by Eden Butler
“Why?” Fingers fisted in his collar, he moved when I pulled him toward me, too eager, too anxious to keep from touching him.
“God, Jani, because now I know you’ve been thinking the same thing I have since the second I walked into your apartment in the city.”
But I knew, I knew that it had all started for us far longer than a few days before.
“Bane…” Tell him no, I thought. Remind him who he is, who you are. But even thinking it was enough to settle him.
“I don’t think I much care,” he stopped me, answering my unspoken question about what would be or what should be. “God help me. I don’t fucking care about any of it.”
Like a flame igniting, like the rush of decision that is never given much thought, a decision that is more instinct than logic, we moved away from ourselves, from the people we were always supposed to be. There was no duty, no honor, no distinctions to be maintained, no expectations that need to be protected. We’d come this close before, the near making of something new, something forbidden, but this time I gave no thought to what would happen if I let Bane forget that I was not for him.
Just one flashing moment where we pulled against each other, where his touch felt like liquid fire on my skin, where my mouth against his throat made that huge man shudder at the feel of it.
“I don’t care either.”
It was all it took. Providence, destiny, the twist of some life altering event set in motion by the lines, by the gods, by whatever it was that bent our wills, directed our paths down the roads we took. My declaration, my small lie that I truly didn’t care, was enough to pick apart the moment that might keep us from it. It was enough to ricochet into something that could never be unmade.
That’s when the screaming started.
In the quiet din of darkness, with Bane holding me, devouring my mouth, insisting my body bend this way and that, a scream rent through the moment and torn it to pieces, followed by another, and another.
“Bane!” Joe called out from seemingly so far away, sounding desperate, appalled. “Bane where are you? Get the hell over here!”
And we ran together toward that frantic voice and the smell of blood that thickened in the air the closer we came to the campground.
Chapter Nine
Death had never come this close to me before.
Cancer took my mother before I said goodbye. That death came in the form of a pristine body, laid out with roses and gardenia petals in her hair. She’d looked lovely, peaceful, like some ethereal fey resting in white lace and vintage silk.
The mortals from the mission where she volunteered, couldn’t believe she’d been sixty. They’d kept their focus on me and my sister, as if looking at us closely enough would reveal the secret to the age-defying genetics my mother had passed down.
But even Mom’s still, cold body, as beautiful as it was, came in the form of custom and preparation. It ended in a marble mausoleum, engraved by my father’s hand, while the mortals slept through the night.
Death, like the one at my feet, was bloody and vicious and looked damn painful.
I could not pull my attention from the body. There was a great clot of tension in my stomach, one that had been given life the second Bane and I stopped running after a screaming, fearful Joe.
The moment we saw Wyatt’s neck twisted beyond its limits. And the blood, lots of it, pouring from the cut near his neck and rib. That smell—metallic and bitter—filled the night around us, peppering the darkness with a stench that was unmistakable, unforgettable.
The weres around us bellowed, cried with their primal voices begging vengeance. At my side, Bane knelt next to his murdered friend, fingers covering his mouth, eyes hard and squinted. There was a heaviness around him, that deep, angry venom the lines loved to stoke pulsing from him, shifting a heated, red energy between his fingers. Him lashing out would not do. Not if we wanted to keep the scene of the crime untainted.
When Bane’s hand closed into a tighter fist, I squatted next to him, not caring that it was probably improper to touch him. Not caring that the others might talk about me offering my boss comfort.
But no words would still his anger. Nothing anyone said would ease this ache and I made no attempts to soften this blow with words that he’d never remember. Instead, my fingers covered that balled fist and my own magic blanketed the furious energy percolating from his body. That touch, soft and cautious, blunted his anger, if only for the moment it took Bane to regain control.
“I don’t understand what happened.” That customary Iles calm had slipped for only a moment—a little gaffe when Bane let the worry, the fear that this attack had been meant for him, outweigh the mourning I knew he craved. But it was a dangerous moment. Only when I had felt it pass did I stop touching him.
