Chapter 4
Zane
Iitched to kill some demons. How fucking dare they come after my mate! Had they not learned their lesson?
A huff of annoyance burst free as I waited for the bear to catch up.
The fucking security mages needed to pay me for my services. I bet I’d eliminated way more demons than those lazy bastards in the last twelve months.
By my reckoning, the tally was somewhere around fifty.
It was a fucking miracle the mages had kept a lid on the rapid increase in demon activity, although the chatter on campus suggested magicals were losing patience with the Supernatural Council’s inability to contain the problem.
Negative sentiment on social media had spiked alarmingly in recent weeks.
I shoved open the fire door and scanned the alley, my sword ready to slice and dice more demons.
“We clear?” Maverick barked. He’d shifted back and was busy letting it all hang free. Not that I cared. Nudity was an occupational hazard for an incubus. Naked people meant sexy times, and sexy times helped me recharge my magic. It was the reason I had a lifetime membership at this shitty club.
I listened intently. A few distant screams echoed from the main street, but I sensed no demons nearby.
“All clear. Let’s go, Tonto.”
The bear frowned at me. “Tonto?”
“I watched an old human TV show a while back. The hero was called the Lone Ranger, and he had a lame sidekick named Tonto. That’s you, by the way.”
“For fuck’s sake, you’re an idiot.” Fur rippled across the bear’s broad shoulders, and he glared at me with creepy, glowing eyes.
Was that the best insult he could come up with? I scoffed, experiencing low-key embarrassment on his behalf. For a dude who was supposed to be an instructor at a high-level magic academy, I’d have expected him to have a wider vocabulary, not to mention a better knowledge of human culture.
I shared this with him. Maverick snarled again, but I didn’t take offense. We both knew growls and snarls were care bear’s love language. In our grumpy-sunshine dynamic, I was the happy sunbeam.
Farris appeared behind us with Raven’s witch friend thrown over his shoulder. She seemed rather disgruntled about that, judging by the angry curses falling from her mouth.
“Have you seen our mate?” The longer it took to find my pet, the more murderous I got. While I sensed nothing bad happening down the bond, I didn’t trust the storm mage to keep her safe. And since the vamp had also disappeared, my patience was rapidly reaching an expiration point.
“No.” Farris shrugged, but the witch’s eyes widened in alarm as she continued punching the fae’s back.
“Raven’s missing?” she screeched.
“She went upstairs to talk to sparky. I was about to go find her when the demons attacked.”
“By sparky, you mean Alaric?” I didn’t bother replying to Glynda’s question. Sparky was pretty self-explanatory in my book. “We need to help them, you fae dickwad!”
“No, there isn’t time,” Farris snapped. Ignoring Glynda’s angry threat to boil his balls in basilisk venom, which sounded unpleasant, he cast a portal spell.
“Don’t you dare take me—” She screamed more creative threats before they both vanished in a puff of magic.
“Come,” Maverick grunted, “we’re wasting time.” Screams filled the air.
Raven was nearby. I could sense her.
I focused hard and pointed at the door on the non-human side of the club.
“This way.”
Maverick sniffed the air and nodded in agreement.
Before we could move, it swung open to reveal Alaric, only he was alone.
“Where’s our mate?”
The mage rolled his eyes contemptuously, ignoring the bear’s angry snarl.
“Relax, she’s right behind me.” Only when I looked over his shoulder, there was no sign of her.
The storm mage had always been a slippery fucker, but his lack of concern for Raven seemed out of character, even for him.
What the fuck was wrong with him? Did he need my bestie, Brenda, to help fix his issues?
I’d do anything to protect my mate, including kill the storm mage, which, to be brutally honest, I had no issue with.
The sound of heavy boots echoed down the alley. When I turned, there were three security mages in tactical gear. One raised his hand and fired a spell at us, cutting the bear down in a volley of roars.
Brenda’s weight in my hand sharpened my focus, but before I could strike the nearest mage, he hit me right in the chest with an immobilization spell.
I froze with only my eyes still functioning. When my eyeballs swiveled to the left, I saw Maverick caught between male and animal, limbs locked in painful positions.
A mid-shift freeze was fucking dangerous. Unless the mage deactivated the spell soon, Maverick would end up permanently stuck that way: part bear, part male.
“Do something, you asshole,” I yelled in my head, hoping the storm mage could hear my mental message. Fuck, if a demon attacked now, we were toast. Not only was I frozen, but my magic was too.
Someone shoved me from behind. My knees hit the pavement with a painful thud. Knowing my luck, the puddle soaking through my pants was piss, not water.
I hoped the mage had a damn good protection charm; I planned to flay him alive the moment this spell faded.
The storm mage with a death wish circled Maverick and me, staring at us, his expression blank. Every few seconds, his left eye twitched and he kept rubbing his temples, grimacing in pain.
The closer he got, the more I noticed the reek of dark magic clinging to the bastard, like radioactive ash in a nuclear fallout zone.
Had the asshole embraced the dark side? He wouldn’t be the first magical being to fall prey to the seductive allure of tainted magic.
Rumors had long circulated about Tiberius Vane’s experiments with dark magic.
Unable to curse the storm mage, all I could do was glare at the traitorous bastard and promise myself that, when I recovered, I’d hunt him down and slice him into a million and one pieces. After flaying him alive. Hell, I might even make him eat his severed cock first.
For fun.
“Let’s get the witch out of here,” the storm mage told one of the pathetic specimens behind me.
Fear wasn’t an emotion I was familiar with, but knowing Alaric had Raven while I was powerless to help her sent white-hot spasms of terror through my veins.
If anything happened to my mate, the mini-series about my father’s infamous massacre would no longer be the most streamed true-crime documentary on Magiflix.
Alaric sneered at me one last time before kicking me in the head. Pain burst brighter than a comet. Before the darkness stole me, I silently promised myself he’d pay the ultimate price for his betrayal.