He stared at her, his blue gaze cold. “I can take care of myself.” There was no wounded male vanity in his tone, only a kind of icy dignity. Duncan rolled out of bed and stalked from the room.
* * *
Pissed, aching, he strode into his bedroom and closed the door, resisting the savage urge to give it a thundering slam. “You dumbass,” he raged at himself. “You had to go and open your mouth.” Though he wasn’t sure it would have mattered if he had kept quiet. Masara had been in his head just as he’d been in hers. The problem with telepathy was that it stripped all illusions away. He couldn’t even tell himself she didn’t mean what she’d said. She damned well had.
Stilling his thoughts, Duncan reached for her. But she was gone, the link shut down. Thank God. I can bleed in peace. He stomped across his bedroom, paused just long enough to slide into a pair of blue jeans, then made for the French doors that led onto the veranda. Over the past month, he’d discovered nothing leveled him out like staring across the multicolored skyline of Avalon.
He needed to get Masara’s scent out of his head, her taste out of his mouth. He was going to have a hell of a time breaking his addiction to her. And I only had her once.
Opening the doors, Duncan stepped out onto the redwood deck. The cool night air smelled of the exotic African flowers Masara cultivated in those elaborate gardens of hers, mixed with the scent of her neighbors’ roses. If it was green, the witches grew it, then magically shaped it into topiary elephants or some damn thing.
Duncan leaned against the thick wooden railing, wrapping both hands around it. The wood gave a loud warning creak, and he hastily loosened his grip. He’d spent his first couple of weeks as a vampire breaking damn near everything he touched before he’d finally learned to moderate his strength. It didn’t help that tonight he badly wanted to break something.
Duncan sucked in a deep breath, staring out across Avalon. All that stained glass gave the skyline a Christmas-tree quality he’d seen in no other city. That -- combined with a funky blend of architectural styles ranging from Gothic to Frank Lloyd Wright -- made the town look more like the Magic Kingdom than twenty-first century.
With a sigh, he dropped into one of the wicker chairs, propped his bare heels up on the railing, and settled in for a good brood.
Duncan had known for weeks he was falling for her, though at first, she’d just intimidated the hell out of him. He’d had good reason to find her overwhelming. One of his instructors had told him he was damned lucky to have her. And it was true.
As Logan MacRoy said, Masara might not be the most powerful Maja in Avalon, but she’d become legendary for her icy daring as a spy during the American Civil War. She’d spied in countless wars since then -- whenever the Magekind decided the fate of humanity depended on it. “She’s one of the most driven people I’ve ever known,” MacRoy told him. And coming from the son of King Arthur, that said a hell of a lot.
So when Duncan had realized he was falling for her, he’d dismissed his feelings as infatuation. It hadn’t even occurred to him that he had a prayer of so much as kissing her. Then she’d opened that psychic link, and he’d learned her feelings for him were a lot more complicated than he’d known. Not necessarily in a good way, either.
He hadn’t been pleased to discover his eyes were evidently the exact same shade of blue as whatever son of a bitch had given her those psychic scars. He’d seen only a flash of the memory he’d triggered when he’d held her down, but it had been enough to horrify him. He’d have left her bed right then, but he’d felt how desperately she needed him to drive the flashback away.
And Masara did feel something for him. Duncan had sensed the strength of it when he’d been on the verge of dying. She’d been wide open to him in that moment, terrified at the thought of losing him. It felt a lot like outright panic, which shocked him considering her reputation for icy courage. Would she have felt that for just anybody?
Then again, he’d been willing to die for Farijaad. Sometimes you did desperate shit because you couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t. Besides, ultimately it didn’t matter whether Masara felt anything for him or not. If she was determined to keep him at a distance, there was nothing he could do about it. If there was one thing his mother had drummed into his head, it was that no most definitely meant no.
