by Vivian Wood
“Let’s get them out of here,” Rhys said. The four Guardians each picked up one end of one of the unconscious Faeries, leaving Alice and Echo to follow, picking their way across the body-strewn brothel floor.
“This has certainly lived up to my expectations,” Echo whispered, making Alice giggle.
Alice’s mind had already drifted. She was openly admiring Aeric’s ass as he walked ahead of her, carrying one of the twins. True, this had been quite an adventure.
But she was pretty sure a better one awaited her back at the Manor… in the bedroom.
Licking her lips, she hurried to follow her mate.
9
Chapter Nine
Alice gave a hoarse bark of laughter when Aeric pulled her sweat-slicked body against his. Her back lay to his front, and he took full advantage. He nuzzled her neck, teasing her with the prickle of his five o’clock shadow as his lips moved across her skin. Her breasts tightened as heat spread low in her body, though she’d only just orgasmed a handful of minutes before.
“How can you be ready to go again?” she asked, biting her lip. She’d stripped that tux off him just as she planned, and then they’d gone several rounds. Now it was nearly daybreak, and he’d thoroughly exhausted her… not that she wasn’t interested.
“I can’t seem to help it,” he murmured against her nape. “I think I gave up on ever having this, having a connection with someone the way I feel with you. It unnerves me, but it also riles me up. The bear and the dragon don’t mind you much, either.”
The last was a joke, Alice knew. She could tell when the bear or the dragon was close to the surface, feel the shift in him, in his personality and his desires. It gave him endless facets, new things for her to explore each time they spoke, kissed, even looked at each other for more than a few moments.
It was intoxicating.
It also made her a little afraid, made her want to confess the past and see if their newfound connection was deeper than infatuation. Could it stand the test of the truth?
“I cursed you, made you a dragon.” The words were out of Alice’s mouth before she could think. Aeric’s lips stilled, his fingers tensed on her ribcage.
“What do you mean?” he asked slowly.
Alice turned in his arms, watching his expression.
“I told you about Furies, about our powers and our… limitations.”
“You mean your stubborn belief that I’m going to kill you somehow? Yes, you told me.”
Alice gave her head a soft shake.
“There’s more. In order to gain our full powers, to become goddesses of a sort, we are supposed to find our fated mate and kill him. The sacrifice it so powerful that it drives a halfling, like me, into full godhood.”
Aeric seemed to mull that over.
“I’m not seeing what this has to do with my dragon,” he said at last.
“I was supposed to kill you. That night, when your cottage fell down around you and the dragon possessed you, I was there. My mother charged me with killing you, told me she’d spurn me otherwise.” Alice paused. “Obviously, I couldn’t do it. Instead, I flung a curse at you, trying to appease her.”
A strange smirk lit Aeric’s lips.
“And the worst you could come up with was making me an unstoppable, fierce creature?” he asked.
Alice had the grace to flush.
“Well… Even then, looking at you, I couldn’t hurt you.”
“Why didn’t you join with me then? Because of this whole he’s going to kill me thing? It’s nonsense, you know.”
Alice shook her head.
“My mother told me that you’d hate me. That you’d be hunted, that you’d never know peace and resent me.”
Aeric was quiet for a beat.
“I have been hunted, that much is true. And I’ve never found peace, but I think part of that is because I was waiting for you. As for the rest…” He leaned in and brushed his lips over hers. “I think my dragon is a great gift. My human life would have ended long ago without it. And I never would have learned magic, attained my bear form… The dragon brought a lot into my life.”
They were silent for a long time, both thinking their own thoughts.
“I watched you, you know.”
“In the scrying mirror, yes. So you said. And you visited me in the dreams…”
“No, I mean… I would find you, and watch you from a distance. For an hour, or a few days sometimes. I always hoped that you would start to look for me, and then I would know that we could be together. No matter what that meant for me.”
Aeric’s brow puckered.
“Why did you never try to lift the curse, if that’s what you thought my dragon was?”
