We danced. And danced.
The magic circled around us, spinning and kissing.
I threw my head back and laughed. The dancers closest to me howled in response — the sound thrilling but terrifyingly inhuman — and pressed closer.
Wolves. Werewolves, to be exact.
A chill ran down my spine, cutting through the heat generated by the dance. Magical beings, not just magic users like Sienna, Rusty, and I. No wonder they tasted so strongly.
Suddenly the wolves, all except the girl with the green hair, pulled back a step. A man moved into their circle.
I looked at him. He looked at me.
Then he smiled. An answering grin spread across my own face. He was a few inches taller than me, and dressed as I was in a tight T-shirt and jeans, his clothing a rather snug fit over his well-muscled frame. He was pushing past two hundred pounds, all of it muscle. His dark hair was cropped short, its styling effortless. He hadn’t bothered to shave in a couple of days.
I flicked my hands up over my head in time with the beat, rocking my hips in his direction.
He instantly closed the space between us. Brushing against me but not grabbing. His magic — even more potent that the others — slid across my skin. I almost shuddered with the divine feel of it. He tasted of expensive dark chocolate — fine and smooth, citrus middle notes, and a clean nose with no aftertaste.
I opened my mouth just a little, and tilted my head toward his neck. I inhaled his clean scent. He laughed, his hands brushing over my hips, and did the same to me. The light touch of his breath was warm and welcoming, so different than the vampire’s icy touch.
Another song had started, but I didn’t even notice the music other than keeping time with the beat. The wolves surrounded me, brushed against me, sharing magic. I should have been scared out of my mind. I wasn’t. I lost track of Sienna and Rusty. I felt teeth against my arms, which were stretched up, out, and surrounded by wolves.
The dark prince — I guessed his hierarchy based on the deference of the others — ran his fingers through my hair and loosened my hair clip. My curls tumbled around my neck and shoulders. He dipped his head to smell me, as if I was a glass of fine wine. He ran his fingers along my arm, which was currently twisted up over his shoulder. I danced my fingers at the back of his neck — hardly touching — and he shuddered in response.
The magic built between and around us.
I wanted to press myself against him. I wanted to taste him with my actual mouth, not just my magical senses. I wanted a different kind of build and release, but that wasn’t how I played this game.
Everyone knew that witches didn’t run with wolves. Very few of the Adept intermingled at all. Rusty’s parents — a witch married to a necromancer — were definite anomalies, and were treated as such. Plus, I had a feeling these wolves were just visiting, because with magic that tasted like this, I would have noticed them before. Visiting werewolves were definitely not relationship material.
The song ended.
The beat just dropped and left me hanging, raised slightly on my toes, hands in the air. Practically wrapped around a stranger.
The club was closing. I hadn’t even noticed the hours passing. Wolves could apparently dance all night.
I moved back, just a half step. My breathing was ragged.
The lights came up. It was definitely closing time … where had the evening gone?
I turned my head slightly and caught sight of the perfect jawline of my companion. The other wolves melted into the rapidly thinning crowd. The dark prince brushed the curls away from my ear. His breath was hot as he whispered, “Take me home, little witch. I like the way you dance.”
A shiver ran down the side of my neck and into my spine to pool in my nether regions. My limbs were loose and compliant. I could take him home. I could forget I didn’t know him at all. I could share magic, and touches, and bodily fluids …
An ache of regret spread through my chest. I wasn’t going to … no matter how tempted. My grandmother’s warnings about being intimate with the magically-inclined, about the vulnerability of such actions, echoed through my mind.
I stepped back and flicked my eyes over his shoulder to see Sienna waiting for me on the edge of the dance floor. My sister didn’t look too happy. I’d let it go too far with the wolves for her comfort … Sienna’s arms were folded, which meant she was scared. Just as I should have been, surrounded by werewolves. But their magic, which still swirled in a dying ebb around us — heavy enough that even Sienna could probably feel it — didn’t feel frightening to me.