Especially if the one saying no could turn you into a frog. He…
Agony flashed across his back in a flaming line of blinding pain. Duncan convulsed and leaped out of his chair, whipping around to hit the werewolf who’d just laid his shoulders open.
There was no one there.
Another line of fire slashed from his right shoulder to his waist. He felt skin split and blood spurt. Duncan twisted around, one hand groping, but his back was whole under his fingers, and there was no sign of the blood he could feel rolling down his spine. Terror rang through him, so intense it made his entire body recoil. Emily! Don’t!
Masara. It was Masara’s terror, Masara’s pain. Something was killing her.
Chapter Five
Duncan bolted through the balcony doors and raced across his bedroom to throw the door open and charge across the hall. Fire raked his back again as he seized the doorknob. It was locked. Pain sliced him again, and he knew the werewolf must be tearing her open. Rearing back on one foot, he slammed the other to the door. It shattered like balsa wood. Duncan bulled through the fragments, ignoring the rake of splintered shards across his skin.
Masara lay curled in a ball in the center of the bed, naked and alone.
Duncan scanned the room wildly, looking for whatever had attacked her, but there was nothing there. “Masara?” he asked, his heart still pounding. What the hell is going on? Then in the light pouring in through the shattered door, he saw something rip across her back. The link blasted him with such pain, he had to clench his teeth against a shout of pain.
“Arrh!” Masara writhed, and he saw that what he’d thought were shadows shone wet in the light from the hall.
Jesus, that’s blood. Those are wounds! Deep cuts slashed across her skin from shoulders to hips. Staring at her in horror, he spotted a rib shining white through torn, bloody flesh. “Masara!” Duncan reached for her through the waves of pain blasting through the battlefield link. “Masara, what’s…”
“Emily!” She twisted, rolling onto her stomach. “No, stop!”
An image flashed through his mind -- a pale woman with a startling resemblance to Masara except for the thick blond hair piled high on her head. Her blood-splattered face was twisted in rage and hate.
What the fuck is this? Is it an attack, a dream, what? Something’s sure as hell hurting her. “Wake up! It’s me, Duncan!” His first impulse was to shake her, but he himself had been known to come out of a nightmare swinging. “Masara…”
“Emily!” She screamed and threw herself off the bed to land facing him, twin fireballs floating above her hands.
Oh, shit! He took a hasty step back. “Masara, it’s Duncan. Are you all right? What’s going on?”
She stared at him, her dark eyes huge with rage and terror as the globes of flame swelled, growing larger, hotter. Duncan tensed to duck. Vampires might be a hell of a lot stronger, but the real heavy hitters of Avalon were the witches. She could fry his ass without breaking a sweat. “Masara! You’re dreaming! Wake up!”
Her rage turned to confusion. “Who are…” She broke off as recognition flared in her eyes at last. The fireballs winked out. “Duncan? What are you… Ow.” Wincing, she twisted her head around to look down over one shoulder. And hissed a word he hadn’t thought she knew.
“Are you under some kind of magical attack?” He’d thought it was a nightmare, but in the Mageverse, anything was possible.
“In a manner of speaking.” Masara probed at her ribs, flinching as if it hurt. “But it’s my magic doing the attacking.” She moved to the full-length cheval mirror and turned her back to it, twisting around to examine herself.
Flipping on the overhead
light, he took a step closer. And swore. The wounds raking across her back did indeed look as if a werewolf had ripped into her. Blood rolled from a dozen long slices, tracing crimson streams over her dark skin. “Oh my God.” He started to reach for her, only to draw back, afraid of hurting her any worse.
“Actually, this isn’t too bad,” she said, appraising her injuries with surprising detachment. “You woke me up before she really got going.”
He stared at her, sickened. “She?”
“Emily. My sister. Technically, half-sister.”
“What?” And he remembered the flashing memory he’d seen of that face. “She did look a little like you.”
“You saw that? Of course, our link’s open. Sorry about that.”
“Yeah, I thought a werewolf was attacking you. Scared the crap out of me.”
