My Darkest Passion (11 page)

“I surely will.”

Then all three of their phones went off. Not calls, but texts.

Harsh looked at his screen. The text was from Carson, Nikodemus’s significant other.

5 mages termed. More sanctions ord. Xtreme caution. Attacks likely.

10

H
arsh almost let Kynan hitch a ride back to the city with Paisley, but at the last minute he decided with Addison so volatile, he was taking too big a risk not having Kynan at hand. As for Addison, she was as unsettled and fragile as ever. But now, if he wanted to, he could reach out to her, hook into her mental state, even catch a thought or two. He didn’t.

Kynan’s phone rang, and he answered it. “Gray. What’s doing?” Gray was one of Nikodemus’s assassins. Given Carson’s text, no doubt Kynan’s specific talents were needed elsewhere. He might shortly need to find someplace safer for them all.

“Let’s walk,” Harsh said. There was no need for Addison to overhear anything Kynan might say to Gray about whatever the hell was going on. She shrugged agreement.

“Don’t go far,” Kynan said. He went back to his call. “Yeah? No shit. How many?”

With her on his heels, Harsh went out the front door and down the front steps. At the bottom, she said, “What’s going on?”

He ran a hand through his hair, and she shrugged again. If there was trouble with the magekind, she wasn’t safe here. She might not be safe anywhere. “If you were sworn to Nikodemus, I could tell you.”

“Okay. Fine. Can you tell me where is this?”

“Unincorporated Sonoma County. We’re about an hour north of San Francisco.”

“The middle of nowhere.”

“You might say that.” His fealty to Nikodemus would be scant help in this situation. If she lost control with as much magic as she had boiling in her, Kynan wouldn’t be able to get here fast enough. The problem was that if Kynan were here, any conversation would be disrupted by an encounter between two warlords who had not settled the issue of rank. He gestured to the gravel road that went deeper into the property. “Shall we?”

She watched him steadily. Distrustful. Sad. Distant. “Where?”

“Not far. It’ll be too dark before long, and I’d rather not test your night vision just yet.” He pointed to the gravel driveway. “It goes a little way past the house.”

She shrugged. “Why not?”

They walked in silence. She was calmer than she had been. In the hope of keeping things that way, he opened himself enough that, if she knew more about what she was, she’d understand he was no current threat. As it was, he could only hope she guessed as much.

The gravel road terminated at a small house that had once housed the foreman back in the days when this had been part of a much bigger dairy operation. The building had been empty for years when he bought the place. And had stayed that way. Even in the days when he’d been here more often, he’d never put his money into renovating this outbuilding. His only maintenance had been to replace the roof, and that was work he’d had done shortly before he was taken mageheld.

She stopped dead, eyes fixed on the shack, and for a moment, her panic baffled him. Then he remembered where and how she’d been imprisoned, and he had to work to set aside his fury that her distrust was justified.

“No,” he said. “That’s not the way Nikodemus operates.”

“Sure.”

He invited her into his thoughts, and she didn’t block him, which was something. As hot as her power ran right now, the connection was something of a rush. “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

She snorted, and he realized she’d picked up the wry humor that had
not
infused his words. She shook her head. “What the hell is that?”

“Normal,” he said. “For us. To share like this. At the moment, you have access to me. I don’t have access to you, though. I know your status only in the most general sense.”

“That makes you uncomfortable. Not knowing.”

“Yes.” He inclined his head. “You’re not stable, which is surely no surprise to you, considering you’ve managed to obliterate a chair. Understandable under the circumstances, but your inability to control yourself is a concern.”

“You don’t like not having access.” She touched her head. Her fingers lingered on her scalp.

“I don’t, but don’t let that concern you.” He kept his distance. “You have an insistent pull. We are a hierarchical species. Rank matters. We need to know where we stand in relation to each other. The warlords are at the top.” He touched his forehead, but just the back of his thumb, not three fingers. “You don’t know enough about what you are. It’s polite to reciprocate, but I can’t take offense.”

“Even if I knew how, I’m not sure I’d agree. Reciprocate, I mean. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He gestured. “I bought this property several years ago. I was at UCSF then, but I was going to retire here one day. When I was old and gray.”

