Beautiful Warrior by Sheri Whitefeather Read Free Book Online

unkempt, which was why I saw Abby that way.
    Nonetheless, I was grateful that Seven loved her. I’d given them the kind of relationship I longed to have.
    We cut across the field, and the clouds shifted, the shapes morphing into butterflies. Was that my way of placing myself into Duncan’s painting, of becoming a romantic part of it?
    I actually wanted Duncan to do a portrait of me, but I wouldn’t dare ask him . Lori said that he only painted people he loved. And the only person I knew of who Duncan loved had been Jack. But I had other things to think about right now, namely muddling through this hallucination without my schizophrenia getting worse.
    We neared the house, the five of us staying together . When we reached the front door, I was encouraged to knock.
    I rapped lightly, but no one answered.
    “Try again,” Seven said.
    I knocked harder this time, but still no answer.
    Face co mplained. “We came all this way, and he isn’t here? Talk about a waste of time.”
    I frowned, wondering what we were supposed to do . Sit on the porch and wait?
    After a long pause, Seven said, “He’s in the barn . I just got a reading on him.”
    “He better be ,” Face remarked.
    We walked around to the side of the house and toward the barn. Seven’s reading was correct. The warrior came out of the building, holding the reins of a big black stallion.
    He caug ht sight of us, and I stopped in my tracks. Even from this distance, I could see his remarkable likeness to Duncan. If I didn’t know better, I could be fooled into believing that he was Duncan. He wore his hair banded into a ponytail, and his clothes were a casual white T-shirt and jeans.
    “You should go talk to him alone,” Seven said. “We’ll stay here in case you need us.”
    With my pulse shooting straight through my pores, I ventured off by myself, trudging through the grass toward the warrior. The horse whinnied, and I took that to be a friendly sign. Thank goodness it wasn’t snorting or pawing the ground.
    As I got closer to Duncan’s clone, I noticed that he was as aware of me as I was of him.
    We came face to face and gazed into each other’s eyes, neither of us uttering a single word.

 
    Chapter Seven
     
    After a long , sweet flutter of soul-stirring, heart-jarring silence, he finally spoke.
    “D o I know you?” he asked. “You seem familiar.”
    “My name i s Vanessa.”  I was still staring at him, still reeling from his effect on me. “And we sort of know each other because of where I come from.”
    “Did you create me?”
    I nodded, pleased that he sensed our connection. He behaved so much like Duncan, I had to remind myself to breathe. Of course there was a significant difference. The real Duncan didn’t believe that I’d created him.
    “Do you want to ride with me?” he asked.
    “Where to?”
    “Just some trails.”  He pointed off in the distance , far beyond his house.
    I wasn’ t about to refuse. I would go anywhere with him, even to hell and back if that was where he took me.
    He boosted me onto the horse , then hopped up behind me. We would be riding bareback, our bodies pressed intimately close. Already I was lost in his nearness. He even smelled like Duncan, with a hint of spicy cologne. And like the warrior from the previous realm, his wrists were tattooed, also mirroring Duncan’s.
    He took the rein s and guided us in the direction he wanted to go. I glanced up at the sky, curious to see if the butterfly clouds were still there, but they’d gone back to being feathers, flowers, and broken arrows. If I wasn’t already acquainted with those symbols, I would’ve thought the broken arrows were out of sync, compared to the feathers and flowers. But in most Native tribes, broken arrows represented peace. I’d learned that from Duncan, who’d researched it online.
    I leaned back, toward my current companion , taking comfort in his Duncan-like presence. We rode for a while, daylight surrounding us. The terrain was