by Lynsay Sands
Memory rushed in then to tell her what had happened. Or at least what she’d been doing before she’d lost consciousness. Obviously they’d passed out and ended up on the bedroom floor, Magnus taking the brunt of the fall.
Allie eyed him with concern now, worried he’d hit his head as they fell, but there was no blood and a brief examination of his head didn’t reveal any bumps. Of course, he might have hit his head and already healed, she thought as she scrambled to her feet.
Allie paused once upright, not wanting to leave him alone there on the floor, but not wanting to stand there naked while she waited for him to wake up either. Spotting his dress shirt on the floor beside the bed, she walked over and scooped it up to put on. It smelled like him, and she paused to inhale the heady scent before doing up the buttons.
Turning back toward the dresser then, Allie stopped when she saw herself. His shirt was big on her, the tails reaching almost to her knees. Despite that, she didn’t think she looked too bad. Kind of sexy, really, she decided with a grin, and then moved back to Magnus. Settling on the floor with her back to the dresser, she lifted his head and then slid to the side until her thigh was under it and then she let it lower to rest on her leg.
As she waited for him to wake up, Allie examined this man that was now her husband. It was still an alien thought to her. Husband. She’d never thought she’d marry, and suspected that if her life hadn’t taken this path, she never would have. She certainly couldn’t imagine doing the things she had with Magnus with any other man. Actually, she was surprised she had with him. That hadn’t been part of her plan when she’d agreed to marry him. But things rarely went to plan in life. That was one thing Allie had definitely learned the last four years as she’d run from Abaddon and his crew. She’d also learned it was often easier if you didn’t make plans for the future, because you never knew when a vampire might pop up to ruin them. It was just easier to roll with the punches and work with what you had. Now she had a son and a husband. A family.
She’d have to work with that, Allie told herself. She could do it. She’d be open to him until he gave her reason not to be, and hope for the best.
“That is a serious expression. What are you thinking?”
Allie glanced down at Magnus’s face to see that his eyes were open and focused on her. She managed a smile, but rather than answer his question asked, “Why do you speak so . . .” She hesitated, unsure of the proper term, and finally said, “You don’t use contractions.”
“Alodia taught me English and she spoke most properly and without contractions. Most old immortals do,” he said, and then sat up and got to his feet.
“Lucian talked like you,” Allie murmured, getting up as well. “But you said Victor was old, and his speech is more modern.”
“You can thank Stephanie for that. She has spent years working on getting him, DJ, Harper, and Drina to use contractions. She claimed their speech made them sound old.”
“It does,” Allie said with amusement. “It kind of makes it obvious that you’re somehow different too.”
Magnus’s eyes widened at that claim, and then he frowned and said, “Then I shall endeavor to change my speech pattern.”
“I’ll help if you like,” she offered.
“I like,” Magnus said with a smile, and then bent to press a kiss to her forehead. Straightening again, he asked, “Are you hungry?”
“I could eat,” Allie admitted, and then grimaced. “And since you’re smelling like steak again, I probably need more than just food.”
“Of course. I should have . . .” Shaking his head, Magnus left her by the dresser and strode around the bed to the cooler next to it. He bent to open it, and then slammed it closed and snatched up his dress pants.
“We are out of blood. But we can get that along with the food,” Magnus announced as he pulled on his pants. He did them up quickly, and then moved back around the bed and caught her hand in passing on the way to the door.
The upper hall was dark and silent, but the lights were on downstairs and enough of it reached the stairwell that descending the stairs was no problem. Victor was in the dining room, peering out the front window. He glanced around at their arrival and smiled faintly, but then turned his gaze out the window again. Allie was relieved. She knew Magnus’s shirt covered her decently, but still felt uncomfortable wandering around in it.
“There’s plenty of food in the fridge if you want it,” Victor said, still looking out the window.
“That is what I was hoping,” Magnus admitted as he led Allie around the counter into the kitchen area. Releasing her then, he opened the refrigerator and retrieved two bags of blood. He handed her one, but when she peered down at it with bewilderment, unsure what to do with it when her fangs weren’t out, he moved closer and set the other bag on the counter behind her. Much to her surprise, he then caught her by the waist and pulled her against him as he lowered his head to nuzzle her ear.
Allie bit her lip and leaned into him at the caress, a little distracted by the knowledge that Victor was just twenty feet away staring out the window, and then Magnus nipped at her ear and whispered, “When I get you back upstairs I’m going to lick every inch of you, from your toes to . . .” One of his hands slid between her legs and rubbed her gently there and Allie gasped as shock and pleasure ripped through her. Distracted by the excitement he’d stirred and the awareness that Victor was just across the room, Allie didn’t notice the shifting in her mouth as her fangs dropped until Magnus stepped back, snatched away the bag she held, and popped it to her fangs.
As she stared at him wide-eyed, he placed her hand gently over the bag, and then winked at her and turned away to open the refrigerator again.
“When the girls checked on you earlier, did they mention that the trap worked?” Victor asked.
