Burned

carcass at my feet.”

From his peripheral vision, Stark could see that the heat he was feeling was the warmth of the blood that was pumping steadily from the two wounds. The Other was right. He was going down.

He had to fight—and he had to fight now. If he kept hesitating, kept being purely defensive, he would die.

With an action that was completely instinctual, Stark lunged forward, striking out at his mirror image, at everything, anything that could possibly be an opening in his guard, but the red-eyed version of him blocked each move easily. And then, like a cobra, he struck back, sliding through Stark’s defenses and hacking a long, deep wound in one thigh.

“You can’t beat me. I know all your moves. I’m everything you’re not. That goodness crap has made you weak. That’s why you couldn’t protect Zoey to begin with. Loving her made you weak.”

“No! Loving Zoey is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“Yeah, well, it’ll be the last thing you’ve ever done, that’s for—”

Stark was wrenched back into his body. He opened his eyes to see Seoras standing over him, dirk in one hand, the other pressed against his forehead.

“No! I have to go back!” he cried. He felt like his body was on fire. The pain in his sides was unbelievable—the force of it pumped adrenaline through his system. His first instinct was to move! Get away! Fight!

“Nae, boy. Remember yie cannae be movin’,” Seoras said.

Stark’s breath was coming fast and hard as he forced his body to stay still—stay there.

“Get me back,” he told the Guardian. “I have to get back.”

“Stark, listen to me.” Suddenly Aphrodite’s face was there above him. “It’s Heath that’s the key. You have to get to him before you see Zoey. Tell him he has to move on. He has to leave Zoey in the Other-world, or she’ll never come back here.”

“What? Aphrodite?”

She grabbed his arm and brought her face down close to his. He could see the blood in her eyes and was jolted by the realization that she must have just had a vision.

“Trust me. Get to Heath. Make him leave. If you don’t, there’s no one who’ll stop Neferet and Kalona, and it’s over for all of us.”

“If he’s to be returnin’, he must be goin’ the now,” Seoras said.

“Take him back,” Sgiach said.

The bright edges around Stark’s vision began to go gray, and he struggled against being pulled under again.

“Wait! Tell me. How—how do I fight myself?” Stark managed to gasp.

“Ach, ’tis quite simple really. The Warrior within yie must die tae give birth to the Shaman.”

Stark couldn’t tell whether Seoras’s words were a response to his question, or whether they came from his memory, and he had no time to figure it out. In less than a heartbeat, Seoras grabbed his head with a viselike grip and dragged the blade across Stark’s eyelids. In a searing, blinding flash he was once more facing himself as if he’d never been gone. Although disoriented by the pain of the Guardian’s last cut, Stark realized his body was reacting quicker than his mind could comprehend, and he was easily defending himself against the attack of his mirror image. It was as if the line of the last cut had revealed a geometry of strike lines into the heart of the Other that Stark had never known before, and, because he’d not known it, maybe the Other did not know, either. If that was so, he had a chance, but only a slim one.

“I can do this all day. You can’t. Damn, my ass is easy to kick.” The red-eyed Stark laughed arrogantly.

As he laughed, Stark lunged, following a strike line that pain and need had revealed, catching the outside edge of his mirror image’s forearm.

“Fuck me! You actually drew blood. Didn’t think you had it in you!”

“Yeah, well, that’s one of your problems; you’re too damn arrogant.” Stark saw the hesitation that rippled through his mirror image, and a hint of understanding whispered in his mind. He followed that thought as naturally as he’d lifted the broadsword in defense and glimpsed the strike lines all across his body. “No, it’s not that you’re too damn arrogant. It’s me. I’m arrogant.”

His mirror image’s guard wavered. Stark understood completely then, and he pressed on. “I’m selfish, too. That’s how I killed my mentor. I was too selfish to let anyone beat me at anything.”

“No!” the red-eyed Stark yelled. “That’s not you—that’s me.”

Seeing the opening, Stark struck again, slicing into the Other’s side. “You’re wrong, and you know it. You’re what’s bad about me, but you’re still me. The Warrior wouldn’t be able to admit it, but the Shaman in me is beginning to understand it.” As Stark spoke, he drove relentlessly forward, raining blows down on his mirror image. “We’re arrogant. We’re selfish. Sometimes we’re mean. We have a bad fucking temper, and when we get pissed off, we hold a grudge.”

Stark’s words seemed to trigger something in the Other, and he retaliated with a speed almost beyond belief, attacking Stark with a skill and vengeance that was overwhelming. Oh, Goddess, no. Don’t let my mouth have messed this up. As Stark barely defended himself against the onslaught, he realized he was reacting too rationally, too predictably. The only possible way to defeat himself was to do what the Other wouldn’t be expecting,

I have to give him an opening to kill me.

As the Other rained the blows in to break him, Stark knew this was it. He feigned dropping his guard on his left. With unstoppable momentum the Other went for the gap, lunging forward and making himself—for an instant—even more vulnerable than Stark. Stark saw the strike line, the geometry of the true opening, and with ferocity he didn’t know himself capable of, smashed the sword hilt down on the skull of the Other.

Stark’s mirror image fell to his knees. Gasping for breath, he was barely able to hold the broadsword up any longer.

“So now you kill me, get into the Otherworld, and get the girl.”

“No. Now I accept you because no matter how wise I am or how good I manage to become, you’ll always be there inside me.”

Red eyes met brown eyes once more. The Other dropped his sword, and with one swift motion hurled himself forward, driving Stark’s broadsword to its hilt in his chest. In the raw intimacy of the moment the Other exhaled, so close to him that Stark breathed in the last of the Other’s sweet breath.

Stark’s gut clenched. Himself! He’d killed himself! Shaking his head in terrible realization, he cried, “No! I—” Even as he shouted the denial, the red-eyed Stark smiled knowingly, and through bloodstained lips whispered, “I’ll see you again, Warrior, sooner than you think.”

Stark lowered the Other to his knees, simultaneously drawing the great sword from his chest.

Time suspended as the divine light of Nyx’s realm focused on the sword, glinting along its bloody but beautiful length and blinding Stark, exactly like Seoras’s last cut had seared his vision, and miraculously, momentarily, it was as if the ancient Guardian was there beside him and the Other as the three Warriors gazed at the sword.

Seoras spoke without taking his eyes off the hilt. “Aye, it will be the Guardian’s claymore for yie boy, a sword forged in hot wet blood, used only in the defense of honor, wielded by a man who has chosen tae guard an Ace, a bann ri, a queen. Its blade is honed tae a bonnie sharpness that cuts withoot pain, and the Guardian who bears this blade will strike withoot mercy, fear, or favor, against those who would defile our grand lineage.”