by Alyssa Day
Lion. Oh my goodness.
She stumbled a step, just thinking about it, and he caught her arm so fast she almost didn’t see him move.
“I’m fine,” she muttered, pulling her arm away and resisting the urge to set something on fire out of sheer mortification. Reindeer. She’d been talking about reindeer. “Oh? You were civilized and roasted them? Poor Rudolph.”
His lips quirked up and she tried not to notice what a wonderful mouth he had.
“Rudolph was safe with me, Lily. Hot dogs. Mostly, I ate a lot of hot dogs.”
“That doesn’t sound very Icelandic to me. Did you ever eat dinner with Peony? I can’t imagine she’s a hot dog fan. From what I remember from family stories, she’s something of a gourmet.”
He laughed. “She made a truly stupendous fish dinner for me and my partner, and I was afraid to eat even a tiny bite. I didn’t want to end up being husband number four.”
“No witchy wives for you, huh?” she said lightly, but she felt an odd flatness at the thought that Damon was just another bigot, prejudiced against witches like so many humans and even so many of her fellow supernatural beings.
“No wives, period,” he said. “My job takes all of my focus and time. What woman—witch or otherwise—would want to put up with that?”
“Nobody would put up with me setting their breakfast, clothes, or hair on fire, either. Good thing I’m not in the market for a romance. In fact, I may never date again, after what I had to go through with Harry.” She shuddered at the memory of the look on his face when she first told him she’d had enough and was leaving.
“Nobody leaves Harrison Bannon the Third,” he’d told her, and if the sudden talking about himself in the third person hadn’t been enough to freak her out, the screaming, furniture-hurling, temper tantrum that he’d proceeded to throw--destroying everything in the den that hadn’t been nailed down--would have done it. She caught herself reaching up to touch her cheekbone, the memory of the painful bruise she’d gotten from flying debris still vivid.
“This is it, right?”
She blinked and looked at Damon, who was standing in front of the little stepping-stone path to her house. His head was slightly tilted, and he looked a little worried. Probably concerned about the fruitcake witch who zoned out of conversations with no warning.
She shook her head, dispersing the bad memories, and nodded. “Yes, that’s it. My little house. But do you notice what we don’t see? Any sign of my moving van.”
Groaning in frustration, she turned to stare uselessly down the street, as if wishing would force her furniture and belongings to appear.
“Well, somebody is happy to see you,” Damon called out from behind her. “There’s a pretty fancy bunch of flowers on your porch. Lilies for Lily. Not particularly imaginative, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?”
A wave of terror smashed into Lily; a flood of vertigo buffeting her about as though she were standing on the deck of a tiny ship in a hurricane. She tried to speak, but the burning taste of hot metal seared the back of her throat.
She suddenly couldn’t see--couldn’t hear—couldn’t remain upright. She somehow felt Damon coming toward her, but he was too far away, too far, too far…
She stumbled and fell to the sidewalk, hearing Damon’s voice through an echo chamber of roaring, screaming fear, but even while she put her hands over her ears and closed her eyes, her mind was telling her that this wasn’t real, wasn’t happening, wasn’t true.
Wasn’t her.
Strong arms lifted her against a warm, hard-muscled chest, and she fought through the hyperventilation, forcing herself to breathe. She gulped small bites of air while she tried not to drown in the icy river of dread that surrounded her, threatening to swallow her whole.
She needed to breathe. She needed to breathe.
She knew—she knew—that the terror wasn’t real.
She just needed to make herself believe it.
She reached out with all her senses to Hugging and Mugging, even though she knew they were more than wise enough to vanish at the slightest hint of trouble. When she was able to reassure herself that they weren’t in the house or nearby, she was able to release the tension in her neck enough to relax her shoulders.
Damon was murmuring soothing noises while holding her in his arms, one arm beneath her legs and the other encircling her back. She suddenly had the most peculiar thought; one that battled with the horror and beat it back just enough to help her catch her breath.
