“Look,” she said, her voice husky. She cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t know what to think about you. I want to trust you. And maybe eventually I will. But it’s not going to happen today.”
His expression relaxed fractionally. “And will you give me the chance to prove myself?”
“What do you think you’re doing right now?” she asked in exasperation. “We’re in a hotel and I’m sleeping in the same room with you. At any time you can stick a knife in my head like you did that faery. The fact that I’m not sitting in the corner with my gun on you all day long must mean I trust you a little, right?”
His smile surprised her. It was that slow, lean smile that made her toes curl and her blood bubble. Oh. Damn. And here she was in a hotel room sleeping no more than five feet away and no way out. “You might just be reckless and suicidal. Remember? That is not the same as trust,” he pointed out.
If she looked into those eyes anymore, she was going to do unspeakable things to him. She plopped down on the bed a couple of feet away and stared at the TV. “Could be. Looks like you’re in for a wild ride either way. Call me the Roller Coaster of Death. So what do you want to do now? Got a deck of cards?”
They ended up sitting on Alexander’s bed and watching an old black-and-white flick called A Comedy of Terrors. Though Max wasn’t into movies or TV, she had to admit it was funny. She liked that it had nothing to do with anything relating to witches or wars. At some point she fell asleep. When she woke, her head was on his shoulder, one arm resting on his chest. He was inches away, watching her. To her utmost humiliation, she blushed. Then she realized what time it was.
In the blink of an eye she was on her feet. Urgency prodded her. She strapped on her weapons, checking her .45 and leaving the safety off. She went to the sink and rinsed her face and combed her hair. Turning around, she found that Alexander was equally ready to go.
“It’s still early,” he said. “We’ve got a good fifteen minutes.”
Max didn’t know what to do with herself. She began to pace aimlessly, flipping the truck keys around her thumb. Alexander leaned against a wall, watching her.
“Thanks for’” Sleeping with me. Could we do it again sometime soon? Maybe with fewer clothes and a little more action? “Thanks,” she said finally, the red returning to her cheeks.
“My pleasure.”
She eyed him. “One hopes you’ve had more interesting days with a woman in your bed than that.”
“More interesting? Possibly. More pleasurable?” He shook his head. “No.”
“You must bring home some real corpses if me falling asleep on you lands at the top of the list.”
He smiled. “You underestimate yourself.”
“I snore.”
“Not loudly. And you will be glad to know that you did not drool.”
Max shook her head. “You didn’t have much of a life, outside of being Prime, did you?”
“Do you?”
She grimaced. “True enough.” Curiosity prodded her. “All right, I’ll bite. What was so special about last night?”
“And if I say that you made it special?”
Max rolled her eyes. “Then I would say again that you’re a couple of clowns short of a circus.”
“You do not believe me.”
“Yeah, because I was born yesterday and then fell off a turnip truck.”
That smile again. Crap. He had to stop doing that. “I can explain, if you are interested.”
“Sure,” she said. “I’m always up for a good joke and we’ve got a few minutes left.”
He looked serious. “First and most importantly, you did not talk during the film.”
“Snoring doesn’t count?”
His lips twitched but he held off his smile. “No.”
“Well, at least you have standards. What is second? No, wait, let me guess. It had to be a really high hurdle. Maybe ...the fact that I was in the same room with you?”
He shrugged, a slight flush staining his cheeks as he looked down. He turned unexpectedly serious. “Something like that.” His chest lifted and fell as he drew a heavy breath and blew it out. He spoke softly, “The truth is that when I am with a woman, it is not usually in that way.”
“You’re saying that you usually get laid?” Max was delighting in his discomfort. In this, if nothing else, he was as nervous as an eight-year-old boy. And he blushed. She was glad not to be the only one.
He looked at her, his gaze unflinching. “That is it in a nutshell. My relationships with women consist of either sex or nothing. No friends, no one to lie on a bed with and share my love of movies with. But you know exactly how it is; that is what it means when you are Prime. You cannot afford to be close to anyone. That is why last night was so remarkable. Sex is easy. Time with someone who understands’really understands’that is a treasure beyond price.”
“Well,” Max said, taken aback. The unexpected honesty that had grown between them in the last couple of days was starting to make her feel like her skin had been peeled off and acid poured all over her. It was too much, too soon. Or maybe too much ever. It was like a drug’it made her high and completely sick all at once. She wasn’t sure she was ready to lose her safe cage of isolation. “Good thing I didn’t drool, then,” she said lamely at last. “C’mon. It’s time.”
She started for the door, but suddenly he was standing in front of her, not quite touching. She looked up warily. His face was set, his eyes thick with emotions she could not read. Max felt the feathery brush of his breath on her cheeks and heard the quick beat of his heart. It sounded loud, as if it were trying to hammer its way out of his chest. Her stomach clenched, though whether it was from anticipation or flat-out fear of what he might say, she couldn’t tell.
“Do not get me wrong. If you gave me an invitation, nothing could keep me out of your bed.” He paused, then said deliberately, “I would very much like to get an invitation.”
