by Amy Cissell
“She is not chattel,” Florence said.
“I know! And we wouldn’t have forced her into anything, just given her a place in our pack and let her choose one of us to mate with if she so desired.”
“We killed everyone in the preserve but the one who offered you the deal and the one prisoner we sent back with Sean,” I said.
“That one is dead now, too. We saw no reason to keep the mage alive.”
“Five of us killed a few dozen vampires and mages. What does that tell you about our skills and power?”
Bruce was shivering hard. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know. What can I offer?” I grinned to myself. I kinda liked being intimidating. No one had ever really found me intimidating before.
“In light of this information, I’m not sure Emma will want to accept your offer to run with the pack on the full moon,” I said. “It’s up to her, of course, but don’t hold your breath.”
He nodded. “I don’t blame her. I am very sorry.”
I was starting to feel sorry for him and needed him to stop apologizing.
“Do you know who I am and what I’m doing?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Yes.”
“The gate is at Ringing Rocks. It is booby-trapped. I’ve been attacked at the last two gates when I was distracted. To make up for your role in this debacle, you and your pack will stand with us while I open the gate and protect us.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Do you trust him?” I asked Florence once we got back to our room.
“Not as far as I could throw him.”
“If he’s not careful, he’ll lose his pack to Jason,” I said. “That wouldn’t be a bad thing. Jason’s stronger than Bruce and more ethical.”
“There will be a challenge, if not at this full moon, then at the next. Bruce not only gave into Finn without fighting, but agreed to give up strangers after welcoming them into his town, and then clearly was on the verge of backing off before he ordered everyone out,” Emma said. “Even if Jason didn’t challenge, someone else would.”
“It’s times like this that I miss Isaac. He’d be able to force Bruce to keep his word,” Florence said.
“I miss him, too,” I said to Florence. “Emma, you should put on your Alpha pants and scare the crap out them all. Make them bow to you. Challenge a few to fight and show them who’s boss.”
“I’m female,” she said.
“I think we’ve all noticed,” I replied. “I don’t know how strong you are, how dominant, but I think you’ve got what it takes to hold your own pack.”
“That’s not possible,” she replied.
“But it is. I told you about Rebecca Nelson. She took the Great Plains pack. And Isaac said that although it was rare, it wasn’t unheard of.”
“I’m not strong enough,” she said. I let it drop. She certainly wasn’t going to be an Alpha with that attitude.
We spent the next week sparring and training. Florence and Petrina spent long hours together going over the runes and working on the counter spell that Jeffries had suggested. Every day, I shifted into my dragon form in the local high school gym that the Pack had given over to us for training purposes and Petrina checked my wound. By the full moon, the hole was almost healed, and I tried a very short indoor test flight. The injury was still affecting my flight and balance, but I could get myself off the ground now, and even if it wasn’t closed by Imbolc, I knew I’d be able to fly.
Florence and I spent the three nights of the full moon locked in our motel room. Raj and Petrina were off hunting, although I think they were keeping a surreptitious eye on Emma and the not-quite trustworthy pack. She’d decided to take her chances with them instead of relying on me. We didn’t talk much, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. I was starting to get nervous. We were only about two weeks away from Imbolc, and I hadn’t even been to Ringing Rocks, much less positively identified the gate site.
“I think it would be okay, Florence,” I said in one last effort to convince her. “You said the runes needed to be invoked. I want to verify the gate’s located where I think it is. We need to get a lay of the land.”
“And if there are other surprises? Or if Finn is ready to invoke the curse now and is lying in wait, hoping for just such an opportunity? No. When Emma is back, Raj, Petrina, and I will go survey the site to check for landmines of a physical and magical nature.”
“What if it’s not the right place? I haven’t been there yet.”
“I do not think you will be able to go to the wrong place,” Florence said. “The patterns are imprinted on your brain and in your blood. The gates are part of your very being and you are drawn to them. That’s why you feel so antsy. Not because you’re worried that you won’t be able to find the gate, but because the gate is calling to you. It is a piece of you—or you are a piece of it—and you long to be one again.”
Part of me knew she was right, that there was no way that I wouldn’t go to the right place. I could feel it, I’d seen it in dreams, and it was part of me. I hadn’t missed yet and hadn’t even come close since the very first gate. Now that my powers were online, it was highly unlikely that not getting the location right would be the thing that would go wrong. Oh, no. There were about five million other things that could go wrong. Landmines. Love spells. More police. Untrustworthy shifters. I could go on, but why? I was tense enough as it was.
“Florence, what do I do?”
She looked up from the book she was reading and stared at me for a minute before placing her bookmark and laying the book aside.
“We’re not talking about the gate anymore, are we?”
I shook my head.
“Do you love him?”
“Which one?” I asked.
She came and sat next to me and pulled me into her arms. “How many relationships have you been in? Real relationships that lasted longer than a couple of months.”
“Uhhh…one.”
“Just Isaac?”
“Yeah and that wasn’t much longer than a couple of months. Raj and I are so new, and Finn and I weren’t ever really a relationship, regardless of what he thought about it.”
