Djinn Justice (The Collegium Book 2) (10 page)

Fay’s smile dared him to ravish her.

“You have no idea what you’ve unleashed, sweetheart.” His voice was little more than a growl, blood thundering in his ears. She’d uncovered his fear so gently and truly, and answered with her own innate generosity. “I have to have you.”

“In the chair?” Her smile was in her voice as she kissed his jaw. She was learning to be adventurous about sex.

He tilted his head, capturing her mouth. He thrust his tongue in, no smooth moves, just wanting to drown in her flavor. He slid both hands up from her waist, squeezing her breasts, growling as her knees collapsed and the heat of her settled over him. He wanted her here, immediately, but he also needed more control. He needed to be the dominant partner this time, the one setting a pounding pace.

She moved, rubbing against him.

He tore at her shirt, hauled her up as he pushed down a bra cup and sucked, no preliminaries, hard on her left breast. Her parted legs stretched the fabric of her trousers. He put his palm there, where she was hot and dampening, and pressed. He loved the sound she made, high and hungry, as desperate as he felt.

“Let me get these off,” she panted. He released her and she scrambled up, legs shaky, unzipping and pushing down trousers and knickers at once. Swearing and using magic to kick off her boots.

“Bed.” He kicked off his own boots, unbuckled.

She dropped her torn shirt and bra on the way to the bedroom. He stopped in the doorway, blocking her entrance, gripping the frame. She was naked. He had his shirt open, trousers unzipped.

They stared at one another, breathing fast, her breasts swollen, nipples hard. He could smell her arousal. He half-smiled, daring her.

She put her hands either side of his face, plastered her body to his, and slowly dragged her hands down his throat, over his chest. She rested her face against his stomach as she sent her hands lower, lower yet, skimming down his thighs and back on a return journey.

He trapped one hand inside his trousers, guiding it to shape and tease him. She licked his stomach, surprising him. He picked her up, game time over and lowered her onto the bed. She edged to the middle of the mattress as he finished undressing, putting on a condom because he was achingly ready.

He kissed her, keeping himself back a fraction, wanting her arousal to peak.

“Foreplay later,” she muttered against his mouth, and using a wrestling move, had him down and on his back.

He rolled them over and she laughed silently up at him, even as her legs locked around him.

“You think you’ve got what you want?” he asked.

“Nearly.” She rippled beneath him in a sensuous shiver. “Give me everything.”

He did.

They’d made love before, passionately, but he’d always been aware that it was all new to her. That she’d trusted him with her body and self, her first—and he swore—last lover.

This time he needed to give her the wildness in him. Anything less would be an insult to her courage and his, and to the love that bound them. So he let himself get drunk on the scent and taste of her, on the heat of her body and her demands, verbal and physical, for satisfaction.

He drove into her with all his power and shuddered at her answering urgency, as if she couldn’t take him deep enough, couldn’t suffer enough pleasure, couldn’t give enough. She had a hand in his hair, hurting as she writhed and fought for more. He wanted more, too. Words were far gone. There were only noises, their breathing, the sounds of bodies in near agony.

And she was there, climaxing, beautiful, all of his dreams and hopes and a sure hold against fear. He let go of his own control, shouting her name.

Silence crept back into the bedroom. Their heartbeats slowed, their breathing evened out. He slid unwillingly from her body.

Her sleepy voice halted him. “In case you ever wonder who you are, in the heart of you, Steve Jekyll.”

He waited.

She rolled up on one elbow, bent and kissed his chest, over his heart. “You’re mine.”

Over breakfast, Fay learned that Steve had identified the female were from North Carolina.

“There aren’t that many lone wolves, especially female ones. Barbara Winnet lives in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I don’t know much more than that since I didn’t want to ask questions at the fort and she doesn’t seem to have much of a cyberprint online.”

“So how did the rogue mage identify her?” Fay paused in eating her microwaved oatmeal.

Steve sat opposite her with bacon and sausages he’d found in the freezer and fried up, and toast from a frozen loaf of whole-wheat bread.

There was a relaxed quality to the morning. No, a contentment. Fay hugged the feeling to her.

As much as she loved Steve, she’d worried that she’d somehow mess things up by her lack of relationship experience. To learn that he’d been just as unsure, if for different reasons, reassured her. She had a new confidence. They’d met their first relationship challenge and it hadn’t destroyed them. In fact, it had deepened their understanding of what they were building. They were equal partners, each providing something the other needed, making them whole.

Perhaps their fortnight alone together at his villa would have achieved the same result, but maybe not. Steve would have controlled how he revealed himself to her. He was a strong, proud man. He wouldn’t have shown her his vulnerability, that hidden hope and fear that she saw and accepted all of him.

Had Uncle purposely and wisely forced the pace?

