by Anne Malcom
Bodies piled up around him as he snatched immortal’s out of the air with renewed speed, renewed urgency. He knew he had little time before the bitter magic snatched Sophie from his grasp.
His muscles burned when he ripped the head off the last demon in front of her.
Then he wasn’t moving, magic cementing his blood, his very breath.
She stepped in front of him, face rippling, almost turning with the force of the magic battling to take control. But she was still there. He could sense her.
“La mia luna,” he gritted out, though the words were razors at his throat.
Pain electrified every cell in his body as she tried to will him to his knees. He did not do so, the beast in him pushing forward so he broke free enough to grasp the sides of her face. His palms burned on contact, as if he’d dipped them into an inferno, but he did not let go.
“You do not leave this world, luna mia,” he commanded, his voice rippling into a growl. “I command you not to. And you must come back to me in order to yell at me for commanding such things.”
She blinked. More of her violet came back into the silver eyes.
“You still have to beg me, remember?” he continued, his voice near feral.
Another blink.
The air started to become sweeter as the foulness of the power receded and Sophie’s eyes cleared even more.
She didn’t even skip a beat as they narrowed at him. “Why do you insist on trying to save the day when I’ve got it the fuck covered?” she snapped, voice sharp but he could hear the slight shake in it.
The tightly coiled fear that had wrapped around his heart loosened some, and he gained enough power over his limbs to release her face and yank her small, shaking body into his arms. He expected her to struggle—she was his little warrior, after all—but she sank into him. That small relaxing of her body chased away every inch of pain that had pulsated through his own.
Of course, it didn’t last.
“Holy James Franco!” she yelled, pushing him away from her and sprinting to the door. She leapt over the bodies surrounding her with the grace of a gymnast, one who’d done such a thing before.
The corpse of the demon flew through a window with the swipe of her hand.
In tune with every part of her energy, he knew his mate had used up almost the last of it coming back from the edge.
“Isla, you bitch,” she hissed, sinking down to her knees beside the body of her vampire. “I told you no more dying. We have backstage passes to Thirty Seconds to Mars next month.”
Sharp and real pain stabbed at his stomach, secondhand from Sophie. It leeched into her tone.
He decided at that moment that, if the vampire wasn’t lost already, he’d do anything and everything within his power to make sure the insane redhead stayed alive. If only so his mate didn’t have to feel an ounce more of that pain, that loss.
They ended up in Sophie’s offices. This was after Sophie had used the very last of her strength to try to heal her lifeless friend. He’d felt it seeping out of her, her very life force. She was literally clawing at the last snatches of what she had left in order to give a vampire—one who was technically already dead—life.
“La mia luna,” he murmured, holding himself back from snatching at her neck and yanking her away from the vampire. He wanted to. By fuck he wanted to. Standing there and watching his mate almost kill herself trying to heal a bloodsucker was scraping against his insides. His beast roared at him to do anything to rip Sophie away from the grave she was falling into.
But he knew that would be a mistake.
So he held back.
“Not now, wolf.” Her voice was flat, losing vibrancy.
He placed his hand lightly on the back of her neck, laying his lips on her head, wishing he could have her sorcery in order to give her every ounce of his own strength.
“It is not working,” he said gently, voice tight. “You know that magic is not what she needs.”
Her body was worried. “You don’t know what she needs,” she hissed, voice broken. “You don’t know what I can do.” That time her voice turned, becoming unfamiliar, and Conall’s body froze at the bitter magic creeping into the air. Into his bones.
Death magic.
He forced himself to calm, using his hold on Sophie’s neck as an anchor. “She does not need her friend to kill herself, or damn herself. I know this,” he growled. He held himself back from saying he did not need that. He would not live with that. This wasn’t about him.
His grip tightened as the air became thicker with the hold of death Sophie was calling on to try to bring about life.
“Isla,” a rough voice demanded.
Conall barely acknowledged the demon who was rushing through the corpses. He had fought with them. He was not a threat.
As if Sophie’s magic was a wall, the demon stopped when he first encountered it, eyes wild, looking from the lifeless vampire to the death-saturated witch.
“La mia luna,” he continued, giving the demon a meaningful look to stay back. For now. If Sophie did not listen, he may need the help of the demon to take her out.
But he feared even both of them would not be enough.
“She needs blood,” he gritted out. “Life. She does not need you to call on death. You know that.”
The silence after his words hung in the air like daggers above their heads, waiting.
It was a tight moment, between destruction and resurrection—just not the kind Sophie was calling on.
Then, like a tide, the invisible black tar in the air receded. Sophie’s sweet energy rushed in to replace it, and he let out the first breath he’d taken in minutes.
He squeezed her neck again.
She shook out of his grasp, standing on shaky feet. Her eyes went to the demon. “Well, don’t just stand there,” she snapped. “Use those muscles, pick the vampire the fuck up and let’s go find a human for her to snack on.”
The demon jumped to heed her command, maybe because of the residual fear in his eyes after seeing her true power, maybe because of the true panic at seeing the unresponsive vampire.
