by Vivian Wood
Aeric nodded, trotting through the Manor’s first floor and across the backyard in the evening’s growing twilight. Aeric’s jaw dropped for a moment when he spotted Mere Marie dressed in a miniature version of the black tactical gear the Guardians favored: Kevlar vest, pants with lots of pockets, and heavy boots. She even had a sleek firearm at her waist, though she’d skipped the broadsword or katanas that Rhys and the other Guardians usually wore.
Catching his shocked expression, Mere Marie smirked and crossed her arms.
“What? Ladies can go on missions too, you know.”
Aeric held up a hand, unwilling to argue with Mere Marie. The witch had a tongue sharper than any blade, and far be it from him to dismiss such a powerful ally. He trusted her just far enough for this mission, which was all he needed at the moment.
“Hurry up,” Rhys groused, looking as though he himself could use a few hours of sleep.
Aeric and Asher dressed in record time, and soon enough the whole crew was armed to the teeth. They loaded into a rusty and windowless blue van that read Tran’s Dry Cleaning on the side, Duverjay at the wheel. The ride to New Orleans East was tense but mercifully brief, and soon enough Duverjay pulled up outside a crumbling brick building with CAJUN SEAFOOD scrawled across the peeling white metal sign.
Mere Marie clicked her tongue at the state of the place, pulling a wand from her pocket. Closing her eyes and chanting a low string of vaguely French-sounding words, she started pulling down the wards around the place.
“We’ll remain here,” Duverjay informed them, picking a speck of lint off his tuxedo. Even on this serious and potentially dangerous mission, the butler still wore his usual tuxedo complete with long tails.
“Right then,” Rhys said. “Let’s go do some breaking and entering, shall we?”
Gabriel slid the van’s side door open and they all rolled out, hitting the pavement and jogging to a spot by the front door. Their backs against the wall, they followed Rhys’s lead as he stood and listened intently.
“Abandoned,” he whispered to the group. “No guard, either. They must be relying on moving the bolt-hole around regularly. Makes sense, as we’ve taken down a couple of his high-profile safe houses recently.”
At Rhys’s signal, Aeric swung around to the rickety metal front door. The thing was barely hanging on by the topmost hinge, and a single kick sent it flying inward. Aeric took the lead, conscious that he was the only Guardian without a lot to lose, as the others were all happily mated.
Inside, no danger loomed. The place had once been some kind of convenience store and takeout restaurant, but every shelf was empty, the whole place wiped conspicuously clean. At the far end, just where the food might have been served behind a sagging Formica counter, was the staticky gray blob of light that led into a typical bolt-hole. Spread about five feet square, it drew Aeric like a magnet.
Alice.
Her name was on the tip of his tongue as he pressed forward, barely able to wait for the other Guardians to catch up before he pushed through the portal. There was a brief moment of tingling freefall before Aeric stepped into a blindingly white world, all ice and snow and light. Three startled guards lurched toward the Guardians, and two of them found the business end of Aeric’s blade before he drew another dozen breaths. Gabriel nabbed the third guard, forcing him to lie on his belly in the snow rather than killing him.
Aeric couldn’t care less. A few steps further was a tall white birch, and under it lay a white stone pedestal topped with a faintly glowing glass orb. As he grew closer, Aeric realized that it was a coffin, made not of glass but of the thinnest ice. Lying beneath the glass like a lone butterfly collected long ago, Alice was perfectly still. Her tiny frame swathed in a filmy white gown, hands folded over her stomach, eyes closed in a peaceful expression.
“No!” rushed from Aeric’s throat as he lunged toward her. When he stood close enough to stare at her, he leaned down. Ever so softly, so light it was nearly unnoticeable, gentle white puffs of breath eased from her nose. Each breath, torturously slow, formed a hundred tiny snowflakes in the air. In the next moment they disintegrated and swept away, waiting for the next breath.
“Aeric—” Gabriel tried to warn him, but Aeric had already brought down his fist against the icy coffin.