The dark prince groaned lightly, as he turned his head to follow my gaze. “Your friend doesn’t approve of me?”
“Witches don’t run with wolves,” I answered.
He laughed. “Don’t be so sure.”
His laugh was infectious, so I grinned back at him.
“At least give me a name.”
“Jade.”
“I’m Hudson.”
“Of course you are.”
“Is that funny?”
I smiled and stepped around him.
“A phone number would also be nice,” he said, but I’d caught sight of the man seated at the table behind Hudson — if man was the right word at all. If I thought Hudson to be the perfect male specimen, this guy was epically more manly. More brutal. Hudson was long and lean. This guy was hard and terrifying. This was who had scared Sienna.
And he was currently staring at me — glaring actually — his arms crossed and his lip almost imperceptibly curled in a snarl. Emerald green glinted off his eyes, as if the overhead lights were casting a strange glow.
“Scary … eyes,” I murmured, frozen in place like prey.
“He won’t hurt you,” Hudson said, but he honestly didn’t sound all that sure.
Sienna, her hand low at her side, snapped her fingers — a warning we’d used as children. The sound woke the part of my brain that controlled movement and I ripped my eyes away from Mr. McGrowly — yes, it helped to make fun of him in my head — as if painfully, slowly, peeling a bandage from my brain. I was pretty sure he was going to eat me, but only after he played with me for a while. And not in a satiating, mutual bliss sort of way. This one liked to hunt, and he kept what he killed.
I found Sienna’s eyes instead, and moved toward her. She stepped back and into the crowd, heading toward the exit. She’d been standing just to one side and behind the peripheral vision of McGrowly. Rusty peeled off from the bar where he’d been waiting, following her into the crowd at the doors.
Hell, they were scared enough that they were distancing themselves from me.
“Ah, Jade, don’t be like that,” Hudson moaned behind me.
I kept walking. Once I felt buried in the people heading toward the exit, I chanced a look back.
Hudson was standing next to McGrowly, both of them watching me leave. Hudson looked regretful, but he smiled when I turned back. McGrowly barked something at him that made his grin disappear, and he dropped my gaze. The green-haired girl was perched on their table, but at a nod from McGrowly, she slipped off toward the staff exit.
Sienna appeared beside me, wrapped a hand around my arm, and began pulling me through the crowd. We stumbled out the doors hand in hand.
I raised my face to the crisp air, the chill easing the last tinges of intoxicating magic. Rusty slung my jacket over my shoulders and I thrust my rapidly cooling arms into the sleeves. The fine dew of sweat from the dancing suddenly didn’t feel so pleasant.
They didn’t talk. They just tugged me across the cobblestone street — one of the few left in Vancouver — while dodging slow-moving cars. The sidewalks were thronged with people exiting clubs and bars. No one in the immediate vicinity was over thirty. This area brimmed with nightclubs, all of which closed at 2:00 a.m.
Time to go home.
We turned a corner onto another street, Carrall or Abbott maybe. I get turned around easily. The crowd
thinned to a few friend groupings and a couple of homeless people wandering in and out of the side alleys. The pavement here was wet. It must have rained while we were in the club.
“You’re freaking me out,” I said, needing to break the oppressive silence.
“We can’t go home yet,” Sienna murmured to Rusty, completely ignoring me.
“Right. After-hours club?” he answered and asked.
“Guys, it was just a dance,” I said, wrenching my arms out of their grips. I wasn’t going to be yanked across town. I needed at least a couple of hours of sleep before baking.
Sienna rounded on me. “Do you know who that was?” she whispered, her voice soft but harsh.
I shrugged. “Wolves.”
“Wolves,” Sienna spat. “At least four of them, plus the one who didn’t dance …” She finished with a shudder.
“You’re overreacting —”
Sienna turned her head sharply toward the mouth of the alley we’d just walked past. “What’s that?” she asked with a hiss.
