by Vivian Wood
Andrea was brought over, Duverjay hovering in the background and shooting the Guardians distrustful glances. Gabriel had recently begun to take a page from Mere Marie’s book; when he did spells, he now combined the physical ingredients ahead of time and tucked them into a palm-sized white linen sachet. Depending on the spell, the sachet might be worn under clothing and against the skin, burned as it lay inside a circle of salt, cast into the river, or any other number of symbolic gestures.
This spell called for Andrea to place the coin-sized sachet on her tongue as she pictured the spell’s target. Rhys winced sympathetically as Andrea sniffed the sachet and blanched at the scent of it, but she dutifully followed orders and then closed her eyes.
After a brief incantation, Gabriel raised his hands before Andrea’s face. He made a pulling gesture, grabbing at the air near her eyes and pulling his hands backward. A thin gray mist appeared in the air, giving them a flickering black and white moving picture of the young woman who Andrea’s mother befriended.
The image was shoddy, giving few details. The woman had pale skin, light-colored hair, and dark eyes set in a heart-shaped face. The single glimpse of her body revealed a sweetly curved hourglass figure clad in a chic but modest retro-style dress. For some reason, though the details about her were few, Rhys felt a stirring of attraction low in his belly.
He pulled a face, suppressing his strange reaction. He hadn’t had a woman since he’d arrived in New Orleans. Modern women were a complete puzzle to him, playing by rules he didn’t understand, using technology he didn’t want or need, expecting… Well, certainly not courtship, if Rhys had that much right.
He was lonely at the Manor, and unlike Gabriel, he wasn’t making any effort to get used to the city’s smoky bars and loud dance clubs. The dancing was the worst part, actually. The most forced social interaction of all, to “music” Rhys despised, all while pressed up against a strange woman…
He shuddered and pulled himself from his thoughts.
“Right. You’re done,” Gabriel told Andrea, who looked grateful as she spat the sachet into her palm. “Stay with Duverjay until we get your mother free, alright?”
“Thanks,” Andrea said, allowing the butler to lead her back to the front hall. Duverjay and Mere Marie both had rooms on the fourth floor, and Rhys guessed that Duverjay would settle Andrea in his for the night.
“Time for the fun part,” Aeric said, giving one of his rare smiles.
Rhys and Gabriel trudged after him as Aeric headed out the back door, across the yard, and into the gymnasium. The gym was divided into three segments. The bulk of the gym held the sparring area that Rhys and Gabriel had used earlier; the floor could be transformed from tough rubber to softer padded mats, or a ring set up for boxing if needed. The second largest segment of the gym was training and exercise equipment: treadmills, rack after rack of weights, all kinds of specialized equipment to keep their bodies in perfect sword-wielding shape.
The final segment, much smaller than the rest of the gym, was also the only area that was protected by a thumbprint and retinal scanner. Aeric strode across the gymnasium floor to the large black-barred cage and stepped up to the door for a quick scan, disengaging the locks on the foot-thick steel door. He swung it open and stepped inside, pausing to let Rhys and Gabriel follow.
Rhys glanced around at the metal bars that made up the cage’s walls, each stacked floor to ceiling with rows of weaponry. Guns and newer weaponry on the right, swords and brutal low-tech arms on the left. Gabriel went right first, Aeric and Rhys to the left. Typical, as Gabriel had adjusted to 2015’s technologies with ease, whereas Aeric and Rhys had struggled a bit more. Aeric most of all, actually. He’d learned the bare minimum about guns and computers, and gone no further.
Perhaps it was because the fact that, though all three men appeared the same age, Aeric and Rhys were far older than Gabriel, who’d lived only thirty years prior to joining the Guardians. His normal human aging only stopped a few months after arriving at the Manor, thirty years being the common point of stasis for bear shifters.
At any rate, Rhys and Aeric went for swords first. Rhys chose a nicely balanced claymore, Aeric a heavy broad sword. It explained their fighting styles well, Rhys choosing maneuverability and Aeric brute force. They crossed paths with Gabriel, who’d scooped up two black handguns and a double hip holster.
