Dangerous Calling (The Shadowminds) (9 page)

Ian rolled through the air in a tangle of limbs and feathers, and I acted on instinct. This wasn’t like before, when I’d collected all the energy I could before making a move. I needed the power to stop us both, and that was all my body understood. I pulled, and the pull landed on the closest source I had. Ian.

I knew from tragic experience that the energy you’d need to stop a human body falling was equal to a human life. There was a price for everything. So even as one part of my mind, my shadowmind, acted instinctively to save us both, I knew that there was a good chance Ian would be dead before we hit the ground.

I tried to disengage, but I was tapped into every part of him, from the impulses firing in his brain to the thrum of blood in his heart. The unnatural warmth of him, the corded muscle in his calves and forearms, his breath. His tangle of buried memories flashed in my own head—his lips on the warm skin of a woman’s back, her red-gold hair brushing his face, her laugh. The feel of a blade against his skin, the surge of fury as he struck back. Power arced through me and kept on coming, filling me up with strength until we froze in midair five feet from the ground.

“What the fuck?” Ian said, and I was so surprised, I lost my mental grip and sent us tumbling, not quite gently, into the fountain at the center of the courtyard.

I struggled out of the tangle of his wings. The left one was streaked with blood and bent back at an angle that made me want to look away. Red inked the water.

“Christ.” Ian stood up and used his tattoo-covered right arm to lift his broken wing. “That hurt like a motherfucker.”

“You’re alive—you’re okay.” I stared at him in shock. He seemed completely unaffected.

“Fuck no, I’m not okay. That bitch threw a knife at me.” The knife was still embedded in the flesh of his wing. He pulled it out. The sound it made—a sucking, wet
squick
—made me cringe. He wiped the blade on his wet jeans and looked at it. “My own goddamn knife.” He looked up at the roof, eyes blazing. “She’s gone.”

“What—how do you know?”

“I just...know.” He stepped out of the fountain and winced.

“You should be dead.” I couldn’t get past it. A pull like that should’ve at least knocked him out.

“Flesh wound.” He peered at his wing, frowning. “The other one’s worse.” He tried to lift his broken left wing and let it fall again.

“No—I mean I pulled from you. You should be dead.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “Don’t know what you mean. Come on. She’s gone, but she could come back.”

Shane.
We both turned toward the breezeway and froze. In the open French doors leading to the building’s darkened foyer was a compact man in a brown suit, smoking a cigar. He had a ridiculous handlebar mustache. He looked at us, made a zipped-closed motion across his lips, raised his palms, and looked pointedly and wide-eyed at his feet.

Chapter Nine

Ian managed to keep his wings hidden while we walked back to the B&B, but the illusion was patchy and flickering. Every time I looked at him I caught a glimpse of warm brown feathers or tattered, red-streaked flesh. He dripped blood onto the sidewalk.

I was still charged up from the pull. I probably could’ve carried him, but that didn’t seem like a good idea. I was hyperaware of his body in ways I didn’t like, the connection of the pull still vibrating between us. His mental state flashed and ebbed in my brain, a mixture of anger, pain and post-fight adrenaline. He was still as full of energy as the day he’d first shown up at the B&B.

“It didn’t affect you?” I still couldn’t believe it.

He turned his head and winced. “What do you mean?”

“The pull. It didn’t affect you. I mean, you didn’t even notice.”

“What the fuck is a pull?”

“Never mind.” I would worry about this later, when no one was bleeding. “How did you even know we were up there?”

“Felt it.”

Before I could ask him what he meant, Shane met us out front running. “Cass!” He ran his hands over my face, and when he found me whole dragged me in close and wrapped his arms around me. His mind tangled with mine, searching.

“
Are you hurt?
Are you all right?
”

“
Fine
,
I’m fine.
Ian took the knife—he took the knife for me.
”

Shane looked at Ian over my shoulder. “You’re hurt,” he said.

“I’ll live.” His wing dragged the ground and left a streak of blood on the concrete. “What happened to the bitch?”

“She jumped.” Shane shook his head, still stunned. I watched his memory of it. Annette leaped from the roof and landed on the sidewalk with a crack of concrete. She should’ve been dead twice over, but she ran down Ursulines Avenue, staggering and trailing blood. “She looked pretty badly hurt.”

I knew without asking that Shane had stayed to protect the B&B.

“Diana?” I asked, suddenly worried. What if Annette had a partner?

“Fine,” Shane said. “Still sleeping. Come on—we need to get you both indoors.” He didn’t say it out loud, but I knew we presented a spectacle to anyone who happened to look out a window. There was only so much we could write off to New Orleans’ legendary nightlife.

Ian nodded, but with his next step, he staggered and had to catch himself on the brick wall bordering the B&B. Shane didn’t comment, but in my head, he said, “
I’ll call Bunny.
”

A healer. We didn’t bother her for little things, but this wasn’t little. Shane took out his phone.

When we got inside, Lionel and Bruce were waiting for us in the kitchen. Ian dragged himself in and collapsed into a chair, spent.

