by Cheever, Sam
But the zombies shuffled backward, away from them, and a path started to open between Ardith and Draigh and the zombie queen.
“Well done,” Ardith whispered to Draigh. “I didn’t think you had it in ya.”
He glowered down at her as they started to work their way through the ragged opening of slimy dead people, toward the zombie queen. “You have no idea what I’m capable of, witch.”
He said the words with such heat that Ardith’s eyebrows lifted. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“See that you do.”
Edwige’s familiar fluttered its wings as they stopped before her, one step down so they were looking up into her deceptively rosy face. “What brings you to my part of the world, sister? And why do you soil my home with the likes of this creature?”
Ardith pressed her arm against Draigh’s as he stiffened. “Let’s not play word games, Edwige. You’ve been creating an army and killing people. The council can’t allow that to continue. Surely you understand the problems this causes us.”
Edwige held Ardith’s gaze for a long moment and then said, “Joris, come.”
The shadows split behind Edwige and Draigh’s knife was up before Ardith could blink. Behind them, the zombies gave a roar and surged forward.
Ardith grabbed Draigh’s thick wrist, her fingers straining to hold it.
The young man who stepped from the shadows looked like an angel. His fine-featured face was perfection. Thick golden hair fell in waves to broad shoulders. The man’s face was smooth, his mouth lush and his jaw was strong. The wide, long-lashed eyes were a crystal blue, so clear they could only have been created from magic.
He was slim, long limbed and moved with a lithe grace. As he stopped beside Edwige, she turned with a smile that told Ardith everything she needed to know. The witch was completely bespelled by young Joris.
She glanced toward Draigh, her gaze darkening. “My apprentice. What I do, I do for him. For his protection. I would do anything for Joris, make no mistake, hunter.”
Ardith frowned. “Has he been threatened?”
“There are those who don’t understand his perfection. Some who call him witch. I create my army for his protection. I do not engage war, sister. I only defend against those who would promote it.”
“Surely you understand how close the situation is to exploding, Edwige. The council fears another flare up of witch trials. That can’t be allowed to happen. Can you move Joris to another place? Maybe another time?”
Edwige’s face darkened. “I cannot move through time, sister. I am not epoch.”
“I understand, but the council could help you relocate. Wherever or whenever you wish.”
“What of the innocents she’s killed?”
“I’ve killed no innocents, hunter. They plotted against me…against us.” Edwige reached out and clasped Joris’s hand. He gave her a beatific smile. There was something about Edwige’s apprentice that bothered Ardith.
He was too perfect, almost plastic in his perfection. And there was no genuine emotion feeding his gaze.
She could see why the human population distrusted him.
“I can inform the council that you and Joris have agreed to be relocated then?”
Edwige fixed a hostile gaze on Draigh. “No. I think not. This one plans to exterminate us wherever we go. I see it in his eyes.
Draigh didn’t deny her accusation.
Ardith didn’t look at him, afraid she’d see the truth of the witch’s words in his face.
Edwige continued, “This is my home. I have plans here. I will not let the girlish fears of a few who have no real power over me destroy what I’ve created in this place.”
Ardith frowned. “If you stay it’s as good as declaring war on the council.”
Edwige’s slow, deliberate perusal held an obvious message. Bring it, sister. Her words were slightly more diplomatic. “I do not wish war with my brothers and sisters. But if my living here as I wish is the cause of that battle, I will fight it. And make no mistake, sister, I will win.”
Ardith clenched her fists, already drawing her power forward. “So be it.”
Edwige lifted her hands and the cavern erupted in a roar as the zombies stirred and started forward, razor-sharp teeth snapping. Hundreds of pairs of dead, glassy eyes fixed unswervingly on Draigh and Ardith as they moved inexorably forward, claw-like hands reaching.
Ardith turned back to Edwige and discovered her gone. Along with her apprentice. There would be no help from that quarter.
Draigh had his knives out, the impressive muscles of his arms bulging as he anticipated the first wave of nastiness.
Ardith pulled her power forward and waited with it tingling in her fingertips. But even as she prepared to do her worst, she knew it wouldn’t be enough. She and the hunter would be overcome fairly quickly by the sheer number of the monsters closing in on them.
It would be a slow, painful and slimy death. Ardith’s mind spun as she tried to come up with a way to escape certain death. There was only one way she could think of, and she was reluctant to pull her precious familiar into such a dangerous place.
Finally deciding it wasn’t worth the risk to Sirius, whose skills and guidance would be passed to the next witch in a long line of witches in her family when she was dead, Ardith did the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. She placed a block on her mind to keep Sirius from feeling her death and prepared to take out as many zombies as she could before she went down.
Claws scraped down her arm and Ardith spun, sending witch fire between the zombie’s eyes. Its spongy head exploded like a melon, dousing the dead ones around it. They came on, hands outstretched, jaws snapping, as Draigh swung both arms, lopping off heads almost faster than Ardith’s eyes could register the movements. She sent power around her in an arc, slicing off limbs and severing heads as each new group of nightmarish creatures appeared.
