Still, you are verbally abusive to the woman he loves, Adam noted.
Not as much as before, she tried to excuse herself. Time has begun to mellow me toward her.
Adam laughed. I wonder if she would agree with that assessment.
He felt the sheepishness that skimmed her thoughts. He realized then how much he had underestimated her. He comprehended how little he truly knew about her depths, her passions, and her flaws. But this connection between them was closing the gap rapidly, filling his mind with her in extraordinarily full dimensions. And with each dimension she seemed to grow more beautiful. The wind whipping through her hair, twisting it to and fro, made her look like a storming goddess, a powerful woman in charge of all the elements around her. In a way it was an amusing comparison since he was the only one in control of any elements. Yet cold hard facts had no place in his vision of her, although he had never seen her more clearly. Had never seen anyone so clearly.
“Easy there, Romeo. Don’t get carried away on a wave of romantic drivel,” she shouted to him.
That made him laugh. Perhaps he was romanticizing to some degree. It seemed he couldn’t help himself. Normally he was a creature who worked in logic and stone-cold truths, who clearly saw the line of the law and would not allow himself to see shades of gray. The fact that he had stars in his eyes as he looked at her could be construed as very amusing. His brother would never let him live it down.
At least, the Jacob he knew would have had fun with it. But now his brother was a stranger to him. And he had yet another brother whom he had not even met. His life was in a state of turmoil ... so how was it that he felt so calm and so incredibly centered?
Jasmine felt herself smiling as his thoughts ran almost musically through her head. As a telepath she was very comfortable walking through the thoughts of others, but her ability forced her to do the seeking. This connection with Adam was proving to be like a light that was left on all the time. It was a wonder Imprinted mates didn’t burn out after a while, what with trying to manage and catalogue the thoughts of two beings at once. But as Adam had noted, there was nothing innately stressful about what they were experiencing. It was just unusual. Alien. Yet quickly growing familiar.
She ought to have been more upset about this whole thing, his invasion of her space and mind, the severe alteration of her body and her soul.
She was not. She could not make herself be. Because it felt too much like coming to completion, becoming suddenly whole. Had someone asked her yesterday if her life was complete, she would have absently said yes, disregarding all the empty places she had covered up these past four hundred years, and others that had existed even before she had ever encountered Adam. But for the first time ...
For the first time.
For the first time her body was singing and her soul was in chorus with it. The mixture of their thoughts in her mind and the blood she had taken from him swirled into the choir of it.
Good God, she was on the verge of skipping through a field of daisies in a gauzy white dress with freaking flowers in her hair.
She laughed with him at the imagery. He didn’t understand the reference completely, but he could appreciate the absurdity of it nonetheless.
They both stopped laughing at the same moment, as if it had been planned, when each felt the overwhelming sense of wrongness that echoed in Adam’s blood. All of the Enforcer instincts that had been muted for some reason until that moment came screaming to life. Suddenly every cell in his body went off as though each was an individually screaming klaxon. The Water Demon shot to the ground as quickly as he could, his form shifting from mist to flesh like the whipping back of a curtain to reveal a magic trick. There was, however, no grace to it and no showmanship intended. He was driven down to a single knee as he tried to brace himself against something that was happening from the inside out.
And because it was stripping through him, it was stripping through her. Though certainly not as powerfully. Her advantage was her extensive familiarity with her enemy.
She quickly stood before him, taking his face in her hands and leaning his forehead against her solar plexus. She comforted him by running her hands through his hair and gave him a moment to compose himself.
“She’s very close. Within a mile,” she told him. “What you are feeling is no doubt the effects of some kind of spell intended to put off the Enforcer, using his own power against him. It was perhaps meant for Jacob, in case he came hunting her.”
“No doubt the components of it are attached to those things within us that make me and Jacob brothers as well as Enforcers,” he said tightly. “I fought many a necromancer in my time. I am familiar with their tricks. Although I confess, this is something altogether different. A Demon casting spells. It is as unnatural as one can possibly conceive of.”
