My Soul to Keep (5 page)

She nodded, stoic and soldierlike. Moistening her lips, she said, “You'll need a heavy coat.”

Of course.

T
HE
A
LASKAN
T
UNDRA

With a glance at her GPS, Sorcha pulled to the side of the rough-hewn road and turned off the engine. She gave the steering wheel an encouraging knock of her knuckles, hoping the Land Rover would start later when it was time to leave. In these temperatures, one never knew. Not that fear of ending up stranded out here would stop her. Nothing would stop her.

With a steadying breath, she took a slow, measuring glance around the barren landscape. A misty gray hung on the air, like a hazy twilight even though her watch read 11:15 in the morning. According to the GPS, she was still several miles from her target, a lodge just beyond the deep snow-dotted ravine where she was parked.

Her gaze crawled over the desolate, white horizon, broken here and there by dead brown earth. If she didn't know better, she'd say there was
nothing out here. No life at all. The wind howled across the stretch of frozen tundra, shaking her vehicle.

But Tresa was close. Just beyond the ravine. Sorcha's heart pumped blood, hard and fast, through her body. This was it. Saliva pooled in her mouth. She had worked closely with Maree until they were able to pinpoint the demon witch's location. Despite the cold, her palms started to sweat, the heat churning at her core. She had been ready for this moment since Gervaise's death. If possible, her pulse thrummed even faster, a rapid staccato at her throat.

Stepping from the vehicle, she zipped up her heavy white-and-tan camo parka—perfect cover against the wasteland that swallowed her. She removed a long leather scabbard from the backseat. The saber inside was honed to deadly sharpness, able to cut through flesh and bone like softened butter. Sliding the strap over her shoulder, she faced the lonely landscape. Perfect isolation. A slow smile curled her lips. Tresa wouldn't expect her.

She pulled her fur-lined hood over her head, and the subzero winds had little effect on her as she set out with sure strides. The beast simmered inside her, just beneath the surface, protecting her from the cold, keeping the freeze at bay.

Instinct hummed through her, propelling her forward. Her boots crunched over loose snow and dead rock as she moved in quickly, her body taut and quivering as her legs worked fast, at a near run. Tundra air buffeted her. She welcomed the bite of cold on her face, never felt more alive and awake.

Before cresting the top of the rise, she dropped and belly-crawled over burning-cold ground. Unzipping her backpack, she pulled out her infrared heat goggles and put them on, tugging her long ponytail free of the strap. Shaking her dark, choppy bangs back from her eyes, she looked through the goggles to the sprawling lodge below. A steady stream of smoke rose from the chimney, assuring her that it was occupied.

“There's my girl,” she murmured. Aside from the glow of the burning fireplace, she easily identified a lone figure through the walls, marking the blurry red silhouette.
Tresa.

The pulse at her throat raced. Her skin snapped and shivered, the beast in her prowling with excitement, stirring up heat like sparking embers, eager to break free and unleash itself on the demon witch responsible for the lycan curse. For so much death and mayhem over the last two thousand years. For Gervaise.

“Let's do this,” she announced to herself,
her voice thick already behind her teeth. She readjusted her infrared goggles.

Her target was in the back of the house, lounging on something. Maybe asleep on a bed or couch. Sliding the sword from its scabbard, Sorcha flexed her fingers around the leather grip with an easy familiarity. She'd trained and practiced long hours with the blade ever since Gervaise's death.

Dropping the scabbard in the snow, she left it behind and advanced on the house, her boots cracking over icy earth as she moved with the stealth of a stalking predator. The witch hadn't moved. Her pulsing red figure still reclined in the back of the house.

Sorcha's palms grew damp inside her leather gloves. She stopped at the front door and listened for a moment to the howling winds. Holding her breath, she tried the doorknob. It turned. Of course. Who would bother locking doors all the way out here?

Soft music wafted on the air as she stepped inside the lodge, sword brandished, at the ready in front of her. She eased her foot down, wincing as it creaked on the wood floor.