“I didn’t…didn’t know…that lions purred,” she gasped, and a tiny sensation of warmth began to pulse through her, warm and smooth and delicious like melted butter on a biscuit during a lazy Sunday morning breakfast.
Yes. She could hold on to that thought. Sundays and breakfast and comfort and Damon.
She tried again to breathe, and this time the air didn’t choke her.
Progress.
“I’ll purr for you right now if it will help,” he said roughly, and she could hear the frustration and concern in his voice. The trickle of warmth widened and spread until she could breathe steadily again.
“I’m…I’m fine now. You can put me down,” she whispered, but her arms hadn’t gotten the message, because they were twined around his neck with no sign of letting go.
“You dropped the pizza box,” she added nonsensically.
“Screw the pizza box,” he said grimly. “I’m not putting you down until we’re safely inside and I check those damn flowers for explosives or poison or whatever else set you off like this. You need some hot tea or—hell--a shot of whiskey, because right now your skin is the color of printer paper.”
“I’m okay,” she managed, and this time she released her death grip on his neck. “It’s not explosives or poison, at least not in the traditional sense. Although maybe you could technically call it both, in terms of what it does. And I’m fine. Please let me down. Now.”
Damon scowled at her, but she gave it right back to him. No way was she playing damsel in distress, even to a gorgeous P-Ops agent with overly honed protective instincts. “Now, please.”
“Fine.” Damon reluctantly lowered her legs until she was standing, shaky but upright, next to him on the sidewalk. “But explain this thing that’s both explosives and poison. And what about your birds?”
“They’re fine, thank the goddess. They’re either hiding somewhere or they were out and well away when this happened. I’d be able to feel them, or at least their fear, otherwise.” She took a long, deep breath that trembled more than she wanted. She may have broken the terror spell, but its residue remained.
Damon glanced at her, but then went back to scanning their surroundings. All trace of humor had vanished from the stern angles and planes of his newly expressionless face, and he still had a firm grasp on her arm.
“You’re giving me cop face,” she said. “Cut it out.”
“I am a cop. This is just my face. And you need to tell me about what just happened to you. What are those flowers? I’m calling my partner. I will not allow anything to happen to you.”
While he spoke, he was leading her to her house. At the porch, he nudged her to one side, giving the vase of lilies a wide berth, and then he stood between her and the flowers while she fumbled with her key.
“It’s thirteen, isn’t it?” She paused, simultaneously wanting and not wanting to look. “Thirteen lilies tied with a black bow?”
He gently took the key from her shaking hands, then nodded. “Why thirteen?”
“It’s Harry’s idea of a signature move. Lilies for his Lily,” she said bitterly. “The black ribbons to remind me of what would happen to me if I tried to leave him.”
“I won’t let him hurt you, Lily,” Damon promised with the edge of a growl in his voice, unlocking the door and pushing it open. Nothing blew up, which was always a good sign. “Let me check the house first, okay?”
She nodded, because she wasn’t stupid, and the big, strong, lion shifter who also
happened to be a gun-carrying FBI agent was the better choice for checking the house. But she’d be damned if she’d let Harry do this to her again. Being imprisoned by fear was no better than being locked in a bedroom.
Maybe worse. It would be harder to deceive and evade an emotional captor like constant fear of what Harry would do next than it had been to cause a few guards to pass out from smoke inhalation.
“You were right. The birds are gone,” he called out, and she liked him better for the note of relief in his voice. “You’re sure—”
“No. They’re fine. I’d be able to tell if they’d been harmed or taken. We have a connection…it’s why Odin’s great, great, great times a thousand or so granddaughter allowed them to come live with me. They’ll be back in their own good time.”
“That’s good to know…Wait. What?” He appeared at the doorway so soundlessly she hadn’t heard him coming. “There really is a connection to Odin? But—never mind. Later. The house is clear. Nobody has been inside, or I’d smell them.” Damon pulled her into the house and then closed and locked the door behind them. “But now I think you’d better tell me about those flowers.”
