Lightning lashed the sea around them, bringing thunder and wind, and letting them see that the creature wasn’t just regenerating. It was getting bigger.
“Motherfucker,” Sven said. And braced for the fight.
We’re dead. That was all Sven’s brain could cough up at the realization that they were out in the middle of the fucking ocean without backup or additional weapons. His shield was good for now, and he would try again with the fireball spell, but already he could feel the drain on his magic. He had burned too much of it sending the skull back to Skywatch.
The hellhound snarled as lightning flickered behind it, painting the scene with St. Elmo’s fire.
Gods help us.
Cara came up beside him with her puny little pistol, eyes hard and determined. Her dress glittered in the blue-white lambency of the storm, her hair trailed from its twist in tendrils of white and black, and his magic haloed her with sparks of red-gold. In that moment, she looked like a goddess, and so damn beautiful it made his chest ache.
He wanted to hold her, have her, protect her. But he couldn’t—
Join. You are more powerful together than apart. This is as it was meant to be. The nahwal’s voice echoed in his head, followed by her soft gasp. She turned to him, eyes wide and scared, even as his pulse thudded with mingled shock and excitement.
“You heard that?” he grated.
She snapped her mouth closed and nodded. Then she held out her hand, palm up, to offer her scar. “Do it.”
There wasn’t time to weigh the options; hell, there weren’t any options. He needed the kind of boost that came only from another mage… or a lover.
He took her hand as the beast struggled to its feet with a gurgling roar that called thunder and a howl of wind. He scored her palm and drew blood as the creature started stumbling forward, its eyes locked on his faltering shield. Then he took her hand in his, aligning them blood-to-blood, and hoping to hell this wasn’t a huge mistake.
He felt the jolt of a low-level blood-link, but needed more than that. Way more. Calling his magic, he reached for the barrier and whispered, “Pasaj och.” But nothing changed. It was just the two of them and his nearly tapped-out magic.
“Hurry!” She gripped his hand, urging him on. “Kill it!”
He called a fireball, but it wasn’t much, wasn’t enough.
“It’s not working!” she cried, voice cracking.
He shook his head. “I don’t know—”
You to her and her to you. The bond must form or all is lost! And for a nanosecond—the briefest of instances, there and gone so quickly he almost missed it—pounding restlessness flared through him and he flashed back on a hot, baking desert floor burning his feet as he raced along, searching for the one who would complete him. Those were the dreams he’d had last year, the ones that he hadn’t realized were coming from Mac. But how… “That’s it!”
His magic wasn’t searching for a mate; it wanted a familiar. He was a coyote, after all.
Heart banging against his ribs, he tightened his grip on her and concentrated, not on his magic or the barrier connection, but on his bloodline mark. He focused on it, poured his magic into it, and opened himself to the soul bond he shared with Mac, even though the coyote was too far away for it to function. The magic pooled, searching for a target, then zeroing in on her.
His magic found her, recognized her, wanted her. It arrowed from him to her and back again, and his body convulsed as something tore inside him. Then blazing heat fired in his veins, burning down to his soul and then outward again, shooting down his arm to his bloodline mark.
“No!” he shouted, afraid the magic would burn her, hurt her, but he couldn’t call it back, couldn’t shut it down. Then the power raged through him, coalesced into a huge fireball that hung in the air, bleeding flames. And for a brief instant he saw double, perceived double—hell, he was double, sensing things not just with his own faculties, but with Cara’s as well.
Connection. It burned through him, forging new pathways in his soul. He could feel her terror, but also the determination that was overriding it to put her at his side, facing the creature with nothing more than a Glock nine. Through her senses, he could feel the heat and sizzle of his Nightkeeper magic, which she shouldn’t have been able to sense. And through both of their eyes, he saw the hellhound gathering for a leap.
“Now!” she shouted, or maybe he did. It didn’t matter as he launched the fireball with a tremendous heave, straight at the onrushing creature.
