by Ann Gimpel
Anguish seared her. He couldn’t walk away. Not before they’d fully explored their attraction for one another. “But you’re drawn to me. I feel it.”
He let go of her and squared his shoulders. “Oh yes, my dear. I do want you. More than is good for me—or for you. But now is the only time we can cut our losses. If we get in any deeper, it will be much harder. One of us has to be strong.”
Her eyes flooded. She didn’t want to be strong. She wanted Jamal’s arms around her and his mouth on hers. She wanted to bury her hands in his wolf’s rough pelt and feel its hot tongue lick her fingers and chin.
She should’ve keep her mouth shut, but words tumbled out anyway. “Tairin and Elliott found a way to make it work.”
“She was half Rom, and now he’s a shifter too.”
Ilona wanted to shriek that he hadn’t been when he and Tairin chose one another. Anger and frustration swept through her. “You’re a coward.” She spat the words. “Either that or you were just in it for cheap thrills when you kissed me.”
Not trusting herself if she stayed, Ilona took off at a blind run heedless of where she was going. It didn’t matter. She’d finally found a man she could love, but he didn’t want her and for the lamest of reasons. This was wartime. If Rom and shifters could fight side-by-side, why the hell couldn’t they love one another?
She stuffed a hand in her mouth to stifle the tortured sounds that wanted to bubble past her chest.
I’m being stupid, she lectured herself.
I barely know him. I can’t be this upset over losing something I never had.
Words didn’t quell the ache in her soul, though. She understood he’d lived through hell and carried a boatload of guilt, but that happened centuries ago. People got over things. What was wrong with him?
Ilona cringed. More to the point, what was wrong with her? She’d thrown herself into his arms like a bitch in heat. Maybe he’d decided she was a loose woman and that whole Aneksi explanation had been nothing but a smokescreen to not hurt her feelings by calling her a slut.
“It doesn’t matter.” Her voice sounded dull and dead.
When she finally looked around, she was back in the clearing with the pools where she’d fallen into trance earlier that day. A shudder racked her, followed by several more. There was a reason she’d ended up back here. Her feet hadn’t just randomly carried her to this place.
She’d been a seer long enough to recognize that being here was far more than mere synchronicity. The question was if she had enough determination to act on it. Ilona fell into a familiar pattern and checked her magical well. If it were depleted, that would make the decision for her.
If not, she’d at least have the option to gather her resources and go after the vampire who’d marked her with his disturbing energy.
Chapter 8
Jamal gazed after Ilona’s fleeing form. He’d handled things badly and hurt her feelings. And he felt like the worst kind of cad. He never should have given in to the temptation to kiss her, except he had. Which made the scene that just played itself out—and her justifiable anger—harder to bear.
“You have to go after her,” the wolf urged.
“No. That will just make things worse. I can’t offer her anything.”
“Why not? She isn’t Aneksi. Besides, times have changed, or haven’t you noticed?”
Jamal plodded back toward the wagons. Arguing with the wolf was pointless. Ilona might not be Aneksi, but she was still Romani.
“Your daughter had the courage to follow her heart,” the wolf continued, relentless as always when it wanted something.
“She was half Rom to start with,” Jamal argued back. “I’m not. Besides, she lived with gypsies, traveled with them. Passed herself off as one.”
The wolf’s words made him feel worse and worse. Boosted by her shifter side, Tairin’s magic was far stronger than any other Romani’s was. Her innate ability had made it easy for her to draw wards, so the caravans she traveled with never looked too closely at what she was.
She’d been alone a very long time when she dropped her barriers and took a chance on loving Elliott. Jamal was glad for her, grateful to the bottom of his heart that his daughter had found a man to love her.
“You’ve been alone for a long time too,” the wolf said.
“Not the same.”
“Why?” The wolf adopted a sly tone. “Because Tairin’s not doing penance for your sins?”
“Something like that. Leave me alone.”
“Hard to do when I know you’re making a mistake.”
