by Ann Gimpel
It was as good an entry as Jamal was likely to get, and he sauntered toward the tableau. “Don’t turn around, Ilona. I’m just behind you,” he said to not break her concentration—or her spell—when she discovered his presence.
“Thanks, but I’m good,” she replied.
He detected an off note to her bravado, but didn’t mention it. She’d be a fool not to be frightened, with the situation she’d gotten herself into.
“You are holding your own, which is impressive, but how about this?” he suggested brightly and took a step toward where the vampire wavered about eight feet away.
“How about what?” Power crackled around her turning the air silvery.
“On my count of three, you sheathe your power and I kill that piece of shit.”
“Sounds good to me.” She didn’t bother to mask the relief in her voice. “Except it’s my count of three. You need to get close enough to make certain he doesn’t escape.”
“You’re on.”
“No, we’re on,” the wolf corrected. Jamal sensed its excitement. Two kills in one day would make his bond animal ecstatic.
“One,” Ilona began.
Jamal bounded toward the vampire, trusting Ilona to time two and three to coincide with his attack.
She didn’t let him down, shouting out numbers. The word three barely left her mouth when Jamal’s wolf closed its powerful jaws around the vampire’s neck. Because he wasn’t fully corporeal, the wolf’s teeth clacked together. Still, they held enough flesh for black, stinking ichor to stream over his fur.
“Don’t let go,” he cautioned his wolf. “We want to make good and certain it’s dead.”
Ilona ran to where he grappled with the vampire. Drawing a dirk from a thigh sheath, she ran it through both the vampire’s eyes, one after the other, taking pains to twist the blade once she hit bottom in brain tissue. A thin, high shriek burbled past the vampire’s lips, followed by a flood of black blood tinged with red flecks.
Ilona moved behind the creature and sank her dagger into the base of its neck. She began chanting, urging power with hands and mouth. Jamal wondered what she was doing, and then he knew.
The vampire grew heavier in his jaws as she forced all of it through her portal. Jamal shook it hard, once, twice, until he heard its neck snap.
Ilona’s voice rose to a screech, and the hole in the earth beneath the vampire sealed over as if it had never existed.
“There.” She was breathing hard when she slipped her knife back into its scabbard after stabbing it into dirt to clean it. “I closed my gateway. No one can follow. If I did what I hope, no one will even know it was there.”
Jamal dropped the vampire. Now that the creature wasn’t split between locales, he knew it was well and truly dead. He shook his head spitting out the rotten taste of vampire blood. There’d be no feasting on this corpse. He wanted his human body so he could talk more easily and think with his human mind, but first he padded to one of the other pools and rinsed stinking ichor from his mouth and paws, slurping down water to kill the taste of vampire.
“We did good,” his wolf crowed. “I want to kill something else. Let’s hunt our dinner tonight.”
“Don’t you want to talk with Ilona first?” Jamal asked.
“Did you change your mind about her?”
The wolf’s question caught him by surprise.
Had he?
An image of Ilona, her hands raised like an Old World goddess while power sheeted from her, filled his mind. His heart ached with wanting her. He was a long way from his clothes, but he called shift magic anyway. Her seeing him naked wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
When his human body returned, he felt her gaze on him and desire ignited. Before he ended up with a full-blown erection, he rounded on her. “What would you have done if I hadn’t shown up?” he demanded. “No, back up. What were you thinking in the first place? I told you the vampire would be waiting, and he was.”
Her features developed a closed off aspect, and she looked away. “I was doing all right before you got here,” she said defiantly. “Speaking of that, why are you here?”
“Nazis were tracking the wagons. Meara and I killed them, but the caravans have to move. By now, they’re likely gone. I wanted to make certain you knew not to return to where they’d been. It’s possible other SS came after the two we killed.”
“Fine. You told me. I’ll figure things out from here.” She held her body ramrod straight.
“You didn’t answer me,” he countered. “Why the hell did you reconstruct a spell after I told you it was a bad idea?”
“I don’t answer to you.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
He narrowed his eyes. How could she be so exasperating and desirable at the same time? “No, you don’t, but humor me because I don’t understand why you’d put yourself at risk like you did.”
“My magic’s never been tested. Mother and I, we experimented, but the stakes were never particularly high. Mostly, we were trying to escape Valentin’s detection.” She tilted her chin. “I wanted to see what I could do if I ran my magic wide open.”
He wanted to shake her. Just before he crashed his mouth over hers and buried himself in her body. Damn his cock, anyway. It was thickening again. He pushed the sexual imagery of her long legs wrapped around his hips to a distant part of his mind and resisted an impulse to cover his cock with his hands.
“Magical practice is essential,” he began, decided he sounded insufferably patronizing, and changed his approach. “Maybe you might want to run those practice sessions when the odds aren’t quite so high.”
“Why do you care?” she countered and transferred her gaze to his face before raking it down his body.
He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Because I care about you. I don’t want anything untoward to happen to you.”
“Like being turned by a vampire?” She quirked a sarcastic brow.
“Yes, like being used and turned by one of those bastards.”
