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Out of the corner of his eye, Gideon saw the large, unnaturally strong warrior stand and shake off the electrical surge that should have killed him. Long brown hair fell across the Ansara soldier’s face, and the muscles in his arms and chest seemed to ripple, to harden. Then the Ansara lifted his head and tossed his hair back, and his gaze fell on Hope.
“Kill her!” the man who fought Gideon screamed as he swung wildly with his sword again. “She is his.”
Gideon quickly killed the redheaded man, a dark psychic of some sort who had identified Hope as his woman, with a blade through the gut. He withdrew his sword smoothly and let the body fall, then spun to see the one remaining warrior running toward Hope.
Hope and Emma. They were his future, his soul, his home—and he would not allow the Ansara to take them away.
The enemy who now focused on Hope was closer to her than Gideon was. He could slow the big bastard down with another jolt, but would it be enough to stop him? Or would it be too little, too late? The Ansara warrior was too far away for Gideon to take him down with a psychic bolt, too far away for the accuracy and strength he needed. The incredibly high stakes of this battle crept higher.
“Shoot him!” Gideon screamed as he ran up the hill. “Now, Hope. Shoot!”
In getting this far, Hope had seen enough of the battleground to know that his order was a serious one. Before the long-haired brute reached her, she lifted her weapon and fired. Twice.
Her bullets didn’t stop the Ansara, but they did slow him down. The enemy soldier staggered, looked down at the blood staining his massive chest, and appeared to be very annoyed by this unexpected resistance from a mortal woman—and Gideon knew he would now realize that she was mortal, since she’d been able to fire a gun. No Ansara or Raintree would have been able to make the weapon work on sanctuary land, and Hope wouldn’t become Raintree until she gave birth to Emma.
Gideon continued to run, until at last he was close enough to do what had to be done. He formed and projected a psychic bolt, a bolt very unlike the lightning that was in his blood. Gold and glittering, it smacked into the Ansara, and in an instant, the threat to Hope was over as the Ansara warrior turned to dust.
Hope rushed toward Gideon. He let his electrical shield fall, and she threw herself into his arms.
“What the…?” she began breathlessly, her heart pounded against him. “This is not…Oh, my God…He just…” She took a deep breath and regained a bit of composure, then said, in a breathless voice, “You’re bleeding again, dammit.”
There was no time to explain as two Ansara warriors came into sight, rushing toward them with deadly intent. One held a sword in each hand, and the other displayed a weak flame of unnatural fire on his open palm. The firebug would have to go first.
“Stay with me,” Gideon ordered as he placed Hope behind him.
As he raised his own sword and erected a barricade of protective electricity that surrounded them both, she muttered, “I’m not going anywhere.”
Dante whirled away from a psychic bolt of energy, and it shattered the tree trunk behind him. He threw himself as far away from the tree as he could, not even daring to look back, because if one of those massive limbs hit him, he would be dead. As he ran, he threw a bolt in retaliation, hoping to keep the Ansara ducking for cover until he himself could find a handy boulder to duck behind.
He’d lost track of Gideon and Mercy in the fierce battle, but he could still sense them there, pooling their strength with his. Together the whole was greater than the sum of the three parts, and they needed every scintilla of power they could muster. There were enough Ansara that they could almost team up three to each one of the Raintree.
An Ansara woman sprang from behind a tree and expertly threw a chain at his ankles. The chains weren’t deadly, but if one wrapped around his legs he would fall, almost as helpless as a turtle on its back, and then the Ansara would make mincemeat of him. The chain flashed toward him, and less than two seconds after the weapon had left the Ansara’s hand, he leaped as high as he could, drawing his legs up like an athlete on a trampoline. With silver fire the chain passed beneath him, whipping into the face of a groggy Ansara who had been trying to get to his feet. The man’s face exploded in a mist of blood.
Dante threw a bolt at the woman, but she was as fast as a cheetah and bounded behind a tree.
He was tiring somewhat, taking a little longer to recharge between bolts. The Ansara had to be tiring, too, but there were more of them.
When had they gotten so strong? How could they have rebuilt the clan undetected? Had an unusually strong Ansara escaped, two hundred years ago and somehow successfully shielded the clan from the Raintree sentinels? They must have established a home place somewhere and used it to feed their power. On a vortex, all things were possible.
Three Ansara erupted from cover, thirty yards to his left, charging him. He spun to face them and shot a bolt at the biggest one; the blast of energy hit the man in the middle of the chest, and he disintegrated from the force, but the other two raced on, and Dante didn’t have time to rebuild enough energy to take both of them down.
Alarm prickled the back of his neck. He didn’t stop to think, didn’t wonder what was behind him; instinctively, he ducked and rolled to the right, coming back to his feet as a six-foot sword hacked the air where he’d been. A woman who had to be at least seven feet tall was wielding the sword as if it were a toothpick. Her lips pulled back in a snarl as she swung it again. He leaped back once more, but the tip sliced him diagonally from the left side of his rib cage and across his abdomen, and down to his hip.
The cut hurt like hell, but it wasn’t mortal. She was too close for him to hit her with a bolt without getting caught in the back-blast, and the other two were only ten yards away now. Desperately he lowered some of the mental shields with which he held back his fire and sent a long tongue of flame licking at her. She fell backward in her haste to escape the hungry red beast. He turned his head toward the other two attackers, and they split up, going in opposite directions, flanking him but keeping a wary distance.
Fire was too dangerous to use on a battlefield. Any battle was chaotic, uncontrolled. He could send out a wall of fire at any time, but with the Raintree engaging the enemy all over the battlefield, he would be killing his own people, too. The larger the fire, the more power and energy it took to control. The risk was very real that, distracted at every turn, he would loose a monster he couldn’t control. No one used fire in a battle.
The tall woman slowly got to her feet, grinning. Holding the sword in a two-handed grip, she began circling him, joining the other two as they looked for an opening.
His ass was likely dead, but he intended to take all three of them with him.
He did
n’t want to leave Lorna. The thought pierced him like a lance. He wished he’d told her again that he loved her, told her what to do in case he didn’t make it back. She might be pregnant. The chance was small, but it existed. He would never know. He remembered the sound of her voice, full of outrage, yelling, “Where are you going?” and wished he could hear it again.
He heard her, actually heard her, so hard did he wish it.
Except she was yelling, “What the hell are you doing?”
