Under His Wings

by Naima Simone

  Nicolai loosed a piercing, shrill cry that split the air and shattered the tenuous leash on his control. It popped with an audible snap that resounded in his mind and Nicolai shot forward.

  The wind cut a path around him as if getting out of his way as he dove for Evander, his talons extended and aimed at the rogue’s chest.

  At the last moment, Evander wheeled to the side and launched into the night, a maneuver a less-skilled hippogryph couldn’t have managed. But Nicolai had trained him.

  With grim determination, he slammed to a stop as if a wall had formed and followed the rogue above the clouds. Cold mist clung to his feathers then evaporated as they soared higher.

  For a moment, Evander disappeared from Nicolai’s sight, the black sky enveloping the hippogryph like a lover’s embrace. Nicolai searched the clouds, his eyes darting beside and below him. Just as he glanced up, Evander’s massive bulk plunged toward him, claws spread wide. The razor tips scraped Nico’s breast before instinct kicked in.

  Pain burned as Nicolai’s legs jerked upward, blocking the death blow that would have eviscerated him. Talon to talon, chest to chest, they clashed and tumbled beak over tail, plummeting toward the ground.

  Air whistled in his ears, dragged at the wings he’d folded against his sides. Light from the lighthouse perched on the small town’s shoreline flashed over their straining bodies. They would crash into the hard, unforgiving earth and Evander’s vile face would be the last thing Nicolai saw.

  So. Fucking. Be it.

  They broke through the cloud line and Evander wrenched free, leaving chunks of skin and muscle in Nicolai’s grip.

  Satisfaction hurtled through him at the rogue’s furious anguished caw. But his contentment was short-lived. Before Nico had time to wheel out of the plunge, Evander rushed down, a black bullet cutting through the shrieking wind.

  Fire erupted across Nicolai’s throat.

  He coughed, lifted his talons. Fluid flooded his lungs, choked him.

  Copper filled his beak, coated his tongue as the obsidian cloak of death encroached on his vision, his brain.

  The strength bled out of his limbs, wings and body along with his life’s blood.

  A loud, harsh cry reached his ears as he plunged toward the jagged rocks and unyielding land below.

  His last thought was of Tamar. Her beautiful face as she touched him in the forest.

  Once again, he’d failed to protect her.

  The black arms of death and grief enshrouded him, claiming him in their bitter embrace.

  * * * * *

  He stared into the face of a dead man.

  Sorrow welled inside him like a bubbling geyser.

  The irony wasn’t lost on him. In order to see his best friend again he had to lose the woman he’d fallen in love with.

  Rage and grief battled in his chest, surged in his throat, racing to find out which would release its howl first.

  Grief won.

  “You keep that up and security is going to stick a nose in our asses,” a familiar voice drawled. “And when they knock on the door, I’m going to let you explain why your neck’s been filleted.”

  Security?

  Nico grabbed for his neck and simultaneously broke off the cry of pain.

  His fingers encountered a ridge of flesh about an inch thick.

  Where his neck had been sliced open.

  “How?” he croaked and winced at the slight soreness.

  The ghost of his best friend Bastien Sarris smiled down at him. He seemed so…corporeal. His green eyes were as bright as Nicolai remembered, his tall, rangy length as solid. Even the white-blond hair fluttered on a ripple of air.

  Everything was the same—except for the wide puckered scar that bisected the right side of his face from hairline to jaw.

  “Bastien?” Nico rasped, his hope so raw and tender fear gripped his voice and squeezed. He nearly choked on the word. Desperate fear stabbed his heart. Terrified if he spoke his best friend’s name aloud, if he dared reach out to touch him, Bastien would disappear like smoke through Nicolai’s fingers.

  The ghost grinned, his white teeth flashing in his olive-skinned face.

  “In the flesh.” He shrugged. “More or less.”

  “But…” Nicolai pushed to sitting, his gaze riveted on the man he’d mourned for three months. With a swift glance around the room, he took in the standard hotel-issue brown dresser, round card table and two straight-backed chairs. But nothing captured his attention more than the man he’d believed eternally lost to him. “You’re dead. I saw your blood. You’re…” His voice failed him as a mixture of disbelief and fearful joy churned within him.

  Bastien’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. I’m very much alive. Although,” he tapped the wound, “not as pretty as I used to be.”

  “You weren’t all that pretty to begin with.” Nicolai chuckled, breathless, before lunging off the bed and crushing Bastien to his chest. He wrapped his arms around a man who had come back from the dead and held tight.

  His best friend. Alive.

  Bastien laughed, the sound husky and soggy. Nicolai finally released him but only the distance of an arm’s length. As long as he held on to a part of him, Bastien couldn’t disappear again.

  “I can’t believe this.” Nicolai shook his head and again felt the twinge of newly healed flesh at his neck. He grazed his fingertips over the reminder of just how close he’d danced with death. “How?”

  Bastien arched a blond brow, held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. “Magic.”

  Nicolai snorted. “Magic my ass.”

  Bastien grinned. “Still the difficult and ungrateful patient, I see.”

