breath, meeting her father's gaze across the distance. He looked down at her, his eyes, for all their glitter, dead and uncaring. He looked right through her with that stare.

“Finish it.” His voice jumped through the air. “Fight to the death!”

She flinched, her fingers tightening on Jonah's arm. Her gaze flicked wildly to the others, frozen still, all of them a horrified tableau. No one knew what to do. She read it in their eyes. Felt the same way. Everything slowed. A roaring sound filled her head. This was it. Any moment death would congest the air.

“Shit,” Sheppard muttered, and her stomach twisted sickly as she noticed his fingers tighten around the grip of his sword. His foot scuffed the ground, inching closer to her.

“Sorcha!” Jonah bit out. “Get up! Defend yourself.”

She snatched up a discarded blade from the ground and held it before her. She'd defend herself. She'd go out defending them both.

The quiet hunter still seemed oddly focused on the crowd. Especially odd considering that they were supposed to start killing one another. He might want to be looking at any one of his potential opponents.

With the roaring swelling inside her head now, she followed his gaze, saw him staring, eyes locked on the good-looking blond guy again.

“What are you waiting for?” her father shouted, his face growing red from where he looked down at them.

“Crazy bastard,” she muttered, every line of her body taut and singing with readiness, waiting for the first assault.

Still, the three of them didn't move. Mila looked the rogue hunter over, clearly marking him for the first attack.

Then he nodded, moving his dark head in a sharp, decisive jerk. Deliberate. And she knew then. He was signaling the guy in the crowd. A split second after she reached this realization, heat and fire blasted the air. She was lifted, flung far.

Someone screamed. Shrill and piercing. The sound endless. The pain consuming.

She could see nothing beyond fire and rolling black clouds of smoke. Every nerve screamed in agony. She tried to move, into what she didn't know. The world seemed turned inside out, upside down. She couldn't move, couldn't budge. Intense pressure held her down, pinned her like a bug.

And then she realized that the screaming—the shrill incessant screech in her ears—was her own.

J
ONAH DRAGGED HIMSELF ALONG
the ground, hauling his body over burning debris that scorched through his clothes and devoured his flesh. Bodies and human remains spotted the arena—or what used to be the arena.

He squinted through the billowing black, the gnawing wound in his back nothing compared to the pain in his heart, the squeezing fist inside his chest.

He followed the sound of Sorcha's scream. The smoke cleared and he spotted her at last, her body buried beneath a slab of ceiling. Her face peeked out from twisted steel and concrete, streaked in blood and soot.

Pandemonium shrieked around them. Chunks of ceiling continued to fall, caving in, shaking the air and vibrating the earth.

The moans of dying hunters filled the air. Shadowy figures staggered around, trying to find a way out of the nightmare—hell's tomb. At least Ivo was buried somewhere in the mounting inferno.

Jonah dropped next to Sorcha and curled his hands around the wedge of slab. His body screamed in agony as he tried to lift the chunk of ceiling off her. He grunted, blood vessels popping from the effort.

His grunt strangled in his throat, twisting into a scream of agony as he realized he couldn't. He couldn't move it. Couldn't save her. It weighed too much. Even considering what he was, what she was, he was too weak, his body still battling the poison coursing through him.

Damn, damn, damn.
Hot tears that had nothing to do with the burning smoke or hungry flames licking toward them pricked his eyes.

Sorcha whispered his name beneath the mangled concrete and metal, her eyes glassy with pain.

He laced his fingers with hers. “I'm here, baby. I'm here.” The smoke thickened. The smell of burning flesh stung his nostrils, and he wasn't sure it wasn't his own. The heat encroached, gaining on them like an advancing beast, edging closer and devouring all in its path. “I'm not going anywhere.”

For several moments, he lay there, an odd contentment sweeping him. If he had to die here, now, at least he would be with her. Dying together, with someone, with
her,
he realized, beat what he'd had before. A nonlife where he'd turned his back on all, on everything.

He laughed hoarsely. It had taken him long enough to reach that conclusion, but now that he had, he felt as if he'd come home at last. If ever, by some miracle, he survived this, he knew his life would be with Sorcha. It would be hunting demons, protecting witches … living out the fate God had somehow chosen for him.

“Jonah.” Her voice sounded stronger, driven and more aware of her surroundings. Her eyes glinted up at him—the Sorcha he knew and craved. “You have to go.”

He shook his head, refusing to hear the words, to absorb them. He would stay. He would stay if this—mere moments—was all that was left for them.

His gaze crawled over her face, memorizing her every feature, soot-covered, blood-smeared, bruised and torn … taking peace from the sight of her. “I have to stay,” he said simply, quietly, as if chaos and madness didn't rage around them.

