by Ann Gimpel
Even now, he was offering her a choice. He hadn’t simply pulled her into an embrace. She breathed in his scent, a clean forest-after-rain smell that soothed and inflamed her by turns. Only a step separated them, but when she took it she felt she’d crossed a huge divide.
One where there’d be no going back.
She twined her arms around him, splaying her hands over the slabs of muscle running down his back. When he closed his arms around her and drew her as close as they could be, a shock of hunger arrowed right into her soul. The sensation was so raw and primitive, it stunned her.
When he cradled her head in his big hands, she didn’t fight him, welcoming his mouth as he kissed her. It had been so long since she’d been kissed, it took her a moment to kiss him back. The feel of his mouth, hard and demanding, called to her, the summons urgent and laced with untrammeled need.
She opened her mouth to him, aware her nipples had turned to hot points of sensation. His cock hardened against her belly, and an image of it flashed through her mind from when he’d been naked in the clearing with his manhood proudly displayed.
If her uncle wouldn’t have been a few feet away, she’d probably have pushed her pants down her legs and bent over the nearby writing table. She wanted him, needed him, and her heart thudded into double-time rhythm.
She was about to reach between them, desperate to wrap her fingers around his girth, when her uncle groaned.
Niall lifted his mouth from hers and grinned. “We need to get out of here but hold onto those impulses. If the goddess grants us grace, we’ll find a spot of solitude to love one another.”
She smiled back, not wanting to let go of him. “I’d like that.”
Stephan scrambled to his feet. “Come on,” he urged. “Ditch the romantic crap. Let’s teleport to Golddust.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Sarai asked.
“Good enough to leave here.”
Niall disentangled from their embrace and took her hand. “We’ll drive partway. My car’s close.”
She waited for Stephan to lodge a protest, but he didn’t disagree. “Probably just as well,” he muttered. “My magic is sucking fumes.” He turned to her. “Why didn’t you leave when I told you?”
“Maybe because I didn’t want to live with your death on my conscience. I’m not a coward, Uncle.”
Stephan’s normally stern expression softened. “I love you. I wanted you to be safe.”
She picked her way through gore and bone bits not wanting to even think how much work cleaning her shop would be. When she got to Stephan, she let go of Niall’s hand and wrapped her arms around her uncle. “I know. But that love stuff cuts both ways.”
Niall cracked the door, probably checking the hall, but she didn’t sense any other vampires or mages anywhere in the vicinity. Seemingly satisfied, he herded them through. They ran for the exit door on her floor. Once outside, he set a decent pace, quick but not so fast as to draw undue attention. He placed himself between her and Stephan, partially shielding the saber from view.
Weariness dragged at her as she settled into the saggy passenger seat. Her uncle got into the back and stretched out as much as his six-foot-three-inch frame would allow.
After they were underway, Niall eyed Stephan through the rearview mirror. “I’ve had a nap or two back there. It’s not so bad once you find a spot where the springs don’t poke you.”
“Not there yet,” Stephan grunted.
Sarai faded in and out as they drove. Bumps in the road and traffic noise woke her, but not for long. At one point, she felt magic flare as Niall and his jaguar talked, but when she asked what the sleek, tawny cat wanted, Niall had hedged. She hadn’t had magic deployed, but she was certain he’d waltzed around the point.
It’s none of my business.
Yeah but, he could have…
Could have what? Told her to butt out? Told her a kiss didn’t mean sharing everything?
She shuttered her thoughts, not wanting him to poke into her mind. She might have suggested to Stephan that she could enjoy Niall’s body without expecting more, but she’d never been that type. Not that she hadn’t savored her occasional roll in the hay, but she’d picked her partners carefully, avoiding men who had potential as more than a momentary diversion.
Crap on a piece of toast, I’m as broken as he is.
Eh, maybe not. He’s upfront about his proclivities, while I conceal my liaisons.
