In the early sixteenth century, twenty-nine-year-old Night
Walker, second chief of the Turtle Clan of the Ah-ni-yv-wi-
ya, fought fearlessly as his entire clan, save him, was
decimated by the greedy pirate, Antonio Vargas. Vargas
escaped with his life and only a few remaining crewmen.
Night Walker was rewarded by the Old Ones to live until he
personally can spill the blood of his enemy.
Unfortunately, Vargas was killed by his crewmen.
Therefore, Night Walker will roam the earth until he can
find the evil soul of Vargas and eliminate the man.
Alicia Pointe is the daughter of one of the wealthiest men
in the nation. Her father, Richard Pointe, is the largest
arms manufacturer in the western hemisphere. Alicia
overhears Richard and Jacob Carruthers, a man she has
always called uncle, talking about a shipment to Osama bin
Laden. Horrified at learning her father is a traitor of
the vilest degree, Alicia flees from her home in Justice,
Georgia, intent on finding some authority to report this
act of betrayal. She makes the mistake of calling her
father and telling him of her plans. Richard immediately
sends one of his henchmen after his daughter, using the GPS
he had installed in her car to locate her. John
Nightwalker witnesses a struggle between a young woman and
a man, and intercedes. Against his better judgment he
takes Alicia to his fortress which is built on the same
land where his people's village once stood. When John
realizes why Alicia is running for her life from her
father, he knows that he has finally found his nemesis
reincarnated as Richard Pointe. Perhaps his five-hundred-
twenty-seven years on earth will come to an end soon, and
his soul will be reunited with his beloved wife, White Fawn.
Sharon Sala has created her most flawed and irresistible
hero to date and has paired him with a woman as strong and
determined as he is. In the beginning, Nightwalker is
willing to sacrifice everything, including Alicia, to
destroy her father. But as they travel a dangerous
journey together, Nightwalker knows that Alicia is as
strong and true of heart as White Fawn was, and he will
protect her at all costs. THE WARRIOR is exciting, fast-
moving, and totally entertaining.
John Nightwalker is a strong, rugged Native American
soldier who has seen many battles. While hunting down an old
enemy, he crosses paths with Alicia Ponte. On the run from
her father—a powerful arms manufacturer—Alicia seeks to
expose her father's traitorous crimes of selling weapons to
our enemies in Iraq. But Richard Ponte will do anything to
stay below the radar…even if it means killing his own
daughter.
Drawn to the mystery that surrounds Alicia,
John feels compelled to protect her. Together they travel
through the beautiful yet brutal Arizona desert to uncover
deadly truths and bring her father to justice. But their
journey is about to take an unexpected turn…one that goes
deep into the past.
Excerpt
Georgia—Present Day
Despite the hundreds of years that John Nightwalker had been
on this earth, he had yet to feel completely comfortable
wearing clothes. And from the look the female bank teller
was giving him as he stood in line at the First Savannah
Savings and Loan to cash a check, she would have been
perfectly happy to help him strip.
John felt her gaze but was ignoring all the signals. Not
only was he not in the mood for dallying with a stranger,
she was wearing a wedding ring—a big no-no for him. He
shifted from one foot to the other, then looked down at the
two little boys clinging to the legs of the woman in front
of him and grinned. The oldest one smiled back, while the
younger one continued the exploration of his right nostril
with his index finger.
"Hi," the older one said. "My name is Brandon Dog-gett." He
pointed toward the little guy. "That's Trevor Doggett. He's
my little brother." Then he pointed at his mother's
backside, which John had already noticed was quite shapely.
"That's my mama. Her name is Doggett, too."
When Mama Doggett realized her name was being bandied about,
she glanced over her shoulder to see who her son was talking
to. Her eyes widened slightly as she saw John Nightwalker's
face. The smooth coffee skin, high cheekbones, strong chin
and nose were telling of his Native American heritage, but
it was the sexy smile and glint in his eyes that stopped her
breath. She might be married, but she wasn't dead and the
man was stunning.
"I hope the boys aren't bothering you," she said.
John grinned. "No, ma'am."
"Daddy calls her Lisa," Brandon offered.
Lisa Doggett rolled her eyes as John chuckled.
The low, husky rumble of his laugh made the female teller
lose count of the cash she'd been dispensing. With pink
cheeks and a muttered apology to her customer, she began again.
Lisa Doggett, being next in line, finally reached the teller
and proceeded with her business. When they were done, the
teller handed each little boy a lollipop, which they
promptly peeled and popped into their mouths. Lisa flashed
John a shy goodbye smile and started toward the front door
with her sons in tow.
Being next in line, John moved up to the window, patiently
waiting as the teller keyed in some data from her previous
customer. There was a moment of silence—a soft, peaceful
sound of shuffling feet and the distant murmurs between loan
officers and their clients—then John felt the atmosphere
change. To him, the room was suddenly stifling and charged
with an anger he didn't understand.
"Sir. How can I help you?" the teller asked, but John didn't
respond.
