Fury of Ice

by Callahan, Coreene

  Rikar didn’t blame him.

  What they asked of him wasn’t fair. Total trust without proof. Complete submission without substance. Soul-baring vulnerability without the chance of self-protection. Mind-fuck material. The fact Forge stayed the course—possessed the strength to endure—pushed Rikar past respect right into pride. He shook his head, calling himself fifty different kinds of crazy. Being proud of a warrior he barely knew, one as powerful as Forge, was a touch north of normal.

  Not that it mattered. It was what it was. No sense arguing with it.

  Wanting to reassure him, Rikar laid his hand on their new boy’s shoulder. Forge flinched. He gave him a squeeze. “Easy. It’s all good. Keep it tight.”

  Forge nodded but adhered to tradition—respected the ritual—and kept his head down.

  B stopped opposite him, flanking Forge’s other shoulder. His movements slow, his best friend reached out and laid his hand on the back of the warrior’s head, just above the collar. Time stilled and silence reigned, throbbing through the cellblock as he and B stood over Forge, their message clear. Trust us. You’re safe with us. We’ve got your back.

  Seconds ticked past, falling into more. Forge trembled as he uncurled his fists. As his tension drained, his body unwound thread by taut thread and muscle uncoiled, relaxing beneath their hands.

  “All right, then,” B murmured, acknowledging the trust, praising the effort.

  Rikar tipped his chin in B’s direction. “The collar?”

  “Yeah.” Shifting behind the big male, Bastian planted his feet on either side of Forge and grasped the collar with both hands. The pads of his thumbs pressed against the locking mechanism just below the base of Forge’s skull as his fingers spanned the steel, wrapping around his throat from behind. “Hold still while I get this fucker off, okay?”

  “Off would be good.” His chin pressed to his chest, Forge quivered, a body twitch full of impatience.

  No kidding. Rikar was twitchy just looking at the thing, and had the steel band been clamped around his throat, he would have lost it by now.

  Inhaling smooth and deep, Bastian closed his eyes. Rikar kept a steadying hand on the male’s shoulder. He didn’t want Forge to move at the wrong time. Packed with C4, loaded with magic, the collar was volatile, a bomb just waiting to go off. The band took a shitload of concentration to put on, but even more to take off. B needed the time and space to unlock, shift, and toss the thing into the magical landscape inside his mind. A place he could implode steel and explosive, keeping them all safe. Intact. Unvaporized, so to speak.

  One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi…four. Chickety-chick-click. The lock snicked open, and steel rattled, sliding from around Forge’s throat.

  Forge shuddered, instinct urging him to move.

  A death grip on the male, Rikar said, “Not yet.”

  As the warrior listened and settled, Bastian bared his teeth on a growl. His best friend’s grip tightened on Forge as he bore down, using the male to lean on. An instant later the collar disappeared. B threw it into his mental junk drawer and—

  Pop. Pop. BOOM!

  Bastian flinched. The explosion rippled, the sound faint, barely audible at all. A blast of air gusted through the cellblock, clawing at Rikar’s clothes, blowing Forge’s longer hair back. The energy field snapped, powerful bands flickering, fading little by little before vanishing completely, leaving the mouth of the prison cell unguarded.

  Breathing hard, Bastian opened his eyes. “Good to go.”

  Conjuring the ceremonial dagger, Rikar handed it hilt first to his best friend. B palmed the blade and stepped around to face Forge. As was custom, his commander knelt, hitting one knee in front of the male. His boot even with the instep of Forge’s bare foot, he settled in place, aligning their legs, inside knee to inside knee.

  The blade in one hand, B raised his other. “Give me your right hand.”

  His head still bowed, Forge raised his arm. Muscles flexed in his forearm as Bastian cupped the back of the male’s hand. The knife came up, steel flashing in the low light as B drew the razor-sharp blade across Forge’s palm. Blood welled, flowing unchecked toward his elbow. Not wasting a second, Bastian turned the dagger on himself, slicing an identical cut on his own hand. As Rikar took the weapon, his commander locked palms with Forge, pressing the wounds together.