Niall had turned off the freeway a while back. After a particularly robust bump, he pulled to the side of a badly rutted road, killed the engine, and said, “We’ll teleport from here.”
“Good idea.” Stephan pushed one of the Toyota’s back doors open amid the creak of rusty hinges.
“Where is Golddust?” she asked as she prodded her own door open and got out. “I’ve never been there.” Other cars lined the road, which meant shifters were converging in the abandoned mining town. At least, she hoped that was what it meant. Light leached from the day, and it would be fully dark soon.
Full dark meant vampires would be running at maximum velocity.
“About ten more miles down this road,” Niall replied, joining her. He’d been quiet since his offhanded comment about his bondmate being chatty after they faced danger.
A ratty, falling-down town flashed across her mind. “Got it,” she said and summoned magic.
“Hold on, sister.” Stephan hooked a hand beneath her arm.
“I’ll be fine.” She bristled and almost added she probably could have given the vamps the slip if he hadn’t shown up, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Something nagged. When she figured out what it was, she shook free from her uncle’s grip.
“Goddammit! I should have noticed this before, but how could those vampires attack in daylight?”
“They were running on mage power.” Stephan spat the answer. “Didn’t you sense the other magic?”
“I did.” Niall nodded curtly. “It didn’t matter. They were going down no matter whose magic they filched.”
Sarai’s jaw gaped open. “B-but it means we’re not safe in the daytime, either.”
“That’s exactly what it means,” Niall said, his voice grim as a doomsday prophecy. “These vamps were stronger than the ones cowering in the back of that cabin, so they’re becoming more proficient at leveraging mage power.”
“All good reasons we shouldn’t hang around here.” Stephan grabbed her arm again. “Group teleport spell, people.”
This time, she didn’t fight free from his fingers curving around her upper arm. The ramifications of fighting vampires 24/7 had sunk in, and she wanted to curl up in a ball of misery and howl her desolation to the skies.
“Buck up,” her wolf ordered. “No surrender. Not with me as your bonded one.”
“This time, it’s your bond animal who’s talking,” Niall observed and took hold of her other arm.
“Right you are,” she retorted, not offering any clues as to its lecture. Giving up was easier than fighting until something killed her, but she hadn’t seriously considered it. Not really. Mostly, she was tired. And numb. And confused about her feelings for Niall.
She didn’t know him all that well. Why should what he did matter one way or the other? The men’s spell rose around her. When it cleared, they were in the midst of a whole lot of shifters. More than she’d ever seen in one place before. Everyone was talking at once.
Niall and Stephan threaded their way through the crowd, tapping a shoulder here, shaking a hand there. She followed them, not wanting to be left behind. Because trust was running thin, she scattered power, assessing the assembled crowd. At least vampires weren’t lurking in the wings, but she did sense something other than shifter magic coming from the end of what had once been the main street through Golddust.
She caught up to Niall and Stephan and said, “Check dead ahead and to the right.” She purposefully didn’t employ telepathy in case someone was listening to the conversations unfolding all around her.
By the time she got to where she’d sensed the intrusive magic and worked her way around the crowd that had formed in front of a dilapidated hotel, Niall, Stephan, and others she didn’t know had dragged half a dozen men and women into the street. Now that the interlopers weren’t warded, mage power steamed from them.
“Talk and talk fast,” Niall hissed.
Shifters circled the six mages, hemming them in and draping magic around them so they couldn’t leave. Echoes of, “Talk,” rippled from many mouths.
One of the male mages squared his shoulders. Tall and rangy, he was dressed in jeans, boots, and a leather jacket. Blond hair was cropped close to his skull, and he tilted his chin at a defiant angle. Blue eyes flashed a challenge. “We’re on your side.”
“But we didn’t expect you to believe us, so we hid.” A blonde woman who might have been the man’s twin planted herself next to him.