His gaze went from Lisa Doggett and her boys, who were on
their way toward the exit, to the surrounding customers
waiting in line. Suddenly one of the two boys cried out,
then turned around and ran. John noticed a toy car in the
middle of the lobby and figured it had fallen out of a
pocket. He saw the mother's irked expression turn to one of
quiet patience as she waited for her son's return.
His attention moved from them to the rest of the crowd. At
first glance, no one stood out, and then his gaze fell on a
tall, heavyset man standing in line on the other side of the
lobby. He was wearing a pair of faded Levi's and a heavy
denim jacket. The jacket seemed out of place, considering
the outside temperature was in the high eighties. That alone
immediately set him apart. The man's lower jaw jutted from
his face like a bulldog's—a strong protruding lower jaw that
extended beyond the tip of a nose that had obviously been
broken more than once. His skin was ruddy, his hair a
brittle yellow color. John could feel the tension emanating
from him. He didn't know what was going to happen but sensed
it wouldn't be good.
As he continued to watch, the big man headed toward a
teller, walked up to the window and slid what appeared to be
a white cotton bag across the counter. It looked like an
ordinary deposit bag, but when the teller's face turned pale
and her eyes widened in shock, John tensed.
He could see the man's lips moving, but he was too far away
to hear what was being said. All of a sudden the teller's
eyes rolled back in her head as she dropped to the floor in
a faint. Everyone heard the thud as her head collided with
the hard marble floor. The teller next to her screamed out
for help as everything ground to a halt.
Wallace Deeds cursed beneath his breath, unable to believe
what had just happened. In all the years he'd been doing
this, he'd never had anyone faint on him before. He was a
criminal, but he wasn't stupid. At this point, his best bet
was to retrieve the note he'd handed to the teller and
calmly walk out of the building. To his dismay, the note was
no longer on the counter. It was on the floor beside the
unconscious woman.
"Crap," Wallace muttered, and slid his hand in his pocket,
taking comfort from the gun he could feel inside. He glanced
up and around, quickly sizing up the number of people inside
the bank against his need for dough. He opted for a hasty exit.
But his plan was screwed by a secretary who'd come to the
unconscious teller's aid. She was on her knees beside the
woman and feeling for a pulse when she discovered the note.
I have a gun. Put all your money in the bag and keep
quiet or you're a dead woman.
Unaware that he'd been made, Deeds was already heading
toward the door when the secretary stood up and screamed.
"Stop him! He has a gun!"
Wallace cursed and turned. The bank guard was pulling out
his pistol and coming toward him on the run. Without
thinking, Wallace grabbed the nearest customer by the arm
and put her in a choke hold as he pulled out his own gun and
fired a shot into the ceiling.
"Everyone on the floor! Now!" he screamed.
The bank guard stood his ground, still aiming his weapon and
shouting, "Drop the gun! Drop it! Drop it and let her go!"
John groaned. The hostage was none other than Lisa Doggett,
the young woman with the two little boys who'd been in line
in front of him.
Bad move. Bad, bad move.
The young mother's panic was evident as she cast a frantic,
wild-eyed gaze at her little boys. Trevor, the youngest,
began to cry and started toward her.
"Don't anybody move!" Wallace roared, waving the gun at the
guard, then at the kids and back again.
John knew the man was a hair's breadth away from shooting
someone, whether he meant to or not, and Trevor Doggett's
determination to get to his mother was putting him in harm's
way. There was no time for John to think about the wisdom of
his actions.
In one swift move, he pulled a knife from his boot and
leaped forward, desperate to draw the gunman's attention
away from the boys, his hostage and the guard with the gun,
knowing full well that he was going to get shot. Knowing
full well it was going to hurt like hell— but it wasn't
going to kill him.
That was the edge he had over everyone else in the room.
He'd faced death and cheated it countless times over the
last five hundred years and had every confidence in the
world that he was going to cheat it again.
When Wallace Deeds saw the movement from the corner of his
eye, he swung his pistol. A man was coming at him on the run.
"Son of a bitch!" he screamed, then fired.
The shot went straight into John's chest. He felt the impact
and a sharp, searing pain, but he didn't go down.
When Deeds' hostage fainted and went limp, she became a
liability instead of a shield. Disgusted, he shoved her
aside and squeezed off another shot. But it was the knife
suddenly protruding from his chest that sent his second shot
into the ceiling next to the first.
A collective gasp rose from inside the bank, followed by a
silence so stark that everyone froze.
Lisa Doggett had come to and was on her knees, shielding her
children with her body.
The tellers had ducked behind the counter.
The people who'd dropped to their bellies when the shooting
started were staring but not moving.
No one ran.
No one spoke.
But the ones who could see were staring in disbelief at the
two giants standing in the middle of the lobby—both bleeding
profusely—waiting to see who dropped first.
The pistol slipped out of Deeds' hand as he reached toward
the bone handle of the knife stuck in his chest. But the
moment he touched it, he shuddered. Had someone poured hot
oil into his chest? He looked up. People's faces were blurring.
"How…" He sighed, then staggered backward.
