Vahid pressed three fingers to his forehead and bowed. “Warlord.”
“Go.”
No one said anything until Vahid reached the road.
Maddy stayed close to Kynan. “Have Telos find out what Cifai and Garzon have been doing for the last several years. The last two years are more important. Kynan said Garzon was in San Diego with Infante. I suspect Cifai was in Portland not long ago so Telos should start there. If that’s true, he was in deep.”
“I do not work for you,” Durian said.
She drew a quick breath. “Someone needs to follow up with whatever magehelds weren’t here when Cifai and Garzon died. Did you call anyone?”
“That is no longer your right to know.”
She managed to suppress her irritation. She had to because the fact was, she was asking for a favor. “Were you able to help any of the magehelds that were here, or did you get here too late?”
“My directive isn’t to take instructions from you, Maddy.”
“At least tell me Nikodemus called Lys to deal with the office while I’m gone.” Lys Fensic was a lawyer who had recently begun working with Maddy.
“I will not answer that question.”
She firmed her mouth. “There were two guards,” she said. “The other thirteen weren’t leftovers. Cifai was thinking big. Maybe you don’t care because this isn’t Nikodemus’s territory, but they’ve been taking the street witches. My street witches.” She was beyond frustrated now. “Ask your wife how she feels about you not caring what happens to women like that.” Gray and Durian were blood twins by choice, but they’d met because Gray had been kidnapped into a breeding program. “Ask her if she’s okay with Nikodemus doing nothing about that.”
“I did not say we do not care.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Durian.” Kynan spoke with a full measure of contempt. “Someone ordered an indwell of a human woman and got her into Maddy’s house with implanted magic. Ask Vahid what his instructions were if you don’t think that’s a problem.”
“Not necessary,” Durian said.
Kynan snorted. “If all you’re going to do is stand around watching, we’re done here. How about you call Nikodemus and get him here before Sessani comes calling to find out if Winters is knocked up yet?”
He cocked his head. “Is she?”
Kynan went still, and Maddy’s bonds twisted up hard. “Not funny, my friend.”
“To you.” He kept the same even tone. “Even less amusing for Maddy. Am I right about that? If she didn’t take you or try to kill you, then there’s a different problem, isn’t there?”
“Stop dicking around.”
“I told Nikodemus to cut you loose.”
“So?”
“I told him you were dangerous to her. You still are.” Durian crossed his arms over his chest, but he refused to look at her. “Kynan Aijan, you cannot be bound to an unsworn witch.”
“Not your problem,” Kynan said.
“If she were in agreement with those bonds, she’d be yours, warlord. She is not. Why do you suppose that is?”
“You don’t understand shit about how that happened.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. “Go back to Tiburon, warlord. Allow Nikodemus to deal with this.”
“My current directive,” Kynan said, emphasizing the word directive, “is to keep her alive. Funny thing. I don’t trust you around her.”
CHAPTER 19
Back at Cifai’s house, Winters broke their silence. “We need to talk.”
“Seems like.” He followed her to the living room. His dead sworn went from a background murmur to a multitude’s cacophony. He let the voices roll through him as they reacted to Winters being near. Some of them objected to her not being sworn to him, others objected to her continuing among the living, and others bitched about the unsettled future because he hadn’t taken her as his sworn.
She sat on a leather wingback chair and took off her shoes so she could sit with her legs curled under her. He stayed on his feet. Despite her casual position, her shoulders were tense. Her hair was pulled away from her face and hung over one shoulder in a thick, inky river. One hand rested on the padded arm of the chair. Her fingers dug into the leather. He wanted to take her in his arms and soothe away the tension, but he doubted she’d appreciate the contact.
“Something to drink?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He went to the kitchen and grabbed the last two beers. The state of relative calm between them wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. His need to have her acknowledgment would infiltrate his interactions with her, and she’d be pissed off. And he’d be pissed at her for being pissed at him. Maybe they’d get lucky and Nikodemus would get here before that happened. He headed back to her. They were alone in the house, and, in an ironic turn of events, Durian was more or less guarding them.
“Hey,” she said in a tired voice.
“Hey.” The zing of energy between them thickened the air, and from the habit of years he reached to be sure his bonds were blocked. But there was no blood-bound promise and no bonds to keep locked away. He stopped in front of her to pass off her beer and to hold out a sideways fist.
His, his, his welled up from the chorus of his agitated sworn. She needed to be sworn to him. He needed her sworn to him. The urge to make that happen dug in deep. Insistent. Fucking Durian being all worried about what might happen without her being bound.
Curious, she held out her hand, and he loosened his fingers. The rubies he’d taken from the two mages trickled into her cupped palm. Her eyebrows went up.
“Keep them,” he said and, without his entirely meaning it, there was power in his words. The rubies were safer with her than they were with him anyway, but he was running a fine line here. He reached into his pocket again and took out some copa he’d pinched from the killing room. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“No.”
