by Zoe Chant
He was drawn to her in a way that was simply impossible.
Impossible without magic.
Rez reached down into his own magic half, calling on his unicorn to provide a counterspell...and found nothing.
No, not nothing, but the wellspring of power that he had expected was the merest of trickles and it dissolved as soon as he touched it. She had stolen his power.
Panic gripped him.
He was in a strange place, with no magic, being twined into a spell so subtle and strong that it felt like it was coming from his own loins.
He may not have power, but he was not completely helpless; his human body seemed to have suffered no harm during his entrapment. Even with no sword…
Rez reached out and captured the woman by her arms.
“Release me,” he growled, leaning close to convince her of his threat.
It backfired terribly.
Her arms were strong and soft, and the touch of her did dire things to long-neglected parts. Her beautiful face, this close, begged him to finish the kiss that she’d started, and Rez found his traitor thumbs trying to caress her arms rather than shake her into submission.
He would have a sword of sorts in no time at all if he did not get her away from him, but before he could force himself to let go, there was a pounding on the door and the tiny hound at their feet began to bay.
“I have never been less grateful for prompt attention from Marcus,” the woman breathed. She sidled back and Rez could make himself unhand her.
“You can’t be here like this,” the woman said, shaking her head. Was she breathing hard because of the effort the spell was costing her?
She looked around in alarm, then put the tissue-wrapped bundle she was holding down and pulled a woven blanket from the back of a plush chair, thrusting it at Rez. “Wait in the bedroom,” she said firmly, and Rez numbly let her crowd him back down the hallway towards an open door.
The pounding on the outer door occurred again, this time with a string of curse words. “Do you want your goddamn air conditioner fixed or not, Heather of apartment 35? I got better things to be doing.”
Heather of Apartment 35 was apparently the title for the sorceress, and she opened the door to a soft-looking, pale-haired man with a vile scowl and the sour smell of alcohol. Rez immediately dismissed him as a threat and categorized him as nuisance.
“Marcus,” she greeted him.
Heather of Apartment 35 had some purpose for him, and let him grudgingly in. Rez hung back in the shadow of the hallway, watching and waiting, the blanket still in his hands.
The visitor did not seem to notice him, or anything other than the alluring woman in her short-skirted dress, pointing out the thing he was clearly meant to service. A wizard of some kind? He had a silver box with a handle on the top that must contain the tools of his trade.
The small hound milled at their feet and sniffed things.
They spoke in code, of fuses and circuits and things being blown.
“Are you sure you should be doing this right now?” Heather of Apartment 35 was clearly expressing doubts of his ability to cast in his condition that Rez privately agreed with. Magic should always be done with a clean mind, not muddied by inebriating substances.
“You want your goddamn air conditioner fixed or not?” Marcus retorted. He fumbled with his box and had difficulty kneeling to inspect the item in question without staggering sideways. He seemed to be spending most of his energy ogling down the sorceress’ dress when she bent carelessly, and Rez could feel a growl rise in his throat at his crude attention.
She was clearly uninterested, and annoyed, and Rez wondered that Marcus did not fear her wrath. Perhaps he was too impaired to have judgment.
Marcus managed to move the silver box a little ways away, and then asked the sorceress to retrieve a specific tool.
When she innocently knelt to assist, Marcus started to move back so that he had a view up her skirt, and something in Rez snapped.
“Return your eyes to their place, or I will cover them for you permanently,” he snarled, stepping out of the hallway, just as the sorceress startled away from the interloper and pulled down her skirt with a fiery glare.
“Whoa,” Marcus said, staring.
Rez, unarmed and unclothed, had no doubt of his ability to overcome this puny man. He snapped the blanket he was still holding in the air and closed the distance between them with two strong strides.
Marcus tumbled backwards. “I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know you were here…”
“What kind of man needs the presence of another to remind him of that which is appropriate?” Rez scoffed.
Marcus blinked without understanding.
“I will make it easier for you, since you are clearly incapable of controlling yourself,” Rez growled. “Heather of Apartment 35 is now under my protection. If you so much as leer in her direction, I will break every bone in your body and leave you in a waterless desert to die.”
Marcus was scooting backwards away from him, sobering swiftly in his terror. “I didn’t do nothing,” he insisted desperately. “Who’d want to?” he bluffed, then he crawled away faster.
The small gray hound barked and capered at the feet of her mistress.
Rez followed him across the room to the door, where Marcus pulled himself up on the doorframe and fled. Rez closed it firmly behind him.
Chapter 4
As much as Heather loved watching Marcus flee her apartment in terror, as rewarding as it was to have a gorgeous hunk stick up for her honor, this was just weird.
Also, this complete stranger was still very real and large and incredibly nude, which made forming words unbelievably difficult.
And her air conditioner wasn’t fixed.
“That was...something,” she managed to squeak. “I, er, thanks.” She bent down to scoop Vesta into her arms.
Huge-and-gorgeous managed to ratchet things up another notch by kneeling at her feet rather abruptly. “I beseech you, release me. Return me to my shieldmates.”
