by Vivian Wood
Witch.
She heard the murmur, knew it would not be the last. Her presence here could only make things worse. If only she had the skill of vanishing and taking another person with her, like her mother did… but Allise was still young in her craft, and her mother had blocked much of her learning.
She took one last look at the man lying in the razed cottage, saw that he looked at her with a gaze so brilliantly blue that it was nearly unbearable to withstand. He looked at her, really saw into the depths of her, and it took everything in her to turn away.
Wiping a tear from her cheek, Allise closed her eyes and vanished herself to her special place, a little copse of trees near a town on the Northern coast of Eire. Here, at least, no one would question her magic. Between the Faeries and the Druids that ran amok there, no one would think Allise out of place.
Here, she would start her new home, her new life.
Alone.
1
Chapter One
In his dream, Aeric was back in the cave. Rationally, he knew this was just a place he’d spent a few nights long ago, a tight dark space with a heated pool that bubbled up from a hot springs located somewhere deep in the earth. His logical mind knew he hadn’t been to this place in hundreds of years, not since his last visit to Turkey. Back then, it had still been part of the Byzantine Empire, nothing like the radical breeding ground it appeared to be when Aeric saw it in the news these days.
Still, his heart knew this place better than he knew his own face in the mirror. He came here frequently in his dreams, because it was where he always met her. Helle, he called her in his head, meaning divine woman. The closest thing to a goddess to walk the earth since the glorious days of the radiant Freyja and Sága. He knew not her name, where she hailed from, or if she even existed outside his head.
All he knew was that she was his.
Aeric walked across the damp cave floor, a chill seeping up into his bare feet. When he came here, he was always bare as the day of his birth. He moved quickly to the steaming water, sighing with pleasure when he slid into the welcome heat. The water came up nearly to his chest, and he submerged himself to take advantage of the warmth, undoing some of the tension that held him tight all his waking hours.
When he broke the surface again, standing and sluicing water from his face, he sensed her. A growl rumbled from his throat as he turned to find her standing at the cave’s mouth, looking like sin incarnate and redemption all in one pale-skinned package. Helle stood with a hand on her hip, watching him with great interest. Her straight, glossy black hair tumbled to her knees, clinging to her body, her hazel eyes glinting with something like a challenge. She was deceptively petite, all that goddess power bundled in five feet nothing, her figure so lithe as to almost be boyish.
But then there were her high, pert breasts. The subtle curve of her hips. The plump bow of her lips, the wide mossy brown-green of her eyes… The way her tongue darted out to wet her lips as she moved toward him, her body swaying in a way that made him painfully hard.
Helle was nothing but woman, through and through.
No words were spoken between them. Aeric had long since discovered that they could not communicate with words in these dreams, that any attempts would come out in Old Norse for him or Ancient Greek for her. He didn’t try anymore, accepting it as a rule of their trysts.
She climbed down into the water, her long hair slithering upward to wrap itself into a neat pile on her head. Another rule of this place seemed to be that Helle’s hair never got wet. Who was he to question, when he was presented with such a gift?
The second she was in his arms, her breasts and hips and lips crushed up against his, Aeric lost himself in the embrace. The taste of her was pure musk and honey, her sweet feminine scent filled his every breath. Her lips moved against his, her tongue flicking his in a teasing dance. One of his hands sunk deep into her silky hair, gripping it at the nape, the other traveled from her shoulder to her hip before gliding back up to cup her breast.
She gasped, biting her lip and letting her head fall back, the long column of her deck drawing his attention. He nipped and sucked at her sensitive flesh as her nails raked his shoulders, his sides, his hips. After a few moments one of her small hands circled his cock, stroking him intimately, seeking.
Aeric dropped his hands to her shapely ass, lifting her higher, groaning as she guided him into her body. They connected perfectly, deep and rough, Helle keening as he filled her impossibly tight sheath. Their breathing grew harsh as Aeric fucked her just like that, standing up in the middle of the pool, the heat of the water only adding to the intensity of the moment.
