“Holy mother of wow,” whispered Mitch.
Smith only knew he had to get to the building before Val’s confrontation lost its element of surprise. Neither the climbing nor the running got easier holding an antique sword…and yet he wouldn’t have put it down for anything.
“—the side gate, over there,” the woman was explaining as Smith, still catching his breath from the race across the backyard, crept up behind Morris. On the downside, Val Diaz had none of the flirty tics that really made for a great distraction—no hip swaying, no giggly smiles. On the upside, she did a damned good job not letting her gaze track him as he moved into her line of sight. “You mean, you’ve never gone pool hopping in the fancy neighborhoods before?”
An honorable man would tap Morris’s shoulder, let him face his attacker.
Smith guessed, as he slowly and silently stood, that he was done with honor.
“Look, miss, this is private property—” A light tap on the back of his head from the sword’s pommel silenced Morris. He fell like a brick at Smith’s feet.
“Look!” Mitch carried Val’s discarded clothes when he caught up. Without a thank-you, she cinched Morris’s hands and feet with plastic riot cuffs and tucked her shirt into his mouth as a makeshift gag. “Someone moved the vent to the attic. Do you think it’s a trap?”
“Let me stand on your shoulders and I’ll find out,” offered Val.
Mitch hurried to do just that. In the meantime, Smith crept close enough to the office to overhear snatches of conversation beyond a closed, shaded window. He caught phrases like “the necessity of secrecy,” and “she had her chance,” and “the only honorable solution.”
A voice he clearly recognized as Arden’s. “If this is what you consider honor, no wonder your society’s rotting from the inside.”
Everything in him went still.
They really had Arden.
“We’re clear,” Mitch hissed down to him. “Come on up, and we can get the footage we—”
“Start filming without me.” Setting his shoulders, Smith looked at the door—then looked down at the double-edged, flared sword in his hand. The jeweled hilt. The warm tint to the blade.
The Sword of Aeneas, huh?
On the one hand, it would really get in the way as he shot any Comitatus bastards who weren’t in a mood to negotiate.
On the other hand, there could be as many as six or seven men in there. His revolver only held six bullets. Unless he could convince the Comitatus to stand in a nice line, he could use a secondary, backup weapon.
His sword would, at the very least, put their ceremonial knives to shame.
“You’re kidding, right, Smith?” But Mitch vanished into the attic after Val. He knew Smith well enough by now.
Carefully, deliberately, Smith turned the knob on the door into Leigh’s guest-house study. In slow increments, he edged it inward just enough to keep it unlatched—drama could always use a little assist, when possible.
“—leaving it up to Leigh,” announced a voice that made Smith’s stomach clench in a completely different way.
Dad.
Then, as Smith shifted the sword to his off hand and drew his revolver from his SOB holster, Donaldson Leigh made a decision. “This is centuries of tradition, an ancient covenant. It’s bigger than any of us. I’m sorry, bunny. Truly…” “No!” wailed a voice that sounded way too young for any Comitatus—
And Smith kicked the office door in. Hard. Loud. Satisfying.
Thanks to the element of surprise, as well as his drawn gun, Smith got a minute to appreciate the tableau before him. His own father, Will Donnell, stood to the side, holding a worse-for-wear Prescott Lowell by the arm. Three other Comitatus members, familiar from Smith’s own days in the society, joined those two in their surprised stillness. In the center of the room, Donaldson Leigh seemed to be facing off against a remarkably composed Arden. Her less composed younger brother tried futilely to stay between them.
Arden…
Her beautiful eyes flared in surprise. Recognition lit her heart-shaped face, pulled at her full lips—only to draw into a fiercer scowl.
Apparently he’d ticked her off again somehow.
By now, Smith was more than used to that.
“Sorry, fellas,” he announced, smiling widely at his au
dience to keep from growling at them when he recognized the swelling of Arden’s lip, the bruising shadowing her jaw. “I forgot the secret knock.
“Did I miss anything?”
One moment, Arden had been listening to her father choose his secret society over her. Worse? He apparently meant to kill her to do it.
Part of her refused to believe it, but she could no longer trust that part of her. Only her experience in pageants and poise—that, and a need to keep Jeff calm, to think as clearly as possible—had kept her from screaming and clawing at him.