“I’m...um...not sure how to do either of those things,” Heather said, looking down at the top of his head. He had long, thick brown hair, highlighted in gold, and his shoulders were broad and knotted with muscles. He looked up at her with silvery-blue eyes under eyelashes that mascara models wished they had. “Maybe we should start with names.”
“Rez,” he said, sounding defeated. “I am Rez, unicorn knight, protector of the realm, defender of the fallen crown.”
“Is it okay to just call you Rez, or do I need to use all of that?” Heather asked.
“Rez would honor me,” he agreed. “You are Heather of Apartment 35.”
“Just Heather is fine,” she said breathlessly, because he seemed to think that an exchange of names allowed him to climb to his feet again.
He was simply magnificent, broad and chiseled, his face as ruggedly handsome as his amazing physique. His skin was tawny, his features without any origin that Heather could quite put her finger on.
“This is Vesta,” she introduced, because the greyhound was squirming in her arms. “She’s an Italian Greyhound.”
“She looks like an admirable ratter,” Rez said. He did not offer to pet her.
“We...ah...don’t have a lot of rats,” Heather said. “She’s just a companion.” She put the dog down.
Vesta scampered to sit adoringly at Rez’s feet and gaze up at him until he knelt and stroked her sleek head and body obediently. No one could resist Vesta for long.
“Can you explain how I am here, and...where is here?” he asked plaintively, and if he had been appealing as a gorgeous, naked gladiator rushing to defend her honor, he utterly melted her panties with his small lost voice as he gently greeted her dog.
“I don’t know,” Heather admitted. “I mean, this is Fairburn, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States of America, on the planet Earth, and I suspect that basically none of that will mean anything to you.”
He shrugged in mute agreemen
t.
“That’s what I figured,” Heather said. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
She walked to the table where she’d left the unicorn ornament, still cradled in tissue, and held it up by the string.
“I work in a shop that sells ornaments,” she said. “Someone tried to buy this, but I wouldn’t—couldn’t—sell it to them. I had to have it for myself, and when I touched it, I had this...vision. I saw…” It felt supremely stupid to say she’d seen a unicorn, even in a world where gorgeous naked men suddenly appeared by magic.
“You saw me,” Rez said, his voice low and sexy.
“I saw a unicorn,” Heather said. Yup, that sounded as ridiculous out loud as it had sounded in her head.
“You saw me,” Rez repeated.
Heather stared at him and tried to decide how being utterly insane could make him somehow even more sexy.
“You’re a unicorn?” she scoffed. “I mean, in the pointy-horned, four-legged, golden-hoofed sense?”
“I am a unicorn knight.”
As if it were as normal as butter on toast.
“Moving on,” Heather said. “I brought the ornament home, called my drunk jerk of a landlord because the air conditioner keeps tripping the fuse, and then…” Saying that she’d kissed a glass ornament sounded as foolish in her head as seeing a unicorn.
“You kissed me.” Rez didn’t say it like he exactly appreciated it. More like he was suspicious of it.
“Sure,” Heather said swiftly. “And I guess it broke your spell or something, because bam, naked man in my living room. As if it wasn’t already hot enough with the air conditioning broken.” Damn, I should have kept that to my inside voice.
He eyed her untrustingly.
Heather sighed. “Okay, then, it’s your turn. Where are you from, and why were you in that ornament?”
“I am a protector of the broken crown…” Rez rose. “But I would have to go back further than that to explain.”
“I got all day, honey,” Heather said. She immediately wished that she hadn’t called him honey. “You want some tea?”
Rez nodded, but looked quite put out when she poured him a glass of iced tea from the fridge. “It is...cold?”
“Do you want hot tea in this weather?” Heather sat at the kitchen table and waved him into the other chair. To her gratitude, he wrapped the blanket he was holding around his waist for an illusion of modesty.
“No, lady,” he said solemnly as he sat. “Have you…a portal to somewhere colder in that box?”
A portal?
“Ah, no. No portals here. No magic, generally, actually. We have machines and things that are supposed to make our lives easier but mostly break down and cost a lot to repair.” He was a lot less distracting safely sitting, Heather thought.
“Marcus,” Rez surmised, looking at the toolbox he’d left behind.
“Yeah, he owns my apartment,” Heather said sourly. “He is supposed to be in charge of fixing my things, but that doesn’t always happen.”
“Ah,” Rez said. He had drained the tea and was trying to get the sugar from the bottom using his fingers. “Marcus appears to be a lesser kind of man.”
Heather nearly snorted her tea. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“I thought at first that he might be ridden,” Rez said dismissively, licking the sugar from his fingers in a way that made Heather uncomfortably aware again that he was naked underneath the blanket he was wearing like a kilt. “But he was merely foolish and inebriated.”
“Ridden?” she squeaked, thinking entirely too hard about things she’d like to ride.
Rez’s dark look and dire tone squashed those thoughts. “Does this world have dours?”
“What are dours?” Heather asked, already dreading his answer from his expression.
“They appear like shadows, but no light casts them. They can possess a man, turning his darkest thoughts into action. They make him greedy, angry, fearful. They turn neighbors against each other, make friends into enemies, incite jealousy. When a dour takes a man’s mind, they bend it to evil, but it is without aim. They are wild, chaotic magic. More dangerous are bleaks, which can control these dours for their own nefarious purposes. You...do not have those, either?”