Alice bit her lip.
“It’s selfish,” she admitted. “If I redacted the curse, took the dragon from you, it would cause a chain reaction of sorts. All my memories of you, the times I visited and watched you, I believe they would vanish. I couldn’t stand the idea of it. I couldn’t take the chance that you’d be a stranger, lost to me.”
Aeric looked like she’d punched him in the gut.
“Could that really happen?” he gritted out.
“If the curse was revoked? I believe so. Luckily, it never happened,” Alice said with a shrug.
Aeric pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her.
“That would kill me,” he whispered.
Alice kissed his shoulder. After a moment, she added: “I will always come back to you, no matter what. I want you to know that. Through anything.”
Aeric’s lips were on hers in the next instant, his hands threading through her hair. He didn’t speak, but neither did he need to. Alice could feel the anger and frustration boiling over in him, his fury at her insistence that she might be taken away from him.
Alice kissed him back, making love to him in rough strokes. Owning him inside and out, giving him possession of herself as well. She understood his fear. She felt it too, down to the depths of her soul. The more entwined she became with him, the more afraid she grew.
There was nothing to be done, though. Even a Fury could not overrule fate, and fate had already cast her lot.
Alice would die, and leave Aeric behind.
Alice stood at the large picture window in Aeric’s bedroom, staring out at the city lights in the distance. The moon hung full and heavy in the night sky, as if brooding as it presided over the New Orleans skyline.
Behind her, Aeric slept deeply. A glance over her shoulder showed his muscular form, stretched out across the big bed, naked as the original sin. She watched him for a moment, then turned back to the window. She worried her bottom lip with her teeth, wondering what kept her awake. A nameless apprehension, a bitter taste at the back of her tongue. A restlessness, foreboding…
The moon shone on, revealing nothing of what Alice so badly needed to know. A strange feeling stirred low in the pit of her belly, the sensation age-old and unmistakable… her Fury powers were attempting to rise, unbidden. If she’d ever completed the ritual and become a full Fury, this response would indicate an assignment, a violent undertaking of revenge that would surge forth without Alice’s blessing or knowledge.
As she hadn’t attained godhood, she could access bits of her power, draw forth parts and use them for a limited period of time. Since she’d left Tisiphone’s side, though, her Fury side had never tried to rise spontaneously.
It was unsettling, to say the least.
Alice cocked her head. A soft sound from the hallway pulled her away from the window, and she left the bedroom in bare feet. She walked to the grand staircase, curious. To her surprise, she found Echo, Kira, and Cassie standing in the foyer, whispering.
“You too?” Cassie asked when Alice descended to join them. Rubbing her pregnant belly, Cassie pulled a face. “None of us can sleep. There’s something going on tonight.”
“This whole group of women has wayyyy too much premonition,” Kira joked, shaking her head.
“Yeah. Meanwhile, all
the Guardians are asleep,” Echo said with a chuckle.
“Asher’s on patrol,” Kira said with a sigh. “I texted him a few minutes ago and asked him to come back to the Manor. I have this really bad feeling…”
Alice lost the thread of the conversation. Her power stirred again, the Fury in her seething and hungry. Ready to wreak havoc, ready to reap the soul of some unfortunate creature. The looming threat she’d felt all night doubled, tripled, until it filled her chest. She thought she’d choke on it, the air was so heavy with anticipation.
She tasted the metallic tang of blood, salty and bitter. That was the moment she knew that her time with Aeric had come to an end.
In a flash, it was all so clear. In the coming minutes, the Fury would rise. Alice would fall away, Allisandre taking her place, and she would do great harm to all in her path.
Alice jerked away from the other women, ignoring their protests, and yanked the front door open. Her movements were clumsy, forced. She fought the rising tide deep inside her heart as long as she could, propelling herself down the front walk and toward the street. Passing out of the Manor’s wards was like shedding a fur cloak in the summertime; she nearly sighed with the relief of it.
