Gathering Darkness: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Anna Zaires

  “Fucking spell.” She tore her gaze away, breathing hard. It was getting harder and harder to stay away from the half-pixie, when everything within her wanted to curl around him like a cat.

  “Don’t look at me,” he advised in a soft voice, and when she looked at him, he was looking up at the ceiling. It was easier to pull away and look up when their gazes weren’t connected. Idly flicking her vision over to that of her dragon, she picked out the runes of the spells Sellers had in place. She frowned as, one by one, the runes went dark.

  “Are you doing that?” she asked Rat, and when he didn’t answer, turned to look at him.

  He was right there, almost nose to nose with her, his blue eyes darker with lust and whatever it was demon’s thought about.

  “No….” He picked up a strand of her hair and tugged gently, bringing her closer. “My sole contribution to our escape was a phone call.”

  “Phone call?” Her lips phrased the question but her mind had gone blank the closer he got. Heat and need shivered through her, her entire body aching for the touch of his lips on hers. Within her, her dragon recoiled, but even that didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was the man who pulled her into his arms, and laid his lips over hers.

  ***

  “This Sellers bastard is taking the piss now,” Jared Stone, one of the team with Duke, grumbled as they climbed the ancient fire escapes to get to the roof of the building their anonymous tip had said the next illegal fight would be. Not only that, but the tip-off had also confirmed that Sellers was supposed to be in attendance. After a day of chasing his tail, terrified for his mate, Duke was ready to go to war on less. “This is way too close to the last location.”

  Duke ignored the chatter behind him, leading the way across the walkways. His vision was half and half, the dragon half giving him an overlay of where all Sellers’ spells were. The runes danced and pulsed in the corners of his eyes, not there when he looked directly at them, so he had to turn and use his peripheral vision to lock them down.

  He reached the largest concentration and squatted down next to a window, motioning to the others to spread out. After the tip off, Iliona had assembled a task-force. Pretty much every operative who wasn’t out on assignment was in the darkness somewhere around him. They had werewolves, gargoyles…hell, even the Dyrad, Destiny, was with them tonight, although Duke wasn’t sure what help she’d be in a building constructed of concrete and steel.

  “Way, way too close.” Jared continued to grumble, leaning against a support pillar two down from Duke. “Does he think we’re stupid or something?”

  “Yeah. Well,” Rhod Claus, looked up and grinned. “With you, he’d be right.”

  “Screw you, Santa.”

  “Hey!” Rhod looked down through the window again, but continued the banter. “No dissing the big man. Or you get coal this year.”

  Another operative a little way down the roof popped his head up. Cole, Rhod’s brother, and another Santa elf. “What’s that? Who gets me?”

  Rhod sighed. “Not you, dipshit. Coal, coal. Real coal.”

  “Well, you should’ve said!” Cole opened his mouth to deliver another salvo, but Duke had had enough.

  “Shut it! This is a serious operation, not an episode of The Three fucking Stooges!”

  Cole nodded, but flipped his brother the bird anyway. “Suits me. Have you seen the peep show going on down there? Dudes need to get a room, like seriously.”

  Duke reached out a tendril of shadow, sliding it through a broken corner of the glass like an octopus’ tentacle to snuff out the runes nearest to them. He worked out, giving them an area to work with, but not one large enough that would trigger alarm. Hopefully, Sellers would just think some pigeon had flown through the rune and disturbed it. To facilitate that line of thought, he slid the tendril behind a group of roosting birds and knocked them all off their perches. Flapping and feathers ensued, giving him chance to crack the window open and peer through the gap.

  What he saw stopped him dead. There, below them, was Chase, wrapped up in some guy’s arms. Kissing him. Not just kissing him. He had her under him on the plush seating, her blonde hair spread around her like a bright halo. Rage hit him as he froze in place, red filtering over his vision. She was his mate. His.

