“Gotcha,” said Jake.
The call disconnected.
Chapter Forty-Seven
There was nothing for it. He was coming for her; that was a given.
So the only real thing for Angel to do now was turn the tables on him. Switch from defense to offense.
She was just finishing the final spell when she began to sense him in the forest nearby. But rather than the warm-belly, sexual-thrill sensation he usually gave her when he was somewhere in the vicinity, it was only the fact that he’d triggered one of her wards that alerted her to his presence. She’d set them up everywhere.
She felt his brush with her magic as if he’d unwittingly pulled on a string attached to a bell. Gotcha, she thought right back. But she was so nervous, his slip up actually made her go completely still. She listened carefully, even holding her breath.
Angel figured Jake would have expected her to run from him. If she were anyone else in her shoes, that’s probably what she would have done. And that’s one of the reasons she didn’t do it. The other reason was that this assumption worked in her favor two ways. If he was sure she would run, then most likely he and David would split up. Jake would track her from behind, riding hot on her heels, and David would transport ahead in whatever direction Jake told him she was most likely headed. Which would leave Jake alone.
That’s what she wanted.
The other benefit was that Jake would be so busy concentrating on hunting her down, he wouldn’t be thinking about things like wards. He was already proving her right.
When a second of her wards went off, Angel turned in the direction of his approach and drew her gun. But the instant she had the weapon gripped firmly in her hands, it was kicked from her grip with shocking force, sending pain radiating up her arms.
The gun hit the dirt, and Angel stumbled, realizing Jake’s cunning. He’d tricked her.
Clearly he had caught on to what she was doing when he’d tripped the first ward. He set the second one off on purpose to throw her attention in the wrong direction. She’d been facing the away from him when he’d come into the clearing. Now he was behind her, and she was unarmed.
Angel gritted her teeth and spun to face him, whipping out with angry momentum and practiced speed. But he blocked her attack, knocked her off balance, and blocked her second attack as well. Fighting with him was draining and confusing. He never dealt any real damage, but he moved fast, and she was forced to keep up the same pace. The the night was so dark, their movements too quick, and Angel started to feel disoriented.
No, she told herself. Focus. This is what he wants.
She concentrated, thanking her lucky stars for the mental walls she’d erected as she’d set up this trap. Otherwise, it all would have been moot; he would have simply entered her mind and either controlled her with vampire influence, or used her own thoughts against her, defeating her at every turn.
The fact that he’d tried to do just that became clear when he blocked her next few punches and then grabbed her arms, holding them tight rather than simply allowing her attacks to deflect. Once he had both of her wrists, he shook his head admonishingly and smiled.
“Tsk, tsk Angel, you’re locked up like Fort Knox. What’s the matter, you don’t trust me?”
“You want the honest truth?” she asked as she tugged ineffectually against him. She wasn’t actually trying to get away. She was maneuvering, or trying to.
“I find it preferable,” he said, smiling easily. He was so damn perfect. So tall above her, leather-clad and bound in muscle. With his glowing green eyes and his fangs just barely peeking behind his lips, it was difficult for her to concentrate, even with her wards up blocking his power over her. He was doing it on purpose, letting just enough of his monster show. He knew it would throw her off her game. And it was working.
“The truth is,” she told him, “I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone in my life, Jake.” And that really was the truth.
The glow in his eyes pulsed, shifting in its intensity as if his eyes were connected to an electrical outlet and someone was fucking with the plug. His body braced in front of her. She could see it in the way he slightly straightened, and the veins in his strong forearms became more pronounced. She could also feel it in the tightness of his grip.
“But you’re not Jake,” she finished.
Jake’s handsome face hardened. He was visibly subverted by her words, but she didn’t want to think too much about it, because it gave her just enough of an edge to finish springing her trap.
Angel dropped down suddenly, putting the entirety of her weight on the wrists Jake held so firmly in his hands. He wasn’t expecting the sudden shift, and it knocked him off balance, forcing him to let go even as he stumbled forward. Angel hit the ground, slid forward, and rolled over, kicking up in a round house that caught Jake brutally in the face and snapped his head to the side.
He crashed to his knees from the shock of the impact, but recovered with inhuman speed, and was back on his feet before she’d fully reached her own.
Angel double-checked where he was standing and hastily spoke the words of the spell she’d so carefully set up. “Immobiles nunc somnum altum!”
The magic ripped from her being like someone tearing a grimoire in half and burning the stolen pages, but the spell activated at once and hit home hard. Jake was instantly wrapped in coiling ropes of strong magic that whipped out from the ground beneath his feet and held him fast.
He dropped to one knee again, and gritted his teeth. When he found her with his eyes and held her gaze with his, Angel experienced a brief, fleeting panic that he would somehow break free of the trap. But it had been made specifically for him – with the pendant he’d given her as its main ingredient.
And it held fast. Little by little, Jake weakened. The red left his eyes, shifting to yellow. The yellow faded to green. The green glow was the last magic to depart, until at last, Jake knelt before her, his strong body temporarily defeated, his magic all but fully drained away. He dropped his head, and Angel spoke the final words that would seal the spell. “Somnum absoluta.”