Boom! Magic detonated on impact, wreathing the beast in flames. The hellhound screeched and reared up, snapping. But this time the fire raged higher and hotter as Sven poured more magic into the fireball, keeping the attack going. “Die, damn you!”
The magic kept coming and coming—from him, from her, from the greater power they somehow made together. He didn’t question it; he used it, searing the beast, charring it. On one level there was dull horror and the too-familiar stench of burning flesh. On another, he knew only that he had to protect Cara and the humans below. Nothing else mattered… and if deep down inside he put her ahead of the masses, and went against the writs in doing so, he was fucking fine with that.
The creature struggled horribly, resisting death with keening cries until it finally collapsed with a shudder. Still, he kept it burning, holding on to the magic while lightning lit the night sky, and the wind whipped around them, pitching the huge ship from side to side. He burned the beast to cinders, but before he could call it done, the noise of the storm changed, rising to the scream of an unrushing funnel cloud.
“Hang on!” He grabbed Cara and shielded them both, but the twister didn’t head for them. It went for the creature’s ashes instead, sucking them off the deck and back up into the storm. The wind howled and lightning flickered, but even as the answering rumble of thunder trailed off, the storm was breaking up, dissipating.
Between one eye blink and the next, it vanished, leaving no sign of disturbance save for a slow roll beneath their feet and a rising clamor coming up from the decks below.
“Gods.” Cara let out a shuddering breath. “The creature got stronger.”
“Yeah, but so did we.” And it was only just beginning to hit him how much stronger they had gotten together… and what it meant.
She looked at him then, and her eyes held a gleam that stirred his already stirred-up blood even more. But before she said anything more, shouts sounded from the staircase just as his armband pinged, doubly interrupting.
“I’ll stall,” she said. “You answer.”
Without waiting for his nod, she stashed her gun in her bag and ran to the stairwell with a cry of, “Did you see that? What’s happening?” Her tone notched up with each question, ending on a wail of, “Are we sinking?” That stalled the human tide that had rushed up thinking there was something going on up on the observation deck. Her near-sobs of “There’s a fire? Where?” and “Oh, God, are there enough lifeboats? Sven, for the love of all that’s holy, stop trying to upload that to YouTube and come on!” completed the turnaround.
Most of the looky-loos headed back down, while a few stalwart souls—all male, big surprise—stuck around to calm her down and shoot him dirty looks.
“You there?” Dez said the moment Sven answered the phone. “What the hell is going on? The skull arrived hotter than hell, and with a blast of magic like I’ve never felt before. And then your dog went nuts.”
“He’s not— Shit, never mind. Here’s the deal.” Sven rattled off a quick rundown of the attack, ending with, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but there’s got to be some connection between the storms, the creature, and Cara.”
“And between the two of you.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t want to make a big deal about that yet, though. Not until he and Cara had a chance to talk about it. It might not make any difference, really.
Or it might change everything.
“You want us to try a midocean pickup?”
“No
, don’t risk it.” When Cara called his name, Sven looked over and saw her and a couple of cruise employees waiting by the stairs. “I’ve got to go. They’re sending us all to our cabins while they turn the boat around and head in. If we disappear now, there’ll be questions.”
“We can handle it. The credit card won’t lead them anywhere if they try to trace you.”
“Still. I’d rather stick it out.” Cara could use a few hours to process what had just happened. Hell, he needed the time too.
“You think it’s safe?”
“We can take care of ourselves,” Sven said, and clicked off. It wasn’t until he had tucked the communication device back in his pocket and was headed over to rejoin her that he realized he’d meant it—not just that he would take care of her, but that they would take care of each other.
Holy shit. He missed a step at realizing that he was suddenly part of a “we.” How had that happened? His gut fisted. He might not have liked it when she said the winikin magic went only one way, but that was because it wasn’t fair to her that the gods and circumstances had conspired to take the choice away from her, not because he’d wanted a two-way magical bond with her—mated, familiar, or otherwise. Yet now the choice had been taken away from him too.
