She went down with a startled cry; it turned terrified as she plunged out of sight, and then it cut short with a splash, barely audible over the rushing water.
Mac saved his breath on a curse, bolting forward—a lurching, awkward run that took him to the edge only just before Rafe made it there, both of them stricken. But if Mac was wild with it, Rafe quickly turned to cold fury—watching the dark rush of water, foam and rapids and debris churning along faster than the average man could run.
I’m not average. For the moment, Mac forgot he was on one-and-a-half legs and forgot he stood beside the man he was sworn to stop. “Gwen!” he shouted out over that roiling water, a deep notch of concrete draining straight to the Rio Grande. “Gwen!”
But he heard nothing in response...not so much as a distant cry. Deep within, a jerk of thought slapped up against him. Rafe. Right here beside me.
The man he had to stop. The one from whom he’d thought to save Gwen, at the cost of his own body.
He hadn’t done that—hadn’t kept her safe at all. But he damned sure wouldn’t let it be for nothing.
As if Rafe hadn’t figured that out.
Even as Mac turned on him, the man’s blade sliced air, aiming to cut him through. Mac stumbled back—fell as the leg went out yet again, but rolled more nimbly this time, barely off his feet and up again, Keska striking out in a cutting sheen of metal—coming back at Rafe fast enough so the older man swore and slapped at the blade, a clumsy move.
Oh, yeah, it’s been a while. For how many lifetimes had the man been living by proxy, sucking down the emotions of others—evoking what he wanted, manipulating the results, watching the agony and sorrow of his own making and then profiting from it? Never putting himself out there, never facing direct retribution.
But Rafe struck back, a flurry of blows—his form strengthening, his movements growing more fine and subtle, his blade slowly straightening to match the sweep of Mac’s saber.
Not long enough, apparently.
And Rafe wasn’t already winded...wasn’t already bleeding...wasn’t already exhausted from days of battling an unknown foe along with his blade.
He smiled with grim satisfaction as Mac missed a parry from low to high guard, his blade skipping along the outer edge of Keska to nick Mac’s arm, then flicking down to slash shallowly across his thigh while Keska chased its shadow, not quite there in time.
“Lifetimes,” Rafe reminded him as they stood apart, Mac panting and stung, his thigh burning deeply and his heart still shouting after Gwen, “which you cannot defeat.” He raised his blade-sword, a ceremonial gesture, and spoke to it, reveling in the moment. “You may take them now.”
Oh, no. No, no, no. That was the whole point. It was why Mac had refused to be parted from the shackles of his own blade, why Gwen had let him go—why she had fled to protect the pendant. Because you don’t get to win.
But the man’s dark blade was right there. And it knew how to spew hatred, up close and personal. It knew how to ooze through to Mac’s soul, flooding in through the blade to swamp them both, looking for the slightest echo from within Mac.
And Keska gave way.
Mac staggered back as the blade’s connection snapped shut, leaving him only what he was: a man sorely tried, sorely wounded, with dead dull metal in hand.
Keska!
In response, only the merest flicker through their bond. Not a blade separated, not a blade destroyed...but a blade overwhelmed. A blade in complete retreat.
Mac sucked in a deep, ragged breath, taking a two-handed grip on a sword not meant for it—braced and waiting even as he reeled. Rafe might have taken him down right then—that moment, with a long sweep of slashing metal that Mac could no longer evade.
But no. Rafe stopped. He took the deepest of breaths—satisfaction of the most profound nature, nostrils flared and standing with proud arrogance, the storm’s pounding flicker of light the perfect backdrop.
And through the thick, pounding nature of horror, Mac felt it. A feather-light touch, no more than a whisper. Keska. Be strong.
More than that, Rafe felt it. He stepped back, jerking around—looking for it. I see you...I taste you...Halgos...you are known.
“Halgos,” Mac said in the wonderment of it—the hope of it, glimmering through the overriding swamp of heavy, pounding despair and darkness. Demardel?
He didn’t have time to think about it. Rafe whirled, came crashing down on him with metal and fury and no small spark of blooming fear. “It,” he said each word distinct and growing in emphasis. “Won’t. Work.”
Mac staggered back away from him. Rafe’s final remaining man abandoned his sorely wounded comrades to snap foolishly around the edges of the fight and Mac pivoted to him with blade extended, driving him away and bringing the point back into guard just in time to keep Rafe from plunging at him. Metal clashed; Keska sparked back to life. —halgos— it murmured, intrigued. —keska. be strong. strong—!
Halgos, said the trickle from outside them all, growing stronger. I see you. I can deny you.
“No,” Rafe said, a harsh whisper from between clenched teeth. “No one can take what we have! And you’ll die trying!” He pressed a quick flurry of attacks and Keska surged to meet him, offering Mac a renewed strength and quickness for which he would later pay.
Halgos. You may NOT.
And all the hatred fell away. The deep inner attack, the imposed hatred wrapped around keen fear wrapped around gibbering insanities. It fell away and it left Mac clear and sharp, reflecting only Keska’s normal trickling mutter of satisfactions—and with those, he was well able to deal.
Suddenly it was Mac pressing the attack. Suddenly it was Mac pushing the older man back.
Suddenly it was Mac, having quietly closed the distance between them, moving just inside Rafe’s guard without notice, allowing small hits to embolden Rafe into taking the bigger strike. It would have impaled Mac through the heart had he let it, giving Keska no time to heal him at all.
But he didn’t; he lured the strike in and he parried it away. And suddenly it was Mac, the sword buried deeply in his side and grating on ribs—stuck there, for the merest instant—while Mac returned the favor. A clean strike, up beneath the breastbone, up through the heart...right on through as they both fell heavily to the ground.
And it was Gwen, soaked and dripping all over, who yanked Rafe aside without regard to his dead and glazing eyes, and who yanked out the blade Halgos—and who threw herself down on Mac. And then—in the nicest possible way—she said, “That was the worst plan ever,” before she planted her hands at the side of his face and kissed him senseless.
Violence lingered in Gwen’s thoughts. Clashing images of fear and peril, the bruising grip of water—the slam of her body up against the inexplicable lip of concrete to which she had clung. The water tugging viciously at her—tearing away her sandals, stretching her shirt.
But she’d latched on, pounded by sensation—the noise, the cold, the battering pain—and she’d nonetheless sent her focus elsewhere. Reaching out. Not to Mac, but to the blade in Rafe’s hands. Halgos.
She hadn’t been strong enough to sunder them apart; she hadn’t known enough. But she’d sure as hell distracted them. And she’d frightened Rafe...and it had been enough.
She just hadn’t known if it had been in time for Mac. And she hadn’t known if she’d survive to find out—not until an unfamiliar form slid down to join her, hauling her away from the outflow pipe against which she’d lodged and boosting her out of the concrete arroyo with impersonal hands placed by necessity in personal places.