Swallowing against her tightening throat, she assessed the comfortably appointed room. A fire crackled in a hearth large enough for a body to stand inside. The furniture was oversized,
brimming with bulky pillows. It looked like someone's vacation retreat. A pot bubbled on the stove in the open kitchen overlooking the living area. She sniffed the savory aroma of meat and vegetables. Stew?

She clenched her teeth until her jaw ached, refusing to let herself be lulled by the domestic scene. Tresa lurked in the next room, a demon witch who needed to be put down like a rabid dog. And then Sorcha would have what she really craved, what she was really after—a confrontation with the demon who'd orchestrated Gervaise's death.

She moved toward the bedroom. Through the wall, she eyed the shape of a female glowing several shades of red as her heat levels varied.

Sorcha's pulse thumped wildly in her neck as she took careful steps over the wood floor. She paused at the sudden creak beneath her, the old wood betraying her yet again. Her heart a loud pounding in her ears, she shot a glance down at her boots, holding her breath. When she looked back up, her heart seized altogether.

The hazy red figure had vanished.

Shit! Where did she go?

She dragged a deep breath inside her smoldering lungs and reminded herself that she was dealing with a powerful witch who had all manner of magic at her disposal … and an especially brutal
demon guiding her. Of course this wouldn't be easy.

Sorcha moved forward another step. At the threshold, she peered inside the room. Nothing. Empty space stared back at her. Her gaze narrowed on a chaise longue where a book sat faceup, forgotten. A page fluttered, undecided about which direction to fall.

She held still and listened.
Felt.
Scented the air. Let her beast find its way from deep within her.

Something was different. The air felt charged. Crackled around her like an electrical storm.

An odor clung to the room, definitely not human, but not beast, not like her. Not even like the witches she had interrogated in her quest to find Gervaise's killer.

This scent was different from the woodsy aroma of a witch—at least any witch she had met. It was acrid, like a recently snuffed-out match.

Then she felt it. Breath on her neck.

Her skin snapped, burst like wildfire. Her bones pulled, scorched down to the marrow. Primal and animal, her beast emerged to answer the threat.

Flexing her hand around the leather grip of her sword, she turned.

J
ONAH GUIDED THE CHOPPER
over the desolate landscape. He held the controls with both hands as a sudden moaning wind shook the aircraft,
hoping he wasn't too late, that he hadn't flown all this way simply to fail. Failure wasn't a possibility.

He checked his coordinates and then assessed the frozen wasteland beneath him. He didn't dare set down too close to the dwelling. Not unless he wanted to alert Tresa and the woman hunting her of his arrival.

He acted with cold calculation, refusing to let his thoughts stray too long to the woman he was sent to kill. To be fair, he would try to make her see reason first. Give her that chance at least. If she failed to listen, he would do what needed to be done. Even as tasteless as he found taking an innocent life—the life of someone who believed she was doing something good, something right, by killing a demon witch—her death could mean the future of the world.

Serving Ivo, he'd killed plenty. All lycans, though. He shook his head, shoving off the distasteful memory. Killing was killing. It blackened his soul, dragged him down. Now, years later, he could admit he'd stayed with Ivo for one reason. Sorcha.

The hero worship in her young eyes had held him prisoner. Innocent eyes for all the evil and corruption that surrounded her, hungry to pull her in. True, he had been the intended vehicle for that corruption. Her father fully expected him to ruin
her, to drag her into the darkness and shatter her youth.

Of course he'd refused. Maybe he would have surrendered to the temptation someday, but he never had the chance. Her father's madness had killed her first.

He winced, hating the thought of that night in Istanbul. The explosion that lit up the air, turned the ink sky red.

Why should he think of that now? Here? On the brink of a mission that bore such importance for all. Humans, witches, lycans, dovenatus. No one would be immune if this demon was unleashed.

A dark voice shivered through him, insidious as the cold wind seeping into the chopper's cockpit and penetrating his layers of clothing, into his very bones.

Because you might kill a woman.
A human … vulnerable, as Sorcha had been. A woman who probably thought she was doing a good thing taking down a demon witch.

Banishing the thought before it softened him, stealing him from his purpose, he lowered the aircraft onto the barren landscape. The skids bounced as he set the chopper down. The blades slowed their frenzy to a dull beat.

