“Can you please help us?” Victoria took a step forward, every movement agony. The man raised a rifle, the barrel trained on her, and she froze. “We stopped to pick someone up, a hitchhiker. He took our car. Beat my…my boyfriend badly. I’ve been waiting for someone…anyone to come by and help,” she said, the explanation sounding ridiculous even to her. He didn’t lower the gun an inch.
“Show me your hands,” he ordered her, and Victoria raised them as high as she could. Her arms roared in agony, her neck and shoulders screaming in pain. “Higher, young lady.” She inched them up incrementally, each movement a struggle as his flashlight played over her body, her arms. “Now step away from the body. Slow.”
She did just that. Oh God. Once he saw Lucas, saw the firepower Lucas had, this man would shoot them both. Bury them in these mountains. He sounded suspicious enough that she knew this was a mortal who didn’t trust a soul. Especially not two bloody ones he’d discovered on the side of the road in the middle of the night.
This couldn’t be how it ended, not like this. Not out here in no man’s land, helpless as a kitten.
Better like this than at Devlin’s hands, a little voice whispered.
Maybe so, but still… There had been something so pure about being beneath the water with Lucas, something so new and exciting and utterly exhilarating. Something that, in her entire existence, she’d never allowed herself to consider.
And yet here they were, on a road to nowhere with a gun in her face.
The man flipped Lucas over, the array of weapons on his belt shining in the moonlight. Victoria’s heart sank. If she could reach the tokens on her chain, she might be able to reopen the portal. There might be something…
The man’s gaze shot straight to her face as she reached for the necklace, his eyes looking as if they saw straight through her. “Would you care to explain to me how you and Lucas Grey happened to end up facedown outside a portal in the middle of nowhere?”
The man’s name was Tate, and the portal was his to guard.
He only knew Lucas because he’d once gone to New York, intent on picking a fight with those “city boys,” and Kieran and Lucas had taken him out and gotten him drunk, instead.
That was all he told Victoria, but it was enough. Thanking male tempers and bourbon, Victoria felt her hair tangle in the wind as she cradled Lucas in the back of the pickup, the truck swaying as they navigated the gravel road winding up the side of the mountain. Movement was good. It would keep them alive, and once she got Lucas warm, she’d feel better about his chances. Tate mumbled something about a barn, and she didn’t much care, so long as there was a solid door between them and this freezing night. In the morning she’d decide where to go next. If there was anywhere to go.
They pulled up in a cloud of dust, the pickup sliding to a stop in front of a low-slung log cabin, set on a high ridge above a dark canyon. What lay below, she didn’t know, but Victoria heard the sound of water, smelled the scent of fresh, clean snowmelt. It took the two of them to drag Lucas inside, down a long hallway and finally into a room with a narrow bed. Without a word, Tate slammed out of the room, leaving her in the wonderful silence. She dropped onto the bed next to Lucas, and within a minute, she was out.
19
Lucas rose to consciousness, slower than he’d ever woken. There was something wrong with his body, an odd residual pain that affected every inch of him. And he felt changed, as if it wasn’t his body at all, but someone else’s. He didn’t recognize the room, or the smells around him. As a matter of fact, the only thing he remembered was diving toward the swirling light of a portal.
But Victoria was curled tightly against him. Warm and lean and snoring softly, she didn’t stir, not even as he shifted to get a better look at her. In the pale rays of morning, she was luminous. Her skin shimmered, as if tiny iridescent scales covered her. Ever so gently, he moved a lock of her hair and exposed her throat.
She was bruised, and badly. Dark purple handprints on her neck, shoulders, and the bloody crescent-moon marks of… Lucas saw red as rage shot through him. Fingernails. Devlin had sunk his fucking nails into her yesterday.
Moving carefully so he didn’t wake her, Lucas took stock. Her knees were scraped and bloody as well, one arm too, but the deep marks on her neck looked the worst. What happened after they escaped London? He didn’t have a shirt on, and his own torso was covered in crusted, dried blood. From the looks of it, he’d lost a lot of blood.
