Chronicles of Arcana (The complete collection books 1-4)

by Debbie Cassidy

  Tay’s shoulders tensed. “She happens to be one of my closest friends, and she has a name. Use it.”

  Tonya flinched as if he’d hit her.

  Oh, shit. The last thing I wanted to do was mess this up for Tay. Tonya was considered quite a catch in the troll blood circles. Bloody Noir, he should have just taken me with him. I could have hidden in his office or something.

  I held up my hands. “That’s fine, Tay. We can do that stuff another day.” I slipped off the stool.

  Tay frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  It wasn’t possible to explain to Tonya that Tay had been acting as bodyguard to protect me from Elora, not without telling her that he’d been sleeping at my place. So, there was nothing that Tay could do to stop me when I strode for the door. I’d hail a cab and lock myself behind the wards. I had Gilbert and Trevor to keep me company until Noir got back, and Hound was probably home by now too. I’d be fine.

  And then I was outside, sucking fresh air into my lungs and shoving the image of Tay with Tonya out of my mind. My boots slapped against the pavement as I headed away from the bar toward the taxi rank round the corner just past the alley.

  Gilbert would have put the scones in the cake tin. I’d have a scone, and I’d feel better. My scalp prickled just before the air to my right shifted with dark movement, and then arms were yanking me into the alley. My head slammed against the brick wall, and a dagger was pressed to my throat.

  A Shedim glared at me with burning violet eyes.

  Seriously? Sod’s law sucked.

  I kicked out, connecting with ... nothing, because the fucking Shedim had gone smoky bottom half like a genie coming out of a lamp. Shit. I slipped a hand into my pocket.

  He grinned. “You die.”

  I arched a brow. “Not today, motherfu—” K fired a bolt into his side.

  He screamed and released me, grabbing at the metal, but it evaporated, returning to my bolt bag. Another bolt took its place, this one burying itself in the Shedim’s chest.

  I shoved at the Shedim’s shoulder. “Where is he? Where’s Azren?”

  The Shedim fell back against the opposite wall, hands patting at the wound the second bolt had made, his laugh a gurgle. “No Azren. Not anymore. Azren dead.”

  Ice filled my veins. “No. You’re lying. He can’t be.” Another bolt, this one into the shoulder I’d just shoved. “Tell me where he is.”

  The Shedim’s eyes narrowed, and he hissed, his gaze flicking over his shoulder.

  Fuck!

  Arms of steel wrapped around my waist and squeezed. “Time to scream,” a rough voice whispered in my ear.

  I obliged, and then headbutted him with the back of my skull. His grip loosened with a grunt, and I was free, staggering forward and ducking to miss the swipe of the first Shedim’s arms. I broke into a run. They’d blocked the way back to the bar, but I knew these roads. This was my territory.

  The Shedim were fast, but knowing where I was heading, knowing every turn and loose stone, made me faster. Damn the back streets and their silence. Damn me for leaving the bar. Noir was going to kill me, if the Shedim didn’t do it first.

  And then my luck decided to desert me. My foot snagged on a wonky brick, sending me flying through the air. I hit the ground, knees scraping and stinging as the skin peeled off. Fucking skirt.

  A boot slammed into my spine, and my head was yanked back. The glint of metal was followed by the bite of a blade at my throat. My vision blurred.

  I was going to die.

  A roar shattered the air, and I was suddenly free. Scrambling out of the way, a storm churning on my chest, I caught a glimpse of Tay as he pulled the Shedim’s arm from its socket with a sickening crunch. The troll was out—red haze, bulging veins, the fucking works. The unharmed Shedim made a grab for the partially dismembered one and they both winked out of existence.

  Tay stood in the side street. His powerful chest heaved, and then he turned his furious, burning gaze on me.

  Ice trickled through my veins. “I’m okay. I’m fine.”

  But he wasn’t listening. He barreled toward me, and his grip was cruel and rough as he picked me off the ground and flung me over his shoulder. And then we were on the move, almost running.

  Oh, God. Oh, shit.

  Tay was gone.

  Tay was ... A door slammed open.

  “Tay? What are you doing?” Tonya’s voice was high-pitched.

