“The hell he is.”
“That’s what all the mages say when they go up against Rasmus.” He touched his chest again, and this time Alexandrine was sure the scent of blood was coming from him.
“You’re hurt.”
Durian sneered. “I’m mageheld, witch. Take my advice. Consider him lost to you. It’ll be easier for us all.”
“If Rasmus thinks he can make Xia one of his magehelds again, I want some of what he’s smoking.”
“I do what I’m told. That’s it.” He lifted a hand and kept it raised between them. “I imagine Rasmus has some thoughts about how to overcome whatever Carson did to Xia and your brother, too, or I’d not have been sent after him.” He shrugged and walked out of the room with Xia over his shoulder.
Alexandrine couldn’t move for what seemed like an eternity after Durian left with Xia. The more time passed with her mind cut off from her ability to use her body, the more her heart felt like it was being ripped from her chest. The effect didn’t wear off. It just ended. One minute she was frozen with Xia’s knife clenched in her hand and the next, her arm slashed down at the point where Durian’s spine had been. She was damn lucky she didn’t end up stabbing herself. As it was, the blade went a couple of inches into the floor. Oops.
She yanked on the knife and arranged the slivers of wood to hide the hole. He’d probably never notice. Her hand shook when she was done. Her premonitions were still dead-on. Something awful had happened. Xia was gone, and unless she figured out what to do about that, her father might just figure out how to take him mageheld again.
Alexandrine sucked in a deep breath, but it didn’t do much good. She remained teetering on the edge of despair. Her father lived in Berkeley, which was at least half an hour from here, provided she had a car and didn’t hit any traffic on I-80. She didn’t have a car, so it didn’t matter if traffic was bumper to bumper or she could speed the whole way there.
Sitting around feeling helpless and sorry for herself wasn’t going to help the situation. She clipped Xia’s scabbard to her waist, put in his knife, and headed downstairs for the phone she’d used to call Kynan. She punched REDIAL. Straight to voice mail. “Crap!”
She left a message along the lines of, Something awful has happened to Xia. Call me the minute you get this. In between the words, she might have sobbed. She set the phone on vibrate and stuck it in her front pocket.
Time to take stock. She’d contacted the only person she knew who might be able to get her some help. Kynan wasn’t going to want to help her, but he would help Xia. She was pretty sure of that. But one phone call didn’t mean she had time to waste waiting for a call back. If he called, and if he decided to help, it was going to be too late. What else? She doubted Google was going to be of any assistance, and no way was she getting any of her nonvanilla friends involved in this. Maddy was in enough danger as it was.
The thing was, she knew where Rasmus lived. She’d been to his house, and despite the fact that she couldn’t touch her magic, she was still a witch. Durian hadn’t killed her, and that meant her father hadn’t lifted the stricture against harming the magekind. In sum, she knew where Durian was taking Xia, and it was a good bet any magehelds she met there couldn’t hurt her. Not unless her father ordered otherwise. Not even Kynan Aijan could claim that level of protection.
She found the rest of her clothes and got dressed. Then she went downstairs and searched the house for car keys or money or maybe a gun—hey, one of those could do some damage. No gun that she could find, but there were twenty-five dollars in a desk drawer and a 1968 Chevy pickup in the garage. The heap of green metal looked like it was held together with chewing gum and bungee cords. No keys. Xia wasn’t the type to leave his keys in the ignition, anyway. She found them hanging off a hook stuck to the side of the fridge.
Money, phone, a sharp knife, a broken-down pickup, and immunity from magehelds. What more did a girl need to go on a rescue mission?
She grabbed a black hoodie from Xia’s closet to protect against the wind, which was whipping up whitecaps off the water. The Bay Area could get damned cold any time of year. The hoodie was too big, but in her old life, all she’d ever worn were clothes that were too big. She revved up the Chevy. Lucky her, a full tank of gas. At the last minute, she went back inside. She rolled a change of clothes for Xia into a blanket she stripped from the bed and then snatched his shoes.