A complex array of emotions played over her features. Hope and caring mingled with resignation. “Caring’s not a good idea,” she gritted. “Not unless you become Rom or I find some way to change into someone like you.”
“But you were the one who argued that didn’t matter.” The words ripped from a place deep inside him, one that left shards of pain in their wake.
“Yeah. I had a chance to rethink that.” She shook herself from head to toe. “Go recover your clothes, and then we need to figure out where the caravans went.”
He nodded. At least she hadn’t taken off without him. The dull ache in his chest pushed his lust aside, and he turned back the way he’d come. “Not much left of my clothes, I’m afraid,” he said. “When I knew what you faced, I didn’t take time to undress.”
“We’ll recover what we can,” she replied. “I’m handy with a needle and thread. Maybe I can repair the worst of the damage.”
“You don’t have to—” he began.
“I want to,” she cut in. “Even though we’ve danced around it, you and your wolf saved my life. The vampire was right. I was holding my own, but eventually, my magic would’ve faded. He wasn’t expending any power at all, and he knew I didn’t have enough extra magic to finish him off.”
Her level of openness seared Jamal. He wanted to touch her, at least take her hand, but he held back. “Some experiments have a higher price than others.”
“Yeah. You saved me from myself. This must be what’s left of your clothes.” She knelt and gathered his shirt, trousers, and jacket into her arms, examining them. “Jacket’s fine. I can mend the shirt and pants.”
He bent and slipped on his shoes and socks. They always survived a shift.
She handed him the jacket and he tossed it over himself, welcoming the warmth of the rough woolen fabric. The earlier tension between them—tension he’d precipitated by his harsh questions—had dissipated.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she
asked. Power shimmered around her.
“Coming off like a Nazi commandant with my questions. What are you doing?”
“What else? Figuring out which way the wagons went. It’s full dark. I’m hungry, and I bet you’re cold.”
That she cared enough to be concerned made the raw places in him ache all over again. “If I get really chilled, I’ll turn into the wolf.” He kept his voice gruff to mask his emotions.
“Wish I could do that.”
Jamal held silence. More than anything, he wished she could too. For once, his wolf had nothing to say.
Chapter 9
An hour earlier
Ilona stumbled back into the clearing where she’d confronted the vampire. What in Isis’s name was she doing testing her magic like this? She’d ascertained she had plenty to play with, but maybe she was being the worst kind of fool. She and her mother had pushed their boundaries, but the dangers had never been quite this daunting.
Yeah, and we always had each other—in case something went horribly wrong.
She swallowed around a dry throat. Either she did this, or she left. Which would it be?
Her thoughts crept to Jamal and how much she wanted him. She shut that line of reasoning down fast. He didn’t want her. He’d made that clear as glass—after they’d kissed. Rejection sat like a physical ache behind her breastbone, and she pulled herself together.
She was used to keeping her emotions buried behind bulletproof walls. No reason to let them out to play now.
Before she thought things to death, she knelt before the pool she’d used earlier and began a brief purification ritual to make certain any traces of her earlier summoning were eradicated. She didn’t want to make it easy for the vampire—the one Jamal was certain lay in wait—to snatch her and pull her through to where he was.
They congregated in nests. In her vision ten of the horrid things had marched into the gypsy camp. What if the one who’d seen her was surrounded by his kin? If he was, and he captured her, she’d wish she were dead a thousand times over.
Ilona rocked back on her heels and stood. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Fear licked at her, and her mouth flooded with the acrid taste of adrenaline. She paced from one side of the clearing to the other and back again, arguing with herself.
Was she going to spend the rest of her life jumping at every shadow?
She’d been trapped in the caravan, forced into hiding her power so she didn’t intimidate the men, none of whom had anywhere near her level of ability. Even her mother, the original brassy broad, kowtowed to Valentin. When Ilona asked her why she put up with him, she’d replied that gypsies needed caravans. They provided history, purpose, and friendships.
People who always stood up for you.
Ilona sputtered. Tairin’s mother hadn’t had that experience. Her caravan had turned on her. Killed her. Ilona didn’t recall anything quite that Draconian in modern times, but caravans kicked miscreants out on a regular basis. Since Romani had a reputation as thieves and scoundrels, finding work was usually a problem.
And now we have the Nazis…
They’d begun rounding up gypsies along with Jews. Meara had predicted hundreds of thousands of Rom would die in the camps.
Ilona squared her shoulders. Some of her people had to survive. Otherwise no one would remember the magic and mystery of the Romani. In an arcane way that she didn’t totally understand, her people were tied to the making of the world. If their magic died out, humankind wouldn’t be far behind. She might be afraid, but that wasn’t a reason to hide her head in the sand.
A quick glance told her she didn’t have much time before sundown. Vampires were stronger at night, at least according to myth. If she were going to challenge one, she needed to move now. Her purification ritual was done, and magic hummed through her.
No reason not to face her fears.
She stomped to the exact spot she’d stood earlier and chanted to summon her vision magic. Power streamed from her, swirling in the day’s fading light. Visual evidence of her ability heartened her. Surely the goddess wouldn’t abandon her and her people.