Sophie glanced to Conall, face drawn, body painted in exhaustion, but fire burned in her eyes.
My warrior.
“I don’t suppose you drove here?” she questioned.
He shook his head once.
“Damn,” she cursed. “Well, that demon better run fast.”
And without a second to snatch her into his arms, taste the life on her skin, remind himself that she was not lost—yet—she was vaulting over the bodies with an urgency that trumped her exhaustion.
The demon was already halfway down the alley when a van screeched in front of it. Conall reached around and threw Sophie behind him, calling on the beast, preparing for a threat.
Though it was a smiling vampire with an eye patch who emerged from the van. First he was grinning with the innocence of youth that Conall didn’t think existed anymore, but then his eyes touched on the vampire in the demon’s arms.
“Stop pushing me behind you, asshole,” Sophie snapped, punching him in the shoulder with her tiny fist and stomping to the frozen vampire. “Scotty, don’t stare. Isla would not appreciate you having such an unflattering image of her in your mind. Get in the van and fucking drive.”
He didn’t hesitate.
Neither had the demon.
So obviously neither did Conall.
Sophie’s dread saturated his skin and he ached to do something, but he was helpless.
He despised that.
More so when the blood the vampire was given spewed out of her along with whatever life was lingering in her cold body. Sophie’s panic and dread nearly choked him then. He didn’t understand her cool demeanor, her strict and firm orders under such emotion, but he was proud as fuck of her. At her strength.
It was magic not gifted to her. It was her. Sophie.
And it paid off. The vampire recovered with a sarcastic quip that he was coming to see was characteristic. H
e would’ve been angered at such a flippant disregard for her life and Sophie’s pain, but he’d seen her fight. Seen her concern for Sophie in the battle. She would die for his witch.
So that was how they wound up in Sophie’s offices. How he was surrounded by vampires. It should have made his skin crawl, their proximity. It did not. Sophie was there. That was it.
But he sensed there was something coming in this small room with an unlikely assortment of immortals.
Something that brought death. Something that lived inside his mate.
It was wrapped up around her core, her being. Especially when that book, the one radiating ancient power, entered the conversation.
He knew everyone in the room sensed its power, saw the way even the king of vampires—who had arrived soon after the had entered Sophie’s office— tensed when Sophie presented it.
Even the redheaded vampire spouting sarcastic remarks knew it was something to be feared.
“Witches are born of the earth, from the soul of nature itself.” Sophie’s musical voice silenced all chatter, mingled with the dread she’d introduced when talking of the Herodias sisters. Even Conall had heard of them. His father was among the immortals who fought to banish them in a cave.
It had cost his clan a lot, that fight. Those witches. Ended up costing Conall everything. So his heart had filled with poison at the mention of them in proximity to the one being on this earth he treasured.
His witch continued, unware of his anxiety. “God bestowed power over the first mortal women to gain the powers of the elements. Not like the vampires or the werewolves.” Her eyes touched his, warming him with her gaze, with their connection.
It was too fleeting before she continued to talk of the powers of witches.
“It was neither good nor evil, what The Four were blessed with, just power itself,” she said, her voice husky and low. Conall’s cock twitched at the depth of it. He needed her. “But it is dangerous, that neutrality, especially when put into human spirits. Which is why the most ancient of us created the rules that bind every witch, that forbid the use of natural powers for unnatural acts. Because it’s there. The power.”
Her words brought about the cold breeze of the past as Conall was thrust into the memory of what the air had tasted like in the bar. That was what she was talking about. A power that craved a hold. A vessel.
That was inside her.
He was swimming, drowning in the thought of losing her when he snapped himself out of it to listen. He needed this information. Information his mate had not given him freely.
She would be sorry for that.
His cock twitched again.
Her gaze was focused on the vampire as Sophie nodded at something she said. “The council has not changed, for their pursuit of power and the witches who wield it stains the blood of this book, even if one can’t see it,” she said, her voice hard and soft at the same time.
Conall’s instincts screamed at him with a strange dread at those words. Something yanking at his bond with his witch. Something intent on taking her away.
He glanced at the vampire. He had no love for the redheaded bloodsucker, but he saw the determination in her eyes to eliminate anyone who threatened his witch.
Sophie continued to tell the story of the witch sisters. Conall listened, but he also started to plan the demise of this council.
He would end them all.
He would enjoy it.
“And the Herodias sisters were banished to the cave, which was neither in the space of living nor dead, since their crimes to both life and death meant they would never embrace the reaper for the stillness of death, nor ever taste the beautiful chaos of life.” Sophie’s words wound around him like a terrible melody. “Forever bound, or shall the earth be tainted and ruined should the chains of their prison be broken.”
Again his past was hurled at him. His life before Sophie, before the wasteland of his solitary existence. The time when he belonged to a clan. When his clan followed him through the moonlight.
He dug his claws into the palms of his hands to chase away those memories. To chase away the rage at the witches for setting a course of events that would ruin his life.
