He did not like how much he enjoyed the sound of her laughter. He did not like the casual way she stated her assumptions, even if she was right.
“And the more I see of you, the more I’m convinced you’re going to die badly of your own stupidity,” he growled aloud.
That caused her to laugh harder. “Well, that could certainly be true.”
Some angry impulse propelled him forward into her personal space. She turned her face up to him, and her eyes sparkled like precious jewels while the moonlight on her skin was unutterably lovely.
She looked too calm for his peace of mind, too unruffled, and far too beautiful, and his wayward thoughts had turned too poetic.
He snapped in a low tone, “You do not take this nearly seriously enough. You might be talented at your own magic. I believe you. I see that message written clearly in the runes you bear on your skin. But if you try to stand against her, she will obliterate you. She has more Power at her command than you can possibly imagine, and she has killed many of us—strong, mature warriors who were just as talented and as experienced as you are. She caused this to happen.”
With a sweeping, violent gesture, he indicated the landscape around them.
She looked around, her expression finally sobering. “She’s the one who broke the crossover passageway?”
“Not her personally.” The bloody memories caused him to clench his fists while a muscle leaped in his jaw. “That was Morgan, the Captain of her Hounds.”
“Morgan le Fae,” she whispered.
“You’ve heard of him,” Nikolas said, turning to watch her expression closely.
“I think almost everyone with some kind of tie to the magical has heard of the most famous bard and sorcerer of the Middle Ages. I can’t imagine how a human has managed to live so long, let alone have the Power that could cause this kind of destruction.” A shudder seemed to pass through her body, and she rubbed her arms. She glanced at him. “Were you here when it happened?”
“Yes,” he replied shortly. “It was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen, and I have seen many terrible things and lived a very long time. Much longer than your twenty-nine years.”
“Where did the crossover lead to?”
“My home, Lyonesse.” Turning away, he looked over the shadowed land. “It was the longest, bloodiest battle I’ve ever been in. Our armies covered the whole valley, and we fought for days. We were holding our own, and we even had some hope of winning, as we waited for Oberon to bring reinforcements through the passageway. Then Morgan broke the passageway. He stood on that rise, over there, looking down at the battle. It sounded like the earth had cracked in half.”
“How did he do it?” she whispered. “Was it a spell or some kind of magic item?”
“I’m not sure. After that, the battle became a rout, and half our troops were killed.” With an effort, Nikolas dragged himself out of the past and looked at the woman standing beside him. “It took Morgan centuries to either break or obscure all the passageways that led to Lyonesse. Now our land is completely cut off from Earth, and we can’t get home.”
“And they can’t get to you,” she murmured. “How horrible.”
“Now maybe you begin to understand the danger and the stakes involved in what plays out here.” On impulse, he hooked his fingers under her chin and turned her face toward him. He could feel her start as he touched her, but she didn’t flinch away, not even after what had occurred between them earlier at the pub. Her skin looked like marble in the moonlight, but it was soft and warm. “Give Robin over to us. It is the safest thing for you to do. You can enjoy your vacation and then go safely home again.”
“I don’t own Robin,” she said. “As you were very quick to point out, he’s not a dog, and he’s not mine to keep or give away. I made him a promise, and promises matter to me. If he wants to stay with me, he can.” Only then did she ease her chin away from his fingers as she nodded to the dark, silent hulk of a building nearby. “And if I have anything to say about it—and I think I do—I’m going to get inside that house and claim this property for my own. This isn’t just a vacation for me. I’m planning to stay.”
She was incomprehensible. He growled. “Why would you want to claim such a cursed place?”
Giving him a wry look, she lifted a shoulder. “Maybe I’m crazy. Maybe I need a place to call my own, and maybe I feel an affinity for broken things. I’m sorry your people struggled so terribly here, but maybe this place is actually more beautiful than your memories allow you to see.”
“How do you think you’re going to defend yourself—with these?” He reached out to touch one of the runes on her forearm.
This time she jerked away from his fingers. “You don’t want to touch that one.”
“Why not?” He gave her a narrow look.
“Because that one will burn you to the bone, and it will keep burning until eventually it consumes your entire body.” She tilted her own forearm to look down at it. “It’s kind of a magic napalm, I guess. Trust me, it’s a nasty way to die.”
“How does it not burn you or anything else it touches?”
“You mean, like my purse?” She tapped her purse to the silver rune on her skin. “It’s a defensive spell, so it lies inert when something neutral touches it. You’re not neutral. After our confrontation earlier in the pub, I’m not exactly sure what the spell would do if you came in contact with it. It’s best we don’t find out.”
He cocked his head, growing more fascinated as she talked. “A defensive spell… You aren’t worried about it melting off if you sweat or get wet?”
“These runes are stronger and a bit more permanent than the one I painted on Gawain.” She gave him a crooked grin. “I used tiny magic-sensitive silver shavings in clear nail polish for these. They won’t come off for a couple of days, unless I scratch or peel them off or take them off with nail polish remover.”
