Raintree Read online

  He’d lost track of Gideon and Mercy in the fierce battle, but he could still sense them there, pooling their strength with his. Together the whole was greater than the sum of the three parts, and they needed every scintilla of power they could muster. There were enough Ansara that they could almost team up three to each one of the Raintree.

  An Ansara woman sprang from behind a tree and expertly threw a chain at his ankles. The chains weren’t deadly, but if one wrapped around his legs he would fall, almost as helpless as a turtle on its back, and then the Ansara would make mincemeat of him. The chain flashed toward him, and less than two seconds after the weapon had left the Ansara’s hand, he leaped as high as he could, drawing his legs up like an athlete on a trampoline. With silver fire the chain passed beneath him, whipping into the face of a groggy Ansara who had been trying to get to his feet. The man’s face exploded in a mist of blood.

  Dante threw a bolt at the woman, but she was as fast as a cheetah and bounded behind a tree.

  He was tiring somewhat, taking a little longer to recharge between bolts. The Ansara had to be tiring, too, but there were more of them.

  When had they gotten so strong? How could they have rebuilt the clan undetected? Had an unusually strong Ansara escaped, two hundred years ago and somehow successfully shielded the clan from the Raintree sentinels? They must have established a home place somewhere and used it to feed their power. On a vortex, all things were possible.

  Three Ansara erupted from cover, thirty yards to his left, charging him. He spun to face them and shot a bolt at the biggest one; the blast of energy hit the man in the middle of the chest, and he disintegrated from the force, but the other two raced on, and Dante didn’t have time to rebuild enough energy to take both of them down.

  Alarm prickled the back of his neck. He didn’t stop to think, didn’t wonder what was behind him; instinctively, he ducked and rolled to the right, coming back to his feet as a six-foot sword hacked the air where he’d been. A woman who had to be at least seven feet tall was wielding the sword as if it were a toothpick. Her lips pulled back in a snarl as she swung it again. He leaped back once more, but the tip sliced him diagonally from the left side of his rib cage and across his abdomen, and down to his hip.

  The cut hurt like hell, but it wasn’t mortal. She was too close for him to hit her with a bolt without getting caught in the back-blast, and the other two were only ten yards away now. Desperately he lowered some of the mental shields with which he held back his fire and sent a long tongue of flame licking at her. She fell backward in her haste to escape the hungry red beast. He turned his head toward the other two attackers, and they split up, going in opposite directions, flanking him but keeping a wary distance.

  Fire was too dangerous to use on a battlefield. Any battle was chaotic, uncontrolled. He could send out a wall of fire at any time, but with the Raintree engaging the enemy all over the battlefield, he would be killing his own people, too. The larger the fire, the more power and energy it took to control. The risk was very real that, distracted at every turn, he would loose a monster he couldn’t control. No one used fire in a battle.

  The tall woman slowly got to her feet, grinning. Holding the sword in a two-handed grip, she began circling him, joining the other two as they looked for an opening.

  His ass was likely dead, but he intended to take all three of them with him.

  He didn’t want to leave Lorna. The thought pierced him like a lance. He wished he’d told her again that he loved her, told her what to do in case he didn’t make it back. She might be pregnant. The chance was small, but it existed. He would never know. He remembered the sound of her voice, full of outrage, yelling, “Where are you going?” and wished he could hear it again.

  He heard her, actually heard her, so hard did he wish it.

  Except she was yelling, “What the hell are you doing?”

  Every hair on his body stood up in alarm. Aghast, he dared a quick look around and almost passed out in sheer terror. She was running headlong across the field toward him, not looking right or left, her hair flying like a dark flame. A body lay in her path, and she hurdled it without pause. “Fry their asses!” she bellowed, evidently wondering why he wasn’t using his greatest gift.

  He had recharged enough of the enormous energy needed for a psychic bolt, and without warning, he shot it at the tall woman. She turned, instinctively bringing up her sword to deflect the bolt as if it were another blade. The blast hit the big blade broadside, shattering it, driving needle-sharp shards of steel into her. She screamed, pierced in a hundred places from her head to her knees. One long shard protruded from her right eye. Shrieking nonstop, she instinctively put her hand to her eye and hit the shard, driving it deeper. She dropped to her knees and toppled over, much as the tree had done.

  Dante spared her no more than a glance as he danced in a circle, trying to keep Lorna behind him and out of the kill zone, trying to keep the remaining two Ansara where he could see them. If he could hold them off until his energy rebuilt…

  Without warning, one shot a psychic blast at him. Not all warriors could muster enough energy to wield this most powerful of gifts; most used more physical weapons, like the swords, which might be gifted with different powers but were still essentially used in traditional moves. This bastard had been hiding his light under a bushel, as it were. If their tactic had been to let Dante bleed his energy level down before unleashing their own blasts, the ploy had worked.

  Lorna never stopped moving, stooping as she ran to pick up a fist-sized rock. “Fire!” she kept screaming. “Use your fire!” She was only twenty yards away, rushing headlong into the circle of death. His blood froze in his veins.

  “Yeah, Raintree, use your fire!” one of the Ansara taunted, knowing he wouldn’t. Then the man turned and shot a bolt at Lorna.

  He miscalculated, not taking enough time to anticipate her speed. She made a furious sound and heaved her rock at the Ansara, making him duck. “Amateur,” Dante muttered, firing a blast at the bastard—or trying to. He was too tired; he didn’t have enough energy left.

  The Ansara wolves circled closer, grinning, enjoying his helplessness as they waited for their own energy to rebuild. They had used far less than he had; it would take only seconds more.

  “Link with me!” Lorna screamed. “Link with me!”

  His heart almost stopped. She knew what it would do to her, knew the agony….

  There was no time for careful preparation, the gradual meshing of minds and energies. There was time only for smashing his way into her mind and tapping the deep pool of power. It fed him like water crashing into a valley after a dam collapsed, a deluge of energy that shot from both his hands in simultaneous bolts. Linked to him as they were, Mercy and Gideon both felt the enormous surge and were fed in turn.

  Dante furiously fired bolt after bolt. Tears burned his eyes but never fell, the moisture evaporated by the cascade of energy running through him. Lorna! He could see her on the ground, lying motionless, but her power still poured into him as if there were no limit to it. He didn’t need time to rebuild; the energy was there immediately, flying off his fingertips in white-hot blasts.

  Faced with the killing machine he’d become, the Ansara retreated, drawing back to regroup. Agonized, Dante broke the link with Lorna’s mind and charged to where she lay unmoving, her face paper white. There were bodies all around her, testament to how close the Ansara had come. If she hadn’t been lying so still that they must have thought she was already dead, they would surely have killed her.

  If he hadn’t done the job for them, Dante thought with an inner howl of savage pain. He fell to his knees beside her, yanking her into his arms.

  “Lorna!”

  She managed to open her eyes a little; then her lids drooped shut again as if she didn’t have the energy to hold them open.

  He had drained her, turned her mind to mush. She had recovered before—but would she recover this time? Mercy and Gideon, not knowing what they did,