Lily took a long, shaky breath, pushed it out, and then did it again. “Okay. But I need that tea. Whiskey would be better but I don’t have any, yet.”
“I have some in the car. Will you be all right here for a minute?” He put his hands on her shoulders and for an absurd moment she was sure he was about to pull her toward him and kiss her.
“Lily?”
She snapped back from wherever her mind had rambled off to when he said her name. “What?”
His forehead furrowed. “Will you be all right?”
Lily thought about it—she actually had to take her time and think, hard, about whether she would be okay in her own house—and the hard, angular shape of that realization ignited a raging fire in her gut, where the iciness of fear had been stabbing her just moments before.
“I’ll be fine,” she told him, and she smiled the same smile that had made two armed gangbangers in Los Angeles back down that one time she’d gotten lost in the wrong neighborhood. Skinheads my ass. Not so bold when she set their motorcycles on fire.
Okay. So it wasn’t a smile, exactly. More a baring of her teeth, really.
Damon eyes widened, but he didn’t step away from her. He didn’t even flinch. Instead, he whistled, long and low. “Cardinal, you’re scary as hell, aren’t you?”
“You have no idea.” She stalked to the door, flung it open, and let loose with every ounce of fury inside her that Harry had dared come to her house.
Dared mock her with those damn flowers.
Dared set a terror spell trap on her at her own front door.
“Never again,” she shouted, and she called to her power, which danced gleefully, rushing to her call. She turned and pointed at the vase and formed a spear of pure, cleansing fire that shot from her hand and incinerated the vase, flowers, ribbon, and terror spell all at once.
“Take that, you rat bastard.”
The magic called to her, as it always did, especially now that she’d grown so much stronger. It wanted to burn and burn; lovely, bright, red-gold flames soaring high against the dark trees and houses of the neighborhood.
The town.
The world.
Lily wasn’t a warlock, so she fought it. And after she won—after she beat the fire magic back—she swore again that she would never succumb to the temptation of ultimate power. But she’d never let Harrison Bannon the Third cause her even one more second of pain or fear, either.
Not ever.
“Not ever,” she whispered, and it was more than a promise.
It was a vow.
“There was magic in the flowers, wasn’t there?” Damon stepped up next to her, studying the scorched mark on her porch where the vase had been. He was so close she could feel the electric shapeshifter energy sparkling in the air around him. “Some kind of fear or incapacitation spell?”
“Terror. He wanted to terrorize me. To let me know that I’m not safe, not even here. Not anywhere. To let me know that he owns me.” She forced herself to take a deep breath, and then another.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
“Nobody owns me.” She whirled around and went back inside, leaving any trace of the fear behind her. She wouldn’t let Harry win. Ever.
“I’m here,” Damon told her, following her inside. “I’m with you. We won’t let this psychopath do this to you again.”
She wanted so badly to reach for his hand, but she didn’t. She knew better than to count on anyone but herself. It had been a bitter lesson, and it had cost her far more than she’d dreamed of to pay it--in blood and fire and pain--but she’d learned.
In the end, she’d learned.
“It’s time to deploy the troops,” he said.
“I was thinking the exact same thing.”
“The full force of the P-Ops division of the FBI,” he said.
She smiled at him--a sane, normal smile this time--and shook her head.
“Granny.”
“Granny?”
“You’d better go get that whiskey.”
6
Damon had to blow out a few deep breaths himself on the way to his car. His reaction to Lily’s meltdown had been intense—and instantaneous. The fierceness of his need to protect her had caught him off guard, and he’d been impressed as hell with how quickly she had recovered from what had clearly been a massively powerful spell. He’d seen terror spells in action before, but nothing like that. Nothing so strong that it could send a fire mage to her knees.