“UCSF? That’s a medical school, right?”

“Yes. Research and teaching hospital.”

“What kind of doctor were you?” She slid her foot back and forth in the gravel until there was nothing but dirt beneath her sandal. “Are you one? You must be. You looked pretty comfortable stitching me up.”

“Oncology.” Afternoon continued its slide to dusk. He nodded at the shack. “There’s no magic there.” He walked to the cabin door and opened it. “Not even warded,” he said. “No electricity either, but there is plumbing.” He looked inside. “I don’t know if it works, though. I should get the plumber and the septic company out here to look.”

“I can’t go in there.”

“I know. I didn’t want you to worry.” They faced each other from the distance of the steps, her on the driveway, him on the stairs.

“Dr. Marit, huh?”

She knew, now, because he gave her access to his thoughts and emotions, that he regretted the loss of his medical career. He let her see that he had been enslaved to a mage, scenes from the night he’d been freed, and his memory of Kynan Aijan, enslaved, as well. What the witch Carson Phillips had done to sever him from the mage, all the confusion and dread of the events leading to Harsh’s decision to swear fealty to Nikodemus.

“Technically, yes,” he said. “I worked with Nikodemus’s lawyers to straighten out the legal mess of my disappearance from my previous life. I’m still licensed, but we decided, Nikodemus and I, that my going back into practice was not the most useful thing I could do.”

“Even though you wanted to?”

He walked down the steps, but stayed at the bottom, looking at a sky that was now more gray than blue. “Like you, I wanted my old life back.” He shifted his attention from the sky to her. “That wasn’t possible.”

“Do you mind?”

“What I do for Nikodemus is important. There are fewer free kin these days. Fewer of us, period. After centuries of predation by the magekind, particularly after the wars before and after the Dark Ages, we’re rarer than we once were. Our own fault, in part. There were long years when our kind did not live well with humans. We are still hunted down and enslaved. More often now we’re murdered. As Bejar was murdered.”

She frowned.

“We are not, as the magekind are discovering, an infinite resource.” He waited a beat. “They say their goal is the protection of humans. But they are often, some of them, many of them, hard pressed to decide between slaves and the extension of their lives.”

“They’re corrupted.” She stared at her feet. “That’s why Infante wants to breed more of you.”

“Yes.”

“That’s just so. . .medieval.”

“From what I hear, they have issues with offspring born into that kind of captivity. The conditions tend to be brutal, but they’ve found the survival rate is better when the mother has some magic. If your friend was the original target, it’s probably because she has ability. I don’t know why Bejar took you instead.” Even with the distance separating them, his adaptable vision meant he could read the lettering on her shirt. “Maybe he was running out of time.”

“Lucky me.”

“He may have done it because his instructions were careless enough that returning with you constituted compliance with his orders. Magehelds often look for ways to rebel. To comply with the letter but not the spirit of their orders.”

She looked away.

“Bejar did not have free will.”

“I get that.”

“It wasn’t personal. For him.”

She stared to her left, away from the shack, away from the house, which was hidden from view because of the curve in the driveway. She was not sharing her psychic status with him, but it didn’t take a genius to guess her mental state. He walked back to her, but though his instinct was to touch, he kept his distance.

“I’m sorry this happened to you.”

“I can’t go home if I’m pregnant.”

He waited her out.

“How can I tell anyone?” She looked at him, eyes wide. “How do I answer all the questions? My parents will be devastated. How can I pretend I want this?”

“Would your family really not understand an unintended pregnancy?”

She let her head fall back and stared at the sky. Dark enough now that there were stars. “I don’t know if I want them to understand.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

She straightened, still in control of herself. “I think I want an abortion.”

“Because of the magic involved, there are no guarantees. But it’s been done. Under certain circumstances. That would be your decision whether to try.”

“Would you? Know how?”

He nodded then remembered she might not be able to see him. “Yes.”

“This is…not a conversation I thought I’d ever have.”

“I imagine not.”

She stayed silent and so closed off he had no idea what she was thinking. If she were kin, normal kin, he would have taken her in his arms and let touch and the psychic connection he now took for granted soothe her.

