Legendary Wolf

by Barbara J. Hancock

  “I know,” Anna said. When pleasure arced through her, enhanced by their connection and the pulse of energy her climax released, Soren cried out at the same time. His body stiffened, and this time he filled her with his heat.

  Anna held him. In that moment they claimed a deeper connection than they’d had before.

  There were still challenges to face at Bronwal, but they were home.

  * * *

  Anna was sleeping. Soren appreciated the flush of repletion on her beautiful nude skin before he covered her with a quilt. For once, he didn’t fight sleep because of nightmares. He was simply too happy to close his eyes.

  The sun was about to set.

  He walked quietly outside and sat on the wall. He ran his hands over the stone and thought he detected the imprint of a wolf’s paw beside him. The light had already gone a golden orange. The edges of the mountains were already on fire. The valleys had already disappeared into shadows.

  He would have to be stone himself not to feel a sudden rush of adrenaline. His heart pounded in his chest. His breath came quick. He wasn’t going anywhere, but he would always remember what it had been like.

  He placed his hand on the paw-print impression the red wolf had left in the stone wall over hundreds of years of this vigil. He hadn’t failed after all. He hadn’t disappeared. He hadn’t lost Anna to the Ether.

  In part because his witch had been determined not to lose herself.

  “I thought I might find you here,” Anna said.

  Her hands settled on his shoulders, and she squeezed. She molded her warm curves against his broad back.

  “Do you remember? All those times you held my scruff and didn’t let me go?” Soren asked.

  “Yes. And I remember all the times we rematerialized together. How relieved I was to see you again,” Anna said. She spoke into his ear, and her breath was an intimate tickle that caused his mouth to curve into a half smile. “Come back to bed. The sun will rise again tomorrow. We’re not going anywhere tonight.”

  Soren stood, but he didn’t turn to head back inside. Not yet. Anna pressed against his back and wrapped her arms around his waist. He accepted the comfort of her presence...and the seduction.

  He reached to press his hands over hers where they pressed against his stomach.

  For a dazzling moment they were bathed in the brightest, warmest hues, and then the sun went down. Darkness fell. They were left in the shadows, but their combined body heat negated the chill.

  Anna’s hug loosened, and Soren turned around. He captured one of her hands in his. Their fingers twined together.

  “I’ll never let you go,” Soren said.

  It was a truth she’d always known.

  They’d been devoured by the cold nothingness of the Ether time and time again, but they had always found each other when they’d materialized once more. Their connection had never truly been broken and it never would be.

  The warrior had won the massive heart of her red wolf a long time ago.

  * * * * *

  Catch up with the first book in the

  Legendary Warriors miniseries,

  Elena and Ivan’s story, in

  Legendary Shifter,

  available now from Harlequin Nocturne.

  And look out for Lev and Madeline’s story,

  Legendary Beast,

  coming in October 2018!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Tempting the Dark by Michele Hauf

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  Tempting the Dark

  by Michele Hauf

  Chapter 1

  Savin Thorne stood before the weird, wavery, silver-blue vibrations that undulated in the midnight sky twenty feet above the lavender field. He waited. Twenty minutes had passed since he arrived in the beat-up pickup truck he barely kept alive with oil changes and the occasional battery jump. He’d gotten a call from Edamite Thrash regarding a disturbance in this countryside location, north of Paris.

  He knew this area. It was too familiar. His family once lived not half a kilometer away. Yet when driving past the old neighborhood, he’d noted his childhood home had been torn down. Construction on a golf course was under way. Just as well. The bad memory from his childhood still clung to his bones.

  To his right, Edamite Thrash, a corax demon, stood with his eyes closed, his senses focused to whatever the hell was going on.

  Savin could feel the undulations in the air and earth prickle through his veins. A heebie-jeebies sensation. The demon within him stirred. Savin tended to think of the nameless, incorporeal demon inside him as “the Other,” for no other reason than it had been a childhood decision. She was upset by whatever was irritating the air. And when she stirred, Savin grew anxious.

  Ed had been getting instinctual warnings about this disturbance for days, and tonight those dire feelings had alerted him enough to call Savin.

  Savin reckoned demons back to Daemonia. The bad ones who had no reason or right to tread the mortal realm. The evil ones who had harmed mortals in this realm. Sometimes even the good ones who pushed the boundaries of secrecy and might have been seen by humans or who were trying to tell the truth about their species.

  Savin wasn’t demon. He wasn’t even paranormal. He was one hundred percent human. Except for the part about him hosting an incorporeal demon for the past twenty years. That tended to screw with a man’s mental place in this world. But most days he felt he was winning the part about just trying to stay sane.

  A sudden whining trill vibrated the air. Pushing up the sleeves of his thermal shirt to expose the protective sigils on the undersides of his forearms, Savin planted his combat boots and faced the sky that flickered in silver and red.