Blood sprayed, gore splashed and the cavern smelled like a broken meat locker filled with spoiling meat.
Still Draigh slashed. Ardith spit deadly fire from her fingertips. And zombies continued to come. Layer after layer after layer of them, snapping, clawing and swinging heavy, rocklike arms.
Draigh was rammed by a particularly large male zombie who had only half of his face and fell sideways. The hunter caught himself before he fell and cut off the zombie’s head before surging back into the battle.
Ardith wasn’t quite so lucky. She fell over a severed limb on the ground and slipped in a slimy puddle of blood. Icy hot pain blossomed in her shoulder as a disease-ridden mouth wrenched her flesh, ripping into her as she fell. Spittle flew as the zombie whipped its head back and forth, trying to rip her arm out of its socket.
Claws ripped down her side, and she was tugged sideways as another powerful jaw closed over her other wrist. Strung between two rabid zombies, Ardith was dragged in opposite directions, her bones felt as if they were being ripped slowly apart. She screamed and fell to her knees as her vision went gray from the exquisite agony.
Teeth gnawed on her fingers. Claws dug furrows in her flesh.
The pile of zombies surrounding her thickened as more and more grasping claws reached for her. She prayed for a quick end, knowing she had no more magic in her.
Cool, thick blood spurted and the pressing pile of monsters started to ripple and fall away. A knife flashed past her head and one of the arms that was wrapped around her shoulders slipped away and fell to the ground. The zombie’s head followed, nearly hitting her on its way down. Draigh’s massive, blood-coated fist reached through the zombies and grabbed her arm, pulling her free of the pile.
The hunter threw her over his shoulder and started to run, heading toward the front of the cavern. Draigh hit the steps Edwige had occupied earlier, slashing backward at the pursuing zombies as he climbed the gore-strewn stairs in two strides.
He rammed the wooden door until it gave way, then slammed it shut in the faces of the pressing hordes, slicing off a few moldy fingers in the process. Breathi
ng heavily, he lowered Ardith to the floor and grabbed a massive table next to the door, shoving it beneath the knob as the zombie hordes pounded and slammed against it.
He leaned against the table, panting.
Ardith gritted her teeth against the incredible pain in her shoulder and pushed herself upright. “Thank you. I thought it was over back there.”
He swiped a hand over his gore-coated face. “It nearly was. We could have used your familiar.”
Ardith shook her head. She didn’t have it in her at the moment to explain how important Sirius was.
“Let’s go. There must be a back way out of this place.” He helped Ardith to stand and they stumbled through the surprisingly plush apartments, built into the side of a mountain. They found an exit and Draigh threw it open, one of his knives clutched in a blood-stained fist.
Nothing.
They were alone, standing on a ledge high on the side of a mountain. Ardith laid her head back against the cool rock and inhaled deeply. The night tasted fresh against her tongue, like ambrosia. Especially in comparison to the nightmare they’d left behind.
Draigh stepped close to the edge of the outcropping and looked over. Something about the stiff way he held himself, and how he only went as close to the edge as he absolutely had to, told her he wasn’t keen on heights.
She laughed and he turned, his glare made even more terrifying under its coat of gore. “What’s so funny, witch?”
Ardith pushed herself off the rock and started forward. “You and I, we’re quite a pair. I’m terrified of being underground and you’re terrified of being above ground.”
To his credit, his lips twitched at her observation. “I’m far from terrified. You don’t see me swooning do you? It’s just that there doesn’t appear to be a way down from here.”
Ardith glanced over the edge and smiled. They were fifty feet above the ground if they were an inch. She grabbed his hand and held it over the ledge. “Call your pretty lights.”
He gave her a wry look. “You mean my guide?”
She shrugged.
He did as she asked and when she saw what she was looking for below, she grabbed him, pulling him into a tight embrace.
“Witch, I’m as randy a man as the next, but I’d really prefer to pursue this line of thought once you’ve scraped the body parts off your skin.”
She snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. You think you’re a Sunday-morning stroll right now? You have at least an inch of zombie ooze all over your body.”
Still, she couldn’t resist clamping her hands over his buttocks. His shocked look was enough to make cuddling up to his butcher-shop stench worth it. “I’m glad to hear you’re not afraid, hunter. Hopefully that means you won’t scream like a girl when I do this.”
She threw her weight sideways and they toppled off the cliff.
His scream and her laughter lit up the night all the way down.
Draigh saw his life flashing before his eyes as the mountainside whipped by. The witch had surely lost her mind. Her delight in his terror was proof of that.
Expecting to die a hard, fast death, Draigh was shocked when his fall was cut short by the silky spring of an invisible net.
They burst apart when they landed and the net grabbed them before they could rebound into the sky.
She lay on her back a few feet away, laughing as Draigh fought to return his stomach to its assigned spot within his gut and catch his breath. “You’re crazed, woman.”
His cranky accusation only served to make her laugh harder. After a moment, when she was able to stop laughing long enough to speak, she said, “You should have seen your face. Priceless.”
