The Dragon's Hunt

by Jane Kindred

  Leo took her hand and turned it in his, stroking it. Though resentment had turned it to hate, there had been affection between them not so long ago. She had bound him to her for her own selfish reasons, but they’d been through a great deal together. Not all of it had been unpleasant.

  “Why? Why now, when you have owned me for so long?”

  “It seems I have been beaten at my own game. The one I accepted as your human protector stole your heart. And I see now it was not through magic as I’d thought. You gave it to her willingly. So I must do the same.” Tears sparkled in her eyes in a rare display of genuine emotion. “I thought you were dead, my love. It gave me some perspective.”

  A tear escaped, and Leo wiped it from her cheek with his thumb and kissed the spot to say goodbye.

  As swiftly and as life-alteringly as she’d first come to him on the battlefield to take him to Valhalla before choosing to spare him instead—she was gone.

  Leo threaded his fingers through his hair and took his first breath of freedom. He realized he was cold—a sensation he hadn’t fully experienced in a thousand years. As Leo the Dull, he’d responded to such stimuli as a mortal man should, but he hadn’t really felt it.

  Leo laughed aloud. Leo the Dull. He supposed he had been a bit. He could blame it on the suppression of his memory, but there were choices he’d made that had been his own foolish doing. Like not taking Rhea right then and there in the tattoo shop when she’d wanted it, jealous of his own unfettered desire. A mistake he intended to remedy right now.

  * * *

  The bedroom door opened, and Rhea lifted her head from Theia’s shoulder. Leo was beautiful and whole. And wearing nothing but her lavender faux-fur robe.

  “Leo.” With a surreptitious swipe at her eyes, she got to her feet as he approached. “Is Faye...?”

  “She’s gone. For good.”

  Rhea stared up at him, confused. “But aren’t you...? She said...”

  “She’s dissolved her bargain with the Norns. I’m mortal. Mostly. I’ll still lead Odin’s Hunt, but not as a wraith and without the associated curse.”

  “So you’ll ride with her.”

  “With her?” Leo stepped in closer and rested his large hands on her hips. “Mitt hjärta. You are my wild, ecstatic goddess. My Freyja. I will ride with you, if you will come.” He put his mouth below her ear, lips brushing her jaw and making every hair follicle on her skin tingle and stand erect—not to mention other parts. “I will ride with you right here, right now, if you like.” The sexy growl made the meaning unmistakable.

  Theia was on her feet in a flash. “Okay. So, I’m gonna go.” She grabbed Rhea’s keys and coat. Rhea was in no position—or condition—to complain. “See you both at Phoebe’s later?”

  Rhea was sure she’d made some kind of noise of assent, but she couldn’t pinpoint exactly when Theia had slipped out the door. Leo’s lips were against hers, nipping and sucking at them, his hands roaming over her, in her hair, at her nape, on her waist, under her shirt.

  “I thought—” She tried to form sentences between his kisses. “The ink—was responsible—magic—our bond—”

  Leo paused with his hands at the small of her back after unhooking her bra. “What’s that, älskling?”

  “She said you didn’t really love me.”

  “She’s out of her mind. If I loved you any more, I’d go mad and wander the earth a blithering idiot instead of a wraith. I need this off.” He tugged at her shirt, and Rhea let him pull the garment over her head. The bra slipped off when she lowered her arms, and Leo cupped her breasts in his hands, completely covering them. “By the Allfather, these are fantastic. I almost can’t look at them. No, I can.”

  She giggled involuntarily at the feathery touch of his fingers stroking the outline of her breasts as if sizing them up for a drawing. “You’re different.”

  “No, I’m not. You’re just not used to me all in one piece. Gang’s all here. Though there’s one particular piece...” He let out a soft groan as her hand found it. “I have your condoms,” he blurted. “We could use many.”

  Rhea laughed, and he laughed with her, the deep, delighted abandon that made her want to climb him. She did, threading her arms around his neck and wrapping her legs around his hips as he drew her up against him, hands beneath her ass. His cock ground against her.

  “You’re wearing my robe.”

  “I know. I’m freezing.”

  “Maybe we should go to my room so I can warm you up.”

  “Good idea.” Leo spun around and carried her into the bedroom, flopping backward onto the bed with her on top of him. He grinned up at her. “Condoms, yes?” He produced one from the pocket of the robe.

  “Condoms, yes.” Rhea shuffled backward, peeling off her leggings while he opened the condom and rolled it on like a pro. He was still wearing the robe, which was oddly sexy. “You’re still cold,” she noted as she crawled over him.

  Leo smirked. “I understand most heat is lost from the top of one’s...head.”

  “I have just the thing for that.”

  He reached to pull her into his lap, but Rhea slid backward off the bed and grabbed his knit hat from the top of the dresser, the gift from Phoebe and Rafe. He laughed when she shoved it onto his head.

  She straddled him, perched on her knees as she stroked his cock. “Merry Christmas, Leo.”