“You tend to jump into the deep end without looking, I think. You rush headlong into everything—magic, fights, relationships. You’re impulsive, and you don’t think things through. You are very much a do or do not kind of woman. There’s not a lot of agonizing over your decisions or analyzing pros and cons for you.”
I was squirming uncomfortably by the time she got to the end of her analysis of my character. I sounded flighty and immature.
“How often have you been wrong?” Florence asked.
I cocked my head to one side and looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“How many times have you made a serious relationship mistake?”
“Well, Finn, obviously,” I said. “I went out with a few losers—who doesn’t?—but not for very long.”
“What about non-romantic relationships? Have you ever been friends with someone who later turned out to not be worthy of that friendship?”
I thought about it. “Nooo,” I said slowly. “Jenny in junior high was kinda bitchy, but I think that’s just a byproduct of junior high. But, to be fair, I don’t have many friends.”
“So, in all your thirty-five years, the only person you misjudged was a 450-year-old half-elf who was desperately and insanely in love with you? Not a bad track record.”
“Where are we going with this, Florence?”
“Your instincts are fantastic. Do you trust Emma?”
“Yes.”
“Petrina?”
“Yes.”
“Arduinna?”
“To a point.”
“Me?”
“With my life.”
“And what about Raj?”
“Absolutely.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“Isaac. And it all seems so fast and too soon.”
“Some of it is a need for comfort. You’d finally found
a good relationship thing and gotten used to having that. It’s natural to want that to still be a part of your life. Part of it is you and that vampire throw off an insane amount of heat. And part of it is you are the type of person who makes up her mind instantly. I would still counsel you to stay out of his bed until we find out what’s going to happen in New Orleans, but the future I saw before is less certain. I’m no longer convinced that he will break your heart.”
“Well, that’s good. I guess.”
“Very good.”
“And what do I do when I have Isaac back and there are two of them?”
“I think you’re getting ahead of the game now. Let’s just concentrate on one thing at a time. We need to open the Ringing Rocks Gate. Then three more. Then we go Underhill and kick some fairy ass and rescue some people.”
“Fist bump!” I yelled, holding out my fist. Florence stared at it like I was shooting her the bird. I rolled my eyes. “C’mon, Florence. Fist bump!”
She knocked her fist against mine and I giggled. Maybe things weren’t so dire, after all.
A couple of days after the full moon, the vampires and Florence headed out to Ringing Rocks to scout the area with a couple of the local shifters. They didn’t find any landmines, but they did find the site with the runes. Petrina and Florence felt confident that Petrina would be able to counter the spells while Florence and I tempered the magical release, as long as the gate didn’t need to open at high noon. She didn’t have the same sun immunity as her father, and even he was uncomfortable in full daylight. I assumed. Who knows what other benefits he’d gotten from my blood?
Emma was different after the full moon. She was calmer, less quick to snipe at me, and more dedicated to training. I wanted to ask about her full moon experience but decided that it was none of my business and would encourage an uptick in the sniping if I pointed it out.
The two weeks after the full moon passed quickly. Raj and I made one more trip to New York, this time for the promised dancing. I threatened him with bruised toes and the side effects of traveling with someone with a wounded ego if he made me press on, but he said he didn’t care. His toes were bruised, but my ego survived intact, thanks in part to the rivers of champagne that kept my glass full, but mostly due to the company. Raj regaled me with stories of all the famous people he’d known, and I was pretty sure that at least 75% of everything he said was a bald-faced lie, but the stories were so good, it didn’t even matter.
Raj flew me home, and even though I was shivering by the time we were back to the motel, he kept me outside a moment longer.
“How can it be the proper ending to a wonderful date if we don’t make out?”
“Oh, think you’re going to try for second base tonight?”
Raj cocked his head to one side. “What is second base? Why are there sports metaphors in making out?”
I shook my head at him. “You’ve watched every vampire movie and television show that’s ever been made—”
“That is decidedly untrue. Some are too awful, even for me.”
“—And you’re trying to tell me you don’t know the baseball making out slang?”
“That is exactly what I’m telling you, “Eleanor. So, explain to me this ‘second base.’”
I smiled up and him and pulled his face close to mine. “I think it’d be better if I showed you how to round second base.”
His lips brushed mine. “I enjoy a good hands-on demonstration.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him deeply, brushing his fangs with my tongue. He shivered against me and deepened the kiss, his tongue twining around mine. “Are we there yet?” he murmured against my lips.
“We’re just rounding first,” I replied.
His arms wrapped around my waist and pulled me in close. I backed up a half step to give myself some room, then slid my hands down his chest until they lingered at the waistband of his pants.
“I liked first base,” Raj said. “Shouldn’t our making out have more kissing?”
I laughed and tugged his shirt up, pressing my gloved hands against his cool, bare skin. I leaned forward and kissed him, nipping gently at his lower lip. I shivered against him and pressed in closer, running my hands further up his chest until my fingers rested lightly against his nipples. I pinched gently and he bit back a curse.