John groaned as he put a hand to his own chest. The warm
gush of his blood was already slowing as he watched the
gunman fall. Wallace's head hit the tile with a sickening
crack, but he never felt it. He was already dead.
The bank guard holstered his weapon and started toward John.
Lisa Doggett was shaking, but she was alive and her children
were safe.
People were getting up and yanking out their cell phones,
anxious to tell their loved ones what had just happened.
While on his belly, one customer had videoed the whole thing
with his cell phone, and now he was in the act of forwarding
it to his brother. The image of what had transpired would be
all over the Internet before nightfall.
Horace Miles, the bank president, was moving through the
crowd, making sure everyone was okay. When he saw the blood
on the front and back of John's shirt, he gasped and yelled
for someone to call 911.
John was anxious to be gone before he had to explain why the
bullet hole in his chest was already nearly closed. He
pulled his knife out of the robber's chest, then wiped the
blood off the blade onto the man's jacket before slipping it
back into the sheath inside his boot.
The bank guard reached John and took him by the elbow.
"You need to sit down, son," he said. "You've been shot."
"I'm okay," John said.
"The police are coming!" someone said.
Sirens could be heard in the distance. John sighed. He
needed to leave—now. He started toward the door, but Horace
Miles cut him off. Like the guard, he took John by the elbow
and tried to usher him to a chair.
"Please," Miles said. "You're bleeding. Let us help you."
"I'm all right… really."
But the bank president would have none of it.
Lisa Doggett came toward him, hugging her little boys to her
legs as she stared at him in disbelief.
"You saved my life. You saved all of us," she whispered.
"Thank you. Thank you."
"Yeah… sure," he said, then gave in to the inevitable. He
was caught now, and there was no way out of it.
The two little boys stared at him—silent now in the face of
what they'd witnessed.
"Mama's okay, boys," John said softly.
Brandon nodded. "You stopped the bad man," he said.
John just winked and nodded. The pain in his chest was
fading swiftly, but the sirens were also getting closer.
Moments later, a half-dozen police cars were on the scene,
followed by two ambulances. A paramedic team followed the
police inside, then, at the guard's direction, headed for John.
He sighed. How the hell was he going to explain his way out
of this?
"I'm okay," he said as the paramedics dropped their bags and
began to cut off his shirt. "I said… I'm okay," he repeated,
and to prove he was right, he pulled up his shirt, revealing
the wound that was almost closed.
Both paramedics rocked back on their heels, staring at John
and then at each other.
"Mister… how in—"
"Er… uh… I studied with the Dalai Lama," John said.
"Learned how to control bleeding and heal myself with my
mind. Ever hear of it?"
They looked at each other, shrugged, and then began packing
up their gear while sneaking curious looks at him.
But they weren't the only ones staring. The bank president
was in shock. He'd seen the bullet pierce John's chest, seen
the blood spurting, yet now the wound was nearly closed.
He'd seen the other scars on John's chest, too, and was
staggered by what this man had suffered and lived through.
Just when John was getting ready to leave, a skinny man in a
suit followed several uniformed officers into the bank,
paused long enough to question the guard, then headed
straight for John, who recognized the type, as well as the
badge clipped to the man's belt.
Great. A detective. Naturally nosy, disinclined to believe
anything he was told. This ought to be good.
John saw him pause to look at the dead man; then he looked
straight at John, who stared back without flinching.
Horace Miles stepped into the silent breach by introducing
himself as the cop approached.
"I'm Horace Miles, president of the bank. I saw everything."
"Detective Robert Lee," the newcomer said, then put his
hands on his hips and gave John the once-over, eyeing the
bloody shirt as well as the blood on John's jeans. "So,
hero, what's your name?"
Sarcasm was the last thing John expected. It made him angry.
He stood abruptly, well aware that he was now towering over
the skinny man's head.
"Considering the fact that right now, my chest hurts like
hell, I don't appreciate your sarcasm," he drawled. "My name
is John Nightwalker, and I'm not a hero. I was just in the
wrong place at the right time."
Lee wanted to be pissed, but the man was right. "Sorry," he
said. "That came out wrong. Let's back up and do this all
over again. So, Mr. Nightwalker, could you tell me what
happened?"
John pointed to the walls where a half-dozen cameras were
mounted. "I could… but it appears that Mr. Miles here will
be able to provide several different angles on the incident
for your viewing pleasure. Suffice it to say, the man tried
to rob the bank, took a woman hostage and was pointing his
gun at one of her kids. I distracted him. He shot me instead
of the kid. I put a knife in his chest."
Believing John had already been tended by paramedics, Lee's
next thought was the weapon in question. "May I see that knife?"
John winced as he leaned over, pulled up the leg of his
jeans, then pulled the knife back out of its scabbard.
The detective's eyes widened and his mouth dropped as he
eyed the wicked blade. It was almost ten inches in length,
with its widest point no less than three inches across. The
handle appeared to be some kind of bone— maybe ivory. He
frowned.
"Hell, mister, that thing's big enough to fight bears with."
"Yes."
Startled by the easy answer, Lee gave John a cool look.
"Don't tell me you fight bears, too?"
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