“Sweet Jesus, son, are you all right?” Bruce raked his eyes over Ian’s blood-spattered wings.

Ian didn’t answer, and Lionel and Bruce exchanged a look. Without even speaking, Bruce pulled out a first aid kit and clean towels while Lionel started boiling water. You’d never know Bruce wasn’t a telepath, the way those two could read each other’s minds.

Shane remained outside and spoke to Bunny, and I stayed where I was, leaning in the doorway. I was shaking with the leftover power of the pull. Every voice in the B&B was murmuring in my head—asleep, awake, frightened, calm. The power in my mind was so intense, I could’ve lifted the whole building off of its foundation. The realization of what just happened hit me in pieces, all out of order. Ian bleeding on the asphalt, the fall, the knife sinking into Annette’s chest. The pull. My hands trembled with the memory. When Shane finished his call and walked up behind me, I yelped.

“You all right?”

“Fine. Come on.” I pulled him into the kitchen before he could ask me again.

Bruce’s rags were soaked with blood and Ian’s face was expressionless, the bloodless white of skim milk. Lionel held a bandage to the wound, and there was a pile of long, striated brown feathers on the table. Ian was usually hard to read, but his thoughts were coming through loud and clear this time.
—fuck me
,
that hurt—

“Bunny’s on her way,” Shane said, and Lionel blew out a breath in relief.

“Good thing,” he said. “Don’t know what they’d do with you at the hospital, son.”

Ian smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Bruce wrung out a handful of rags in the sink while Lionel kept pressure on the wound. Ian glanced at the liquor cabinet on the opposite wall, closed his eyes and turned away.

“Have you ever come across someone like that before?” I asked him. “I mean—what
is
she?” I’d never seen anyone with that kind of strength, and the power she’d put over my mind was like nothing I’d ever encountered.

“Some shadowminds can do that,” Lionel said, frowning as he picked up what had happened. “It’s not common, though. Strange.”

“I felt her in your head,” Shane said. “She didn’t feel like a telepath.”

“And she can’t just be a converter—that doesn’t explain how strong she is.”

“All I know is she put a hole in my wing,” Ian said.

It didn’t take much longer for Bunny to arrive. She didn’t knock, just came through the back door into the kitchen. She looked as immaculate as always, as though we hadn’t just woken her from a dead sleep. Her steel-gray, rod-straight hair was neat and perfect in its usual bob, and she was wearing freshly pressed dress slacks and a crisp white shirt. She took one look at Ian and froze.

“Baton Rouge,” I said, hoping that was enough.

“I wondered.” She came forward cautiously. Ian watched her skeptically, but didn’t move when she stood by the table he was sitting on. “Is this a knife wound? Or did you have an argument with a barbed wire fence?”

Ian extended his right wing, forcing Lionel to drop his hand. The wound was still seeping blood. Ian’s feathers had been pulled out around it, and he looked weirdly vulnerable with even that small patch of skin bare. Bunny leaned close to look at the wound.

“So, you anchored to Baton Rouge,” she said.

Ian made a sound that might have meant
yeah.

Bunny held her palm over his wing and closed her eyes. “How long ago?”

“Few days.”

“You’re new to be this far from your anchor point.” She pressed two fingers to the skin above the wound, bloodying them.

Ian gritted his teeth. “I’m dealing with it.”

“Mmm.”

Bunny wasn’t a doctor. She had a rare talent—healing. She was the only shadowmind I’d ever met with the gift. I didn’t understand how it worked, except that she could heal injuries that should leave a person dead. The wound on Ian’s wing was probably child’s play to her. I was on the other side of the room, but I could still see the way the gaping flesh closed and went smooth. Ian barely moved, but I could sense his pain abating.

“And your healer?” Bunny asked.

“Don’t have one.”

“It seems that we complement each other well, then.” She didn’t smile. She’d once told me, when I’d decided to embrace my gift instead of returning to San Francisco, “We don’t have a guardian of our own. What we have is you.”

I had no idea why New Orleans lacked a guardian, but at the moment, I was feeling like a pretty poor substitute.

“It gets easier,” Bunny said. Ian gave another grunt, this one marginally more interested. “In a decade or two you’ll have a great deal more range. And you’ll be able to keep that glamour up. This might be tad unpleasant, darling.”

Bunny pressed her whole palm to his wing, right above the bare spot. Ian’s brow furrowed, and he nearly twitched back. Nothing happened for a moment, but then new feathers poked through the bare skin and grew, lengthening into damp spines and unfurling. Even Ian looked impressed.

“Now the other,” Bunny said.

Ian lifted his broken left wing anemically, and Bunny cocked her head at it. She didn’t even have to touch him. She held her hand over the crest and the wing slowly straightened, unfurling until it took up half the room. Ian flared it, the feathers opening like a hand for a catch.

“Good as new,” Bunny said.

“Thank you,” he said. It was the first time I’d heard him use those words.

“Anyone else?” Bunny asked.

I shook my head even though Shane frowned at me. “I’m fine.”

