War Bringer (7 page)

Time and distance seemed to distort; the closer he came the farther she appeared. He wondered if he were hallucinating.
 

She looked peaceful. Eternally so.
 

But not everything was as it seemed. Shallow breaths moved her chest.
 

Before he could get close enough to touch her, two men entered the room from the doors at either end. He didn’t look at them. Instead he kept his gaze on her and observed them from his peripheral vision. They were dressed all in black and moved like shadow warriors. They had a significant advantage over him…they weren’t emotionally involved with the woman on the table. But he was, and instead of letting that distract him, he had to use it to give him focus and fuel his fight.
 

Kelan moved a few steps to the side. He didn’t want to get very far from Fiona, but he didn’t want her injured in the coming fight, either. He watched the two men, judging from their movements how they would fight. He could tell they were experienced fighters from the way they squared their bodies, spreading their shoulders and legs to enhance their mobility.
 

When the first guy threw a punch, Kelan grabbed his wrist and pulled his body in close so he could slam his knee into the guy’s diaphragm. He bent over reflexively, sucking back the air he’d lost. Kelan took advantage of the moment, and braced himself on the guy’s back, then levered his feet up the other guy’s chest to wrap them around his neck, tumbling them both to the ground. The second guy fought to get free, but Kelan ended him with a quick twist to his neck. He didn’t know what the night held for him, but leaving either of these two alive so that they could come after him again was not an option.

The first guy was on his feet again, and he was pissed. Kelan waited for his next move, but was distracted to see someone else coming out of the far door. How many would he have to fight before he could get Fiona free?

Kelan tried to slip between the newcomer and Fiona, but the first guy stopped him. They exchanged a few punches, but when the newest guy started to roll Fiona’s table away, Kelan had to finish the fight fast. He did a roundhouse kick to the guy’s chest. He stumbled backward, and as he righted himself, he pulled out a switchblade.
 

Fiona was being rushed from the room. It was taking too long to deal with this guy. Kelan pretended he was focused on what was happening with Fiona, letting the guy lunge toward him. At the last moment, Kelan caught his wrist, turned it back toward his attacker, and thrust it into his chest.

No one else challenged him, so he was free to race after Fiona. He slammed through the doors she’d just been taken through. The room was a black void. Before the door shut behind him, he noticed another door on the opposite side. He checked it, but it was locked.

“Hello, Mr. Shiozski.”
 

How did they know him? Where had they taken Fiona?

“I’ve been waiting for you.”
 

“Why?” He remembered his comm unit and turned it on, but wasn’t sure Max could hear him in the metal box he was in.

“Because you are the War Bringer we’ve been told was coming.”

Kelan went still. He thought of the tattoo he had on his right arm. He’d gotten that ink before he went into the Army. It was the skull of a Lakota warrior. A red bandana was tied around his forehead, holding back his hair. On the other side of the skull were the words, in big block letters, War Bringer. Kelan had designed it as an appeal for the protection of his ancestors against the enemies he would encounter. Its meaning was personal for him, yet this disembodied voice was talking about it as if it had meaning of another sort.
 

He wasn’t going to let that oddity distract him from his purpose. “Where’s Fiona?”

“You shall have her, soon, if you are successful in the competition.”

“Who are you?”

“No one of importance.”

“Why did you take Fiona?”

“It was her destiny.”

Great. These were the fruitcakes that had the other half of his soul. “All right. You’ve had your fun. Game’s over.”

“No. In fact, it’s just beginning. Fiona is in the next room. Go to her.”

The door opposite him opened, showing another long, narrow room. Fiona lay on a pallet on the floor, in a thin blue beam of light. The whole room was padded in white fabric, like something out of an asylum. As soon as Kelan stepped through the door, a panel slid shut behind him. The room moved then paused. He heard heavy doors close on the other side of the steel panel, then the room rocked as if in motion.

It wasn’t a room at all, but the trailer of a big semi.
 

