My Soul to Keep (8 page)

Conflicting impulses warred within him. He didn't know whether to strangle her or hug her.

Staring at the fierce creature Sorcha had become, he could only recall his misery as he stared at that building in Istanbul eaten up with writhing flames. He'd hunted down the one responsible for the explosion. Almost killed him. Until he realized it wouldn't fix anything. It wouldn't bring Sorcha
back. He'd needed an outlet for his grief, for his helpless rage. He had only ever wanted the best for Sorcha, to protect her from her father … from himself. He'd refused taking her to mate because he quite simply wasn't good enough for her. There had been something so pure about her. So innocent despite being Ivo's daughter. Clearly that innocence was gone.

In the end, it hadn't mattered. For all his care and caution, he'd lost her anyway.

He greedily drank in the sight of her, searching for glimpses of the girl he remembered, the girl he mourned, but seeing little evidence of her in the jaded expression of the woman staring back at him. “You've changed.” Staring at the hard-eyed female, he recognized the fact that the sweet girl was gone. This wasn't the Sorcha he'd known.

“Yeah, I'm not dumpy Sorcha anymore with the unfortunate acne who trailed after you like a lost little puppy.”

His chest tightened. “I never saw you that way.”

“Don't worry. I have no intention of picking up where we left off with me stalking you.”

“You never stalked me,” he quickly inserted even as he admitted to himself that she had come close … well, shadowed would be a more apt description.

She snorted. “I was pathetic.”

“I always liked you, Sorcha.”

Her eyes widened. “Now who's lying?”

He opened his mouth to argue, but from the cold bend of her lips he saw that she did not want him to—nor would she believe him.

Her eyes flickered for a moment, shadows shifting through the brown depths, and for a second he thought he read something there. A hint of the vulnerability that she used to possess. The sight softened him, made him want to fold her in his arms in a comforting hug.

Then, it was gone. Nothing but coldness frosted her gaze now. Where had the girl he remembered gone? It had been so easy to earn her smiles back then. To make her laugh. This Sorcha would just as soon use her sword on him as smile.

He cocked his head, studying her.

She mimicked the motion, watching him as he watched her beneath the choppy fringe of her bangs.

“I don't remember your hair quite so dark.”
Or your face so beautiful.
His blood pumped faster as he assessed her.

“Like I said, a lot has changed.”

He reached out to touch her face, stroke her cheek.

She jerked back from him, knocking his hand away as if stung. “I'm not yours to touch.”

In response, a low growl rumbled in his throat. The old Sorcha would never have slapped his hand from her. Would never talk to him as if she couldn't stand him. The beast stirred in him, intrigued and hungry, excited by the challenge of her.

Her pretty lips curled back, revealing a flash of white teeth. “You may have had that chance once, but that was a long time ago.”

Her words burrowed deep, and he knew what she was talking about. He remembered their last night. The night the building blew up. When a fifteen-year-old Sorcha had looked at him with such hope, the hunger for him bright and desperate in her gaze—banked the moment he turned away from her.

He dropped his hand to his side, curled his fingers into a fist. He couldn't explain it, couldn't make her see that he would have been wrong to take her then, would have been nothing more than an animal destroying something innocent and pure. She clearly didn't understand. Only remembered the rejection. “Yeah. A long time ago.”

“A lifetime,” she shot back.

He nodded. She wasn't innocent anymore. No pure girl's body molded against him. While he mourned that, he also craved her now, as she was.

It was as if looking at her reawakened a missing
piece of himself. A piece he had not even realized was missing.

“Yeah,” he agreed, hardly recognizing the tight sound of his voice. “A lifetime in which you've started hunting witches. How did you get mixed up in this, Sorcha?”

“I can ask you the same.” Her hands fluttered between them, looking for a place to rest. “Here you are ready to kill me to save some worthless, soulless witch—”

He tightened his lips in a frown. “There's a lot you need to understand—”

“I don't have time for your lies. Get off me.” She surged against him and he enjoyed the feel of her breasts beneath their layers of clothing.