  As their blood mixed, red droplets fell, splattering the floor between them. With a howl, magic rose, twisting into a funnel cloud around them. Invisible yet majestic to behold, powerful and potent, the Meridian surged. The energy grabbed hold, linking the two males locked knee to knee, palm to palm, and now…heart to heart.

  “Blood of my blood,” Bastian murmured, reciting the ancient words of the blood oath. “Of one mind. Brothers in battle and for all time.”

  Lifting his chin, Forge repeated the incantation. As his gaze met B’s, the connection flared, snapping into place, binding them together in the way of their kind…the time-honored tradition of the warrior. Bastian nodded once, then released his grip on Forge to step aside. Rikar sliced his own hand and took his commander’s place. Locked together by touch and magic, he completed the ritual, recited the words, heart hammering as he tied himself to Forge. The blood bond rippled between them as he accepted the male and was accepted in return.

  The other Nightfuries crossed the threshold into the cell. Each male took his turn kneeling with Forge. First Venom and then Wick. Sloan. And finally Mac.

  When the last word had been spoken and the last blood droplet spilled, Bastian stepped forward. Standing in front of a still-kneeling Forge, he held out his hand. The warrior took the offering, allowing B to pull him to his feet.

  “Welcome, my brother,” Bastian murmured.

  Forge blinked, combating the sheen of moisture in his eyes. “Mervaiz, commander.”

  “Well done, zi kamir.” Fiercely proud of the male, Rikar palmed the side of Forge’s neck. The newest member of the Nightfury pack met his gaze and nodded, thanking him without words. Rikar jostled him in answer, then let go, stepped back, and tipped his head toward the corridor. “Now go…meet your son.”

  Forge’s focus snapped toward the front of the cell. Rikar’s mouth curved. Thank fuck for Daimler. Per usual, the male was right on time, standing just outside the cell beside a mound of floor cushions. A wide smile on his elfin face, a precious bundle in his arms, the Numbai murmured a greeting, then offered Gregor-Mayhem to his sire.

  Tears pooled in Forge’s eyes. Rikar looked away, his own eyes burning, his chest gone tight as the newest member of the Nightfury pack walked toward Daimler to hold his son for the first time.

  Messy piles of papers spread out on the kitchen table. Lothair tapped the tip of his pen against the bottom of his new list. The latest one. Number one hundred and forty-fucking-whatever.

  With a sigh, Lothair tossed the BIC on the table and leaned back in his chair. Seemed about right, and he was starting to hate lists. And family trees, but…derrˋmo. He couldn’t argue with results. Or that three days spent compiling—checking and rechecking—had finally paid off. He’d hit the jackpot last night.

  Twins. Friends of the two females already locked in cellblock A. Blonde. Beautiful. High-energy. The pair were Ivar’s favorite kind of female. Needless to say he’d made the boss very, very happy last night.

  Himself, too.

  The pleasure of securing the pair in cellblock A, however, took a backseat at the moment. With the afternoon light waning, he needed a new target. Several new ones. He was still three females short of the seven Ivar needed to round out the breeding program. Which meant he didn’t have time to waste, never mind celebrate the fact he’d proven his theory.

  There remained little doubt. High-energy females were drawn to each other. Were either born into the same family or became the best of friends. They lived together. Worked together. Hung out together. Recognized something in each other. A likeness, maybe. A shared energy vibe as the Meridian reached out, touched, and
connected them.

  His eyes narrowed on the list of potential candidates, Lothair shrugged. Whatever. He didn’t give a shit about the whys and wherefores. All he cared about was pinpointing another female to go after when night fell.

  Find one…find more. That was his stupid motto now, and would be for the foreseeable future. Until he had all seven in the kitty for Ivar to play with.

  Four down. Three to go. A small victory, but a hollow one.

  The she-cop was still on the loose.

  Growling low in his throat, Lothair flipped his laptop open. As the MacBook fired up, he slid a sheet of paper from beneath a messy stack. He couldn’t stand it. The fact Angela Keen was still out there drove him insane. He couldn’t sleep during the day. Kept dreaming of her…of what he would do when he finally got his hands on her. He needed to hurt her. Shame her. Wrap his fingers around her neck and squeeze the life out of her.

  “Hey, Lothair.”