“We heard him yell. It was Wyatt’s watch.” Joe’s voice cracked at his cousin’s name, as though saying it delivered pain he couldn’t quite bear. “It was seconds. Seconds and we ran to him here.” The shifter’s breath released in a sputter of noise that sounded like a wheeze. Something that could not be controlled. Anguish hidden within the patent ache this death had caused. “He was just…he was laying here.”
“Where was she?”
Bane and I both stood from our crouch over Wyatt’s body as Hamill Donaldson’s question had the crowd around us looking my way. “What?” I stammered, incredulous.
“Convenient that you weren’t near the camp.”
“She was with me.”
The accusations in the silence that followed were still deafening.
“She takes off, no one sees you, Bane and then Wyatt gets dead.” Hamill didn’t back down from the glare Bane gave him. Instead, the angry shifter kept his glare focused on me; the thin line of his top lip making him look even more hostile than he had earlier that night when he nagged me about doing my job.
“I said,” Bane started, walking away from his examination of his friend’s body to step close enough to Hamill so that he could look down at him, “she was with me. I never let her out of my sight once.”
“And why is that?” The question was honest, if not invasive and when the wizard asking it stepped forward, I understood where the curiosity came from. “Funny how you have an answer for everyone where this witch is concerned.”
“Funny?” I said, tilted my head at Caridee’s little brother. “He hired me. Most employers want to know what their workers are up to. It’s how they know whether or not to pay them.”
“And what job is he paying you for exactly, Miss Benoit?”
“Ethan,” Bane warned but I silenced him with a head shake.
“Not to kill people.” The wizard barely acknowledged me when I faced him. “And certainly not to fuck him.” Ethan’s smirk was unconscious, I was certain. He didn’t find me funny. Crude, possibly, and I couldn’t argue with that.
There was a haughty, snobbery about the way he carried himself. His clothes were too clean, too above-rim to be convenient to a long hike and search through the forest. Those black, leather boots were made for looking good, not walking; that long trench coat had begun fraying at the hem from the hours it had been brushed against the ground.
The ridiculous penchant for appearances over practicality, the perpetual lowered gaze down his long nose, none of it was new to me. I’d seen Ethan Rivers’ sort my entire life in the Cove. I’d seen more of that entitled, rich boy swagger working catering events in Manhattan when one of my friends needed an extra pair of hands serving New York’s richest. Money is the same no matter where you are. It might come in different clothes, speak with a different accents, but the attitude is the same; it’s the unbendable belief that just being born into their lives, their station, engenders some sort of declaration—the fierce determination that the world is theirs to take and those not in that same station don’t warrant a second thought.
“Please, Miss Benoit…Ethan, there’s no need for this cool attitude.” Another wizard stood next to Ethan. I’d only heard of him through Sam�
��s passing mentions of Bane’s family. That one was Trevor Lincoln, Bane’s younger cousin. He and Ethan were friends, thick as thieves in anything remotely decadent, but Trevor was subtler than Ethan. He wore his disdain for anyone not part of their station with a shinier gloss. Smiles that weren’t friendly and the glimmer of kindness spoken with sentiment he’d never mean.
“And Hamill, really,” Trevor said, waving between Wyatt’s body on the ground and me. “What kind of idiot would blame Miss Benoit for this? What possible motive could she have?”
“She had opportunity.” But even as Hamill spoke, his voice held little convention. The small amount of pride he had deflated as he scanned Bane’s face. “She’s not one of us, Bane. You know that. Who’s to say she wasn’t hired. That…father of hers…”
“Excuse me?” Bane caught me before I could lift my hand and pull a bit of the line into my limbs.
“Not going to work now, remember?” he said against my ear.
“At all?” I asked, suddenly worried that the block would render me helpless.