“Are you going to run? Promise you'll behave and I'll—”

“In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not a little girl anymore.”

“Oh, I noticed.”

The pink in her chill-burned cheeks deepened.

He settled deeper into her softness, couldn't resist. “We're going to remain like this for a while, until I have your word.”

The light at the centers of her eyes sparked with anxiety, and he knew she was thinking of the passing time, of how each second took Tresa farther away.

“Why are you so determined to kill Tresa? Is it all demon witches or just her?”

“I couldn't give a damn about any other witch. She's responsible for it all … for everything!”

“So you want vengeance, is that it?”

She gave a single hard nod.

He stared at her starkly, trying to let his next words penetrate. “You can't do it, Sorcha.”

A stillness came over her. She scanned his face intently. “I wish you'd stayed dead to me. Better than what you are now.”

Her whispered words stung as they shouldn't have. She didn't understand, but he would make it clear to her, and then everything would be good. Right between them. For some reason, that was important. Meant everything to him.

“Listen to me, Sorcha.” He paused, breathed in. “It's not that simple—”

He didn't get the chance to finish. She surged against him with sudden violent force, flipping him over her head.

His back slammed to the floor with jarring impact. He saw stars for a moment, before sitting up and shaking off the stun, cursing himself for dropping his guard. He'd let the sight of her, the memory of what she'd meant to him, distract him.

Whatever she was, whoever she was now … Well, he didn't know that person.

By the time he righted himself and looked around, she was gone, out the door and racing through the craggy, snow-whipped landscape. A blur of tan camo, fast as the wind. At that speed, with the instincts of their kind, she would overtake Tresa in no time. He glanced around quickly. The deadly-looking saber was gone. If he didn't catch her, she'd have Tresa's head. And then he'd have a demon loose on his hands.

With a bitter curse, he was on his feet and running out the door after her, sudden fear coating his mouth, sour and metallic as blood.

But not the fear he should have felt. Not fear for the world if that demon was set loose. His fear was for Sorcha if she came face-to-face with a demon that killed and destroyed as easily as breathing.

His jaw locked, hardening with determination. He'd failed Sorcha before—believed her dead.

He wasn't going to let that happen for real this time. No matter the stranger she had become.

S
ORCHA DIDN'T LOOK BACK
. Didn't risk a glance over her shoulder, too worried it would slow her down and trip up her focus.

There were no tracks. The swirling wind had blown whatever trail Tresa left. She could trust only her instincts. She opened her senses, blocked
out thoughts of Jonah closing in somewhere behind her. Instead, she focused on the prey ahead of her.

The heavy pounding of her tread echoed in her ears, in perfect sync with the ragged slap of her breath on the dense air.

At last, she caught a whiff. The faint, woodsy, peat-smoke scent of Tresa carried on the arctic wind.

Panting, Sorcha stopped, twisted around, following her nose. Trailing the earthy scent, she slid down an embankment in a spray of snow and landed on her feet. She dragged in a deeper breath and realized Tresa was everywhere, all around her.

Sorcha's gaze swung left and right. Too late, she heard a snap behind her, the crunching of snow and ice beneath the weight of something moving in swiftly.

Everything slowed down then.

She turned, the wind cutting her cheeks. Her ponytail slapped her in the face, so she must have moved quickly, but it all felt so drawn out. Sluggish. As if she moved underwater.

The embankment she slid down hid a den. A shallow burrow from which Tresa emerged, charging Sorcha with an inhuman shriek, her eyes black as tar.

Sorcha dodged the first swipe of her fist and
lifted her sword, ready to strike, but Tresa was too fast. Whipping in a fast circle with the speed of wind, she jumped on Sorcha's back. Like a wild beast, she clung, sharp nails digging into her exposed neck. Sorcha thrashed, trying to fling her off. Her efforts brought them down with a shuddering crash to the frozen ground. Her sword flew wide. With a grunt, she flipped over and scrabbled for it. But Tresa beat her to it. The demon witch stood with the sword raised, her hair a wild black nimbus haloing her pale face, a woman possessed by darkness.

