War Bringer (8 page)

Fiona’s brows went up. “Princess?”

They said nothing more to her, just took up positions on either side of the chair. Fiona sat, if for no other reason than it blocked most of the audience from staring at her body through her barely there clothing.

A man walked past her. He looked at her, marking her with his eyes as his. She let her gaze focus on something behind him, cutting him from her attention. Kelan followed him. Like the other man, he wore only a pair of black boxer briefs. His feet were bare. He had bruises on his chest, on his face, a cut on his lip. His high cheekbones made the hollows in his cheeks look stark. When his eyes met hers, they were stoic. She could tell he was in pain.

What was going on? How had her world turned so upside down?

He paused in front of her then knelt. The entire arena went silent as he bowed his head. His black hair spilled forward. Tears welled in her eyes. She caught his face and whispered, “Kelan, what’s happening?”

He leaned his forehead to hers. “It’s some kind of role-playing game. I don’t know anything about it, what the rules are, how one wins. Just go with it. Buy us some time.”

“Why do you have to fight again? You’re already injured.”

His eyes hardened, and in them she saw the echoes of his warrior ancestors. “I will fight for you forever.”

She blinked her tears away. One of the men next to her was becoming restless. She noticed a red bandana hanging from his pocket. “Wait,” she ordered Kelan, then reached over and took the bandana. She looked into Kelan’s eyes as she tied it around his black hair. She pulled him close so that she could kiss his brow. “Finish this for us so that we can go home.”

Kelan nodded and stood, then walked into the center of the fighting floor. An announcer stepped into the middle of the arena. He held up his hands. There was no microphone, but the acoustics in the building let his bare voice carry.
 

“This event has been nearly twenty-one years in the making! King’s very own daughter is coming home at last. The fighter who wins tonight’s challenge will earn the right to deliver her to King—and to be her bodyguard and her champion.

“Now, listen up! This is no free-for-all. Each contestant will fight until he has defeated three others. The first to do so wins the challenge.” He looked at the two men, then went over and lifted Kelan’s right arm. “Fair notice to all who think to attempt it. This is no ordinary man; he is the War Bringer. And the princess has already chosen him.”
 

Fiona forced herself to watch Kelan in the ring as if she was accustomed to such violence. But she wasn’t; she felt the pain of every punch or kick that he took or delivered. It was surreal when he finally got the other guy down and snapped his neck.

She’d just watched him kill a man.
 

The next guy brought a knife to the floor. It took five long minutes for Kelan to help him fall on it, ending that round.
 

The third guy carried two swords. He tossed one to Kelan. Fiona gripped the arms of her seat. The swords were long and wide and looked hellishly heavy. Fighting with them was a specialized and archaic skill set. Kelan was tired. His footing wasn’t as steady as it had been with the first challenger. At least the bandana she’d given him kept the sweat from his eyes.

At one point, he had to duck a forward thrust. He went down in a crouch and stayed there, his wide back bared to his opponent. As the man ran in to finish the fight, Kelan unwound, slicing the heavy blade across the guy’s stomach, then running it up his body, through his chin and out the back of his head.

Fiona wanted to vomit at the blood that spilled from him. A chant started in the stadium. Faint at first, then growing louder. “War Bringer! War Bringer!”

And then a fourth man came forward to challenge Kelan.

Fiona couldn’t take any more. She started to rise, but one of the men posted beside her chair pushed her back down. “No!” She shoved herself free of his grip and rushed to the stage, slipping between Kelan and his latest opponent as the last victim was dragged offstage.

“No, Fiona,” Kelan growled as he pulled her behind him.
 

The announcer hurried into the arena. Fiona stepped around Kelan. “He has met your terms. Three fights. Three wins. This is over.”

The announcer held up his hands, silencing the roaring crowd. Before he could speak, the fourth contender thrust a knife into his back. The look of shock and pain seared itself in Fiona’s mind. Kelan stepped in front of her and forced her back.