Max’s eyes widened and her face heated. Her mouth started working before her brain. “Why so shy? Say what you mean, why don’t you?” Inside she quailed. Oh, no no no. Do not tempt me.
His lips quirked, then the humor leached away as she sobered. “I don’t mess around with the men in the coven, especially my Shadowblades,” she said with quiet finality. Flirting was one thing, but anything more’it was a mistake of epic proportions.
His eyes narrowed and he gave a slow shake of his head. “That is all right then. Because I want so much more than just to mess around.”
He slid his hands over her hips, holding her gently. Slowly, his eyes fixed on hers, he bent to kiss her. His lips were butterfly soft as he touched hers experimentally. When Max did not pull away, Alexander slid his hands up, curving them around the back of her head. He leaned back a moment, looking a question at Max. This was such a bad idea. And yet’She licked the taste of him from her lips. It was all he needed. With a guttural sound, he kissed her again. This time his mouth was hungry and demanding. His head slanted and he pulled her closer.
Heat unfurled in lazy curls through Max, and her body flared with desire. Her lips opened. She stroked her tongue delicately over his. He sucked on it gently, then delved past, deepening the kiss. Alexander didn’t rush and neither did Max. If she was going to be stupid, she was going to savor every moment. It wasn’t like it was ever going to happen again.
He pulled away too soon, still holding her, his fingers rubbing the back of her neck lightly. Max’s mouth tingled deliciously. Heavy heat settled low in her stomach. She ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. He followed the slight movement with his eyes and swallowed. He stepped back, the muscles in his jaw flexing.
“We should go.”
Max nodded. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what she wanted to say except to beg for more, and that was a road she wasn’t willing to walk, even if they had the time. Just at the moment, however, she didn’t have the willpower to resist. She wanted to know what the rest of him tasted like. She wanted to be
skin on skin with him.
Abruptly she shoved past to the door and yanked it open. She was a moron. Worse’she was the village idiot in a city of idiots. His voice halted her on the threshold.
“Rules are made to be broken. You do it all the time. So do me a favor. Think about it.”
“How the fuck do you think I’m going to stop thinking about it?” she muttered, and his snort of laughter told her that he had heard.
But forget she did. As soon as she pulled out onto the freeway, everything but Horngate faded from her mind. Her compulsion spells clenched down hard. She didn’t stop for food. She doubted she could eat.
They came through Hellgate Canyon and got off the freeway at Reserve Street. It was like driving back into Julian. A heavy pall of smoke was in the air. Ash drifted lazily in the hot, still air. Max rolled her window down, nearly choking on the scent of Divine magic. She’d never smelled it so strong. With blind fingers, she checked her weapons, her gaze fixed on the road ahead. She chafed at the lights, barely resisting the urge to blow through them. Getting pulled over would delay them far more.
At last she was out of Missoula and going south on Highway 93 heading toward Lolo. She turned west on Lolo Creek Road and roared through the narrow canyons as fast as she dared, the mountains rising steeply on either side. Trees clung to them like barnacles. The smoke was thicker here, and the smell of magic grew nauseating. Alexander gripped the overhead handle and braced his other hand on the console. He said nothing, even when they skidded around a turn, tires screeching.
She stamped the brakes as they came up on the turn to Horngate. An arch of elk antlers curved over the wide entry with a sign dangling down beneath that said HORNGATE GREENHOUSES in letters shaped like leafy tree branches. They snaked up the picturesque road, the evergreen forest marching close on either side. The covenstead was still another ten miles in, just south of Deer Peak on Burdette Creek. Now she could no longer drive fast. The road was too narrow and winding, and the smoke and ash had become so thick that it felt like a scene out of a disaster novel. Still Max hurried as much as she was able.
Her skin prickled with fear. The stench of magic had become so thick she could almost touch it. It coated the inside of her mouth and nose and filled her throat like tar. Her stomach lurched. She swallowed.
“What is this?”
“I do not know,” Alexander said. His voice was hushed and she could hear the tense apprehension in it.
Fire bloomed along the ridge above them. It flared and swept across the dry timber with supernatural speed. Smoke billowed and leaped to the sky. Max bit down on her lower lip, tasting blood. Fucking angel. But it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t have a choice. He belonged to Hekau. If it was hard to say no to Giselle, Max could imagine what it was like to defy a Guardian.
She drove through the steep folds of the mountains. They were less than a mile from the coven when she came around Deadman’s Spur and slammed on the brakes. The tires squealed and the truck slid sideways before coming to a jolting halt. She yanked open the door and vaulted out, staring in shock.
Sweeping across the road was a curtain of opaque gray. It filled the gorge from side to side like a great overturned bowl, rising to cover the ridges that hemmed in the road. Behind it smoke and flames flickered from the serried ridges to the north, west, and south. The barrier shone with a faint pearly light. Jagged streaks of crimson and black flickered wildly across it. She could see nothing on the other side. Cold oozed through her gut. Horngate’s shields should be a transparent pearl white, and she should have been able to walk right through them. But something was wrong. She could feel a repellent malevolence pushing out at her. It felt ...hungry.
