Horace tried again to focus his powers. A sputtering wind whooshed past him as he tried to hold back the bullet. But it was too little and too late.
Horace shoved Faith out of the way a heartbeat before a lead fist slammed into his chest.
It hurt like hell. Horace slid down the brick wall.
And suddenly, he didn’t hurt at all.
“So much for changing the future,” he grumbled as he dropped to the cold, hard ground.
Chapter Four
He wasn’t dead, not yet, which surprised Horace. He must have passed out, though, because the next thing he knew, he woke up flat on his back on the ground with Faith on her knees beside him. Lovely, beautiful Faith. She looked like an angel. A damned sexy angel. An angel Horace wanted to pull into his arms and kiss with his very last breath. If not for the unmistakable lust tugging at the lower parts of his body, he might have thought he’d already died and woken up in Heaven.
With every drop of his overheated blood, he wanted Faith. He could still smell the sweet scent of sex on her, and it only made him want her more. Nope, not dead. But he might as well be dead since he sure as hell couldn’t act on any of his sexual urges.
Faith had removed her lavender shirt and had it pressed to his chest wound. Blood had already soaked through to her hands.
Damn, his chest hurt like hell. He tried to bat her hands away, but she remained an immoveable force. Stubborn. Considering how she’d doggedly pursued him despite everything he’d done to keep her away, Horace figured he already knew about that stubborn streak of hers.
“You need to get out of here.” His voice sounded harsh, raspy. He tried to push her away again. “You’re in danger, Faith. The shooter might still be out there.”
“I’m not leaving you.” She flicked her tongue over her full, pink lips, a frantic gesture. And if he hadn’t been in so much pain he would have tried to kiss her. She glanced around nervously. “I don’t see anyone.”
“And we didn’t see him the first time, either.”
She ignored that reasonable bit of information. From somewhere on her body, he couldn’t figure out where, she produced a small pearl-colored cell phone. “I’m calling 911.”
Oh no, she wasn’t. It took considerable effort to wrench the clamshell phone from her hands and close it.
“No police. No ambulance.” The first would only complicate matters, and the second might seriously screw him up...if he managed to survive.
“But-but—”
“I need to get in touch with Stone.” Horace’s head hummed with pain. Thoughts drifted helter-skelter within his head. It took all his concentration to remember and then recite Stone’s cell number while his eyesight blurred in and out of focus.
He needed to kiss Faith...to feel her sexy-as-sin lips on his one more time. Not call Stone.
Look at her. Faith could use some comforting. Her hands trembled so badly she could barely hold her cell phone, but somehow she managed to dial. Her voice sounded calm, neutral, and very out of place for this damnable situation as she introduced herself to Stone.
“Horace has been shot,” she said with great care, which made Horace wince. Hearing it said aloud somehow made the bullet wound hurt worse. “You need to come to the club. Horace wants you here.” She listened.
He wished he could hear Stone’s reply.
Faith nodded. “We’re out back in the alleyway. He won’t let me call an ambulance.”
She didn’t seem to like Stone’s reaction to that. She actually sneered at the phone.
“You can’t be serious.”
Another pause.
“Okay, I’ll try,” she said, and then turned off the tiny cell phone. Tears pooled in her eyes.
“Baby,” Horace said. He wished he could protect her from the inevitable. The bullet had caused too much damage. He could feel his soul slipping away. “I’m dying. I’m sorry...” that you had to be here. “I’m sorry...” that it had to be like this. “But-but—” He coughed on his own blood. “I-I’m not sorry that we—”
“Oh, shut up,” Faith snapped.
“What?” He was trying to do the right thing, to be sensitive to her feelings and to understand what his dying in her arms like this might mean to her. Didn’t she understand the mountains of effort it took for him to even talk?
“I said, shut up.” Flames flashed in her baby blue eyes. “Listen, Horace.” Rage deepened her voice. A force behind her words, one very similar to the mental push he’d used when he’d told her to go home earlier that evening, pressed against him.
“You are not going to die.”
“I don’t think I have a choice in the matter.” He doubted he’d be able to hold on long enough for Stone to get there.
“I won’t let you die. So you better stop scaring me with this talk about you giving up on life and leaving me alone in this alleyway.” The fire in Faith’s eyes grew hotter. Her pupils widened, swallowing her light blue irises, making the pair of eyes staring at Horace appear solid black.
And Faith’s hands felt like hot coals against his chest.
Horace tried to wiggle away from her touch, but she wouldn’t let him. She pressed against his wound.
“You are not going to die,” Faith repeated. Her words shuddered through his body. The fire in her hands grew hotter. A faint glow illuminated her skin and face. Even her eyes glowed. “You are not going to die.”
Faith could repeat that litany a hundred times, but Horace knew her words couldn’t save him. Nothing could.
Perhaps if a healer had been on hand, or a doctor who understood the complexities of their kind, but that wasn’t how it had happened. His eyesight darkened. The life-giving air in his lungs drifted away, leaving him empty.
At least he wasn’t going die alone...
You are not going to die! Faith’s angry voice tore through is head.
