Regret (Lady of Toryn Trilogy) (8 page)

“Aren’t I always?” Skye said with
an easy smile, his teeth gleaming in the faint light. “This isn’t much
different from what Drake and I did earlier when we were rescuing you.”

“I don’t like the term
‘rescuing,’” she said lamely, trying to preserve her dignity, but she was
smiling too. “Oh, one more thing- if we get separated somehow, we meet up back
in Toryn. No running around the forest searching for each other. It’s going to
be too dangerous, and Toryn needs us if the army moves against the city.”

“You got it,” Skye said as he
tightened the cinch on his horse’s saddle. “Are we ready to move?”

“Yes,” Ashlyn said, accepting the
reins from Drake. She checked the cinch and then put her foot into the stirrup,
taking a deep breath before swinging up into the saddle. She checked her sword
and armlet, reassuring herself that all stanes were accounted for, and glanced
at Drake, who was already astride his horse, waiting.

“Here we go,” she whispered, more
to herself than the others, and nudged her horse with her heels. Fear was
unfurling in the pit of her stomach, but she tried to tamp it down. Skye and
Drake were with her- they would help her. They would save her dad.
No need to be afraid.

She urged her horse into a
gallop, clutching the reins in one hand and her shuriken in the other.

The soldiers heard Ashlyn and the
others coming, but for some reason didn’t react immediately, looking up in the
direction of the forest as the hoof beats resounded. The moment Ashlyn left the
protective cover of the trees, she pointed her sword at the closest ninjas and
cast her spell, too breathless to do anything but whisper the words as a
lightning bolt hit the ground in the midst of the group, scattering them. She
followed up with a wave of flame that roared through the frightened soldiers,
singeing everyone in its path.

On her right, Skye used
earth
to literally flip the ground up
beneath a large cluster of advancing ninjas, flinging them backwards and sending
wet soil raining down on top of them.

She urged her horse on, seeing
her father lying in the dirt ahead of her, seeing Kou struggling to calm his
horse so he could climb back on. Ashlyn furiously threw an ice spell in his
direction, but Kou managed to leap out of the way, although his horse reared up
and tore its reins out of his grasp.

Ashlyn continued to pelt the
soldiers around her with fire and lightning, working hard to keep her terrified
horse under control amidst the chaos. For his part, Skye was making it nearly
impossible for any other soldiers to reach them, raising high walls of dirt
around their immediate area and boxing them in with Kou and a handful of
ninjas.

As she drew even with Lord Li, he
turned his head ever so slightly in the dirt, eyes widening as he recognized
her. Ashlyn leapt off her horse, keeping hold of the reins as she hastily
shoved her sword into its sheath on her back. She dropped to her knees beside
her father.

“Hold onto me, Dad!” she yelled,
grabbing one of his arms and hooking it around her neck. She tried to stand,
but he was too heavy. Suddenly there was an explosion next to them and her
horse spooked, shying sideways. Ashlyn held onto the reins and was dragged
across the dirt, losing her grip on her father. She rolled aside, kicking to
get her feet out of a smoldering clump of grass, and scrambled to her feet.
Dirt hailed down on her from one of Skye’s attacks, the blond swordsman
decimating everything around them and scaring her horse even worse.

A ninja appeared beside her.
Ashlyn ducked under his haphazard punch and landed a solid kick to his knee,
knocking his leg out from under him. She followed up with an uppercut, but was
pulled backwards again by her frightened horse before she could land a third
blow. Ashlyn knew she couldn’t let go of the animal or all chance of escape
would be lost. Frustrated, she pulled the horse’s head around with the reins,
turning the animal in circles in an attempt to contain its movement, and trying
to force it back towards her father. In the middle of one rotation, she
glimpsed Drake kneeling next to her dad, his midnight-colored horse standing
calmly beside them.

“
Drake!”
she screamed, and she didn’t think her voice was loud
enough to carry over the noise of battle, but the vampire looked up and met her
eyes.