  “Tay, man, you need to calm down,” Mack tried.

  I knew better than to fight, better than to poke the bear. I lay limp across his shoulder, heart thudding so hard I was certain everyone could hear it.

  “Tay, put her down,” Mack said. “Take Tonya. Just take her.”

  Someone touched my back, and Tay turned so fast my head spun. His roar was a primal sound of admonishment, a sound that said, back the fuck off or lose your face.

  And then we were through the apartment doors, up the stairs, and into his room. He dropped me on the ground, and I scrambled up and backed away. The door thudded shut and the lock engaged with a snap and click of finality. There was nothing else but me and the mountain of a man who was staring at me as if I were his last meal, as if I were the only oasis in the desert. His clothes seemed tighter, as if he was expanding with need, and the front of his jeans strained with the thick, long shape of his arousal. My core melted. Wet. I was wet for him. My gaze flitted up to his face, and my heart stalled, because the creature looking back at me from behind those tawny eyes wasn’t the Tay I knew. It was the darker side, the troll. It was the primal beast. His nostrils flared, and his eyes blazed with a hunger my body was all too willing to allow him to satisfy, even though it trembled with what it knew was to come. I’d heard the tales. I’d heard them all.

  “Tay.” My voice trembled, my brain stumbling over the words I needed to say and those that I desperately wanted to.

  His response was a low, beastly growl, and then he was striding at me. The backs of my knees hit the foot of his bed, and I toppled backward. He came with me, crushing me into the mattress. His hands scrambled to gather up my skirt and yank it up over my hips. There was no tenderness, and a dangerous heat surged through me.

  “Oh, God. Tay, we—”

  My panties tore with an angry rip. His hands fumbled, knuckles grazing my wetness. I needed to push him off, to stop him, but instead, I pressed into his hand as he freed himself. There was no foreplay, no preamble. No consideration for pain, no adjustment period. He pushed himself into me with long, hard, angry thrusts that ground me into the mattress, smashed the headboard into the wall, and ripped sounds from my throat that I hadn’t been aware I’d be able to make. I was dripping wet, but even then he was too large, too thick, but he didn’t hold back. This Tay didn’t give a fuck. All he wanted was to rut, to claim, and to possess. My nails dug into his ass cheeks, urging him on. Pain mingled with pleasure as the rolling, coiling, tightening feeling built and then tore through me. He groaned into my shoulder, hips jerking, butt clenching as he came with me, inside me.

  His body stilled, but the aftershocks trembled through us as tears leaked from my eyes. What had we done? He withdrew slowly, jerkily, his head bowed. Not looking at me. My mouth worked but my voice had deserted me. There was nothing to do but stare at his wide shoulders as he sat on the edge of the bed, head buried in his hands, fingers raked through his hair.

  I’d done this. I’d pushed him to the edge, and I’d brought out the troll’s instinct to claim and to protect. I’d broken him.

  “Tay ... I’m sorry.” My voice was a rasp.

  He made a harsh sound, part laugh, part sob. And when he turned his head to look at me, my Tay was back, his eyes soft orbs of sorrow. “I hurt you.” The words were filled with torment.

  I sat up, biting back a wince at the soreness between my legs. “If that’s what you call hurting, then I’ll take another round.”

  He choked back a laugh. “I lost it, Wil. You could have died, and I lost it.”

&n
bsp; “I know. I shouldn’t have left the bar. I was stupid. I just ...”

  “Couldn’t bear to see me with Tonya.”

  I hung my head, blinking back tears. “I’m a horrible person.”

  He climbed up onto the bed and pulled me into his arms, tucking me against him. His body heat seeped into me, his hands combed through my hair, and his lips brushed kisses across my temple. His scent was pungent but not unpleasant—the aroma of a rutting.

  “I’m going to fix this, Wila. I promise. I’ll make it right.”

  I didn’t know how that would be possible. We were two different breeds of animal, but in that moment, I simply wanted to believe. My eyes grew heavy, limbs lethargic. Almost getting killed and then having your brains shagged out would do that to a woman.

  I snuggled into him. “You don’t smell of raspberries.”

