From Jennifer Ashley, With Love: Three Paranormal Romances from Bestselling Series

by Jennifer Ashley

  Adrian gave her his full attention. “I told you not to fall in love with an Immortal.”

  “Well, too damn late. I love you. Hear me?” She shook him again. “Breaking my heart so you can stay down here meditating in an ice cave is just . . . “ Amber groped for a word. “Mean.”

  Adrian kept his gaze on her. She could never read what was in his eyes; he hid so much.

  “Finding my brother is the reason I remained so long in your world,” Adrian said. “I will locate Tain and go.”

  “Oh, I see. So anyone else you happened to drag into your adventures along the way doesn’t matter?”

  Adrian brushed a lock of hair from her face and kissed her forehead. “Go home, Amber. Thank you for helping me. Be well.”

  He raised his hand, and a wave of his power lifted her from her feet. Amber fought it as hard as she could, but the ripples propelled her upward into the ice tunnel. She scrabbled against the walls of ice, hands slipping. Amber screamed to Adrian to let her go, tried to break his spell, but his power was far more immense than hers would ever be, damn the man.

  The air grew colder as Amber drifted firmly toward the surface. She felt the wind above her, which would give her frostbite if she couldn’t get her gloves and mask on in time.

  She’d almost reached the top when she heard a tearing sound. Amber looked up in shock to see the tunnel above her collapse. She screamed as a huge wall of black, freezing water barreled into her, plummeted her down the length of the tunnel back to the cave floor.

  The walls and ceiling of the cave groaned and shuddered, bowing inward. Then they broke, sending a wall of water spiraling down to bury the cave, Amber, and Adrian beneath it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The filthy taint of death magic told Amber the demon had sprung his trap. She saw him in the wall of water, darkness within darkness, blotting out the cool green light of the cave.

  She couldn’t scream anymore because water filled her mouth, the weight of the wave crushing all air out of her. Amber was going to die. A fire spell and a knack for earth magic wouldn’t help her now.

  Adrian’s power broke the water like a slice of white, cutting the darkness of the demon’s magic. His magic pressed a bubble of air around Amber, its white walls shoving the water away. Amber fell to her knees, gasping for breath, her clothes sodden.

  Not two feet from her Adrian and the demon met. White and black swirled together, obscuring their bodies, life magic and death magic in a blurred struggle. She felt Adrian’s magic like a scythe, the man no longer worried about keeping his enemy alive. He wanted vengeance.

  Amber knew that if Adrian lost this fight, she was dead. The demon would either amuse himself snuffing out her life, or leave her here to suffocate or drown alone.

  On the other hand, if Adrian killed the demon, they might never find Tain. The demon had gone to great lengths to keep Adrian from his brother, which must mean that if the two got together something could go wrong . . . wrong for the demon, that is.

  With dawning comprehension Amber understood that all the clues leading to this point, and the journey itself, hadn’t been about Adrian finding his brother to restore him to their haven. This was about the demon working his butt off to trap Adrian, the most powerful of the Immortals, to keep him occupied while he fulfilled his plans for Tain, whatever they were.

  And what if Adrian had been right when he’d suspected Tain didn’t want to be found? What if this plot wasn’t the demon simply trying to thwart Adrian, but the demon trying to protect Tain?

  Tain had gone away with whoever had enticed him seven hundred years ago. Adrian was convinced Tain had been duped, but what if he had truly gone of his own free will?

  What if she and Adrian weren’t dealing with a powerful demon who wanted to control Immortals, but with an Immortal who wanted to control demons, vampires, and death magic?

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  Amber pawed in her pocket for the radio, but it had gotten soaked, even through its protective plastic covering. There wasn’t much chance it would transmit well this far below the surface anyway. She hadn’t even bothered with her cell phone.

  Hands shaking, she withdrew her pouch of crystals and selected the clearest piece of quartz she could find. With a smaller quartz crystal, she drew a circle around herself in the ice then closed her eyes and raised the power around her.