  With his hands on her hips, he drew her down until she was positioned just above him. Rhea sank onto the rock-hard heat of his erection with decadent slowness, moaning as he filled her, her arousal heightened by his unabashed groan of pleasure and relief.

  Leo wrapped his arms around her and hugged her against his chest, rocking her into his hips. “God Jul, mitt hjärta,” he murmured and kissed her hair as he drove himself deliciously deeper. “God Jul.”

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE WITCH’S THIRST by Deborah LeBlanc.

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  The Witch’s Thirst

  by Deborah LeBlanc

  Chapter 1

  Evette—Evee—François watched as black and pus-yellow liquid flowed from Bailey’s arm when Daven clawed through it. Both were Nosferatu and hell-bent on destroying each other. Aside from Bailey and Daven, six more Nosferatu had paired off, each viciously attacking the other. Her head captain, Pierre, supposedly in charge of the two-hundred-plus Nosferatu they forced to remain in the catacombs and allowed out only for feedings, did his best to sto
p the fighting. He’d stretched his bulk of a body to its full eight feet, had morphed into his natural state—bald head with a large, throbbing vein that started at his forehead and then extended over the crown of his scalp like tree branches. His fangs, the longest and most lethal of all the teeth possessed by the Nosferatu within the catacombs, were bared. His hands had balled into fists. And when he shouted, the walls seemed to vibrate with the fierceness of his voice.

  “Enough! As leader of this clan, I say enough! Return to your assigned spaces at once!”

  Instead of listening to Pierre, more Nosferatu began to fight. They hissed and shrieked, and Evee let out a heavy sigh. She noticed that the Nosferatu who weren’t fighting were either hiding behind a crypt or had rolled onto a grave shelf, seemingly content to watch, but not wanting to engage in any brawl.

  “We’ve got to get them under control before they kill one another,” Lucien Hyland said emphatically. He took hold of the two steel bars from a floor-to-ceiling gate that separated the outside world from the catacombs of St. John’s Cathedral. He shook them, then pulled the thick chain and padlock that secured the gates. Neither gate nor padlock budged.

  “Cousin, get your hands away from the bars—” Before Ronan Hyland could finish his warning, two Nosferatu slammed into the gate. Both reached for Lucien.

  Lucien sprang backward, away from the gate, then looked from his cousin to Evee, who was leaning against a stone column, arms crossed over her chest.

  “Why aren’t you doing something?” Lucien asked Evee, his emerald green eyes ablaze with anger. “You’re acting rather nonchalant over this ordeal. Why? Can’t you see they’re going to kill each other? Can’t you see all the...blood?”

  “No one’s going to die—unless you stick your hands back there again,” Evee said. “They’re fighting, yes, but it’s not to kill one another. It’s out of boredom. They’re not used to being cooped up at night.”

  Ronan, who Evee had learned was the more serious of the cousins who’d been assigned to her, shook his head. “I don’t understand. The Nosferatu aren’t senseless beings. Don’t they know that keeping them here is for their own protection?”

  Evee tossed him an exhausted look. “Imagine a room full of children and a huge storm is blowing outside. The children know the storm is dangerous, but that doesn’t stop them from getting antsy and squabbling with one another when they’re forced to stay indoors.”

  Ronan cocked his head as if considering her words.

  Lucien let out a huff of frustration.

  Evee closed her eyes for a few seconds. She’d felt exhaustion before, but never to this degree. She wished she had the power to turn back time. Two weeks of time at least.

  Two weeks ago, things had flowed normally in her life. Well, as normal as life went when you were the middle sister from a set of triplets, and the triplets happened to be witches. The fact that she and her sisters, Vivienne and Abigail, were responsible for the Originals, those being the Nosferatu, the Loup Garous and the Chenilles, twisted the definition of normal all the more. By human standards, of course.

  Along with the Originals, throughout the centuries, sprouted their offshoots, like vampires, werewolves, and zombies, etc., each created from either crossbreeding, malicious intent by some sorcerer with a wicked streak, or possibly an off-the-radar, wayward coven. Fortunately, others were in charge of the netherworld offshoots.

  Evee and her sisters only tended to the Originals. She and her sisters were known as a Triad, which were triplet witches born from a triplet witch. The first set had been born in the 1500s, somewhere in France. According to legend, the first Originals and the chaos that went with them occurred when the first set of triplets got pissed off at the men they were supposed to marry. Evidently, the night before the triplets were to wed, they found their betrothed fooling around with other women.

  Women scorned, men be warned, Evee thought. She supposed that creed existed even back in the 1500s because the anger of the first Triad played a huge part in creating the Originals. This caused the Elders from their sect, known as the Circle of Sisters, to punish the first Triad and the punishment carried to each generation of Triads that followed.

  Evee thought cursing whole generations of Triads for something someone had done long ago was bullshit. She and her sisters had nothing to do with what had happened in the past by the first Triad. To her, it was simple. If a puppy peed on its owner’s carpet, the owner might bop the pup on the snout with a newspaper to teach him “no.” However, that didn’t give that owner the right to go popping every pup born thereafter because the first one tinkled on a carpet.