He pushed me back against the motel wall and kissed me until I was breathless. I kept my hands under his shirt, periodically plucking his nipples to make him gasp. Every time I got a reaction, I grinned against his lips.
“Oh, you like that, do you?” he growled into my neck.
“Very much,” I agreed.
“We’ll see how much you like it when you’re on the receiving end.” He tore open my outer layers, ripping my shirt, and reached up to cup my bra-clad breasts. He squeezed them roughly and tugged at my nipples until I was squirming in his grasp. He bent down and bit through the lacy material of my bra. The heat of his mouth and the chill of the air mixed and my nipples rose to rigid peaks. I was breathing heavily against him and trying to figure out how to get the release I desperately craved.
Raj ceased his attention to my breasts, pulled my ruined shirt and heavy coat back over my chest, and then tugged me into the circle of his arms. I reached up and threaded my fingers through his hair while he kissed me again.
“Congratulations,” I said. “You just got to second base.”
“I’m interested to learn more about third base now. Is that something we do when we’re making out but not going all the way?”
“I don’t know…” I let my voice trail off. “I’m not sure that’s something good girls do.”
“I’m not interested in good girls. I’m interested in very bad women.” He pulled me further into his body. His hardness pressed against my center, and my body involuntarily bucked against his causing a jolt of electricity to zip through me.
I wondered again how much longer I’d be able to remember why we were keeping our clothes on.
“And with that note, I should probably say goodnight and return you before your curfew is up.”
One more kiss and he disappeared into the night.
Chapter Twelve
THE EVENING BEFORE Imbolc, I was pacing, when suddenly I knew what time we had to be there. “Dawn, tomorrow,” I said. “Are we ready?”
Florence looked at me and said, “Everything that can be packed is packed. Now that we have a time, I’ll get word to Bruce. You and I have done the weir three times now; we know what we’re doing. Raj will coordinate with Emma and the packs to serve as the defense, and Petrina is as ready as she can be to counter Finn’s work.”
“We’re still not killing him, right?” I asked.
“Nope. We need him for something, yet.”
“I hope it’s something involving thumbscrews,” I muttered.
“If we need to torture, I could always go fetch my grandson. He’s rather an expert in the matter,” Raj murmured.
“I thought he went straight for the impaling.”
“Well, that’s his preference, but he has other skills.”
“So well-rounded.”
“What I’m saying,” Florence said, “is that everything that can be prepared is prepared. It’s just over an hour’s drive, so if we need to be ready by sunrise, which is just after seven, then we should leave here at five at the latest. Do you want to sleep or just stay up?”
“I need to sleep a bit,” I said.
“Sleep then,” Raj said. “We’ll watch over you and wake you in plenty of time.”
Raj shook me awake a few hours later. “What time is it?” I asked blearily.
“Four. I have coffee for you.”
I sat up, and he pressed the cup into my hands. I drank it, and soon the fog started lifting from my mind. I dressed; less concerned about warmth today and more about freedom of movement. When I was armed and dangerous, we headed out to the car. Florence drove us to Ringing Rocks and pulled into the deserted parking lot. A short, r
ocky hike later, and I got my first glimpse of the fifth gate site. I could feel the power pulsing and was giddy with it. I heard laughing and then realized it was me.
“When do you think he’ll do it?” I asked. “Will he do it the minute I walk onto the site, or will he wait until it’s opening and I’m distracted?”
“Distracted,” Florence said. “He’d be too afraid that it wouldn’t work if you were paying attention.”
“Good point,” I said. “He’s proven his cowardice more than once.”
I walked towards the site and then looked around. “Okay, team! Let’s go!” I executed a half-assed cheerleading jump, and everyone laughed. Emma stripped and shifted. Raj kissed me then drove the car back to town so it would be partially protected from the magic wave. Even if he drove like a maniac then tessered back, I wouldn’t see him again until after the gate opened. Petrina stood next to the gate, waiting. I joined hands with Florence, and we wove the magical weir that would slow the rush of magic. It would still tumble too fast into the world, disrupting whatever technologies were still working, but we could keep it from being a tsunami at least. Once the weir was constructed, I extricated myself from the lines and left Florence to maintain it. I checked my internal clock. It was almost time.
I walked up to Petrina and looked at her. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“If it doesn’t work, kill me quickly, please.”
“Yes.” She inclined her head to me slightly. Gods, I hope she liked me.
It was almost show time. I felt the gates gathering energy. I leapt up and felt it grab me. My limbs yanked outwards into the familiar X shape, and I opened myself to the gate, trusting everyone else to do their jobs. The magic started spinning around me, turning me every which way. I felt as if I were in the center of a tornado.
Then it burst through me. It slowed as soon as it hit the weir, which strained under the push of the magic, but it held. The gate yawned open, and for a moment I saw Underhill. It was winter there, too. The sky was a brilliant cerulean, and the land looked incredibly unspoiled. I hoped that we would bring that kind of balance back to this world. I needed this not to be in vain.