“Get him out of here!” she called.
Drake nodded and turned, picking up Lord Li easily in his arms. Too late,
Ashlyn saw two ninjas running for Drake with their swords drawn. She grabbed
her shuriken, slicing her hand open in her haste, and flung it sideways. The
hira arced gracefully, slicing across one soldier’s throat and glancing off the
other’s shoulder. Ashlyn turned and vaulted into her saddle, and her horse was
only too happy to run. She urged the animal towards the ninja who was now
raising his sword to strike at Drake, but before she could get there, Drake
pivoted out of the way, awkwardly supporting her dad on one arm and drawing his
pistol with the other. He shot the ninja point blank.

Ashlyn drew her horse to a halt
next to Drake, and the animal skittered sideways, too nervous to stand still.
Ashlyn leaned down, hooking one knee over her horse’s neck as she came out of
the saddle, made a swipe and managed to yank her shuriken from where it was
embedded in the ground.

“Take him,” Drake shouted as she
straightened up in the saddle, and before she could object, he was moving
towards her, lifting her dad across the saddle in front of her just before her
horse danced aside again. Even though she hadn’t been strong enough to pick him
up, Lord Li was still surprisingly easy to support, and Ashlyn curled one arm
across his torso, hooking the fingers of her bleeding hand over his shoulder to
try to anchor him against her. Drake turned away and shot five times in quick
succession, dropping five ninjas who were advancing on him, and used the butt
of his gun to slam a sixth ninja in the face.

There was an explosion right behind
her-
pretty much the worst luck anyone
could have EVER,
Ashlyn thought later- and her stupid horse bolted. Ashlyn
struggled to keep control, wishing with all her might that she had her own
horse, Suki, back right now, and somehow managed to turn the animal back
towards Drake just in time to see him duck under a swing from Kou’s katana.

Ashlyn screamed Skye’s name,
searching for the swordsman amidst the flames and smoke and rain of earth.
Drake was driven back by blow after blow from Kou and two other ninjas,
blocking as best he could with his silver glove. Ashlyn tried to concentrate to
cast
fire
on Kou, but her horse was
moving too much and she was struggling too hard to keep her dad in the saddle
with her.

Terrifyingly, Ashlyn glimpsed a
strike from Kou that landed true- slicing diagonally across Drake’s chest even
as the vampire jumped backwards. Drake fell to his knees, and for one horrible
moment Ashlyn thought that it had been a severe wound, but then her horse spun
angrily, trying to escape from the pressure of the reins, and she lost sight of
Drake for just a moment.

When she managed to quiet the horse
and saw Drake again, he was on his feet, and his eyes were glowing brighter
than she’d ever seen them. His lips curved in a snarl, and he was hunched over,
fingers curled like claws. He stalked around Kou like a wolf circling its prey.
There was something animalistic and feral about him, something she’d never seen
before.

It was then that she realized Kou
had cut the cord that held the
resist
stane.

She’d never seen Drake without
resist,
but she’d heard enough stories
about vampires to know that her situation had just become infinitely more dangerous.

Skye emerged from a cloud of
smoke to her right exactly at that moment, dragging a soldier who had
apparently tried to strike him using a whip, and Ashlyn shrieked his name.
Without looking up, Skye opened a cavern in the ground directly beneath the
soldier and sliced through the whip with his sword in the same moment. The
falling ninja’s screams somehow reached Ashlyn’s ears through the din. Skye
urged his horse towards her.

“What’s wrong? Get out of here!”
he told her, using
earth
to ripple
the ground by the cavern he’d just created, sending several other soldiers
falling into its depths.

“Drake lost
resist,”
Ashlyn said to him, feeling dizzy from all the circles her
horse was turning. Her father was slumped in her arms, unconscious.

“What?” Shock registered on the
swordsman’s face, and he followed Ashlyn’s gaze to Drake, who was on top of a
screaming Toryn ninja, tearing at the other man with his teeth. Kou was nowhere
to be seen.

“We’ve got to get it back to
him,” Ashlyn pleaded, and almost before she’d finished her sentence, Skye was
rushing forward. Ashlyn’s infuriatingly spastic horse followed after him, the
sudden movement throwing Ashlyn off balance and forcing her to grab at its mane
as she struggled to keep both herself and her father upright.