  “Hey…Duke. Mate, you need to calm it down.” Jared’s worried tones filtered through the roaring in his ears and he blinked, the red mist sliding away until he could look up at the werewolf. Jared’s eyes were maxed out with his wolf, but the concerned expression was all human. His gaze flicked down to Duke’s hand, then back up again.

  Duke followed the look. His hand was wrapped around a steel girder. Or what was left of it anyway. He’d crushed the thing in his rage. Releasing his grip and moving his hand revealed a perfect imprint.

  “Thought you were gonna scale out on us there, big man.” Jared joked, but his tone was too serious. “And this roof just won’t take all of us and your big, scaly ass, you know? So keep it together man, at least until we get in there?”

  Sucking in a hard breath, Duke nodded. Ris had given him the low down on the collar Chase wore. An ancient magic, it controlled her and her magic. Whatever she did, whatever atrocities she’d committed in the past while wearing the collar, was all down to Sellers. She wasn’t responsible for and couldn’t control her own actions.

  He had to hold onto that thought or he’d go mad. Madder, because he was pretty fucking mad right now.

  “The other teams are already in position,” Rhod confirmed, his voice business-like now as everyone looked toward Duke. Since he was the lead on this investigation, it was his operation and his call. “Just waiting on your say-so, boss-man.”

  He nodded, and a slow, dangerous grin spread over his face.

  “Let’s burn this fucking place down.”

  ***

  Kissing Rat was, in a word, amazing. For a moment, everything around them—the club, the chatter of the clientele, the sound of Sellers’ voice as he announced the first of the fights—fell away. Rat’s lips were warm and firm and for an evil villain’s lackey he sure as hell knew how to kiss.

  With how rough and tough he looked, she didn’t anticipate the soft brush of his mouth over hers, nor the skilful way he used his lips and tongue to seduce her. She murmured in the back of her throat and let him ease her back onto the seat behind. His hands were gentle but firm. She frowned as he teased the corner of her lips, tempting her to open up for him.

  It shouldn’t be this way. The way he looked, he should be pawing and groping at her…something, anything that would make it easy for her to push him away. But he didn’t. Instead, he treated her with such tenderness that she wanted—no, needed—to relax into his arms.

  He groaned when she parted her lips, and tilted his head to deepen the kiss, the low sound echoed by her softer moan. She wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, the fire in her blood settling low in her stomach. She wanted this. Needed it…. Didn’t she?

  Gasping, she broke away but it didn’t deter him. Instead, he trailed a line of kisses down her throat, murmuring endearments between each caress. She frowned as the sense of wrongness grew. One part of her wanted to relax, really get into it with Rat but there was the niggling sense she’d forgotten something. When she prodded the thought though, it slipped through her fingers, only to reform again at the edge of her mind, tantalizingly out of reach.

  She closed her eyes again, turning towards Rat’s embrace but still the niggle remained. It was like this was just sex, the act not quite connecting with her soul. The feeling was blocked before it could quite reach even though she could feel the tug on her soul as something, the magic of their bond, tried to bind them together. Each time it tried though, something slid between it and its goal.

  She frowned again, breaking away to push at Rat’s arms. “No, stop. Something’s wrong.”

  “Shh, baby.” His lips were warm on her neck, nuzzling under her ear. “I’ve got you. No one can see us back here. Just relax, we�
��ve got plenty of time before he gets back.”

  The doubt hit again, this time in a crippling wave. The magic was trying to cloud her memories. Trying to creep into her mind and blur everything she knew to be true. It was wrong. A sticky, awful feeling that hit her right in the pit of her stomach. Bile rose. A hot tide trying to bubble over as, within, her dragon pitched a fit. Trying to claw its way out and rip the demon to pieces.

  Demon. Her brain latched onto that one piece of information in the myriad others flowing through her brain. The dragon knew. The dragon had known all along what Rat was. Demon.

  Fuck.

  She pulled back, tension running through her body but before she could do or say anything, all hell broke loose.