The entire spell weakened her immensely, leaving only a few tattered remnants of her veritable book behind. Two or three pages, two or three spells and that was all. But when Jake dropped to his side unconscious, she accepted that it had been worth it.
One down, she thought as she shivered and dizziness swept through her. One to go. She braced herself, stood slowly, and made her way to Jake’s body. She knelt beside his boots and dug down into the dirt a few inches away. His boot prints marked the space where he’d been standing moments earlier. From between the prints, Angel pulled a shining silver object.
She raised her hand and let the pendant drop to the end of its chain. The chain glimmered in the moonlight, but the bear claw emitted a bright emerald green glow that pulsed with pent-up magic. This was Jake’s power. Temporarily stolen, and temporarily stored.
Unfortunately, no one could extract it from the bear claw but him. It was simply a vessel for the magic to fill as it was taken from him. After a day, it would fade away as Jake naturally regained his power through rest and time.
Angel slipped the pendant around her neck, tucked it beneath her shirt again, and pulled the cuffs out of Jake’s back pocket. She studied them carefully. Standard warden anti-magic cuffs. They would need to be reinforced or they wouldn’t hold a vampire for long. Luckily, anti-magic didn’t mean they couldn’t be enchanted. It simply meant that anyone wearing them couldn’t access their own magic.
This meant Angel had to cast another spell. She sighed and muttered the words to a strengthening spell. Yet another page was torn from her already demolished book. She could almost hear the page slipping away on the wind. But again it couldn’t be helped.
Angel knelt behind Jake’s beautiful sleeping form and pulled his strong arms behind his back, locking them in place. She took a moment to admire him helpless and bound before her – she couldn’t help it, really – then stoo
d once more.
She didn’t have much time. David was still out there somewhere.
Angel needed to find Jake’s pack. He was a tracker. If he’d been tracking her the way he normally tracked people, it would mean he had a pack full of spell components somewhere nearby. He’d probably dropped it when he tripped her ward, so that was the first place she should look.
She was hoping he still kept it stocked the way he had when they were working together. Of course, at the time he’d pretended that the spell components were just personal cultural items, but she’d already begun to suspect he was a mage at that point.
If it was stocked the same way, it would have food and drink in it, and a number of other useful items. Smart wardens knew that if you had to carry a pack anyway, you may as well load it with necessities. Just in case.
Angel patted Jake gently on the shoulder. “You just make yourself comfortable big guy,” she told the sleeping man before she strode into the forest, praying time would be on her side.
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Angel.”
Angel glanced sidelong at Jake where he sat against a group of boulders several feet away.
“He’s still coming for you,” he told her. “Even now.” She closed her eyes for a moment as his voice rolled over her. “And he won’t be coming alone. I’m betting he’s got a dozen more on your tail by now.”
He was resting against the rocks, his long legs bent, boot heels dug into the dirt in front of him. His head was tilted back on the stones, and he gazed at her through narrowed slits that were as piercing as they’d ever been. His clothing was dirty in a few places from their fight, but the bleeding from the gash in his forehead had stopped.
As ever, Jacob Crow was a painfully exquisite man, and now she knew he was gorgeous even when he wasn’t bolstered by gobs of magic. Angel supposed she would probably always find him irresistible.
But he was a dangerous man too. Especially to her. Especially now.
And she needed to remember that, despite having temporarily taken his powers.
She looked away and strode to the fire she’d built, lifting his pack closer so she could go through it with proper lighting. There were definitely spell components in here, satchels of herbs and powder, sand, semi-precious stones, vials of odd-colored liquid. She had also found a protein shake in it earlier, and since she knew he didn’t need it, she wondered if he’d packed it for Sharpe.
It happened to be her favorite brand of pre-made protein shake, actually. So without asking, she took the shake out and ripped it open, downing it as quickly as possible. Time pressed in on her, after all.
Now she continued to search the pack. But no matter how thoroughly she looked, she couldn’t find anything in particular that would explain how he was being controlled.
“You’re only prolonging the inevitable,” he told her. It was something she knew he would never normally say, and it sounded strange coming from his lips. It just wasn’t the way he spoke.
“That isn’t you talking,” she said softly without looking up.
“No?”
“No.”
“Then how about this?” he asked next. She did look up now. He lifted away from the wall of rock behind him, strong enough to do so despite the cuffs holding his arms behind his back. He was strong. He was capable. And his motorcycle club brother was still out there somewhere; she could feel that he was getting closer.
One of them, she could handle on a very good day, and she’d proven as much. But both of them, not a chance. She’d only gotten lucky with Jake. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. She hadn’t been under the same compunction, hence the gash in his forehead. It was healing more slowly than usual for a vampire. She wondered whether it was the influence over him causing that.
“You’re wearing yourself down, Angel. You can’t keep this up forever,” he said. He gave her a knowing look, deep and penetrating. “I can tell you’re growing weak.” And then he chuckled, no doubt feeling the gash in his forehead. “Well, at least in magic.”