Jamal clamped his jaw in a tight line and shuttered his roiling thoughts. No reason to give the wolf more ammunition to challenge him. Ilona was young, beautiful, fearless. She needed a man to match her forthright spirit, not one who came with a tarnished past—and a whole lot of baggage.
“Stop.” The wolf’s command was harsh.
At first, Jamal thought his bond animal was referring to the downward spiral of his thoughts, but when his body moved of its own accord into the shadows between two enormous trees, he realized the wolf must sense danger. It was rare for it to commandeer their shared form when it was human.
“What is it?” Jamal breathed the question in shielded telepathy, hoping no magic would leak out to reveal their location.
“From the smell of things, Nazis.”
Thank Christ it wasn’t vampires, although Nazis were scourge enough. Since the SS held zero magical ability and couldn’t detect him, Jamal sent his own power zinging outward and cast a wide net.
“Two. Is that what you came up with?” he asked the wolf.
“Yes. They’re following the wagons’ tracks, but on foot.”
“Mmph. Probably had a vehicle and it broke down or split an axle or something.”
Jamal kicked off his shoes and stripped off the rest of his clothes, not stopping to think about his next move. He’d shift and then kill those Nazi bastards. Before they could radio any information back to whomever had deployed them.
Maybe they were working on their own.
Possibly deserters, but that wasn’t likely.
Shift magic spilled through him. Taking care to be quiet, stealthy as only a wolf could manage, he scented the air and circled behind the men moving toward where the wagons were parked. Something about their smell gave him pause. These men weren’t regular Nazi officers. They carried an infusion of power from vampires.
Not that it would help them much. If they had magic that was worth a Reichsmark, they’d have noticed him. He closed from behind. If he were quick, decisive, he could leap on one, close his jaws over the spot where carotid and jugular lay and rip out the man’s throat before the second soldier could react. Both men had rifles slung over their shoulders and sported sidearms strapped to their hips, but their hands were empty.
Good. Meant precious seconds. Time when he could strike without dealing with bullets aimed for his heart.
The hunting cry of a vulture drew his gaze skyward, and his jaws parted in a lolling grin.
Meara.
Sure enough. “Take the one nearest you,” she instructed just before she plummeted from the sky, talons extended.
Jamal broke into a hard run, no longer quiet.
One of the Germans looked up, pointing at the large black vulture. “What the fuck?” he demanded in German and reached for his pistol.
“Nein,” the other man shouted. “Vultures are Hitler’s bird.”
“Ja, but this one’s headed right for us.”
“Eh, you must be mistaken. They only feed on the dead. Not so unlike our Fuehrer.” He spun, no doubt because he finally heard Jamal behind him. “If you’re going to shoot something, shoot the wolf,” he shouted at his companion, not knowing those would be his last words.
Meara buried her talons deep in the other man’s neck. Blood geysered everywhere, and Jamal leapt atop his target biting sure and deep. More blood, hot, coppery, viscous, showered him, and he lapped it up. Once it slowed, he ripped th
e man’s uniform aside and dug his teeth into his gut where the stomach and liver were. Heart too. Still warm and trying to beat.
A flurry of German blatting from the radio strapped to the man sliced through Jamal’s blood fever. He lifted his bloody muzzle from his feast and stared at the radio’s dials trying to make sense of it with his wolf’s brain.
Meara raised her beak from her own feeding frenzy, holding an intact eyeball aloft. “What are they saying?” She sounded as caught up in the hunt energy as he was.
Jamal licked blood from his snout and coaxed his human intelligence back into ascendance. The radio was still spitting German, but it wasn’t set to transmit, only to receive.
“Luck is with us.” He nodded at Meara. “Whoever’s on the other end can’t hear us.”
“Can you disable that thing?” She flapped her way over to him, the eye still clamped in her beak.
Instead of answering, Jamal called shift magic with his wolf’s protests loud in their shared mind.