She closed the distance between them and bent her head until it rested on his chest. He put an arm around her shoulder and after a moment, his other arm, too. She felt insubstantial in his arms. Fragile. He’d kept himself open to her and now she opened into his consciousness—a mass of conflicting emotions none of which were very happy ones. He held her close but he didn’t dare more.

“What am I going to do?” she whispered. “I have a life. Had one. I’m in school. How am I supposed to go to grad school—how can I even finish college if I have a baby by myself? I can’t. I can’t afford it.” Her voice broke. “I don’t see how I can do it alone.”

“We take care of our own.”

Her hands fisted. “I’m
not
one of you.”

“Even if that were true, and it’s not, your child would be.”

She tucked her arms against his chest and sank into him. Her fingers clutched his shirt.

“Whatever your decision, no matter what you decide is best for you, you would not be left to fend for yourself. Nikodemus would not allow that to happen. I would not allow that to happen.”

“I can’t tell anyone about demons and magic. They’ll want to commit me.” She lifted a hand and wiped at her cheek. “I don’t want this. Any of this. I want it to go away.”

He kissed the top of her bald head. Not even a hint of stubble, and it broke his heart, it truly did. “Whatever you need, you won’t be alone.”

She dug her fingers into his shirt, and he reacted to what she was—a human female—and to what Bejar had been. Out of decency, he closed that part of himself off. The last thing she needed was to think she was in danger all over again.

Every nerve in his body jangled, and at first he thought the cause was Addison and the way her magic flashed hot. A second later he realized that was wrong. She’d just reacted to the presence of a mage before he did.

11

H
arsh grabbed Addison’s elbow and sprinted toward the house. As they rounded the corner, a black Lexus SUV with tinted windows blasted down the driveway, accelerating as it went. He ran faster. If the mages inside the SUV didn’t give a shit about stealth, that meant there were already magehelds in place.

The SUV screeched to a halt, locked wheels sliding through the gravel. Inside the house, Kynan’s magic spun up at about the same time the perimeter wardings began to crack. He pulled up, making sure Addison stayed with him.

She sucked air, in no fit condition for any of this. “Jesus, what is that?”

“The proofing going off.” For now, whoever was in the SUV stayed there. Harsh calculated the chances of making it inside the house before the mages in the SUV ordered their enslaved demons to attack. Low to none.

“Why are they just sitting there?” So far she was steady enough, but he doubted that would last much longer.

“They sent their magehelds in first, that’s why. Things are about to get much, much more dangerous.”

“Shit.”

“How well can you see?”

“Not very.”

“I need you in control and open to Kynan and me.”

Eyes wide, she nodded. When he linked with her, she shuddered, and he reacted to the pull of all that disorganized magic. Even the part of him he kept blocked away; especially that part.

“If you lose it, I’ll have Kynan lock you down. I’ll do it myself, if it’s necessary, so best efforts.” He stared into her eyes. Violet flecks and swirls looped through her ice-blue irises. “I won’t do anything that isn’t necessary or a last resort. My word.”

“Okay.”

Kynan appeared on the roof of the house. Harsh opened to the warlord, and it was like jumping into the real world from thirty-thousand feet. With no parachute. One hell of rush. Addison was there, too. Bright. Hot. Immediate.

His skin rippled. Two goddamned warlords. He set a hand on Addison’s shoulder, a light touch, but it enhanced the psychic connection. She remained steady. Through Kynan, they got the location of the magehelds he could see from the roof. Harsh spotted two of them on his own. Addison’s magic fluctuated when she realized those magehelds meant an inevitable, imminent attack.

“Steady,” he said in a low voice.

“I’m trying.”

The driver’s-side door of the Lexus opened, and a man slid out. He headed toward them at a trot, not drawing any magic, but then he didn’t need to if he intended his magehelds to do the dirty work. Harsh stepped forward, getting a shoulder between him and Addison when he saw who it was. Vlasi Petrasov: asshole, braggart, and all-around scum. About a year ago, the mage had made Harsh’s time in the Ukraine exceedingly unpleasant.