The next moment, the door had exploded open and Smith,
her
Smith, stood backlit by August sunshine, an incongruously decorative sword in one hand and a revolver in the other. Never had the bandages on his arms looked more like gauntlets.
Smith had come for her. He was her hero, after all.
Then Arden recognized the extreme danger that put him in. If her own father would willingly kill her, then Smith…
The
idiot!
He’d come for
her?
Did he think she couldn’t handle matters herself?
Other than this surrounded-by-enemies, slated-for-execution business.
“I forgot the secret knock,” Smith faux-apologized, cockier than ever. She wondered if he’d practiced that line. “Did I miss anything?”
“You missed the part where you were banished from this society,” snarled her father.
“Yeah. About that. I’ve decided I don’t accept banishment. Now step away from Arden and Jeff.”
“Don’t
accept?
” parroted Lowell.
“Smith…” Mr. Donnell shook his head. “Don’t make this any worse.”
“Any worse than what, Dad? Whatever could you pillars of society have been planning?” Smith’s mocking expression hardened. “If Arden and Jeff leave with me, we don’t have a problem.”
“You know that can’t happen.” Her father, again. “She knows too much—and I blame you. Her blood will be on your hands as much as on mine.”
Jeff tried to push Arden farther back with his body. Keeping her hands on his lanky shoulders, to brace him as much as herself, Arden refused to move, even to shake off her father’s grip. Not until the path to the door cleared.
She’d given herself up once already, to protect Jeff. She wouldn’t endanger him in a premature dash for minimal safety.
Smith’s father said, “You spent almost ten years in the society, boy. You understand the obligation we have to protect our secrecy, our preeminence.”
Smith rolled his eyes. “Did nobody actually pay attention to
why
I left?”
“You left,” dared Lowell, “because you couldn’t cut it.”
Arden almost rolled her own eyes at the ridiculousness of his claim, until she saw Smith’s stubborn chin come up. Surely he wouldn’t let Lowell
provoke
him into a fight, would he?
Then again…
“I
could
cut it,” Smith insisted. “I just chose
not
to cut it. Not in some corrupt farce of what we were once supposed to be.”
“Bullshit.” And Lowell wrenched away from Mr. Donnell, his body language radiating challenge. “You never gave a damn about the Comitatus.”
“The Comitatus gave me something to believe in!” The words that ripped from Smith tore at Arden’s heart, too. At last, he’d admitted it. And not just that he had really belonged.
Why
he’d belonged.
“It gave me a direction,” he echoed. “And all the petty,
power-hungry
bullying
that they’ve taken on as a new mission statement took that away from me. If this is all that’s left of a great society, then we need to take it out back and shoot it.
Let Arden go.
”
In answer, her father’s grip on her arm only tightened. He wasn’t trying to hurt her. She suspected she could twist away from him if she had to. But that left several other Comitatus members to get through before she and Jeff reached the door.
She didn’t like their odds of making it safely, especially after Lowell snatched a knife from the lax hand of one of the older men. She didn’t like their odds of making it safely.
“You and firearms,” Lowell taunted. “It was decided centuries ago—any commoner can use a gun. But you’re too much of a coward to fight me like a gentleman.”
“Arden’s safety is worth more than elitist traditions,” Smith insisted.
God, she loved him.
“Then give
her
the gun, and she’ll be safe,” suggested Lowell. He even clucked like a chicken, to complete his caricature. “Let’s see if that shiny party favor of yours can stand up against a traditional blade. Or are you—”
Smith took two steps, and Arden found herself detached from her father and brother both, with the weight of a revolver in her hands. “Do whatever you have to,” Smith murmured into her ear, holding his sword between them and danger. He smelled disturbingly like smoke.
Then he was gone from her, shifting the blade to his dominant hand in preparation. For a moment, he paused. Blinked slowly, as if distracted by something. Then he obviously shook it off, standing taller than ever.
The pistol grip in Arden’s hands still radiated his heat.
“Challenge made,” announced Smith, circling his opponent. “Challenge accepted. By society rules, nobody else can interfere. Oh, and by the way?”
Lowell, brandishing his toothy knife, waited.
