“Yeah, well, I didn’t see much of a future for us,” I said, shrugging one shoulder as my eyes continued to sweep over the immediate area, searching for anyone else that might be drawing close for the ambush.
“It’s hard to compete with the hunter. He’s so determined to have your heart,” Nicolai replied, stopping when he was still several yards away from me.
A snort escaped me and I weakly smiled at my companion. “On a pike,” I replied, finishing the thought. Danaus’s only interest in me was how to finally kill me. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, ending the lighthearted banter we had forced into the tense air.
“He wants only to talk,” Nicolai murmured.
“Rowe?”
“No.”
“Shit,” I hissed, the muscles in my shoulders instantly tensing.
“Me,” Jabari said directly behind me.
Spinning around and into a crouch, my skirt flaring out around me, I snarled at Jabari, exposing my fangs to the Coven Elder. I positioned myself between the lycanthrope and the Ancient, ready for the attack. “You can’t have him,” I growled.
In Venice, Jabari had sent Nicolai to kill me. I knocked the werewolf unconscious and later claimed him as my own in an effort to protect Nicolai from Jabari and the rest of the nightwalker Coven. However, both Nicolai and I knew that I wasn’t strong enough to protect him from Jabari should the Ancient ever return to claim him. My only goal had been to extend his life for a little while.
“I can take him back at any time I should choose,” Jabari said with a smile. His pale Egyptian robes wavered in the breeze sweeping through the city that night.
“Nicolai, get out of here!” I commanded as I lifted my right hand and conjured up a fireball. The sight of the dancing flames brought a growl from the back of Jabari’s throat, forcing the Elder to realize that I was ready to take the defense of the werewolf seriously. The nightwalker seemed too tall, too strong, with his dark brown skin and fierce black eyes. I was in over my head, but I had promised to protect Nicolai with my life, and I was prepared to keep that promise.
“No! It doesn’t have to be this way,” Nicolai countered. I could hear his footsteps growing closer. I needed him out of there, but he wouldn’t leave.
I threw the fireball at the Ancient nightwalker so it landed just before his feet, forcing him to take a couple steps backward. As he moved, I launched myself at him. But he was ready for me. There was no surprising him. Jabari was constantly in my head, he knew my thoughts if he wanted. He grabbed my wrists just before my fingers could reach his neck and tossed me aside like a bag of garbage. My feet slid across the walk, sending up a spray of gravel. The second I stopped sliding, I was moving toward him again. I spun in a roundhouse kick, hoping to get him off balance again, but he caught my ankle and pushed me backward. Landing on my butt, I snarled up at him, preparing to push to my feet. But I couldn’t.
Jabari raised a single hand toward me, and I could no longer move. The nightwalker had the power to physically control me like a puppet on a string. He had just been toying with me before, allowing me to get my hopes up that I actually had a chance in defeating him. Now he was ready to crush me.
“You can’t have him,” I growled, still fighting his control over me. Jabari was too strong, though. I could feel his power sliding through my entire frame, soaking into muscle and tissue until he was a part of me.
“I could make you kill him for me if I wanted it,” he taunted, taking a couple steps closer to where I sat. “I could force you to rip his heart out and set him on fire.” As he spoke, a surge of power rushed through me, sending a wave of pain through my frame. At the same time, a voice in my head commanded that I create fire. I tried to fight it, but there was no fighting it. A ring of fire sprang up around Nicolai.
“Stop it!” I screamed, fighting his will. The flames shrank, but I couldn’t completely extinguish them no matter how hard I tried. The ring of fire closed in around Nicolai until it was only a couple feet away from him on all sides, and still he said nothing. He knew that we were both trapped by Jabari’s will. “Stop it, Jabari! Your fight is with me. Not him. Leave Nicolai out of this.”
A secretive little smile appeared on the Ancient’s full lips for a moment as he stared down at me. And then the fire disappeared, as well as his presence within my body. “I didn’t come here to take Nicolai from you,” he admitted with an indifferent shrug. “I can take him at any time, but for now my concern is with the naturi.”
