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A new sensation took over. She felt as though she had become Kerrick as he fought death vampires one after another. She was in his skin, wielding his sword, throwing his dagger. She could feel his wings move at his command, propelling him through the air in pursuit of the enemy.
Deep within the fibers of her muscles, she experienced exactly what he felt when he fought, the flex of his biceps, of his calf muscles, the way his knees bent and moved, the shift of rib cage, thrust of arm, the absolute ballet quality of his movements. She saw through his eyes. A battle edge skipped through her blood. Excitement pounded in her heart.
She began to know when his movements would quicken and when his legs would retreat, when he would raise his sword-arm, when he would strike, and when he would shield a powerful blow. When he would mount his wings and fly into the air. When he would stay the thrumming of his wing-locks to remain close to the earth. She felt the leather of his kilt slap at his legs, the pull of his T-shirt when he fought in cargoes and steel-toed boots. Every strike of an enemy’s sword against his sword now sent vibrations up her arm.
A few minutes more and he began to pull out of her mind, not in a rush but in a long, slow glide that reminded her of stretching pizza dough. One last tug, and he freed himself. Again, how bereft she felt, just like before, on the granite island when he left her mind. She put a hand first to her chest, then to her head.
Her body felt rubbery, disoriented as though some of her muscles pulled two ways at once. Of course. Since she now possessed his muscle memory alongside her own.
She set her feet apart and slung her left arm behind her back.
He looked her up and down, nodded his approval. “A warrior’s stance.”
Some of the images flickered up to her conscious mind. There he was standing before a woman with black hair and a dress made up of some kind of spotted animal skin, a beautiful woman who looked Arabic and exotic.
She knew the woman was Endelle, the leader of Second, even though her name wasn’t spoken. She knew because he knew. Endelle appeared angry, her enormous wings all the way to the ceiling but drawn back aggressively. The words came from her mouth, “Don’t you dare take that f**king tone with me, Warrior, or I’ll have your wings—literally—feather by feather.”
“Okaaay,” she murmured, shutting the memory down. She was so out of her depth.
“You’ll need your weapon now.” He held the box bearing what would become her personal sword, her identified sword.
She took the box from him and looked down at a really beautiful weapon resting on a bed of dark green velvet. The steel glimmered beneath the recessed lights high in the vaulted twigged ceiling overhead.
“Carbon steel, extremely sharp. You’ll need some instruction on the care of it.”
She looked up at him. “How exactly does this work? You said the sword accepts an identity and then that’s it, the sword is mine, only mine.”
He nodded. “Once properly identified, no one on Second or Mortal Earth can touch any part of the sword without dying.”
She nodded. “So how do I do this?”
“Take the handle in a tight grip and the identification process will complete itself. Just maintain contact steadily for a few seconds. You’ll know.”
She shifted the weight of the box to one hand, holding it firmly beneath. She reached for the handle but hesitated. She was taking another step on her path to a new life, a new world, literally a new dimension.
Oh, God.
* * *
“I’m still pissed at you,” Medichi said.
Marcus sat on the curb near the downtown Borderland, his kilt slung between his legs, sweat dripping with blood from different parts of his body. He looked up at his fellow warrior. “Who the f**k cares?”
Medichi stood on the sidewalk as cars on Mortal Earth whizzed by. He looked like a god from the Roman pantheon, all six-seven of him, lit by the overhead streetlight. His hair was long, black, and straight, and he wore it pulled back slick and bound up tight in his cadroen. He had pronounced cheekbones and a strong jaw. He was powerful, lean, a warrior with dark secrets. No one messed with Medichi.
He wiped down his bloodied sword with a clean, soft white cloth. He didn’t seem to notice the traffic and of course no one could see either of them. Marcus had misted the area, a gossamer cloud that none of the mortals would be able to see. The presence of the mist would simply create a confusion of mind.
“So, Medichi, you still keeping your wings a secret?”
“Fuck off.” Nobody knew the why of Medichi’s refusal to mount his wings. No one. In fact, no one, to Marcus’s knowledge, had ever even seen his wings.
Medichi asked, “You still planning on running back to Mortal Earth with your tail between your legs?”
Marcus took the jibe in stride. You did that when the other vampire had saved your ass about a dozen times over the last two nights.
He wiped a hand across his forehead, which caused a cut above his left eyebrow to sting like hell. Their most recent engagement, which involved snapping an enemy’s wing, had sent quills scraping him raw. Central had just done a cleanup on eleven death vamps. “You know why I had to leave. It wasn’t exactly a secret.”
Medichi peered at his sword and rubbed back and forth in a quick motion. Blood trickled from a slice on the back of his thigh and ran down the back of his knee, into the calf straps of his shin guards. He didn’t seem to notice. His scowl sat heavy on his brow. “I never believed you’d actually hurt Kerrick.”
“Everyone thinks they were just words,” he said quietly. “But I would have killed him and my sentiments on the subject haven’t changed. Endelle’s been smart to keep us separated like this.”
“Your beef with him is two centuries old. You need to get over yourself.” He didn’t add the usual ass**le tag. A few hours of fighting a common enemy would also do that to a couple of warriors. They weren’t exactly buddies, though some of the I-want-to-cut-your-liver-out had left Medichi’s dark brown gaze.
Marcus scanned the area, from the burned-out smears of old gum on the sidewalk, to the litter in the gutter, the car across the street with a smashed-in fender. “Helena was the last of my family and I begged Kerrick not to marry her. I begged him for months. I begged her as well, much good it did.”
“She loved him,” Medichi said, his tone deep, resonant, dark. “What else mattered?”
Marcus gathered a wad of saliva in his mouth then spit. “Well, aren’t you the f**king romantic.”