“No. You can still fight.” Bane released me when the conversations around us sounded a bit too much like judgment. He was better at ignoring them than I was. “You just can’t seriously injure anyone.”
It felt as though something heavy, something that could not be easily lifted from me had crashed onto my chest. “I won’t have any power.”
“You have power, Jani. More than you know.” Bane’s voice was softer, lower and though I still felt his sadness, that foreign emotion I knew he tried to keep off his expressions, there also was a peek of pride, a little swirl of confidence in me that slipped to the surface. Bane could not block me from the lines without letting me feel what he felt as well and as he stared down at me, defying the murmurs surrounding us, I realized that block may have uncovered more than it held back.
“This is fucking adorable, really.” Ethan’s whine broke the spell and Bane stepped back, keeping enough space between us that Ethan and Trevor could corner him, usher him away from the crowd and, it seemed more importantly, away from me.
“I don’t care what Bane says,” Hamill said, walking behind me through the throng still looking for evidence, clues around Wyatt’s body. “I don’t damn well trust you.”
“Yeah?” I asked him, not caring that I’d hurt him just a few hours before.
“Shit’s sake, people!” Joe cried out, his voice ragged. “My cousin, your friend, Bane, who was like a brother to you, a clan mate—has been murdered right under our noses and all you do is bicker and point petty fingers and stir up trouble? What is wrong with all of you?” His voice broke, and he fell to his knees next to Wyatt’s body.
Bane knelt down next to Joe, spoke to him in quiet tones, words that mentioned revenge and love, but words that were meant to bring Joe alone comfort. I could see, though, by his clenching fists, and I could feel, that it was all he could do, kneeling next to his friend, surrounded by violence and blood, that it was all he could do from lashing out himself, in his grief and his anger. I wanted to go to him, but now was not the time. He needed space, and to keep from being a target that he would feel obligated to defend. And Joe was right—Wyatt deserved better from us, from all of us.
So I held back. But as I did, my mind was racing. I couldn't help it. The one day I had met Wyatt he was witty and fun, and he obviously cared about Bane, but in his death it became clear that there were threats and danger abroad of which we had no clue. And something else was dawning on me, something that came unbidden, but felt important. It had been my experience that unwarranted anger came from somewhere. Hamill Donaldson was a shifter I’d only just met. He wasn’t even local. Logically, there should be no real reason for him to hate me. But for some reason, he’d mentioned my father.
I glanced over at where Hamill had been pacing, a cigarette in his hand. He stood apart from the crowd, eyes down, but his gaze did slip up once or twice to glare at me. What had my family ever been to him? Maybe Papa or Ronan had screwed up a job for his pack. Maybe they hadn’t done everything they were supposed to cover up the trace of magic. Whatever it was had angered Hamill and that rage was now being directed right at me, despite the chaos in the camp, despite the murder of a fellow shifter.
Bane had blocked me from the lines, but he hadn’t completely tampered my magic. I could still draw the lines toward me, though I suspected Bane would have to release the block for me to control its power. But I could still rely on my innate abilities—the power to focus, feel the remnants of magic left over from the Elam. It had been brought through the forest and as Bane debated with his cousin and Ethan, and Hamill guarded himself from my attention or the draw of the crowd, I let that small trace of remnant power slip into my senses.
And suddenly, I felt it. The Elam.
It was close, closer than it had been in days and the moment I realized what I was feeling, the second I stepped away from the bustling crowd, Bane knew it too. He knew and stood up from where others were now also comforting the still grieving Joe, and followed me as I walked into the darkness, feeling, listening for the Elam.
But, this time when he followed me, he wasn’t alone. Hamill didn’t trust me for reasons that likely had more to do with my family than me. Ethan and Trevor seemed quite eager to remind me of my place and Bane of his responsibility. It was the makings of an argument of epic damn proportions.
I followed the remnant of the Elam.
Bane followed me.
Hamill followed me.
