by Ann Gimpel
Ilona ran to where the wolf grappled with the vampire. She could help, wanted to make certain the hell-spawned thing was dead. 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. Up close like this, it reeked of death and rot. The stench made her gag, but the thing’s misery egged her on, and she moved to where she could sink her dagger into the base of its neck. Wanting to make certain her efforts weren’t in vain, she chanted, urging more power with both her hands and voice.
She’d drag the thing across the veil separating where he lived from this glade. He was too weak to fight back.
Her chant rose to a screech, and the hole in the earth beneath the vampire sealed over as if it had never existed. Exultation was heady, like a rich wine. She’d done it. Pulled the bastard through. Once it started dying, she’d had plenty of magic to spare.
“There.” She was breathing hard when she slipped her knife back into its scabbard after cleaning it in the dirt. “I closed the portal. No one can follow. If I did what I hope, no one will even know a gateway was there.”
Jamal dropped the vampire. He shook his head spitting out vampire blood before padding to one of the other pools where he rinsed ichor from his mouth and paws, slurping down water once he was done. Magic bubbled around him. She’d felt it before and knew he was shifting back to human. Ilona waited, feeling grateful to him. They’d fought side by side. Would that change how they’d parted? She hoped so.
She tried not to stare as his body emerged, but it was arresting. Marks cut through bronzed skin, running across his torso and shoulders thick with muscle. How had he gotten all those scars? His arms and legs were shapely and strong, radiating power and danger. Her gaze tracked to where his cock was beginning to swell from its nest of dark curls. She shouldn’t look. It wasn’t right, but she was having a hell of a time looking at anything else.
Jamal rounded on her, his face like a thundercloud and his brows drawn into a single, thick line. “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.”
Shock ricocheted through her at his tone, and she looked away. He didn’t sound any different from when she’d run from him earlier, and his rebuke stung. “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?”
Barely controlled fury spilled through her. “I don’t answer to you.” She crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
He narrowed his eyes. “No, you don’t, but humor me because I don’t understand why you’d put yourself at risk like you did.”
She gritted her teeth against one another. He had rescued her, which meant he deserved at least some explanation. “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. I wanted to see what I could do if I ran my magic wide open.”
“Magical practice is essential,” he began, but his voice trailed off. When he started over, he said, “Maybe you might want to launch those practice sessions when the odds aren’t quite so dangerous.”
“Why do you care?” she countered, still battling anger. Despite that, she returned her gaze to him and his naked body. How could she hate him and want him all at the same time? This wasn’t the sick desire the vampire conjured, but something clean and pure.
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.”
Hope speared her, mingled with resignation. She couldn’t open the door to him again. Not if he were just going to slam it on her foot a second time.
“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.” His words held harsh edges, as if they cost him.
“Yeah. I had a chance to rethink that.” She shook herself from head to toe. They had to get moving. Now. Before she threw herself into his arms and dove into his nakedness with her fingers and mouth. “Go recover your clothes, and then we need to figure out where the caravans went.”
“Not much left of my clothes, I’m afraid.” He shrugged. “When I knew what you faced, I didn’t take time to undress.”
“We’ll recover what we can,” she replied and followed him out of the boggy area where the pools lay. “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. She made a grab for her earlier ire, but it eluded her. Driven by a need for honesty, she said, “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.”
“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. She handed him the jacket and he tossed it over himself.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?” she asked and sent power outward, seeking the location of the caravans.
“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.”
“If I get really chilled, I’ll turn into the wolf.” His tone was gruff as he began walking.
“Wish I could do that,” she muttered wondering why he sounded so out of sorts.
“May I take a look at your dirk?”
His question came out of nowhere, but she dug it out of her thigh sheath and handed it over. “Sure, but why?”
He turned it this way and that before handing it back to her. “Explains a lot.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Ilona battled exasperation. She was exhausted and too hungry to figure out riddles.
“I wondered why we managed to kill the vampire. I’d expected it to retreat to where its body was. Your blade solves that mystery. It’s an alloy, but silver is part of it. That metal is lethal to vampires. According to the lore, they need to be stabbed through the heart, but apparently it’s just as effective in other locations. Good to know.”
She tucked the dirk back into place. It had belonged to her mother and her grandmother and goddess only knew who else in her family. Had they used it to defeat vampires? If they had, her mother never mentioned it.
They lapsed into silence. The wagons were still on the move, so she selected a trajectory to intercept them. Jamal was a solid presence next to her. She wanted so many things, wished their lives could be simpler, different.