“What! You came here with Nicolai to talk to me about the naturi, not to steal him back?” I demanded, shock keeping me from pushing back to my feet.
An evil smile twisted Jabari’s full lips and danced in his dark eyes. “Yes. You’re the one that started this fight. Not me.”
“You’re a real asshole, you know that,” I snapped, pushing back to my feet and dusting off my black skirt. “I’ve been under attack here since leaving Crete and then I have you pop into town with Nicolai in tow. I don’t need this kind of torment, Jabari. My hands are already full.”
“You should have returned to Venice as I commanded. You would have been protected from the naturi and had none of these worries,” he calmly stated.
“But my people in Savannah would not have been. They are my responsibility.”
“You’re on the Coven now. Your responsibility extends beyond a single city to all of our people.”
I shoved both of my hands through my hair and paced a couple steps away from Jabari in frustration before I screamed. There was no winning with him, in a fight or in a discussion. It was never enough. I didn’t want to be on the Coven, but I’d had to take the open seat in order to break the bargain that Macaire made with the naturi. Macaire struck a deal that would have the nightwalkers kill the naturi queen, Aurora, so long as the naturi killed Our Liege, stopping him from releasing the Great Awakening early.
“Besides the need to drive me insane, what do you want?” I finally demanded when I had my temper under control.
“The next sacrifice is going to be in a few days. You need to be there to stop it.”
“The fall equinox, right?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know the location?”
“Machu Picchu.”
I nodded. I wasn’t surprised. That was just how my luck ran. Machu Picchu was also one of only two holy sites south of the equator. In Peru at this time of year, winter would be drawing to an end, making the holiday the spring equinox there instead of the fall. The spring equinox was a time of rebirth and new beginnings. Peru was also the sight of the last great failure of Aurora’s people to come through the door. There was no better time or place for her to make her grand reappearance.
“Is there a plan?” I asked, almost afraid to hear the answer. The last plan the Coven had come up with to defeat the naturi was to use me as bait in an attempt to draw at the leader of the naturi.
“I would like you to be there early. Hunt Rowe. Stop him.”
“Will you be joining us on the hunt?” I inquired, knowing the answer before he gave it.
“Eventually.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Yeah, Danaus and I were to be the foot soldiers in this attack. We would sweep in and take on the naturi. And then when Rowe was preparing to complete the sacrifice, Jabari would appear and help to take down the consort king of the naturi, stopping the arrival of Aurora. At least, that’s how I’m sure he envisioned it. But then I doubted any of this had happened the way Jabari had envisioned it so far.
“Mira!” Nicolai cried, causing my head to snap up. The first thing I noticed was that Jabari was gone, but then, he had the ability to pop in and out of a place at will.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded, briskly walking toward him.
“The naturi,” he called back, causing my feet to come to a sliding halt. I seemed doomed to have someone forever shouting those two words at me.
I forced myself to take a step closer to him as I looked around the night-drenched
cemetery. “Are they here?”
“No,” he said, pressing the palm of his right hand against his temple. “They’re calling us.”
Biting off a curse, I rushed to his side. I cupped his cheeks with both of my hands as he slowly fell to his knees. He was gritting his teeth as beads of sweat dotted his forehead. His pounding heart and ragged breathing filled the night air.
“Are they close?” I demanded, tilting the werewolf’s head so he was forced to look up at me.
“N-No…in the city.”
“Can they read your thoughts? Are they searching for me?” I barely resisted the urge to give him a little shake when his attention seemed to drift away from me.
“No, just calling. Want us to come to the city…Forsyth Park.”
“Listen to me, Nico,” I murmured, kneeling on the ground before him. “You don’t have to obey them. They don’t own you. They aren’t your masters. You don’t have to go to them.”
