When he released her, she was bereft. She shivered, and didn’t know how to release the pressure in her head. He extended his arm and with the side of a fingernail that briefly flashed into a talon, he opened a cut near his elbow. The smell of his blood rolled through her and sparked a familiar hunger in her. She knew about this. The taste of a fiend’s blood, the rush of power that came with it. Her hand shook as she reached for his arm, cupping his elbow and wrist in her hands. She bent her head and breathed in, anticipating the tang against her tongue just from the scent.
Durian hooked his other arm around the back of her neck and pulled her close until her side rested against his torso.
She could swear she tasted his magic in his blood as her psychic connection to him deepened. Her oath to him remained quiescent, something that existed but was not currently in play. She felt his bonds with Nikodemus, too, and other bonds she couldn’t identify. She caught an image from his thoughts; bodies intertwining. The curve of a woman’s breast.
At last, she lifted her head. He smiled, and her desire was an ache. The longer they looked at each other, the more the connection between them intensified. She was turned on. So was Durian. She knew that. They both knew.
“This is only unusual—” he said in slow, deliberate words. He kept his arm around her neck, kept her close to him. The tip of his tongue darted out to pull in a tiny drop of blood on his lower lip. “Unusual, in that you are a human female. With everything that means for one of the kin.” His eyes were half-closed. The kin reproduced with humans, so of course Durian was thinking about more than normal sex. “We will find a way to manage that.”
Her head jangled with a sense of another fiend. One who outranked her considerably. In fact, whoever it was also outranked Durian, and that was a bit scary. “Damn,” she whispered.
“It’s all right,” he said. Durian cupped the side of her face, and she turned toward the contact. His fingers stroked down her neck, then along the collar of her robe in a soft caress. The thing was too big on her. Of course it was. The outside was wrapped halfway around her body just to keep it closed. His fingers swept up to touch her temple.
She let her head fall back against his supporting arm. His hand moved up the side of her throat, pausing over the pulse point there. She stretched toward him because the contact felt so good.
The door opened, and another fiend walked in. Durian had already turned around and said, “Kynan Aijan.”
CHAPTER 13
The Berkeley Hills, Berkeley, California
Maddy Winters stood hands on her hips at the side of her pool. She was barefoot and wearing a bikini top with an orange and green sarong tied low around her waist and hips. The shade of an enormous oak tree kept her out of the direct sun. She’d stopped about a quarter of the way down the long side of the pool, nearer the shallow end than the deep end, and was shamelessly staring.
Pitcher of lemonade in hand, she tried to deny her little pull of arousal. Hopeless, really. He ought to be declared illegal. Seriously. But she did so appreciate the sight, even if she felt pervy for staring. If there was any fiend more of a psychological mess than Kynan Aijan, it was this one.
Iskander reached the deep end and hauled himself out of the water. Muscle rippled all along his back. When he was out and on his feet, he slicked his dark hair out of his face and lifted his face toward the sun. Five blue stripes of varying widths ran down the left side of his torso, disappeared into the waistband of his boxer-style swim trunks and continued down the back of his leg.
She happened to know that if he turned around, she’d still see five stripes down the left side of his body, including his face. If she were to look she would see that the blue coloration affected his hair, too. Water dripped off him, spattering on the concrete as he walked to one of her lounge chairs, shucked his trunks and draped himself, gloriously naked, on the chair.
Iskander had no inhibitions about his body. He was comfortable in his skin. Considering what he looked like, no wonder. He had a perfect body. Not a flaw in sight. Really. Not even one. No man should be that beautiful. It wasn’t fair. Well, though, the more powerful the fiend, the more perfect the physical form. She shook herself and headed toward him.
Of all the kin Nikodemus could have sent to work with her and her group of mages and witches, he’d sent Iskander, the least well-adjusted and most mercurial of all of them. The psycho who couldn’t go five minutes without saying something inappropriate. He was a destabilizing influence. If he weren’t so damned good at this, she’d have told Nikodemus to forget it and send someone else. Almost anyone would do.