  Nicolai reluctantly dropped his arm and lowered to the bed. But not before flipping off his friend. His recovery from what should have been a mortal injury didn’t surprise him. Not when Bastien was a master healer. Only he could have brought Nicolai back from the brink of death. When they’d believed Bastien had fallen, Nicolai hadn’t just lost a friend, the race had lost the most gifted healer in their long history.

  “How are you here?” Nicolai asked. “What happened? Where have you been?”

  His friend sank into the garishly patterned hotel chair next to the bed with a sigh. With his long jean-clad legs sprawled in front of him and fingers linked over his abdomen, he seemed to settle in for a helluva story.

  “When Evander ambushed me, I was on my way to find you.”

  Nicolai frowned. “I wondered why you were so far from home, but nobody seemed to know.” Bastien lived in Greece where most of their people still resided. But when Nicolai, Lukas, Adon and Dorian discovered the place they’d believed Evander had murdered him, they’d been off the western coast of Ireland.

  “I needed a…” Bastien hesitated, “a break. I thought I’d crash at your place for a while. Get my head together along with some rest.”

  “What happened?” Nicolai demanded. Fear sharpened his tone, made the words clipped. Bastien was the most dedicated, tireless male he knew. Even when his warriors had gone limp with exhaustion, he’d witnessed the healer continue on without lagging. For him to “need a break”, something must’ve been terribly wrong.

  But Bastien shook his head and waved off the question with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “Not important.” When Nicolai growled, the other man pointed a back-the-fuck-off scowl at him. “Like I was saying, Evander took me down with humiliating ease.” His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating grimace. “Not personal, he claimed. But with my guts hanging outside my stomach and my face ripped open, it felt damn personal to me.”

  Rage tainted his friend’s voice and Nicolai arched a brow. The healer possessed the most easygoing nature. Nicolai could count on one hand—his hippogryph hand—the number of times he’d witnessed Bastien angered. Nicolai studied his friend’s face. The injury must have been severe to leave such a scar. Bastien stroked the marred skin and shifted his gaze to some distant point across the roo
m, but not before Nicolai caught the flash of bitterness in his green eyes. The hard glint was there and gone so fast if Nicolai hadn’t been paying attention, he would have missed it.

  Maybe not so easygoing anymore. Remorse flickered inside Nicolai’s chest. The wound wasn’t the only difference in his friend. Whatever Bastien had suffered it had changed the man in some way. Only time would tell if it were for the good or bad.

  “Later I found out Evander left for me dead on an outcropping of rocks in the Atlantic.”

  “Found out?” Nicolai asked, leaning forward with a frown. “From who?”

  “The one who saved me. A cruxim.”

  Well damn. Nicolai’s eyebrow jacked higher. He wondered if it touched his hairline. “A cruxim? That far out?” The lovely, ethereal and deadly creatures usually settled in more densely populated cities where their enemy—the vampire—tended to inhabit. They were infamous for killing not healing.

  Bastien nodded, his fingers drumming a soundless rhythm on his stomach. His lashes lowered, hiding his thoughts from Nicolai. “Yes. She cared for me the three months required for my injuries to heal.”

  “Damn,” Nicolai whispered. “Three months.” For a hippogryph that was almost unheard of. If the mark on his friend’s face was anything to go by, Nicolai couldn’t imagine what scars mapped Bastien’s chest and abdomen.

  “Yeah, they were bad. For a while there I didn’t think I would make it.” Bastien inhaled and straightened in his chair. His shoulder lifted in a shrug. “And since I couldn’t treat myself…”

  Healers could mend others, but due some weird, fucked-up quirk of the Fates, they couldn’t do the same for themselves. Their bodies followed the same healing pattern as any hippogryph—fast but without the miraculous recovery a healer’s own hand would have brought.

  “Where is she? The cruxim that took care of you?”

  A silence heavy with pain and more of that fury filled the room like a blast of arctic air. That same ice froze Bastien’s features into a hard, unreadable mask—except for his emerald eyes that blazed with such rage Nicolai fought not to recoil from it. He was familiar with that kind of pain and anger. Had bunked down with it the last few months.

  “I don’t know.” Bastien’s cold reply didn’t invite any further questions and Nicolai didn’t offer any.

  Rising to his feet, he thrust a hand through his hair and turned to survey the hotel room. The décor was the usual eye-wincing blend of flowers and plaids. Nothing about it pointed to their location.

  “Where are we?”

  “A hotel outside a town called Grace Crossings.” Bastien paused. “Do I want to know why Evander is in this dot in the middle of nowhere?”

  Nicolai glanced down at his friend. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  The old Bastien reappeared as he smiled and rubbed his palms together in mock glee. “Ooh. Do tell.”

  Shaking his head, Nicolai searched the room for the requisite digital clock. One a.m. “It’s that late,” he murmured. “I’ve been out for three hours.”

  “Three?” Bastien snorted. “More like twenty three.”

  His head snapped around and Nicolai gaped at Bastien. “An entire day has passed?”

  “Yes.” His friend nodded. “It was a freakin’ mortal wound. I did my part in a matter of hours, but your body still needed time to recover and gather strength.”

  “Fuck,” he rasped. “Tamar.”

  He rushed toward the hotel door, crossing the small room in several long strides.

