Darkness Awakened (Primal Heat Trilogy #1) (Order of the Blade) Read Online Free Page A

and didn’t move to help him. Quinn could feel the turmoil inside Gideon as he struggled to understand what had happened. It was the same way he was feeling.
    “I’m not due to report to Dante on the trainees’ progress for two more days,” Quinn said evenly. “That gives me forty-eight hours to find Elijah.” Quinn located the ID brand on the youth’s left pectoral muscle, where it would have stayed unless he made the Order. Then it would have shifted to the back of the shoulder and updated to the double crossed hook swords of the Order brand.
    Quinn frowned as he read the ID tag. “Ajax Drachman.” Drachman. The name sounded familiar. He knew he’d heard it before tonight, before the kid had shown up at his door. What was the kid’s deal? Quinn checked another trainee. Roger Filcox. The name meant nothing to him. Not like Drachman. “Why did my weapon and Drachman’s get stolen, but not the others?”
    “Six dead innocents.” Gideon ignored Quinn’s question as he strode over to a trainee and yanked the kid’s shirt open so he could record the tag. “I’m reporting Elijah to Dante. We need to send out everyone to find him. He has to die.” His voice became hard as he said the words. “We have no choice. It’s our duty.”
    “Screw that.” Quinn gave Gideon a cold stare across the bodies. “If Elijah can be brought back from the edge, we’re going to do it. We owe him, like we all owe each other.”
    A shadow passed over Gideon’s face. “You two aren’t the only ones I owe. I have a duty to the innocents he might kill next. Innocents like these kids.”
    “For hell’s sake, Gideon, this is Elijah . You can’t condemn him outright. You know you can’t.” Quinn walked among the bodies, studying them, trying to think, trying to figure out Elijah’s motivation, but he came up with no answers. There were no excuses for what his blood brother had done. The only explanation was that he had gone rogue, and, for him to murder his best friend, he had to be so far over the line that there was nothing left of the man who had been his friend. Quinn swore and slammed his sword into the earth in frustration. “I don’t get it.”
    “Me either.” Gideon walked up and slammed his hand onto Quinn’s shoulder. They stood side by side at the edge of the clearing, guarding the bodies they’d sworn to protect when the trainees had been given over to them. The kids they’d failed. The youths that Quinn had led to their death.
    Why had he led them the wrong way? He was always right, but he’d made the wrong choice. Why? What had screwed with his instincts? Quinn listened to the wind whirling through the tree, and he opened his senses to his woods, trying to uncover the mask that had rendered his instincts inoperable. The forest smelled of death and treachery, and Quinn stood straighter. “Can you smell that? There’s a shift of equilibrium. An imbalance. Something’s not right.”
    Gideon’s eyes narrowed, but he turned his head to the woods, closed his eyes and raised his face to the breeze. Quinn picked up the slight vibration as Gideon opened all his senses, reaching out on a metaphysical level to test the world.
    After a moment, Gideon opened his eyes, staring into the forest. “You’re right. I feel something dark lurking beneath the surface of the earth.”
    Hot damn. Quinn slammed his fist into his palm, psyched by the discovery. There really was something else going on. “We need to find Elijah and get answers,” he said. “Killing him straight up isn’t the solution. He’s involved. He’ll know.”
    The muscles in Gideon’s jaw were working, the tendons in his neck rigid. “What if he kills other innocents while we search for him?” His eyes were dark with the agony of what he knew he had to do. “I can’t let you go after him.”
    Quinn knew it was tearing Gideon up to make the decision that would result in the death of either his friend or maybe more innocents. Screw that.