She had a point. He hadn’t even thought about that nuance of a fact. “And what is your spectacular plan?”
She didn’t say a word.
But he knew what thoughts were running around in that pretty little head of hers. She was thinking of feasting on the darkness in his heart. “Oh, no. Absolutely out of the question.”
“But it is our only hope at getting rid of the beast.”
He was not going to have his Leila consume the evil that had harbored in his chest for a thousand years. “It’s too much. Too dangerous.”
“It’s what I do.” She reached her hand to his face and stroked his cheek. “It’s also the only way.”
Stalling the woman was a must. “I don’t know where the wolf has gone, so until then, I want you to find a room and stay in it.”
“You can’t order me around.”
“You’re my mate. I most certainly can.” Vidar headed down the hall, checked every door to see if by chance any were unlocked. He glanced to his left and saw that Leila hadn’t followed him. Being pissed didn’t even begin to describe the look on her face.
“I’m not an ancient Viking, Vidar.”
Christ. Why did he always say the wrong thing when it came to women? Katya was forever reprimanding him over his choice of words, but still he hadn’t learned a damn thing. “I did not mean I own you. I am just concerned for you and that is why I would prefer you stay put.”
“Not going to happen. So, get over it.”
His beautiful, feisty Leila walked forward, cell phone in one hand, broken pixie wing in the other. “The wolf is in the last room on the opposite side of the hall.”
He didn’t know what to say. Leila hadn’t even checked a single door and yet she knew where their target hid.
“My sin-eater is detecting it, in case you were wondering.”
He really needed to get better at hiding his thoughts. “Did you call Bane?”
“Yes.”
“Is he coming down?”
Leila brushed past him, pixie wing glittering in the sunlight that filtered into the hallway from the numerous skylights above. “I didn’t get to talk to my uncle.”
“You said you called.”
“I did, but he must have been out because all I got was his voice mail.”
They were still on their own. His focus shifted to the pixie wing in Leila’s hand. “I don’t think that’s going to kill the wolf.”
“Of course, it won’t.”
She wasn’t giving up her secrets. The woman could be quite frustrating at times, but he loved her fiery attitude. “Indulge me, lovely Leila.”
“It’s bait.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It is. But it must be done.”
Leila walked up to the last room at the end of the corridor and reached for the crystal door handle. Prismatic colors danced off her thin, delicate fingers as Vidar watched her hand cut through the sunlight streaming across the knob.
He prayed she knew what she was doing. “I don’t want you getting too close my wolf. Will you at least agree to that?”
“I’ll keep my distance.”
He had no choice but to trust Leila.
With a click, the door creaked open.
A gust of dusty air, loaded with what smelled like centuries of scents piled one on top of the other, burst into the hall.
Vidar detected lavender, jasmine, and even a hint of vanilla. The familiar combination of fragrances stirred up memories of his brother-in-law. “Mortimer has stayed in this room.”
“How can you tell?”
“He uses the same herbs and flowers in the incense censer in his crypt. The underground chamber reeks of the stuff.”
Vidar inched toward the door. “Stay behind me.” He stepped across the threshold but then stopped. “And I mean it this time.”
Leila exhaled.
The snippy little breath fanned his nape.
Better she be annoyed at him than get herself killed.
He crossed the room, his gaze darting to every corner, but with barely a streak of sunlight coming in from the slit between the drawn, velvet drapes, locating his wolf was near impossible.
“I’m going for the window,” he said. “We need some natural light in here.”
With a deliberate step, Vidar headed for the far wall. He grabbed the edge of a single panel of drapery and tugged it open.
Full sun slammed the room.
Leila gasped.
He spun around.
Vidar’s ghost wolf stood on the bed, the center of what should have been its chest, now a festering circle of dark, swirling energy spewing out bits of blue flame.
“Don’t even think of sucking down that negativity,” he said, glancing at Leila. “It’s far too vile for anyone to take in.” Stepping away from the window, he walked to the middle of the room and stopped at the end of the bed.