  His chest rumbled. “Should I?”

  Mmmm ... sleep was good.

  ***

  Tay leaned against the bar, arms crossed, his face solemn, while Mack watched him warily from his perch on a bar stool. The place was deserted. Mack had closed up after Tay had returned carrying me like a sack of potatoes.

  Tonya was nowhere to be seen, not that anyone had mentioned her or what had transpired a few hours ago, although I was sure Tay and Mack would get into it once I was gone.

  I sipped my orange juice. “The Shedim who had me said Azren was dead.” My lips felt numb around the words. I’d blocked them out, pushed them to the back of my mind, not wanting to acknowledge them. But they’d surged up once the haze of sexual desire had melted back into my skin, and now my hands were blocks of ice as the possibility that the fucker had been telling the truth filled my mind with dread.

  “He’s lying,” Tay said. “If this kindred bond you have with Azren is anything like the mating bond troll bloods share with their mates, then you’d know.”

  Except Azren had said that our bond was muted. What if there was no way for me to know the truth? What if he was gone? When he’d been taken, I’d had the hope of finding him, of bringing him back, but now that hope was being challenged, and panic was a set of talons around my throat.

  “Wila, breathe dammit!” Mack was rubbing my back. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to find out the truth from the ambassador tomorrow night.”

  His words finally penetrated, and the spike of anxiety ebbed. “The ambassador will know. He’ll have heard things.”

  “And if anyone can charm him into talking, it’s you,” Tay said firmly.

  His confidence in me, his assurance that Azren was alive, pulled back the veil of darkness threatening to swallow me.

  “I went out while you guys were ...” Mack cleared his throat. “And I found this in the side street not too far from the bar.” He placed a flat blue disc on the table in front of me. There was a thick crack running through it, but there was no mistaking what it was.

  “A transponder.” I picked it up gingerly, turning it over to examine it. “The Shedim that was about to slit my throat must have dropped it.”

  “He also dropped an arm.” Mack winced and glanced at Tay.

  Tay didn’t even blink.

  “Don’t worry, I disposed of it,” Mack continued.

  I turned the disc over in my hand. “How the heck are they getting hold of this tech? There has to be someone supplying it to them, someone on this side.”

  “Like Kelter,” Tay said. “It’s his tech, and he spends an awful amount of time going back and forth from the Westside.”

  He’d been at the equinox, but— “How do you know that?”

  “I keep my ear to the ground, Wila. Information is power.”

  “But why would he do that? He’s essentially aiding Elora in breaking the Treaty. If The Collective find out, then he’s finished.”

  Tay let out a bark of laughter. “You really think The Collective can do anything to Kelter? The man runs the city. His tech powers all the Arcana institute operations. He is the nuts and bolts that hold this city up. Not only this city but every other pocket of magic and Arcana institute in the world.”

  “And if Elora has him in her pocket ...”

  “Then we’re fucked,” Mack finished with his usual level of eloquence.

  The air in the room shifted, becoming charged, and Tay and Mack were immediately in defensive mode. But then Noir appeared by the exit and the tension whooshed out of the room like the air from a puncture.

  The Arcana studied us in turn. “Why do I feel like I just avoided getting jumped?”

  Mack chuckled but Tay remained stoic. “I’ll let Wila fill you in.”

  He was giving me the responsibility of revealing as much as I wanted to. An abridged version of events that may or may not include Tay’s troll slip. My neck heated at the memory of what we’d done.

  I handed Noir the broken transponder. “I was attacked by Shedim. One of them dropped this.”

  He took the transponder but didn’t examine it; he was too busy staring dumbfounded at me. “What? How? They came into the bar?”

  I gave him a sheepish look. “Not exactly. I left the bar without Tay and got jumped.” Noir opened his mouth, probably to berate me, but I held up a hand to stall him. “I know. There’s nothing you can say that I haven’t already said to myself. I slipped into dumb-movie-heroine mode, and trust me, it will not happen again.”

  Noir pressed his lips together and then dropped his gaze to the tech. “How in the world are they getting hold of Kelter tech? Who’s shipping it to them?”