“It’s nothing,” I replied. As long as being stalked by wolves was nothing, that is. I could feel the magic of the green-haired girl emanating from the shadows. I was surprised Sienna had noticed.
Sienna’s lips pulled back off her teeth. Most of her face was eclipsed by the shadow of the overhead streetlight, which darkened her eyes until they seemed like nothing but pupil. “Do you have your knife?” she asked.
“Sienna, it’s just the wolves playing. They’re not going to hurt us. We don’t need knives.” Sienna turned back to me into the light, and what I had mistaken for dark anger was fear. “Sienna, it’ll be fine. I’m going to grab a cab home. You and Rusty enjoy the rest of his birthday.”
Sienna nodded and looked to Rusty.
He wrapped his arm around her. “It’s okay, babe. It’s not the first time Jade’s attracted attention.”
“That was a lot of attention,” Sienna said. She placed air quotes around the word attention, her voice a snarl of sarcasm.
I sighed. Sienna had issues with taking anger out on the wrong people. Especially when her fear masqueraded as anger. I turned my head toward the alley. The wolf magic was moving away. “See. No wolves bursting out of dark alleys … I’m sorry I scared you.”
Sienna snorted a laugh, but it held none of her usually playful tone. “You didn’t scare me, Jade. I can handle myself.”
“You bet you can,” Rusty said, getting her attention with a leer. Sienna giggled, sounding a little more like herself.
I raised my hand and flagged down a cab trolling the street just behind us. We’d lucked out — the streets were one way around here, and the cab must have just dropped off a fare before circling back to the crowd seeping out from the row of clubs all along this strip.
∞
I asked the cab to pull over at the north side of Burrard Street Bridge. I felt like walking home to burn off the residual magic still coating my skin, though not in a bad way. The after-hours club Rusty and Sienna were heading to was on the north side of the water anyway. No sense in doubling back.
Sienna protested but was pretty wrapped up — literally — in Rusty. They already had an outlet for their ‘residual magic.’ I was a bit envious. Sienna didn’t worry about sexual dalliances with the magically inclined. But then, Rusty was low in the power department, and the wolves had been much, much higher.
Was I worried the vampire was still lurking somewhere? Maybe. But I knew he couldn’t hurt me without breaking his vampire code — Rusty’s info had been confirmed by the vampire’s mention of “safe passage” earlier — plus, I wasn’t going to let him play me. I wasn’t some toy.
∞
So I walked, happy that my Fluevog boots were sexy yet still practical. I tucked my collar up, lowered my head to the wind as it rushed over the bridge, and hoped it didn’t rain.
I didn’t hear or see the vampire until he was matching me stride for stride.
I fought back the instinctive urge to run, reminding myself I wasn’t going to let him scare me. But being on a long cement bridge over a wide inlet pretty much limited my escape options, so that didn’t help with the instincts. Plus, he’d be faster than me. Way faster. I knew that much about vampires at least.
“You don’t happen to fear water or heights, do you?” I asked without looking at him.
“No. Why?”
“I was thinking about jumping and wondering if you’d just follow.”
The vampire threw his head back and laughed. I could clearly see the stretch of his neck and tilt of his head in my peripheral vision. It was a purely human sound, and for some reason, that scared me more. He could pass for one of them … walk among those who couldn’t see the magic simmering off him, then rip someone’s head off with a flick of his wrist.
“I wasn’t attempting to be funny.”
“And yet you are.”
“So this is your safe passage?”
“You can’t get any safer than with me by your side.”
“Right. That doesn’t sound creepy stalkerish at all.”
He didn’t respond further. Apparently, he was okay with being a creepy stalker.
“What do vampires care about murders in Vancouver?”
“It’s the missing blood that drew our attention.”
“So … it looks like a vampire kill?”
“Yes, but not on closer inspection.”
“And if it was done by a vampire?”
