INVISIBLE FATE BOOK THREE: ALEX NOZIAK (INVISIBLE RECRUITS)

by Buckham, Mary

  It was but I was having a hard time getting around Franco as an adorable dog. That’d really go to his head, especially since in the version I saw him in he was butt ugly and that was being nice.

  “And then,” Sabina was almost breathless with excitement. “I got you. Saw you all gross and bloody, but I still grabbed your shirt and flew you over here.”

  Thanks, I needed that visual.

  “And Bran looked nearly dead.”

  I glanced at him, seeing from the exhaustion on his face how close he had been.

  “Sorry,” I whispered, not able to do much else. What I wanted to shout was sorry for getting you into this, for sucking your magic from you, for nearly killing you.

  His lips quirked as he shook his head. “Never a dull moment around you.”

  Sabina was obviously insensitive to the vibes and continued head long into her recap of events, “So there you were. A bloody heap next to the druid but …” she paused as if facing her fear all over again.

  I reached up to brush my hand against hers. “It’s alright. The fear, I mean. He was a mega scary guy.”

  She nodded, the whites of her eyes quieting a bit as she glanced at Bran. “I flew you in here, though it wasn’t easy—”

  “Get on with it, kid,” I ground, knowing dead weight was heavy but sheesh!

  “Bran said to kick the cell door closed. So I did.” She looked beyond the metal bars. “Once I got the chains off him enough he could move he started his magic.” She glanced at him again, this time in awe. “I’ve so got to learn me some of that magic.”

  “Mage magic, kiddo. Not witch magic,” I said, trying to ease Bran off the hook.

  “You mean as a witch I can’t do that?”

  I shook my head. “Nope.”

  “Well that just sucks.”

  A laugh welled up in me. Hurt like the dickens but it was good to know one still existed inside. It winked out the second I asked, “What about the others? The team?”

  “Herc’s all right except his woo-woo spidey weapon got used up right away. He’s not happy about that, which is why I had to run ahead and get caught. I mean they were fighting the Weres and there were a boatload of them and I couldn’t wait.”

  Good to know where her priorities were. “And the others?”

  “The bad-ass instructor dude got hurt.” She must have seen my expression as she quickly followed with, “Not bad. A broken collarbone I think. Sounded painful but he’ll live.”

  I wouldn’t be telling Stone about her concern, or lack thereof, about him. “And the team?”

  “The shifter one is a real ass-kicker. She tore into those Weres like she’d been waiting forever to beat the crap out of them. Did you know she was some kind of big cat? Not like a tiger but big, like a female lion only not a lion.”

  “No.” She was exhausting me. “Didn’t know.”

  “And Van? He’s sexy as a wolf. No wonder Kelly has only eyes for him.”

  What? That had me squirming. No way was I going to let Kelly become one of Van’s love-‘em-and-leave-‘em conquests. Even if she didn’t mind. No way.

  “Shhh,” Bran soothed, actually laughing at me. He didn’t know my brother. That side of my brother and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let Kelly know that side either.

  “I think Alex needs to know if the other members of the team are safe and where they might be now?” Bran spoke to Sabina who hung on every word.

  “Oh.” She shook her head. “Isn’t that what I’ve been saying?”

  Before I could groan out loud she shrugged and added, “Far as I know, they were okay. When I left them.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the hallway. “I haven’t seen them for a while, but as Franco and Willie and I were running back this way I heard them still fighting, only in the hallways, not outside.”

  “Franco got a bad gash on one paw but Willie took care of it. Then beat feet saying he was allergic to too much blood.”

  “Recovering Were side effects,” I said. “I bet Franco will think we kept him from all the fun.”

  At least it sounded like they’d made it through okay, which made it easier for me to do what I needed to do next.

  I squirmed in Bran’s lap, which might have been very distracting in any other situation, but now all I wanted was to see what had happened to the druid.

  I wished I hadn’t looked. The last place I’d seen him standing there was what looked like a dried-up lump of clothes. “That him?” I didn’t realize I’d spoken out loud until Bran’s arms tightened around me.