Allie glanced toward him with surprise and then back to Magnus as he stilled and then glanced over his shoulder to ask, “They caught Abaddon?”
“They think so,” Victor said. “They got all six vehicles and caught thirty-six rogues in all. One of the men has short hair and fits the general description of Abaddon, but Basha and Marcus are the only people still living who have actually seen the bastard and can identify him for sure.”
“And?” Magnus asked, straightening and turning now to look at the man.
Victor shook his head. “Lucian and Mortimer still haven’t been able to get ahold of them.” He ran a hand wearily around his neck, and admitted, “We’re starting to worry that they ran into something in California that they couldn’t handle.”
Allie’s eyes widened slightly at this news. She recalled the couple being mentioned when she was at the Enforcer house. Lucian had seemed to think it was important that they be in on the search. Now she knew why. They were the only people who could identify Abaddon. But this was the first she’d heard that they hadn’t been able to contact the couple.
“I thought they were checking out a rumored sighting of Abaddon in California,” Magnus said now, reclaiming her attention as he grabbed a tray that rested on the counter and moved back to the refrigerator.
“Yes,” Victor agreed. “Obviously that was wrong if he’s here. But it doesn’t mean there wasn’t a different rogue nest there that they stumbled into.”
Magnus stood with his hand on the fridge door as he considered that, but then shook his head. “I met Basha the last time I was here, and I have known Marcus for centuries. They can handle themselves.”
“We both know sometimes that isn’t enough,” Victor said quietly.
Neither man spoke for a minute, and then Victor turned to look out the window again. “Anyway, until we have verification that Abaddon is among the immortals they got, we’re still on the alert.”
“Right.” Magnus opened the refrigerator door to poke around at the contents. Allie frowned from one man to the other and then, looking down at the bag at her mouth, saw that it was empty and tore it from her fangs. “Can’t you just ask the other rogues if it’s him? Or bette
r yet, read their minds? It sounds like they’re all new turns, so should be easy for you to read.”
Her question made both men turn to peer at her as if her question surprised them. She couldn’t tell if they’d just forgotten she was there, or the idea really hadn’t occurred to them. But then Victor said, “There’s no one to ask. They’re all dead.”
When Allie gaped at him at this news, Magnus explained, “Rogues are rarely taken alive. Knowing they will be judged and executed, they usually fight to the death to escape.”
Allie turned to look at him, and then back to Victor. “So Lucian wants Basha to look at the bodies?”
“Something like that,” Victor muttered, and looked back out the window in what she suspected was a bid to avoid her gaze.
“Here.”
Allie turned and found several bags of blood pushed into her arms. “You carry those and I’ll bring the food.”
She arched an eyebrow, not at all fooled. Allie knew he was trying to get her out of there to prevent her asking what Victor had meant by “something like that.” But she let him get away with it for now and trailed him back up to her room. Or was it their room now? She wasn’t sure.
Magnus urged her to sit on the bed, helped her bring on her fangs, and then popped another bag onto her fangs before moving away to put the rest of the blood in the cooler. Once that was done, he grabbed the tray he’d set on the dresser when they entered and carried it back to join her on the bed.
“We have cold fried chicken, cheese, bottled water, and a couple of bananas,” he announced as he settled cross-legged in front of her with the tray between them. “And your bag is empty.”
Allie tugged the bag from her fangs, and handed it over when he held out his hand.
Magnus tossed it on top of the cooler next to the bed and then turned back to survey the food he’d gathered, muttering, “Hopefully you like something here.”
“I like it all,” she assured him, reaching for a drumstick and a napkin from the small stack he’d also included. “Thank you.”
They were silent when they first started to eat, but then Allie said, “So, you know all about me. Now it’s your turn.”
Magnus was silent as he finished chewing and swallowed the food in his mouth, but then he asked, “What would you like to know?”
“What you’ve been doing the last twelve hundred years,” Allie said dryly, and then asked, “Did you go home after you were finished turning and learning how to survive as an immortal?”
Magnus shook his head. “No. That was not possible.”
“Why?” she asked at once. “You were only fourteen, so the nanos wouldn’t have changed you that much. I mean, it’s not like they had turned you from an old man into a young stud.”
He smiled at her words, but said, “Age is not the only thing they change. I had been in battles and had scars. Those, of course, were gone and that certainly would have been noticed. Aside from that, however, the whole village knew I had gone a’viking with Erik and the others. Their first question would have been to ask after the fate of the other men and I could not explain that.”
“Right,” Allie said slowly. “So you don’t know how your family fared after you left?”
“Actually, I do,” he admitted. “While I did not go back right away, I did visit my village twenty years later.”
“Did anyone recognize you?” she asked at once.
Magnus shook his head. “I did not actually talk to anyone. A stranger would have been noted and confronted, so I approached at night and more or less skulked around spying on everyone to learn what I wanted to know.”
“By that you mean reading minds and such?” she suggested, and when he nodded unapologetically, she asked, “And what did you learn?”
“My parents were both still alive but very old. My sister had married and ran the farm with her husband, while my parents looked after her children. They all seemed content.”
