Free Arrow to the Soul by Lea Griffith Page A

tranquility.
    “Tell me about Aziveh,” she whispered.
    His face hardened in a split second, turning dark in his fury.
    Her arrow met its mark. Her heart sighed while her mind rejoiced. It was a small victory in the face of a looming defeat. She’d live another day then.
    “You speak her name; obviously you know what she is to me.”
    Oh, his voice was horrible. Gone was the lovely cajoling depth of it, replaced with bottomless menace and hate.
    “But I don’t know who Aziveh is.”
    Yes, she did. She was the Afghani woman Adam Collins had given his heart to. Then she’d been married off to an elderly tribal leader and lost to him.
    “Don’t say her name,” he growled.
    She nodded. “There is power in a name.”
    “It has nothing to do with power and everything to do with her beautiful name coming from the mouth of a murderer.”
    His words scored her and she wondered why she was so weak with this man. She’d never shied from pain, hadn’t been lying when she’d told him it centered her. But this hurt was more than others—it was different . He’d drawn blood with his scorn.
    Arrow stepped around him and threw the towel to the floor, wrapping her hair once again in a knot atop her head. She ignored the red stains on the towel, made a blade with her hand, and placed just her fingertips against the wood of the dummy. She concentrated with all of her might, pain and truth roiling in her gut, and she aimed her thoughts at the Wing Chun dummy. Power was infinite and as long as your mind was strong enough to control its flow, you could wield it and strike, killing whatever stood in your path.
    Arrow did so then, her gaze narrowing as if a target lay beyond her yumi, only this time there was no ya to send flying. This time, her weapon was her fist. Her shoulder relaxed and her breathing slowed. The power prowled under her skin like a snake about to strike and then she did. Between one breath and the next, she poured that power through her body, let it center in her arm, and with the speed of a cobra, fisted her hand, striking the dummy. Over and over she settled her fingertips against the smooth wood only to let the power flow through her right fist to strike the inanimate object. She closed her eyes, opened herself up to the pain focusing on each blow.
    How long he stood there she didn’t know, but eventually the tightness at the base of her neck disappeared. And still she struck the dummy until numbness crept up her arm and fatigue weighted her heart. The wood finally gave, splitting apart and falling in two solid pieces to the floor.
    Then she stopped and began her kata .
    Time lost meaning as the movements of her body brought her peace. Her mind calmed though her center remained in flux, turbulent and frothing with emotions she wouldn’t give name to. And it was her center that twisted and turned in the tumult of her interaction with Adam Collins.
    Because Saya had no soul.
    •●•
    “Where is Arrow?” Bullet asked as she walked toward the workout room.
    Adam couldn’t answer; his throat was clogged with rage. So he motioned with a sharp turn of his head instead.
    “What did you do?”
    He glared at Bullet. “What did I do? You know her right? Perhaps you should be asking her what she did.”
    “She asked about Aziveh.” Bullet knew her sister well apparently.
    He threw his hands in the air, frustration singing through his bloodstream. He wanted to bite her head off, remembered she was healing and besides, she wasn’t his target. The bitch beating her hand to a bloody pulp in the workout room was.
    “We knew about all of you. Our research brought us many facts. You were our enemies according to Joseph and information is power. She used Aziveh as a distraction. So I’ll ask you again, Adam, what did you do to her?”
    His vision blackened. “I didn’t do a goddamn thing to the killer,” he nearly yelled.
    “Back away, Adam,” Rand said from the end of the hall.
    Bullet turned to him, anger in