Alexandrine hadn’t driven a vehicle with a clutch since she had been a joyriding seventeen-year-old, but driving turned out to be a lot like riding a bike. A few lurches and a little grinding of gears, and she was on her way to the People’s Republic of Berkeley. Since she didn’t own a car and the one time she’d been across the bay she’d gone the Bay Bridge route, she didn’t know the roads well. Mostly by accident, she found there was a way to the Richmond– San Rafael Bridge not so far from Xia’s place. Once over the Richmond Bridge in the no-toll direction, she knew the way without having to guess. The driver’s side window plunged into the door after she took the first Berkeley exit, which meant she drove into the Berkeley Hills with a hurricane blowing into the cab. Icy wind roared in her ears. Ah, refreshing.
Half an hour later, she parked the Chevy on Wildcat Canyon Road. The parking brake didn’t work, which at last explained the triangular block of wood stowed on the floor of the cab. She got it jammed behind a front wheel before the car rolled too far. She walked up the driveway and was stopped by a security gate. Locked. Hmm. What the hell. She pushed the button on the gatepost. She wasn’t going to surprise a mage and a houseful of his magehelds, anyway. Someone inside buzzed her in without asking who she was. They probably knew. What a friendly bunch they must be.
The one and only time she’d been here, she’d chickened out and never gone up the driveway. This time she did, with her hands shoved in the front pocket of her hoodie. Dear old Dad had a shiny dark blue Jag. The motor clicked as it cooled, and the obvious conclusion that Durian had transported Xia in this car kind of pissed her off. Xia got to ride in a Jag, and all she got was a rusted-out Chevy. She squatted down and used Xia’s knife to deflate the back tires. Then she walked to the front door and rang the buzzer.
A shaved-headed man who looked like Vin Diesel opened the door.
She didn’t feel jack shit from him. “Hi, there.” She bobbed her head at him and kept her hands in the hoodie and Xia’s knife in her hand. “I’m Alexandrine Marit, and I’m here to see my father. Rasmus Kessler.” She stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. Wow. Her father had a damned nice house.
“He’s busy,” said the Vin Diesel look-alike.
She met his gaze head-on. “Tell him I’m here, please.”
“No.”
“What the hell is going on?” said a voice she recognized.
“Hey,” she said as Durian came down the twisting marble stairs. Paintings, actual original paintings, hung on the walls. She recognized a Cézanne that had been stolen in Zurich. “Guess who?”
“You’re a pest, aren’t you?” The mageheld walked into the entryway and stood in front of her with arms crossed over his chest.
She grabbed her phone and hit REDIAL.
“Who are you calling?”
“The cavalry.” She just hoped they were home and answering the damn phone this time.
“Go home before you get hurt.”
She held up a hand. “Do you mind? I’m on the phone.” The mobile stopped ringing. Somebody was answering. “Excuse me a minute, would you? This is a personal call.”
Chapter 25
Kynan waited outside the North Berkeley Peet’s, holding his quad macchiato with foam only and kept an eye on the line inside the coffee shop. It was getting dark but not cold yet. His vision was excellent, and he didn’t have any trouble seeing. Good thing he didn’t wear suits anymore. He’d stand out if he still dressed that way, since everyone else was heinously young and university casual—shorts, sweats, jeans, and T-shirts. Instead, he fit right in.
He was wea
ring ripped jeans with a black T-shirt and black boating shoes, a beat-up denim jacket he’d borrowed from Iskander was draped over his arm. His hair wasn’t long enough yet to put in a respectable ponytail, so he left it down. If he had a backpack, he’d fit right in.
From the sidewalk, he watched the woman get to the head of the line for coffee. She wore ratty blue jeans with pointy leather shoes that dressed up her look. Her hair was such a dark brown it looked black, and her ass was first class. Long legs. An inch of honey-brown skin showed between the top of her jeans and the bottom of her shirt. She had some kind of tat on the small of her back. A tramp stamp. What he could see of the swirling, interlocking pattern of green and blue looked impressive. She’d gotten a real artist to do her up. Most of the men in the place were giving her long, serious looks. Kynan didn’t blame them. She looked even better than she had in Alexandrine’s memories.