  Ed hissed, “Savin, did you hear that?”

  “I did. I’m ready.”

  Behind them, hefting a fifty-pound sack of sea salt out from the back of a white hearse, Certainly Jones, a dark witch, prepped for his role in whatever might come charging at them.

  “Hurry up, Jones!” Ed called. “It’s happening!”

  With that announcement, the sky cracked before them. A black seam opened from ground to clouds. From within, a brilliant amber flame burst and roiled. A whoosh of darkness exploded out from the seam.

  Savin cursed. That could be nothing but demons. An invasion? He felt the dark and malevolent beings, incorporeal and corporeal, as they flooded into this realm. Cool, hissing brushes across his skin. Wicked alien vocals. The gnashing of fangs and rows of deadly teeth. Tails scything the
air. Claws clattering for flesh. And the ones he could not see vibrated a distinctive hum in his veins.

  The protection sigils he wore tattooed on his body kept those invisible incorporeal demons from entering his system. As did the bitch demon he’d been serving as shelter to for twenty years. But that didn’t mean he was impervious to an external attack by a corporeal demon. He was strong but did not hold a weapon.

  The only weapons he required were his stubbornness and his innate ability to see and deflect most demons with a few choice warding incantations.

  In the inky darkness, there was no way to count their numbers as they spread across the field and whisked through the air above the men’s heads. Standing center of the freshly laid salt circle, Certainly Jones began to recite a spell. Ed swung above his head a black bone lariat bespelled to choke and annihilate demons.

  For his part, Savin could recite a general reckoning spell that would reach about a hundred-foot circumference about him and send those demons back to Daemonia. So he began the chant composed of a demonic language he hated knowing.

  “There are hundreds,” Ed said as a curse as he avoided the salt circle with a jump. “We’ll never get them all. Savin?”

  He couldn’t speak now, for to do so would shatter the foundation of the spell. Raising his arms, palms facing inward—but not touching—and exposing the demonic sigils on the underside of his forearms, Savin expanded his chest and shouted the last few words. And as he did so, the power of those spoken words formed a staticky choker between his fingers. He spread his arms out wide, stretching the choker in a brilliant lash of gold sparks. Then, with a shove forward, he cast the net.

  Demons shrieked, squealed and yowled as they were caught by the sticky, sparkling net. Like a fisherman hauling up his catch, only in reverse, it wrapped up dozens, perhaps a hundred or more demons, and wrangled them back through the rift in the sky.

  “I expel you to Daemonia!” Savin recited, then immediately prepared to begin again.

  “That took care of at least half!” Ed called. “But some are getting away. Jones! How’s it going getting that damned door to Daemonia closed?”

  “Soon!” shouted the witch.

  Savin’s net, filled with yet more demons, wrangled another gang and whipped them back through the rift.

  The dark witch, a tall, slender man dressed in black, stretched out his tattooed arms. Using specific tattoos as spells, he shouted out a command that gripped the serrated rift in the sky and vised it suddenly closed.

  The night grew intensely dark. Not even a nocturnal creature might see anything for the few moments following the closure of the rift to the Place of All Demons.

  Savin dropped his arms and shook out his entire body like a prizefighter loosening up his muscles. He felt the air stir as a few creatures dashed above his head. None dared come too close, or try a talon against his skin. They could sense his innate warning.

  No demon dared approach a reckoner.

  Ed tugged out his cell phone from an inner suit-coat pocket, and the small electronic light glowed about his face and tattooed neck. The thorns on his knuckles glinted like obsidian as he punched in a number. “I’m calling the troops in Paris. We’ll head to town. Certainly, will that seal hold?”

  “For a while,” the witch said. “But I’m not sure how it was opened in the first place. Had to be from within Daemonia. Which is not cool. Something wicked powerful opened it up.”

  The witch cast his gaze about the field. Dark shadows flitted through the sky, black on black, as the demons that had avoided Savin’s net dispersed. The cool, acrid taste of sulfur littered the air.

  Savin thought he heard someone walking across the loose gravel back by his truck. He swung around, squinting his gaze. He didn’t see motion. Could have been a demon. More likely a raccoon.

  “The energy out here is quieting,” he stated. For the hum in his veins had settled. “I think we’re good for now. But Ed will have to post a guard out here.”

  The corax demon nodded to Savin and gave him a thumbs-up even as he spoke on the phone to organize scouts.

  Savin slapped a hand across Certainly’s back. “Good going, witch.”

  “I can say the same for you. You took care of more than half of them. I don’t know anyone capable of such a skill.”

  “Wish I could be proud of that skill, but...” Savin let that one hang as he strode back to the parked cars with the witch.