He sucked in a deep, cleansing breath through his nose and pushed the air out again through his clenched teeth. He was trembling beneath my hands as sweat started to cover his body. He was fighting it as best he could, but if there were any naturi close by, Nicolai didn’t have a chance at avoiding them. I had watched the Savannah Alpha give in to the call, and I knew few lycanthropes that were stronger or more stubborn than Barrett.
“They’re miles away. You’re stronger than they are,” I continued, desperate to free him from their siren song. Kneeling beside him on the ground, I was so close now and he was holding on by a thread. If that thread snapped, he would have his fangs into my throat before I had a chance to move.
Nicolai blinked and looked up at me with copper-colored eyes. I was losing him to the animal inside. I swallowed back the fear that was rising in the form of a lump in the back of my throat.
“Stay with me, Nico. Think of Venice,” I said, trying to conjure up a purely human memory for him to cling to as he fought the naturi’s hold on him.
“Venice…?” he bit out between clenched teeth. He closed his eyes and shivered. “Nightwalkers everywhere. Air was thick with blood.” His upper lip curled and I caught a flash of his right canine as it started to lengthen.
“No, not that part of Venice,” I said, running my thumbs over his cheekbones. “I meant where it was just you and me together, alone in the hotel. No naturi. No nightwalkers.”
Nicolai’s eyes opened and I watched the copper recede to brown. He was coming back to me, fighting their hold as he recalled the memory of us having sex following a narrow escape from both the Coven and the naturi. Neither of us had spoken about that night since it happened. In fact, after returning to Savannah myself, I had gone out of my way to avoid Nicolai, and not entirely because of the naturi. I hadn’t been quite sure what to say after our extremely brief encounter, particularly since the night before that, Nicolai had tried to kill me.
“You were beautiful that night,” he said in a low, rough voice. He lifted his left hand and laid it over my wrist, his thumb caressing the inside of my arm.
“I like to think I still am,” I replied with a smirk. I needed his mood to lighten, needed to be sure he was completely with me before I released my hold on his face.
“You were a long, pale line of white light,” he continued, ignoring my comment. His eyes traveled over my face slowly, as if he was suddenly becoming reacquainted with me, before finally meeting my gaze again. “You’ve avoided me.”
“It was for the best. The…the naturi,” I said, trying to swallow the last word. I had just won him away from that dark race, I didn’t want to lose him all over again. “They’re making it difficult for everyone.”
“You don’t even call. You send Gabriel with all your messages,” he countered. The hand encircling my wrist tightened, as if he was preparing to hold me in place in the event that I tried to quickly move away from him. “You started acting cold and distant while we were still in Venice. It’s because of what my sister did.”
I flinched at the mention of his sister, and I know he felt it in my hands, which were still cupping his face. It wasn’t his sister so much as him. While in Venice, I discovered that Nicolai had come into Jabari’s keeping because his sister and a few others were aiding the naturi. Nicolai traded places with his sister when Jabari demanded to take one of the traitors as a servant. Of course, I didn’t discover any of this until after we’d had sex. I believed Nicolai when he said that he didn’t help the naturi, but a part of me wondered if he had worked to protect his sister by keeping what she was doing a secret. While I could understand it if he did, I knew that a part of me would never forgive it. The result was an uneasy coldness I felt around Nicolai that I struggled to overcome.
“It’s not your sister,” I said in my most reasonable tone. “I have no doubt that she has paid for her crimes, and I won’t make you pay for them as well.”
I released my hold on his face and shoved my free hand through my hair in frustration. How was I supposed to delicately put this? It was just casual sex. We both needed to blow off a little steam. Baby, you were great in bed, but I’m not looking for anything long-term. I preferred to not hurt his feelings, but I also didn’t have time for this.
“Venice was great,” I lamely started again, inwardly cursing my ineptitude. You’d think after living for six hundred years, I’d be better at this.
“Venice was amazing. I thought we were great together. I also thought that since you sent me to your domain, you would want to continue what we started.”
