The Relentless Warrior

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.