“Yes. Very much so. As unnatural as Vampires killing in a feed or ...”
“Drinking the blood of Nightwalkers,” he finished for her when she trailed off. “But one taboo broken has led to nothing but pain and misery, while the other,” he said, looking up into her eyes, “has led to us. There is no such thing as good magic. And all I see in this connection with you is goodness.”
“I look forward to introducing you to Valera,” Jasmine said with lips turned up in amusement. “She is a natural-born Witch staying in the Vampire court at the moment with her Shadowdweller mate, Sagan. She is living proof that a human with magical inclinations can use magic in a good way. Holistic magics. Defensive magics. Well-intentioned magics. We have begun to call it white magic or sometimes clean magic. It is quite something to see.”
Adam sighed deeply, resting his head against her again for just a moment. Talking to her was easing the pain inside him, helping him get a handle on it, helping him to compartmentalize what was necessary to finish his hunt and what was not.
The world has changed so much, he thought wearily.
“Don’t let it overwhelm you now. You’ve barely scratched the surface of the changes you will see, and you cannot let despair take you over. And for every bad taste, I promise you there is an equally good one waiting for the curious touch of your tongue.”
Jasmine felt the mischievous quirk of the smile that touched his lips.
Her soothing hand in his hair quickly wrapped around a few locks and gave a hard tug.
“Ah! Vicious woman,” he cried, grabbing hold of her wrist as he surged up to his full height. “Give me some time to learn to censor my thoughts better before you start to punish me for them! I am unused to every stray idea being monitored. It takes a large measure of control to filter what goes through my mind from coming past my lips.”
“Oh, as a lifetime telepath, I am very aware of this,” she assured him. “I did not punish you for the thought, merely for having it in a situation where I could do nothing to take you up on it. I rather hate being put in the position of having to be responsible.”
“That is a merry lie,” he accused her. “Everything you do reeks of responsibility.”
She visibly winced.
“Ouch. You really know how to hurt a girl.”
“Confess,” he urged her. “I know you must see it as clearly as I do. You are the right hand of a powerful monarch. You are in charge of a multitude of subordinates who are not always used to being subordinate to others, never mind a Nightwalker of a different breed, and you dance attendance on the leaders of other nations. You might wish others to see you as being a long-legged sack of trouble, but I think you are failing miserably.”
“Mmm, well ...” She tilted her head back so she could look up into his eyes, their stunning green so incredibly pretty in the face of someone so incredibly male. “I bet no one else would ever dare say that to my face. That has to count for something. And the only reason you are getting away with it is because ... I’m in a mellow mood.”
“Admit it, you rather like me,” he needled her, cupping her jaw and tilting her face to his dropping lips.
“You’re not bad, as far as o
bnoxious, arrogant asses go,” she relented with a smirk.
“Bah!” He pushed her face aside, not bothering to hide the irrepressible grin she inspired. “Let us get this over with.”
“Acting with haste as usual, Jasmine?”
Jasmine tilted her head to look at the Vampire intruding on her private exchange with Adam. She had sensed Damien’s approach somewhere in the back of her mind, but had been more focused on Adam and his needs of the moment. She was not foolish enough to disregard Damien’s value in the encounter to come. She wanted a successful vengeance, not a private one. That was why she had been so eager to have Adam by her side. However, Damien was a much cooler head and knew the enemy far better than Adam did. She had played on Adam’s arrogance and confidence a little in order to recruit him to her way of thinking.
A trick I will not fall for twice, he thought admonish-ingly to her.
The grin she flashed at him was as unrepentant as the one she gave to Damien.