Bannon had money, so clearly he’d hired the best. Damon needed to put resources on the job of tracking which warlocks were unscrupulous enough to do business with scum like Harrison Bannon the Third and had recently come into a big whack of cash.
He popped the trunk lid on the car, which was actually an agency car that the local SAC had offered for his use. The Special Agent in Charge had also directed one of his people to stock the car with the basics: emergency gear, guns, ammunition, and survival gear. The sight of the gear made him grin at the memory of Zane’s phone call.
“I’m putting out a call for the best vest manufacturer in the business to make a bulletproof vest that will fit you when you’re in lion form,” Zane had said, in his best “Or Else” tone.
“Zane. I’m not going to stop and put on a vest when I’m shapeshifting. How would that even work? ‘Excuse me, Mr, Bad Guy, would you please help me into this vest? I’ll just put my left paw here…’”
“Shut up. We’re doing it. We’ll figure something out. You…you saved my life, today, man. You could have been killed. So cut out the damn heroics. And thanks again.”
“Shut up, yourself. How many times have you saved my life, Brain Boy? It’s the job. Get over it. Have Zenia make me some of her incredible chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies and we’re even, at least until the next time.”
Zane had laughed. “My life is only worth a batch of cookies?”
“They’re good cookies, Zane.”
Damon grabbed the sleeping bag and blanket, the duffel bag with his favorite weapons, and the bottle of excellent twenty-year-old Scotch he’d bought on the way from the airport, planning to drown his sorrows at having to deal with fragile, boring witches.
Assumptions, meet ass. There was nothing fragile or boring about Lily.
He tried to ignore the distracting wave of warmth that swept through him at the thought of her, but that was a lost cause, so instead he focused on scanning the area for any sight, scent, or feel of danger.
And found it.
The tiny yard surrounding her cottage was vibrating with dark energy. He couldn’t believe neither he nor Lily had felt it when they’d arrived back at the house after dinner, so either the terror spell had masked it, or the perpetrator had cloaked himself with some kind of don’t-see-me magic and then hung around waiting to see the res
ults of his handiwork.
He—or she--was gone now, Damon was pretty sure, but he tracked the sense of darkness to the edge of Lily’s yard and into the street, where the warlock had either stepped into a car or simply disappeared. When he walked back into the house, he found Lily standing by the window staring out at the street.
“Lily, We need to check that surveillance footage now. I hate to have to add to your stress—“
“Just spit it out, Jones,” she said wearily. “The sky is falling? Harry is walking up my street with a Gatling gun? You’re out of whiskey?”
He held up the Scotch. “Brand new bottle, my friend. The bad news is that I could feel the warlock’s magic outside, and it’s pretty damn powerful. He or she isn’t here now, unless that warlock has some massive stealth cloaking magic that I can’t sense.”
Lily walked over to the kitchen and pulled a couple of red plastic cups out of a plastic bag, and then she shook her head. “I know it’s powerful. Cardinal, remember? I’d be able to feel him if he’d hung around—and it is a him, I can tell the difference in the magical resonance—and he’s gone. The coward must have been watching for me to leave, so he could plant the terror spell.”
“And the lilies.”
“And the lilies,” she agreed, sighing and handing him a cup. “Hit me.”
“This is almost sacrilege, you know. Whiskey this good should only be poured into a cut crystal glass and then savored.” He filled her cup more than half full. “I make no promises about how good plastic-cup whiskey is gong to taste.”
She laughed. “Hey, my cut crystal glasses are at the cleaners this week. Cheers!”
He touched the rim of his cup to hers, and then watched in disbelief as she gulped down a big swig.
“Sip. It’s sipping whiskey, not…not—“
“Boone’s Farm? Pabst Blue Ribbon? Old Milwaukee or generic brand wine coolers? Because that’s what we must drink in Garden City, Ohio, right, city boy?”
“I didn’t--"
“Oh, whatever. I’ve had a long damn day, and I deserve a big gulp of whiskey. So relax, kitten, and worry about your own drink.”