She’d suspected the djinn cared for Steve’s grandfather, but maybe Uncle cared for Steve, too? It wasn’t an assumption to rely on. The djinn could care and still set Steve up for a fall. The djinni were capricious.

“There’s a private airport we can fly into,” Steve said. “Then it’s a forty minute drive to Barbara Winnet’s house. The were who owns the airport—Gordon Forde, the wolf alpha—will lend us a car. Depending on what we find there, we’ll either pass responsibility for Barbara’s safety to him or bring her with us back to Alexandria—even if I have to tranquilize her to do so.” He paused. “If I was Suzerain, I could force her to change into her animal form. As it is, we’ll have to transport an unconscious woman.”

“I can hide her,” Fay said. “The magic affects the world around her, not her, herself, so the fact that she’s a were doesn’t cancel its effect. I’m going to do some reading on the plane about dream essences. The concept isn’t covered in Collegium training. Or rather, I think it might be tangentially addressed under astral projection, but mages tend to dismiss astral projection as New Age nonsense.”

“Why astral projection?”

“It’s the only part of my studies that mentioned a ‘dream self’. There might be something in the method of separating that dream self from the sleeping body that will help me understand the Ancient Egyptian spell and how the rogue mage has used it.”

Steve topped up their coffee mugs. “If I can help, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll clear my emails. Judging by the couple I skimmed, the family has heard that Uncle’s testing me and they want to help.”

“Can they? What are the rules of a test?”

“No rules. But if they don’t know that a rogue mage is stealing dream essences, I’d rather keep it that way. It only takes one slip of the tongue to start a panic.”

Fay stared at him, slowly lowering her mug. “I hadn’t considered…” His grim tone triggered an avalanche of understanding. “If weres begin fearing mages, they’ll attack.”

“And be punished under were law,” Steve said. “But by then, it would be too late. Mages would retaliate.”

She stared at him, stunned. The situation was so ordinary: a man and a woman, sharing breakfast. But looked at another way, it was rare: a were and a mage, trusting one another.

Mages and weres had always gotten along by ignoring one another. Unaffected by magic, the weres went their own way in the supernatural community, while mages studied and collaborated with other magic users. But if mutual suspicion and fear replaced the existing disdain…the bloodbath would destabilize the world order. Were and mages operated at every level of society and were tightly embedded in it.

“Do you think Uncle knows the identity of the rogue mage?” Fay asked.

“Since we can’t compel him to answer the question, it’ll only drive you crazy wondering if he could.”

“So we’re on our own.”

“Except that Uncle might meddle, anyway.”

“Great. I wonder if there’s a spell for containing djinni?” she muttered.

“I’ll buy you a brass lamp.”

Four hours later, coming in to land in North Carolina, Fay magicked the last reference book back to the Collegium library and groaned. She could use three wishes about now.

Studying the research on astral projection hadn’t told her much.

It was shamanism, which a lot of mages tended to look down on as little more than wishing. Primitive magic.

Fay had met shamans who could summon, control and banish demons. That was not minor magic. But she realized she’d been a bit snobby about their power, too. She’d dismissed it as will-based magic; requiring less learning.

Shamans studied their whole lives, and generally, inherited a code. That code distilled the expected behaviors to maintain their world, as they saw the world.

There was her stumbling block. Astral projection, described within a shamanic world view, required the interpreter to understand it in context. Without the context…Fay rubbed at her forehead. There were three key aspects.

Astral projection required the shaman to concentrate his or her self into a contained form. So they could picture themselves in their own body, or in that of an animal or spirit (the small gods of their world) form. That was the form that left their physical body and returned to it.

The second visualization required was the cord that linked their spirit and physical bodies. They had to be able to follow that cord back into their physical body. Some shamans left protections by their physical bodies to protect the cord. Others summoned assistance in their incorporeal form. The stress on protecting the cord indicated that it could be attacked. The shaman’s dream essence could be divorced from the shaman’s body.

Fay breathed evenly, maintaining steady adrenaline levels, even as she identified this second point as the crucial one. When she and Steve saw Barbara Winnet, the lone wolf, if the cord to the woman’s dream essence had been severed, then Fay didn’t know what she’d do. If, however, the rogue mage hadn’t cut the cord but maintained it to continue draining Barbara’s energy, then Fay could potentially wrench it back to Barbara and/or follow that cord to the rogue mage.

A shaman would pursue Barbara’s dream essence while in a trance. Fay couldn’t imagine surrendering her control to that extent. She liked to stay grounded in the physical, here-and-now world. Just as she’d never pursue a demon to hell.

She looked at Steve. “Do you know any shamans?”

“Some. None that I’d trust with this.”

“Why not?”