The fourth guy laughed. “Fuck the rules. King wants a champion for his daughter who will stop at nothing.”

Kelan still held the bloodied sword from his last battle. He was so intensely focused on his new opponent that he didn’t see the crowd begin to stir…or hear the siren wailing in the far distance.
 

A siren! Fiona had never been so happy to hear that sound. It meant a return to reality very soon. But what were the cops going to say about the four dead men, three of whom Kelan had killed?
 

They had to get out of there.

She wasn’t the only one with that thought. Before Kelan and his newest challenger could begin their fight, men swarmed the floor. She and Kelan were hurried to a door where an SUV awaited. They were rushed inside. The windows were so heavily tinted that they could see nothing out of them. A black divider separated them from the front seat.

Fiona was shaking. She tried to open the door, but it was locked. What now? Where were they being taken? How were they going to get out of this?

* * *

Val pulled the back doors of the semitruck open. It was empty, but what a strange setup inside. A thick acrylic window separated two portions of the cargo area. The larger one was covered in pristine white padding. The back portion nearest the doors was left in its raw state.

Kit shined a flashlight into the cargo hold. “What the fuck?”

Angel held up one of the team’s comm units. “Found his earpiece. It was lodged in the bumper.”

“Max, what do we know about his tractor trailer?” Kit asked via his comm unit.

“The truck was reported missing two weeks ago. The tags were stolen a day ago. We can process it for fingerprints, but that’s about all the info we’re going to get from it.”

Kit shook his head. “Great. So now we’ve got two missing people.”

Val jumped down from the truck. “Kelan kept the earpiece I gave him off until it pinged ten miles from here. Either he couldn’t safely turn it on, or he was in the truck and the signal wasn’t getting picked up. Let’s go see what there is where the signal first came online.”

Kit called the truck in to Lobo for processing, then they made the drive out east, deep into the prairie. The original ping had come from what looked like a big steel horse arena. There were no vehicles in the parking area, but it was clear that there had been a lot of them there recently.
 

“Max, what other buildings are near here?” Kit asked.

“Nothing. Not for a good two miles in any direction. That building is the only thing in that whole section.”

The door wasn’t locked. Angel and Val entered from the front, Kit from the back. As soon as they cleared the building and knew it was empty, they flipped the lights on. Stadium rows stood like aluminum skeletons in the dusty arena floor.

“Kelan was here,” Angel said, holding up his abandoned clothes and boots.

“Shit, look at this,” Val said in the center of the stadium seating. “A fucking throne. Was King here?”

Kit was looking around the compacted dirt…and all the blood that stained it. He frowned. “I don’t know, but I got a bad feeling about how much time those two have left. If any. We need to find them, fast.”

Chapter
 
Seven

Kelan wore only his boxer briefs. They’d left in such a hurry that he hadn’t been able to grab his clothes. He’d lost his earpiece during the fight in the truck. Hopefully, it hadn’t broken. If the guys could pick up its signal, they’d be after them quickly.

He reached over and squeezed Fiona’s hand. He couldn’t make out much of her features, but he could tell that she turned to him. He didn’t smile, because it didn’t seem appropriate given where they were, and she would see it anyway.
 

He’d seen a blanket folded on the back seat when he got in. He grabbed it and put it around her, getting her to fold her legs so that her feet were tucked in. She leaned against him. He kissed her forehead, pulling in her scent. She didn’t smell like her usual strawberries, but some foreign soap he didn’t recognize. Beneath it all, he could still catch her essence in the mix, and he focused on that. It was unimaginably fine having her in his arms, even if they were still snagged in their captor’s crazy world.

They drove far out into the country. The roads in this part of rural Colorado were divided into square sections two miles by two miles. When they’d left the arena, they were headed south. The driver took occasional turns off then back on the same road, either to confuse Kelan or to dodge anyone following them.

At last, they pulled off the road onto a driveway more gravelly than the dirt road. The vehicle stopped, but no one got out. After a moment, they pulled forward a short distance, then stopped again. Kelan felt the vehicle jerk, then had a distinct feeling they were descending…down, down, down.
 