Killing the engine, he gathered his gear and
set out, forgetting the past and wrapping his head around what lay ahead of him.

He covered ground in good time, his long legs pumping hard. The white-and-brown landscape, both soft and hard, whipped past in a blur. Wind floated over the land like something alive, crawling, frozen curls of white seeking something, just as he was.

Soon the house came into view. A sprawling lodge with smoke streaming from the chimney. He reached inside his bulky jacket and pulled his gun free.

S
ORCHA STARED AT THE
witch who had killed her husband. Even if it was at the behest of a demon, it had been her hands that tore Gervaise apart. Sorcha pulse stuttered, slowed to a choking halt as her gaze drifted to the female's pale, slim fingers … as though she expected to see Gervaise's blood still there, a stain never to be washed clean.

“Tresa.” Her lips moved numbly around the name. A sweeping cold filled her, shriveling her veins. Every wound, every pain she'd ever known, suddenly ripped open, tender and raw again.

Standing before the two-thousand-year-old witch responsible for her every sorrow, she felt dizzy, almost as if she stood outside her own body. Her father's face flashed before her eyes.
As did all the lycans she'd ever crossed paths with. She relived the memory of their cruelty, their brutal power. Tresa was responsible for all of them.

The demon witch was beautiful in a strange, otherworldly way. Even in a cream-colored fisherman's sweater and dark jeans, she looked extraordinary, out of place and time. Her hair gleamed, blue-black as a raven's wing, the ends cut bluntly, stopping just past her shoulders. Buff, fur-lined boots encased her long legs up to the knees. Her eyes gleamed whiskey-gold, catlike in a face that was sharply cut, exotic. Pure and ancient.

Those finely arched brows winged high. “You know my name.”

“Yes,” Sorcha hissed, thinking again of her demented father and the lycan army he had amassed before his death. The destruction he had wrought. Countless deaths and misery. This witch had brought all that on the world. Death and misery and destruction. And not to be forgotten—Gervaise. Vengeance would taste sweet. She would make this bitch and her demon suffer for all they had done.

Somehow, intricately woven in her head, was the not entirely reasonable belief that this witch and her demon were responsible for Jonah's death, too. The agents that had blown up their building only existed because of Tresa, after all.

Tresa's expression turned bemused. “It's been
a long time since anyone has spoken my name.”

No denial then. It was the only validation Sorcha needed. She'd found her target. With a triumphant shout, she let her blade fly, brought the razor tip inches from the creamy throat peeping over the high-necked sweater, stopping a fraction of a second before making contact.

Tresa didn't even flinch with the blade's tip at her throat. She simply stared at Sorcha with her whiskey-warm eyes. As if a sword placed at her throat was an everyday occurrence. “You don't want to do that.”

“Oh, but I do.” Sorcha flexed her fingers around her leather grip and wondered why her palms were sweating inside her gloves. She inched her face closer. “I've dreamed of meeting you, of watching you die. You killed my husband.”

Finally, she would end it. She licked her lips and tried to still her suddenly shaking hands. Tried not to think about how very human the witch appeared. Not a monster at all.

“Did I?” Tresa asked in a voice laced with an indefinable accent. “I'm sorry for that.”

The words enraged Sorcha, increased her loathing. “You're
sorry
? He's dead. You viciously murdered him … and you're sorry?”

“I have little memory of the things I've done under possession.”

“You mean you're not possessed right now? Your demon isn't … here right now? He's gone?”

Tresa's lips pulled tight in a frown. “He's never truly gone. I'm bound to him, but yes, presently he's not here.”

“But once you're dead, I imagine he'll surface.”

The witch smiled without mirth. “Even as much as demons abhor the cold, yes, if I were killed, he would instantly materialize. But you don't wish to do that.”

“Oh, I think I should like that very much,” Sorcha growled, her words distorted through her thickening teeth.

“You're not human,” the witch announced, looking at her intently with her fiery gaze, her nostrils flaring slightly, as if she scented Sorcha's unnatural origins.