By now, Iskander had propositioned all of her witches and two of the three mages. He was discreet and, unbelievable as it seemed, must be charming at some level, because none of the ones who’d said yes to him—she believed that was most of them—were hurt or bothered when he moved on. Moving on was, apparently, inevitable with him. Sooner rather than later.
She’d never seen the love ‘em and leave ‘em type leave so little damage behind. He must really be gifted.
“Lemonade?” she said when she reached the patio furniture. Over the course of his time here, Maddy had learned how to avert her gaze to avoid overt leering, but still. He’d caught her ogling him more than once, and he’d never come on to her. Most of the time she was relieved. But sometimes not.
“Please,” he said.
She poured them both a glass and handed one to him, making sure she kept her eyes at his chin level or higher. As with so many of the kin, as she was learning to refer to them, his eyes were just this side of abnormally colored. Sometimes, of course, they were unnatural. At present, his irises were cobalt blue. Not human. While he drank, she wandered over to the grill and flipped his steak and her chicken. Another part of the routine. When he was done working for her, she let him swim and then she’d feed him.
“Practice went well today,” she said. She turned over the vegetables she had grilling, too, and then basted everything again.
“Think so?”
“Yes.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. His blue eyes were on her ass. On Nikodemus’s orders, he worked with her and her group three days a week, helping her teach her misfits what to expect from a fiend, how to forge a mutually beneficial link, and even defend against a psychic attack. He could also, they discovered by accident, spark magic in a latent human. Behaving wasn’t easy for him. God, no. But he did just about everything she asked without complaint. He worked hard, and he never lost patience with her newbies.
From the lounge chair, he said, “I was at the Tiburon house the other night. Kynan Aijan was there. He asked about you.” He meant the Marin County enclave the warlord Nikodemus had made his primary residence.
Maddy hoped to hell she managed to hide her start. Thank God she wasn’t facing him because there was no telling what he’d figure out from seeing her reaction. Sometimes he was remarkably dense about reading human emotions and other times, he saw far too much. And he was unpredictable about which way he’d be at any given time. “Oh?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“What was he asking about?” She brushed the chicken with more marinade. She was used to him being naked like this after the others had left. She didn’t care for the discomfort on her end, but that didn’t mean she didn’t appreciate what she saw. In a way, she regretted that she didn’t want to get involved with him.
“The point,” Iskander said, “isn’t what he said but what he meant.”
Since he liked his meat rare, she grabbed a plate and some silverware from the supply on top of the grill, flipped his steak onto the plate, added some of the veggies and walked it over to him. Her heart beat faster than it should and Iskander, being Iskander, probably noticed. Hopefully, he was in one of his unintuitive states. “What did he mean?”
“He wants you so bad his nuts hurt.” He took the plate from her and sat up, legs spread wide so he could put his steak on the chair.
“Oh, for God’s sake.” She stood the
re like an idiot, befuddled at the sight, holding on to her spatula. Nothing like regressing to her thirteen-year-old self all over again. It wasn’t as if her previous encounters with Kynan Aijan were the stuff of girlish fantasies. Hardly that. They had been, to understate the case, intense. And not particularly safe, either. She knew what Iskander was. And wasn’t. Unfortunately, intense seemed to push a button or two for her. “How can you even tell what he wants?”
He swallowed his first bite of steak. “Excellent as always.” Then he pointed his fork at her. “He’s still messed up over his whole deal with Carson, but he wants you.”
Carson being the witch Nikodemus was permanently linked with. Kynan had been responsible, to the extent a mageheld was responsible for anything he did, for a great many wrongs against Carson. “Kynan Aijan is insane.”
He got a thoughtful look on his face and there was just something so subtly un-human about his expression that she couldn’t help a chill. Kynan wasn’t human, either. So what the hell was her excuse, thinking about sex with either of them?
