Warrior's Touch (Deadly Touch book 2)
For All Our Sakes

Llew pushed a hand through her hair and blew out her exasperation. “I can’t stop you, can I?”

He risked an amused smile. “Well, we still need your blood to make it work.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Just think about it, Llew. We got time between now and us facin’ Aris. Just think about it.”

Llew nodded, though she still fumed. She shouldn’t even have to consider it. But, when it came down to it, this was the only way she could fight Aris – by providing the fuel to boost the strength of her friends, or, at least, her associates. Jonas was right when he said that if Llew was left to face Aris, she would fall. This was the only way she could help. Didn’t mean she had to give in straight away.

Jonas leaned like he was about to kiss her, and she brushed him aside, turning from him and walking from the paddock. She needed some time alone.

The only way she could be more useful to them than as a blood donor for Braph’s horrid device, was if she got pregnant with Jonas’s child, giving her his strength and speed again, effectively making her as powerful as Aris on her own. But that couldn’t happen, not since Aris destroyed her womb, forcing the doctor to remove it entirely. Jonas’s words Can you save it? and the answering shake of the doctor’s head replayed in her mind, yet again. Everything else around that question and that head shake was a blur. Can you save it? No. She had seen and heard it almost every time she closed her eyes that first week. Then it had been nightly, then two to three times a week. Now it was once a week. The Ajnai tree had healed her, but her magic could not replace what was no longer there.

Can you save it? and the responding head shake played again. This time, some other part of her mind asked: What if? What if Jonas hadn’t been asking about her womb, but instead had been querying whether their second, untouched child could be saved? Can you save it? Shake: No.

She walked along the cart-way, numb, between her rows of Ajnais. Already, they stood halfway up her thigh. She wondered about the tree in Quaver, the one planted over her children. How big would it be now? Big enough to save someone’s life? And that second voice, the one that belonged to the child not killed by Aris’s strike, would that voice age with the tree, or forever be a baby?

Can you save it? No.

She stepped from the path, between two saplings, leaned back against a fence post and slid to the ground.

Can you save it? No.

She wept. She wept for the child she hadn’t known to mourn in those earliest days, the child who, she now realized, had been the “it” the doctor couldn’t save. And she wept with guilt at the flash of joy she’d had at the realization that she was whole.

Was this what life was all about? Striving to live, striving to create a life, then either suffering the devastation of failure, or the guilt of succeeding while others failed? While she was free, her ma sat in a Turhmos gaol, and her child’s soul lived inside a tree.

A song she hadn’t heard in thirteen years came to her lips.

As her ma had done before her, she hummed as if there were a couple more lines before finishing with a shaky: Sweet bird.

Well, that went about as well as he’d expected.

Jonas watched Llew until she exited through the gate, then he walked after. Not to follow her. No, he would let her have her space.

He scuffed his heels through the damp, dead grass of the training field. He paused at the gate. Llew had seated herself against the fence, among her trees. She seemed to replace solace there. Maybe these saplings could speak to her, give her guidance. He didn’t know how it all worked, but he believed in the connection she had with the Ajnais.

She would come around.

Not that he liked it either, but it was less scary having Braph in charge of that kind of power than Aris. At least Braph’s power could be taken again, his access to Aenuk blood restricted. The only way to stop Aris was to kill him.

The thought didn’t give him a great deal of pleasure. Aris had, after all, been like a father to him. He had also killed Jonas’s children, and would kill Llew if the chance arose again.

“That good, huh?” Braph asked when Jonas’s soles met the corral’s coarse sand.

“She’ll think on it.”

“What’s she got to think on?” Hisham asked, jolting his right arm to make the stake shoot out and smiling with satisfaction when it made an appearance across the back of his fist.

Jonas and Braph shared a look. Braph was keen to share his news, Jonas less so. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was letting everyone down allowing Braph to have a new device. Worse. He’d helped him construct it, even helped feed the tubes under the skin.

Perhaps it was better they all knew about it, then. At least it meant they’d all have eyes Braph’s way, keep him honest.

As for his own secret, he still wasn’t too sure they were ready for it yet. It would come out. It had to. But it was one of those revelations where timing was important. Problem was, he didn’t know when the right time would be. He kind of hoped he’d know it when it came.

