Chapter 3 #2
The mage took a step that almost put him over the edge of the circle. She grabbed him around the waist to hold him in the circle. Everything about him was solid and warm to the point of being nearly too hot.
“What are you doing?” He pushed on her hold around him.
“You almost stepped outside the circle.” She banded her arms tight around his waist.
“Are you…” He craned back to stared wide-eyed at her. “Are you worried about me?”
“Of course I am.”
“I have to stab it in the heart to send it back to its domain. If you want to do it…” He held out the blade hilt first. “Be my guest.”
I don’t think so. She stared at the blade and up at him. “I wouldn’t dream of taking away your moment of vengeance.”
“How thoughtful of you.” His lips twisted into a sarcastic smile.
He spun and resumed his guttural chant. Abruptly, he darted forward to slam the dagger into the demon’s chest. The demon screeched something about how he would have his revenge and disappeared.
The dagger landed with a dull, wet smack on the street.
Raindrops slapped the stones of the road. The sense of misery and bleakness lifted. Her partial transition to her feral state ebbed as she relaxed.
The mage squatted next to the river to clean her dagger.
“Sometimes demon blood can weaken a blade.” After handing it back to her, he paced away, leaving. A few yards into his departure he paused to glance up at the sky. His shoulders drooped. With a sigh, he returned to her.
“Where should you be this early in the morning?” He fisted and relaxed his hands, which drew her attention to his fingers. Each digit was tattooed with symbols she recognized as runes.
“I can get home on my own.”
“You’re…lycan?”
“You’re welcome for saving you.” She notched up her chin. Wind caught her cloak’s hood and yanked it off. Quickly, she tucked strands of blonde hair that escaped back into the hood and pulled it over her head.
He’d taken on the bewildered look most males gave her when she dropped her glamour and lost control of her hair, be they human or lycan.
Glamour was important around humans to hide the allure her kind held over them and to avoid causing them to do stupid things.
She had to use it often around lycans as well.
If she didn’t, like humans, male lycans lost their minds and did things like trip and fall, or drool.
This ability to awe could probably be used to her benefit, but she hadn’t spent time honing the skill.
He blinked as if whatever momentary power she might’ve had over him disappeared. “I didn’t wish to be saved.”
“You weren’t complaining when I fished you out of the river. Why did they want you dead?”
His glare meant he refused to answer. What a relief. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know why.
“Run home…or I might eviscerate you and suck out your soul.”
“You would?” A small snort-laugh escaped her. Then she burst into belly laughter that bent her at the waist. “Sorry. This has been a lot.” Risk of death from witches, fishing a mage out of the river, a demon, and freezing down to my bones in the rain.
“Have you gone mad?”
She held up a hand while she wiped moisture from her eyes. “Would you actually suck out my soul?” A barrage of choking laughter overcame her. “I’m not losing my mind. I swear. You refused to kill me, and you didn’t throw me at the demon who could’ve done the job for you. Your threat lacks teeth.”
“I’ve changed my mind. You’re addled and clearly need to be put out of your misery.” He crossed his muscular arms, but didn’t convey a hint of malice. “Why are you out here alone?”
“To rescue you, of course.” She grinned.
One more small snort of laughter escaped before she had control of it.
Lycan females never traveled alone and were kept ignorant about threats outside their guarded homes.
She wasn’t allowed out of sight of a male for more than the time it took to sleep or pee, and even then, she was guarded.
Slipping out of her captivity tonight required that she climb out the window long past midnight and scale the wet wall.
After tomorrow, her prison walls would tighten.
“It seems the Fates want us to speak about this death wish of yours.” His lips slanted into a sardonic smile as he held out his hands palms up to trap the sky’s bitterly cold drips.
Water dribbled from locks of his drenched hair that hung unbound to just beyond his shoulders.
“Come.” He led the way toward the ruins of a stone bench on the shore as if this were something they did often.
She followed but didn’t sit. “I don’t trust you. You just said you’d eat my soul.”
“I said I’d suck out your soul. You shouldn’t trust me. We’re enemies, right?”
Some want us to be. “You’re cranky.” She shrugged and sat next to him. “I suppose if a bunch of witches tied me up and threw me in a river, I’d be angry at life too.”
“They also conjured a demon to slit my throat in the middle of a pentagram to offer me up as a sacrifice to summon a much nastier demon from hell.”
“Bet that hurt like a sonofabitch.”
The movement of his curved lips as they tilted ever so slightly upward focused her attention on the perfectly carved dip in the center of his upper lip.
Up close, his chin line was as sharp as his cheekbones.
He could pass for a thirty-something human so long as no one looked in his eyes.
He watched her out of the corners of his eyes with a violence that wasn’t as cruel as it was savage, and her entire middle section cramped with a wave of longing.
This is full-moon crazy. You’re not attracted to a mage. She glanced up into the cloudy, dark sky. Damn the moon’s sexual pull on her kind.
She clasped her hands and stared at them. “Why did you have a death wish tonight?”
When he didn’t answer she looked up at him. Did he just smile? It’d barely happened. Now it was gone.
“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.”
She was acutely aware that he dwarfed her in size and breadth. The drive to move closer to his warmth, to touch her thigh to his…
Full moon…quit. I am old enough to handle this.
Rain pelted everywhere around them but not on them, as if an invisible roof provided protection. The wind had ceased even though it looked to be swaying all the trees around them. This must be his doing.
“Why do you want to meet Death, Evie?”
He knows my name?
“Of course I know your name.”