A slug of solid air slammed into his lungs, filling him. He shot up from the ground like a bullet. Suddenly, without knowing how, his wobbly legs supported him. Faith blinked those beautiful blue eyes of hers. They still glowed. She still glowed. But it didn’t matter, because he was alive.
Horace couldn’t believe it. He’d been dying one moment and alive and well the next. Amazing. Nearly as amazing as the woman who knelt at his feet. He pulled Faith into his arms and did what he’d wanted to do all along.
He kissed her.
****
“What-what-what just happened?” Faith stammered.
Horace felt about as stunned as she looked. The pain in his chest had vanished. He carefully peeled back his shirt to reveal healthy, but bloodstained, skin. The bullet hadn’t left a mark or even the slightest indentation.
As Faith watched wide-eyed, Horace touched his chest. Automatically wincing, expecting the slightest touch to hurt like the devil. It didn’t.
He hadn’t felt this healthy in years.
Faith, on the other hand, look as if she’d been dragged through hell.
“Are you okay?” Horace asked as he vigorously rubbed her icy hands between his own. Hadn’t they been burning hot just a moment before? Her skin had turned pasty white and her lips blue.
“What did you do?” he demanded.
Faith swallowed and shook her head. Something was seriously wrong. He wrapped his arms around her and caught her as she fainted.
****
“What the hell happened?” Stone demanded after fingering Horace’s blood-soaked shirt, complete with bullet hole.
““Hell if I know. None of the Protectors could have done a better job healing me.” He motioned toward Faith.
She was sitting at the desk in his office. He’d propped the office door open so he could keep an eye on her. He watched as she cradled her head in her hands, concern tightening his chest. He’d given her a white workout T-shirt to put on since she’d sacrificed her own shirt to staunch his blood flow. He kept several spare T-shirts in his office in the event he wanted to go directly to the gym from the club. Right now, he was
glad he did. Glad he had something to offer her.
He didn’t know how she’d done it, but by some miracle she’d saved his life. A completely normal human had used magic—magic very similar to their own—to save him.
Faith looked up and stared blankly at the unopened birthday gift bag Brendan had brought over earlier that night. She looked quite shaken.
“She did this?” Stone’s tone crept up into the incredulous range.
“I can’t imagine how. She’s human.”
Stone nodded. “What were you doing before you were shot?”
“Ummm...” He wasn’t the kind of guy who talked about those things with his buddies.
“I see,” Stone said.
“Do you? Because I sure as hell don’t.”
“You must have transferred your powers somehow. I remember you’d once mentioned that you didn’t think you could safely have sex with a human. Maybe it’s time you talk about what you meant by that.”
“No!” Horace barked. He glanced toward his office and met Faith’s frightened gaze. Great...just great. He’d screwed up both of their lives. He should have never touched her. He lowered his voice. “I’m sorry, Stone.” He couldn’t talk about it. He wouldn’t talk about it. He couldn’t even think about that missing time in his life. “I...I can’t.”
“I don’t need specifics. But can you tell me if a transfer of powers has ever—?”
“No—” He slashed his hand through the air. “I can’t talk about this.”
“Why? Does this have to do with what happened when you were away from us? When you were missing? Where did you go?” Almost six years earlier Horace had disappeared for two solid years. Two years that Horace couldn’t really explain or remember.
He didn’t want to remember.
“I can’t talk about it.” Horace slashed an angry hand through the air.
That piqued Stone’s interest. “Can’t or won’t?”
“Both.”
Stone shrugged and appeared willing to let the matter drop, for now. “She must have soaked up your energy. I’m sure it’s only a temporary thing. Nothing to worry about.”
Only Stone did look worried. His frown deepened. He flicked a glance in Faith’s direction. “We’ll need to deal with her.”
“Deal...with...?” Horace asked. The Protectors rarely harmed the humans. Like a band of wizards living in a tower they watched over the humans, kept them safe from malevolent forces. All of the Protectors believed they existed on earth to do just that. No one had ever given them a mission statement, or even told them what they were or where they came from. But watching over the humans seemed like a pretty obvious reason for their existence.
They had powers and abilities far beyond anything the humans would believe. And yet, every single one of the Protectors had been born to humble beginnings, made to suffer as children. It only made sense that they existed so they could ease suffering. To help. Not harm.
But that didn’t mean they never harmed a human.
The Protector’s had a council, a formalized justice system. Unlike the human court of law, their justice tended to be swift and often extremely brutal. And one of the most staunchly held laws of their kind was that they couldn’t reveal their powers to the humans.
What would the council say when they heard that a human had borrowed Horace’s powers? Would they consider Faith a danger? Would they call for her death?
Horace rubbed his tired eyes. “I don’t have any healing abilities. I’m not convinced she used my power.”
Stone nodded again. It was a noncommittal gesture. Meaningless. Unreadable. But Horace knew one thing for a certainty—Stone protected his own. He would walk through fire before letting anything bad happen any of them. Even if that meant keeping secrets from their council.
“Ms. Summers, may I speak with you for a moment?” Stone called.