The ice was surprisingly resilient, a thin web of cracks spreading out from the spot where his fist landed. As he watched, a thousand tiny mirroring cracks broke out over Alice’s skin, silver slivers that sent an alarming chill down Aeric’s spine.
“Stop!” Gabriel finally said, pulling Aeric back half a step. “It’s a spell. You can’t break it physically.”
Rhys and Asher circled, keeping an eye on the snowy landscape around them.
“How do I free her?” Aeric asked, panic clawing at his chest. Having her so close, only inches from his touch, was killing him inside.
“There’s an inscription,” Gabriel said. He reached out and touched a spot on the coffin lid, which made a set of magically-etched words flare brightly against the ice. “Damn, never was much good at ancient Abyssinian…”
Gabriel ran his fingers over the words, squinting.
“Ah… it’s an energy spell. Do you know what kind of magic she has?” Gabriel asked, looking up.
“No,” Aeric admitted. “I can sense her aura, something dark and potent… but nothing more than that.”
“Whatever she is, Pere Mal is feeding off her. That’s what the spell does, holds her and drains her magic. I can feel her restlessness,” Gabriel said, splaying his hands out an inch above the coffin, his mouth set in a grim line. “She’s trying to escape, I think. Maybe she feels your presence?”
‘The dreams…” Aeric muttered.
“Sorry?”
“She’s been coming to me in my dreams, but she can’t speak, can’t do anything other than act out the same scene again and again.”
“In your dreams, does she tell you anything? Maybe a gesture—” Gabriel asked, but Aeric was already two steps ahead of him.
“Blood,” Aeric said, thinking of the dreams. “She draws blood.”
Pulling his sword free from its sheath, Aeric used the base of the blade to make a thin score across his palm. Vivid red splashed forth and dripped onto the coffin’s icy veneer. The blood caught and spread in the blink of an eye, melting away the ice but leaving its victim intact.
The second it melted enough that he could free her from the coffin, Aeric cradled Alice in his arms. Her eyes opened, proving to be the most brilliant hazel imaginable, nearly the color of soft peat moss and fresh-turned soil. When her long lashes swept upward and their gazes connected, something deep inside Aeric’s gut wrenched painfully.
Mine.
For once in his life, bear, man, and dragon were in perfect harmony.
Her lips parted on a gasp as she sucked in a deep breath, startled and lovely. Her cheeks went pink as her arms slid around his neck, eyes searching his face.
“Alice,” he uttered.
“You found me,” she whispered.
Then she brought her mouth to his, lips seeking purchase. Aeric couldn’t keep himself in check, kissing her hard and fast, groaning at the taste of her. Like honeyed nectar, a thousand times better than anything he could’ve made up in his head. Her lips moved against his, her fingertips kneading the nape of his neck as she clung to him.
Mate.
At the thunderous calls of his bear and his dragon, Aeric finally released her lips and pulled back a fraction of an inch, staring into her wide, dark eyes. He felt the weight of the others’ gazes upon his back and wished for nothing more than to be alone with her, but first he needed to get her to safety.
“Soon,” he promised, and to his surprise she merely nodded.
As if she understood him perfectly. As if two perfect strangers could already be precisely in sync.
Whatever Alice was to him, Aeric understood one thing: he’d deprived himself of her company for far too long, and he wasn’t about to take any ri
sks with her now.
“Home,” he tossed over his shoulder to Gabriel.
Rhys and Asher drew up beside him and followed him toward the bolt-hole, ready to defend Alice at all costs. Their defense was pure loyalty and honor, just as Aeric’s had been while protecting their respective mates.
All at once, Aeric could truly appreciate the service. For the first time in his life, he had something worth protecting.
3
Chapter Three
Her Guardian had finally arrived.
Though she was an immortal who’d seen thousands of sunrises and sunsets, Alice was having a day quite unlike any other. For months, all she had were dreams… dreams of him, dreams of her mother Tisiphone, dreams of her long-ago home in Erebus. She’d slept in that coffin for too long, her self-awareness fading until all she knew were her dreams and her heartbeat, slow, faint, and steady.