  The secret of witch magic was that you truly didn’t need candles, knives, chalices, and censors of burning incense. Those accoutrements focused your concentration and enhanced your magical energy, but a true witch could perform magic standing alone in the woods or walking along a beach. You needed to pull energy from things around you and from inside you, channel that energy, and release it to accomplish your spell.

  If you didn’t have the correctly colored candle or the right herb, it didn’t necessarily matter. True magic was about the witch’s connection to the deities and her ability to raise energy, not whether she sprinkled the correct powder into the correct container at the correct time.

  On the other hand, it never hurt to use what was on hand to boost strength. Amber sketched the rune for victory in the ice with a piece of carnelian. Then she sat back on her heels, trying to calm her mind, which was next to impossible with the battle raging nearby.

  At one point Adrian’s sword flew through the air, smashing through the bubble that protected Amber. She gasped, but the bubble sealed again, Adrian’s magic holding. The sword skittered and bounced toward her glowing circle. Quickly Amber sketched an opening as the sword morphed into Ferrin and slid faster than thought toward her. He slithered up Amber’s leg and burrowed into her jacket, diving into a dry pocket.

  Amber gave her pocket a comforting pat, then refocused her energy into the flat crystal.

  Valerian, she shouted with her mind. We’re in some deep shit here. We need you!

  Outside her circle of calm and air, Adrian and the demon fought, through water and through ice, explosions of magic rocking the glacier above them.

  Valerian!

  She continued to mentally scream his name while the cave grew blacker around her. Adrian fought with magic and muscle, trying to best the demon whose death magic flowed like thick darkness at the bottom of a well. The blackness grew denser, spreading until Amber couldn’t see Adrian or his white magic.

  She did see, however, when the walls of the air bubble that kept her safe began to collapse.

  * * *

  Valerian woke from his bored doze when a crackling voice filled the room. “Valerian!”

  Startled, he clicked off the television where a national news station broadcasted that a heat wave had hit the Southern states. The voice was Amber’s but it cracked and broke as though she transmitted through faulty equipment. After a few moments, Valerian realized the sound came from the pockmarked mirror that hung above the motel room’s dresser.

  He went to it “Amber?”

  “Valerian.” Her tinny voice exuded relief. “The demon is going to kill Adrian, and I’m trapped with Ferrin under the ice.”

  Valerian couldn’t see anything in the mirror but his own tall body and blond hair mussed with sleep. “Where are you? What coordinates?”

  Her answer shook, fear radiating all the way from the middle of nowhere, as she gave him GPS coordinates.

  “All right. I’ll get there.” How he’d do it in the brutal cold, he didn’t know. A human could survive with the right gear, but his dragon’s blood would freeze, and he’d die. What Amber needed right now was not human but supernatural help.

  “Send someone, send anyone,” she begged. “Adrian’s losing.”

  “That should piss him off,” Valerian said. “He hates losing. You sit tight, babe, I’ll coordinate the rescue mission. Did you say you were under the ice?”

  “Yes, and that could change any minute to being underwater.”

  “Crap.”

  “Hurry!”

  “Hang on, sweetie,” Valerian said. “I’ll find you—
I swear it.”

  Amber said something else, but her voice crackled, too faint to be coherent. Like a cell phone breaking up and dying, her words faded to nothing.

  Valerian swore in many languages, including dragon, and dragged the motel room phone onto his lap. The first number he dialed was Septimus’s cell phone. The vampire for some reason was back at Adrian’s house—no, he was at Kelly’s next door. Valerian’s brain filed that interesting fact away as he filled Septimus in on the details.

  Septimus promised things. Valerian heard Kelly’s throaty voice on the other end before Septimus clicked off his phone.

  Valerian then called Adrian’s house, talking to Detective Simon. Simon promised help, too—he’d contact rescue people he knew up in Alaska and get them moving. Before Valerian could hang up, the phone was jerked out of Simon’s hands, and Sabina’s voice shrilled to him.