“That implies I had not put a great deal of thought into my actions. I assure you, Damien, I have done little else.” She raised a brow when she saw Syreena at Damien’s side as well as Valera the Witch and Sagan the former Shadowdweller penance priest. Sagan had given up his calling as one of the most powerful warrior priests to stand protectively at his mate’s side. He was a fighter of incomparable skill, and at present armed with the notoriously vicious khukuri blade he wielded so proficiently.
“This is not a wise battle for a Shadowdweller,” Jasmine noted. “The light that emanates from Ruth’s magic will burn you to a crisp.”
“I have a protective spell for that,” Valera countered proudly, her hand drifting to rest on Sagan’s powerful forearm. “It covers him in shadow, a personal bubble of darkness. Don’t worry about us, Jasmine. It’s Ruth you need to worry about. She’s going to sense us here soon and we’ll lose all advantage, if we haven’t already. The spell affecting him”—she nodded to Adam—“probably has an alarm tethered to it.”
Valera stepped up to Adam and reached out a hand to touch him. To her surprise, Jasmine suddenly hissed at her and body-blocked her. The women looked at each other, and it was hard to tell who was more surprised.
“I was only going to ease the pain he’s feeling,” Valera reassured the possessive Vampire.
“So it is true,” Damien noted with a grave measure of surprise as he stared at Jasmine and Adam. “He is your mate.”
Damien sounded as flabbergasted as Jasmine was feeling.
“Some joke, right?” she remarked in return. “But not what’s important at present,” she brushed on. Neither was her curiosity over how he’d come to be there. No doubt he had intercepted their trail at some point, and Damien’s familiarity with her scent had allowed him to track her twice as fast as she had been tracking Ruth.
“Dawn comes. The fighting force will be devastated by its arrival,” Adam noted. “Is an hour enough to do this thing?”
“We will make it enough,” Sagan said grimly. “Damien says this is our last chance to bring her to heel. Let us go.”
It was true. It was time. All the other hashing of questions and details could wait until it was over.
Chapter 10
Windsong had slowly been coming conscious over the last half hour. Conscious, aware, and yet unable to move because she was tightly trussed to a hard, flat surface. A table about three feet up from the floor. When she looked to the left she could see a bed with a Vampire in it.
A dead Vampire.
She could tell he was dead because death held him in the shocked, gripping position he had no doubt died in, and she knew he was a Vampire because that position included a gape-jawed extension of his fangs. It was hard to tell if the smell of him was decomposition or the same malodorous stuff that sloughed off the other occupant in the room.
Ruth.
Infamous Ruth. Evil-to-the-core Ruth. And now Windsong was her prisoner, for whatever reason. Windsong had realized she had the dubious luck of being held captive by a gloater and a sadist. Whatever Ruth’s motives, Windsong had no doubt she would reveal them soon enough.
“How good to see you awake,” Ruth greeted her as she worked busily at a mortar and pestle. “Do not bother trying to speak. You are gagged for the time being. But do not fret. We will want your voice soon enough.” Then she shouted toward her workroom door. “Girl! Get in here!” To herself she muttered, “What is her name? I can never seem to remember it.”
The door opened and in walked the girl who had tranquilized Windsong.
“Yes?” She bowed her head respectfully as she shut the door.
“Help me with these last components,” Ruth ordered her. “Grind them together.”
“Of course.” The girl hid behind the loosened fall of her hair. She looked as though she’d been in a fight and had hastily put herself back together. She had a wicked-looking cut down her face from the corner of one of those disturbing eyes of hers. She moved to the table, taking over the mortar and pestle for her mistress, but sparing a glance at the tied-down Mistral. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get the Druid for you,” she said carefully.
“You were ambushed by a pack of Demons,” Ruth said dismissively. “What were you going to do? You were fortunate to make it out alive. The others did not.”
“I suppose.”
Windsong was astounded. In spite of not having telepathy or any great special senses, Mistrals could sense quite easily when someone was lying to them. Windsong’s senses told her that this girl was telling a massive lie to her mistress.
