by Hazel Hunter
Sebastian gritted his teeth. He remembered the man he had ushered out of Nicolette's tent the first day he had met her. The idea that he could have taken care of this threat before it came back to hurt Nicolette was torturous.
“I spent a lot of yesterday hunting.”
“Ha, I knew there was something that you weren't telling me. What'd you turn up?”
“Nothing. Nothing yet. I am formally requesting permission to stay and hunt until I find him.”
“Can't give you that.”
Sebastian barely kept himself from snarling into the phone. “Who the hell gave you that authority?”
“The Commandant. Things are heating up. Everyone's standing order is to get the witch they're shepherding to cover at a local coven, and then to report back. Templars sound like they're gathering again, and the Commandant thinks that they've got a big push in mind, something big enough that most of the Corps is getting called in.”
A week ago, Sebastian would have leapt at the chance to do real battle with the Templar forces. He was proficient at finding witches, but it had always palled next to running maneuvers against the Wiccans' ancestral foes. Now that Nicolette was in the middle of it, he hesitated.
“I want more time,” he said finally. “A week. Give me something.”
“Is the witch going to come back with you?”
Sebastian might cut Stephan off on the phone, and he might be sharp with him, but he knew that he couldn't outright lie to a man who was practically the Commandant's eyes and ears.
“No, she's not.”
“Then you're done.”
“Stephan–”
“You're done,” Stephan repeated. “Can't help those that don't want to be helped, Sebastian. Spend the rest of the day cleaning up. Give her one last bid. With the action that might be coming up, she's going to be a sitting duck. If you tell her that, maybe she'll let you bring her in from the cold, but that's it. Whether she comes with you or not, you need to come in.”
Sebastian thought long and hard. “I can't do that.”
“Bullshit.” All of the humor was stripped out of Stephan's voice now. “You know what the Corps is all about, and you know how bad Templar attacks can be. I'm sorry for that girl out there, believe me, I am. I'm sorry she got stuck with a shithead like Vacek, and I'm sorry she's too wary for you to bring in. But facts are facts, and we need you back in forty-eight hours or less. You can hear it from me or you can hear it from the Commandant.”
Sebastian was silent, and Stephan sighed.
“Sorry it has to be this way. But are we clear?”
“Crystal.”
There was a long pause.
“Sorry about this one, man.”
“Yeah.” Sebastian felt his heart tighten. “Me too.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nicolette wasn't sure what she should tell Sebastian about what she had seen. She opened her mouth to mention it when he walked back to her, but when she saw the look on his face, she shrank back in on herself. He was calm, but it was like the calm before a tropical storm. There was violence coming, and it brought a sense of panic boiling up in her throat.
“Nicolette, I want you to listen very carefully to me. What you are doing is very dangerous. That was Stephan, another member of the Corps. We have intel that tells us that the Templars are on the move. I don't know if they are coming here or not, but they're heating up again. That means that things are going to get very, very dangerous for anyone who is on their own. Even large groups of Templars need to plan before they take out a coven. With rogues like you, they won't hesitate.”
“I've looked after myself for years.”
She flinched when he grabbed her shoulder, but there was an edge of panic to his voice that she had never heard before.
“You may not survive this,” he said, his voice deep and urgent. “This isn't like anything you've dealt with before. These men want to hurt you, Nicolette. They are powerful. They are cruel. And they do not see us as human. They will break you, and then they will kill you. Please, please let me get you to a place where you will be protected.”
The silence stretched out between them, and Nicolette tried to find a place in herself where she could agree. Her feelings for Sebastian were deep and complicated, but above it all was the fear. She remembered being given to Vacek, stranded with a man who was supposed to protect her and had done everything but.
She shook her head, her throat suddenly tight. “I can't.”
She thought that Sebastian would try to argue with her again. She feared that he would become angry with her, even in the middle of all of these people. Instead, he took a step back, and there was something shuttered about his gaze.
“I only have another two days here,” he said formally. “I have the rest of today, and tomorrow. But I need to be prepared to go. I'll ask you one more time before I go, but after that, there is nothing else I can do for you, even if I wanted to.”
“Sebastian, I–”
“Come on, we have more you need to learn.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nicolette would have been impressed with Sebastian if she wasn't so sore. When he said there was more he wanted to teach her, he didn't mean just magic. He taught her a few self-defense tricks. They worked on how she could cloak her own aura, something that made her less easy to notice. He showed her the gadgets that the Corps used to track people, and how sometimes they could be fooled if she stayed on the move. She followed along and kept up with everything he threw at her, and every time she thought that he would be angry at her faltering, he only praised her determination and her skill.
“You're being too easy on me,” she said finally.
He had been teaching her to exercise her skill as they walked, and she was picking it up with an impressive amount of speed.
“Why do you say that?”
“Vacek called me an idiot,” she said bluntly. “He told me that I must have been being deliberately slow because I couldn't get everything he was trying to show me. That means that either you are handing me baby stuff or you are just lying to me.”