Then air flooded her lungs once more, warmth filled her veins. A pair of strong arms lifted her aloft. She opened her eyes…
…and it was him.
Wavy blond hair, long enough that he knotted it at his nape. Piercing blue eyes the color of a winter morning. Chiseled cheekbones, a sinfully full mouth, twin slashes of eyebrow that made his gaze even more intense. A kind of golden glow radiated off his skin, a tan that modern-day humans would be envious of, though Alice knew the truth. It was his aura, his dragon, his power that made him glow.
Then she’d pressed her lips to his, fulfilling a lifetime of fantasies. It was easily the most perfect moment she’d experienced to date, kissing him. Hearing her name from his lips. Letting him hold her tight all the way back to his home, a huge mansion he called the Manor.
Alice already knew all about the Manor, since she’d been borderline stalking Aeric for centuries. She’d lost him after she laid the dragon’s curse on him, but found him again when the voodoo witch Mere Marie used a spell to yank Aeric through time and space, bringing him to New Orleans. A spell like that took a hell of a lot of power, and it was impossible to keep it quiet. Luckily for Alice, she’d been keeping watch for just such a thing.
And now here he was, in the flesh.
Being as old as she was, Alice had dabbled in this drug and that over the ages, seeking a little warmth on the coldest of nights. Her mother’s people, the Greeks, had especially loved drug and drink, often sipping mead laced with poppy. The euphoria was sweet but brief, though Alice remembered thinking that she could understand why people got hooked on the stuff…
None of it compared to the feeling of finally touching her dragon. She twined her fingers with his, staring boldly at him, sucking in big lungfuls of his scent. He smelled like warmth and spices, amber and myrrh and a thousand exotic and unknowable things that excited Alice to her core. Just where her fingertips pressed against his skin, she thought she could almost feel an electric current running between them, the beginning of something new and tenuous but frightfully strong.
The car ride was silent. Alice could tell that Aeric had much he wanted to say, but he kept glancing at the other men in the car as if he couldn’t. As long as they were touching, there seemed no need to speak just yet, to explain themselves to one another; she could tell that he was every bit as nervous and excited as she was, but he did seem to be keeping a level head about it.
Alice’s mouth turned down at the corners when she realized that of course he would feel more calm than she did. He’d just found a life mate, an exciting turn of events. For Alice, it was much more: the sign that she was entering her last days. For Furies, the arrival of their fated mate ushered in the final act of their long lives.
She’d delayed the inevitable once, turning him into a dragon instead of killing him, refusing to make herself known to him no matter how he called to her heart. But now, it seemed, Alice would need to make her peace with the inevitable, fate riding close on her heels now.
She glanced at Aeric as their vehicle pulled onto a beautiful street lined with grand old oaks, each dripping with Spanish moss. The houses here were grand, speaking of old money that went back to the very foundations of the city of New Orleans. Alice thought the city made a beautiful backdrop for Aeric, appropriately dramatic for a man who was six and a half feet of pure hulking menace coated in raw sensuality.
When they pulled up outside the storied brick mansion where the Guardians lived, everyone got out of the sleek black SUV. Alice tugged at Aeric’s hand, keeping him back a few steps while the other Guardians bounded up the front steps.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” Aeric said, the deep rumble of his voice giving her chills. “This is where I live, along with the other men who rescued you. I’ll tell you all about the Guardians shortly.”
He squeezed her fingers, making Alice’s heart thump wildly, her tongue knotting in her mouth.
“When can we speak privately?” she asked, her cheeks going red. She’d had the barest taste of him on her lips, back in Pere Mal’s prison, and she was desperate for more. “I have information about Pere Mal.”
Aeric arched a brow.
“How do you know that the Guardians are hunting Pere Mal?” he asked, curious.
“I used to get all my information from Cassie, before she was freed. Then when Pere Mal put the sleeping spell on me,” she paused, shivering, “I dreamed about you. I followed you around the world, watched your dragon fly.”
Aeric’s expression was unreadable for the longest moment. He squeezed her fingers again, giving his head a soft shake.