“Nicolai, I—” I started, then stopped. “My main reason for sending you here was that it would be easiest to protect you from my own domain. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that…” My voice faded as I noticed the lines from the corners of his eyes growing, while one corner of his mouth quirked in a smile. He was laughing at me. “You’re just playing with me, aren’t you?”
“Totally,” he said, his head dropping back as a bark of laughter finally escaped him. I punched him in the arm and then fell back to sit in the middle of the gravel graveyard road, chuckling at myself. Nicolai sat up, his shoulder still lightly shaking as he released my wrist. “You were so serious and scared shitless,” he teased.
“Asshole.”
“Mira, sweetie, you’re great and I appreciate you bringing me here, but it was just sex,” he said, stretching out one hand toward me.
I batted his hand away, trying very hard not to smile at him. I felt like such an idiot. “No kidding it was just sex.”
“You’re just not my type. I prefer to date women that can’t kill me with a snap of their fingers,” he said, grabbing my hand when I tried to smack him away a second time. “I’m hoping this means you’ll at least stop avoiding me.”
A sad smile finally lifted the corners of my mouth as I looked at my handsome companion; a ray of golden sunlight in a dark, dreary cemetery. If he thought I’d been avoiding him because of our brief encounter, I wasn’t about to disabuse him of that notion when the truth was far darker. “Not until the naturi have been taken care of. It’s too dangerous,” I said, giving his hand a light squeeze as if to soften the blow of my words. It wasn’t his fault that he lost control when the naturi were around. The race had the natural ability to control all lycanthropes when they were close. The only reason Nicolai was able to fight it that night was because they had been several miles away.
“Speaking of which,” I said, suddenly recalling what had started this conversation in the first place, “I’m assuming the naturi are no longer calling you, since you’ve gotten this good laugh in.”
“Yeah, they stopped a little while ago,” he confirmed, pushing to his feet. He extended his left hand to me and pulled me up as well.
I dusted off the back of my skirt as my gaze scanned the area once again. As far as I could tell, we were completely alone in the graveyard. But then, I couldn’t sense the naturi, nor could I sense Jabari. “Do you know what they wanted?”
“It sounded like a hunt of
some sort in Forsyth Park. They didn’t want us in human form. I had an overwhelming urge to shift and…hunt.”
“Hunt nightwalkers,” I growled, looking down at the ground. Closing my eyes, I reached out, searching the night for Tristan. Some part of me needed to know that the young one was safe and away from the naturi. I didn’t get what I wanted.
Mira! My name reached me as a frantic scream as I made contact with my ward. Help! Naturi…shifters…everywhere! Hurry! Tristan broke off contact, but not before I caught a flash of the large white fountain at the center of Forsyth Park. Tristan wasn’t alone. There was another nightwalker with him and it felt like Amanda, but I wasn’t sure. I knew now that the naturi had summoned up the lycanthropes to hunt down Tristan and whatever other nightwalkers were currently in Forsyth Park.
“I have to go. The naturi are hunting nightwalkers in the city. Tristan!” I said, turning toward where I had parked my car near the entrance to the cemetery.
“Go,” Nicolai called after me, but the word had already begun to fade when it reached my ears as I started running.
Tristan was in trouble, and I was going to happily tear apart anything that dared lay a hand on what was mine.
Six
The fight was over by the time I drove the twenty minutes back into the city from the cemetery, but the damage left behind turned my stomach. I parked my car more than a block away from Forsyth Park, as the entire area had been ringed by flashing blue and red lights from the police cars and ambulances. Cloaking myself from prying eyes, I slipped between the police cars and entered the area.
I flinched at the sight of the first body. Naked, he had been disemboweled before his head was torn from his body. He was one of the unlucky lycanthropes that answered the call of the naturi. The moment he died, his body had naturally changed back into human form. I suppressed a shudder as a white cloth was laid over the body and pushed on, moving deeper into the park.
Tristan? I hesitantly began. I had not tried to contact him earlier for fear of distracting him at a critical moment. But now that I knew the naturi were gone from this place, I needed to hear his sweet voice in my head.
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