Smith smirked. “Bite me.”
Oh…
sugar.
S
mith began the standard salute, touching the bejeweled hilt of the Aeneas sword to his heart, his lips—and the buzz that had filled his head, from the moment he’d shifted it to his dominant hand, amplified.
Time swallowed him.
He saw darkness. Mankind’s near helplessness against animals’ hunger—against one another’s evil. And then—then, the innovations that changed the world.
Bronze.
Then iron.
Then steel.
And he knew.
He got it.
This wasn’t just a sword of heroes. This blade, and the blades like it, and the men worthy enough to wield them, carried the hope of humanity.
If ever magic existed, if ever early man became god, he did so by transforming base elements through smoke, through heat, through sweat into instruments of pure grace. Everything became metaphor. Smelted ores—cleansed of impurity, fused
together, no one of them strong enough on its own. Crucibles of molten metal cast, hardened into bars, then forged in coals. From earth to fire, glowing red, burning to orange, then searing into white. Hammered toward perfection, no gentle process, but beautiful in its violence, again, again. Folded. Reformed. Then—water. Quenched in a rush of steam, to harden it, to temper it. Tested and retested. Those blades which cracked, or warped or shattered on impact were discarded without sentimentality.
Everything went to the end result. Perfect weapons—hard, yet flexible. As beautiful as they were powerful, and, oh, the power. The person with the best sword won. Ruled. Passed on his blade as he passed on his legacy. Swordsmith—Hephaestus? Warrior—Achilles? Emperor—Aeneas?
Every one of them represented in the next, hero to hero, through the millennia.
By this sword.
Then—Smith was back, lifting the sword upward into the air, to finish the salute, and to finish its quest. It had been forged for one purpose, to be used toward the good of all.
And here he stood, ready to accept the responsibility of doing just that.
One freakin’ fight at a time.
Lowell lunged mid-salute, full-body. Bastard.
This
was why Smith had instructed Jeff to attack sword first…and he felt oddly as if the sword in his hand knew it. Pivoting onto one leg, he stopped Lowell with a boot in his gut. He bent his own knee to ease the weight of the younger man’s momentum. He blocked the knife with the Aeneas sword—knew it wouldn’t shatter, however old it really was—and kicked Lowell backward. Hard.
“You need a bigger sword.”
Stumbling, Lowell regained his balance against a dark-paneled bookcase. “Tradition’s good enough for me.”
“Swords
are
traditional, dumbass.” Smith smacked Lowell’s knife hand with the flat of his blade. Then, following the
movement full circle, he flicked the knife free with the full weight of his sword.
All that was left was to kick the knife under a chair, as soon as it hit the floor, and level the Aeneas sword at Lowell’s throat.
That easy. On a gut level, Smith knew part of that was the Sword of Aeneas. But only because of what it stirred deep within him.
He raised his empty hand high, like a calf-roper in the rodeo signaling time to stop the clock. Lowell glared—but reluctantly held up both his hands in brooding surrender.
“You defended with your body,” noted Jeff, who’d maybe paid attention to the other day’s lesson after all. “Cool!”
Smith knew better than to preen, with Arden still in danger. “Well, that was fun. Now if you guys are finished with the younger Leighs—”
“We are not.”
Hell.
Arden’s father remained as big and determined as ever.
“Daaad!” wailed Jeff. Smith remembered the first time he’d realized his father wasn’t as honorable as he’d imagined. It wasn’t that long ago. “He
won!
”
“He won against Lowell.” Over by the bookcase, Lowell’s mouth fell open in silent protest, but Leigh faced the other men with natural presence, natural leadership. A surface semblance of leadership, anyway. “Smith himself admitted that their weapons were mismatched. More important, nobody among us named Lowell as our champion—nor would we be so foolish as to do so. If a duel were to be official, it must follow tradition.”
“There was already a duel!” protested Arden, the revolver hanging at her side.
Smith widened his eyes at her, jerked his chin toward the gun.
She raised it again. She and Jeff had backed into a corner, more than an arm’s reach from any of the Comitatus. Of that, at least, he approved.
“That was a rout,” her father snapped back, as if winning were a character flaw.
“It’s okay,” Smith assured her. “That was just practice? Fine. Let’s establish some legitimate conditions and duel for real.”