But then had it not been in a ruined life that he had found his mate?
Did he not have these witches to thank for finding his mate?
Yes, he would thank them. Then he would tear them to pieces.
Something entered the air and Conall’s hackles rose, his body tightened against the threat.
“It is because the two have returned that the blood shall not be sullied with anything but the design of the gods should the world hope to flourish in a new age of peace.”
Conall searched for the source of the foreign voice until he realized it was fucking Sophie. Something coming from inside her.
His claws dug farther into his palms as he used the pain to keep him in place. To stop him from clutching Sophie tightly, shaking her back to herself. That would not work. The emptiness in her eyes told him as much. He could not bring her back. He would wait. He had to.
His eyes didn’t move from his statuesque witch as the vampire argued with her human. Sophie didn’t even fucking breathe. Blink.
“She will be deathless, this chosen one.” Her voice fluttered through the air, iron in Conall’s lungs.
“The one like the one who came first before her,” the eerie voice continued. “First before her, but was the one who submitted to the mortality she was plagued with. Her head of fire in the sky for all to see, the emerald of her eyes in the oceans which glint from the sunlight that banished her mate to the darkness until it was no longer the place where monsters lurked. For the light was their home more than the shadows.”
Conall’s beast roared against his chest, against his ribs. But he stayed still.
“In the shadows and in the light, they come back. Come back with the chosen one. Deathless until the blood of her mate is drained or ash if the heart stops beating. Then her death shall come swift and fast, and on the heels of this, the end of the world.”
The silence after her words was a resounding roar so loud he barely heard the vampire’s response to Sophie’s words.
No, not Sophie’s words.
He shook as she rubbed at her head, her eyes coming back with her scent, with her.
The vampire baited him, unaware of what a tenuous hold he had on his beast. Unware that if he changed, he’d be unable to distinguish friend from foe, and he’d tear them all apart.
But that wouldn’t save his mate. That would ruin her. And in turn ruin him. So he fought against the change, against himself, barely listening to the words fluttering around him. He forced himself to latch on to Sophie’s scent, her heartbeat, her life. It was there now. It wouldn’t leave.
He would make sure of that.
Sophie was barely able to hold on to her uterus when the wolf snatched her out of the air and slammed her against a brick wall with enough force to crack one of her ribs. Three were already broken, but to be fair, she’d cloaked her injuries from him to make sure he didn’t get that tortured artist look about him whenever she had a hangnail, or a caved-in chest.
Now, out of anger, and desire, and also because she didn’t have enough juice anymore, she removed the cloak.
She had been outside to say goodbye to Isla and the rest of the vamps, and to make sure that no more attackers lingered in the night. And, to be truthful with herself, she needed to leave the proximity of the book, of the premonition that had gripped her in her office.
The wolf had, of course, followed, staying silent as everyone left. And then he’d grabbed her.
She knew he sensed her injuries, but that didn’t stop him from sinking his hands into her hair and laying his mouth atop of hers.
The fire of his touch was like nothing in the world. Cracked and broken ribs meant less than nothing with his tongue moving against hers, with his beast growling at the back of his throat.
She forgot all promises of death she’d h
urled at him if he did this again. The only time she’d kill him now was if he stopped.
Her teeth nipped at his lips, aching to draw blood.
He moved a hand from her head downward to brutally caress her breast, causing a rush of desire to pool inside her. She cried out into his mouth. He tweaked her nipple and her knees weakened.
Then he moved lower and delved into her soaking panties. They both let out a hiss.
“Always wet for her man,” he rasped.
“Her wolf,” she corrected, mad with pleasure. She barely noticed the jerk in his body at her words, too far gone for anything but the pursuit of orgasm.
His pause was less than a second, because he found her clit and began to circle it.
“Conall,” she cried out, throwing her head back. It met his palm as he took care not to let her make impact with the brick wall. He was obviously concerned about pain, but how could there be pain? Not now. Not ever.
Her climax smashed into her with the force of a thousand pickup trucks, and she cried Conall’s name into the night, barely able to stay upright. She suspected the wolf was helping her with that.
She was unaware of how long it took her to come down, but she did become painfully lucid the moment her wolf stepped back, hitting her with the cold, empty air that was a slap compared to his inferno and rock-solid body.
His member strained against his jeans. His body had grown, changed with his need, and his eyes glowed.
She yearned for him to take her against the wall as much her next breath. But he’d stepped back.
She blinked once, then twice. “You… what are you doing?” she said, her words slightly slurred, as if drunk.
His jaw was stone. It took him long moments to respond, as if he physically couldn’t speak. “I will not break my vow to you.”
Sophie blinked again, her body still quaking from her orgasm. “You already did,” she pointed out the obvious, and she wasn’t even mad about it. She only wanted more. She only wanted him inside her.
He let out a pained growl, as if he could read her thoughts. He likely could sense the spike in her arousal. The connection that she usually cursed—or tried to—only excited her more in that moment.