“We weren’t done eating. There’s more…”
Jamal flexed his newly forming fingers and pulled the radio out of its leather case. Once he had it, he peeled the back off its metal casing. Inside, he pulled wires at random until the thing was silent. A flash of brilliant light told him Meara was human again too.
Blood streaked her face and hands, but her smile radiated grim satisfaction. She chewed quickly, likely the pilfered eyeball. “We need to get rid of the bodies.”
“No. What we need to do is round up the wagons and move our location. It’s only a matter of time before more come after these two when they don’t return. It might foil the vampires for a short time too, if we relocate.”
“Speaking of vampires. These two had some vampire essence. Not enough to ruin feeding on them, but I wonder how many of the SS have been contaminated by Hitler’s pets.”
“Hard to say.” Jamal shrugged. “For all we know, fucking a vampire is a requirement for joining the SS.”
Meara wiped the back of a bloody hand across her mouth, but all it did was smear more gore. She spread her arms wide. “This. All of it is such an affront to the goddess. We cannot let them win. They’ll destroy the Earth and everything living on it.”
Jamal narrowed his eyes and surveyed the two SS officers. Absent the destroyed radio, it looked as if they’d been the victim of animal attacks. Maybe he could add to that impression by resurrecting the radio. He coaxed the missing plate into place and tucked it back into its carrying case.
“There.” He straightened. “This almost looks accidental.”
“I’ll fly to the wagons,” Meara announced. “This is damned inconvenient since I spent the last several hours telling our kinfolk to show up at this location as soon as they could.”
“Not the end of the world.” Jamal headed for his clothes and switched to telepathy. He wasn’t done talking, and Meara had taken her bird form again. “We tell whomever we can reach with mind speech about the new location and have them pass it on.”
Meara didn’t reply, but she had to have heard him.
Jamal wiped his bloody hands on vegetation. He needed water to clean himself better, but didn’t want to take the time. He was leaning over his clothing pile when his wolf asked, “If we leave here, who will tell Ilona?”
The question rocked him. “How do you know she didn’t return to the wagons?”
“She was headed the opposite direction. I’d have sensed her if she’d retraced her steps and passed us.”
As always, the wolf’s logic was impeccable. Jamal didn’t waste time sparring with it. “Do you know where she is?”
“Not precisely, but we can track her easily enough.”
Jamal set his jaw in a tight line. The wolf’s argument had merit, but Meara was expecting them. He raised his mind voice. “Meara?”
“Why aren’t you back yet?”
Jamal inhaled raggedly. Now wasn’t the time to beat around the bush. “Ilona and I quarreled. I have to find her so she’ll know it’s not safe to remain here and that the wagons are moving.”
“Fine. I’ll locate one of the Rom who knows how to drive. They will move your car from this place. I will mask us ever having been here with magic, but we cannot leave anything behind.”
“I understand. Keys are in it. Don’t worry about us, we’ll find you.”
Jamal dressed fast and ceded their shared consciousness to the wolf, trusting its superior hunting skills. They took off at a lope. After a mile or so, the ground grew progressively boggier, and he stopped next to a sluggish stream to clean the gore off his hands and face.
“I don’t like how this is shaping up,” the wolf said.
Jamal straightened from where he’d been crouched next to the water. “Why not? This was your idea.”
“Look where we are. When you turn me loose, you often don’t pay attention.”
Jamal let his gaze rove over ancient trees festooned with moss. Sick knowledge sucker punched him. “Goddammit!” He fisted one hand and punched a nearby tree trunk not bothering with mind speech. “She went back to where she raised the vampire. The place she had her vision.”
“My take too. Hurry,” the wolf urged.
Jamal took off, water dripping from his hands and face. Branches cracked and snapped beneath his shoes. Why would Ilona do something so rash and ill-advised? He’d been abundantly clear she wasn’t strong enough to take on a vampire. Had even told her the one who’d broken through her spell would probably be lying in wait for her.