“Go ahead. Set a truth spell around us,” the man urged. “I’m Jeremiah. My sister is Chloe. We’re just as horrified by the vampires’ doings as you are. And by our kin becoming their allies.”
“The magic surrounding you already contains a truth casting,” Stephan noted in a somber tone.
“Aye. You did speak the truth. At least as far as it went,” Niall muttered.
Sarai pushed forward. “Do you know how many mages allied themselves with vampires?”
“Maybe,” Jeremiah replied. “A small group are still angry about the outcome of the last war. They call themselves Mages First and hold regular meetings.”
“Since when?” Stephan asked.
Chloe shrugged. Her hair hung in braids reaching knee level, and she wore dark pants and a tattered green ski parka. “Forever. From what I gathered, the group formed soon after our ship reached the Americas.”
Interesting. So they arrived on separate vessels.
“Is this Mages First group nationwide?” Niall asked.
“Yes and no,” Jeremiah answered. “It was much bigger two hundred years ago, but people’s interest waned. “From what we can tell, the largest concentration is in northern Texas these days.”
“Define large,” Stephan growled.
“I’d be surprised if a hundred were left,” Chloe replied.
“It may not sound like a very big number,” Jeremiah cut in, “but locating them and severing them from their magic will be a huge undertaking.”
Chloe exhaled sharply. “Indeed. We performed that rite on three of our own, and it took a week for our magic to recover.”
Sarai was fascinated—and repelled. She’d had no idea there was a way to separate a magic wielder from the source of their power, absent killing them. Which brought up a point. “Why not just kill them and be done with it?”
Chloe turned sad blue eyes her way. “They’re our kinsmen.”
Sarai understood. Mowing down her family in cold blood would take more fortitude than she possessed. Killing vampires was one thing. She had no idea if she had it in her to plunge a knife into a shifter’s chest, especially knowing its bond animal would be trapped in limbo for eternity.
Niall motioned the six mages forward. “How did you find out about our meeting? Who else knows you’re here?”
A short redheaded male said, “We’ve been monitoring magical frequencies ever since the incident in Glenwood Springs the other night where innocent humans lost their lives.”
“Was that the first time vamps stole mage magic and used it for ill?” Someone behind Sarai shouted.
“Insofar as we know,” the man responded.
“There’s a piece of decent news,” Niall muttered, adding, “That explains how you knew about our meeting. Who knows you’re here?”
“All our mage kin who walk the good side of the street,” Chloe answered.
“We knew showing up in your midst would be dangerous,” Jeremiah cut in, “so we used a lottery to select who would come.”
“We figured you’d discover us,” the redhead said.
Something bothered Sarai. “Since you’re apparently innocent, why were you hiding?”
Color stained Jeremiah’s stubbled cheeks. “We’re not warriors. We were scared what you’d do to us. You have every right to be angry.”
“We were planning to show ourselves,” Chloe said. “As soon as all of you had arrived and it appeared you had a plan in place.”
“We willingly offer our magic to the cause.” The redhead stood as tall as his stature allowed. Dressed in jeans, boots, and a leather jacket like many of them, his tone was serious.
“How about the others who aren’t here?” Niall asked. “Will they stand with us?”
“Most of them,” Jeremiah said.
“We never were very hardy fighters,” Chloe added with a wry head shake. “Could be why we lost the war in the Old Country. Very few mages have a taste for battle. We’d rather lose ourselves in spells and books.”
Sarai had been listening carefully and testing their words with her own magic in addition to the truth spell fluttering around them. Because the mages knew about it, there’d been no reason to make it invisible. So far, everything the mages had said pinged cleanly off her radar. Maybe this vampire uprising wouldn’t be as impossible to quell as she’d feared. Mages might not want to kill their own, but shifters wouldn’t be bound by such compunctions.
She gathered saliva, still tasting vampire on her tongue, and spat it out. The taste was fading, but it tied her guts into knots.
“We still need a plan.” Niall projected his voice with magic.