“We’ll need to meet with the whole Guardian team, debrief and get as much information from you as we can. I would ask that you not tell the others about…” he paused, eyes flashing. “The dreams.”
Alice felt her lips tug upward in a smile. So secretive, her dragon.
“Of course,” she said, dipping her head.
“Let’s introduce you to the group, then. And get you some more substantial clothing,” he said, eyeing the thin white shift she wore.
Alice blushed again, but more from pleasure than any real shame. She’d lived in this body too long to want to hide it, but she liked that Aeric wanted to keep her under wraps. There was something sexy about a man who coveted that which he already owned.
The Manor itself was beautiful, a true work of art with impeccable interior design. The foyer boasted an airy space several stories high, complete with a dazzling crystal chandelier. Alice followed Aeric through the entryway and into a massive common room evenly divided into a kitchen, a living area, and an office-like meeting space with a big oak table.
A familiar face awaited Alice there.
“Cassie!” she cried, spotting her friend’s telltale head of bright red hair.
“Oh, Alice!” Cassie said, flinging herself at Alice. Alice caught her, then pulled back with surprise when she felt her friend’s newly-rounded stomach.
“Are you…?” Alice gaped.
Cassie flushed and nodded, laughing.
“Yep. A little girl, an Oracle just like me.” Cassie’s grin was irresistible.
“That’s amazing! I’m so glad to see you safe. I couldn’t find you in the scrying mirror,” Alice confessed.
“I’ve seen a little of you here and there, but not enough to find you. I’m sorry about that,” Cassie said, suddenly tearing up. “Oh, and I’m a little emotional lately, as you can see.”
“Don’t give it another thought,” Alice admonished her. “Everything has played out exactly as it should. Here I am, after all.”
Cassie gave a watery laugh and nodded. She glanced over to where Aeric and Rhys stood conferring in low voices. Cassie arched a brow, obviously curious.
“I barely know any more than you do,” Alice sighed. “I mean… well… I’ve known that he existed for ages, but I don’t know him.”
She blushed a little at the memory of the only way she knew him, through a long series of very graphic and sensual dreams that happened in a place she’d never been, with a man she’d never touched until today…
“You’re smitten!” Cassie declared in a whisper, looking scandalized.
“I— well—” Alice wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“Here,” Aeric interrupted, appearing with a wool blanket that he tucked around Alice’s shoulders. “We’re going to start the meeting now, I think.”
“We’ll catch up later,” Cassie said, shooting Alice a meaningful glance before she sauntered over to a tall dark-haired man, who dropped a kiss on her head.
“Gabriel,” the man said, thrusting a hand out for Alice to shake. Alice took it, all the hair on her arms raising at the barest contact with him. The man was a very powerful mage of some sort, that was certain.
“Nice to meet you,” Alice said, smiling at the way he ushered Cassie into a seat across the table, pure chivalry and solicitousness. Alice approved wholeheartedly; Cassie deserved that kind of treatment after her long and lonely imprisonment with Pere Mal.
Something Alice herself understood all too well. To her surprise, Aeric mirrored Gabriel’s gesture, pulling out Alice’s seat and making sure she was comfortable at the table. She blinked at him as he gestured to the others taking seats around the table, introducing the Guardians and their mates.
“This is Rhys and his mate Echo. You know Cassie and Gabriel already. Asher and Kira round out the Guardians and their mates. And last but not least,” Aeric said, gesturing to the stoic-faced voodoo priestess who’d taken a seat at the head of the table. “Mere Marie.”
“We’ve met,” Mere Marie said tartly, pursing her lips. “It was brief, but memorable.”
So Mere Marie remembered the last time their paths had crossed, sometime around the Louisiana Purchase.
“That we have,” Alice agreed, inclining her head but not elaborating when Aeric cocked a curious brow.
“Alright, well now that we’re all acquainted,” Rhys said, breezing past the moment. “I think Alice probably has some information about Pere Mal that’s newer than what we’ve got. I don’t know about you guys, but I’d like to nail his arse to the wall, and I think this just might be our lucky break.”