For a moment, he wished he could take her somewhere else, on a bed maybe. Squeeze her tits while she rode him, lean her back and taste her nectar as she cried out his name, bursting against his lips. In the next second, all other thoughts receded as he lost himself in the feel of her, the tight heat that he couldn’t get out of his head. She tensed and cried out, clenching around him as she released, drawing him along with her.
When he came, his whole frame shuddering with the force of it, he leaned her back and filled her to the brim, jetting his release deep into her body. She rocked against him softly, her expression awed, as if she wanted everything he had and more. So, so much more.
Before she could slip away, Aeric kissed her hard and then leaned his forehead against her, trying to catch his breath.
I saw you. There, in the cemetery, I saw you, he whispered against her lips, but it came out in that old, lost tongue.
She merely smiled, kissing his lips a final time. Her teeth caught his bottom lip, biting down hard until Aeric could taste his own blood. Helle touched her lip where his blood flowed, then held her fingertip up for Aeric to see. A dark red spot of his life’s blood lay there, then it vanished in a flash of gold light.
He glanced at Helle, but she merely stared back at him, imploring. Begging him to understand… but what?
After a moment she pulled away, separating their bodies. Already Aeric was hungry for more, hard and aching, but she just gave him an unreadable look and blew him a kiss. She climbed out of the pool, moving with that fluid grace that made him wild. The shadows swallowed her in the next moment, and she was gone.
Aeric closed his eyes and sunk into the water, letting the dream pull him under.
When Aeric opened his eyes, he found himself in a comfortable bed. For a moment, he was disoriented. It was always that way when he dreamed of her; she filled his entire world, chased away every other thought he could possess. Where was he, again?
He rose and looked out the window, then sighed. Prague. Of course. He’d heard a rumor that Pere Mal kept one of his safe houses here, with a bolt-hole that held some of his most important assets. Unfortunately, the loose-lipped and drunken sorcerer who’d given him the tip had been wrong. There was a safe house, yes. There was even a bolt-hole.
But when Aeric had forced his way in, expending a great deal of magical force not to mention a few long-held favors, there was nothing inside but a room of gleaming gold and treasure. As a dragon, the gilded room thrilled him, made him want to burrow deep in the cold security of it all, but Aeric was displeased.
Much like the sorcerer, who’d been awakened in the middle of the night by a furious dragon filling his Edinburgh flat. The dragon was taking hold for days at a time now, giving Aeric little glimpses of his manic search for her. Aeric knew he needed to make progress, and quickly, lest he give himself over entirely to the dragon.
It would be so easy, just to let the dragon circle the globe, hunting for his mate…
The problem came in the finding. If by some sheer luck the dragon found her, Aeric wasn’t sure what would happen. He didn’t think the dragon would harm her, but neither could Aeric simply let the dragon mark and claim his mate. He’d be signing her death warrant, just as his own had been signed the moment he and the dragon became one.
Hunted for their magical abilities, not to mention the vast oceans o
f treasure they kept tucked away, dragons were prized in a way that made Aeric’s skin crawl. The first dragon he’d laid eyes on outside himself had been in a market in Persia. The fool had already been caught and was being carefully butchered, blood and scales and teeth pried from the body and stowed away for sale. They’d saved the head for last, perhaps preparing it as some kind of trophy for the Raj. Aeric had stared into the other dragon’s eyes, wondering all the while if the beast was even dead or merely being vivisected.
It had seemed so… alive.
With a shudder, Aeric swept up his trousers and began to dress. This could not go on, letting the dragon come and go as it pleased. The fact that he hadn’t already been noticed and hunted was astonishing. It could be explained by the fact that he woke in a different city each night, the dragon was that smart at least.
Well… the dragon was probably even more clever than Aeric, truth be told. They were one in the same, but the dragon held a kind of cold and calculated ruthlessness, a dogged persistence of his goals, without consideration for his safety or the lives of others.