Sebastian stopped dead in his tracks, and turned to her. They were on a crowded sidewalk, and people swore as they swerved to avoid them, but Sebastian ignored them.
“Nicolette, do I look like an abusive monster?”
“No!”
“I hope to god not. What I'm getting at is that was exactly what Vacek was. He was a terrible man and a terrible teacher. Don't compare me to him, because I like to think I'm nothing like him at all.”
“I don't think I follow.”
Sebastian sighed and pulled her into an alleyway where they could speak more comfortably.
“What I mean, honey, is that everything I've shown you today, you've picked up quickly and well. You're bright, you work hard, you make mistakes, and then you get up and try again. According to my teacher, that's what makes for a good student and a powerful Wiccan. That's it. You are tough, strong and bright, and you're doing really goddamn well.”
Nicolette frowned, feeling stubborn and unsure why.
“But if I was as smart as you're telling me I am, there wouldn't have been a need for…for him to…”
The growl that rose up in Sebastian's throat reminded Nicolette of the angry noises made by big cats.
“There was never a need for that animal to treat you the way that he did. That's what I'm trying to show you, and that's what I'm outright telling you right now, Nicolette. He did terrible things to you that would make any good Wiccan sick.”
Nicolette stared at him, a thick lump in her throat. She was afraid if she tried to speak around it, it would dissolve and she would burst into tears.
“Trust me on this one, even if you won't trust me on anything else. What Vacek did was inhuman, and eventually, someone slit his throat for it. Trust me when I say no one was really sorry for that. You're amazing, and if he told you things that hurt you, believe me that was exactly what they were designed to do.”
Nicolette could feel that lump growing, and his words made her stare. Sebastian could obviously feel that something was wrong because he stopped and looked at her, concern warring with his temper.
“Nicolette?”
“He's dead?”
Sebastian cursed to himself, and then nodded.
Nicolette felt as if the top of her head had simply opened up and lofted away. The world felt dim and she couldn't tell if she was floating or falling. She made herself focus and then she could look at Sebastian again.
“Are you serious? He's dead?”
Sebastian nodded, watching her with concern, and she shook her head.
She still felt unsteady, so she leaned against the brick wall, and when Sebastian came closer to touch her shoulder, she rested her head on his chest.
“Nicolette?”
“Oh god, he's dead,” she whispered, and the tears started to come.
She didn't know why she was crying. She didn't know why her whole body shook, and why she clung to Sebastian as if he were the last stable thing in the world. She understood why she felt relieved, but she didn't understand the overwhelming sense of sadness or grief. She didn't know why she wanted to laugh, why she wanted to cringe and throw up, why she simply needed to sob and sob.
Sebastian's arms came up around her, and he held her close. She was distantly aware of him rubbing her back and kissing the top of her forehead. Slowly, she regained control of herself.
“I'm so sorry,” she whispered.
“I should be the one apologizing. That was a terrible way for you to find out.”
“He was a terrible man, I don't know why I did that.”
“You're mourning.”
Sebastian's voice was as soft as down, and she looked up at him skeptically.
“But he was a terrible person,” she said.
“You're mourning what you lost and what he should have been to you. If he had done his job, treated you with the compassion that you deserved, well, things would have been a lot different.”
With those few and simple words, Nicolette began to believe it. If Vacek had been a different man, a kind man or at least a man who was simply less cruel, it would have been different. She wouldn't be living with a traveling circus. She would be further along with progress in her power. She would never have thought that her power began and ended where it did for so long.
“Nicolette, listen to me. Vacek was wrong, and if you take nothing else from me, I want you to take that, okay? Things would have been so different for you if someone else was your teacher.”
Though Nicolette nodded, and they began to work again, the thought of everything she had lost stayed with her. In another world, there was a version of her who had never run away. Perhaps that version had met Sebastian. Perhaps the sparks had flown with no trace of the fear or mistrust that she felt.
They worked hard with her powers, and where Sebastian couldn't help her because his own were so different, he made up for it by listening to her explain what she did and offering solutions. She noticed that his phone rang several times throughout the day, and though he stopped to look at it, he never picked up. Finally, as evening drew on, they made their way back to safe house, ordered some Chinese food, and sat down with a list of names and addresses.
“All right, again. Who are the masters and mistresses of the Chicago covens?”
“Harold Fremont, Delun Chau, Humberto Peters, and…and…” He waited, but she looked at him helplessly. “I…I can't remember.”
“It's Helena Beauchene. All right, what are their addresses?”
Nicolette dropped her head to the table. “I don't think I can do this, Sebastian. I won't use these addresses.”
“Memorize them anyway. This is the safest way for you to get this information. Tell me the addresses.”
Somehow she found them in her memory, and she recited them. She could do the Atlanta addresses, and the ones from Seattle as well, but then it was like she was trying to swim through pudding.
“I really, really don't know what else I have in me.”
“Take a break,” Sebastian said reluctantly. “We'll see if there's anything left after some food.”
They ate their food in silence, and finally the question that had been in the back of Nicolette's mind all day came out.