“No werewolf, just Emily.”
He folded his arms and eyed her. “Your sister could give a werewolf a run for his kibble in the bunny-boiling-crazy department.”
“Emily wasn’t crazy. Just spoiled.”
Duncan gestured at her shredded back. “That’s not spoiled, that’s attempted murder.”
“Oh, it was more than attempted.” When he looked confused, she added in a cool, too-controlled voice, “I was pregnant. The beating was so severe, I miscarried.”
He stared at her, completely at a loss. “I’m… so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago, and Emily has been dead for most of it.” She walked over to the dresser and picked up a bottle, then poured the amber contents into a crystal tumbler. She drank it down in one long draft. Magic flared, rolling over her in a glowing wave, swirled around her, and vanished. Her back was unmarked, as if the dream attack had never happened.
Reading the question in his mind, Masara lifted the bottle and shook it to make it slosh. “One of the healers gave me this for nights like this, when I’m too fried to work magic. Which always seems to be when I have that dream.” She turned to the armoire in the corner, reached inside, and pulled out a long red robe. Sliding into it, she said, “Let’s go to the great room. After that, we both need a drink.”
He blinked at that. The most alcohol he’d ever seen her drink was a glass of wine at dinner. Apparently, this was going to be one hell of a conversation.
As they left the room and headed down the hall, he ventured a question. “This Emily -- was she a Latent too?” If Emily had been a descendant of one of the original knights and ladies of Camelot, she, like Masara, could have become a Maja.
“Yes, although we didn’t know about the Magekind at the time. A few decades ago I got curious, so I did some scrying into the past. It seems our father descended from Galahad, who’d slept with one of our ancestors some generations back.”
The great room was a cavernous space, lined with bookshelves stuffed with leather-bound volumes and paperbacks of every kind. A conversation pit held a semicircular wicker couch upholstered with an orange and red geometric African print. A magical fire burned in a huge copper bowl in the pit’s center, producing light, but no heat or smoke. Masara headed for the elegant ebony bar. Duncan followed and leaned an elbow on its gleaming surface.
She grabbed a couple of cut crystal glasses, then poured each of them two fingers of from one the bottles on the bar. Curious, he picked the bottle up. Its label described it as a fifty-year-old single malt Scotch whisky. “Damn, this stuff is my mother’s age. Do I want to know how much it cost?”
She smiled at him and lifted her glass in a toast. “Nope.”
“It’s good to be friends with a witch.” Taking a reverent sip from his own glass, he discovered the whisky was delightfully smooth, with a rich, smoky taste. Not as good as Masara, though… He squelched the thought. He really didn’t want to go there just now.
When she headed for the couch carrying the bottle and her glass, he followed. “I loved Emily when we were kids,” Masara said after another meditative sip. “She was my big sister. My mother, who was her nursemaid, raised both of us -- that was how it was done then. I didn’t realize Emily owned me until I was eight years old.”
He stared at her. “I can’t even imagine what that must’ve been like.”
“Many of us worked very hard to ensure you can’t.” She took another sip and held the whisky in her mouth for a long moment. “When she was young, she wasn’t so cruel. Spoiled, yes, not to mention convinced she occupied the pinnacle of creation. Just under her daddy.”
“Sounds delightful,” Duncan said dryly.
“My mother tried to warn me. ‘Betsy, you can’t trust them. You can’t love them. You don’t mean anything more to them than a hound. Less, because they’re not afraid a hound is going to poison them or rise up in the night and murder everyone in the family.’ And she was right.”
His brows shot up. “Betsy?”
“We changed names frequently back then. Every time you got a new master, he changed your name. When I became Magekind, I changed my name to Masara. It’s Swahili for sorceress.”
“It’s pretty.”
“Thank you.” Masara stared into the fire a long moment. “I thought my mother was wrong. True, Emily hit me occasionally, but she always said I’d given her no choice.”