When the witch had her coffee and was heading for the street, he backed away a step and took the opportunity to stare at her some more. She was average height, maybe a little below that, and she was slim, with eyes that seemed to be the same color as her pupils. She had a mildly hooked nose and a full mouth. Native American, he guessed. Stacked, too. She was quite lovely. Perhaps not a raving beauty, but she was getting her share of attention from jerks looking to get in her pants.
He let up on his block so she’d feel his magic. Just a touch. Be interesting to see what she did. He sipped his coffee as she came out rubbing one arm. Her dark eyes settled on him, and he got a once-over. And then the do-over. Now that his hair was growing back and he found hours when he could relax, he was skewing young again. The better to pick up grad students with. Man, she had no idea what he was. None at all. She narrowed her eyes at him, and he smiled at her while he backed off the magic. Oh, yeah. He totally wanted some of that. He took a step toward her, smile in place, and she slowed down.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hey. Good coffee?”
“Yes. Yours?”
“Very.” He drank more coffee. He hadn’t picked up a woman since the days when picking up a woman meant paying for the pleasure of her naked person. He was fairly certain offering to pay wasn’t going to work with the delicious Maddy Winters. Kynan nodded in the direction of the sidewalk seating. “Want to sit down a minute and enjoy the evening?”
She thought about it and then nodded. They found a table, and she slung a heavy backpack off her shoulder and onto the sidewalk next to her chair. She stuck out a hand. “Maddy Winters,” she said.
“Maddy.” He smiled at her, and he clasped her hand. She looked directly into his eyes, and damned if he didn’t get a tingle from her that was purely sexual. Nothing magical about it. “Kynan Aijan,” he said.
She nodded. “Kynan. Nice to meet you.”
Shit. She was seriously beautiful. He thought about putting some moves on the lovely Maddy, who probably didn’t want her sex delivered with a side of pain. Pity, because that meant she wasn’t going to like it much when they got personal. His phone rang and interrupted his train of thought.
Saved by the Peanuts song.
He pulled his mobile out of his jeans pocket. “Pardon me,” he said to Maddy. He opened the phone. “Yes?”
“Kynan?”
Alexandrine. “I should have known it would be you.” Well, he thought, once he’d gotten over his astonishment at her call, at least she didn’t sound teary this time. He wondered if she knew he was sitting across from her friend Maddy. “My boy all right?”
She didn’t answer right away, and when she did, she sounded phony. The deliberate kind of phony. “No. I don’t think so, no.”
He turned sideways so that Maddy couldn’t see his face very well. She tilted her head and sipped her coffee. He smiled back. Damn, but she was pretty. Exactly what he needed tonight to get himself over his frustration. There could still be a dead witch tonight. “Where are you?” he said into his mobile.
“Um.” Two heartbeats, during which he stared at Maddy’s breasts. Nice shape there. “At my father’s house.”
He froze. “What the hell for?”
Again she didn’t answer right away, and when she did reply, her voice dropped in pitch. “Because that’s where Xia is.”
Kynan’s entire body flashed hot. He no longer thought the call was some stupidity on the part of an inept witch having issues with a fiend who hated her but who wanted to boink her. He lowered his voice, too, and that caught Maddy’s attention. “What the hell is he doing there?”
“Yeah. Right,” she said brightly on the other end of the call. “Exactly. Someone came and got him. Good old Dad.”
“Someone took him to—” Shit. He bit back the mage’s name. How much did Maddy know about Alexandrine’s father? He grabbed a handful of his hair and held on hard. His heart banged against his chest. “Did he go there on his own?”
“No. This guy named Durian came to the house. In fact, I’m standing here looking at him right now.”
Durian was bad news. You didn’t fuck with a mageheld of his power. “Durian can’t be trusted.” He glanced at Maddy, so gloriously and exotically lovely and interested in him, and of course she was listening. How could she not? He lowered his voice again. “He’s not free. Capiche?”
“Yes,” Alexandrine said. “Just a sec.”