  “You find her, Valerian, you hear me? Amber’s my best friend, and I don’t want the pack to have to come after you for getting her killed. We can take down a dragon if we do it together. And we will.”

  “Hey, I’m doing my best here,” Valerian yelled back. “It’s like twenty below on this balmy spring day.”

  “Just find her.”

  “I will,” Valerian said in all seriousness, then hung up.

  Being unable to help Adrian, having to negotiate with a vampire, and being yelled at by a gorgeous werewolf did not make Valerian’s day brighter. He looked out the grimy window across the equally grimy parking lot and the slushy snow on the street. Amber might already be dead, and Adrian—who knew?

  Valerian imagined Amber would rather be in the Southern heat wave just now, lying on a Florida beach sipping mai tais while Adrian licked her toes. Valerian would like to be on that beach himself, splashing in the waves with a cute blond werewolf.

  He growled, the sound coming from deep within him, startling a mouse that skittered quickly behind the baseboards.

  “Oh, what the hell,” he muttered.

  He grabbed his parka and slammed his way out the door, jogging across the street into the scrub to look for a place to change to his dragon form.

  * * *

  The demon’s magic sucked the power from Amber’s spell, and Valerian’s voice cut off. Death magic was winning beneath the ice as Adrian’s life magic divided itself between fighting the demon and maintaining the air bubble around Amber.

  Amber scrabbled in her pouch of stones. If she could sustain the bubble herself, then Adrian could fight without worrying about her. The trouble was she wasn’t certain how to do such a spell or whether her crystals had enough power left to help.

  Plus Amber was terrified, the light was almost gone, and the overwhelming death magic was nearly destroying what energy she had left. She collapsed to the bottom of the bubble, shaking as she watched the two fighting so close.

  Pretty soon, Adrian would have to choose between killing the demon and saving Amber. She couldn’t be sure which choice he’d make, and she hated that he’d have to make it. But if she’d stayed up top as he’d wanted her to, the demon would likely have found her, snuffed out her life, and tossed her body down the hole to taunt Adrian.

  The demon probably had found their stash of bikes and supplies and wrecked those too. Even if she did get out of the cave, she’d freeze to death alone, far from civilization . . .

  No. Amber shook herself. The death magic was depressing her, drawing away her will to live. She needed to keep herself alive, freeing Adrian from having to look after her.

  “You don’t know any good air spells do you, Ferrin?” she asked.

  The snake remained silent in her pocket. He was using her body heat to keep his reptile blood from freezing, she understood. That fact that she felt sorry for him told Amber how many things she’d come to accept in the last week.

  A thought came to her, though she wasn’t certain if Ferrin put it there or Adrian, though it sounded much like a wisp of Susan’s voice. Invoke the Goddess.

  Amber dumped her stones onto the ice. Of course. The simplest ritual she could do was a spiritual one, to invite the Goddess to her. If nothing else, the chanting of the Goddess’ names would calm her. She needed some comfort trapped under a thousand feet of ice with two supernatural beings battling it out steps away from her, her only friend a snake who was doing his best to go dormant.

  Amber drew the circle, closed her eyes, and began a chant to the Goddess. “Mother of the moon, queen of the night, blessed be the Goddess, blessed be her might. By Gaia, Isis, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Ishtar . . . “

  Calm eased her aching limbs, her tight throat loosening as she repeated the chant. The cold and fear, the icy smell of the water, the hideous noises of the fighting, started to recede, until they were distant, observed, and her panic ebbed.

  In the darkness, Amber saw a slim woman in silhouette, with thin horns rising from her head. Her dress was a single light sheath bound at one shoulder, her hair black and flowing to her waist. She turned her head and looked straight at Amber, her large black eyes framed with lush lashes, giving her a look that was both sensual and wise.

  Without opening her mouth, the apparition said, “You care for my son.”

  Amber brushed tears from her eyes and tried to focus on the woman, who blurred the more Amber stared at her. “When he’s not being a reckless pain in the ass.”