“Yes, and a way to reach every single shifter and warn them to be vigilant,” Stephan tossed out.
“Our people are in danger as well,” Chloe noted.
Sarai frowned. “Can they be co-opted against their will?”
Jeremiah nodded. “It begins against their will, but we’ve never been especially strong when it came to vampire coercion, which is why we settled where they weren’t.”
“What happened?” Sarai asked.
Chloe shrugged. “They came looking for us. We’re not hard to find, and they apparently knew about Mages First because that’s who they started with.”
“Aye, and it’s who we’ll finish with,” Niall growled.
An idea took form based on something Sarai had read in the shifter history tome, and she said, “Not much point in kidnapping a mage, even a Mages First one, but what if we capture a vampire?”
Niall quirked a brow. “What would we do with it?”
“Torture it. Hope it calls its dark brothers for rescue.”
Stephan clapped her on the back. “Nice, bloodthirsty plan, niece. When they show up, we kill them.”
Sarai nodded. “If they’re all connected, it should make the others so angry, they come gunning for us.”
“And then we do away with them too. I like it. A two-step plan where we knock out enough vamps to discourage them and every single Mages First member we can lay our hands on.” Niall narrowed his eyes and focused his next words on the crowd. “How many of you hung onto the old sabers?”
A scattering of hands went up.
“We can teleport and return with weaponry,” a silver-haired shifter said.
“Do it,” Niall replied. “Return as soon as you can. Maybe by then we’ll have located a vampire.”
“Or lured one,” Sarai said. “The other advantage of my plan is we get to pick where events unfold. We could remain where we are. It’s far enough from civilization, there wouldn’t be any human casualties.”
“May we put out the call for our mage brethren?” Jeremiah asked.
Stephan nodded. “Make very sure of whom you’re including.”
“No worries there. It’s our hides on the line too. Last thing we want is to resurrect the war between us.” Power bubbled around the mages as they employed telepathy.
Sarai moved off to on
e side, intent on fleshing out the easiest way to snag a vampire. When it came to her, she felt like an idiot because it was obvious. Only problem was the men wouldn’t like it much, and she needed them to pull it off.
Maybe she’d start with Niall, since she figured Stephan would blow a gasket. She waited until Niall was done talking with an eagle shifter and then crooked a finger his way. When he strode to her side, she said, “I’ve got it.”
“Got what, darling?”
Her eyes widened with pleasure at the endearment, but she didn’t comment on it. “Simplest way to find a vampire is to return to either the cabin or my shop. If you’re right about them all being linked to one another, they’ll sense we’ve returned to where we killed their own, and they’ll be all over it.”
“Grand idea, except you’re not going.”
“The hell I’m not. It’s my plan.”
He dropped his hands onto her shoulders and spun her to face him. “It’s a decent approach, and it’s also damned dangerous. I’ll take a few of the men so we’ll have enough firepower to subdue whoever shows up. It won’t only be one vampire. They always travel in packs, which means we need to kill all but one and keep him from teleporting out of there. It will be a delicate balancing act requiring split-second timing—”
She tried to duck from beneath his hands, but he held her in place. “Damn it. Let go of me. If I was a man you’d take me.”
“Maybe. Depends how strong your magic was. Now, be a good lass and get some sleep. You’re dead on your feet and have every right to be.”
Sarai tamped down fury. Her wolf howled within, mirroring her mood. “Fine.” She tossed her head. “I’ll duck into one of those buildings, and—”
His fingers bit deeper, and he transferred one hand to her upper arm and began marching between two buildings. “You’re as transparent as the day is long.”
“Where are you taking me?” She kept pace with him because she didn’t want anyone to think he was dragging her against her will.
He didn’t answer, just kept on walking until they stood next to a secluded glade behind what had once been the local saloon. He turned her back to face him. Emotions rippled across his stunning features, but she couldn’t interpret any of them.