Angel looked away. She stifled the need to swallow past the tightening of her throat. Instead she said, “You’re not yourself, Jake,” and pulled the rations out of his pack to rip them open. She didn’t strictly need them; the shake had helped her light-headedness immensely. But she wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity when it presented itself.
When she turned back to face him, he was simply watching her, his singular, light green eyes glinting. And she knew his mind was working.
Despite everything, Jake still wasn’t her enemy. She wasn’t sure he ever could be. Not with the way he made her feel inside, not with the way his eyes scorched her and his hands branded her and his voice marked her. She was his, body and soul. She had been the moment they first met.
Jake wasn’t her enemy. No, he’d told her exactly who her enemy was, in fact. As he’d sat there against that boulder, he’d come right out and made it clear as day: Lord Malek Taal was coming for her.
And Jake took every opportunity to remind her of that, knowing it would distract her, knowing it would disrupt her train of thought and make her weak as his brother drew closer out there in that forest.
He was right. Because it was bewildering to her that the Taal King should want her. First Dmitri. Now Malek.
What voodoo priestess had she pissed off?
Malek Taal was ancient. He’d had a long time to live and a long time to learn, so he was also very smart. He’d proven as much by singling out two of the small handful of men in the entire multiverse who could actually defeat her in the field. He’d somehow gotten to them and turned them to his cause.
He’d used powerful magic to do so. It had to be powerful, strong enough to make it past the protections both men sported as members of the Monsters clan. Strong enough to make it past the wards of the Monsters safe house. And strong enough to make it past Jake’s innate Chippewa power, the Crow clan magic that flowed through his veins and made him who he was.
Malek had somehow subverted all of it and infiltrated the minds of two Monsters members, siccing them on her like blood hounds. Now he wasn’t the only one hunting her down, and Jake was right. There might actually be more. Like maybe Jake’s sentinel and friend, Lucian, who went by the shortened name “Luke.”
She’d met Luke briefly a few weeks ago, again while they were working the sovereign case. At the time, the Monsters had been in a different city, hence in a different safe house. She’d met the other four wardens there for an update on the case, and Luke had been there with a few other warden sentinels as if it were their day off and they were just out hanging with buddies. He honestly seemed more like a drinking mate than a sentinel, except that his smile was pure and devoid of ulterior motive. She could tell just by being around him that he was kind, strong and good, and she’d taken an instant liking to him.
But he was still Jake’s sentinel, and if he appeared at Jake’s call and either Jake or David Sharpe told him that Angel needed to be neutralized, he would probably believe it. They’d obviously known each other for years and they trusted one another. She did not need a sentinel as powerful as Luke thinking she was the bad guy.
Jake was also right about her growing weary. She was using magic to keep the light of the fire from glowing past the boundaries of her camp. She didn’t want to help his brother locate her any easier. She didn’t have the strength to cast a healing spell right now, which was why he was still injured.
“What did he tell you, Jake? Is there even a reason you’re hunting me, or is he just pulling your strings like a puppet master? What does Malek have you believing about me that makes it so important you turn me in to him?”
Jacob slowly leaned back. Something uncertain flashed across his strong, handsome features, just for a split second. But then he shook his head. “That it needs to be done.”
Angel blinked. She frowned, her teeth grinding. “That’s it? He didn’t tell you I was dangerous? That I was killing innocents or something? That I needed to be n
eutralized? Reined in? Restrained? Jake, do you even realize what you’re doing right now?”
Jake laughed softly again and let his head fall back against the stone behind him. His laugh was deep and beautiful, and his Adam’s apple moved in his strong throat, tempting her, making her lips tingle.
She recalled the way he’d felt standing beside her while they worked together with the other wardens. He’d been tall, capable, and supportive. He’d smelled like leather and gun oil, deodorant and battle. She’d been instantly, if secretly smitten.
“I already knew you were dangerous,” he told her. His smile grew bigger, white and predatory. A hint of fang peeked from behind his lips.
Angel looked away again, and now she felt a heat move up through her. Her heart was hammering. Her attention was slipping. Focus, she told herself. You need to keep an eye on him until you’re strong enough to make another phone call to Gabe. And remember, Sharpe is still out there –
With that thought, Angel experienced another feeling. It was familiar and hard and grounding. It was the feeling of being watched. Carefully studied. She realized suddenly that she’d had the feeling for a while, but she’d attributed it to Jake.
At once, she threw up a shield around the camp, using nearly all that was left of her magical strength in the defensive move. But she was too slow. The dart made it through just before the shield was erected, and its sharp tip embedded itself firmly in the side of her neck.
She winced and yanked it out as quickly as she could, but she knew the damage was done.
No! she thought, reaching out for magic, any magic, that she could get her mind wrapped around. But the fire crackled blue, then black, then flared bright, its light expanding suddenly past the spell she’d used to keep it hidden.
Her eyes began to close. She heard footsteps on both sides of her, which meant Jake’s cuffs were gone; he’d somehow made it out of them.
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