Strange. Ruth was a Mind Demon. Couldn’t she read her subordinate’s thoughts and discover the same thing? And surely the Demon girl knew a Mistral would catch her lying, so why bring up the topic at all in front of her? Windsong sensed it was not a detail she should dismiss, but neither should she think any more about it. Ruth most certainly could read her mind at whim while her voice was out of commission.
Luckily, Ruth was distracted by the obviously huge project she was embroiled in.
A spell, Windsong realized.
“Almost complete. The last and most powerful component comes during the casting,” Ruth said, pausing to look at Windsong and smile. “The death screams of a powerful Mistral. The older and more powerful the Mistral, the more powerful the spell. So you can see why I needed you. Nothing but the best for Noah’s Queen.”
“What does this spell do again, exactly?” the assistant asked.
“It is simple,” Ruth said impatiently, clearly having explained it before. “It will carry her screams to the center of Kestra’s mind. Softly at first. But then the sound will grow until it is loud and incessant. Kestra will go quite insane from it. I imagine she will break at some point and take her own life. Noah will follow quickly after, if he does not also go mad, since their precious little Imprinting makes them share thoughts.”
Ruth was so delighted by the idea she danced a little bit on the tips of her toes. Her airy dress floated around her as she moved, looking something like a demented ballerina. But she quickly recovered her decorum, running her hands back over her smooth blond hair and smiling like the cat that had swallowed the canary.
“Vengeance is so beautiful. Is it not, dearest? And once this is done, I can fully focus on your resurrection. Even now our children are researching the Egyptian—”
She broke off awkwardly, her head jerking and tilting as if someone had smacked her in the back of her head.
“No! Damn you, not now!” Ruth growled out a curse angrily, picked something up and threw it against a wall, the clay container shattering into dust from the power of her anger and strength. She stormed over to a table and began searching frantically for something; then with a shout of triumph she found it, thrusting the bejeweled dagger into the air. “Ha! Very well then, come if you must. I will make you choke on the very dagger you used to kill my mate. You!” She turned to her assistant. “What is your name? Damn it. I have no time for such trivialities! You come with me.”
&nb
sp; The female with the black and gray hair laid down her pestle and closed her eyes a fraction of a moment, taking a breath as her hands curled into fists.
“Yes, Ruth. I very much wish to be by your side in this battle.”
And that, Windsong could see, was the complete truth.
Ruth appeared in the thick of the woods with a tide of Vampires and Demons at her back. It was a small contingent, but in it was packed a great deal of power. More than enough, she thought, to overwhelm the Enforcer.
He was there, leaning back against a tree, sword in hand, the tip of which he was tapping against the heel of his shoe. He looked bored, impatient, as if he had been waiting a long time for her to get there.
“Waiting for me, Enforcer?” she asked him archly.
“All of my life,” he said, straightening from the tree to make her a flourishing bow. “Many have told me you are the consummate enemy. That I would die, should I be foolish enough to take you on by myself.”
“Mmm, and yet here you are. Did you not believe them?”
“If I did not believe them, I would not have come.”
“So you have a death wish,” she observed.
He laughed at that. At her. It made her prickle from head to toe with fury.
“Your logic is flawed, you traitorous bitch. Your assumption is that I am foolish. Foolish enough to come alone.”
Jasmine stepped out from behind the tree.
“But you are not foolish,” she observed with a tsk.
“Not at all,” he agreed.
Ruth felt a flash of irritation at herself. She had not taken the precaution of scanning for other minds. She did so then and felt only Adam’s strong thoughts. But it was like hearing an echo. She heard them twice over. It was an effect she was used to when she confronted Imprinted couples. But this was a Demon and a Vampire. A Vampire whose thoughts she had once mined quite easily. But Jasmine had grown quite a bit stronger since their last encounter. She could barely make out her presence. The Enforcer was schooling his thoughts very well. Impressively well. But that was a skill even his brother had shown. It seemed to be something innate in their hunting strength.
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