Nail polish. Polish remover. He let the foreign, feminine words wash over him as he watched the hint of mischief that played across her expression while she spoke.
“What do the other runes do?”
“Some are defensive, and others are offensive.” She held up one palm. “This one is telekinetic. It’s strong enough to knock a troll on its ass.” She held up her other palm. “This other one creates confusion. If I slapped your face with this one, you wouldn’t be able to find your car keys for hours even if they were in your pocket. I used it once on a drunk guy who tried to grope me. By the time the spell wore off, he was sober enough to drive home. They’re all one-use-only spells, and they all require contact. I don’t have much in the way of long-range weapons, which is why I miss my gun so much.”
He knew how to cast webs of confusion so that the unwary might wander for hours lost in the spell. He also knew how to cast a glamour that could snare one into believing every word he said, and how to make ancient sleeping roads speak, but he was surprised that she had learned such proficiency so young.
He said slowly, “You created all these, yourself?”
“No, not really.” She let her hands fall to her side. “My teacher taught me the basics and how to make the colloidal silver, and I have an affinity for runes, so I put the one thing together with the other and got creative. I think there might be some interesting applications with permanent tattooing, if you could stand to have the silver tattooed into your skin and knew how to renew the spells when they had been used, but I’m too human, and that much silver would be toxic for my system, so I haven’t pursued it.”
She was clever and inventive. He liked that too. He liked her, which was the biggest surprise to come out of the whole evening.
He felt the impulse to reach out and trace one of the runes and had to restrain himself. “Teach me how to cast the null spell the way you do,” he said. “And sell me a vial of your colloidal silver.”
“Why?” Now it was her turn to give him a narrow look.
“Because with your technique, I can call the eight men who rem
ain to spend the evening together, or even a night or two. We could set one of us apart to stand as guard and even set up shifts, while the rest can talk and rest.” He paused. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to do that.”
She looked shaken, as she had when he had talked of Morgan breaking the crossover passageway. “That’s all you have left, eight people?”
He felt his expression turn stony, as it always did when he focused on bearing the unbearable. “Of the Dark Court warriors on this side of the passageways, yes, just eight men—nine, including myself. Others of the Dark Court who are not warriors and have been barred from returning home are either spending their lives in hiding, or they have emigrated to other countries.”
“I’m sorry.” Reaching out, she brushed the tips of her fingers across the back of his fist.
The fleeting touch made him clench his fist tighter to keep from grasping her hand, an odd, unwelcome urge. “As our numbers have dwindled, so too have our options. Once, we would have been able to gather in strength and hold our own against any attack. Now we need to be much more wary. And like you, we need to find a place to call our own. But until we do, being able to disguise our whereabouts when we meet would be the next best thing.”
“I’ll help you,” she said abruptly. “I’ll show you how to make magic-sensitive colloidal silver for yourself, and I’ll teach you how to infuse it with the null spell. There’s no need for payment.”
He gave her a long, dark look. A better man would have insisted upon paying her, but he didn’t.
A better man would have pointed out that the more she became involved with him, the more danger she was putting herself in, but he didn’t do that either.
Sophie Ross was proving that she could be very useful to him. If his people needed what she could teach him, he would take everything from her that he could get. Never mind what his old, damaged conscience might have to say about it.
His conscience wasn’t useful in helping his men or Lyonesse, so he told it to shut the hell up. He had warned her, and she had already made it clear she was capable of making her own decisions.
She didn’t have any magic runes painted in her dark hair. Obeying a wordless impulse, he reached for a stray curl and tucked it behind her ear, while her eyes went wide and she stared at him. She didn’t pull away from him either, and as he dropped his hand, his fingers stroked down the side of her face, marveling at the marble paleness of her skin and the fragile warmth of life beating underneath it.
Even knowing he could bring her death, he told her, “I’ll take you up on that offer.”
Chapter Seven
Why did he touch her?
That’s what Sophie wanted to know.
Why did he touch her, and why did she let him? The whole thing was inexplicable, but he did, and she did, and when his fingers trailed down the side of her face, the muscles in her thighs shook in a fine tremor.
He was a man with a killer’s face, living through a tragedy with his people dwindling away, and he was fighting for existence any way he knew how. He was using her, and she knew it, and she was going to let him.
At least for teaching him how to cast the silver rune.
That was all. Just the rune.
Because she had grown a little over the years, and she had learned a lot about herself. She knew she was an asshole magnet, and if there ever was an asshole, this guy was it.
So. She would help him with just the rune.
That was more than enough, and she was being more than generous after the way he had behaved. She understood what had happened and why he had acted the way he had. She could let bygones be bygones, but they weren’t going to magically turn around and become besties during the course of a single evening.
“I’m done talking,” she said. It was raw and awkward, but he didn’t seem to mind in the least. She paused. “By the way, how did you get here without me hearing you?”
He stepped back. “I parked at the road and walked up the drive.”
“Oh. Well, we can talk sometime soon about when I’ll teach you how to make the colloidal silver and cast the rune, but for now, I’ve had enough. Good night.”