Alexander caught her arm when she would have gone closer. “If you want to try to go through it, then send me,” he demanded softly.
Max pulled out of his grasp and approached until she was just inches away from it. He went with her. The surface of the barrier rippled like silk in the wind, and something thicker and darker rolled beneath it. If it came down to it, she’d have to be the one to try crossing it, whatever Alexander wanted. He didn’t have the lock-spell to open doors for him. She might have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting through. He wouldn’t.
She touched the lump in her pants pocket. She had the hailstone. It could give her passage. But then she’d have wasted it on something that she might have been able to do for herself. She needed to use it to help Horngate. If only she knew what to want. She took another step back. There was another way inside’if it hadn’t been sealed, too. The problem was it might be just as deadly.
“Let’s go,” she said to Alexander as she spun around. She didn’t get five feet.
“I think not.”
Max whipped about, yanking her .45 out of her holster. “Alton’What the hell are you doing here?”
The witch stood just at the edge of the road in the shadow of a tall cedar, smoke smudging the edges of his silhouette. He stepped out onto the pavement like he was a demon rising out of hell. Max’s stomach clenched and bile flooded the back of her tongue. In the last few days he’d grown younger still. He now looked to be in his early twenties. His skin glowed with a radiant health and his eyes were a luminescent green, as if he’d drunk radioactive waste.
“Very good to see you, Max. I’ve been waiting for you,” he said in his sickly sweet baritone voice. He ran his hand over the top of the shield, and streamers of red knotted beneath his fingers. He smiled, a greedy, smug expression that made her want to punch him.
“Waiting for me?” she said cautiously. “Why? How did you know I was coming?”
“It was foreseen. I have been sent to collect you. And Giselle of course. If she survives.”
“Survives?” Adrenaline surged through Max, and her compulsion spells jerked tight, cutting deeply into her soul. Despite the pain, she held herself tightly in check. She needed answers, and it seemed that Alton had a lot of them. Plus he’d clearly gone from a mediocre witch to a force worth worrying about. She couldn’t attack him head-on and win.
“Oh, yes. Shall I tell you what is going on inside?” he asked eagerly. The idiot bastard wanted to gloat.
“By all means. Tell me a bedtime story,” she said mockingly. “I’m all ears.” She shoved her gun back into her holster and crossed her arms expectantly.
He stiffened at her mockery, shaking himself, his jaw jutting. Good. One thing that hadn’t changed was his ego and his need to tell everyone how important he was.
“Do not underestimate me. I am far more powerful than you can imagine,” he said haughtily.
Unfortunately Max believed him.
He bent forward, his voice dropping. “If you must know, I tampered with the shield,” he said gleefully.
“Tampered? How? What have you done?”
He smiled pompously at her fear. “I’ve done many things. The Guardians are moving to reclaim the earth and bring back the magic. But they don’t wish to ruin the world by overdoing it. Some cataclysm will be necessary, of course. But they must be careful. In cleaning up the human mess, they don’t want to kill the land or the creatures that belong here.”
He waggled a finger and made a tsking noise. Max barely refrained from rolling her eyes or telling him to hurry the fuck up and get to the point.
“Setting off the Yellowstone volcano, for example, would cause a nuclear winter, and that can’t be allowed. Or melting all the glaciers’that would cause too much devastation. So they have called on witches to lead their armies of magical beings to wipe away the human plague.” He gave a little shrug as his smile momentarily disappeared. “It requires sacrifices, of course. But I have to serve when called, don’t I?”
Max’s teeth clenched. “Do you? What sacrifices have you made?”
“Old Home, for one,” he said and, there was not even a hint of sorrow in his face. “Sekti had to destroy it so that Giselle would scry before the Conclave. I would have hexed her. Then I would have been able to take you all so much mor
e easily. But the bitch wouldn’t do it.” His lip curled. “She should have. She was my ally. She broke her promise. Now she’ll get everything she deserves.”
Max bit her tongue, then spoke through gritted teeth. “What exactly does she deserve?” And who the hell is Sekti? Another Guardian?
“She deserves to see Horngate burned to ash. She deserves to crawl on her knees as my slave for the rest of her life.” His mouth hardened, his teeth baring in a snarl. “She will never refuse me again.” He fairly spat the words. “Right now, Hekau’s fire angels and one of Marduk’s angels of the sword are battling within these shields. No one can interfere. Not even you’I’ve made sure of that.” He stroked his hand over the shield. “Even if they want to, they can’t drop the shields. Not without me.” He smiled triumphantly. “I went to Giselle two days ago. I begged for her help, but she refused.” He scowled. “I knew she would. She will pay for that, too.” He shook himself and glared at Max. “While I was there, I set a special spell. When the coven invoked the shields, they stepped into my trap. Now they cannot release the shields until they are entirely depleted. And when the coven falls, I will be waiting.” He paused, then smiled slyly. “You don’t know it, but you and Giselle and Horngate’you are a valuable prize. They all want you very badly.”
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