The water bubbled and churned before its surface quieted, turning glassy. Ilona watched intently. At the very least, she’d glean information from her spell. She wound wards about herself to be on the safe side. Would something so simplistic hold a vampire at bay?
She had no idea.
Ilona urged the water to yield images. It was how her magic worked. How she pried information from a future that hadn’t yet occurred. Nothing happened, so she pressed harder.
Minutes ticked past. So many she was on the verge of reeling in her magic and leaving this place. A keening howl rose out of nowhere in a cacophony of discordant minor notes, and the water formed a vortex, spinning downward.
She’d never seen anything quite like it and focused power on the pond, instructing it to respond to her command. Instead, the vortex deepened. Eyes formed in its depths. Fear clawed at her like a live thing, and she chopped the flow of her magic, but it was too late.
The portal was open. Nothing she could do would change that.
She beat back horror and dread. She’d asked for this. Welcomed it. Now that it was here, she’d damn well better meet the challenge as something other than a simpering ninny. Ilona let power flow from her outstretched fingertips and strengthened her warding.
A vampire—maybe the one from earlier, she couldn’t tell—took form in the still, cold air. A quick check with her magic told her it was maybe only a quarter corporeal. How was the rest of it anchored? And where? If it wasn’t too far away, maybe she could push the damn thing back where he came from.
Long dark hair, thick and luxuriant, fell down his shoulders and back. Eyes the color of a turbulent sea met hers. The creature was stunning, so beautiful it was impossible not to look at him. A creamy, silk robe sashed in deep blue hung from his broad shoulders. Sharp cheekbones suggested Mongol or Asian blood.
She kept magic flowing, relieved beyond words when it seemed to keep the thing at bay. If he could have seized her and vanished back through the now still water, he would have.
The vampire smiled lazily showing elongated fangs. “I knew you’d be back. Women can’t resist me. Neither can men.”
He pushed the robe back, displaying a muscled chest and copper nipples, all the while watching her closely.
Ilona tried not to stare, but she had to maintain her focus on the vampire to keep it contained. As he pushed the robe farther back, revealing more of his perfect body, sexual heat kindled in her. He wasn’t saying anything, but the invitation streaming from him was impossible to misinterpret.
Part of her wanted to see more. Another part was afraid she’d be lost if he exposed the ridged flesh she glimpsed through his robe. His penis was engorged, ready. He wanted her. All she needed to do was drop her magical protections and that body and cock could be hers. Her nipples turned into aching points of sensation, and need slicked her thighs.
Jamal had started this when he kissed her. She’d been aroused then, but this ratcheted up the game by a factor of a hundred or better. Her desire for Jamal was normal. What she felt now was sick and perverted. She told her body to stand down, but the throbbing between her legs intensified.
The vampire’s hand strayed to his crotch and he cupped himself through his robe, mouth opening suggestively as he licked his perfect lips.
Ilona wrenched her gaze above his waist. If she saw that cock, she’d be lost. Her resolve would shatter.
Yeah and that bastard will turn me. I’ll be nothing better than a sex slave. Or worse, I’ll become like him and feed on blood and fear.
“Nice try,” she gritted. “Keep your private parts covered. I’m not interested.”
“Not my take, human, and I’m a most excellent judge of such things. I could force you with my mind, but it’s ever so much better when women come to me of their own free will.”
He was probably still touching himself, but she’d stopped looking
. Ilona forced a magical barrier between their bodies—one created from cool, rational thought. Her lust abated as if someone had turned off a switch, and she exhaled sharply. She could stay on top of this. Not give in.
“I’ll get you for this, gypsy bitch,” the apparition snarled, no longer playing at his seduction charade.
Ilona shrugged. “If you can’t do any better than you are right now, I’m not worried.”
A sly expression slithered over the vampire’s features. It shrugged, displaying still more skin. “Your magic is strong, but you’re a neophyte. You can’t let me go because I’ll drag 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.” It was a bluff, but maybe the vampire wouldn’t know that.
“Don’t turn around, Ilona. I’m just behind you,” flashed into her mind.
Jamal! How the hell had he ended up here? And then she remembered the way they’d parted, and her gratitude that she wasn’t alone anymore evaporated.
“Thanks, but I’m good,” she replied, keeping to a neutral tone.
“You are holding your own, which is impressive, but how about this?” Jamal suggested brightly. The wolf passed her, moving toward where the vampire wavered about eight feet away.
“How about what?” Power crackled around her, turning the air silvery.
“On my count of three, you sheathe your power and I kill that piece of shit.”
“Sounds good to me.” She didn’t bother to mask the relief in her voice. “Except it’s my count of three. You need to get close enough to make certain he doesn’t escape.”
“You’re on.”
“No, we’re on,” the wolf corrected, and Ilona could have hugged it.
“One,” Ilona began.
Jamal bounded toward the vampire. Ilona timed the wolf’s approach carefully, shouting out numbers. The word three had barely left her mouth when Jamal’s wolf closed its powerful jaws around the vampire’s neck, and black, stinking ichor streamed over its fur.