Anticipation and proximity to Winters were making him jittery, and jittery was never good around her. He took half a bolus and returned the rest to his pocket. He needed to relax. Badly. Beer, much as he liked the brand and the taste, wasn’t going to do a damn thing for him.
Winters closed her fingers over the gems, still locked away from him, and it was all he could do not to demand that she stop it. He didn’t have that right. And his wanting it didn’t confer it. There was what was possible and what was right, and those two things didn’t always overlap.
She let the rubies stream from her fist to the table and then examined the gems in more detail. “Thank you.”
“I figured you’d appreciate them more than I would.”
She laughed softly, swirling a finger through the rubies. “I’ve never liked rubies. I’ve always thought they seemed cold.” She picked up one of the star rubies. “Even this. Beautiful as they are.”
“What do you like?”
Her eyes were huge, even through the veil of her lashes. “I’ll spend a fortune on shoes, and it turns out I like common gems. Amethysts, citrines.” She shrugged. “They’re pretty.”
“You never wear jewelry.”
“It gets in the way of fighting.” Her thick, dark hair swung away from her outside shoulder. “Do you think Vahid will come back?”
He washed away the taste of the copa with a mouthful of beer. “His choice.”
“Yes.”
“I’m hoping.”
She focused on the rubies. She was drawing power from them, a thin stream of magic that skittered up and down his arms. Without the copa doing its thing, his reaction would have been a lot worse. “I was certain he’d be sworn to you by the end of the day.”
“I want you first.” Maybe he was too relaxed. He didn’t move or speak, but as he waited for her reaction, he decided it didn’t matter. He’d meant the words. They were his feelings, and there was only so much he could hold back without building up to a bigger breakdown between them later. Another shiver slid down his back when she drew on the rubies again.
“So un
funny.” She was his now, yet she was a million miles away. “Nikodemus will have something to say about that when he gets here.”
“Just telling you how I feel, Winters.” He lifted his bottle to her. “I’d give you a room full of amethysts to have that. Another of citrines.”
She stayed quiet, and he reflected on the fact that she was not a witch you fucked with. Some of the others, their power could sneak up on you, Carson or Paisley, for example. Those two seemed like witches none of the kin needed to stress over, but that would be the exact wrong assessment. He’d seen plenty of kin underestimate those two. Other witches had magic that kin with even half a thimble of power knew they needed to respect. Gray. Emily. And Winters. Her, most of all.
She arranged the rubies from smallest to largest. The beer he’d brought her remained untouched. She continued blocking her thoughts, and no way was he going to ask her not to. Given the direction of their conversation, her private thoughts probably weren’t much different from her words.
He brought over a chair and slouched on it with his beer bottle dangling from one hand. He wanted her to look at him, but she refused, and even with the copa having an effect, the warlord in him objected. In his experience the easiest way to get a needed conversation going was to plunge in head-first. “You should have let me die back at your place.”
She lifted her eyes to his, and the zing kicked up several notches. He loved that don’t mess with me look, even when it was leveled at him. “Fuck you.”
“You didn’t, and I lived.” He pictured her draped with citrines that glowed like gold against her skin. “Now we have to deal with the consequences.”
She went back to arranging the rubies into patterns. For a long time. He could wait. He won that battle, sort of, because she ended the silence. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Yeah?”
“We should assume Sessani and her crew are responsible for the disappearance of street witches around here.” She left off the rubies and settled into the chair. “My guess is, she keeps a few of the girls who pass the test so she can siphon off their magic the way Magellan did with Carson.”
“And traffic the rest for cold hard cash.” He didn’t need a link with her to know what her reaction would be to that revelation.
Winters went still, and though she looked at him calmly, there was rage in her eyes. “If that turns out to be true, I’ll start the war myself.”
He took a drink. “Vahid was there. He had no reason to lie. Besides which, I know he didn’t. So do you.”
“Nikodemus needs to extend his territory at least into Humboldt County.” She went back to playing with the rubies. Maybe that was a message to him. Now that everything had changed, they needed to clear up whatever she was thinking about the two of them.
He leaned over and put a hand on top of hers, steeling himself against the effect of the rubies. “Winters.” He waited for her to make eye contact, but she didn’t. Wouldn’t. “Let’s settle this.”
She drew her hand from underneath his. “He should go as far as the Oregon border. That would be a big help.” The whole time she was talking, everything else about her was saying fuck you, Kynan Aijan. “That would send a message to the Portland mages. But I don’t think even he can do that.”
“He can now.”
That made her look at him. There was a lot of anger there, and some of it was for him. He leaned back, antsy. “I want—need us not to disagree about the details of our new status.”
“You want.”
“Need, Winters. I need it.”
She smiled mostly to herself. “We will, though. Disagree. Of course we will.”
He leaned back again even though it went against his every instinct. Now that he wasn’t as close, she sorted the rubies by size. At least she kept one eye on them.