“People say that about me, too.” He ate a few veggies and then cocked his head in the direction of the grill. “Your chicken’s going to burn.”
“Oh, rats!” She dashed back to the grill. The chicken wasn’t burning, though. She turned it over again and brushed more marinade over everything because it gave her a reason not to look at him. Eventually, though, the meat was done.
While she was plating her food, Iskander said, “If you like insane, why not hook up with me?”
Maddy turned, plate in hand. “What?”
“I never asked you before because I figured you and Kynan—”
“Kynan?” Her chill wasn’t unpleasant. “And me?”
“Well, then.” He looked her up and down. Twice. “If there’s no Kynan and you, what about you and me?” He stretched out on the lounge chair, catlike, and grinned. His empty plate was on the ground beside him. He crossed his arms behind his head and the things that did to his torso. My God. “Come on, it’d be fun.”
“Fun.”
“Sit down and eat, Maddy. We can talk about this.” He polished off his lemonade and stared into the empty plastic cup with puppy dog longing.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” Oh, but he was just insanely beautiful. All meanings of that intended. She sat on another of the chairs, sideways and with her knees firmly together.
Iskander looked her up and down, smiling. “It’s okay if you don’t like to talk during sex.”
“Stop it.” She lifted a forkful of chicken to her mouth and then froze.
“I’m a talker.” His grin widened. “I hope that doesn’t—”
“Hsst!” She slashed her hand through the air. Fear rolled through her, and disbelief. “You don’t feel that?”
“What?” He was relaxed, unable, she was afraid, to see that she’d shifted into a whole new set of emotions that had nothing to do with going to bed with him. Or not. Against her better judgment either way. Half the time she thought she was crazy not to. The rest of the time she thought she’d be crazy if she did.
Maddy stood and the chill in her head got bigger. The sensation rolled over her with a measure of anger. “Magehelds.”
Iskander got to his feet with leisurely grace. He wasn’t smiling anymore, but he also didn’t look concerned. He should be. He really should be. “How many?”
She concentrated. The stink of the perverted magic that kept a fiend enslaved nauseated her. Iskander, she knew, could not feel them. None of the free kin could feel a mageheld. “At least four.”
Who the hell was sending magehelds after her? She’d left that world years ago. She doubted many of her former colleagues knew she was still alive, let alone what she was doing here or that she had associated herself with Nikodemus. No one. No one knew there was any reason to retaliate. To be honest, even if her fellow magekind did know, they’d think she was wasting her time. The arrogance of her kind was chilling at times.
The wooden fence between her yard and the uphill neighbor’s bowed inward with a groaning screech of nails sliding against dry wood.
What if the magehelds were here for Iskander?
She pulled her magic because she was damned if she let her negative feelings about the use of magic against living creatures stop her from saving her life or Iskander’s, if it came to that. Judging from the way he stood there, stark naked and smiling like this was the greatest day ever, she was going to be saving his life as well.
Five feet from where she and Iskander stood, the fence popped back into place, snapping two of the boards in half.
“Why don’t you go inside?” Iskander said. So far he hadn’t turned a hair. But then, he couldn’t feel what she did; that massive wrongness that permeated the air. Wrong even for a mageheld fiend.
“Oh,” she said as the first mageheld ducked through the break in the fence. A second came through right behind him. Both of them were large. Whoever sent them wasn’t messing around. She had time to notice there was something off about them before the other two came through the fence from the downhill neighbor’s side. She stayed focused on the nearest threat. “Two more behind us.”
She gathered herself. An instant before she would have released her magic at the magehelds who’d trespassed in her backyard, Iskander moved past her. She cut off just in time.
His magic flashed hotter than she would have believed possible. He met the two magehelds at the edge of the concrete and after that, everything was a blur and over before she finished exhaling. She saw a flash of red and the first mageheld fell to the ground in an uncoordinated heap. The second hit a moment later in the same boneless manner. She had time to register that she no longer felt their magic and that both had gaping holes in their chests before the other two fiends were too close to ignore.
