The Darkest Knight (Guardians of Camelot #3) - Victoria Sue Page 0,4

patrolled, and trying to turn her down kindly had been difficult when she hadn’t wanted to take no for an answer. He was just going to give her some money anyway when he had heard the cry of the beasts and had run to find them.

He’d come back later after killing one to make sure the park was safe before they went home and heard her. He’d heard the desperate cry cut off with a fist, and worse seen the pulp left of her young face when she was no longer making a noise. If he hadn’t known it was her, the only way to tell would have been the tattoo on her neck he had recognized. At least she wasn’t dead, and Kay had lingered until the ambulance arrived.

He’d come very close to killing a human that day. Apparently, she had failed to fill her quota.

He answered his cell phone as he stopped the truck. “Meet Lucan at the south entrance to the park. He’s on his way.” He jerked at the terse instruction from Mel and realized the sun had set. His amulet flashed, the blue of the stones turning darker to indicate the Ursus’s presence. Kay’s breath caught. The wooded areas and the playgrounds would be closed. There would still be a lot of people in the park, but he was close enough to the Lincoln Road entrance to miss most of the people leaving the other way.

He heard them as soon as he got out of the truck and started running. What sort of a sick coincidence had brought him here on this day?

He smelled the Ursus before he saw it and followed the screams, except these came from a human throat. He drew his sword as the Ursus turned and dropped the woman that it was holding, raising its sword and roaring its anger to the heavens.

Except it didn’t sound like anger. It sounded like triumph.

Kay drew his sword as he had done what seemed like every second of a million lifetimes, but just as he was going to slash it down, the Ursus changed. And for an interminable second, Kay halted, not believing what he was seeing. It wasn’t the face of the Ursus he was looking at. Black eyes like chips of smooth glass lightened and stared back, became human even as Kay gazed in disbelief. He could see sickened fear in the haunted gaze, the confusion and the terror. As the woman held up a hand as if to ward off the blow from Kay’s sword, he saw the bruises and the sagging skin hung from too gaunt a frame. The cart she pushed with her worldly goods in had turned over, and the smell of rotting food and paper hit Kay in a rush, and he lowered his sword in utter shame.

“I—” But the words—any words—caught in his throat. Silence seemed to weigh down his world. There were no cries of the beasts; his heart that had pounded in his ears fell to a mere whisper that fluttered against his ribs. His sorrow, his shame, had no noise. “I won’t hurt you.” He reached out with his empty hand just as she was brave enough to look up.

For a second he looked at too wasted a life. The red-rimmed eyes, the hair that had once been long which now seemed to lie in clumps, but as he watched, she brought her hand up to her throat and traced the tattoo on her throat. The triquetra symbol. The Celtic trinity. He stared in disbelief as recognition slammed into him. It was the girl from fifty years ago. Impossible. But his eyes shot to meet hers as she suddenly smiled and her green eyes that had been full of tears bled to black. Her mouth—thin red lips—parted as if ready to utter kind words, but the sound that came from them chilled his soul. The song of the beasts, too harsh to come from a human throat, slid into his mind like poison and held him still. She rose defiantly, all sense of infirmity gone, the cry on her lips and a sword in her hand, and as she raised it, Kay knew he was going to die. He didn’t understand, but bewilderment was little comfort and no explanation. He didn’t even have the ability to close his eyes as the sword came hurtling down.

And then sword met sword in a shriek of metal defiant enough to stop the cry from her lips,