As much as he cherished the dreams where she appeared to him, it wasn’t enough anymore. Letting the dragon hunt was not enough, not nearly.
He needed a special set of skills that could only be found in a true Oracle, and it just so happened that he knew one. Gabriel, one of his fellow Guardians, had taken an Oracle as a mate. Though Aeric suffered no illusions that the Guardians would be pleased to see him after his extended absence, effectively breaking his contract with Mere Marie, he had run out of options.
He’d return to the voodoo queen on his knees, if that meant that he had a chance at finding her. He’d do anything just to…
What? Make sure she was safe? Enshrine her in some secret safe house of his own? Cage her like a beautiful, rare bird?
It didn’t bear consideration. He needed to find her first, and all would fall into place. Aeric had been alive more than a thousand years, and by now he’d learned to let fate have her way with him.
Resistance was futile, as the saying went.
He swept from the room and headed for the rooftop, ready to cloak himself and take flight. He could only hope that in this, his dragon would take his lead, taking him across the ocean to New Orleans.
For the first time in untold centuries, Aeric Drekkon was going to ask for help.
As he made his descent over Louisiana, Aeric was surprised to feel his bear rise. The dragon had allowed Aeric more awareness than usual through the entire flight. As he closed in on New Orleans, hungry and tired, the dragon had receded enough to let the bear surface, though briefly. Unlike the dragon, who functioned seamlessly as a part of Aeric, the bear was an acquired form, the result of a year’s study under an African mage who specialized in shape shifting.
Knowing that his dragon half threw off an unmistakable aura of power and magic, Aeric had spent a long time searching for a good cover to keep nosy magic-havers at bay. All Kith were aware of others’ power on some level, that was the nature of the paranormal community. Being able to shift into his bear was proof enough for most that Aeric might merely be a very powerful bear shifter, and it had gotten him out of several nasty scrapes where the dragon couldn’t emerge and protect them.
Lately, Aeric hadn’t released his bear long enough for a good run, much less a hunt. The bear rose once in a while, curious about their mate, eager to splash in rivers and catch fish and do all the other mindless things that the bear loved.
Aeric tried to soothe the bear, letting him know that it would be amongst his own kind soon enough. The Guardians were mostly bear shifters, and soon enough there would be a good trip way up into Cajun country to let the bears rollick and roam. Aeric truly treasured his bear, a hard-fought bit of magic that had sunk deep into his personality. The bear protected him from being exposed and hunted, and it didn’t ask much in exchange. Compared with the dragon, the bear was practically mellow.
That said, the bear had gotten him into trouble before. As he glimpsed the city lights of New Orleans, Aeric recalled his recruitment to the Alpha Guardians. He’d tried to save a village girl from being raped and possibly killed, and she’d turned on him when she saw his bear. The villagers had come with pitchforks and torches, the whole shebang.
Then Mere Marie showed up, offered to save his life, and Aeric hadn’t been in any position to turn her down. The time jump to modernity had been quite a shock, but not terribly upsetting. The dragon could jump through time, though it took an immense amount of power; Aeric only used it for urgent situations. At the point that Mere Marie had recruited him, Aeric believed that moving forward in time could only mean more humans, more opportunity for his true nature to be discovered. He’d deliberately chosen never to jump past his natural life.
Plans changed, and quickly.
Upping his cloaking spell to make himself completely invisible, Aeric zoomed over the city. The Superdome dazzled him, the gold and green lights shining upward. Not all new technologies were terrible, he knew. After all, he was a rabid Saints football fan, watching each game on the Manor’s big screen TV with a mindless pleasure he hadn’t felt since boyhood.
He flew past St. Louis Cemetery #1, trying not to flinch. His most recent memory of the place was far less kind, the moment when he’d seen his mate lying helpless on the cold ground, unconscious and captive to Pere Mal’s whims. He’d known her on sight, of course, and then there’d been her scent…
That honeyed sage scent was unmistakable. He knew it from his dreams, and every once in a while, even thought he’d sensed it in his waking hours. He was probably just living in a waking fantasy, but still. It drove him wild, running him in circles searching when he smelled her on the breeze.