“I’m done dancing around this whole deal.”
She froze. Yeah. She got it, all right. “Is it my imagination that you’re stronger now?”
“No. A lot less distracted, too.” He sat forward again.
She picked up the largest of the star rubies. “Strong enough for Nikodemus to hold that much territory?”
“Yes.”
She blanched.
He returned to his slouch. He needed her to acknowledge him, but forcing the issue would be a mistake. He couldn’t. The slightest hint of compulsion from him, and he’d destroy what trust they had. Fucking sworn needed to shut the fuck up about his situation. “When I made those bonds, you weren’t supposed to live more than a day or two. Four if I got lucky.” He didn’t remember much about those days, but he remembered those hours with her. “I wasn’t thinking about anything except what I needed right then for what I wanted to do. Believe me, if it had been possible to undo those bonds without the risk of killing you, I would’ve done it already. Nikodemus would have done it.”
She drew in a long breath, and some of the tension eased. “I’m not an idiot. I know that.”
“Just making sure things are clear.”
“I understand the difficulty of anyone working with those unclosed bonds. But now?” She scooped up several of the larger rubies, fully into her all-business attitude. “Now, maybe it’s finally safe. They’re not volatile anymore, and you don’t have a promise to Nikodemus.”
“If it were a matter of stability, Nikodemus would have let them close and dealt with it, and we wouldn’t be in this situation now.” He didn’t know how much to tell her—or how to say it. No matter what he said, he stood a good chance of putting it badly.
She cocked her head, and his jitters came back. “It’s in your interest for that to be true.”
“No,” he said softly. She looked up, and they connected. Need. “It’s not in my interest to lie to someone I want sworn to me.”
That made her think. The problem was, he didn’t think she’d ended up at a happy place. “Are you saying we’re worse off than before?” She shook her head. “That’s not possible.”
There was no point being anything but brutally honest. “Worse for you. Not me.”
She burst out with a frustrated breath. “You are such an asshole.”
“What I want is to demand your oath to me. I want you on your knees, fingers pressed to your bowed head. That’s what I fucking need, Winters.”
“No.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Not the way you want me to be.” The copa was still working on him, but he was thinking maybe he needed more. “Tell me what you need from me in order to say yes. If it’s possible, it’s yours.”
“Time.”
“How much?”
Her eyebrows quirked, so he knew he was about to get a bullshit answer. “Eternity?”
“How about a week?”
At least that got a laugh from her. She reached for her beer and took a sip. “I cannot stand that I actually like this. I’d rather not like anything you like.”
“I like breathing when I need to. Does that mean you want to stop breathing?”
“You’re being difficult on purpose.”
His magic shimmered all around them, through every corner of the house. She had to react to that. Had to. She had to be as close to losing it as he was. “So are you.”
While the quiet stretched out, he allowed himself to see her again. New. With the eyes and perceptions he had now, with his new reality still transforming him. Beautiful woman. Strong. Loyal. Dedicated. She did like the finer things. Too bad they might never be able to set aside all the shit that kept them barely speaking and seething with resentment.
“There’s a lot I don’t remember about what happened that day.” He forced himself to stay slouched. “But I know this: those bonds were fucked-up and twisted when I made them, and sure, they’ve changed, but they’re still fucked-up and twisted.” He held up his thumb and forefinger separated by a millimeter. Less. “We’re this far from being fucking blood twins, Winters. Let’s just finish it, and move on.”
She slid a fin
ger through the sorted rubies and smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile meant to reassure anyone, especially him. “Check your work, warlord.”
Slowly, he sat up. “There’s benefits to us being blood twins.”
Her eyebrows rose with cool doubt. Exactly the expression she knew pissed him off. “Such as?”
“You’ll live longer.”
“Not necessarily appealing.”
“More power. Both of us.”
She thought about that. “I’m happy the way I am.”
“Mind-blowing sex.” They both knew that wasn’t a consequence of an oath.
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Really.” He smiled, soft and wicked, the way she liked. “Let me show you.”
She made herself accessible to him, the way she taught her street witches to practice. The link fired on fast. Winters was present. With him. Part of him. Of him. His magic surged along the sizzling connection, straight to the core of her. Her eyes widened, and he couldn’t help himself. He growled because for damn sure he wanted to take them places that weren’t safe. He leaned forward, nearly on his feet, but forced himself to stay put. This was what he wanted, her singing through him exactly like this.
“Here’s what you don’t get, Winters. What matters is that you are mine now, the way you should have been all along. I’m not supposed to feel that way, but I do, so fuck you.”
“There are rules, warlord.” He saw her. He knew her. He was hooked in so tight he practically was her. His earlier indwell of her made their connection even more intimate. She wasn’t as confident as she showed him. Interesting.
“I didn’t break any of the rules. You told me to indwell. You ordered me to.”
My Demon Warlord Page 17