“And the girl you wanted to marry?” Allie asked. “The one you went raiding to win?”
“Ah.” He smiled wryly. “It turns out I made a lucky escape there. A friend of mine had been more successful with his viking efforts. He sailed out with a different group just days after we left, but they made it back alive. He returned with enough gold to convince her to marry him . . . and came to regret it.”
“Why?” Allie demanded.
“Because it turned out that Sassa was as rotten inside as she was beautiful on the outside,” he said with a grimace.
“That was her name? Sassa?”
Magnus nodded. “From what I read from their minds, while he had done his best to make her happy, nothing would. She, on the other hand, delighted in making him miserable.” He grimaced. “My old friend was by that time resolved to simply drinking himself to death so he need not deal with her further.” Smiling wryly, he added, “As I said, I made a lucky escape.”
Allie nodded silently, but was oddly pleased that his young love had turned out to be such a disappointment. She didn’t look too closely at why, though. “So, what did you do then?”
“I was a warrior for Kenric and had been since Alodia finished teaching me about what I was now and how to survive. One of the tasks I was given had taken me to a town close to my old village, which is why I stopped in. Once my task was done I returned to Kenric.”
Allie smiled faintly. She could imagine him as a warrior of old, swinging a long sword or battle-axe. He had that kind of body with his wide shoulders and strong arms. “How long were you a warrior at Kenric?”
“About two hundred years,” he answered, dropping the chicken wing he’d picked clean, and choosing a thigh next. “By that time, I had moved up the ranks to be her first in command over the men and had been in that position for more than a century.”
“Then why did you leave? And wasn’t that dangerous?” she asked before he could answer the first question. “Not being a warrior—that, of course, is dangerous. But I mean remaining in one place so long. None of you age. Didn’t it raise questions by the mortals around you?”
“Alodia had several properties across England. We never stayed in one for more than a decade before moving to another. And fifty or sixty years would pass before we returned to a previous keep. By then most of the mortals we had known had died, and the few who remained were old, often blind, or too decrepit to get around.” He shrugged. “We rarely had trouble.”
Allie nodded, and wondered if that was how all immortals avoided detection, by moving every decade. Before she could ask, though, he answered her first question.
“And I left because I grew weary of battle and wished to return to my roots.”
“You became a Viking again?” she asked with interest.
Magnus smiled crookedly and shook his head. “I am sorry to disappoint you, but no. My roots were farming. I grew up on a farm,” he reminded her. “That Viking expedition was a one-time thing.”
“Oh, right.” She shrugged at her mistake. “So you gave up fighting for farming.”
He nodded. “It was nice for a time. My father had taught me well and I was a successful farmer. But eventually I tired of that too, and decided to travel around. I tried various things along the way.”
“Like what?” she asked with curiosity.
Magnus considered her question briefly, and then said, “Blacksmith, stonemason, carpenter . . . I seemed to most enjoy doing things with my hands, creating things,” he explained. “Eventually I decided I should like my own castle, but I needed a lot of coin for that. And land, of course, which only the king could bestow on you. So I became a mercenary to earn the coin.”
“And controlled a king to get the land?” she suggested.
“No. I might have, but it was not necessary in the end,” he said with a grin. “I was a very successful mercenary. Most immortals are. We are strong, fast, and hard to kill, after all.”
Allie nodded, but said, “Which makes me wonder how Basha could identify Abaddon among the dead rogues when the only wa
y I know that one can be killed is by fire.”
Magnus blinked, and then smiled wryly. “I knew you would revisit that subject eventually.”
“Hmm,” she murmured, and then arched an eyebrow. “So? Is there a way to kill your kind without fire?”
“Beheading,” he said solemnly. “An immortal can survive it if the head is placed back on the body quickly for the nanos to heal, but if not . . .” He shrugged.
“So Basha will be expected to inspect the beheaded bodies?” she asked, grimacing at the thought of thirty-six bodies laid out with their heads severed.
“The bodies will have been burned,” he assured her. “But the heads will have been kept for identification purposes unless ID was found on their bodies. Enforcers try to keep track of mortals who are turned by rogues in case their disappearance causes problems in the future.”
“Oh, God, poor Basha,” Allie said with disgust at the thought of being expected to look over a bunch of detached heads. It sounded like a horror story to her. Although she supposed it was no worse than having to look them over with the bodies lying nearby. Still . . . Shaking her head to remove the images now playing through her mind, she said, “Fine. Thank you for telling me the truth. Now finish telling me about your efforts to get a castle.”
“I will always tell you the truth,” Magnus assured her solemnly, and then took a sip of water before saying, “Successful as we were, it was not long before I had the coin I needed to build my castle, but I needed to be granted land to put it on. Fortunately, the Battle of Agincourt was one of the last contracts I took.”
“Oh, I know about that one,” Allie said, excited to recognize a part of his history. “The Battle of Agincourt happened in 1415.”
Magnus smiled and nodded. “Yes. The history books recorded a great deal of that endeavor. What they did not record was that an attempt was made on Henry’s life the night before the Battle of Agincourt.”