Alice tried to glance back at the Manor, wishing all the while that she could see Aeric again, kiss him one last time. Whisper sweet words to him, things she’d held back because it hurt too much to say them. What a fool she’d been, thinking she had enough time for it all.
She saw Cassie following her.
“Stay back!” Alice shouted. Alice threw out a hand in a warning gesture — she had no idea what was about to happen, but Cassie needed to be far, far away.
Turning her back on her friend, she stood on the curb and waited. Several moments ticked by, her heart thrumming a quick tattoo in her chest. Alice shivered as raw power built and built inside her, swelling and pounding in time with each beat of her heart. She clenched her fists just as the first explosion occurred, perhaps a few hundred feet away. A vicious spell hit a tree close by, sending a fiery red wave of sparks high in the humid night air.
So it began.
The girls all rushed out the front door, careful to stay within the Manor’s wards. It was all well and good, as Alice planned to keep as much of this outside the Manor grounds as possible. The street in front of her erupted in sudden chaos, black-suited goons arriving alongside monk-like pale men in dark robes. Brightly-robed mages began to appear from all sides, lobbing spells at the Manor’s wards. Several nasty-looking wolf shifters prowled down the street, heading straight for Alice.
Last but not least were the undead, sightless and thoughtless bodies staggering down the sidewalk with blind determination. They were slow, but effective; a bite or a scratch could infect a human victim with ease.
Alice’s lips peeled back in a slow grin. The power was overtaking her now, rolling off her in waves, making her skin glow with silvery light. A spell struck her shoulder and slid off, not affecting her in the least. Her fingers tingled, and she knew what would happen next. She felt the coolness of metal before she saw it, the flaming longsword materializing in her hand like a fiery brand from heaven. She raised the burning sword high in her hand, the weight of it perfectly balanced.
Nothing had ever felt so right. She rushed forward and thrust the sword straight through a mage who rushed her, a dark spell crackling in his hands. The second the sword pierced his flesh he screamed and went up in a burst of inky black flame, destroyed in the blink of an eye.
Truly, until that moment Alice had never known the feeling of being a Fury. It was better than any drug she’d ever known, pulsing through her veins and drawing a deep laugh from her throat.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” Alice breathed.
Behind her, she felt Aeric’s presence in the yard. As Alice moved forward, a wickedly bright ball of energy already at her fingertips and ready to be released, she knew the Guardians were rushing into action.
Alice gave herself over to the fight, something she’d never truly experienced before. Her field of vision narrowed to the enemies before her, blocking out everything else as she fired spells and swung her sword. The flames arced through the air time and time again, the fire driving her mania higher, bloodlust consuming her bit by bit.
Through the red haze that descended on her, Alice was able to make out the big furry shapes of several bears. The Guardians had all shifted and were tearing through throngs of attackers, the animals fierce and frightening in their own right. After a long string of satisfying kills, Alice was distracted by the enraged bellow of one of the bears.
She turned her head a little to the left, keeping the black-suited goon she was fighting in her line of sight. One of the bears was roaring and rushing, several mages working together to hold him in a force field. It wasn’t Aeric; Alice could tell that much. She thought perhaps Gabriel, though she couldn’t be sure. All the bears looked alike in the moonlight.
After she dispatched the suited idiot and two staggering zombies, Alice realized that the bear wasn’t distressed by his attackers but by a sight just a little closer to the Manor. The wards had come down at some point, and several zombies were circling around Cassie. Cassie was trying to shoot spells at them, but her spells kept fizzling before she could properly launch them. At best, she was keeping them at bay by scaring the undead with bright lights and electric shocks, which wouldn’t last long.
“Cassie,” Alice whispered. She swung her sword in a wide arc, backing up a bunch of attackers, and then summoned a big stunning spell. She launched it at the zombies attacking Cassie, and they fell back for a few moments. Just as they fell back, a red-robed mage stepped up and grabbed Cassie from behind, wrapping an arm around her neck. He started to drag her away, and Alice grew worried.
