by Tessa Cole
The nightmare glared at him, the hellfire in his eyes blazing, then he jerked his arm free. He slammed his fist into the face of one of the other assailants, knocking him to the ground, and charged down the path toward Titus and Cassius.
“This doesn’t involve you, angel,” the demon-vampire said. “You should run.”
In one swift motion, he drew his katana, turned, decapitated an assailant rushing up behind him, and strode after the nightmare.
I stared at the headless body, its blood rushing into a thick pool and soaking into the ground. It had happened so fast I almost couldn’t make myself believe what I’d just seen. Sure, I’d just seen Titus kill someone, and I’d watched people kill and die during the war, but that man’s death had been so quick and emotionless. As if the demon-vampire had felt nothing when he’d taken that life.
Sebastian dropped to the ground beside me as I sat up and pulled in my wings. Behind him, Hawk now fought with the shadow fae, his attacks with his knife not as sleek or efficient as the fae’s but still confident as if he’d fought with a knife before.
“Are you hurt?” Sebastian asked.
“No. I’m—” I tried to catch my breath, still stunned from my fall and the horror of the nightmare’s magic. The world was still spinning and I was so exhausted it was hard to keep my head up. “I’m—”
I dragged in another breath, this one harder than the last.
Hawk grunted and Sebastian’s attention jumped back to him. The shadow fae yanked his dagger from Hawk’s shoulder and rammed his fist into Hawk’s gut.
“I’m—” I fought to draw my next breath against a rising pressure squeezing my insides. It was as if I’d cracked my ribs again. Each inhalation was agonizing, and darkness started to creep around the edges of my vision. “I’m—”
An invisible weight slammed into my chest, stealing what little air I had left and making my pulse race. I gasped, but there was no air to breathe in. Every muscle in my body tensed and I collapsed onto my side, my lungs burning.
“Amiah!” Sebastian’s eyes flashed wide. His attention jerked up, and he yelled for Titus.
The world spun faster as the darkness in my vision swelled. I desperately reached for any glimmer of magic I had to save myself. But just like the last time, I had nothing left. And even if I did have magic, it wouldn’t save me. There was no air to breathe. That wasn’t something I could fix.
Chapter 14
Amiah
“Where the fuck is Titus?” Sebastian yelled and he rolled me to my back, captured my face with his cool palms, and pressed his lips against mine.
I froze. Shocked. Sebastian was kissing me. I was dying, and he was kissing me. I’d wondered what it would be like to kiss him, how it would make me feel. Would he surprise me and tease me with something gentle or be strong and brash like he always was? Except I couldn’t tell if I felt anything. Everything within me was howling, desperate to breathe.
Then he released his breath into my mouth and I gasped it in against the pressure in my chest.
He turned his attention back to the fight around us. “Find Titus!”
“Little busy,” Hawk said, his voice barely audible against the rushing in my ears.
Sebastian gave me another breath. “You’re going to need to hold the next one.” He pressed his lips against mine and gave me a bigger breath.
I tried to gasp in as much as I could, forcing my burning lungs to expand against the invisible weight crushing me.
“Find Titus. The big guy. Now.” Sebastian pressed his hands to his chest, and both the sleep glyph on his shoulder and the force-wave glyph on his forearm burst to life, along with a third glyph that curled across his ribs.
With a scream, he released a massive blast of power that swept dust into my eyes and made the world darken and spin. Hawk staggered into the trailer, leaning against it to keep standing, while the shadow fae fell to his hands and knees. Beyond them, everyone along the path collapsed, some completely unconscious. All except the tall stern guy. He staggered, dropped to one knee, and his attention jerked to us.
“Fucking hell,” Hawk hissed and he jabbed his blade toward the shadow fae’s back, but the fae dropped and rolled under the trailer.
Gasping and trembling, Sebastian gave me another shallow breath, and Hawk dropped to his knees to chase after the shadow fae.
“No. Titus,” Sebastian barked. “They’re too far apart and everyone won’t be down for long.”