  The ceiling exploded, showering the screaming guests with shards of glass and bits of masonry. Doors burst inward, wood splintering under heavy boots as armed men swarmed through them. The lights cut out and plunged them into darkness punctuated only by the flashlights held by the intruders. Shots rang out, echoed by screams and the roar of whatever creatures were in the pit.

  “Get off me,” she bellowed over the noise, and pushed Rat hard. He fell backward, dropping into the space between the seating and the table. She left him there, wrenching the stupid heels off her feet to clamber over the table.

  She stood barefoot in the middle of the melee, all her senses extended to try to spot Sellers. With all this, he would be distracted. Perhaps long enough for her to dispatch the asshole into the next life.

  A table a few feet away overturned, toppling the men trying to get around it into the pit below. Twin snarls cut through the other noises, quickly followed by screams as the pit claimed two unexpected victims. She tilted her head to the side. Sounded like Manticores down there. Rough way to go.

  A suited guest ran into her, grabbing her upper arms in a hard grip. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he shouted, face bare inches from hers, a wild and panicked look in his eyes.

  “Which way?” He shook her so hard that her teeth practically rattled in her head. Her temper snapped and she moved, slamming her forehead against his hard. He went down like a stone to lie whimpering on the floor.

  “That way, asshole,” she muttered, leaving him there to stalk off into the darkness looking for her prey.

  The club was in total uproar, but the intruders, all dressed in black with ‘PPA’ or ‘Police’ emblazoned across their chests, had quickly started to round up the panicked guests. She helped a couple of times by tripping one that had fled or shoving another in the direction of the waiting authorities before sliding back into the darkness. Sellers might have managed to lock her into her human form again, but that didn’t mean she was defenseless. She could move in the darkness easily, force the shadows to wrap around her still, even if she couldn’t become part of it at the moment.

  “Where is he?”

  “Get this lot out of here!”

  Spotting Sellers over the other side of the pit, she tried to work her away around before he could slip away through one of the side entrances concealed over there. She knew him, he’d have at least three escape strategies, although she didn’t know if any of them included taking on the police and this PPA group the rest seemed to be from.

  “Fuck’s sake, what the hell is that down there?”

  A roar from the Manticores in the pit forced several back and she had to change direction suddenly to skirt around them. Sellers reached a door and with a quick backward glance to see if he’d been spotted, disappeared through it.

  “Hegra’s tits,” she hissed, drawing out the sound in her frustration. Another group of police hemmed her in on the left so she turned right, looking for a way around the pit to follow Sellers. Alone and on the run, she still had a chance of killing the bastard. It wasn’t just sex with her mate that could break the curse. So could death, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be hers.

  Ducking around a pillar, she had barely taken a step when a figure materialized out of the darkness and shadow. Familiar green eyes looked down at her, anger boiling in their depths.

  “Going somewhere, sweetness?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  In all her years, Chase had never seen anyone as mad as her mate. She hadn’t managed to get a word in edgeways at the club. He’d shifted and yanked her out of there so fast that her ears had rung. Unable to change, all she’d been able to do was curl up in the cage of his claws and watch as the city fell away behind them.

  The moon high in the sky lit their way, the rhythmic beat of his wings and the roar of the wind in her ears her only company. Long minutes passed before she spoke.

  Duke?

  Her tentative mental query was met with stony silence. Not the static-silence that would have indicated the link was broken, or not there at all. Instead it was a wall, one that had been deliberately erected against her. To keep her out.

  She shivered, huddling closer to his scales. The wind whistled through his claws and her outfit wasn’t exactly suitable for a high altitude night flight. Using the little gap she had in the wall between her and her dragon, she pulled energy to heat herself. A pitiful amount but anything was better than shivering so hard her teeth nearly broke from the chattering.

  Duke?

  More silence, but his massive paws tightened. She yelped a little as the cage she sat in suddenly became tighter but then the scales over his palms started to heat up. A sigh of relief escaped her as the sudden heat beat against her chilled body. A small act but one of caring even though he was obviously furious.