  Unclenching his teeth, Lothair glanced toward the door. He tipped his chin, greeting Ivar as the male strode into the kitchen. “Fun afternoon?”

  Well fed, his friend’s eyes glimmered behind his wraparounds. Skirting a row of cabinetry, Ivar strode behind the huge island on his way to the fridge. His mouth curved, he tossed Lothair an appreciative glance. “Jesus, man…love the twins.”

  “They’re prime.”

  “Got any more surprises for me?”

  Lothair planted his forearms on the table and looked at his paper trail. “I’m working on it.”

  “Any word on Myst Munroe?” Ivar asked, cracking the fridge door, tone casual.

  But Lothair knew better. There was nothing casual about Ivar’s interest in Bastian’s female. The boss man wanted her. Had from the moment he’d seen her picture. The fact she belonged to his enemy just deepened the obsession. Imagine, stealing a female your rival loved…craved, needed to survive? The ultimate conquest, and a victory that proved one male’s supremacy over another.

  “Nothing yet. Bastian’s keeping her locked up tight,” he said. “How’s project superbug? Any progress?”

  “Fuck, no. I’ve KO’d the first batch. I’ll lock down the other humans and fire up the second viral load tonight.” With a silent curse, Ivar pulled the milk out of the fridge. Popping the top, he drank right out of the carton, then plunked the container down on the granite countertop. “You hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  “Roast beef sandwich?” Ivar tossed a loaf of bread onto the kitchen island.

  Plastic crinkled as the Wonder Bread slid across the flecked surface. Lothair nodded, watching his friend closely, an idea sparking. Ivar wanted the Nightfury’s female, and Lothair hadn’t checked in a while. He’d check her phone records again. Who knew? Maybe she’d been out sometime in the last few days. Maybe she’d used her cell phone. Maybe he could get his commander what he needed with a couple clicks of a mouse.

  Turning the laptop toward him, he tapped in his password. Denzeil’s program came up on screen. Inputting the female’s number, he scrolled through phone records and…

  Derrˋmo. How the hell had he missed that?

  Bastian’s female had called one number more than any of the others. Lothair’s heart started to pound as he brought up a fresh screen and typed in the number. The computer hummed, the whirl of the fan loud in the silence as it searched the new set of parameters. A second or two passed before a home phone, address, and name complete with picture popped onto the screen.

  Lothair’s mouth curved. “Hello, Tania.”

  Hmm, she was a beauty. Dark hair. Brown eyes. A mouth made for sucking.

  A couple of key clicks opened a new browser window. His eyes narrowed on the screen, Lothair sifted through the World Wide Web, picking up more intel on the female, searching for the best way to nail her down. In less than ten minutes, he had his in…and her superintendent’s name.

  With a satisfied hum, he reached across a stack of paperwork and grabbed his new cell phone—the one he’d bought for just such a purpose three days ago. As his hand closed around the BlackBerry, he shuddered. He hated the thing…and the inferior race who’d invented it. He much preferred mind-speak with his fellow warriors to the humankind’s preferred mode of communication. But necessary was just that…necessary.

  Flying all over Seattle in search of a female wasn’t a timesaver. So he always called ahead. Made sure she was home. And if she wasn’t—he fired up his MacBook and the special program Denzeil had designed. Got her real-time location via the GPS chip in her cell phone. He didn’t, after all, have time to fuck around.

  Pressing on the black button, Lothair waited for the cell phone’s dark screen to go blue, and then he dialed the number.

  Time to see if Ms. Solares was home.

  Standing on the threshold of her walk-in closet, Tania grimaced. Ugh. What a catastrophe. A den of iniquity full of pirates would’ve been easier to navigate than the travesty that had become her wardrobe. Stuffed to the ceiling, her clothes overflowed the large rectangular room. Dresses. Jeans. Skirts. Tops. Oh, and she didn’t even want to think about the number of shoes and boots hiding in dark corners. Or underneath the pile of handbags that had grown monstrously large over the past year.

  She chewed on her bottom lip. The abundance was kind of embarrassing, actually.

  Stepping inside the war zone, she grabbed a wooden hanger and, wrestling with over-crowding, pushed her leather jacket aside. God. She really needed to jump on the Salvation Army’s bandwagon and do some serious giving.