Or had it? He had promised to watch her back, after all. And their new connection had given him the power to do it. That couldn’t be a bad thing.
Right?
“Hey.” She caught his hand as he reached the small crowd at the stairwell. “Did you get through to your parents and let them know that we were hit by a storm, but we’re fine?”
“Yeah, I talked to them.” He slid an arm around her waist. To the two crewmen who had stayed behind, waiting to herd them to their stateroom, he said, “Did the boat take any damage? Are there more of those squalls coming?”
“Everything’s fine, sir, but you really need to get under cover.”
They joined the flow of humanity down below and headed for their stateroom in a silence that seemed out of place amid the babble that surrounded them, a mix of, “Did you see that lightning?” and, “It looked like something was on fire there for a few minutes!” and, “Are you sure we’re not sinking?”
When they reached their room—an exterior cabin with an ornate door and a key-card slot designed to look like old ship’s brass—he swiped his card and held the door for her, and then stepped through and closed and bolted the door. Shutting out the din was a huge relief, but the pressure inside him skyrocketed again as he took a look around what proved to be the sitting area of the two-room stateroom.
The place was decorated like a damn French bordello.
There was gilt and red velvet practically everywhere he looked, and in the nearby bathroom, brass and marble picked up the theme and promised hot tub action and all the slippery bath salts and massage oils he could ask for. Come on in, get comfortable, and get busy, the decor practically screamed. Get naked. Get it on. Or maybe that was just him, he thought. But then Cara turned back from taking her own long look around, and he saw an answering heat in her eyes, along with a disquieting click of connection. It felt almost like he’d jacked into the barrier, but it was faint and far away, just a buzz of magic in his blood, a stir of echoes in his soul.
Their bond—whatever it was, however it worked—didn’t just come when he called his magic, then. The realization brought a skim of disquiet, as did the way she linked her fingers together and stared down at them as if bracing herself.
He crossed to her, didn’t let himself touch. He wanted to soothe, to fix things, but wasn’t sure if they were fixable, or if he should even try. “I’m sorry. I know this wasn’t what you wanted.”
“No, it wasn’t.” She let out a slow breath, then looked up at him, and he was surprised by her calm. “Part of me is glad it happened, though. It makes things easier.” She paused. “After all, I did ask for a sign, didn’t I?”
A buzz of fresh heat entered his bloodstream as he remembered. “Yeah, you did.” Along with the heat came a sense of inevitability. Join, the nahwal had said, or all is lost. She had wanted proof that their being together was part of the gods’ plan before she risked the winikin by becoming his lover for real. But… “I’m still the same guy, Cara. I can’t change who I am.”
“There’s a newsflash.” Brief humor lightened her expression; then it softened to something he didn’t remember seeing from her before: peace. “I’m okay with that. More than okay, really. I didn’t ask for a sign that we were destined mates or meant to be together forever. That’s not what I want. I just needed to know that we weren’t talking ourselves into something that’s not real.”
As much as he was dying to touch her, he held himself back. “The magic is real,” he said, the words coming from deep inside him. “The connection we made upstairs… that’s real, and it means something. But at the same time, the magic shouldn’t force you to do anything you don’t want.”
“It’s not forcing me; it’s giving me permission.” Her lips curved, her eyes lit, and she held out her hand, palm up, to show a thin scar where a scab should have been. “Will you be my lover until the end of the age? Will you stand with me, fight with me, and help me lead my people beside yours?”
Said that way, it somehow took on the weight of a spell. He hesitated, though not because of the magic. “What happens after?”
“We say good-bye.” Her smile didn’t waver. “I’m not trying to trap you into anything, Sven, and I’m not letting the magic trap me. We’ll do our duties and, gods willing, save the world. And after that, we’ll go out there and live our lives knowing that each day after the twenty-first of December is a blessing. What could be better than that?”