Hawk’s attention jumped to me. “Shit.” He bolted down the path.
Sebastian gave me another weak breath, his expression tight with pain and his eyes filled with fear. The glow in his skin was gone and his complexion was gray. Whatever he’d cast, it had taken a lot out of him.
The darkness in my vision swelled. His breaths weren’t going to sustain me for much longer.
Another warm breath filled my mouth and, too late, I tried to breathe it in, but it vanished before I could inhale it. Sebastian’s hands, back on my cheeks holding me steady, trembled and he gave me another shallow breath.
Someone yelled. Sebastian’s cool presence disappeared and strong hands picked me up.
Whoever held me clutched me tight and started running, and I gasped in a painful breath, the crushing pressure still present, but at least the air was back.
Titus had to be near. I dragged my eyes open to find him and looked up into his ferocious golden gaze. He didn’t look nearly as affected as I was, and I didn’t know if I should be furious or grateful for that.
He barreled around the only remaining brick wall of what used to be a house into another tent alley. Ahead, Hawk and Sebastian — Hawk with his arm slung around Sebastian’s waist helping him — slipped between a wooden stall with a red awning and a blue pickup truck, and Titus followed.
“We can’t keep running,” Cassius said from behind Titus.
“There’s a storm drain overflow up ahead. Do you have enough juice to eliminate our trail?” Hawk asked Sebastian, who nodded.
We cut between two more tents, across ten feet of waist-high grass and weeds, and skidded down the concrete incline into the currently dry, man-made runoff creek. Ahead lay the dark mouth of the storm drain, its metal grate twisted back providing an opening big enough for us to enter.
The guys didn’t slow once inside. They kept running deeper into the cool, damp darkness, Hawk leading us down one pipe then another and another until we reached a hole where part of the wall had collapsed.
“We can catch our breath in here,” Hawk said, helping Sebastian climb over the rubble and up a short, steep incline.
Titus set me on the ground at the top of the incline — which was actually a blue-tiled floor littered with debris, rubble, broken glass, and dirt. I lifted my gaze to a high domed ceiling covered with a blue and white mosaic. The intricate design flowed around tall windows close to the ceiling, letting in just enough light to soften the darkness — the glass long broken — and ran down the walls and the half dozen pillars supporting the dome. A few feet away sat a curved bench, one of many ringing a large recessed area in the center. It looked like we’d entered what had once been a fancy European bathhouse.
With a grunt of pain, Titus climbed up beside me then moved past me so Cassius could climb in as well. He stopped beside me on his knees, his expression icy and his angel glow blazing.
“You okay?” A spark snapped from his hand and he shifted away from me.
“Are you?” I asked back.
Blood oozed down his cheek from a gash above his left eye and his T-shirt had been cut in numerous places.
“Nothing you can do about it,” he said.
“I’ve more than just my magic.” I could still treat them with non-magical methods. Even dizzy and exhausted, I was sure I could manage something. “We still need to take stock. What’s everyone’s condition?”
And I wasn’t going to think about how I’d almost died because Titus had moved too far away from me.
I struggled to push a
way my fear and turned to face the rest of the guys to assess their conditions.
Except Hawk knelt in front of me, blocking my view. He ducked in close, grabbed the back of my head, and before I could say anything or pull away, captured my lips with his.
I gasped in surprise and he pushed his tongue into my mouth, raking it against mine.
Holy smokes. This was a real kiss.
Desire ignited within me. All the desperate need I’d been fighting for far too long, need that had been behind a wall of restraint that Sebastian and now Hawk had shattered, surged inside me.
I tangled my fingers in his hair, purposefully brushing the base of this horns, and kissed him back. He groaned, the sound low and dark, and his kiss turned ferocious. His grip in my hair tightened and he pulled my head back, arching my back and pushing my breasts forward. His other hand plunged down the front of my dress and he roughly palmed my breast, the sensation rushing through me, drawing a moan.