  “Tamar?” Bastien repeated, right behind Nicolai as he jerked the door open and strode out into the hall. “Who’s Tamar?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  Several short moments later, they exited the hotel lobby, cast a gyges and launched into the early morning sky.

  * * * * *

  Evander stared up at the two hippogryphs winging across the black, clear night from his hiding place next to the hotel.

  The fury at Bastien’s resurrection from the dead and his interference in the battle had ebbed to be replaced by grim satisfaction.

  Bastien wasn’t a soldier—hadn’t concealed his and Nicolai’s location with the skill of a warrior. The pair had been almost laughably easy to find. And now they would lead him to Tamar. Usher him right to the doorstep of victory.

  He waited until Nicolai and Bastien had become small fading dots before he shifted and shot into the air after them.

  * * * * *

  Where the hell is he?

  Tamar paced the cabin living room, peeked outside for what seemed like the thousandth time, observed the empty front yard and woods for the thousandth time and marched back across the room to start the fruitless process over again.

  Worry did a nauseating pirouette in her stomach. Dread played an endless loop in her head of all the horrible things that could have happened.

  Crossing her arms, she choked back a sob.

  Nicolai had to be safe. He had to be.

  She would know if he was… No! Her brain locked down on that word, refusing to even think it.

  “He’s okay. He’s okay,” she whispered, chafing her arms not so much to gain warmth as to calm the…disturbance inside her.

  She’d felt this way once before. Like something else inhabited her skin with her. Something ancient, wild. It refused to settle down. Its movements were as agitated as Tamar, as if it prowled the landscape of her soul, searching, waiting for…what? Nicolai’s return?

  The eerie restlessness had started when morning returned and Nicolai hadn’t. Unlike the first time she’d experienced this sensation, she wasn’t afraid.

  She was too worried to be afraid.

  And if she rode this crazy train even farther out on its track, she had to admit the…feeling…gave her an odd sense of comfort. As if she wasn’t alone in her vigil.

  Another trip to the window. Another stomach-plummeting letdown.

  Another trek across the room.

  She loved him.

  God, did she love him.

  For three years she’d dreamed about him, been fascinated with him. But those fantasies couldn’t compare to the reality of him. She inhaled a shaky breath. His kindness, patience, tenderness—he was out of some fairy tale. And just when she’d given up on those fantastic tales, he’d strode—or flown—into her life and made her believe in the goodness of people again.

  Okay, so she realized and accepted he would leave her when this ended. Sort of. Pretty much. Hell. She thrust her fingers through her hair, fisted the curls. If she were brutally rip-her-fingernails-off-with-pliers honest, she’d admit even when Nicolai first mentioned returning her home and walking away for good once he handled Evander, her heart had wrenched in protest.

  Even then her soul had recognized what her rational, stubborn mind had not been willing to accept. When Nicolai disappeared out of her life, she wouldn’t be whole any more. His absence would leave a gaping chasm no one—no friend, no lover—would ever be able to fill. Would she still have the dreams? Would she even want to have them?

  God, which was worse? Cutting off all contact and learning to get on with her existence like an emotional amputee? Or having that small bit of him in her fantasies, waking up longing for him every morning, empty, knowing she could never touch him again?

  Yes, she understood the whys and becauses that prevented their being together. He was a mythological beast. She was human. He was the judge, jury and executioner of terrifying creatures. She was a sixth-grade social studies teacher. He lived with danger and violence. She wanted bake sales and TMZ TV.

  Two different worlds that had no hope of meshing.

  And yet…

  She rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes until gold stars burst across the backs of her eyelids. It can’t end like this. Not like this.

  She’d imagined a mutual parting where he was whole…living. Where he hugged and kissed her before soaring into the sky. Not where he left her one night never to return again.
She couldn’t lose him to death. Watching him leave her would cause enough pain, but not having him in the world at all?

  The sob escaped before she could bite it back.

  A shout went up outside the cabin.

  Her arms dropped and she stared at the closed front door, frozen.

  When another yell echoed through the walls, she raced across the room and snatched the door open. Blindly, she rushed over the porch and down the steps, coming to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the stairs.

  A group of men formed a semi-circle on the lawn. Damn big men. They laughed and grinned, slapping one another on their wide backs and shoulders.

  Her gaze scanned them, their faces unfamiliar. Her heart plunged toward her feet, the adrenaline that had carried her from the cabin fading.

  Why were they so happy? Where was…

  Oh Jesus.

  With a shriek, she flew across the yard, her bare feet barely skimming the grass as she threw herself into arms that were already outstretched and ready to receive her.

  Nicolai snatched her up, crushed her to him. His strength embraced her, his scent enveloped her. And deep inside, the restlessness disappeared, satisfied he had returned to her.

  Tamar clutched him close, her arms like manacles around his neck. Relief and joy poured through her in a flood that refused to be contained. Burying her face in his neck, she kissed the strong column, tasting his skin. A tremor shook her. God, how she’d feared she would never taste or touch him again.

  “You’d better have a damn good excuse,” she whispered.

  His chuckle vibrated over and through her. To hell with the excuse. Just as long as he was here. Now.