  Please. Talk to me.

  He still didn’t respond and misery wound around her heart. Leaning her head against the inside of one of his talons, she watched the landscape below idly. They’d left the city behind long ago, and where now into countryside. Lots and lots of countryside. Where, she had no clue.

  Since Sellers had pulled her from the cave she and Baby had slept in for centuries, they’d been firmly based in the city. She hadn’t had time to look over a map of the surrounding countryside to even hazard a guess as to where Duke was taking her. And since he wouldn’t talk to her, she had little chance of gleaning anything from him.

  Besides, right now, she didn’t care. Fate had given her a mate though all her life she never thought she’d be lucky enough to be granted such a boon. But now he was mad with her, really mad. So mad he wouldn’t even let their minds touch, even though holding himself away from her had to be hurting him just as much as it hurt her. Tears pricked the back of her eyes.

  Perhaps she deserved his anger, perhaps she was the cast-iron bitch her fellow warriors had always called her; incapable of being loved. Hells, perhaps she took after her mother in that as well as everything else. Nevaris had been a legend at court, a warrior-mage of such renown they’d told tales of her abilities for centuries after her death. But they’d also told stories of her cold heart, of the husband who’d taken a suicide mission rather than return to his wife.

  Maybe she deserved a mate who hated her.

  Slumped in his paw and lost in her own thoughts, she barely noticed the change in altitude until there were treetops just under her feet. Duke wheeled around, one wing dipping until the tip made the leaves beneath rustle.

  They left the trees behind, a lake opening out beneath them. She caught sight of her own reflection but then they were landing in front of a small cabin set back from the shore. She lifted her head, and breathed in to taste the air. They were the only people —human or para—around for miles.

  Duke dropped off the wing and managed as neat a shift from dragon to human as she’d ever see—barely a pop or crack of bone as he folded his dragon form back into the human. He came out the other side fully clothed and carrying her in his arms instead of the massive paws. She bit back her gasp of surprise in favor of wrapping her arms around his neck.

  A quick glance up confirmed he was still mad. His jaw was tight, controlled. The moonlight overhead cast his features in hard lines. Pebbles crunched under his feet as he headed to
ward the cabin.

  “Where are we?” Her voice sounded odd. Too loud in the silence of this sanctuary.

  “Safe house.” To her surprise, Duke answered her, then kicked the door open. It opened easily, as though unlatched. He stepped through, hooking a foot around it to close it. The lock clicked without him turning and candles flared to life around them, lighting the room.

  Magic. She’d felt the brief flare press against her, but it had been gone so quickly admiration rolled through her. Neat, efficient. No sloppy overspill. How had she ever thought him to be magically immature and ill-disciplined? She hadn’t even seen him at the club, but he had to have been there. She’d felt the deft touch as someone had reached out to snuff out Sellers’ detection spells, and hadn’t been fooled by the flutter of wings that had fooled everyone else. He didn’t have formal training, but he had raw ability and somehow he’d learnt to focus it all on his own.

  She looked around. The room was small. Homely. A couch sat in front of an open fireplace, a table and chairs to the side. Beyond that lay an open-plan kitchen, with a closed door she could only assume led to a bathroom and maybe a bedroom.

  He turned his head to look at her and for a second the mask slipped. She caught her breath at the anger and pain reflected in the depths of his eyes. But he recovered quickly, the pain blanked out to leave only fury.

  “Who was he?” He demanded, sliding her down the front of his body. She felt every hard plain of muscle, every corded ridge of his abs, and the bulge between his thighs. He was aroused despite his anger, but that didn’t surprise her. Dragons were a passionate race, and shadows were among the more volatile either on the battlefield or in the bedroom.

  She opened her mouth to explain. She needed to explain. Needed him not to look at her with anger in his eyes, or hate in his heart. But he didn’t give her the chance, dropping his head so that his lips whispered over hers. His nearness, and the awareness that punched a hole in her gut, held her spell-bound.