The wolf snarled, scratched its paw against the dust covered bedspread. Its spectral body shifted from gray to a light blue hue.
“Wait for me in the hall.”
Leila shook her head. “I’m not moving from this spot. There’s no telling what that animal will do and I am not going to be the one to clean up whatever mess is left because I definitely can’t absorb the wolf’s energy and whatever else my sin-eater will pick up in the process. Aggravating the animal will only notch up my craving for darkness.”
Maybe Leila was right. A calmer wolf would be easier to manage. He glared at the beast, stared it square in its icy-white eyes.
A cold jolt rocked his soul.
The wolf sneered.
Vidar got in its face. The warmth of the animal’s breath blew against his cheeks, reminded him of a hot, sticky summer day where the air remained stagnant and putrid smelling. The trace of rot clung to his nose.
The beast came forward.
Vidar didn’t budge. “Do whatever you wish because I have no more patience with you. You’re an evil, despicable soul and no matter what you do, you will never conquer me.”
“Vidar…”
“I’ve got this, Leila.”
“No. You don’t.”
Of course he did. The wolf was locked into his thoughts, to his energy, listening to his every word. A few seconds more and he’ll have it convinced to return to the its nice cozy ice-tomb. Once back in his heart, the wolf will no longer be a threat to the outside world. Especially, to Leila.
“There is a tendril of darkness coming out of that mass at its chest.”
He hated not being able to detect what Leila could recognize on the instant. And battling an unseen enemy rarely resulted in a positive outcome, but he prayed today would end differently. “Where is the darkness going?”
He didn’t get an answer.
Turning around, he eyed Leila waving that damn fairy wing near her heart. He gave her what he’d hoped was his most serious glare. “Tell me you didn’t.”
“It was the only way. Now the wolf’s darkness is safely focused on me, on my heart to be specific. It should make its way to my mouth soon, then I will consume it and the wolf will be gone.”
He was on the beast before it could blink.
A howl spewed from the wolf’s throat, as did a low growl. It leapt from the bed and landed directly on Vidar’s chest.
Despite having a ghostly body, the animal had quite a firm grasp, its claws like super-sharp razors against his flesh.
Blood dripped from Vidar’s torso. “Is the energy still attaching itself to you, Leila?”
He grabbed the wolf by the neck and wrestled it to the floor. Leila was right about the difficulty of dealing with the ghostly animal. For every two punches of his hand that met with formidable substance, four went straight through the beast. But the animal did seem to be losing some of its gusto.
“You’ve broken the link,” Leila said. “But now that line of energy is coiling its way around you. It’s going to choke you, Vidar.”
Leila fell to her knees and punched the wolf. “Y
ou should have just let me handle it. Drawing in its negativity would have made heck more of an impact than this. We’re wasting our energy. We’ll never get anywhere fighting him this way.”
The beast grunted. It fought back, escaped Vidar’s grasp, leaving a trail of splattered blood on the wood floor. It then turned on Leila.
He was not going to have the wolf kill his mate.
Vidar rose and lunged for the animal.
Leila screamed. The beast had her by the neck, its spectral teeth clamped to her flesh. Blood flowed over her shoulder and painted her alabaster skin a deep crimson.
For a ghostly entity, his wolf had a very strong bite.
Vidar pried the animal off Leila.
Together they tumbled to the floor, rolled about like two wrestlers each determined not to the let the other win.
The wolf’s claws separated from its paws and attached themselves to various parts of Vidar’s body. They scratched at his skin until red welts surfaced.
With a quick swing of his right hand, Vidar punched the animal square in the core of its festering cavity.
The wolf exploded, its shadowy form scattered into bits, spun through the air like crystalline shards of slivered glass.
Every last one of those shards cascaded down on Leila and seeped into her chest.
Vidar howled. His vision turned to infrared, his hands morphed into claws, his bones cracked and shifted form.