“Tell me about the Nazis,” she said, mostly because she wanted to hear his deep, musical voice. “How do you think they tracked the wagons so quickly? From what
Michael and Stewart told me, they figured they’d have at least a couple weeks before they had to move on.”
“Vampires helped.”
“Vampires were with them?” Fear twisted her empty stomach into a hard, painful knot.
He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t clear. Let me backtrack. Vampires can interact with humans without turning them. They can drink human blood without killing their victims, and they love having sex with anything alive.” He hesitated. “From what I’ve seen, the SS have some kind of unholy alliance with vampires. They fuck them and feed from them. In the course of both, the SS absorb some level of unnatural magic.”
“So that’s how those Nazis you killed were able to track the wagons?”
“Maybe. I’m not certain. Either that, or they had vampires providing more direct help.”
Hopelessness crashed through her. “If that’s true, we won’t be safe anywhere. It’s not that I didn’t know that—especially after I ended up in Dachau, but I figured once I escaped I’d find somewhere to wait out the war.”
Jamal laced his fingers with hers, and she grasped his hand. “We could run, seek safe haven for ourselves,” he said, “but it’s not the right thing to do.”
“We could never run far enough to escape Shifter or Rom law.” Resentment at the injustice of edicts forcing shifters and Rom to never mate bit deep.
“Even if edicts prohibiting congress among our two types of magic wielders didn’t exist,” he went on, “we must face our enemy. If magic dies out of the world, chaos will ensue. Beyond that”—he stopped walking and turned her to face him—“am I right that you’re not angry with me any longer? I acted like a jerk, and I apologize.”
She met his gaze as moonlight filtered through leafless branches. “I’m not angry. Mostly I was hurt.”
A crooked smile lit his even features. “I don’t know if we can find our way together. Hell, I don’t even know if we’ll both live to see tomorrow’s sunrise, but I vow I will do my damnedest to try to figure things out.” He cupped the side of her face. “You fascinate me, Ilona Lovas. My wolf gave me grief after I turned away from you, reminded me you weren’t Aneksi. Just because my world turned to shit two centuries ago is no reason to expect the same thing will happen twice.”
“The world is a different place.”
“Yes, the wolf said much the same.” He bent and kissed her once lightly, before recapturing her hand. “Which way?”
A quick check with her magic surprised her. “They switched direction,” Ilona said.
“Which way?” he repeated. “I could look for myself, but since you’ve already opened a magical channel, there’s no reason for me to draw more power.”
“Higher into the mountains, and from the speed they’re traveling, they’ve abandoned at least some of the wagons.”
“Or else a cadre of my shifter kin caught up with them, and they’ve added magic to the mix. Let’s hurry.”
Ilona trotted next to him. The world didn’t feel nearly as bleak with Jamal next to her.
Nothing changed. Not really, she reminded herself. Danger still hovers. I feel it every time I deploy my power.
“Maybe so.” Jamal answered her unspoken thoughts. “But we’re stronger together than we are apart. You have to believe we’ll survive.”
She wanted to, but her earlier fear that linking her fortune to any gypsy caravan would be her undoing cast a pall over everything. She needed to scry her own future, something that wasn’t unheard of, but was frowned upon.
Next chance she got, she’d take a peek. Knowledge might not change her actions, but at least she’d have some sense of what lay before her.
And if Jamal would be part of her path.
Chapter 10
Jamal strode next to Ilona, grateful she’d relented enough to give them a chance to explore what flowed between them. He gave himself a good, mental shake. They’d actually taken turns spelling out all the reasons their relationship would be doomed from its inception, but maybe they’d each traded pessimism for hope.
The path steepened. Half the time, he had to use one hand to steady himself, and he kept the other laced with Ilona’s to make sure she was safe. Shifter magic could probably coax horses and teams up a grade this abrupt, but it would take a hell of a lot of power. He had no idea how his car could manage—unless maybe there was a track on the other side of this hillock. When he reached outward, testing, he sensed a surfeit of magic not far above them.
“They’re close,” he observed.
“Either they located a stopping place,” Ilona agreed, “or they’re resting.”
Jamal switched frequencies, employing different magic. “Interesting. Someone, probably Meara, guided the group to what feels like a cluster of shifter shelters. I’ve never actually sensed quite so many in close proximity before.”
“What exactly are they?”
“Usually large, commodious caves carved into cliffs. Magic hides them from everyone. We need to employ a particular brand of tracking to locate them ourselves. And to get inside.”