He remembered…
“You were shot.” Victoria’s big blue-green eyes took him in. “As you carried me through the gate, the bullet caught you in the side.” Her eyes strayed down to his right side, then locked again with his. “But you got us both through, Lucas. You did it.”
“How am I not dead?” He ran his hand over the place she said the bullet had hit him, but there was nothing there. “What happened, Vic?” She smiled slightly at the nickname. “How long have I been out?”
“A night, is all. Last night. I healed you. I used some water magic, so you’re going to feel…weird for a while. I’ve never used it before on an actual person, and I don’t think it’s supposed to work on…men.” The flicker of concern in her wide eyes had him smiling right back.
“You should have used it on yourself. You’re a mess,” he murmured, tracing a finger down her throat, over the dark marks, the half-healed crescent cuts. He was going to kill Devlin. And he was going to make it slow.
“I’ll be fine.” But she avoided his eyes, dipping her head, a faint blush rising in her cheeks. “Be glad that man…Tate…found us when he did, or we would have frozen to death last night.”
Gods, he hadn’t even cared where they were, only that they were alive. And Victoria was with him. Other than that, nothing seemed to matter.
“Tate found us? So we’re in Montana, then?” The door was unreliable, she’d said, so it must have dumped them out here. Strangely, one of the few places they would have found an ally. Chicago being the other, but even Odin could be picky about whom he allowed into his precious Chicago. “I’m sorry, Victoria. You must have been terrified, and I was of no help.” There was more he’d say, but she cut him off, her finger on his lips.
“Don’t you dare. You got us to the gate. And then you got us both through. And you killed Worton. You don’t know how long I’ve waited for that.” She laid her head on his chest, a solid, warm weight as breath shuddered out of her. “Eighteen years,” she murmured. “I waited eighteen years to get out from under his control.”
Out from under his control.
“What did he do to you, Vic?” he asked quietly, not wanting to know the answer.
She stayed silent, although he swore he could practically hear the wheels spinning in her head as she shivered again. Finally, she whispered, “It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.”
In response, he just snuggled her closer and let her sag against him as he watched dawn break over the mountains in the distance.
The second time he woke, his body felt more his own, less…odd. And this time his thoughts were full of Victoria. Of what she’d endured at the hands of the Circle, at Worton’s hands. It was plain enough to see what she’d endured at Devlin’s. Although…
Her t-shirt had shifted upward, and there, on her torso, just below her breast, was a handprint. Perfectly formed, the mark was dark black and blue. Pulling his gaze from the blemish, Lucas gently turned her hands, inspecting, searching for any other injuries. Around one wrist, below the odd iron bracelet, a solid black and dark blue band, looking like it was left by fingers binding her tightly. Something inside him hollowed out. More than jealousy, more than anger, it was something primal, something he’d never experienced before. And it rocked him to the core.
Slipping away from her, he thought it best if he sought out someone who knew more than he did about Trackers.
He found Tate outside. With the Wind River range looming over them, Lucas figured coffee on the porch of a cabin overlooking a waterfall in the mountains was something every
one should do at least once.
To human eyes, Tate looked to be a man of about forty, his face rugged, his hair a mix of grey and brown, his body muscled and lean. But everyone in their magical world knew he was much older, and much more than that. Thanking God that Tate was a man of few words, Lucas took a moment and allowed the blessed silence to seep into him and clear his head as he sipped his coffee.
Normally, Tate was the silent type. Apparently, not today.
“That girl saved your sorry ass last night. I smelled her magic all over you the second I pulled up. Didn’t know it was you, of course, but her…” The old man’s clever, knowing eyes found Luc’s. “She’s something I haven’t seen in several lifetimes. Not around here, anyway.”
“She’s half nymph. Half human.”
“She’s more than that, boy.”
God, no one had called Lucas “boy” in… Well, so long that Lucas couldn’t remember the last time.
“Do you have any earthly idea of who’s in that room?”