My core throbbed and I strained to move against his grip and straddle him, but he held me firm, fully controlling my body. Then a whisper of his sensual magic caressed inside of me and a soft climax rolled through me.
I shuddered with my release and whimpered into his mouth, satisfied and yet disappointed it had happened so fast and softly.
“Let her go.” Cassius wrenched me out of Hawk’s embrace and slammed his fist into the incubus’s face with a resounding crunch.
“Fucking hell,” Hawk gasped, blood running from his nose. “I just needed a top up.”
And boy had I given him a top up. Succubi and Incubi survived on sexual energy. Anything that was lustful: thoughts, kissing, touching, and of course intercourse. And while they didn’t need to participate in any of the activities, flesh-to-flesh contact provided more powerful energy than just standing nearby, and being the focus of the lust and participating was the most powerful of all.
He pushed his broken nose back into place, his enhanced healing stopping the bleeding and starting to set it already, proving just how much of a top up I’d given him.
“Pretty sure she didn’t mind,” he said, giving me a smug smile and making my cheeks heat with embarrassment. “And I didn’t just take. I’m generous like that.”
Oh, my God! If it hadn’t been obvious to the others that I’d orgasmed — again — it was now.
“Just because you seduced her with magic doesn’t mean she consented.” Smoke billowed around me and Cassius’s hands grew searing hot, stinging my skin.
“Cassius.” His lack of control was really starting to concern me. I tried to push out of his embrace before his fire manifested and burned me. “Cassius, please.”
His attention dropped to me and his smoke.
“Shit.” With a growl, he set me on the floor and wrenched away. His smoke vanished but now he was so tense, trying to hold it back, he shook. “You don’t get to use your magic on anyone you like.”
“Oh, there was no magic involved.” Hawk’s smile turned wicked, renewing my aching desire. “Well, not until—”
“That’s enough,” I said before Hawk could go on. “I’m exhausted—” And embarrassed and frustrated on so many levels. “And my chest still hurts from the leash spell.”
And I’m still trapped.
I fought to shove down everything I was feeling and focus on the situation. “Hawk is now healed. Who else is bleeding and how badly?”
“I’ll manage,” Cassius said, even though his clothes were ripped and bloody and the right side of his face was starting to swell, making it hard for him to fully open his eye. “If everyone else can manage as well, we should get back to Bane’s and regroup.”
“Not until we stop leaving a blood trail,” Sebastian said, leaning back against the pillar beside us, his appearance the opposite of Cassius’s. His shirt wasn’t overly bloody, but he must have had a serious injury somewhere because his complexion was still gray and there was a small pool of blood beside him. “Both the Shadow and Spring Courts will be able to track us by our blood, and I don’t have enough juice to hold up the group concealment spell and remove all traces of us as we make our way back home. The minute we move on and our blood is no longer within the concealment spell, they’ll be able to hone in on it.”
“Which means none of us can bleed until the samples they’ve no doubt taken from our fight degrade.” Cassius shifted, sucked in a sharp breath, and pressed his arm to his side. He probably had broken ribs as well. “In fifteen or sixteen hours?”
“I’d go with at least twenty-four to be safe,” Sebastian said. “And I can’t keep up the concealment that long without a break. Amiah, have you got enough magic to stop our bleeding?”
“No.” I had nothing. “If I rest, I can recover some. How long can you hold the concealment?”
“If I’m just holding the concealment spell, I can keep it up for a while. How long do you need?” Sebastian asked.
“Honest inventory everyone,” Cassius said, saving me from confessing I didn’t even have enough magic to assess anyone’s injuries. “I took some really nasty cuts from some of those shifters, but I’ve seared the worst of them shut so I’m not even close to bleeding out.” Which had to have been excruciating.
Sure, his fire magic gave him the ability to cauterize wounds that regularly couldn’t be cauterized and he now wasn’t bleeding, but he’d replaced those lacerations with nasty burns. Burns he normally wouldn’t have because unless he purposely set his mind to it, his fire didn’t burn him. “I’m also pretty sure I have at least one broken rib.”