As Gabriel went to find a lightweight sword, Rhys and Aeric chose their guns. A Guardian rule that Mere Marie had instituted — if they were going to fight in the modern world, they needed modern weaponry. If someone fired a gun, the Guardians had to fight back in kind. So far, the guns had gotten very little play. It was second nature for Rhys and Aeric to fight with their swords, and the Guardians’ usual gambit of dispatching demons and threatening bloodlust-stricken vampires were sword-friendly activities.
“Don’t forget your uniform,” Rhys said to Aeric as they headed out of the cage. Duverjay kept three neat stacks of gear waiting on a table just inside the cage, each stack neatly labeled with the Guardians’ names.
Rhys grabbed the black combat boots, black cargo pants, dark gray t-shirt, a specially made weapons belt, and bulletproof black tactical vest. Every item was emblazoned with the Alpha Guardians’ logo, a snarling bear’s head over two crossed swords, with the letters A and G on either side. Heading over to the small locker room beside the arms cage, he suited up.
After threading the weapons harness through his belt loops, he secured a set of straps around each leg at mid-thigh. The belt had a scabbard and sheath on the left side for his sword and two gun holsters on his right, one at the hip and another six inches lower. The back of the holster held a couple of clips for the two .38 specials he carried, and he kept more ammunition in his vest.
Outside the locker room, the Guardians took a minute to check themselves and each other over, making sure all was in place and no one was missing something vital. Another one of Mere Marie’s rules, something she felt encouraged teamwork.
Out of all the thousands upon thousands of new words Rhys had learned over the last year, teamwork was probably one of his least favorites. Its use usually suggested an unpleasant task or personal sacrifice for the larger good, and Rhys had done plenty of both in his lifetime. Still, he had grown to like working with Gabriel and Aeric, to trust them in a fight. Gabriel was a vast pool of information about magic, and Aeric… Rhys hadn’t figured Aeric out quite yet, but the man knew a little about almost everything.
“Let’s get moving,” Aeric said.
They left the gymnasium from the opposite end they’d entered it, going through a short breezeway that led off the property. The Manor was situated on Esplanade Avenue just north of the French Quarter, in a historic neighborhood called the Treme. The Manor and its grounds took up nearly a block, and the Guardians still had to use part of a three-story parking garage that abutted the back of the property to store their numerous vehicles.
Since they were riding together and trying to move fast, Aeric had snagged the keys to a light SUV from the arms cage. He tossed them to Rhys, who was the de facto driver of the group. Less than a minute later, they were pulling out of the garage and gunning for the Marigny neighborhood.
The trip was short, barely a mile. There was little traffic in the area since it was after ten at night on a Wednesday, so they pulled into a parking spot on Spain Street only a few minutes later. The street was residential, tightly lined with colorful row houses that were almost as old as the city itself. The whole neighborhood was filed with shotgun-style cottages. Rhys jumped out and looked around, trying to pinpoint the area where the scrying mirror had shown their target.
Echo, he thought distractedly, a pretty name. Rhys scowled at himself and refocused, but Gabriel solved the riddle first.
“There,” Gabriel pointed. “A few blocks down, the orange one there.”
The other Guardian was right. The distinctive melon-colored house was wedged between a teal blue one and a lime green one, three cheerful a
nd well-kept buildings that were identical except for their color. Rhys pushed into a trot, locking the car with the key fob as they moved down the block.
Rhys stopped across the street from the orange house, number 307. He passed it, walking down a few houses until he came to a spot where a few satsuma orange trees sprang up, their thick foliage giving the men something to lurk behind.
“Aeric, watch the west,” Rhys said, pointing to where they’d come from. “Gabriel, the east. I’ll watch the front door for movement.”
They didn’t have long to wait. A few minutes after they took up their watch, the front door of number 307 swung open with a loud bang. There was the sound of a shout, and a voluptuous blonde in a conservative navy dress burst from the house, barefoot and in a hurry.