  His system suddenly shivered. Savin did not panic. He knew it was the Other expressing her thanks. Or maybe it was resentment for what he had done tonight. He’d never mastered the art of interpreting her messages. So long as she kept quiet ninety percent of the time, he couldn’t complain. Some days he felt as if he owed her for what she had done to help him. Other days he felt that debt had long been paid.

  “I’m off,” Ed said as he headed to his car. “I’ll post a guard out here day and night. Thanks, Savin. I’ll get back to the both of you with whatever comes up in Paris. If my troops find any of the escapees, we’ll gather them for a mass reckoning. Okay with you?”

  “I love a good mass demon bash,” Savin said. But his heart could not quite get behind his sarcasm. “Check in with me when you need my help again.” He fist-bumped Ed and the dark witch, then climbed into his truck and fired up the engine.

  Alone and with the windows rolled up, Savin exhaled and closed his eyes. His muscles ached from scalp to shoulders and back, down to his calves and even the tops of his feet. It took a lot of energy to reckon a single demon back to Daemonia. What he’d just done? Whew! He needed to get home, tilt back some whiskey, then crash. A renewal process that worked for him.

  But first. His system would not stop shaking until he fed the demon within.

  Reaching over in the dark quiet and opening the glove compartment, he drew out a small black tin. Inside on the red velvet lay a syringe and a vial of morphine that he kept stocked and always carried with him. He juiced up the syringe and, tightening his fist, injected the officious substance into his vein. A rush of heat dashed up his arm. A brilliance of colors flashed behind his eyelids. He released his fist and gritted his teeth.

  And the shivers stopped.

  “Happy?” he muttered to the demon inside him.

  He always thought to hear a female chuckle after shooting up. He knew it wasn’t real. She had no voice.

  Thank the gods he no longer got high from this crap. The Other greedily sucked it all up before it could permeate his system. A strange thing to be thankful for, but he recognized a boon when he saw it.

  Flicking on the radio, he nodded as Rob Zombie’s “American Witch” blasted through the speakers. Thrash metal. Appropriate for his mood.

  Savin was the last of the threesome to pull out of the field. He turned left instead of right, as the other two had. Left would take him over the Seine and toward the left-bank suburbs of Paris. He lived near the multilaned Périphérique in the fourteenth arrondissement. Driving slowly down the loose gravel, he nodded to the thumping bass beat, hands slapping out a drum solo on the steering wheel.

  When the truck’s headlights flashed on something that moved alongside the road, Savin swore and slammed on the brakes.

  “What in all Beneath?”

  Was it a demon walking the grassy shoulder of the road? He’d felt more incorporeal demons move over him during the escape from the rift than actually witnessed real corporeal creatures with bodies. But anything was possible. And yet...

  Savin turned down the radio volume. Leaning forward, he peered through the dusty windshield. The figure wasn’t clawed or winged or even deformed. “A woman?”

  She glanced toward the truck. The headlights beamed over her bedraggled condition. Long, dark, tangled hair and palest skin. She clutched her dirtied hands against her chest as if to hold on to the thin black fabric that barely covered her limbs from breasts to above her k
nees. Her legs were dirty and her feet almost black.

  She couldn’t be a resident from the area. Out for a midnight walk looking like that? Or had she been attacked? Savin hadn’t passed any cars in the area, which ruled out a date-gone-bad scenario. That left one other possibility. She had come from Daemonia. Maybe? Corporeal demons could wear a human sheen, making them virtually undetectable to the common man.

  But not to Savin’s demon radar.

  Shifting into Park, Savin spoke a protective spell that would cover him from head to toe. He was no witch, but any human could invoke protection with the proper mind-set. The demon within him shivered but did not protest, thanks to the morphine. He shoved open the door and jumped out. His boots crushed the gravel as he stalked around to the other side of the hood.

  “Where in hell did you come from?” he called. Daemonia wasn’t hell, but it was damned close.

  The woman’s body trembled. Her dark eyes searched his. They were not red. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She looked as though she’d been attacked or ravaged. But demons were tricky and knew how to put on a convincing act of humanity. And yet Savin didn’t sense any demonic vibes from her. He could pick a demon out from a crowd milling in the Louvre at fifty paces. Even the ones who had cloaked themselves with a sheen.

  He stepped forward. The woman cringed. Savin put up his hands in placation. With the sigils on his forearms exposed, he advertised what he was to her. Just in case she was demon. She didn’t flee. Nor did she hiss or spew vile threats at him.

  Now Savin wondered if she had been hurt. And perhaps it had nothing to do with what had just gone down in the lavender field. Had she been assaulted and fled, or had some asshole abandoned her far from the city?

  “It’s okay,” he said firmly. “I’m not going to hurt you. My name’s Savin Thorne. Do you need help?”

  “S-Savin?” The woman’s mouth quivered. She dropped her hands to her sides. “Is it... Is it really you?”

  He narrowed his gaze on her. She...knew him?