  “After you—after you left,” what a euphemism for killed myself if I ever heard one. “he went crazy.”

  Crazy didn’t leave one looking like dirty laundry. “And then?”

  “I think he’d drained himself to the point there was nothing left.” He glanced where I was still looking. “Closest I can describe, it was as if all the magic bled him dry, leaving his body a husk that imploded.”

  I might have cringed a little, but not very much in spite of what sounded like a painful way to die. But Padraig had no qualms about unleashing a demon on innocents, master minding the deaths of hundreds of thousands if not more. Payback was a bitch he deserved.

  “And the demon?” I asked, turning back to look at Bran, even finding a smile for him.

  “Wasn’t able to pass through the portal.” He brushed the back of his fingers down my face, making me want to purr. “Seems one determined witch slammed the door shut just at the right time.”

  I was basking in the moment, but Bran seemed to have his own agenda. Why wasn’t I surprised?

  “Explain how your dad was able to cross over and find you?” Bran said, his voice low and husky. “I know firsthand that I could barely think, I was locked so solid. So how did your father escape?”

  I waved the fingers of one hand, which was about all I could move without pain. “Old shaman trick. Before he met with the druid, he used a pipe to smudge himself as a protection. An ancient Native American shamanistic practice that had been used a lot more than it is now, which is why dad was hoping Padraig forgot the custom.”

  “You mean like a peace pipe?” Sabina asked, her voice incredulous.

  “That’s a white man’s term. Any shaman worth his salt knows the combination of herbs and tobacco needed to create protection before any startling information is shared. Whites didn’t bother to learn; it isn’t just some quaint ritual but a way to provide immunity from an enchantment spell.”

  “Which is exactly what the druid cast.” Bran whistled.

  I nodded and closed my eyes for a moment, accepting that my body was still healing, in micro bits by the aches and the pain twanging through me. But I was alive and that wasn’t anything to sneeze about.

  “What now?” I murmured, feeling all vague and fuzzy.

  “Seems we wait for your team to finish routing the bad guys, find us, and hope someone has a key for the cell door,” Bran said, practical and forward thinking as always.

  Only one of the reasons he made me happy. Very, very happy.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  It was sunset three days later as I stood in an open balcony doorway looking out over the red and cream rooftops of Paris, my wounds mostly recovering. A few Technicolor bruises across most of my body, the spot where I’d plunged a knife into my chest still sore and a clean, deep scar on my palm healing into a white ridge. Not bad for being all the way dead not that long ago.

  “You look pensive,” Bran said from the sole bed in the room. I glanced in his direction because he looked good, damn good, rumpled and sexy among the white sheets. For a second I forgot about what was tumbling through my mind. Which was good and sorely needed.

  “Just thinking.” I shrugged and turned back as if to memorize the skyline. “You know, this is how I thought of Paris,” I admitted, running one hand along the crisp cotton curtains bracketing the doorway, inhaling deeply of the cooling spring breeze. Not cold enough to shut the door just yet, but enough to have me rubbing my
bare arms. The ecru silk nightgown Bran had given me was not meant for warmth. Well, not the kind of stand-alone kind of warmth.

  Without my hearing him, Bran was suddenly beside me, pulling my back against his naked chest and long, lean legs, wrapping his arms around me, resting his head against the top of mine. Warlock blanket. I liked it and knew I could so easily get used to this.

  “Want to share what’s putting a crease between your eyes?”

  Mages could see way too much. “Is that a nice way to tell me I’m looking haggard?” I asked, trying to go for light, though I failed miserably.

  “What is it?” he asked, all seriousness in his voice. “Your father and Van are well. Your team came through mostly unscathed.”

  “Except for Stone and Mandy.” Sabina had been right. Stone earned a broken collarbone, several cracked ribs, and brain lash while fighting a particularly nasty Were. Mandy had reinjured her arm, the one broken when I’d called an echo demon during early days of training. A time that seemed years ago, yet was less than a month or two. Amazing how fighting preternaturals made time fly.