“Bleaks?” Heather shook her head slowly. “Not by that name.”
“They are half-shadow, half-man, as I am half-magic, half-man. My shieldmates and I are light to their dark.”
“Who are your shieldmates?” Heather had to ask.
“My fellow knights,” Rez said mournfully. “Trey, Henrik, Tadra, and our teacher, Robin. We are...were...the last of our kind, the final protectors of a fallen world.”
“A...fallen world?”
“We knew that the battle we faced was likely to be our last,” he said grimly. “The bleaks on my world were led by a powerful man of shadow and magic, and...I had doubts of our long-term success.” He reached forward and fingered the unicorn ornament on the table. “I wish I knew what had happened to them, but I fear the worst.”
Broody Rez was more dangerous to Heather’s peace of mind than even lost Rez, and she was once again keenly aware that he wasn’t wearing a stitch beneath her afghan. She put her iced tea down on the table hard enough that the ring around the ornament clinked against the unicorn.
They both stared at it in alarm for a moment, both undoubtedly wondering what would happen to Rez if the ornament broke.
“If you’re going to be in this world for a little while, you’re going to need clothing,” she said firmly.
“It is warm enough that garments are not necessary,” Rez said off-handedly.
Heather opened her mouth to protest that it was very necessary indeed, then realized that his silvery eyes were dancing. He knew exactly what his body was doing to her.
And playful Rez was the sexiest yet.
Heather badly needed to escape, before she did something she regretted, like rip off her sweaty elf costume and throw herself at him. “I’m going to go down the hall and see if I can borrow some clothes from a friend of mine who is nowhere near your size, but still way closer than I am.”
Rez stood at the same time she did, and the blanket slid entirely too far down for comfort before he caught it.
“I’ll be back,” she squeaked. Or possibly, she said something closer to “Ibba baaaaah yeah…”
She fled out of the apartment and heard Vesta bark in dismay as the door shut behind her.
Chapter 5
Rez knew that his first goal must be to break the spell of Heather of Apartment 35.
Her magic allure diminished with her exit, and Rez was able to finally think almost clearly again. He still yearned for her, but he could remind himself that this was merely part of her enchantment.
He looked out the window over the broken box that had been the focus of attention. All he could see was the side of another building, with the same strange windows. He could hear distant growls of great beasts, and a dull chaos of beeps and bells and far-off voices. The sliver of sky that he could see was hazy with heat.
Vesta, distraught by her mistress’ absence, whined and trembled and came to Rez’s feet. She placed tiny paws on his leg and begged for comfort. Before Rez could stop himself, he had scooped the hound into his arms as he’d seen Heather do, and cuddled her close.
Obviously, the witch’s spell had been cast to include her companion.
Vesta stopped quivering and butted her head into his chest in delight. Her whip-like tail beat a cheerful rhythm on his arm.
Rez frowned down at her. He needed to find how the sorceress did her casting and undo her evil work.
Vesta looked at him with huge, adoring eyes and Rez knew that he needed to hurry, before he lost more of himself.
He put the hound down firmly and scowled down the hallway. Magic was usually kept to private chambers; it was unlikely that she cast spells in rooms where she entertained. He opened the first door to find a shallow closet filled with bedding and furs and boxes marked �
��Christmas’ and ‘Games.’ There were several shelves of unmarked containers. A quick rummage of their contents showed unusual items and a rather alarming amount of yarn, but none of it appeared magical.
There was a tall machine in the bottom with hoses and ropes, but Rez could not make sense of it, and when he tipped it over with a vicious jab, it merely lay on the floor.
The next door was far more fruitful.
Here was a tiled room, undoubtedly easier for cleaning up after sacrifices. Rez found himself reluctant to believe that Heather did such things, but he could not afford to trust his own judgment in these matters.
There was an uncomfortable-looking chair, a sink with a small hand-pump on it, and tall glass walls enclosing a shining space.
Rez had never seen anything like it, but it was clearly a space for ritual. There were furs of unnaturally colorful animals hanging on racks, and there was a mirror above the sink, undoubtedly for scrying. His reflection glowered back at him.
He drew fingers along the edge of the mirror, wishing with all his might for the power to see his shieldmates.
The mirror refused to obey him and the power he could barely sense fizzled away as fast as he tried to touch it.
Vesta, capering at his feet, found one of the colorful furs on the floor and burrowed into it eagerly. Rez crouched and discovered that although it was furry, it did not actually appear to be fur. Vesta growled and chewed on the fabric, inviting him to play with her.
Rez reminded himself that he was there to break free of his fascination with the hound and her mistress.
There was a thick L-shaped tool on the counter by the mirror, tethered to the wall with smooth rope. Rez picked it up, turning it in his hands. It appeared to be hollow on one side, the interior covered with a grate. Was something trapped within it?
As he peered into it, his hand slid along a button on the other side of the device and there was a sudden roar and a blast of fiery air, directly into his eyes. Rez flung the thing away from him, and the rope attaching it to the wall came loose and whipped after it with a pronged tail.