He landed in the Manor’s backyard with a thunderous thump, and brought all of the Guardians outside in less than a minute.
“And here I thought maybe a stray cat set off the wards,” Mere Marie said, dressed in her usual flowing lavender robes, holding her creepy pet cat Cairn in her arms.
“Different kind of stray, I think,” Cairn mumbled, earning a glare from Aeric.
“Where in the hell have you been?” Gabriel asked, his arm around his mate. Pretty Cassie was noticeably pregnant now, her hand curled against her belly in a protective gesture.
“Gabe, be nice,” Cassie admonished him.
“Yeah, okay, get it out,” Aeric waved at Rhys. “And what’s Asher still doing here?”
“Filling in for you, actually,” Rhys said. The big Scot crossed his arms, impatience flashing in his expression. “This is his mate Kira, in case you’d just decided not to ask. You’re not big on asking permission, I’ve found.”
Mere Marie held up a hand, silencing the Guardians, but Rhys’s mate Echo didn’t seem overly concerned with that.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Echo said, giving him a smirk. “Rhys needs more nights off. I haven’t been on a date in ages.”
Asher and his mate both seemed to be smothering a shared laugh, and Mere Marie huffed.
“So? Any explanations to be had?” Mere Marie demanded.
“Looking for the girl from the cemetery,” he said, deliberately keeping his reactions casual.
“Your mate, you mean?” Cassie asked, then pressed her fingers to her lips. Aeric’s startled expression made her frown. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to give anything away. I’m just getting visions right and left these days.”
She rubbed her belly and gave an apologetic shrug.
“You’ve seen her?” Aeric asked, his cool act dropping in an instant.
“Alice,” Echo chimed in. “Her name is Alice. Cassie knows her.”
Something twisted in Aeric’s chest. Alice. How perfect.
“I just… I’m not taking a mate, but I need to know she’s safe,” Aeric said, his tone clipped. “I can’t settle until I know she’s been freed from Pere Mal, and I’ve exhausted all my other avenues.”
“You should come inside,” Kira said, scrunching her nose. �
�Speaking of exhausted, you look it. Come inside, and we’ll all work it out, okay?”
Mere Marie clicked her tongue, then spun on her heel and headed inside. The rest of the group filtered inside, leaving Gabriel and Aeric last. Gabriel clapped Aeric on the arm.
“Knew you’d be back,” the Brit said with a grin. “Not a doubt in my mind.”
Aeric cocked a brow and followed him inside, amused. For his own part, he hadn’t been certain of a thing in the world.
If a man like him could be said to have friends, he supposed his were pretty damned loyal.
2
Chapter Two
“Aeric, wake up.”
Aeric’s eyes snapped open. Asher stood a couple feet away, shifting back and forth on his feet, full of restless energy.
“What time is it?” Aeric asked. You would think part of the power and mystique of being a dragon would include not getting jet lagged when you make globe-trotting trips, but you’d be wrong. At the moment, all Aeric really wanted was to sleep for another two or three days, catch up on a few months’ worth of sleepless nights.
“You’ve only been down for like six hours, but Mere Marie got a fix on Alice’s location and…” Asher continued, but Aeric lost the thread of the conversation as he rose and pulled on a shirt.
Alice. Enough said.
“Where is she?” Aeric asked as he laced up his boots, cutting off Asher’s story.
“Pere Mal’s got a bolt-hole stashed in some restaurant in New Orleans East,” Asher said, ignoring Aeric’s total lack of manners. “We’re not sure what we’ll be walking into, honestly. We’re prepared for a number of scenarios.”
“When do we leave?” Aeric asked, following Asher out into the hallway and down the grand staircase.
“Rhys and Gabriel are suiting up in the gym. As soon as we’re all armed and ready, we take off. Mere Marie is coming along to take down the wards on the bolt-hole, and Duverjay will be guarding her while we are inside.”