  Regardless, the creation of the Originals by her ancestors way back when must have been equated with peeing an ocean on a Persian rug, because Triads were still paying for the deed to this day. And there wasn’t a damn thing she or her sisters could do about it.

  So they’d simply lived with it. The Originals were assigned—Vivienne, or Viv as everyone called her, and the oldest of the three by ten minutes, took care of the Loup Garous; she, or Evee as she preferred being called, handled the Nosferatu; and Abigail, whom everyone called Gilly, managed the Chenilles. Once their routines had been established, life hadn’t been so bad. Complex at times. But not terrible.

  Until now.

  For the last couple of weeks, they’d been stuck in a nightmare that wouldn’t go away, that no one seemed capable of waking them up from.

  It wasn’t like they hadn’t run into issues with their broods before. Odd incidents were the norm when dealing with those from the netherworld. But for some reason, when the cousins—Lucien, Ronan, Gavril and Nikoli Hyland—arrived, all hell seemed to break loose.

  They’d appeared at the Triad’s front door, four extraordinarily handsome men, claiming to be cousins—although only two were with her right now—and swearing to protect the sisters and the Originals with their lives. They called themselves Benders and claimed their purpose was to save the Originals from monstrous creatures that hid in dimensional folds. They called the creatures Cartesians and said these were bent on annihilating the entire netherworld, especially the Originals and the Triad. With each netherworld creature’s death, a Cartesian absorbed the powers of the creature it destroyed, then brought the essence of the kill to its leader, allowing the leader to grow stronger, which empowered him to create more Cartesians.

  According to the Benders, the Cartesian leader meant to be the sole power of the netherworld, and once he had completed the task of absorbing the powers of every netherworld creature, humans were the next target. In essence, the Cartesians—specifically their leader—meant to control the very universe.

  When Evee first heard the Benders’ claims, she thought all four of them were a few cards short of a full deck. But in the days that followed their arrival, she’d seen much more than she needed to for truth to set in. Cartesians and the danger they presented were very, very real. She’d yet to see one of the creatures for herself, but her sisters Viv and Gilly had, and their descriptions had been all too vivid. Huge beings that appeared to be at least ten feet tall and had the expanse of body to match their height. They were covered with matted brown, gray and black fur, which hid thick scales like armor beneath it. Their teeth were all needlepoint incisors, and their claws were none like they’d seen before on any creature. At least four inches in length and razor-sharp. And the worst part was that they seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

  The Cartesians’ entry into this world came from rifts in the sky. The initial rifts were caused by natural disasters, odd cosmic alliances or an erred declaration. Their first experience with the Cartesians came after Viv, responsible for the Loup Garous, had told her brood in frustration that “she quit.” She hadn’t meant what she’d said, but exasperation could cause a person to throw caution to the wind. Once she’d uttered those two words, a small rift had occurred, and the Cartesians had gnawed, claw
ed and forced their hideous bodies through the opening and into this dimension.

  So far, Viv had lost many Loup Garous to the Cartesians, and Gilly, some Chenilles. As if that wasn’t bad enough, even stranger occurrences added to the Triad’s terror. Something they couldn’t understand, much less keep from occurring. Some of the Originals had gone missing. Simply vanished from their safe zones, from places that she and her sisters had controlled with border spells for years with great success. To date, Viv had nearly one hundred and fifty Loup Garous dead or missing; Evee had ten Nosferatu on the loose; and Gilly, fifteen missing Chenilles, plus two dead.

  The missing Originals planted their current situation in the dirt of dire straits. Humans were now in danger. If they couldn’t find the missing Originals and bring them over to the feeding grounds located at the North Compound in Algiers at their regular feeding time, which occurred in the wee hours of morning, they’d be seeking food elsewhere. They’d be looking at humans to satiate their hunger.

  Adding to the dilemma, the wayward Nosferatu, Chenilles and Loup Garous were now open targets for the Cartesians. Evee had to find her brood so they could be watched over and kept safe from the enemy.

  You would think that she and her sisters being witches could easily defuse the situation. But such wasn’t the case. Along with the mayhem and confusion they faced, their powers and natural abilities like clairvoyance, channeling and mirroring seemed to be diminishing or worked haphazardly. Even the Triad’s Elders, Arabella, Taka and Vanessa, appeared to be at a loss and utterly useless in helping them through the situation.

  The only people they had to count on now were each other and the Benders, whom they’d decided to pair off with in order to cover more territory. Viv with Nikoli, she with Lucien and Ronan, and Gilly with Gavril.

  So far the misfit teams seemed to be barely holding their own. At last count, Viv had located one of Evee’s Nosferatu, whom she had Pierre fetch and return to the catacombs. Viv had also located at least twenty of her Loup Garous, whom she’d teleported to the North Compound, where Viv had them encamped.