Kelan walked over to Fiona. A thick acrylic panel separated the two portions of trailer, blocking him. He sat down, folding his legs as he assumed a traditional yoga pose, facing her. He took the earpiece out of his pocket, put it in his ear, and lowered his face, letting his hair and posture obscure him from any cameras that might be watching him. “Max, you read me?”

No answer.

“Max, come in.”

Nothing.

Either the comm unit was broken or the truck was blocking the signal. He’d leave the earpiece in until they stopped at their destination. Hopefully, it wasn’t so far that it would be out of range.

He looked over at Fiona’s prone body. He hadn’t noticed before, but the silk gown she wore was nearly sheer. He could see the dark shapes of her nipples.
 

As he watched her, she started to rouse. She pushed herself to a sitting position. Her now long blond hair spilled about her face. She brushed some of it out of her face, then held it and looked at it, frowning.

She glanced his way, then tilted her head as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. “Kelan!”

She scrambled toward him, but the long gown she wore inhibited her progress. She huffed a ragged breath, then gathered the fabric away from her legs and crawled over to the clear panel that separated them. She flattened her hand against it. He raised his hand to cover hers. Maybe, if they held still, their palms would heat the acrylic, and it would be as if they were actually touching.

“I can’t believe I’m seeing you,” she said, her voice muffled by the dense panel between them. “Is it really you? Or is it another dream? I don’t know if I’m awake or asleep even now.”

“It’s really me, Mahasani.”

She nodded. Tears slipped down her face. “How long…how long has it been?”

“A day.”

“It feels like a lifetime. Kelan—they said they had Casey, too. Is she also missing?”

He shook his head. “She’s safe at Blade’s. They lied to you.”

“Thank God.” She looked up then around at their container. “Where are we?”

“In an eighteen-wheeler, headed somewhere.”

“Why? Why is this happening?”

Kelan shook his head. “I don’t know. One of our captors said a whole bunch of stuff about destiny.” He didn’t tell her one of them had said she was King’s daughter. Princess Fiona. He nodded toward a bruise on her cheek. “They hurt you.”

“I fought them when they tried to take me. Then again at the house out on the plains.” She closed her eyes as the memories flooded her mind. “Kelan, there are girls being held there against their will. Minors being used as sex slaves.”

His fingertips pressed into the glass. “Not anymore. We got there just after you were taken.” He also didn’t tell her the bastards had tried to burn the little house down, occupants and all. “The girls have been taken to the hospital. They’ll be cared for in shelters.”

“They aren’t criminals.”

“I know.”

“What’s going to happen to us?”

“We’ll find out soon. Stay calm. Do what they say.”

“What if they separate us?”

“I will find you. I will always find you, Fiona. Let’s see what they’re up to.”

“I’m afraid.”

He nodded. “I’ll get you out as soon as I can.”

Her blue eyes met his. He could see the tremble in her chin, even through the thick panel. “I love you,” she whispered.

“I will not fail you, Mahasani.” Words that he knew, as soon as he’d spoken them, were a lie. He’d already failed her by letting her get taken in the first place.

Chapter
 
Six

The truck pulled to a rough stop. Kelan got to his feet. There was no door on Fiona’s half of the truck, so they were going to have to come through him to get to her. He braced his feet and waited.

A panel in the door slid open. “Put your hands through,” someone ordered.
 

Kelan stayed put.

“There are six of us out here. You don’t think you’re a match for us, do you?”

He didn’t answer. He had a more defensible position inside the rig than he would out in a wide-open space. And with him out of the truck, they could get to Fiona. After some debate amongst themselves, along with a cryptic comment about needing to get him into “the arena,” the steel panel at the back of the semi slid open.

Two men jumped inside. Kelan prepared for their attack. The one on his left jabbed straight at his chest. Kelan blocked that thrust then slammed his boot sideways on the guy’s calf, breaking his knee. As the second guy slammed Kelan back against the wall, two more men jumped into the truck, one with a cattle prod, one with a dogcatcher’s loop. Kelan couldn’t dislodge the guy holding him pinned to the wall, so instead of fighting for release, he jammed the guy’s head against the steel wall with his elbow.