“Shut up.” Draigh began crawling, searching for the edge of the web. Grimly, he wondered if his scream hadn’t been a bit shrill. A little girlish. He was pretty sure his tonsils had locked up at one point. Surely he hadn’t shrieked like a virgin as he faced death? Frowning, he realized it didn’t matter, he’d never live it down.
His seeking hand found air and he grasped the edge of the web, flipping himself off and landing lightly on his feet. “Come. You’ve had your fun. Now we have work to do.”
She crawled on all fours toward the edge. Draigh found his body tightening as he watched her come. Her plump breasts strained the worthless scrap of leather that snugged her torso and the thick braid of dark hair slipped over her slender arms as she moved.
When his gaze finally made it to her face, he found her watching him with her bright-green gaze. Heat flared between them, though Draigh tried to shove it back behind an uber-thin veneer of disgust.
Even covered in zombie goo she smelled of jasmine.
He had to fight the urge to clasp her around her narrow waist and lift her to the ground, sliding his hands along her slender ribcage to cup the luscious bounty beneath that scrap of leather. The memory of the kiss they’d shared in the passageway deep within the mountain made his cock stiffen beneath his pants.
Much to his chagrin, she easily dismounted from the web without his help. Though he noticed she limped slightly and held one arm against her side. The wounds from her battle with the zombies weren’t life threatening, but it was certain she would be stiff and sore for a while.
They took off on foot toward Devil’s Glen as Draigh called the guide to track the rogue witch.
The blue lights erupted all around them, coming together and spinning in a funnel over Draigh’s hand. Unfortunately they never took shape.
“Well?”
“She has left this area. The guide cannot find her.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
He frowned. “I am not sure. She could be cloaking her presence of course. But it’s difficult to hide from the guide’s magics.”
“Or she could have really left.”
“She has no travel magics.”
“Wrong. She has no epoch travel magics. But she can shift from geographic area to geographic area. It takes a powerful mage to do it. But after seeing the army she created and threw away in that cavern, I’m starting to understand that Ms. Edwige is more powerful than we were led to believe.”
“It’s impossible for a mage to hide from the elders.”
“Apparently not.”
He scowled down at her.
She stared back, unblinking.
Draigh realized, with a start, that she believed the witch Edwige was operating, at least partially, outside the oversight of the council.
He shook his head.
They continued on toward the portal in silence. As it came into sight, the witch beside him sighed.
Finally she admitted, “Okay. I think it’s time to pay a visit to your Watcher.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“The Watcher cannot see us until morning.”
Ardith scowled. “What is he, some kind of banker?”
They stepped into the portal. Draigh lifted a heavy, dark-blond eyebrow. “Nay. He is not a money changer, he’s an oracle.” His tone of voice made his disgust at her stupidity clear.
Ardith expelled a breath. Last stop, Literalville. “So where do we go now?” The portal engaged and she soon found herself standing in Draigh’s rooms. “What are we doing here again?”
“I’ve changed my mind about making you use your own bath. I’m not letting you out of my sight. You can’t be trusted.”
He strode out of the portal, heading for the bathroom. “This time I’m showering first.”
Ardith waited until he’d turned on the water and she could hear it sluicing over his big body. She tried not to envision the long, thickly built perfection of his form in all its naked glory. The more she tried not to picture it the more clear the picture grew in her mind. Her lips dropped open as the hunter expelled a long groan of pleasure. Her pussy clenched with sudden need, her breasts swelling to discomfort under the unforgiving leather.
Then she got a whiff of herself and, looking down, saw the zombie ooze that coated her. It defied logic that she could think lustful thoughts with prim
ordial ooze all over her body.
Ardith shook her head, disgusted with herself, and lifted her fingers to give the portal a new location. She’d return to her home and get cleaned up, then she’d visit Blackthorne and discuss her latest theory. If Edwige was operating outside the council’s purview, there were no constraints on her activities.
A horrifying thought.
Ardith completed her translocation spell and waited.
Nothing happened.
She tried again with the same results.
Then she realized, that bastard hunter had locked the portal to all but his own, unique signature.
Filled with rage, Ardith strode across the massive room toward the sound of splashing water in the bath. Anger carried her through the door, to stand before the shower.
But rage didn’t have a chance when faced with the incredible reality that was a naked Draigh.
Steam surrounded him, filling the room with moist heat. The hunter stood wide legged under the dense spray of water, his hands resting against the tiled wall beneath the shower head.
His head was bowed and he seemed to be enjoying the heated pulse of the water driving over him—lovingly molding the chiseled planes of his frame.
Ardith realized she was holding her breath. The sweet spot between her legs pulsed with pleasure as her gaze slipped appreciatively over his back and the cut of his narrow waist, caressing the firmly rounded protuberance of his fine ass. Her gaze skimmed down the bulging cuts of his muscular thighs and calves and then upward, to appreciate the well-developed geography of his arms and shoulders.
He was massive and hard…every part of him.
Ardith wondered what he was thinking about in that shower.
“Are you just going to stare at me, or are you coming in?”
His head came up and his gaze slid in her direction. Hunger lit his icy-blue gaze, such hunger that Ardith took an alarmed step backward.