Paladin

Chapter 24 Part II

Caught in the purgatory between nightmare and reality, Sam’s mind was awake, but her muscles were paralyzed. A crushing weight on her chest pinned her to the pallet, her arms frozen and useless at her sides. She sensed an evil presence lurking to her left, though try as she might, she couldn’t pry her lids open to see it. Logic whispered in her ear that the paralysis that gripped her was fleeting, nothing but the fading remnants of a stubborn bad dream. But while logic whispered, panic roared. Sam fought like a madwoman to move just one tiny muscle.

After what could have been minutes or hours, Sam’s eyes popped open. The room was an unrelenting black, so dark that she could barely make out vague shapes. Only her uneven breaths and the thump of her own heartbeat interrupted the silence of the night. She was comforted for a moment, until she realized that the only breathing she heard was her own.

She whipped her head towards Braeden’s pallet, half-expecting to find him dead. Instead, she couldn’t find him at all.

Her pallet was close enough to his that she should have been able to see the outline of his form against the rectangle of the bed. She blinked, waiting for her sight to further adjust to the darkness, but all she saw was the same unobscured rectangle. Mistrusting her eyes, Sam crawled to the edge of her pallet and swung her legs over the side, intending to cross the short distance between the two beds. She took but a step forward and tripped and fell over something solid and immobile at her feet. It rumbled with a low, menacing sound.

Sam pushed herself onto her knees, fumbling blindly as she steadied herself. Her hands grasped onto biceps as large as watermelons, the skin rough and scaly. Two red orbs glowed directly in front of her, yet somehow they lacked any light. “Braeden?” Sam called tentatively. He was crouched on all fours, which did nothing to diminish his bulk. He was enormous, his arms and neck as thick as tree trunks. “Thank the gods you’re alright. You scared me for a moment,” she said, her voice a little weak.

Braeden said nothing, his body vibrating with tension. A strip of white flashed across his jaw as his lips peeled back into a mockery of a smile. He rumbled again, the gravelly sound vicious in his throat.

Not good, thought Sam. She searched the glittering rubies in his skull for a hint of Braeden, and came up short. “Braeden?” she tried again, hating that she was even the tiniest bit afraid of her friend.

Braeden shuddered violently and then leapt for her, his big body tackling hers to the ground. His teeth snapped, narrowly missing her neck as she shoved at his chest with all her strength. He yowled as he fell backward and clamored back onto his hands and knees, the bones of his spine poking up into the air like spikes. He leaped towards her again, crashing full force into her pallet as she rolled out of the way. The pallet slammed into the wall, splintering into pieces.

With horrifying certainty, Sam realized that Braeden was honest-to-the-gods trying to kill her…or eat her, or whatever it was demons wanted with their prey. He was bigger than her and faster than her and he could see better than her -- but his greatest advantage was that she didn’t want him dead.

If Braeden had drawn daggers, Sam would have died in seconds. He was lethal with his knives, as much as if not more so than she was with a sword. But, thank the gods for small favors, Braeden -- or this creature that once was Braeden -- fought like a true demon, his body  his sole weapon.

Not that that was anything to sneer at. The recent modifications to his body weaponized everything from his hands to his teeth to his hair. His nails were curved and clawed and his teeth tapered into needle-sharp points. His silver hair draped down his wide back in wild, barbed tangles, gnarled like knotted rope. Besides, Sam didn’t have a weapon either, the greatsword back in Tristan’s possession. They were hardly evenly matched.

With single-minded determination, Sam ran to Braeden’s pallet, which sat undisturbed on the right side of the room. She tore off the blankets, hunting for one of Braeden’s daggers. Gods knew he stored the things everywhere.

She found a knife tucked beneath the straw mattress and grabbed it by its handle. She brandished the blade at the fast-approaching Braeden. “I’m armed now,” she warned him, her knife-bearing hand shaking.

Her warning, if he even understood it, did little to daunt him. He charged, his claws outstretched as he jumped over the pallet that separated them. Sam hopped sideways, and he sailed past her, snarling. His attacks weren’t hard to dodge; this beast lacked the subtlety and unpredictability--and most significantly--the intelligence that made the Braeden she knew such a deadly fighter.

With a flash, she realized she could win this fight. The problem was she didn’t want to.

Braeden lunged at her again, but this time she met him head on. He clamped her by the waist, nails digging into her flesh. Before he could move in for the kill, Sam wrapped her arms around his torso, as much as she was able to with his added girth, and held him upright. “Double-waist tie up,” Sam murmured, her face buried into his chest. His still-human heartbeat drummed against her ear. “Braeden, do you remember?” He gnashed his teeth in response. He didn’t remember.

She slithered her knife in between them, pressing the tip into the base of his throat. “I’ll do it,” she whispered. “I’ll do it if I have to.” She pushed the tip in, parting the topmost layers of skin, blood dripping down his throat in a slow river. Braeden growled and tightened his grip on her waist in response. “Don’t make me do it, Braeden.” Her voice choked up. “Please, gods, don’t make me do it.”

Could she even do it? Could she kill the man who risked his life for hers, who kept her most closely guarded secret, who liked her in spite of it? She could have been a woman alone in a man’s world, but she wasn’t. She had Braeden, her ally, her friend. Her maybe something more. The last was a thought she’d never allowed herself, but who cared now, when his life was a few inches of flesh away from dying at her hand?

Fat, angry tears trickled down her cheeks. “You stupid idiot, you promised you wouldn’t leave me!” She brought around her free hand, beating it against the solid wall of his chest, not caring if it made her vulnerable, not with her knife in his neck. “I know you’re in there somewhere!” she yelled. “Stop being so gods damned stubborn and snap out of it. This isn’t you! You’re better than this, Braeden.” A sob caught in her throat, but she swallowed it down. Sam didn’t cry, not for anything. The water leaking from her eyes and dripping off her chin didn’t count. That was…that was…

She beat Braeden’s chest harder, now slick with the wetness of her tears, the droplets spilling into a puddle of salt and blood. Rage, wild and ragged, filled her, tearing her carefully erected barriers asunder, her thoughts chaotic and unrestrained. She was so, so angry. She had seen Braeden on the edge of madness before, and he had come back from it every time. Yet now that he had teetered over the line, there was no turning back? All because of a tattoo? It was ridiculous, it was outrageous, it was unfair--“Gods damn it!” Her voice exploded with the swell of emotion in her breast. She was going to lose him; he was going to die at her blade. They would never again train together, fight together, talk together. She would never again see his strange, beautiful eyes or his mouth turn upwards into his rare, lopsided grin. She treasured those rare smiles, those even rarer moments when he let down his guard and laughed with her.

Sam wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, his monstrous arms around her waist and her knife in his neck. She waited and waited for the gods knew what, but Braeden’s claws just pushed deeper into her sides until she gasped with pain, and he angled his head, swooping down like a bird of prey.

Sam caught him by the jaw, his bared teeth inches from her face. She squeezed the hilt of her knife. “Goodbye, Braeden,” she said, and kissed him.