“I told you to leave me be,” Tresa rasped, her voice hissing through clenched teeth. Her head jerked side to side as she spoke, clearly under the influence of her dark and twisted demon. “Now I
have
to kill you.”

“You don't have to do anything. Why don't you let me end your miserable existence?”

The witch laughed hoarsely, her eyes flashing in and out from black to blue. “Tempting, but I can't let you do that. As bad as I am, unleashing my demon on the world would be far worse.”

Crouching low, Sorcha eased forward. “Oh, so you're being altruistic.”

Tresa's face contorted in a pained grimace. “Enough,” she choked out. “He grows stronger inside me. Soon I'll have no control. He invites my
death. Welcomes it, don't you see? He wants you to free him.”

“Then let me accommodate him.” Sorcha lunged forward but Tresa held up a hand.

It was like smacking into a brick wall. Her body convulsed from the force, shuddered with pain. Gritting her teeth, she tried to move, tried to push ahead.

Her gaze narrowed, and she suspiciously eyed Tresa's poised hand, the fingers that curled in a very deliberate, menacing way. Something else started to happen then. It wasn't just that Sorcha couldn't move anymore. A tingly numbness started in her neck and coursed down her arm. Her chest constricted, each breath an agonized drag from her lungs.

The witch's fingers stroked the air in clawing sweeps, weaving her dark magic. With each pass of her fingers, the tightness in Sorcha's chest grew.

Gasping, she clutched a hand over her heart, pressing at the tightening ache. “What are you doing?” She panted, feeling the slowing thud of her pulse, the sluggish flow of blood in her veins. A cold sweep of fear washed over her.

“Making your heart stop.”

No, no, no …

Shaking her head, she fell to the ground, her
knees hitting the frozen earth first before she fell to her side.

A heart attack wouldn't permanently kill her. She would recover, but in the time it took her to regenerate she would be at Tresa's mercy, totally defenseless. And that was the witch's plan. Disable her and then sever her head from her body.

As she lay on her side, a cold she had never known penetrated her body, sinking into her bones. Still, she could not rise, could not move, could not stop the unbearable, twisting fist from wringing her heart dry. Her head lolled on the icy ground as she struggled against the dark, killing magic.

Jonah,
she thought with her dying breath.

A hazy fog clouded her vision. As though in a dream, she watched Tresa approach. The witch halted before her, the toe of her boot spitting up snow onto Sorcha's lifeless hand.

Sorcha opened her lips, tried to speak, could get out no more than a dry croak. Bleak frustration swept through her. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
Her death. Gervaise unavenged.

Her eyes moved, rolled in her head, following the flash of a silver blade on the air as Tresa lifted the sword high over her snow-dusted black hair.

Refusing to be a pathetic witness to her own slow death, Sorcha dug deep inside herself, groping for the barest scrap of will.

Then she heard a shout that didn't belong to her. It was a deep bellow, masculine and rich, stretching over the air like a foghorn.

But then its sound was lost, replaced with another. Air hissed, alive and angry. The wind increased. Silver flashed and sang as the blade descended.

Sorcha willed herself to move even a fraction, just enough to escape certain death—but nothing.

Her beating heart stilled to a stop and her vision blurred, graying at the edges, darkening. Everything dragged to a crawling pace.

She stared out with wide, unblinking eyes, straining to see, to stay awake, even as her heart died in her chest. As blackness crept in, she watched, her dying sight that of a razor-sharp blade sweeping toward her throat.

At the last second the sword was diverted. Swung sideways. A dark shape hurtled past, claiming Tresa. But not before she made contact. Not before Sorcha's body tasted the cut of cold steel.

Not against her throat, but elsewhere.

The blade sliced deeply across her torso. She gasped at the shock, at the stunning pain. Wet blood instantly saturated her clothes, the warmth of it smoking on the arctic wind.

And yet with Tresa distracted, her heart
stuttered back to life, renewing its beat. Adrenaline pumped hard through her veins, blocking out the pain and carrying her back to life.

Despite the deep, gaping chest wound, she propped herself up on one elbow, looking around, her pulse striking hard against her neck.