Exhaustion was beginning to color the edges of her thinking. As she turned to walk to the Mini, she looked around. She really wasn’t Robin’s keeper, and he was free to take off whenever he felt like it, but it was going to bother her if he didn’t show up by the time she started the car.
She needn’t have worried. As she opened the door of the Mini, a dark streak raced across the open lawn from the shadow of the neighboring forest, tail up and wagging. She raised her eyebrows as the dog reached the open door and leaped in. The change in him from when she had found him wandering down the road was remarkable.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, she murmured, “You’re feeling better, I take it.”
Large bright eyes blinked at her from the shadowed darkness. For a brief moment, as she looked at Robin, she caught a flash of something else. Something that wasn’t a dog. Blinking rapidly, she tried to see it again, but the vision was gone.
The moonshadow had offered its magic to her again.
“Is it wrong to pet you as if you really were a dog?” she asked, holding out her hand.
Even though she didn’t live the kind of lifestyle that was good for a dog, she was going to miss the dog she had thought Robin was. He sniffed at her fingers and didn’t seem to mind as she scratched him gently behind the ear.
Smiling to herself, she started the car and turned on the interior light to inspect the raised blisters that ringed his neck. They were completely healed. He was indeed feeling better.
She switched off the light and headed back down the drive. When she pulled out between the gateposts, she didn’t see a car parked on the side of the road, so Nikolas must have already left.
Even driving the unfamiliar roads slowly and carefully, the drive back to the pub took less than ten minutes. As she pulled into the parking lot and opened the door, the sound of screaming split the night.
The screaming came from inside the pub. It was a woman’s voice.
Maggie.
This time adrenaline hit hard, and the only imperative it gave her was fight.
Stupid. Crazy.
She lunged out of the car and sprinted for the pub, straining with every sense to glean information about what was happening inside.
The screaming came from the front. From the pub side. As she rounded the corner of the building, a gun went off. One shot.
A monkey leaped and ran beside her, shrieking at her.
A… a capuchin monkey… a monkey?
Her stride faltered, and she stared at it. As it yelled at her, she saw in the light of a nearby streetlamp the monkey had no tongue. “Go back to the car!” she ordered.
Instead, Robin jumped to hang on her leg. He dragged at her, clearly trying to stop her from going forward.
She tried to brush him off as she charged toward the front door. Toward what used to be the front door. The door itself was in shreds, a piece of wood still hanging from the hinges.
Ignoring the monkey hanging on her leg—at least he had stopped shrieking although his hard little monkey fingers pinched at her thigh painfully—she slowed, walked along the edge of the building quietly, and peered in.
There was blood everywhere, with furniture knocked awry, body parts and playing cards strewn everywhere, and monsters.
Huge, very werewolf-y looking monsters. One monster savaged a body. As she stared at it, Arran stood up from behind the bar and fired a hunting rifle point-blank into the face of a second monster that rushed toward him. It fell but just as quickly rolled onto its feet.
Aw, damn. It was never a good sign when bullets didn’t faze a creature.
She didn’t pause to think. Instead, she acted. Lunging toward the monster that was getting to its feet, she slapped the confusion spell onto its back. It faltered and looked over its shoulder at her.
For a breathless moment she loo
ked down a massive, bloody muzzle with long, sharp teeth meant for rending. The monster turned toward her, and it kept turning in a circle… and turning. Its growl changed to a puzzled whine.
Arran was dead white and shaking. “What the fuck is wrong with it?”
“Doesn’t matter.” She gasped. “It’ll do that for hours.”
She felt a rush of air. The monkey had climbed up her body and shrieked an earsplitting warning in her ear. Arran jerked the rifle up to his shoulder and fired just behind her. Whirling, she saw the first monster already climbing to its feet.
She had two confusion spells, one on each side of her hand; two telekinesis spells, again, one on each side of her hand; and the corrosive defensive spells on her forearms. Before the monster could scramble to its feet, she slapped it with the second confusion spell.
Another scream split the night.
Arran said, his voice shaking, “Maggie.”
“Call for help,” Sophie told him. She grabbed the puck, pulled it off her back, and flung it to the area behind the bar where it could take cover, then she raced to the back game room with the dartboard.
Pausing on the doorstep, she took in the details of the room at a glance. Dead body parts, check. Blood all over, check. One of the monsters was in the process of tearing apart a closet door while Maggie screamed from inside it.
Really bad situation, check.
Oh man. If the gunshots didn’t keep one of these monsters down, would her telekinesis spells do much better?
She couldn’t stand by and watch it rip Maggie to shreds. Striding forward, she delivered a roundhouse punch to the monster’s broad, powerful side. The blow lifted the creature into the air and slammed it into the opposite wall. It crashed halfway through the plaster and hung suspended in the hole it had created, half in the room and half in the kitchen behind it.
Sophie turned and, ignoring the painful tearing pull in her weak side, hauled Maggie bodily out of the closet. The other woman was hysterical, sobbing and babbling. Sophie grabbed her by the shoulders.
That got the other woman’s attention. With a hiccup, Maggie stopped screaming to stare at her.