He ignored the plane’s bumpy landing. “Same reason you didn’t tell Lewis all the details. I don’t want to give anyone ideas of controlling weres, or anyone, this way. Is this shamanic magic?”

“I won’t know till I see Barbara.” She hesitated. “I learned one other thing, but there’s no time now.” The plane was taxiing to a stop.

“Does it change our plans?”

“No.” It made her feel cold and wary, but it didn’t change what they had to do. If anything, it made their mission more urgent.

Steve studied her expression as she unclasped her seatbelt. He pulled her up, into a hug.

She went eagerly into the warmth and sanity of his embrace. Her research, or rather, the implications of it, could give anyone nightmares.

The plane door opened. “Ah.” A man cleared his throat.

Fay looked over Steve’s shoulder.

The late middle-aged man didn’t look like ground crew. He wore a khaki work shirt and jeans, and his gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but he had an aura of authority.

“Hi, Gordon,” Steve said.

Gordon Forde, wolf alpha and owner of the airfield, sniffed the air rather than responding to the greeting. Thick gray eyebrows went up. He stared at Fay’s face, assessing her. “Well, now.”

Mate scent.
Fay disengaged from Steve’s embrace and stooped for the jacket she’d shrugged off in the cabin’s warmth. She’d forgotten that to a were, her connection to Steve was immediately obvious. She figured that what threw the wolf alpha was her lack of were scent.

Yes, folks, the heir to the Suzerainty has chosen a non-were partner.

She studied Gordon’s face, curious as to the man’s response.

“Congratulations,” he said to Steve. But then, something seemed to strike him. His head tilted.

Fay saw the wolf in him, the ruthless calculation and readiness to act.

“You’re a mage.”

Steve broke the moment, pushing forward, pushing Gordon into retreat down the plane steps. “I’m glad the grapevine doesn’t have every detail yet.”

“What have I missed?” Gordon grumbled from the ground, watching Fay descend.

“I introduced Fay to Tomy and Raha, yesterday.”

“I don’t care for Suzerainty politics.”

Fay reached the ground. “How about Collegium gossip?” she challenged.

He barked a laugh. “Me and mine don’t have anything to do with that lot—unless we’re hungry.” White teeth gleamed in a reckless grin, but he’d divided his attention, ready for a move by Steve.

Fay held out her hand. “Fay Olwen, former Collegium guardian.”

“Well, now. Seems I heard the Collegium recently lost its old President Olwen. You any relation?”

“Daughter.” She kept her hand out, waiting, daring him.

“They kick you out along with your dad?”

Steve snorted. “You really are out of the loop, Gordon.”

“What’d I miss? Oh, hell.” He took the two steps required and shook Fay’s hand. His grip was strong, calloused, but not ungentle.

Fay smiled. “Steve and I kicked Dad out after his secretary summoned a demon that had ambitions to possess the entire Collegium.”

“A demon hunter.” Gordon’s gaze raked her one last time before he slapped Steve on the back. “I ought to have known you’d pick a fighter.”

“A warrior-princess,” Steve quoted Uncle with a small smile for Fay.

She rolled her eyes.

“So why are you here? I haven’t heard of a demon in my territory.”

“No demon.” Steve looked at Fay. “According to my grandfather, not Tomy, the—”

“The earl.” She grinned at him.

His eyes lit with laughter. “I was going to say, the other one, who is also a wolf alpha, trusts Gordon.”

“Were business or magic?” the older man asked, gaze shifting between them.

“Both.”

“Ain’t no were business on my territory that I don’t know about.”

“This is just outside your territory. Barbara Winnet, a lone wolf.” Steve’s eyes narrowed. Like Fay, he’d seen Gordon’s response to the name. “What’s she to you? Do you have a problem with her?”

“Only that she’s too damn stubborn. Like my son, Saul. The two of them ought to be mated. Saul’s working on an oil rig in the Gulf. He’d be in this if he was here, arguing with her or not.” Unspoken was the declaration that Gordon would take his son’s place. For a lone wolf, Barbara had defenders.

Steve raked a hand through his hair. “Damn. I didn’t think there’d be an emotional tie. Lone wolves and all…”

“I won’t jeopardize whatever you’re doing, but Barbara’s one of mine, whatever she thinks otherwise.”

Steve nodded, jerkily. “All right. You can come with us to see her, but you stay out of the way, and you don’t do one thing Fay hasn’t cleared for you.”

“Magic don’t touch weres.”

As a Collegium guardian, Fay had gotten used to other magic users backing away and letting her assume full responsibility, whatever the problem. Now, with weres, she had a whole new frustration: they dismissed her and her magic.

She might as well start as she meant to go on. She might be Steve’s mate, but she’d have her own reputation. She’d earned respect once. This time, outside the Collegium, she’d demand it.