  “Your comrades were hurt but they will recover,” Bran said.

  “This time.” The words slipped out unbidden.

  “Is that’s what’s bothering you?” He turned me in his arms, no doubt trying to distract me with the breadth of his very solid, and very yummy shoulders. Ones I’d been admiring since we’d arrived here, to recuperate he’d said. Ha! No one told me recuperating could be so fun, and inventive.

  Bran had been gentle, and insisting we take things slow physically between us. I think he just wanted to torture me or drive me crazy. Kisses and touches were divine but not when my body craved more. More of him. More of us. More reassurance that we were both alive and alive was good.

  Have I mentioned patience is not one of my strong suits?

  “Alex, talk to me,” he murmured, grabbing both my hands in his so I couldn’t continue rubbing my fingers along his skin in ever widening swirls. And I had been having such fun.

  “Fine.” Yes, I said it in that way that meant there was nothing fine about any of the situation. So I stepped back, just enough to be able to breathe instead of swimming on the scent of Bran’s skin just inches from me.

  “Talk to me,” he said again in that CEO voice that said he wasn’t going to stop until I did. Didn’t he get the male handbook that said all talking was inherently dangerous? I was so going to have to get him together with my brothers for some serious clarification.

  On second thought, nix that.

  I was avoiding. I do that when I’m just not ready to bare my soul. As in all the time. So go with the easy issue first. “Sure, we stopped Padraig, but what about the demon? There were more Council members who were working with Padraig to release that demon and that doesn’t count the Seekers. How are we going to stop them?”

  Bran scrubbed his hand over his face. “One problem at a time. Your father now has some leverage over the remaining three known Council members who supported the druid. That might help keep them in line, and your father is not without his own allies on the Council.”

  Council politics made me itch. I raised my gaze to Bran. “And the Seekers?”

  “I don’t know, Alex, I seriously don’t know.”

  That’s not what I wanted to hear. Bran was the focused one, the one who made decisions and took action. On the other hand he was right. He was a dress designer, not a trained, or somewhat trained agent sent to fight the preternatural bad guys. Which is what my real problem was.

  I turned away from him totally, stepping farther out on the balcony, watching the sun inch closer to the horizon, wondering why stopping one very bad guy and saving the world just wasn’t enough some days. Like today.

  “You’re thinking about us, aren’t you?” he laughed behind me. Laughed?

  I twisted to face him so fast my hair flew in a curtain of black behind me. “You think this is funny? There is nothing funny about any of this.”

  He went to step closer, then thought better of it and paused, struggling to wedge his lips into a serious cant. “You make me happy,” he said, stealing all the air out of my blustery sails. “That’s why I’m smiling.”

  He took that last step, that put him close enough he could cup my shoulders, not holding me as much as reassuring himself that I was really there.

  “If you didn’t care too, you wouldn’t be so agitated.”

  Oh, for being so dam sexy the man had a few things to learn. One did not call one’s lover agitated. No matter how true it was. “I’m not—”

  He placed his fingers across my lips. “You care, that’s what matters and so do I.”

  There, he did it again, that melting my heart thing. So not fair.

  “But is this real?” I asked in a wimpy-assed voice that did not sound at all like me.

  “You mean what’s happening between us?”

  I couldn’t speak around the solid lump in my throat so I nodded, keeping my eyes focused on his chest again, not trusting myself to meet his gaze.

  “Are you thinking of the prophecy?” His voice at least had turned serious, though his fingers were playing with my hair. An action I don’t think he was even aware of.

  “Yes.” He’d nailed it. “I don’t want to be here, with you, simply because of some silly announcement made by a coven and witches and warlocks who knows how long ago.”

  He nodded, then repeated the words he’d used to describe the prophecy the first time he’d told me about it. “Acies, acendo, adamo. Lost in the mists of time, the meeting has been foretold between a powerful warlock and the even more powerful witch who would bring him to his knees and start the time of change.”