I started to stand to move to him, but the room twisted and darkened before I’d even gotten off my knees, and I sagged back down to the floor. “Come here and take off your shirt so I can see just how many ribs you’ve broken.”
The muscles in his jaw flexed and his expression grew icier. But he got up, knelt before me, and pulled off his ruined T-shirt, revealing an angry patchwork of second degree burns and lacerations, many of which were oozing blood, along with bruises and swelling skin.
Hawk drew in a sharp breath. “Jeez. I’d hate to see how bad it gets that you can’t manage.”
“I fought on the front line in the war. I’ve been hurt worse,” Cassius said, his voice gruff.
My throat tightened. He had been hurt worse. A number of times. And every time he’d come back to me a little harder and colder.
I ran my hands over his ribs trying not to think about his pain or how stunning he normally looked or how much I still ached with desire.
Because I had no magic, I had to put pressure on each rib and judge by feel and his reaction to determine how many were actually cracked or broken. “You’ve got three broken ribs on your left side, and I’m worried about two more on your right.”
This was going to take a lot more magic than just healing lacerations. If Sebastian wanted me to stop all of their bleeding, I was going to have to heal Cassius’s ribs first — and no way was I going to let him use his fire magic to burn the rest of his wounds shut.
“Titus?” I asked, turning to the dragon. He looked the best out of everyone, but then the people who’d attacked us weren’t trying to kill him, just hurt him enough to abduct him. Yes, his shirt was also ripped and bloody, but I suspected the lacerations weren’t serious, and even if they were, Titus was a fast healer.
“If we sit here for a few hours, I’ll be fine,” Titus said.
Hawk huffed. “The angel said honest inventory. I saw you get run through with a sword. A shifter can’t heal that fast in a few hours.”
“It wasn’t that bad.” Titus shrugged, and I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or lying to hide how fast he healed. As it was, there was no blood gathering around him and his complexion was good, so he’d probably be in decent shape by the time I had enough magic to heal Cassius’s ribs.
I shifted my attention back to Sebastian and fought to keep my expression even. It wasn’t good if your physician looked worried, but he looked terrible. The blood pool by his leg had
grown in the few minutes we’d been talking, his breath was shallow, and the light in his skin still hadn’t recovered.
“I was cut a few times and I think the one on my thigh is pretty deep,” he said.
“Let me see.” I prayed it wouldn’t need a tourniquet. I’d already need at least five hours of rest to recover enough magic to heal Cassius’s ribs and cuts. That would leave the tourniquet on for too long, which could cause nerve damage and would require even more magic to fix.
He shifted so I could get a better look at the nasty laceration on the side of his upper right thigh without any comment about needing to take his pants off.
Jeez, he really was in bad shape.
I tore the hole in his pant leg wider and tried to get a good look without having anything to wipe the blood away.
The wound was deep and long, and blood flowed slowly and steadily. It cut through muscle, but, given the pace of his blood loss and the laceration’s location, he’d gotten lucky and no major vessels had been severed. Yes, it would take at least a few more hours of rest for me to recover enough magic to heal it and any other injuries he had, but he wasn’t in immediate danger.
“I’d like to just bind this and avoid a tourniquet. Take off your shirt.”
“Pretty sure that’s the wrong article of clothing. Or do you finally want to see me naked?” Sebastian’s lips quirked and a glimmer of the annoying man I knew flickered in his pale eyes. Thank goodness.
“You have the cleanest shirt,” I said, too exhausted and worried and relieved to give him the reaction he was probably looking for.
He unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it as I fought to keep my expression even. He was even more breathtaking than Cassius, with his sculpted muscles and the dark tattoos swirling over him, and I’d clearly lost my mind because I couldn’t stop thinking about sex.
I handed the dress shirt to Titus, who was the most capable of the group to make me a bandage with his strength and claws. “Please tear off the longest piece you can.”
“Sure.” Titus took the shirt and, with a sharp claw, cut a piece off the bottom, keeping the seams intact to make one long strip.