  That was what we needed to find out, because this could be evidence to take to The Collective. “Is there any way to find out where that one came from? Is there a serial number or batch number that can tell us where it was sold from? Is there a way to trace it?”

  Noir sucked his bottom lip in thought. “Every active transponder is registered, and coordinates go through a database. I’m not sure about the finer techy details, but I may know someone who can look into this.”

  “Good. Get on that. If we can somehow prove the transponder traveled from Westside to Eastside and link that to Kelter, then we may have something to take to The Collective. Heck, even if we can’t link it to Kelter, we may be able to question the person or people aiding Elora and find out what she’s up to.”

  Noir pocketed the item. “I’ll speak to my contact tomorrow afternoon.” He looked to Tay. “Are you all right to run Wila duty tomorrow daytime?”

  Tay slid a glance my way, and heat seared me. “Yeah. I’ll be there in the morning.”

  A lump of need formed in my throat, and I swallowed it down. There would be no more horizontal playtime with the troll blood, not until we’d figured out a way for us to be together without driving him nuts with territorial instinct, not until I had my kindred and my ... Valance back.

  Chapter 3

  There is a pot of tea the size of Hound’s head on the table, and a pile of pancakes that reaches the ceiling beside it. Gilbert is by the stove, visible but see-through, and Trevor is sitting at the table wearing a party hat. What is this? My birthday?

  “Aren’t you going to open the door, Wila?” the voice asks.

  My head whips round, and there, in place of the fridge, is the metal door from the basement. A dream. This is just a dream. A nervous chuckle fills the room and then the lid of the teapot lifts itself off and cracks on the table. Darkness rises, pooling in the air above the table, and a voice fills my dream.

  It’s dark for now, but she’ll come for me. She’ll come and then the pain will begin. How much longer? Why? Why not just end me? But where there is life, there is hope that I will see Wila again, hold her again. Elora can’t know. She can’t suspect. She can’t. But Wila won’t let me go. I can feel her holding on. Tenuous and far away, but I feel her. Our connection is solid, and if I follow it … if I just reach out.

  No. Mustn’t. Mustn’t. Too risky. But she needs to understand.

  A tugging sensation at my solar plexus. Azren. Oh, God. It’s Azren.<
br />
  Wila, don’t come for me. Whatever you do, don’t come.

  Azren? I hear you. I hear you. The darkness pulls me in.

  The drip of water is my only companion, marking the seconds, the hours, and the days. Earth and rock surround me, and the air is stale and warm. My wrists chafe and bleed where the shackles cut into them. My ankles throb and ache where metal has sunk into the swollen flesh.

  “Good morning, pet,” Elora purrs. “It’s a beautiful, sunny day.”

  Something clanks and chinks as she moves. Probably a new weapon of torture, but if I remain silent, if I remain still, she might simply turn around and leave. She may give me a reprieve. She may allow my skin time to heal from the barbs and the blades of a few hours ago. My tormentor doesn’t sleep. My tormentor loves to hear me scream.

  “Feigning unconsciousness, pet? You forget I can hear your heart. Its pitter-patter is a symphony to my ears.”

  She thinks I’m broken, that she has taken my will, and although I am teetering on the edge of despair, I will go into the dark on my own terms. I raise my head and clench my jaw.

  “Just end it. Kill me and be done with it.”

  She chuckles. “And why would I do that?”

  Yes, why would she? She is enjoying playing with me. I am no stranger to her brand of pain, but it has never been this consistent. Hours and hours, day after day, she tears at my flesh until my back is a raw, open wound, and yet she never touches my torso, never lays a finger on the ink decorating my flesh.

  The tiny part of my mind untouched by the torture churns with the question ... why? What do these markings mean? That tiny part of my brain urges me to fight. To stay alive and hope that there will be liberation, but my only liberation lies with a woman I’d die to protect. I’ve felt her in the back of my mind, reaching out to me, but I’ve blocked her each time. Kept her away, kept her safe. I’d die a thousand deaths to ensure her survival, to keep Elora from discovering our connection.

  Fire lashes across my shoulders, opening yesterday’s wound and bringing hot tears to my eyes.