The air in the cab of the SUV stopped smelling like newly harvested fields and started smelling like recycled air, as if from inside a building.
 

When their descent ended, the driver pulled forward and turned into what had to be a parking spot. He shut the engine off.

Fiona’s hand tightened on his. If they were to die, if there was no way to get out of this, they would die together. It was the only comforting thought he could summon at the moment.

The two men in the front of the SUV got out and opened their doors. “Get out and come with us.”

The guards separated them, each taking an arm, and guided them across a parking garage. They entered an elevator and again descended. How many floors, Kelan couldn’t determine because each level had a name not a number.
 

Their handlers’ disposition changed as the group stepped out of the elevator. They didn’t jerk, pull, or prod them anymore. Now their hold was light on their arms. Kelan sent a look around the place, awed by its elegance. The floor was polished marble topped with a red runner that went the whole length of the hall. Tall marble columns stood like sentinels every fifteen feet. Between each column was either a long banner with a slogan supporting the principles of a new world order or a sculpture or a painting. Except for the banners, the whole place looked like a museum that might be found in any large city.

“Where are we?” Kelan asked.

“King’s Warren.”

And that was about as helpful as anything the rabbit might have said to Alice when she fell into his burrow. They walked through a few corridors, went down some stairs, turned into another hallway, and soon came to a stop. His guard unlocked a door and led them inside.
 

Kelan looked around the extravagant room. “What is this place?”

The light-brown-haired man removed his sunglasses and sent a look around the room, too. “King had this made for you.” His blue-gray eyes cut toward Kelan. “Well, for the princess and the War Bringer, anyway.” He dismissed the two other guards. When they were gone, he looked right at Kelan. “You have one night. I will come for you in the morning. Be ready.” He gave Kelan a hard look. “I cannot save her. Only you can.”

“Who are you? Are you King?”

The man went through the door without answering any questions. Kelan stared at the door as he heard the lock catch. That guy was too young to be King. Besides, King made everyone believe he was omnipotent. King could save Fiona if he wanted to—he wouldn’t have said Kelan was the only one who could.

He turned slightly and glanced at her. They had one night—one that was already well progressed. One night to figure out a way out of here and get her to safety.
 

She stood in the center of the room, in the middle of a blue- and cream-toned oriental carpet. The blanket from the SUV was still wrapped about her shoulders. She took a few steps around the room, looking at the furnishings and decor. He followed her, as troubled by what he saw as she was.

The room was a suite of luxurious appointments. The ceiling was twenty feet high and filled, corner to corner, with a mural of clouds in a deep blue sky surrounded by lush gardens. All around the edges, naked couples were copulating while winged cherubs flew about the edges of the garden observing them.

Fiona looked up, then away. Color blossomed on her face.
 

The bed’s canopy was suspended from the ceiling in the middle of one wall; its long panels of white silk hung to the floor. All of the furnishings in the room were of an Empire style with slim, delicate proportions and ornate decorations. The exposed woodwork was a mix of fine woods. The walls and fabrics of the cushions were pale yellow, cream, and gold. The room was big enough for him and delicate enough for her.

Tall windows led to what looked like a moonlit garden. Kelan walked over to check it out. He went up a couple of steps to the huge double glass doors and opened them. A breeze came inside, humid and smelling of roses and peat moss. Somewhere in the garden was a water feature; he could hear it. The ceiling in that space was dotted with little lights that twinkled like stars.
 

The two rooms were beautiful, elegant, and as fake as a theme park ride.
 

Kelan pulled Fiona into his arms, sighing at the feel of her so close. He’d never let himself give up hope of holding her again during the hellish hours that had just passed, but the fear of never being here with her like this again had stalked him.

She looked up at him. “Kelan…I don’t think this is some role-playing game. Three men died fighting you. They would have gladly killed you, too. And the way they were chanting the words on your tattoo. Why would they do that?”