Trevor and Ethan complained, bitched at losing Bane’s attention, but still followed the rest of us.
“Jani? You feel it?” He watched me standing in a small clearing, far enough away from the scene that the voices around Wyatt’s body were nothing more than a low hum.
“You can feel it?” Eyes closed, I stretched my neck, let the hint of magic that perfumed the air fill my senses. “Can you see it?”
“No. Not like you can.” He stepped closer, ignoring everything around us but the energy the Elam pulsed behind its trip within the trees. “It’s a damn whisper, as if your brain is muffling the song it’s singing. I can only feel what you do and you’re seeing it now, aren’t you? You’re hearing it?”
“A little. Yes.”
“A little? That’s muted? What the hell is the full force of it like?”
My eyes were still closed and the scent of the Elam, the heat of it still a distance away yet so close, mixed with the warmth pulsing from Bane’s still hyped up body and almost perversely, that sweet, honeysuckle scent coming off his skin.
“Full force it is like life itself. It’s a great piercing scream, louder than a crowd, penetrating through the thunder of a hurricane.”
“And you hear it all?”
“No,” I said, blinking, smiling despite the circumstance, despite Wyatt’s loss. “It’s an aftershock. What was laid waste as the Elam travelled through the forest. It’s lesser but still damn powerful.”
When Bane only stared down at me with an impossible, astonished expression on his face, I took his hand, eager to let him feel more of the signature that crowded closer toward me the harder I concentrated.
“It’s like air,’ I told him, looping my fingers through his. “It’s just like the lightest, fiercest air burning your lungs, but you can’t help the sensation. You crave it.” He squeezed back when I fell silent and the action brought my attention to him.
“You know what that’s like? Feeling something that you know is horrid for you but you…”
“Still want it inside you.”
“Yeah. Well.” Bane didn’t stop me when I pulled my hand away. “That’s my gift. I feel what others can’t. Anything lost has energy. Hell, anything in life has it. Every single element on this planet, anything with mass, creates energy. It’s the energy I can hear. It’s the energy that calls to me.” My arms wrapped around my waist and Bane’s gaze glowing hot against my neck, I continued, walking up the small trail set in front of us. “I just have to focus
on the object. It’s the small details that no one pays attention to. That’s what I can sense.”
“Then that’s what we’ll follow. You just keep feeling for that energy, see where it takes us and I’ll get things sorted out here with…well, Wyatt.”
“Sorry, Bane, but that’s not gonna work,” Joe said, coming toward us followed by two of the Board of Covens’ guards. They were officers that maintained any crime not involving mortals. Normally, the two worlds did not ever interact, certainly not with violence or crime. Wyatt’s death was intentional and since there were no mortals in our group, the Coven Board guards were sent in to investigate.
“Max Wilson,” one nodded as way of introduction to Bane, barely looking my way when he greeted us. “This is Lyle Simms. The Board sent us when Joe here called in the homicide.”
“We have a lead,” Bane told them, his voice bordered on finality that would typically work on anyone. But the guards were used to powerful wizards using their force and names to get their way.
“Sorry, Mr. Iles but as the most senior coven leader here…”
“I’m not a coven leader yet, Wilson.”
“This is your investigation. It’s your case. Your blood took down the Elam. The Board chose you to provide the means to find it.” The guard glanced at me, but his gaze didn’t linger. “Protocol dictates that you stay until we’ve completed the investigation.”
There was indecision, a little hesitation in Bane’s stance. He popped his neck, twisting away from the guards, turning away as he came to my side. It was the second time his indecision seemed to crumble just by his standing near me.
“I can’t let you on your own.” His profile was sharp, a stark silhouette edged against the moon as Bane looked out over the forest. “You’re vulnerable.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Bane glanced at me, and debated what he would do as the guards took the opportunity to question Ethan and Trevor. When they got nothing but bored attitude from that pair, they moved on to talking to Hamill, making sure to stand downwind of his lit cigarette.