Page 114 of Shielded Heart 1
An explosion boomed inside the workshop—near Arc’s desk, by the sound of it. It was followed by the sounds of raining debris and crackling electricity.
“All of you get in there to support the other team. Kill anyone you find,” Vaund said.
The Syndicate goons hurried forward, keeping to the sides of the partially open blast door. Arcanthus held his gaze on Vaund as flash grenades went off in the workshop; the detonations left a ringing in Arc’s ears that almost drowned out the sound of the Syndicate gunmen storming into the room.
Vaund maintained his hold on Samantha, whose eyes were wide and fearful. The energy blade was impossibly steady in his hold.
“Release her,” Arcanthus said.
“I should kill her.” Vaund tipped the blade infinitesimally closer to Samantha’s pale skin.
She cringed and whimpered softly.
Arcanthus’s insides knotted, and he clenched his fists.
Vaund’s laugh was like electricity arcing out of a broken power casing. “But I’m not going to. I’ll hurt her—you can be sure of that—but I’m going to keep her afterward.”
“No one’s in here, boss,” someone shouted from inside the workshop.
“Where are they, sedhi?” Vaund demanded.
“It’s just the two of us, Vaund,” Arc said, struggling to keephis voice steady. He couldn’t allow himself to forget one of the lessons he’d learned long ago—a battle could be won before the first blow was thrown if you could get into your opponent’s head beforehand.
Arcanthus focused his rage into a tiny point, into a powerful, controllable shape, and let his instincts and fear make it cold; it would be a weapon to wield deliberately against his foe, a deadly tool. He could not allow it to control him, or he’d lose.
Vaund laughed again and shoved Samantha aside. She stumbled half a dozen steps before crashing heavily to the floor. To Arcanthus’s relief, her head snapped up immediately, but there was a concerned look on her face. Her shoulders heaved with her quick, shallow breaths.
“The two of us and twenty of my men in the room behind you,” Vaund said.
“I thought this was meant to be a fair fight,” Arcanthus said. “Or is it that you still can’t beat me without a gang to hold me down?”
Vaund reached up with his empty hand and tore off his shirt, tossing it aside. His bared torso was lean, with hard, irregular ridges of muscle, and armored plates jutted from beneath the ashen skin of his forearms. Tattered flesh, smeared with dark blue ichor, dangled from his chest. He looked more skeletal—and less alive—than ever before; his chest didn’t even move with the wheezing breaths flowing through the damaged tube on his mask.
“I don’t need any help killing you, sedhi.”
“Good. I just wanted to ensure we had an understanding.” Arcanthus lifted his arm, engaged his neural link to the auto-canons mounted on the workshop’s ceiling, and flicked his wrist to enable their automated threat elimination mode.
The heavywhumpsof the canons’ rapid firing was joined, for a few brief moments, by the shouts and screams of theuninvited guests in the workshop. Flashes of light pulsed from under the open blast door, casting strobing shadows around Arcanthus. It was over within seconds; the only sound remaining after the canons fell silent was Vaund’s strained respiration.
“It doesn’t matter how many more you have outside,” Arcanthus said. “You’ll be dead before they get here.”
Vaund released a buzzing growl. “I’m going to cut off your limbs again, one by one, and your terran is going to watch. She’s going to be haunted for the rest of her miserable life by what I’m about to do to you.”
Arcanthus opened the compartment on his left forearm, dropping the hilt of his hardlight sword into his waiting hand. He activated the weapon, and the translucent yellow blade materialized, extending from the hilt.
Vaund circled slowly to his left; Arcanthus mirrored his foe’s movement, maintaining the distance between them as Vaund neared the big door and Arcanthus approached Samantha, who had moved to Drakkal’s side.
“You could’ve just accepted my offer all those years ago. We could have avoided all this. All this pain and strife,” Arc said. But he didn’t regret the way things had happened—didn’t regret having been forced to flee Caldorius—because that chain of events, that long, torturous road, had brought him to Arthos and, ultimately, his mate.
“And you could’ve justdied.” Vaund pointed the tip of his energy blade toward Arcanthus. “You had no right to be on top. No right to act like any of us should’ve bowed down to you and fallen into what you thought were ourplaces.”
“Ourplace was on top.” Arcanthus rolled his wrist and halted his legs as soon as his body was between Samantha and Vaund. “That was my point all along. My goal. Webrought in all that money, and it should’ve been ours.”
“Myplace is on top. Yours is face down in an alleyway puddle.”
He was never this much of a talker before a fight. He’s fueled purely by hatred.
“Samantha,” Arcanthus said softly, “stay with Drakkal. We’re going to leave as soon as this is done. It won’t take long; I don’t have the patience to toy with him this time.”