It seemed like things were moving
in slow-motion as Ashlyn felt herself falling to one side, losing grip on the
saddle as her horse darted and leaped around fallen soldiers in terror. When it
became obvious that she wasn’t going to be able to recover her seat, Ashlyn
clutched her father to her chest and kicked her opposite foot out of the
stirrup, turning so that Lord Li fell on top of her.

The impact knocked the wind out
of her, and she found herself skidding in fresh, moist dirt before coming up to
rest against the body of a soldier. Ashlyn struggled to sit up, still keeping
an arm around her dad’s waist, and watched as her horse galloped off into the
woods.
Crap,
she mouthed as her lungs
screamed for air. Trying not to panic, she glanced down at her dad and saw the
resist
stane, still threaded on its
cord, lying in the dirt next to his head.

She grabbed it and struggled to
stand up. Her father was still too heavy to lift, so she rolled him off her as
gently as she could. She had to get back on a horse somehow. Could she even
find a horse? Her eyes came to rest on Drake’s horse, standing quietly exactly
where Drake had left him as battle raged around the poor animal. Ashlyn gritted
her teeth and shoved the
resist
stane
into her pocket, then grabbed her dad’s arms and tried to drag him. First
things first…she had to get her dad back on a horse…then she could help Drake.

Something slammed into her from
the side, knocking her to the ground and rolling her over twice, and Ashlyn
gasped in pain as her shoulder hit a rock. She brought up an elbow, striking
her attacker in the nose. He snarled and rolled off, and Ashlyn scrambled up, yanking
her sword off her back.

Drake stood in front of her,
furious and growling and very
un-
Drake-like.

“I have
resist,”
Ashlyn said unsteadily. “Let me put it back on you,
Drake.”

Drake lunged at her, and she
flipped backwards, kicking him in the chin on her first flip and landing in a
sideways crouch on the second, ready to leap aside at any second.

Behind Drake, Ashlyn saw Skye
grabbing her father, lifting Lord Li into the saddle.
Please go,
Ashlyn willed him silently.
Please take him and go.
But Skye barely managed to prop the
unconscious Toryn on top of the horse before another ninja attacked him.

Drake leaped at her again, and
this time Ashlyn sidestepped and spun in a leg sweep. Drake jumped over it and
snatched the front of her tunic, dragging her forward. Ashlyn swung her sword
down, slicing across his knuckles. Rather than yanking away from him, she
advanced, swinging with the sword, driving him back furiously with a series of
blows that were blocked by his glove. Ashlyn had never fought Drake before and had
never wanted to. Despite his preference for long-range weapons, his vampiric
strength made him a formidable opponent in hand-to-hand combat. She didn’t want
to give him a chance to hurt her.

At last she retreated, fists
raised, her legs trembling and angrier than she could remember being in a long
time. “Find the will, you moron!” she snapped. “Vampirism doesn’t control you
any more than the
resist
stane does.
Fight it!”

Her words fell on deaf ears, and
the vampire lunged a third time. This time Ashlyn fell backwards deliberately,
bringing up her feet to catch him in his midsection and propel him over her
head, sending him tumbling behind her.

Ashlyn jumped up, sheathing her
sword, and ran to Drake’s horse. She slammed her foot into the stirrup and
pulled herself up, but was just swinging her opposite leg over when someone
grabbed a chunk of her hair and yanked. Ashlyn yelped, but grabbed the saddle
and barely managed to avoid falling, and there was a harder yank and then-
suddenly she was free. She clambered up onto the horse, looked over and saw
that Skye had plowed into Drake with his horse, slicing off half the length of
her hair with his sword.

“Run!” Skye yelled at her. He
circled around and cast an
earth
spell
that flung Drake backwards into a throng of soldiers that had just managed to
make their way around the dirt barriers.

Wordlessly, Ashlyn jammed her
foot into the other stirrup and wheeled Drake’s horse around, galloping for the
forest with her father slouched in the saddle in front of her.