They were the right words but they somehow struck him wrong, making him want to argue the inarguable. Instead, he took her hand and cradled it for a moment in his, surprised anew that hers was so small in comparison, yet held such strength. “You’re sure? This is what you want?”
She nodded, then looked up at him. “Yeah. You?”
He let his body answer for him, leaning in and sliding his hand up her arm and down to her waist, skimming over the textures of the dress and the woman beneath. Her eyes darkened and her breath caught, and a primal response surged up from deep inside him. Suddenly he wanted to nip at her neck, herd her into the bedroom, cover her with his body, and thrust into her warmth, pounding hard and heavy. He could see it in that instant, not just through his eyes, but through her senses, as well. He could smell their mingled scents, hear her cries, feel the furious pleasure of taking her as his own.
Do it, his overheated system chanted. Do it!
Instead, he eased in and skimmed his lips over her cheek to the corner of her mouth, lingering there while her hand crept up his arm and her fingers curled around his shoulder. He waited until she softened against him, until her lashes fluttered shut and she murmured his name, and then he claimed her mouth in a deep and drugging kiss, one that said, I want you, and, I need you, and, We’re going to take our time and make this last. And if on some level he knew that by holding back those mating urges he was trying to prove to her that there was more to them than just magic and circumstances, more than the gods’ intentions, he tried to let that go for now.
After all, he had known from the moment he kissed her in the coyote cave that neither of them was going to walk away from this unscathed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They went through the door into the bedroom together, kissing and dragging at clothing with reckless abandon.
Sven slapped the switch near the door and the room came to life, with light fracturing from a central chandelier and a series of wall sconces. Cara got a glimpse of gilt, and a huge, crimson-covered bed overwhelming the small shipboard space. Then he slammed the door and spun her back against it, lifting her and then pinning her there. And instead of, Am I really doing this? all she could think was, Oh, gods, yes.
She didn’t need to think any further than that—she’d gotten her sign i
n the nahwal’s message, and even without it, she knew that this was right for her, here and now. She would lead the winikin but she wouldn’t live her life in fear of them. If the future was only a few short months, she wanted to live those months with all the pleasure and magic she could find. And if “after” went beyond that, she would have fully experienced passion for the first time in her life, giving her a benchmark for her next lover to meet and exceed.
Not that she wanted to think about that next lover now.
Instead, she found Sven’s mouth with hers and poured herself into the kiss, taking it dark and wicked with her palms and tongue. He groaned in answer and ran his hands up her legs to push the dress high, and she stretched to wrap her legs around him, arch into him, and ride the hard ridge of his erection. The move wrung a growl from deep within his chest, and he lifted her higher to feast on her throat while she wrapped her arms around his neck, needing to hold him, touch him, be close to him. Closer still.
His kisses were ardent, his breathing fast and furious, his body a solid, immovable wall that brought nerves and the breathless weight of panic flashing through her as one part of her knew it was trapped, but another said, Yes, please, more.
She gave herself up to it, gloried in the way he held her off the ground without effort, pinning her with his lower body so his hands were free to touch and take. The dress was bunched at her waist now, his mouth at her breasts as she remained trapped between the flat press of the door and the yielding hardness of her lover.
Her lover. Yes. Sven was about to become her lover for real. Gods.
She buried her fingers in his hair and tugged back his head. His eyes were wild and glazed, his focus entirely on her, and when she drove her lips onto his, he met her stroke for stroke, with a rattling groan that echoed from him to her and back again, seeming caught in the heat and the magic that thrummed just beyond her senses.
“Not here. Not this time.” He spun them away from the door, cupping her ass so she rode him, as he carried her to the bed, kissing her, needing her. His hands raced over her, nearly violent in their speed, yet gentle when they connected. She leaned away, unfastened her dress, and skimmed it up over her head to fling it wonderfully free, so she was wearing only stockings, panties, and heels, and was wanton with it.
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