Besides, as an alpha and a stubborn one, Gordon would keep hammering at what he saw as her non-were weakness unless she showed him otherwise.

“Magic touches the world around you,” she said, and slammed a silencing bubble around him. She cut off air as well, remembering how he’d used scent to identify her as Steve’s mate. The bubble shimmered as she turned it opaque on its inner surface, blinding Gordon. Nothing she did directed magic at him, so his were status couldn’t cancel it. All of her magic centered on changing the world around him. She stripped his senses from him, and when he’d have torn free, she locked metal cuffs around his ankles and embedded them deep in the tarmac.

For the count of ten seconds she and Steve watched the wolf alpha rage and strain in his confinement. Then she released the magic.

Gordon stumbled three steps, turned and leaped at her.

Steve blocked him and threw him to the ground.

Men and women ran out from the airfield’s jumble of buildings. Fay watched them.

Steve watched the man on the ground. “You knew she was a fighter.”

“Kick a man while he’s down.” Gordon bounded up, as agile as an eighteen-year-old, and swung to face his rescuers. “Can’t a man lose a fight in private?”

His pack skidded to a halt. One or two evidently recognized Steve.

“I’m fine. Steve’s fine. Fay’s more than fine.” A hint of a wink in her direction was probably all the apology she’d get.

She was just relieved he’d accepted her attack.

“Get the hell back to work,” Gordon roared.

“Next time you’re going to kick his ass, let us know and we’ll film it,” a young woman said with the cheek of family. “Getting slow in your old age, Dad?” She laughed at his cuss word.

“All right.” Gordon lowered his voice. “I was going to lend you a junker, but since I’m going with you, we’ll take my car and I’ll drive.”

Fay was barely aware of reacting, but both men focused on her. Minutely, she’d stiffened in resistance.

“Unless that’s a problem?” the wolf alpha pushed.

“No,” she said coolly. Gordon wouldn’t like it, but if she wanted to talk privately with Steve, she could block Gordon’s hearing, again.

Steve was more direct. “Give us ten minutes,” he told the older man.

“Meet me in the carpark,” Gordon said with would-be casualness and strode away.

“Will he tell anyone we’re going to Barbara’s?” Fay asked.

“No.”

She trusted Steve’s judgement. They walked slowly towards the office. “About the rogue mage. I was reading a story copied from a medieval text. The original author stated that he mistrusted the tale. Nonetheless, it seemed to have hooked him and he included it. The story was told to him by a merchant, a story of a wizard met in an Egyptian oasis. The wizard was crazy. He had magic enough to turn away a sandstorm, but at night, when he slept, his skin bulged and twisted and he cried out in different voices. He sounded old and young, male and female, and when he woke, he screamed. His skin split open and poison ran out. It sizzled on the ground and anything that touched it, vaporized.”

“You’re thinking of the toad in the spell Uncle found us.”

Fay nodded. She enclosed them in a silencing spell as they neared the range of were hearing by the office building.

“And this came up when you were researching astral projection?”

“Tangentially. It was in a volume on night walkers.”

“I’ve not heard of them.”

“Another name for all the folk stories of vampires and hags, succubae and the like.”

“Fairy-tales,” Steve dismissed them.

“But with a hard truth apparently. I didn’t know about dream essences.” She grimaced at him as they rounded the corner of the office building and the carpark appeared. The airfield was small but busy, and the carpark three quarters full. The sun had a welcome warmth to it because the breeze from the mountains bit. She thought regretfully of the warm Mediterranean sun. It wasn’t worth putting her jacket on. In a couple of minutes they’d be inside a sun-heated car.

Steve moved, positioning himself to block the wind from her.

It helped even her internal chill. She ceased rubbing her arms and shoved her hands in her pockets. “The warning of the story is that a rogue mage draining dream essences mightn’t just be evil, he might be mad.”

“Driven crazy by trying to contain multiple essences in one body?”

“And poisonous. Whatever that may mean. It could be physical poison, or a mental or spiritual one. Capable of being transferred. The original Egyptian spell warned of poison on the toad’s claws.”

“Toads don’t have claws.” He watched the office and Gordon emerging from it.

Fay stared at him. “That’s your concern? A biological detail?”

He kissed her open mouth. “We’ll be careful.”

“Hmmph.” She released the silencing spell as Gordon approached.

The old wolf beeped the doors of a massive SUV.

Steve opened the passenger door for Fay.

She gave him a look that said she failed to appreciate the honor of riding shotgun.

He half-grinned, and helped her up and into the seat with a pat to her butt. Then he got into the seat behind her, where he’d be able to protect her back and observe Gordon’s profile. He waited till Gordon had pulled out of the carpark and onto the road before he outlined the situation.