She’d been hurt, angry, but surely those two things wouldn’t have undermined her common sense. When he cut to the meat of things, he didn’t understand how women viewed the world. The same helpless fury that had filled him when Aneksi steadfastly refused to leave the caravan returned with a vengeance.
“How would you feel if someone told you that your magic wasn’t strong enough to do something?” The wolf’s question came out of the blue.
Jamal winced. “But I’m a man.”
“So?”
“So, indeed. It reinforces my insight about not understanding—”
“You stopped even trying to understand anyone—including yourself,” the wolf cut him off midstream. “First, you were devastated about Aneksi not obeying you. You hadn’t come close to recovering from that when you let our blood kin bully you into not going after your daughter.”
Jamal ran harder. Ilona’s scent was growing stronger. She couldn’t be much farther away. “Are you done lecturing me?” he asked the wolf.
“No. After you chose pack over your daughter, you abdicated from everything. You lived day to day, month to month, year to year, not caring what happened. Until Tairin’s wolf found us and told us about the vampires and that she needed our help.”
“If I was such a son of a bitch, why didn’t you break our bond?” Bitterness left over from Aneksi’s abandonment ran beneath his words, still outrageously strong. Her stubbornness had cost her life, but she’d taken a chunk of his along with it.
“If I had, it would have removed your last reason for living.”
Jamal bristled. “I’m stronger than that.”
“Are you? I wasn’t certain. I love you, just as you love me. Would you have deserted me if I lost my mind?”
“Of course not, but I didn’t—”
“Poor choice of words. You changed. Nothing reached you. There were times I was surprised you—”
The wolf had stopped talking for a reason. Jamal halted abruptly, his nostrils twitching. Ilona’s wildflower and vanilla scent flooded with the sharp overtone of adrenaline, fear. He inhaled harder, and his heart twisted wildly in his chest.
Vampire. She’d recreated her trance and the vampire was waiting, just as he’d predicted.
He dropped his jacket into the dirt. No time to save the rest of his clothes. The harsh sound of fabric ripping pelted him as he summoned shift magic. Jamal bolted for Ilona’s scent before his paws were fully finished forming. Pain shot through his half-hum
an, half-wolf form, but he ignored it. The only important thing was that he was fully a wolf before he located the vampire. One facet of their magic was they could suspend his kind mid-shift until the lack of connection to either side spelled their death.
He passed a band of oak trees with thick, heavily burled trunks. Light flashed on the far side, so bright he squinted against its brilliance. What was that? Some new brand of vampire malfeasance?
Jamal burst into a small clearing dotted with pools, runoff from a stream pounding down the mountainside. Ilona stood with her back to him, cloaked in multihued brilliance. Power danced around her, sparking from her hands as she chanted in Coptic, the Rom’s Egyptian spell language.
Beyond her, a vampire wavered, insubstantial and then not. Clearly, it had shot through the connection when Ilona established it. Just as clearly, she’d trapped it and it was stuck. So far, both were so intent on each other, neither had noticed him.
“Is enough of it on this side for us to kill it?” the wolf asked, keeping its mind voice very quiet.
Jamal shuffled pros and cons quick as any card shark. “Worst thing that could happen is it will try to drag us back with it. Of course, if we kill it in this plane, it won’t have enough power left to do anything. It should die everywhere.”
“What happens if it gets stuck between the rest of its body and here?”
“I don’t know.” He also wasn’t certain about the addition of Ilona’s magic to the equation. He didn’t want to have it snare him by dint of proximity and weaken his attack on the vampire.
“I’ll get you for this, gypsy bitch,” the apparition snarled.
Ilona shrugged. “If you can’t do any better than you are right now, I’m not worried.”
A sly expression played over the vampire’s features. “Your magic is strong, but you’re a neophyte. You can’t let me go because I’ll spirit you back with me. You’ve already figured that out. Sooner or later, your magic will falter. When that happens, I’ll win.”
“You’re wrong, vampire. If I loose my spell, you’ll fall back through the ether and rejoin the rest of you.”