“Damn you, no,” she choked out, tears running down her smoking cheeks. Smoke rose off both their bodies now. He didn't feel any of it. Not anymore. He didn't feel the heat. He felt only this moment with her. “You have to save yourself,” she hissed.

“I'm already saved. You saved me.”

Her face crumpled then. She sobbed, tears trailing shiny tracks on her face. He inched as close as he could, holding her arm, his fingers tightening around her fingers, wishing he could feel all of her pressed against him.

“Hey!” The voice jarred him, so close. He looked up at the other dovenatu who had been in the arena with Sorcha. “Move it!” the guy shouted, leaning down and grasping a jagged edge of concrete in his hands. The female was there, too, the blonde whose throat he had tried to cut. The mark at the nape of his neck throbbed in recognition. A witch.

As the dovenatu worked to lift the slab off Sorcha, the witch stood close, holding up her arms, working whatever skill she possessed, her face screwed up tightly, as if she were in pain from the effort.

As he squinted through the curling black, it seemed that the tips of her fingers glowed.

Finally it rose, tiny inch by slow, unbearable inch.

With a grunt, Jonah grasped Sorcha's arm and dragged her clear of the wreckage, ignoring her cries.

“You're free!” he cried, feeling as if he'd saved himself. Because if she lived, he knew a part of him always would.

The dovenatu didn't hesitate. He bent and scooped her up. Jonah suppressed his rage, the hot flash of possession, at seeing Sorcha clasped in another's arms. But he would bear it. He didn't care how she got out of here, as long as she did.
As long as she lived.

She looked back for him, twisting her head desperately, her dark hair whipping into her face as the dovenatu bore her away from him. He tried to rise, tried to move after her, follow, but his body didn't feel a part of him anymore. He couldn't command it, couldn't force the dead weight to action. He felt as if he were being pulled, squeezed
through a too small hole, wrung out and twisted dry, empty.

Staggering, he dropped, unable to keep up. A warped steel beam fell beside him, shuddering the ground. He heard Sorcha scream his name as she vanished into the black smoke.

Stop! Put me down!” Sorcha writhed, cursing, feeling as helpless as a child in Sheppard's arms. She tried not to worry about the fact that she couldn't feel her legs, or that her ribs ached as if a herd of horses had stomped all over her body.

Her broken body would heal and repair itself in time. Time she didn't have. Time she needed to see to Jonah, to purge the silver nitrate from his body in the hope that he would survive.

She blinked tear-filled eyes. Now wasn't the time to break down. Jonah was still back there. He needed her.

She struggled harder. “Put me down!” She would crawl back to him with her bare hands if necessary.

“Would you stop?” Sheppard shouted, navigating his way though the burning, smoking wreckage. “The elevators are up ahead.” He glanced back over his shoulder. A foul expletive fell from his lips. “Where the hell's Mila?”

“You left her, too,” Sorcha accused.

“Honey, in case you didn't realize it, this is war—be grateful I grabbed you!”

“We have to go back for Jonah!” She beat a knotted fist against his shoulder, hating that she was too weak to stop him from carrying her away.

Sheppard shook his head fiercely, lips pressed into a grim line. “I can't carry both of you. Sorry.” Except he didn't sound sorry.

“Then go back for him,” she choked out. “Leave me.”

He laughed, then coughed against the suffocating smoke. “Love really does render people stupid.” She caught the motion of his shaking head. “Trust me, if I'm not going back for Mila, I'm not going back for him.”

He reached the elevator and kicked the up button with his booted foot, muttering, “Let's hope it works.”

And Sorcha hoped it didn't. Because she couldn't imagine going on without Jonah. Not now. Not ever again.

Over the roar of fire, the din of crumbling earth and debris, the elevator binged open in front of them. Sheppard dove inside.

Only they weren't alone for long. Two others jumped in beside them before the doors had a chance to slide shut. The rogue hunter and his
blond friend, the guy in the crowd he'd signaled to the split second before the explosion. Somehow he'd done this. They both had. They had destroyed her father's little kingdom, killed hundreds.
And why not?
she asked herself dully. She couldn't blame them. Her father had only ordered them to kill one another. At least with the explosion there was a hope for survival … escape. It was that hope the two men had seized.

She stared hard at them, resenting that it worked out so well for them. They were getting out alive. Jonah, Mila … they weren't.

As the elevator began its glide upward the two hunters sagged against the back of it, shoulders touching. In the flickering, dying light of the elevator, she watched them. The fair-haired hunter's hand brushed over the other hunter's hand, closed around the fingers in a tight grip.
Intimate.
As if he was afraid his friend would be ripped from him again at any moment.

Not friends, she realized flatly, her heart a squeezing fist in her chest, each pounding beat for Jonah, lost in burning chaos even as it dawned on her that these two men were much more than friends. They were lovers.