While they fought, the man with the cattle prod managed to zap Kelan’s side. The pain stunned him temporarily, long enough for the man with the dogcatcher loop to slip that wire over his neck and pull tight. Kelan turned his attention to the wire, giving them a chance to slap a pair of cuffs on his hands. When he still struggled, the man with the dogcatcher loop tightened it until he hit his knees. A couple of the other men went inside and unlocked the big acrylic panel, letting it swivel open. They rushed in and grabbed Fiona.
 

She tried to resist, but her strength was no match for theirs. As they walked her past him to the truck opening, Kelan jabbed his elbow into the groin of the man holding the cattle prod. Yanking the prod from his hand, he used it to zap the man holding the choke wire about his neck.

He freed himself from the wire loop then tossed that man out of the truck, into a new fighter. He kicked yet another oncoming fighter in the head, then leapt out of the truck. A whole new circle of fighters stepped into formation around him.

Someone clapped. The man wore a black beanie and dark sunglasses, even though night had fallen. Kelan watched behind the guy as Fiona was taken inside a large steel building. The man leaned close and whispered to Kelan, “Save your strength for the competition. If you win, you will have a night with the princess.” He shrugged. “If you lose, someone else will have a night with her.”
 

Kelan recognized his voice—it was the same as the one on the speaker before he got into the truck.

The guy stepped back and glanced at one of the men circled around them. “Take him into the arena.”

“He won’t go.”
 

“Oh, he’ll go. And without resistance. Uncuff him.”

“Are you crazy? Have you seen what he did here?” The guard held his hand out, indicating the prone and groaning men.

The man in the sunglasses turned to the guard. “Do you challenge me?”

The guard made a rapid attitude adjustment. Was he King? Kelan stared at him as the handcuffs were removed. Freed, he took two long steps toward him before two men blocked him.

“Good. Good.” The man smiled again. “You still have some fight in you.”

Kelan never changed his expression. All this chitchat was keeping him from Fiona. He turned away and started toward the structure where they’d taken her. The circle of men made an opening for him to pass through. The man in the beanie fell in step beside him.

Kelan looked around as they went to the arena, taking stock of his whereabouts so that he could bring the team back here. There were no other buildings he could see besides the big steel arena. The place looked like it got a lot of use. A thick row of cedar shrubs surrounded the area, and a cluster of huge cottonwoods provided the building and dirt parking area with a windbreak in winter and dense shade in the summer.

* * *

Fiona was wobbly on her feet. They must have drugged her. The last thing she remembered was being taken from the cathouse. They’d done something to her hair. She was wearing an unfamiliar gown that clung to her body and was so fine a silk that it was almost translucent. The men walking on either side of her cut a wide swath through the crowd. She didn’t see any women anywhere.
 

She glanced back to check what was happening with Kelan. He’d gotten off the truck and was standing inside a circle of men. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew he watched her. And then, without ceremony, she was yanked inside the steel building. Lights were scarce. Four bare bulbs hung on long wires, illuminating four sets of bleachers. One larger set of spotlights hung down over an empty area in the center of the bleachers. It had no ropes or stages, just the bare, compacted dirt floor.

There were too many men for the bleachers to accommodate, so they stood in the aisles between them. The noise was a shock to her ears after the silence of her drug-induced sleep. And the smell was noxious. Horse dung, unwashed male bodies…and something else, a scent she couldn’t quite identify. Excitement, maybe. Did that have an odor, she wondered? Fear did, and its stink was in there, too.

The ground between the bleachers was loose dirt. It was hard for her to walk on it in the stilettos she wore. She looked at her feet and caught sight again of her nearly invisible clothes. Why had they put her in this terrible outfit? Dreading what was coming, she lifted her head and wore the frostiest expression she could muster.
 

The men led her down to the center of the arena, then around to the middle of one of the bleachers, where a huge, throne-like chair sat in front of the bottom row.
 

“Princess,” one of the men said, indicating she should sit in the chair.