“Then I would have found and sentenced the killer already.”
“Capital punishment?”
“Not unless I had no other choice.”
“Because vampires are precious.”
“Yes.”
“I still don’t understand why you care, if it wasn’t a vampire.”
“Appearances must be maintained.”
I had no idea what the hell that meant — maybe bad PR for the vamps? But I didn’t want to look more ignorant than I’m sure I already did.
“The shifters seemed enamored of you tonight, especially the wolves. I can see how your magic could be intoxicating.”
“What do you mean ‘especially the wolves?’ What other shifters are there?” I deliberately ignored the intoxicating comment. He didn’t need any more reasons to think that drinking my blood might be a treat.
“I’d be careful. They aren’t the cute playthings they seem to be, especially when they’ve lost one of their own.”
“What do you mean by ‘especially the wolves?’ ” I repeated. “And ‘one of their own?’ Did someone kill a werewolf here in Vancouver?”
The vampire didn’t answer. We continued to walk across the bridge side by side. I tried to keep my pace steady, though every few moments my steps unconsciously quickened and I had to slow.
We were approaching the crest of the bridge, almost halfway across. A cement outcrop stood there, rising off one of the central concrete pillars thrust up from the water below.
The vampire suddenly dangled the burned trinket he’d showed me earlier in front of my face. I nearly walked right into it, but then the magic hit me straight in the gut. It rolled over me, dark and terrible, like ashes in my mouth. I faltered. I twisted away from the cursed thing in his hand. The vampire followed me. The stink of magic coated my nose and forced its way down my throat. My stomach protested.
I held up my hands, backed away, and hit the concrete side of the bridge, hurting my hip and back. I was getting frantic. I thought the night had already featured a number of terrifying moments, but this … I wanted to flee and hide.
I twisted away again, retching the contents of my stomach onto the sidewalk. What an awful waste of an expensive meal.
I retched again but my stomach was empty.
The dreadful magic disappeared. The vampire reached for me, perhaps to steady me — I could feel rather than see him — but I fought his hands. I probably would have been less bruised if I hadn’t tried to knock him away.
It was like hitting granite — and I know, I’ve taken a header in my kitchen before.
A car slowed on the bridge, honking. It probably looked like the vampire was assaulting me. I looked up — I was still hunched over, waiting to see if I was going to heave some more — and caught the concerned eyes of a carload of twenty-somethings.
“Wave them off,” the vampire murmured. Yes, wave off the fragile, blood-filled humans.
I flapped my hands and attempted to straighten. “Thanks, guys,” I called. “Just too much to drink, I think.”
The driver nodded, though his companions looked a little unconvinced. The car slowly pulled away.
I took a few hesitant steps. A show of independent movement for their rear view mirror. Plus, I wasn’t interested in continuing to stare at my own puke.
I wiped my hand across my face, and my stomach spasmed at the remembrance of the sickly magic that had emanated from the burned trinket. “What the hell was that?” I said. I tried to snap, but my protest sounded a lot more like a pitiful moan.
“Black magic,” the vampire answered easily enough. He certainly was chatty now that I was practically incapacitated and trapped.
“The trinket was used to kill someone? That can’t be … can it?”
The vampire shrugged. “I’m not a black witch.”
“Well, neither am I.”
“I can see that. Your reaction was rather extreme. Unexpectedly.”
“Is that an apology?”
The vampire fixed his icy eyes on me and didn’t answer further. It seemed he only stayed in human mode for short periods.
“I’m not some interesting bug!” I spat.
“I’m not the collector here,” he answered. He meant the trinkets. It was true that I was a collector — the proverbial magpie — but somehow that smug observation pissed me off further.
As I tried to soothe my rage, I realized how surreal it was to be standing in the middle of a four-lane bridge in the early morning — in the slight breeze, underneath starlight — having just puked up black magic, while being stalked by a vampire who believed that my little trinket could kill someone.
Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic Page 4