“Are they safe from vampires?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea. In Egypt, vampires were plentiful, but so were a phalanx of priests and priestesses who devoted their lives to holding the vampire population at bay. They never bothered us back then. In truth, I mostly forgot about them until Tairin showed up on my doorstep requesting help.”
“Fascinating. Whew! All that magic above us is overwhelming. Where we’re going can’t be much farther.” She let go of him and used both hands to work her way through a particularly steep section.
Jamal scrambled up behind her. They emerged onto a broad mesa dotted with evergreens and berry bushes studded with thorns. He looked around. The place held an otherworldly feel, as if it didn’t quite belong in twentieth century Germany.
Beside him, Ilona frowned. “I’ve been through this country so many times, I’ve lost count, but this place wasn’t here.”
“Are you certain of that?” Jamal sent magical feelers out, sorting impressions.
“Quite.” She nodded once, sharply. “Mother and I would play hooky from the caravan whenever we could. This escarpment isn’t far from Munich. I recognized the approach, but where we are now—” she spread her arms wide “—didn’t use to be here. No plateau. The hillside butted into those cliffs dead ahead.”
The sharp scents of shifter magic, rife with animal musk and electrical byproducts, stung his nostrils. If Ilona were right, someone had altered the geography. Not an impossible task, but far from commonplace. Before he could set off to explore where everyone was, Meara broke through an invisible barrier and walked toward them. One minute she wasn’t there, and then she was, accompanied by the sucking sound of a vacuum being broken. He squinted against brightness surrounding the vulture shifter.
“There you are,” she announced. “I’ve been waiting for you to arrive. You took far longer than you should have, given your earlier location, but never mind that. Follow me. So far, we’ve pulled this off, but you’re a loose end.”
“We killed a vampire,” Ilona announced.
Meara focused her unsettling gaze on Ilona. “I don’t care if you killed Hitler. You’re still late.”
Jamal sucked in a tight breath. “Killing the vampire was my idea.”
“Fine.” Meara rolled eyes that appeared far more avian than human. “That’s why you’re half naked? You shifted first and thought later?”
“Not exactly,” Jamal said through clenched teeth. Why was Meara treating him like a halfwit? It wasn’t like her to be overtly rude. Direct, maybe, but not supercilious.
“Give me those.” Meara snatched his pants and shirt from Ilona. Power flared, gray with red edges, and she handed them to Jamal. “They’re patched enough to wear. Dress and dress fast.”
Jamal pushed off his shoes and hustled into his trousers. He dropped his jacket on the ground and slid into the shirt, still warm and prickly from its go round with Meara’s power. His jacket and shoes
came last.
Ilona looked from one to the other of them, confusion plain on her face. At least she wasn’t peppering Meara with questions.
“Come on. This will be uncomfortable, but the pain doesn’t last.” Meara spun and ran back the way she’d come, vanishing once she hit the barrier he couldn’t see.
“What is that thing she went through?” Ilona asked, her voice higher than usual. “And why was she so…abrupt?”
“I have no idea why she was such a bitch. The answer to your first question is she disappeared through an alteration in the weave of the time-space continuum. That spell requires a very complicated type of shifter magic, which is probably why I mistook it for multiple shifter shelters. Don’t ask any more because that’s all I know.” He extended a hand, and she gripped it. “Don’t let go. If Meara felt the need to caution us about the transition being rough, gird yourself.”
“One more moment won’t hurt,” Ilona countered. “I know you’re a shifter, but shifters aren’t like gypsies. You don’t travel in caravans casting Tarot spreads and sharpening knives and telling fortunes.”
“You want to know what I did to earn my way.” At her nod, he went on. “Most recently, I taught ancient and medieval history at the University in Innsbruck, Austria, a post I’d held for almost thirty years. I went on sabbatical a few months ago, but my plan was to fade out of everyone’s memory—again. Living as long as we do is inconvenient.” He tugged on her hand. “It’s not wise to anger Meara. Patience was never her long suit.”
“Convenient to teach what you lived through.” She smiled.
Jamal chuckled. “Oh I’m not as old as all that.” He moved toward the barrier, gathering momentum. Having watched Meara go through, he figured speed would ameliorate the pain.
He was wrong.
He entered blackness so deep, it was endless. Once he got close, a vacuum took over, sucking so hard escape wasn’t possible. It felt as if a million hot needles penetrated his flesh, flaying it from his bones while the vacuum tried to turn him inside out until bone pierced flesh. Ilona’s hand clamped around his, and a hissing shriek rose from her. He bit down hard, determined not to shame himself by crying out.