Again, Iskander moved past her without a sound. He grabbed the first mageheld to reach him and then his hands and body were a blur. A sound of pure joy ripped free from him. Seconds later, the last mageheld was on the ground too. None of them were moving.
Maddy blinked. It couldn’t have been even thirty seconds since the fence broke, and the attack was over. She didn’t feel any more magehelds, just a fading perception of something gone terribly wrong.
While she stared at the bodies, trying to make sense of what she’d seen and what she was seeing now, Iskander knelt over each one in turn. His lips moved, though she heard nothing. At the edges of her ability to sense magic, she caught a faint bluish mist in the air above the dead magehelds. Iskander’s magic flashed hot again. The bodies collapsed in on themselves and then vanished. But not before she put together the visual puzzle; the bodies didn’t look right because Iskander had ripped out their hearts.
There was blood on the concrete, but Iskander was turning his attention to that too.
“What the hell did you do to them?” she whispered.
He shot her a quick glance. “Killed them.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that. Ever.”
When she looked up from where the bodies had been, Iskander stood motionless. His body tattoos rippled with an interior, glowing cobalt blue. His eyes were the same brilliant blue as his tats. That amount of magic coming from one fiend was almost impossible to imagine. A ripple of fear shimmered up her spine and lingered at the back of her neck. Any sensible person would be afraid.
Iskander hadn’t been mentally stable for very long. She knew that. Nikodemus had warned him about what would happen if he lost control, and had insisted that she’d be safe and that Iskander was safe to be around. A guarantee given, she sometimes thought, with the confidence of knowing he wouldn’t be there if he happened to be wrong.
Blood dripped down Iskander’s arms and fell onto the cement where it vanished in a sizzle of red mist. He wasn’t even breathing hard. He reached out to flick something glistening off his forearm but left behind a smear of blood. He grinned at her. “Mind if I take a shower?”
CHAPTER 14
; Gray heard several soft pops from the other room. The medallions, she realized. The sound rocketed around inside her head. Every nerve in her body sizzled. Every muscle tensed. Durian remained completely calm. She forced herself to relax. Whoever had come in wasn’t kidding, and he wasn’t welcome, either. In the bedroom, the faces in the medallions along the walls shifted, and unless she was losing her mind, the colors intensified. Most of the ones she could see from where she stood contorted, as if the faces inside the circles of carved wood were shrieking.
Durian muttered something under his breath and the magic icing up her back and spine melted away, but did not vanish. Not by any means. The tracings on her arm and temple whipped into a frenzy of motion. This time, she didn’t ignore it. Durian might not care, but she was bound to protect him. She pulled.
The fiend who walked into the bedroom looked like a college student. He probably got carded a lot, Gray thought. The way he dressed didn’t help much. He had on faded jeans that hit low on his hips, a ratty T-shirt and a pair of leather flip-flops. His light brown eyes were, at the moment, focused entirely on her. Because she had put herself in front of Durian.
She was ready to kill the guy if she had to. More likely she’d die trying.
The fiend gave her a good long up and down, without once looking at her face. With his hands turned palm up at either side of his waist and a predatory grin in Durian’s direction, he said, “What the hell?”
“Gray,” Durian said. Was he ever anything but cool and collected? His fingers curled tightly around the top of her shoulder, sliding over to the nape of her neck. “Allow me to introduce Kynan Aijan. Kynan, this is Gray Spencer. She is—”
“I know what she is.” He stalked toward them. He stopped about a foot from her and looked her up and down again. Twice. Like she was naked. Gray had a lot of practice hiding her emotions, and she hid hers now. There wasn’t anything for him to get from her.
He was too close, but with Durian behind her, she couldn’t back up, not that she would have given him the satisfaction. A trickle of fear slid down her spine, but she cut that off. The guy was trying his damnedest to provoke a response. “Like I said, Big Dog, what the hell? Have you taken her to Nikodemus yet?”
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