Bunny gave me a once-over—visual and mental; I could feel her powers sweep me—but she let it stand. “Well, then. Call if you need me.” She showed herself out.

* * *

Lionel sent Shane and me up to bed with some kind of admonishment to rest. I wasn’t really listening. I wasn’t even slightly tired.

The pull had combined with the adrenaline rush of being dangled six stories above the ground, and there was no way I was going to calm down. Even my skin felt charged. When Shane and I got to the privacy of his old room, I pressed him into the closed door, dug my fingers into his hips and kissed him.

He wasn’t shocked, I could tell. The rush of panic had affected him as much as the pull had affected me. I picked up the lust wrapped around him as clearly as I could feel the humid night air on my skin. He was already hard. I pulled off my shirt and rocked my hips against him.

“Bed,” I said in his ear. “Now.”

He backed me to the bed, holding my gaze. When my knees hit the mattress I sat, and my mouth was level with his belt buckle. I pulled off his belt and undid his fly, reaching for him, but he stilled my hands.

He gave my shoulders a light shove to knock me back onto the bed, then he ranged over me and laid open-mouthed kisses down my neck. I clenched the sheets and arched my back and groaned at the ceiling while Shane ran his warm tongue flat over my belly. My skin was on fire.

“Easy, easy.” He slipped two fingers under my waistband and tugged off my jeans.

I grabbed his undershirt and ripped it in two, pulled him down and fastened my mouth to the dip between his pecs, dug my fingers into his back.

“Please,” I said, my voice susurrating through the small space between my lips and his skin. “Please fuck me.”

“Jesus Christ.” He struggled out of his shoes and jeans and rolled us both over, putting me on top. He threaded his fingers in my hair and steadied me, twined his legs around mine to still me. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”

Shane slid his hands to my waist and shifted my hips up. It was all he needed to slide his erection to my center, and slowly, slowly, he seated himself inside me. I threw my head back and moaned, tumbling into his head as he entered me. The hot pleasure of it—his, mine—was enough to make my rational mind go blank.

I was already so close to the edge when he started to rock his hips, I knew I didn’t have long. I spread my legs and took him in deeper, clenching my inner muscles around him, and that was it. I was done. The climax took me like the wild thing it was. Shane gripped my hips and levered me up, just enough to give himself room to move, and the half-dozen thrusts it took for him to follow me made my whole body go limp.

I collapsed onto his chest, panting.

Shane threaded his fingers through my hair. “Cassie.”

“Mmm.” The power had bled away, thank God. I felt almost normal again.

“Are you all right?”

I levered myself up to look at him. “I’m fine. Why?”

“You were a little...”

“What?” I sat all the way up.

“Hey.” Shane pulled me back down onto his chest. “
You seemed upset
,
that’s all.
”

The problem with living with a telepath was that you couldn’t lie. If I told him nothing was wrong, he’d know I was hiding something. With a lot of concentration, I could conceal what I was thinking, but it would take even more to stop him from picking up on my emotions. There was no way I’d be able to keep him from feeling how much the pull had scared me.

And no way I could keep him from seeing that I’d loved it.

“
It didn’t hurt him
,” I said. “
It just kept coming.
” The rush of power came back to me and he saw the way I’d felt. Just the memory of Ian’s energy sizzling in my veins was enough to make me want it again.

Shane stroked my back. “
I’m sure it’s normal to feel that way.
”

I didn’t know what to say to him. I didn’t want to admit it.

“
Cassie.
Talk to me.
” He tugged on my ponytail until I lifted my head and met his eyes.

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

I could hear him deciding what to say next, considering whether it was better to push me to talk now, or wait. He considered, going back and forth, and finally he nodded. “We should get some rest.”

“Yeah.” I’d wake up and feel normal again. I had to.

* * *

It was always the same dream.

I was on a plane, heading over an ocean. I don’t know which one, or where to. The engines failed, and the pilot came on and told us we were going down. The shriek of wind over the wings drowned out every other sound, like static. People screamed, ran for the useless emergency exits. I felt their fear everywhere. It was like smoke.

I knew I could stop it. I was calm. I stood up, a rock in a froth of panic, and reached out with my power for the weight of the plane. Ice formed on the wings. The ruined engines went cold, but we slowed down. The people closest to me stopped screaming and looked out their tiny porthole windows. The surface of the water was so close we could make out dark rain falling into choppy waves. The plane hovered motionless over the ocean, and then people started to drop dead.

I woke up shaking. I could hear Shane’s heartbeat, his steady breath. The pull during the fall came back to me, and Ian’s sleeping mind felt like a siren in an empty street. I wanted it. A claw of desire pricked the skin of my chest. Any minute it would go deeper. I pushed it away, trembling.

Shane stirred beside me, half asleep. He wrapped an arm around me and pulled me back down against him. His chest was warm and broad.

“S’okay, baby. Just a dream.” He settled me against him and nestled his face against the back of my neck.

For the first time in months, I wanted my pills. Longed for them, for the way they’d suppressed my powers. Breaking an addiction to sedatives wasn’t as bad for a shadowmind as it was for a normal, but I knew better than to go back.