“Are you going to be okay fighting the Templars?”
Sebastian looked startled.
“What do you mean?”
“They are dangerous. That's what everyone told me, and that's what you're telling me too. A Templar is dangerous to me, but are they dangerous to you?”
Sebastian's laugh was short and humorless, and he responded by pulling the tail of his shirt out of his trousers. He pointed to a thick welted scar that cut across his flank, from his side right down to a spot underneath his navel.
“A Templar did that to me not long after the Civil War,” he said. “I was careless, I wasn't looking, and suddenly he was there and trying to gut me.”
Nicolette shivered at the matter of fact way he told her this. Sebastian pulled down his shirt and shook his head.
“They're very dangerous, Nicolette. When something has committed its every waking moment to destroying you, your way of life and everything that is important to you, they're dangerous.”
“And the Corps is the force that fights them?”
“There are others, but I'm not sure that anyone does it with as much dedication and as much organization as we do. The covens have their own defenses, and some of those defenses would put Fort Knox to shame. Those battles are more like sieges, and unless there's something really nasty going down, Templars prefer to fight when they have more of an advantage.”
“So the Templars tend to be fighting the soldiers of the Corps like you?”
“And the rogues like you. Yes.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you fighting them? I mean, you're strong, you're immortal or nearly so, why fight when you could just as easily leave it behind?”
To her surprise, Sebastian smiled almost wistfully.
“Because I was made to protect others,” he said quietly. “Some three hundred and seventy five years ago, I was wasting my life in Amsterdam. My father wanted me to go into the family business, and I was simply more interested in drinking and carousing. My teacher found me, and he had to spend a week convincing me of what I was. I move the earth, you know, but thanks to a combination of drinking and denial, I was ignoring it quite well.” He paused for a moment, a far-away look in his eyes. “He tried to convince me my life held more than just what I saw in front of me. Then he gave up, saying that there was someone he had to go help.”
Nicolette sat, wide-eyed, listening to Sebastian's tale. It was hard for her to see a wild-eyed self-destructive boy in the lean and serious man in front of her. This was Sebastian's history, and she wasn't sure how many people had been given the rare privilege of hearing it.
“On a lark, I decided to follow him, and we rode hellbent for leather for Dresden. There was a young man there who was in rather a lot of trouble. He spent the night with his lover, and he woke up spitting fire. His lover denounced him, the Church got involved, and he was going to be executed.”
“But you saved him?”
Sebastian's smile lit up like the sun, and Nicolette felt her breath catch. There was still a hint of that wild boy in the man. She could see how he must have looked when he found his life's mission.
“We did. We took him away from there, and we found him a place in a coven in Mantua. He's a teacher now. Amazing with elemental magics, and very well loved by students with an affinity to fire.”
“You look happy,” she said softly.
“I can't save everyone,” Sebastian said quietly, “but I saved him.”
Nicolette thought that she could see the shades of all of the people that Sebastian couldn't save. He was already adding her to that list. The effect on him was terrible, and she couldn't stand it. So she did t
he only thing she could think of. She walked around the table and, when he didn't look up, she cupped his chin in her hand and lifted his head.
“Nicolette?”
She couldn't leave with him, and he couldn't stay with her. There were no words she could give him. Instead, she dipped her head down to brush his lips with hers. When his hands landed on her narrow hips to pull her closer, she knew that at least they would have this. The kiss stretched out, gentle and sweet. There was a goodbye in it, and yes, there was love there as well, but that could be wept over later. She could feel the tension in his shoulders, and when she broke the kiss, he looked up at her with those pale, feral eyes.
He started to speak, but she placed her finger over his lips. She didn't want to hear more arguments that could never be resolved. She only wanted him, and after a moment, he nodded.
His tongue licked out, and she shivered when he lapped at her finger. Slowly, she slid it between his lips, drawing it back and forth. The inside of his mouth was soft, hot velvet, and the skill of his tongue was making the blood rush hotly through her veins. It was beautiful, but she wanted more, so she drew back.
Standing, Sebastian took her hand and lead her to the bedroom, closing the door behind them. The bed stretched out for miles, and when Sebastian pulled the dress off her body, she wanted nothing more than to lie down.
He settled her on the mattress, and with quick deft motions, he removed her bra and her panties. In the field it had been nothing but passion and pleasure, but now in his luxurious bed, she felt shy. She had been a skinny girl who grew up to be a lanky woman. She wondered what a man who had had centuries to bed women would think of her. But the clear pleasure on Sebastian's face quickly disabused her of any idea that he was displeased.
He knelt over her naked body and ran his hands over her tenderly. From shoulder to hip, from hip to ankle and back again, it felt like he was trying to memorize her body. When he brushed the back of his hands against her cheeks, she sighed, and then he was reaching for her hair.
With fastidious care, he loosened her hair it until it lay over her like a dark cloak, and then his fingers were massaging her scalp, making her purr with pleasure. His strong fingers traveled over her body, working out the tensions that she never knew were there, and as he did so, she ran her hands over his as well.