  “Change, no problem, before you said something more.”

  “The time of loss,” he finished, shadows in his gaze.

  “That’s the part that gives me the heebie-jeebies. As if fighting wicked powerful uber bad guys isn’t enough, now I have to deal with bringing loss. To who? Us? Me? The world?” I shook my head, the aches through my body punctuating my resistance. “I can only handle so much,” I said. My voice low, almost cracking. “I have barely tapped being a witch, not to mention developing as a shaman.” And fulfilling my promise to a ghost on the other side. “And now with this shifter blood … I can’t—”

  This time he silenced me with a kiss. His lips firm and coaxing, covering mine, teasing me to join him, to release the frustration and fear and yes, the agitation rocketing through me. When he finally raised his head I swore my knees were weak and his body was telling me loud and clear where it wanted that kiss to lead.

  “That’s not fair,” I murmured.

  He smiled again, that sexy, all-male, hot warlock smile. He so did not play by Noziak rules. Yet he was serious as he whispered, his hands once again in my hair. “I don’t have all the answers,” he said, his voice low and husky. “But I’m here. I’ll be here until you push me away and together—”

  He rushed the last word when I squeaked at the thought of pushing him away. Not just yet, it’d taken us both too much to get together.

  “And together,” he continued, taking my hand and leading me back to the bed, “we’ll find answers.”

  “To what the prophecy means?” Have I mentioned that I don’t do the trust thing real well either?

  “Yes, to the prophecy.”

  “And my being a shaman?”

  “I’m sure your father will help there.” He raised his free hand to stop my jumping into the whole we’re-not-where-we-once-were-relationship-wise issue with my dad. We were doing better but shadows still remained. Bran continued, “We don’t have to solve that issue this week, this month or anytime soon. But he will help, you know that?”

  We paused by the bed, my feeling like a sulky kid as I nodded. “Yeah, I know that.”

  “Good. And the shifter issue we’ll tackle, too.”

  He’d said the “we” word. Hard to feel alone and overwhelmed when someone you cared about made it cl
ear they weren’t going away, in fact, they were staying close, to help.

  “So we’re together?” I asked, looking at him, no doubt my heart was in my eyes because it sure damn well was making it hard to breathe.

  “Yes. We’re together.” He gathered me in his arms then, which is the one place I wanted to be. Then he almost messed everything up by adding, “Sometimes I want to hate you—”

  My gaze locked with his.

  But he wasn’t finished. “Because you have touched me like no other woman has ever touched me and I am changed until the day I die.”

  Those were not tears in my eyes. So not.

  Leave it to a warlock to break down my barriers.

  “I know you’re scared, Alex, about what’s between us, but so am I. You hold my happiness, my sanity in your hands.”

  When I could speak again I cleared my throat. “Damn, and here all I wanted was some hot, sweaty sex.”

  He started laughing, throwing back his head in one of those deep chested it’s-good-to-be-alive chuckles as he scooped me up off my feet and tossed me on the bed. “Good! That works for me.”

  Then he went on to prove it. Several times.

  What aches and pains?

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Stone sat on the arm of the chair in Ling Mai’s hotel room once again. Vaughn at his side this time. Only a week since the last time he’d met with Ling Mai alone. A lot had happened in one week. Alex was alive. A new member had joined who proved her mettle in a fight, though would take some time to settle in with the other women. Two younger recruits who looked like they’d become the nucleus of an Invisible Recruit Academy for young and gifted teens. Plus, the team had managed to stop a three-thousand-year-old demon from returning and annihilating mankind. The Council of Seven wasn’t so happy with them, being down to six members and their nasty factions exposed to outsiders.

  Tough, they could deal with it. His team was still alive, though hurting, even more than last week, with the bandages around his shoulder and ribs chaffing on a lot of levels.

  Ling Mai walked in looking as she always did, calm, collected and totally enigmatic. “You are feeling well?” she asked of him.