Seconds later he was wolf. He traipsed over to Leila’s motionless body and nudged her with his snout.
She didn’t move.
He howled a second time, then slapped his paw against her chest.
She gasped.
A dark vapor lifted from Leila’s core. Thanks to his wolf vision, he now knew what it was like to watch negativity pull from a body. Just the thought that Leila had kept all this inside her, pained him. Tears filled his eyes.
The gray aura snaked about the air, then darted toward him. It came at him with such vengeance, it slammed his mouth and forced itself inside.
A loud roar sliced through the room.
He had no choice but to accept the onslaught of negativity. It slid down his throat, squirmed its way into his chest and then calmed on the instant as if it hadn’t been moving around in the first place.
His body returned to human form.
Leila remained on the floor, her body bloodied and still. She barely breathed.
Bane appeared at the door. “What the hell have you done to my niece?” He was at Leila’s side in a heartbeat, lifting her from the floor and cradling her injured body.
“She freed my wolf.”
The alpha raised his gaze. His dark brown eyes turned black as tar. “Get out of my home. Now.”
“But…”
“I don’t care what you have to say. I want you gone. And don’t ever return.”
Agony, like nothing he’d felt before, sliced his heart. “Please.”
Bane glowered. “Leila didn’t deserve this. You’ve made her wolf, the one thing she never wanted. The one thing she was never meant to be. My brother kept her away from the pack specifically so she would never be in danger of ever becoming wolf. We never even spent a single Christmas together so there was no chance she could be attacked by a feral member of the clan. And now you have destroyed all that we worked years to protect. My niece was the most innocent sin-eater ever to grace this earth. And now you’ve destroyed her soul. You don’t deserve her.”
“You can’t do this,” Vidar said. "Not now. Not after…” He silenced himself. It didn’t matter that Leila was his mate. She was not his. Never could be. Bane was right. He didn’t deserve Leila.
He didn’t deserve anyone.
Chapter Eleven
New Orleans, One Hour to Midnight, New Year’s Eve…
Vidar entered the only magick shop on Bourbon Street that catered solely to Highland and Viking shifters, and went straight for the private back room. Last month he’d promised himself he’d never return to Abeille’s. Never give the witch the satisfaction of letting her know he needed the woman who helped his uncle curse him for a thousand years. But after having run out of all options where Leila was concerned, begging the immortal hag was far less painful than the agony he imagined his mate was suffering.
Thoughts of Leila flooded his mind.
What if Bane couldn’t heal her? While the alpha was good at tending to his pack, a mortal needed different medical care than did a bunch of feral skirt-wearing wolves. He knew for fact Bane hadn’t trusted a human doctor when it came to his own son, why should he now when it came to his niece?
Maybe leaving Leila to her uncle’s care wasn’t the right thing to do, but it wasn’t like he’d had much choice in the matter. Not with Wolfsden on Bane’s side. That damn castle would have killed him if it had the chance and right now Leila needed him alive.
He sighed.
If only he’d hear something. And it didn’t even have to be an hour’s long phone call or a detailed report. A frickin’ text would do. After all, Bane did have his cell number. Dealing with the stubborn-to-the-core alpha was downright frustrating. And what was up with the man freezing out Katya and Mortimer? That damn silence was unacceptable. His sister had been to hell and back umpteen times over aiding Bane and his sons over the years. Never mind what Mortimer had done for the family, taking in a brooding widower and his pack of mangy pups couldn’t have been easy on the vampire. But the man did it without question. No, his sister and brother-in-law deserved better. And Bane had better take stock of that situation soon because in their harrowing world, friends you could count on were priceless.
A whiff of spicy patchouli filled the air.
Abeille was indeed in the building.
All he had to do now was knock on her damn door, but its brass bee shaped knocker might as well be a million miles away because his arm was finding it very difficult to move at the moment.
Stupid man.
What did he have to lose? Certainly, not Leila. Bane made sure of that, so really there was nothing left to cost him at this point.