“If you lose, you leave here. Alone. And you never,
never
come back.” Worse? That demand came from Smith’s own father.
Smith ignored his gaze.
Leave and never come back?
He’d heard that before.
“Not just that.” Donaldson Leigh moved books from one of his built-in shelves, dropping them loudly to the marble floor. “You will have a half-hour head start. If any Comitatus member sees you again—”
thud
“—they will be under orders to kill you. We tried to be lenient with your exile, because you’re of the blood, but—”
crash
“—no more. You have flaunted our indulgence and, worse—” With a final sweep of books, he turned with a long wooden box in his hands and laid it on his desk. “You destroyed my daughter.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” protested Arden, her full lips parted, her beautiful eyes flashing. “He did no such thing!”
Leigh wouldn’t even look at her.
“I was researching the Comitatus before Smith ever came back!”
Again, she got no reaction.
“Daddy…” she whispered. Then she narrowed her eyes, lifted her stubborn little chin—and was done with him. Smith had seen that dark expression before. Now, though, he saw the extent of the pain that had prompted it.
For that alone, he hoped he got to fight Leigh—and kick his butt. “And what about Arden, if I lose?”
“If you lose,” Leigh clarified, opening the wooden box, “it will be no business of yours
what
happens to Arden.”
“Oookay, then—”
“Smith!” protested Arden. He shrugged apologetically to
ward her. It wasn’t as if he had any option, besides the duel, that wouldn’t end with her under Leigh’s control. Well…nothing except killing him, which—no. Or sic’ing Mitch and Val on the lot of them, but mentioning their presence would kind of blow the secret-weapon part of their nearness. For now, Smith was happy with those two just capturing this meeting on tape.
He’d just have to win, was all.
He liked to think the blade agreed.
“Here are
my
conditions.” He swung the Aeneas sword, trying to summon up some of his earlier cockiness. “When I win, you release all hold on Arden and Jeff, both.”
“No.” No bargaining. No nothing. Damn, Leigh was confident.
“Ard, could I have that gun back?”
“You cannot take Jeff,” clarified Leigh, one hand in the box. Briefly, Smith worried that he had a gun in there. But if Leigh still believed even in twisted, Comitatus honor…“He’s my only son. My
heir.
”
Smith’s dad winced. Unlike with Arden, Smith took a selfish pleasure in
his
distress.
“Then how’s this? Jeff gets to choose whether or not to go into the Comitatus, with no undue pressure—no threats of violence, no financial manipulation, nothing. If you try to force him in any way, you’re undermining everything even you think the Comitatus stand for. But Arden gets a free pass. She keeps her trust fund. She is never under threat from your society again.”
Leigh glowered at his daughter—who, holding Smith’s revolver in both hands, glowered right back. God, she was magnificent. Finally he said, “If she promises to keep our secret.”
“Like she was such a big threat before,” scoffed Smith.
Then Arden disproved him. “That depends on whether you drop your plans to ruin Molly Johannes.” Oh, yeah. Her.
“Um…yeah,” added Smith, embarrassed to have forgotten. “And you drop your plans against the state comptroller.”
Her father’s face flushed red, but Arden didn’t back down. “You allowed me to host a fundraiser for her in this very house,” she noted. “That means you offered her hospitality. In what society has it ever been honorable to turn on your own guests?”
“Damn few,” Smith agreed.
“You’ve no say in our decisions,” Leigh warned her. “If you want safety, you stay out of society business!”
He was lucky, thought Smith, that she didn’t shoot him right there. Or Smith when he said, “She’ll take it.”
Arden glared. She couldn’t know that they already had enough proof on tape to clear Molly’s reputation when the time came.
He seriously hoped her attitude toward him improved when she found out.
“You didn’t ask for your own safety,” his father noted.
Smith laughed. “You’re saying you’d give it to me?”
“Not in a million years.” Leigh removed a sword from the wooden box—a beautiful saber with an ornate brass knuckle-guard and wired-leather grip. Smith could make out the letters CS engraved into the blade, amidst other flourishes.
Confederate States.