  She felt Isis’s amusement at her statement. “You care for him. He needs that. More than your magic, more than your help, he needs your love.”

  Amber shook her head. “He’s not exactly accepting it.”

  “You must make him accept it. He needs you. In the end, it will be your love that saves him. Hold on to that.”

  “My love that saves him?” Amber said, bewildered, as the goddess began to fade. “Wait a minute. What will save me?”

  “Friends,” Isis said in a faint voice, then she was gone.

  Frantically Amber tried to hang on to the calm she’d achieved, tried to reach outside the danger to find the Goddess again. Nothing.

  As Amber gathered her stones to form the circle again, the air bubble shattered and broke. A wall of water sent Amber tumbling across the remains of the ice cave, shards slicing through her padded coat to her flesh. She slammed face-first into the frozen ground, tasting blood.

  Over the crush of water she seemed to hear an irritated voice uttering every profanity she knew and some she’d never heard before.

  “Frigging cold, I’m going to have rigor mortis before I die.”

  Amber’s body went limp, no air reaching her lungs, her skin feeling strangely warm as she drifted into lassitude. Then something clamped around her like an iron cage and dragged her unmercifully up and up through freezing water into even colder air and slammed her down again onto hard ice.

  * * *

  When Amber peeled open her eyes, she found her ski mask and goggles jammed on her face, but twisted so much she could barely breathe. She sat up, jerking her mask and goggles straight with hands clumsy in padded mittens.

  She was on the ice again, in open air and wind. A clear sky etched with thousands of stars arched above her, the smudge of the galaxy blazing to the horizon. Next to her stood an exhausted-looking Valerian in parka, pants, and boots. He wrapped a thick blanket around her and extracted a thermos from a box and shoved it at her. “Drink.”

  It was coffee, the beverage Amber most hated. But the steam filled her nose, and she poured the scalding liquid into her mouth, swallowing it as though it were ambrosia. The coffee’s heat burned its way down her gullet and eased her tight shaking.

  Something moved under her coat. Amber peeked inside to see Ferrin poke a tentative nose from her pocket, and she exhaled in relief that he was all right. Then she scanned the ice, empty of all except herself and Valerian.

  “Where is Adrian?”

  Valerian’s look was grim. “He disappeared as I pulled you free.”

  “Disappeared?” Amber tried and failed to get to her feet. “What do you mean�
��disappeared?”

  “He and the demon vanished together,” Valerian growled. “They’re gone. I don’t know where.”

  Amber swept her gaze over the ice again, its unbroken whiteness and the fierce light of the stars making it as bright as dawn. She saw no sign of Adrian walking upright across the vast plain of white. Even the tunnel that had led to the cave was covered and gone.

  Grief twisted her, but she had no tears left to cry. She drew her knees to her chest, her hand straying to the pocket where Ferrin hid.

  She was not ready to let Adrian go. Amber was a witch with some skill, and she would dig out the most powerful locator spell she could muster and hunt him down.

  “He won’t get rid of me that easy,” she said.

  Valerian grinned at her, but his smile was shaky, his face gray-white with cold.

  Amber reached for his hand and climbed painfully to her feet, the ice so cold it was sticky, not slippery. “We have to find the bikes. Our tent is there too, where we can rest before we ride back.”

  Valerian shook his head. “I didn’t see them. I think the demon already made a clean sweep.”

  Amber balled her fists. “Fine, then he can explain it to the rental agency.”

  “Don’t make me laugh, it hurts.”

  Amber focused on him, noting Valerian was as shaky and gray as she felt. “I thought you couldn’t fly so far in the cold.”

  “I can’t. I shouldn’t have. I thought if I changed myself back to human and got warm right away, I’d be all right, but I think I’ve screwed myself over.”

  “Don’t you dare die on me, Valerian,” Amber said fiercely. “I need you.”

  He had his hands pressed to his stomach. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Valerian’s words were drowned out by the drone of an engine above them. Yellow and red lights appeared against the black sky, color cutting a swath through the night. Aircraft.