Duncan scowled. “And you bought that?”
“I loved her. And I saw myself as…” She shrugged. “… less.”
“You weren’t.”
“No, but it took me a very long time to realize that. The light dawned soon after Emily married Robert Townsend. She was seventeen, I was fifteen, and he was a handsome thirty-five year-old widower. Since I belonged to her, I went with her. She worshiped the ground he walked on.” Masara’s lip curled as her eyes blazed with old rage. “She had no idea. Me, I knew exactly what he had in mind.”
“He raped you.” His own fury began to rise.
“Robert wouldn’t have described it in those terms. It never occurred to him I had the right to say no.” Her dark eyes narrowed as she stared into a past he didn’t even want to think about. “I knew better than to even try, though I quoted the Bible at the bastard at every turn, trying to remind him he was committing adultery. I did everything but try to fight him off.” Her voice dropped into a deadly growl. “I didn’t want to die, and he was a killer. All slaveholders were ruthless, but he was a sadist. Of course, when you have three hundred people in the middle of nowhere, how do you get them to work if you don’t pay them?”
“By beating the fuck out of them.”
“Yes. And they got away with it because on their plantations, they were gods.”
Duncan wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this, but he felt driven to learn as much about her as she could. “I never understood how anyone could do what they did.”
“Money. Lots and lots and lots of money. They were the richest men in the country, and they did whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted. And they made sure the law was on their side.” No matter how long it had been since her enslavement, the rage was still there. It had just gone deep and cold and glacial. “You could breed your slaves, sell them, and get even richer.”
“So Robert got you pregnant.”
“And Emily noticed the way her husband watched me.”
He studied her. “I take it he wasn’t exactly subtle.”
“Of course not. It never dawned on him that she had any say about what he did.”
He made himself ask the question. “When did she go after you?”
“After the fourth time I cast up my breakfast into a chamber pot.” Masara grimaced. “Emily realized it was morning sickness and lost her mind. Dragged me out to the barn and laid into me with a strip of cowhide. After she was through with my back, she hit me across the face and sliced me open, temple to chin. And told me, ‘He won’t want you now.’ I lost the baby and very nearly my life.” She drained the glass in one long pull. “The horrible part was that I was relieved, though I knew it was a sin.”
Duncan blinked. “Wait, what?”
“I’d seen what h
appened to my mother when Emily’s father sold my older brother. It crushed Mama. I didn’t want to suffer the same fate. But most of all, I didn’t want my child to be a slave.” Her eyes narrowed in an expression so cold, Duncan was glad it wasn’t directed at him. “But Emily didn’t gloat for long.”
“Do I want to know why?”
She poured herself another glass and topped his off as well. “When Mama came to take care of me afterward, she said Robert had beaten Emily soundly.” Glancing up, she caught his expression and snorted. “Not out of concern for me, I assure you. He could have sold our child for a thousand dollars as an adult, which translated to roughly the price of a new SUV today.” He could feel the rage boiling just under her iron control. “Raping slaves wasn’t just allowed, it was highly profitable.”
The rage under that controlled surface seemed to burn him. He wanted her to let it out. To trust him that much. “You don’t have to pretend with me, Masara.”
She looked up at him. “Pretend what?”
“That this is an academic discussion of your dead child’s financial value. It was fucking horrible, and you’re entitled to be pissed.”
“I know.” She drained the glass. “But whenever I talk about those days, the old habits come back. Showing anger was a good way to lose the skin off your back.” She stared at the stained-glass window. “Whites saw us as weak and contemptible for allowing ourselves to be slaves -- that’s why they didn’t want to let black men enlist in the Union Army. Now even our descendants see us that way. ‘I’m not like them. I’d have kicked their asses.’ Easy to say when you’ve never felt the whip.”
He shifted, suddenly, painfully aware of the color of his skin. “I’m sorry.” The words felt pitifully inadequate.
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