Rhys could feel Gabriel and Aeric tense beside him, the sense born of years on the battlefield, fighting side by side with his men. One second Rhys was ready to spring into action, the next second the blonde looked up and met his gaze. One second he was a warrior primed for battle, the next second he was drowning. Her eyes caught him, twin pools of the deepest amethyst imaginable, a regal purple flecked with hints of molten gold.
Mate.
Rhys felt his bear move within him, rising to the surface without forcing Rhys into a shift. His lips parted of their own volition, a ragged cry tearing from his throat. Then he was moving, knowing nothing except that he needed to touch her, protect her.
“Mine,” he growled.
A dark shape barreled into Rhys’s line of vision, something Rhys couldn’t quite comprehend at the moment. The dark blur collided with Rhys’s mate, who gave a shocked cry.
Pop.
Rhys skidded to a halt, staring into empty space. Though the woman had been on the sidewalk a moment before, less than fifty feet away, now she was just… gone.
“He dragged her into a bolt-hole,” Gabriel said, appearing at Rhys’s elbow. “A pocket of space between this world and the next. We can’t go after her, it would be impossible to know exactly where they went.”
Rhys blinked a few times, looking down at his hands, which seemed empty. He’d never been at such a loss before, unable to understand, unable to explain…
“Rhys,” Aeric said, clapping a hand on Rhys’s shoulder. “Look alive.”
Rhys turned to him, lips pulling back from his teeth. His bear was responding to the loss of his mate now, ripping at the last shreds of Rhys’s suddenly-ragged sense of control. Something in Aeric’s ice blue eyes shifted, a response to Rhys’s challenge.
Rhys tipped his head back, his mouth seeking the sky as his body began to ripple, bones shifting as his form shifted from man to bear. Furious and devastated, Rhys released a desperate, frenzied bellow.
Dropping to all fours, he turned and loped down the street, mindless to all but finding that which he’d lost.
5
Chapter Five
Rhys
Laird Rhys Ian Bramford Macaulay had made many difficult choices in his life, chosen the welfare of others over his own in nearly all those moments. He was a born ruler, the blood in his veins the result of generations upon generations of fierce Scottish chieftains. As such, he was used to both putting the interest of others first and to having his way in all matters of importance. A self-indulgent martyr, if such a thing existed.
At the moment that his future mate reappeared, returning to the human plane with a pop, Rhys had only just managed to contain his bear. Aeric and Gabriel had been forced to subdue him before Rhys started a citywide panic with reports of berserk bears rampaging through the 8th Ward. The Guardians had only recently established themselves as a beneficial addition to the Kith community; the last thing they needed was Rhys blowing that by ending up on the evening news for mauling an animal control officer.
Luckily, his fellow Guardians had calmed him somewhat and dragged him back to where the girl had disappeared, insisting on the need to wait, should she return. Their words were mostly bluff, intended only to focus and soothe Rhys.
So when the gorgeous, curvy blonde threw herself at him, he was hard-put to restrain himself. His bear was already rearing and going wild, insisting that Rhys obey the intense and growing mating urges that bloomed deep in his chest. Unfortunately, far from being receptive to being stripped, fucked, and marked, Rhys’s future mate was bawling her pretty eyes out, clutching his shoulders as her body shuddered with the force of her sobs.
All he could do was try to comfort her, and hope that his newfound obsession with sinking his teeth into the tender skin of her shoulder would pass. He just wrapped his arms around her to return her embrace, marveling at the foot-plus difference in their heights. She wasn’t overly thin, her hourglass figure pleasingly substantial, but she still felt incredibly fragile in Rhys’s arms.
“You’re alright, lass,” Rhys said, trying to pretend that sucking in deep pulls of her scent wasn’t making him strangely elated. Rhys immediately identified her scent as that of wildflowers and sunshine, and the specificity of it baffled him.
Rhys gave Gabriel a helpless glance, uncertain how to proceed.
“Give me the keys, eh?” Gabriel asked.
Rhys fished the keys to the SUV out of his pocket with one hand and tossed them to Gabriel, then turned his attention to the girl.
“Echo?” he asked gently, feeling absurd about his tentativeness. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Echo Caballero?”