Maddy’s expression altered slightly, and Kynan felt her magic. She wasn’t pulling, not yet. But she wasn’t vanilla anymore, either. Like he needed to be more turned on than he already was. Alexandrine’s muffled voice addressed someone else. I’ll only be a little longer. Why don’t you go tell Rasmus I’m here to see him? Kynan heard someone laugh in response. A very male laugh.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“He’s a bigger pain in the ass than you, if you can believe that. Hey, Durian?” Her voice got a little fainter. “You under any orders from my good old pops right now? Other than to be an ass, I mean. Hey.”
Kynan could see her in his head, giving attitude to Durian. “He’ll kill you,” he said softly. “Without thinking twice about it. Don’t piss him off, and get the hell out of there.”
“I’m still a witch,” she said. “No thanks to you. Durian can’t harm me.” That magelike attitude of hers was the only reason she was alive right now. Her voice got far away as she addressed someone else. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt here, Durian. What’s the answer?”
He heard Durian say, “No.”
“Great.” Her voice came back louder. “Anyway, the thing is,” Alexandrine said, “I need to get in touch with Carson Philips.”
“She’s in Paris.” Kynan watched Maddy look at her watch. He shrugged and made an apologetic face.
“They have phones in Paris, I’m pretty sure. Durian is starting to—ouch!”
“What happened?”
“—piss me off. Well, fuck you, too. Listen, Kynan, I need to know how to sever a fiend.”
“Are you insane?” Kynan said. It occurred to him that she was talking about Carson and severing for a damn good reason. She wasn’t asking because she wanted to know but because she wanted Durian to hear and maybe help her find a way around Rasmus. A delay of a second or two could mean the difference between living and dying. Hell. That was damned smart. No mageheld ever lost an opportunity to stick it to his mage. “Are you still there?”
“Yes. Do you have her number or not?” She sounded like a goddamned witch now, and half an inch away from giving him an order.
He gave the number to her and with a reluctant shrug in Maddy’s direction said, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Alexandrine hesitated before she replied, “That might be a good idea.”
Kynan disconnected the phone and thought about throwing the thing into the street. “Family emergency,” he said.
“Oh?” Maddy leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. She wasn’t bothering to hide what she was. “You’re a very interesting man, Kynan Aijan.”
He got a view of
her cleavage, so he looked, and the whole time he blocked himself from her for all he was worth. “Honey,” he said, “you don’t know the half of it.”
Maddy, the beautiful witch, smiled and said, “Half is interesting enough, I think.”
Kynan grabbed his coffee and her bag and said, “Let’s go.”
Chapter 26
Xia wasn’t surprised to feel Alexandrine. He didn’t think she was anywhere near him, but hallucinating that she wasn’t far took his mind off the pain. The room where Rasmus had him was magically dampened with respect to anything outside of it. Inside? A magical echo chamber. In here, the effect of pulling magic was redoubled. Since none of the kin got past the walls and door, there was no way he could feel any nonmageheld fiend unless he or she was in this room with him. That meant the change in his psychic sense of what was going on had to be an artifact of what Rasmus was doing to him.
Based on Rasmus’s behavior and reactions so far, Xia was convinced the mage had no idea he was any different than he had been before he was mageheld. Rasmus didn’t know Xia now had access to magic that sourced from a witch. He had to laugh to himself about it, though. Alexandrine’s magic made him a fucking mage when she was around, so he could pull her magic. Why, he and Rasmus were practically brothers.
Not that his new talent mattered much right now. His forbidden witch wasn’t anywhere near, so instead of blasting her mofo father to hell and back, he lay naked on a metal table under a suffocating magical restraint. Movement was impossible. No matter what Rasmus did to him, and he was doing a lot, Xia was unable to move or touch any magic at all. His autonomic nervous system, however, remained in fine working order.
What Rasmus was doing amounted to a magical vivi-section. The sorcerer was determined to have him mage-held again, which was why he wasn’t dead yet, and he was going after Xia’s bond to Carson and Nikodemus with a scalpel. Sometimes a hacksaw. He switched between assaults on his magic and physical assaults in the hope that near-death would give him an in.
My Forbidden Desire Page 25