He tightened his grip on the sword of Aeneas. “Last condition. Win or lose, you’re to grant immunity to Greta Kaiser in Oak Cliff. Lowell here tried to burn her house down earlier today. She’s fine,” he added quickly, at Arden’s gasp. “But that kind of harassment ends now. Either way, Greta Kaiser gets a free pass. Her house becomes sanctuary. No Comitatus presence within a five-block radius of it—which, incidentally, includes Arden’s recreation center.”
Leigh scoffed. Arden, though—Arden stared at Smith as if she understood. He might not be able to stay with her, no more than Aeneas had stayed with Dido. Death or further exile would probably see to that. But the least that he could do was secure her other love.
Donaldson said, “I don’t—”
“Safe status in Oak Cliff,” Smith insisted, “or I take that gun from Arden and start shooting.”
His father tried not to look startled. “Don’t make threats you won’t see through.”
“I’m not honorable, remember? A blight on our family legacy, you said. Arden probably wouldn’t forgive me, but at least she’d be alive.”
Silence. Better than an instant no.
“Greta’s an old blind woman,” Smith insisted. “And she’s
of the blood.
Don’t any of you recognize the name Kaiser? Time was that the society took care of widows and orphans of the blood.”
Maybe Leigh liked that Smith had appealed to his honor. Maybe he even had some remnants left. He nodded. “It’s a deal. Before all witnesses.”
“Before all witnesses,” echoed the other men in the room. Jeff looked, wide-eyed, from one to another.
“You should hear yourselves,” chided Arden. “You can’t really mean to stake this much on some foolish sword fight!”
Leigh swung his blade, as if adjusting to the weight of it. Good. Just the opponent Smith wanted. “As the senior member present, I name myself champion for this contest. Does anyone here object?”
“
I
object!” insisted Arden. At the same time, Lowell said, “You’ve got to be kidding! Why are you giving him any concessions at all?”
“You—” Leigh pointed his sword at the younger man “—have shown no grasp of the responsibilities of our position. You have no say in this.”
Then he came around the desk and faced Smith.
“Stop it,” repeated Arden, more quietly.
“Just a moment,” said Smith to his opponent—and turned, and stepped to Arden’s side, and kissed her.
Thoroughly.
His free hand wove into her thick, black, Irish hair. His lips worshipped her. His soul…
Just in case. Sooner or later, after all, even heroes lost.
He took some small comfort in the fact that she kissed him back, far more passionately than her ladylike exterior would imply. He took even more comfort from the sense of rightness about this. Apparently he had more Comitatus left in him than he’d thought. Because the person he’d once been—the rebellious youth who’d found direction in the idea that the people with power could use it for good—now filled him with ideals he thought he’d lost with his credit rating and his trust fund. Lowell was right about one thing. Guns
were
inelegant, brutish, pragmatic.
If needed to save Arden, Smith could manage all three.
But as long as she had the ability to save herself…
Wrenching himself away from her and back to Leigh, Smith touched the hilt of his sword to his heart, his lips, then the sky.
That honor guide my heart. That my words guide my actions. That something greater guide my body.
He felt strangely gratified when the older, stockier man did the same.
And then—
Then Leigh went on the offensive. Fast. Strong.
And expert.
Smith felt an honest grin stretch his own mouth. No, he didn’t want Arden at risk. He didn’t want Jeff trapped as he’d been trapped. He didn’t want Greta harmed. And yet…
The same idealist he’d once been relished the skilled attacks that he and his blade blocked, parried, ducked.
This, at least, would be a fair fight.
Stupid,
Arden kept thinking.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
How…
male
of them, to think that they could resolve some
thing as significant as Greta’s safety—as her own life!—by fighting about it with antique swords.
She shifted the not-insignificant weight of Smith’s revolver, which she held with both hands, slightly more to the left and reviewed everything she knew from summer camp about firing a gun. Revolvers had no safety—check. Situate her target, whatever—
whoever
—that was over the sight, like a lollipop onto a stick—check. And when the time came, squeeze instead of pull the trigger.
Neither her fate nor Jeff’s would have a damned thing to do with this sword fight, even if she had to kill her own father to ensure it. She prayed it wouldn’t come to that. But the man she’d met this afternoon apparently
wasn’t
her father, not the way she’d thought she knew him.