  Well, either that, or stop shopping. An impossible endeavor if there ever was one. At least for her. Retail therapy was her specialty. Her drug of choice. While some people were heroin addicts, she was hopelessly in love with her American Express card and all the goodies it could buy.

  A failing? No doubt. But nothing made her feel better than a pair of new shoes. A gorgeous handbag. Or hmm, boy, take her away…a beautiful piece of jewelry. And oh, how the list went on. Call her crazy.

  Myst did. With unerring frequency.

  Her throat went tight. Tania bowed her head, ignoring the organized chaos around her, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She was so tired of crying, but God, she missed her best friend. Was so worried she didn’t know what to do. The cops still hadn’t gotten back to her. Three days and nada. Not one call. Nary a single text or e-mail. Something was really wrong. Tania huffed. Duh. What was her first clue? A very dead Caroline Van Owen. A missing baby. A still alive, but hiding, Myst. And two homicide detectives gone underground.

  With a sigh, Tania tucked back into her closet, pushing more hanging clothes aside. She needed to find her—

  “Ah, there you are,” she said, spotting her travel bag on the floor near the back in the black hole where handbags went to die. Though what her favorite duffle was doing way back there, she didn’t know. “Come to Mama, gorgeous.”

  Grabbing the leather straps, she hauled the Louis Vuitton out, then headed to the bedroom. A quick toss and it landed on the bed’s silk duvet beside her neatly folded clothes. A weekend excursion was in order. Actually, it was a bimonthly event, one in which Tania visited her sister. At the Washington State Correctional Institution for Women.

  Another failure. She’d missed all the signs. Had been so worried about putting food in their mouths—and decent shoes on J.J.’s feet—she’d failed to realize her sister had fallen in with the wrong crowd until it was too late. Now she made the drive every second week, bribing the guards with cookies to get a few extra minutes with her sibling.

  This week it was chocolate chip.

  Her heart aching, she made quick work of packing, laying two days’ worth of comfy clothes in the bottom of her bag. Ballet flats went in next. She didn’t plan on coming home tonight. Was in for a little more retail therapy after she got kicked out of the prison and left J.J. locked up behind bars.

  “Buck up, Solares.” She wiped beneath both of her eyes. Damn it all. Not again. “No one likes a crybaby.”


  With a quick zip, she closed the bag, then rounded the end of the bed and checked the answering machine on her night table. Nothing. No messages. None from Detectives MacCord or Keen. Zero info from the stupid reporter.

  Crap on a crumpet.

  She should never have talked to Clarissa Newton. But she’d been so flipping angry, and tweaking the police’s noses had seemed like a good idea yesterday. Now she regretted sitting down with the reporter. Too bad the interview was already in the can. They’d done it 60 Minutes–style, sitting at the back of a café in a couple of armchairs while the camera rolled tape. The station had agreed to run her interview as part of an exposé on police corruption in Seattle.

  Tania stared at the buttons on the phone and shook her head. Part of her hoped MacCord would have a cow when he saw the interview. Come banging on her door, demanding to know what the hell she thought she was doing. At which point she’d have to admit she didn’t have a flipping clue and kiss the heck out of him. For payback. And maybe just the tiniest bit of pleasure.

  He deserved the tease. And let’s face it, she needed the delight. Especially after the dreams she’d been having about him. And well…wow. Just wow. Talk about hot. Add in some steamy. Toss it all with oh-my-God-I-want-you-right-now salad spoons, and the dish came out somewhere south of holy crap.

  She rolled her eyes. Stupid fixation. It wasn’t healthy, particularly since—

  The phone rang in her hand.

  Tania gasped, fumbling with the thing before she found the talk button. “Hello.”

  “Ms. Solares?” Filled with gravel, the deep voice rubbed her the wrong way.

  Tania tensed, reacting to the undertone. “Yes?”

  “Are you home for a while?”

  “Excuse me?” A whisper—ultra fine, barely there at all—ghosted through her mind. A warning, maybe? She couldn’t tell.

  “Oh, sorry, miss. Didn’t mean to alarm you,” the man said, no doubt reacting to her frosty tone. “It’s Nick…Mr. Cannon’s assistant?”