Faith pushed up from the office chair and walked cautiously over to them. She still looked shell-shocked. Horace put his arm around her shoulder, not because he felt a need to touch her, to connect with her, but because she looked like she could use the support. He’d gotten rid of any tender yearnings to connect with others in that manner years ago...hadn’t he?
“Who are you people?” she demanded. She looked and sounded fearless. But she shivered in the circle of Horace’s arms. “What are you?”
“It really doesn’t matter,” Stone said. His voice sounded soft and gentle. Safe. He focused all his attention on Faith. Horace, standing so close, could feel the waves of Stone’s magical power rolling over him. He tried not to imagine what such intense power must have been doing to Faith.
Faith blinked up at Stone. Her expression relaxed, and then went blank.
“Nothing out of the ordinary happened tonight,” Stone told her, using his powers to bend her memories.
Faith nodded.
“You had fun with your friends and then went home at closing.”
Faith nodded again.
“You had a good night’s sleep. And you will wake up in the morning feeling happy and rested.”
“Yes,” Faith said, her voice was flat, lifeless. Stone rifled through her purse and handed her a set of car keys.
“Will she be okay to drive like that?” Horace asked. Faith seemed so out of it. Like a vital part of her had been pushed away.
“She should be.”
And just like that, it was all over.
Just a few months earlier Brendan had been furious when Stone had used his powers to control Dallas’s mind.
Horace, oddly enough, felt faintly relieved that someone else was handling matters. Of course, there was one major difference between his situation and Brendan’s. Brendan loved his Dallas St. John. He’d ended up marrying her.
This thing between Horace and Faith...it was just lust. Raw. Primal. Lust. They would never be permanent lovers. He’d made a huge mistake by acting on his urges in the first place. If Stone could fix things by blurring Faith’s memory of tonight, so much the better.
Horace pulled Faith to his chest and wrapped his arms around her. He reverently kissed the top of her head.
“Thank you,” he whispered. And because he knew she wouldn’t remember any of this, he spoke a truth he hadn’t realized was true until the words had formed on his lips, “If not for who I am—what I am—I could easily see myself falling for someone exactly like you.”
Such a shame, really. Because of what had happened to Horace all those years ago, and what he had become, there could never be anything between them.
But it hurt his head to think about that.
So he didn’t.
Chapter Five
The alarm clock beside Faith’s bed wailed like a blasted foghorn. Faith groaned as she sleepily rolled over to slap the snooze button. She really needed to get up. She had an early class. And she couldn’t skip it since, as a graduate teaching assistant, it was her class to teach. Even knowing that, she couldn’t find the energy to move.
Her entire body felt stiff and drowsy. Muscles not used to action ached from the alleyway encounter. Had that really been her? She’d thrown herself at Horace. Though there’d been a connection between the two of them, Horace had done his best to discourage her. To keep...that...from happening.
And he’d marked her. The spot where he’d bitten her ached this morning. Not an altogether unpleasant sensation. Despite the dull throb of bruised skin, the mark he’d made on her breast left her feeling slightly aroused and anxious.
Don’t think about that. I need to put him and what he did to me out of my mind, a calm, soothing voice inside her urged. Forget him and forget everything that happened last night.
Nothing happened last night. She’d gone home early.
Faith curled deeper into the covers, nodding her head in agreement with her inner voice. She should forget. She should...
Suddenly she remembered something she would never, ever forget. With a frustrated scream, Faith jolted up in bed.
That jerk!
<
br /> After they had acted so impetuously in the alleyway, but before all the weird stuff—or had that been a foggy dream?—Horace had started to tell her that what they’d done had been a one-time thing. That there could never be anything between them.
Well, buster, Faith didn’t do one-night-stands. She didn’t give sex to men in order to make herself feel special or sexy. She made connections. She cultivated relationships. Sure, sex might come into the equation pretty quick. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t already started calculating the likelihood of a happily-ever-after.
But Horace had made himself clear. He didn’t want a relationship or any kind of forever. And after what she saw last night, she couldn’t be sure she did either. At least, not with him. A man had shot him in cold blood.
Cold blood.
The memory made her shiver. Though she didn’t know anything about these things, it sure as hell hadn’t been a crime of passion but a chillingly pre-planned murder attempt.
Any normal person would have been scared shitless and knocking people over to call the police. But not Horace.
She’d gotten the feeling he’d expected something like that to happen. And when she’d tried to call 911, he’d snatched the phone away. Bleeding and dying, he’d wrenched the phone from her. Why would he do that?
Something fishy is going on.
Most likely illegal.
She should have never had sex with Horace...a virtual stranger. What had gotten into her? Could getting her tongue pierced have so thoroughly gone to her head? How was she going to face him tonight—or any night—with that between them?
Despite the summer heat, Faith tossed her covers over her head and planned to stay under there forever.
“Damn, girl!” Kimmi’s voice was muffled thanks to Faith’s thick quilt. “What happened in your bedroom last night?”
“Go away.”
“I brought coffee,” Kimmi said. “I thought that after our late night you might need help getting to you 8:15 class. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m not going to the class. I’m not leaving this bed.”
Mystical Seduction Page 4