Whipping her head around, to look for her mate.
“Aeric! To Cassie!” she cried.
Aeric’s gorgeous brown bear form shuddered under the weight of several undead. He ripped one apart and shook two more off, rushing toward Cassie at Alice’s urging. When half a dozen more men cropped up between him and Cassie, Aeric paused.
Alice knew he was going to shift forms a few seconds before it happened. He shimmered all over, then a bright cloud burst into the night sky, growing and shifting until Aeric’s dragon was revealed. Standing almost fifty feet tall, and when the dazzling creature stretched out his gilded wings they spanned at least twice that. His scales shone like liquid gold, his long snout and wicked teeth gleaming beneath a pair of shining blue eyes that Alice would recognize anywhere.
He was glorious.
He glanced at her, then at Cassie. Then he sucked in a great breath, the scales on his belly and chest rippling, and blew out a huge puff of bright orange fire. Just the same color as the fire of Alice’s sword, it made her heart skip a beat. The fire caught a dozen men at least, mages and men in robes and zombies alike. They all scattered, screaming and burning, running in every direction and catching other bad guys ablaze.
Then Cassie screamed, and the whole scene suddenly shifted. Aeric lumbered toward her, brushing away bad guys with his wings and snatching others up in his jaws. The grisliness of it made Alice’s stomach lurch, though she’d only just gutted a man with her own sword. Somehow, seeing her mate in his most primal state made her very, very afraid for his safety.
Alice moved in Aeric’s wake, and when he circled to clear a path, she made her move. The Fury in her was drawn to the mage who held Cassie; she could already taste the sweet, dark justice of his death in the air. Alice raised her sword high and threw it like a javelin, letting it go in a high arc.
Cassie screamed bloody murder as the blazing sword came down, messily cleaving the mage’s head from his shoulders before falling to the ground. It touched nothing else, leaving Cassie unharmed, and when a bad guy tried to lean down and pick it up the sword burned him whole in a brilliant flare of flame.
Cassie broke away and ran toward one of the bears, presumably her mate. Th
e bear crouched and shifted, and Gabriel emerged, naked as the moment of his birth. He scooped Cassie up without a thought and ran headlong toward Mere Marie, who was calling out to him. The white witch threw up a thin purple shielding spell when Gabriel dumped Cassie at Mere Marie’s feet, then shooed Gabriel off again.
The distraction almost cost Alice her life, or at least a good chunk of flesh. She turned away just in time to narrowly miss a flaming arrow that passed so close to her shoulder, she could feel her flesh blister. Apparently her defenses required actual concentration, at least to protect her from physical objects flying through the air.
Alice was sucked into the fight for a few more minutes. It struck her suddenly that the scale of the attack was immense; there had to be several hundred attackers, all swarming the Manor. The Guardians were doing a serviceable job holding them off, but four guardians and three mates did not an army make. On the heels of that thought came a sound that made Alice’s blood turn to ice.
She whirled, running her sword through a man’s shoulder and gasping for breath. Less than fifty yards away, Aeric was under siege. Someone had realized the rarity of the dragon and called an all-out attack on him. Thirty or more men covered his body, striking blows and digging blades into his scales, trying to bring him down.
One man held a wicked looking blade that radiated a sickly-looking blue light. He’d climbed under Aeric’s wings and then thrust the blade into Aeric’s belly, just where his leg met his body. Aeric bellowed
Half scream of pain, half roar of fury, the sound bought Alice’s attention with a sudden and laser-like focus. Aeric went down like a zeppelin, snorting fire and roaring his anger. In that moment, everything slowed down, down, down…
Alice’s mouth opened, the beginning of a keening note leaving her lips.
Her song, destruction made melody, burst forth. Her entire body shuddered, bright light filling her vision. She leaned her head back and let the sound flow free, the note bringing the whole world to a standstill. It went on and on and on, Alice pouring out everything inside herself, the Fury releasing the last of her power in a final show of brutal power.