“Kieran claimed she’s Rhiannon’s niece,” Lucas said. Of course, he’d only been half paying attention at the time. He’d been focusing on how to use her to get inside Obsidian Hall, another part of him trying not to rip her heart out for what she’d been about to do to Kieran. As he remembered how he’d behaved, shame went through him in a sour wave. “I’m not sure how he knew that, when—”
Tate lowered his coffee cup. “Your brother has wind magic. Long ago, when humans first took to the water, they called him a seafarer’s god. That girl is part water nymph. Trust me, Kieran knew the second he laid eyes on her exactly what she was and who she was. But none of that matters.”
Lucas raised his eyebrows.
“That fact pales in comparison to what that girl really is,” Tate said carefully, as if debating just how much to reveal, absently rubbing the white scar around his wrist.
“You’re telling me that being related to the Tuatha de Danann isn’t a big thing?”
“It’s not.” Tate set his cup down. “Not against what I’m about to tell you.” He turned his thousand-yard stare toward the deep ravine. “Do you know why I’m out here? All alone, all these years?”
Lucas stayed quiet. They all knew. It was practically legend.
“Some of us halflings aren’t fit to be around people, boy. We don’t play nicely with others. Start looking at them like…food. We don’t have friends. We don’t mate. We don’t have young. We keep to ourselves. And that’s the way life has to be for us.”
“What happened in Egypt was not your fault, Tate.”
Tate met his stare, as if to say, Oh yes it was. But he left that subject alone. “Have you asked her about the iron bands on her wrists?”
Lucas frowned. He’d noticed them, but figured they were jewelry. “Iron?”
“Those iron bands are Circle-made—welded on the very day she was sold to them, I’d wager. She’s probably never been without them. My advice to you? Don’t ever let her take them off.”
Lucas’s head spun, working its way through the information, the horror, contained in what Tate just said. “Sold? Victoria was…really sold?”
Tate scoffed. “You really don’t have any idea how the Circle works, do you, boy?” Tate shook his head and glanced to the door before walking down to the very end of the porch. Lucas followed, fear growing in the pit of his stomach. “The Trackers—almost all of them—are slaves. Sold to the High Circle by family or slave traders, or through bad luck, for some sum. It’s a well-known fact in the magical underworld: any shifter, full-blooded or half, with highly sensitive powers—smell, sight, taste, touch—there’s money to be had for bringing them in. The Mage Circle buys them, chains them, assesses their innate skills and then sends them out after those they designate enemies of the state.”
Which meant that panicked thought Lucas heard had been the truth. He thanked the gods that, somehow, Kieran had had the presence of mind to question her. “How…how do they get free?”
“They don’t,” Tate said. “They’re as good as dead if they fail, worse than dead if they try to leave. And looking at her…” Tate’s mouth tightened. “I don’t have to tell you, son, what she’s most likely endured. But you ought to know, when I got to you, that girl set herself between you and me. Stood her ground. Even thought about going up against me, without a weapon. For you. So tell me…how did Rhiannon’s general become so goddamn chummy with a goddamned Circle Tracker?”
A flicker of magic charged the air between them as Tate dumped his coffee cup over the porch railing and rose, standing a good three inches taller than Lucas. Menace poured from him in waves.
“And what the fuck are you doing all the way out here? Because if she’s come here to take me back to them, I swear to Christ, I’ll kill the both of you.”
Lucas raised his hands in surrender. “We’re here completely by accident, Tate. Victoria doesn’t even know you exist. Give me a minute and I’ll explain.”
“You lay a single finger on him, human…” Victoria’s voice, layered with varying shades of anger and fury, held not one ounce of fear as she quickly covered the length of the porch until she stood before Tate, tipping her head back to stare up at him. “And I swear to you, I will peel your flesh from your bones.”
“Ah.” Tate smiled, the expression not reaching his eyes, “There she is. The Circle’s loyal little hunter.”
Victoria took a sniff, then another, her eyes widening. “You’re a Tracker.” She took a step back. “Shit.”
Lucas took a not-so-subtle step between them. “Vic, this is Tate. He was a Tracker. Very long ago. Now he freelances, I suppose would be a good word for it. He does some reconnaissance for us, and for Odin, in Chicago, every once in a while.”