Echo sniffled and drew back a few inches, embarrassment staining her cheeks a delicate pink. Rhys understood her discomfort. The lure of the potential mate was strong, drawing them together like lightning arcing down to the waiting ground; the sensation had the intended effect of making one forget that the other person was a perfect stranger.
“Y-yes,” she said, swiping at her face with the back of her hand.
Rhys had never so wished for a handkerchief. The thought made him scowl, because comforting women certainly wasn’t his normal routine. The fact that he wanted to do so… well, he’d chalk that up to the mating magic.
“I’m Rhys Macaulay,” he blithered. “R-H-Y-S, but you say it like a Reece’s Cup. My… friends, here… are Gabriel and Aeric.”
Again, Rhys was struck by the complete loss of control over his desires. He didn’t explain himself to anyone, much less spell and pronounce his name, but he looked into those stunning violet eyes and he was just… undone. It was as unfair as it was immutable. There simply was no help for it, which frustrated him.
“Rhys,” Echo said, testing the word. “That’s a beautiful name.”
Gabriel pulled the SUV up to the curb, and Rhys gave Echo a soft squeeze.
“Echo, I know ye doon’t know me, but I think ye know that ye can trust me. Is that not so?” he asked.
He watched her parse his words, perhaps puzzling over the more heavily-accented bits of his speech. His Scottish brogue did seem to thicken whenever he looked at her face. After a moment, she nodded.
“Yes. I don’t know why, though,” she said, catching her bottom lip between teeth.
“I’ll explain that later. Right now, I’d like you to come with me. I live very close by, with these gentlemen,” Rhys gestured to Aeric and Gabriel. “I think you’re involved in something beyond your control, and I’d like to take you somewhere safe. Our house is heavily warded.”
Echo hesitated and pulled away from him entirely, giving herself a little space to think.
“You don’t have to stay,” Rhys said, knowing his words for a lie the second they left his lips. He felt a strange burning in his gut, the knowledge of his lie singeing his lips. “But you can’t just walk around in the open, lass. That man is coming back for you, make no mistake.”
Her gaze jumped back up to meet his, making his heart race like a lovestruck lad’s. Rhys nearly groaned aloud, but he was afraid of frightening Echo away. She gave him another measuring glance, and he could sense that she felt every bit as out of control as he.
“Alright,” she said. “Just until I have a plan,
okay?”
Rhys gave her a jerky nod, because he was suddenly unable to lie to her. His brain thought it, his lips tried to form the sounds, but his tongue went leaden and the words of course simply would not leave his mouth.
“Fucking hell,” he said, astounded.
Echo glanced up at him, startled.
“It’s nothing,” he assured her with a sigh. “Just… adjusting.”
Echo’s expression shifted to one of precise understanding. She allowed Rhys to lead her to the SUV and help her into the back seat. He went around and slid into the back seat beside her, his mouth curling into a frown when his fingers started itching with the need to touch her, to be in some kind of contact. Rhys’s glance slid to the front, where Gabriel and Aeric seemed to be doing everything in their power to look anywhere but at Rhys and Echo.
Mate bonding was much-feared among most shifters, and Rhys was an instant walking illustration of the reasons why. As Gabriel navigated back to the garage behind the Manor, Rhys was left in silence to ponder the fact that his instincts had overtaken his rationality for the time being. For the foreseeable future, at least until he was able to seal the mating bond by marking Echo, it seemed that Rhys would be ruled by his desire and concern for his mate.
Frustrated by this bizarre twist of fate, Rhys clenched his fists and forced himself to stare out the window, trying to tamp down the wildness ruling his heart. By the time they got out of the car, Rhys had better control of himself. He still nearly growled at Aeric when the other Guardian tried to open Echo’s car door, but managed to repress the sound, if not the nasty glare.
“Uh…” Echo said as they walked through the breezeway and into the gymnasium. She looked around with evident trepidation, and Rhys chuckled when he realized that Echo thought they lived in the gym.
“The house is this way,” he said, putting a hand on the small of her back and guiding her across the gym. He couldn’t miss her shiver at the contact, although he wasn’t certain of the cause. Nerves, most likely, though if his own level of arousal was any indication…