He nodded the okay at Braph who, with a little more than the minimum of flourish, unpinned and pulled up the hanging end of his right sleeve.

As soon as the first tube poked out, Hisham’s face darkened. He looked to Jonas, something akin to betrayal in his eyes.

“You helped him build that?”

“Aris is Immortal,” Jonas stated flatly.

Hisham’s eyes rested on the device awhile. “You shouldn’t’ve done it.” He met Jonas’s eyes. “To atone for my sins, I’ll follow you to the end of days, but this … This is wrong. He—” He looked up at Braph, hatred in his eyes. “You would provide him with Llew’s blood?”

“Only if she chooses to.” Jonas spoke through gritted teeth, his anger flaring. A part of him still worried he’d done the wrong thing. But Braph had offered a solution to their problem and Jonas was desperate. Maybe he should have refused. Maybe he should have discussed it by committee. But they had little time, and Hisham and Llew didn’t understand the full picture. He’d made the best choice he could under the circumstances. Hisham and Llew expressing their doubts and disappointments only fueled his own, and his anger.

“I hope she doesn’t, for all our sakes,” Hisham said.

Braph chuckled. “There are other Aenuks.”

Jonas silently pleaded for his brother to tone down the arrogance. It would do no one any good.

Hisham rushed Braph, knocking him to the ground before Jonas could react, following up with a barrage of punches. Braph shielded his face with both arms. When Jonas finally managed to pull him back, Hisham’s knuckles bled where he’d struck the mechanical bracelet. Hisham shimmied his shoulders forcefully, shaking Jonas’s grip free, and stalked from the corral. Jonas followed, jogging to catch him up.

“We need this.”

“No, uh-uh.” Hisham spun to face him. “You need it. To relive your childhood, or somethin’. No one needs Braph getting his powers back.”

“Someone has to face Aris as an equal.”

“Yeah. You, or me.” Hisham splayed his hands, indicating Jonas’s lean figure that, normally, would have given the illusion of weakness. But there was no longer any illusion. “Why couldn’t it be you? I mean, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? You’re already our greatest chance.”

“Not anymore.” Jonas was almost surprised how easy it was to say. But then, this was Hisham. He hadn’t kept a secret from his friend in his life.

“What are you sayin’?”

Jonas opened his mouth to tell Hisham the truth.

“Shit.”

Hisham and Jonas spun to face Braph. His attention was focused on the farm gate. They followed his gaze.

A troop of perhaps thirty riders milled about the farm gate. Merrid stood before them, stalling their entry to the property. And Llew still sat among her trees.

“Shit,” Jonas echoed his brother. “Get Llew. Bring her to the bunker. Get her now!”

Hisham ran, leaving Jonas to curse repeatedly under his breath. Hisham was barely faster than an average horse at full gallop. He was too slow. But Jonas was slower.

Hisham reached Llew as one of the Turhmos riders knocked Merrid aside.

Ard, pausing on his way back from checking the chickens, made a pitiful sound in the back of his throat and took off at a getting-on farmer’s run.

Hisham got Llew to her feet, but she wasn’t in a hurry until the riders started down the cart-way. Then she let Hisham sweep her off her feet and start the run back.

“Let’s go.” Jonas ran to the bunker door, getting it open as Hisham arrived with Llew. They got her inside first, then Hisham. Jonas turned back to where Braph still stood, watching the riders. “Come on!”

Braph glanced at him but didn’t move.

“Come on!” At a loss of anything else to do, Jonas gestured wildly at the opening.

Braph turned back to the riders. By the sound of hoof falls, they were nearing the front of the house now. They must have seen Braph.

“Shit!” Jonas scrambled through the hole, closed the trapdoors as silently as possible and dropped to the concrete floor.

“Where’s Braph?” Hisham asked, already armed with a bow and arrow, and a sword hastily strapped to his waist.

“Not comin’.” Jonas stalked into the darkness.

“He’s dead?” Hisham sounded genuinely concerned.

“No. He’s just not comin’,” said Jonas. “Not yet anyway.”

Hisham cursed under his breath.

Probably, Jonas should have been arming himself and joining Hisham by the trapdoor, but he would be less than useless. He was weak. Worse than that, he wasn’t used to being weak. Every move felt like it was in slow motion.

He was of no use to anyone.

Braph had turned. And Jonas had given him the power to.