He took a deep breath.
Who was he kidding?
He had everything to lose.
His thawed heart may have booted out the cursed wolf that had squatted in it for a millennium, but it certainly wasn’t vacant. The dumb thing now filled itself with the most miserable feeling ever.
Hope.
And not huge hope, either, but rather a tiny, miniscule dash of possibility, that maybe in the future, by the smallest bit of chance ever, he’d run into Leila, and maybe, just maybe, she’d grace him with a glance from those deep brown eyes of hers or give him a faint trace of a smile from those lush lips he so thoroughly had enjoyed kissing.
So yes, he did still have something to lose. Something huge. Everything in fact, because idiot that he was, he still loved Leila.
Buck it up, Vidar.
He really did make for the most pitiful Viking ever.
Summoning whatever courage he had left that the last few days hadn’t stripped him of, he reached for the knocker on the red door and banged it twice as he always had when coming to Madame Abeille’s.
The noise of a cane scraping against wood floor, sounded from the other side. “Come,” said the female voice belonging to Abeille.
He opened the door and slipped inside the room. Dim light shining down from a crystal chandelier gave the place a curl-up-on-the-sofa-in-a-warm-fuzzy-blanket feel, but he knew better than to deceived by the witch. Nothing in her world was ever what it seemed.
The sweet aroma of raspberry jam and fried dough teased his nose, forced his gaze to zoom in on the yellow ceramic plate of beignets just to the side of a garnet topped athame teetering on the edge of Madame Abeille’s desk. The witch was never seen without that jeweled knife. Probably didn’t even use it for ritual purposes but rather for protection. Though on that note, he couldn’t blame her. Watching her back was something Abeille had to constantly do considering the circle of friends she’
d kept. One was viler than the other. And Rorik was the tamest of that bunch.
He shook his head.
“Vidar,” Madame Abeille said. “I didn’t think you’d return after our last little chat.”
Neither did he, especially since that ‘little chat’ had left him down two men, but he had reason for being here tonight. “I have something you want.”
The plump, short woman raised one red eyebrow in apparent surprise. “And what gift do you bring me, Viking?”
He hated having to play nice with the woman, but he also wanted to erase the pain she’d caused him and healing could only be done if he let it all go. “My uncle did you wrong.”
“He did indeed,” Abeille said. “But I thought you weren’t open to discussing the issue.” She calmly sat in the red velvet chair behind her large, mahogany desk.
Vidar brushed his hands over his jeans, sweat from his palms making his fingers all clammy and cold. “What I don’t care to discuss is your feigned innocence in my uncle’s schemes. You were just as vile, just as guilty in all those despicable things he’d done. In fact, there was no better partner in all the world for Rorik in those evil acts, than you.”
A sly grin swept across the witch’s mouth. “I am in no mood to argue, Viking. If that is all you came for, then leave.”
He was not going anywhere until he got what he wanted. “What if I could give you Rorik’s deepest sin?”
Abeille laughed. Her charming giggle sounding pure and innocent, though Vidar knew better. Nothing about the old hag was innocent. “Your uncle’s worst sin was the curse he placed on your heart. I know that for fact because I helped him formulate it.”
“Do you want it?”
She leaned forward, rested her elbows on her desk, a serious look crossing her age-worn brow.
“Well?”
“Patience, Viking. I’m thinking.”
What the hell did she have to mull over? He was giving her the one thing he knew she’d wanted for centuries. It was the crux of their ages old argument, but he’d always feared his wolf would kill Abeille if she’d release the beast and as much as he’d hated the woman, he’d never stoop to his uncle’s level of despicability. Now the wolf was no longer a threat. He knew that for fact because the energy from the beast’s evil soul was now contained in the sin he’d taken away from Leila. Funny how imbibing darkness alerted him to all sorts of things about the evil side of his cursed wolf, facts he hadn’t known all the years the animal had laid dormant in his heart.
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