“When I want to.”
“When he wants to,” Lucas agreed with a smile. “And Tate, this is Victoria Monroe.”
“Victoria Monroe. Were you born with that name, or is it Circle-given?”
Lucas noted that the two of them seemed equally fascinated.
“Born. I think,” she said. “There is much about my childhood that’s…sort of fuzzy.”
Lucas opened his mouth to question her, but Tate settled a hip on the banister and gestured for her to continue.
“My da, though, called me Victoria, and his friends called him Monroe, so…that’s the name I took, you know…when”—she cast a sideways glance at Lucas—“when I got to Obsidian Hall…”
“When they sold me to the Mages, I was barely ten,” Tate said, his voice thick. “The slave traders brought me to England in a cage in the bottom of a ship. Miracle I survived, really. They’d trapped me by accident, here, in Montana, not quite knowing what I was, only that I might be worth something, if only they might get me back. I was bought, and bound, and trained. And I hunted for the Circle, for Worton.”
“For how long?” Victoria whispered, her hand tangled in the chain about her neck.
“Over two hundred years.”
“Oh God.” She shot out a hand to grip the railing.
Tate nodded. “Indeed.” Then his eyes cleared, focusing on her exposed wrists, on the dark, thin bands welded permanently around each of them. “How long do you have?”
Victoria checked her huge diving watch and frowned. “By my mark? Less than nineteen hours.”
Lucas interrupted, “We’re on a limited time frame? I planned to head to New York and regroup. Certainly Rhiannon’s got enough authority to get Vic out from under the Circle’s thumb. If not her, then we go to Odin.”
“Like I told you before, Lucas. You don’t know how any of this works,” Tate said. “There’s no workaround for this particular timetable, and there’s no way out of it, trust me.”
Victoria was staring at straight at Tate, a growing awareness in her eyes. She pursed her lips before asking, “You got out of it, though, didn’t you?” The smell of nitrogen filled the air, a sign of magic ramping up.
“You do not want to go there, young lady.”
Lucas spun Victoria around, putting his back to Tate. “If one of you doesn’t tell me, right this fucking minute, what’s going on, I am going to lose my shit. What’s with the timetable, and what’s with this serious, high-stakes attitude?”
Victoria bit her lip, glanced to Tate and then raised her eyes to Lucas. They were filled with regret. And when she opened her mouth, Lucas finally understood why. “In thirty-six hours, if I don’t cross the threshold of Obsidian Hall, I’ll die. Every Tracker has a death spell woven into their DNA. It’s unbreakable, irreversible.”
Luc looked at Tate, who nodded.
“When we’re sent on a mission, we get up to forty-eight hours on the outside, and then we must return to the Mage who owns us,” she continued. “Only they can give us more time. If we don’t…”
“You die.” Tate looked between the two of them.
“And trust me, it isn’t pleasant.”
20
Tate was a unicorn. The one who got away.
She’d heard the rumors, heard someone had escaped the Circle.
Once.
Nobody knew his name, only that a Tracker had gotten free. And to make this even more delicious, he’d belonged to Worton. A slim hope—fragile and delicate—rose in Victoria. Here was someone who knew. Someone who knew what it meant to be owned. She clasped Lucas’s hand. “Did you tell him you killed Worton? Burned him to a crisp?”
Tate’s head whipped around. “That’s…impossible.” But from his tone, he damn well hoped it was true.
“I did.” Lucas’s voice didn’t hold a shred of emotion. “In his own fucking office.”
“But the wards…”
“They didn’t work on me. No wards work on me, not any I’ve ever come across, anyway.” He shrugged, meeting Victoria’s eyes. “No one, not even Kieran, knows why. It’s the only reason I agreed to the plan.”
Her mind whirled with questions. Why didn’t they work on him? And where had he conjured that fire from? That raw power that had obliterated three people, and a good chunk of Worton’s office.
Seacursed: The Mage Circle Trilogy: 1 Page 9
