My Darkest Passion (12 page)

The Russian mage’s eyes were too bright, a sign that he’d dosed himself with copa. For the demonkind, copa acted primarily as a relaxant. The effect on the magekind was significantly different. Copa increased a mage’s magical abilities, but for them, the drug was also addicting. Eventually, a mage either died from an overdose or he burned out his magic.

“You’re a long way from home, Petrasov.” The man had tortured a mageheld to death to make a point to Harsh about how Petrasov and his faction of Ukranian mages felt about the demonkind. He made sure that information got pushed to Kynan and Addison.

“Such a beautiful country, America.” He lifted a hand and drew on his magic in order to cast a yellowish light overhead. Harsh was tempted to snuff it out.

“You don’t want to start something here. Leave now and we’ll call it a misunderstanding.” Through his link with Kynan, he knew more magehelds had worked their way around from the barn behind the house. One of them was doing a piss-poor job of hiding. In true mageheld fashion, that one was obeying the letter of his orders while doing his best to disobey.

The mage’s attention turned to Addison and the intensity with which he studied her made it obvious his being here was no coincidence, just like it wouldn’t be a coincidence if the mage still in the SUV turned out to be Infante. His wry thoughts transferred to Addison, and he braced himself for a reaction. To his relief, her anxiety stayed within acceptable limits.

“You have thirty seconds to get in your car and leave.”

Kynan let them know one of the magehelds was working on a way through the proofing and into the house—an endeavor surely ordered by one of the mages and not likely to end well for the demon so tasked. According to Kynan, the other magehelds were now spread around the house.

“Time’s up, Petra—”

The mageheld working at the external proofing didn’t manage to avoid disaster. The energy from the ward going off blew the encroaching mageheld backward twenty feet and into full view of the three of them. On the roof, Kynan was poised to jump.

Petrasov whirled and jabbed a finger at the mageheld who’d been injured by the ward. The mageheld convulsed. “Get up. Up!”

He was still shouting when the SUV’s passenger door opened and Giuseppe Infante stepped into the weakening light hovering over Petrasov.

Addison went blank to him, shutting him out of their link so hard it hurt. In the next second, she went hot with magic, and that invited disaster for them all. He bent to her and practically snarled because there wasn’t time for gentler methods. “Maintain, Addison.”

She did. Under different circumstances he would have admired the effort he knew that took. Instead, he was just relieved to have her rejoin his link with Kynan.

Magically speaking, Infante no longer resonated as he had at the compound, and Harsh didn’t think he was mistaken that the mage was unsteady. Paisley had done her usual thorough work. Every shred of power he’d gained from his string of ritual murders had been stripped from him. No wonder he was reeling still.

Harsh set his legs shoulder-width apart and drew as much magic as he could safely handle. Maybe a little more. Petrasov came to attention. So did Infante.

“Hotblood bastard.” Infante’s eyes gave away his chemically-enhanced condition. Like Petrosov, he was hyped up on copa.

“I didn’t expect to see you so soon.” He’d had long practice at keeping up the appearance of calm around unfriendly mages, and he called on every atom in his body to keep the mages from guessing he expected this to go quickly south.

Infante gave Harsh a malevolent smile, and then he turned that same smile on Addison. “We’re here for all the monsters.”

Petrasov moved his fingers in the air, drawing more power as he did; enough to make the hair on Harsh’s arms stand up. Judging from the increase in tension from Addison, she was having much the same response. “You do not have the right to keep a human with you.”

At his side, Addison ran a hand over her shorn head. That brilliant
fuck you
didn’t need a word in support. Kynan fed off Harsh’s amused admiration and echoed back approval.

“She will come with us.” The Russian lifted a long-fingered hand and drew magic through him, smooth. Controlled. As good as Infante had been. The chill down Harsh’s back turned to ice. The overhead light brightened but he wasn’t fooled. No one needed that much magic for something as basic as light. And he sure as hell didn’t need a goddamned floodlight out here.

“I’m afraid not.” Harsh drew enough power through him that the part of him he kept locked away stirred to life. Meanwhile, Kynan disappeared from the roof. From long experience, Harsh knew that meant nothing good for the magehelds.

A sneer curled Petrasov’s lips. “In my country, we do not permit your kind to form connections with humans. Those who do, we kill. No questions. No excuses. No chances.”

Harsh maintained an easy grin even though Addison’s psychic state was unraveling. He touched his fingers to the small of her back. “She stays.”

“We cannot allow that.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“This isn’t the Ukraine,” Harsh said. “Your rules are not in play. Ours are. Ask Infante if you don’t believe we are capable of enforcing them.”

Infante put a hand to the center of his chest, undoubtedly a signal. Two magehelds sprinted from around the corner of the house. Another came at them from the southeast. Two more launched themselves into the air as winged beasts.

Still out of Harsh’s sight, Kynan brought down both the magehelds who’d stayed on the ground. The two overhead swooped down, and Harsh struck as hard as he knew how, hard enough for the burn to hurt. One of the magehelds fell from the air and crashed onto the roof of the shack. The other one landed five feet from them. It contorted its body in order to reach for Addison.

Harsh would have killed it, but before he could, heat surged from her, searing the air around them and partially extinguishing Petrasov’s light. Harsh barely had time to react before that energy focused and hit the writhing mageheld hard enough make it lose physical cohesion.

More magehelds emerged from the surrounding fields. Now, even Kynan had his hands full. Fighting magehelds was always a dicey business because the kin could not feel an enslaved demon. That bleak core in Addison grew and her power whirled around them, not focused enough now. Sparks rained down, biting gnats of fire. The mageheld she’d hit regained its physical form and charged at her. The next thing he knew, all that unfocused magic flexed, and the mageheld was dead.

Kynan came around the house at full speed. More magehelds died, but more came in from the surrounding fields. More than Infante could possibly have had under his control, and more than Petrasov should have been able to command, too. The Russian just wasn’t that strong.

While Harsh’s concentration was split between Kynan, Addison, and the mages, Petrosov took a lacquered box from his pocket. Up to now, both mages had been insignificant, really. All talk and not much action. They always were when there were enslaved demons to do the dirty work. Harsh whirled and took down a mageheld with a blow to the head that he juiced with power. He heard bone crack.

The next time he saw the mages, they were kneeling beside one of the magehelds Kynan had incapacitated. Infante held a stone knife in both hands, arms raised high. Both men muttered words that made Harsh’s skin crawl and turned the air thick.

“No,” Addison said, sharp and clear. “No.”

Harsh’s own heart nearly flew out of his chest and he yanked Addison back as the malign ritual magic redoubled. He’d caught her injured arm; the stitches were rough underneath his fingers. Being this close to killing magic was flat-out dangerous for all of them. Kynan roared, and then time and sound stopped. The ground around the warlord exploded and every mageheld in visual went down. He didn’t doubt for a second that the rest were down, too.

No longer in human form, Kynan raced toward the mages. The light Petrasov had been maintaining shifted from yellow to purplish-gray. Harsh went cold inside, arctic, when Kynan drew on his power, too, borrowing from him and Addison. Too late. The killing ritual had progressed to the point where not even Kynan could get past the barrier that kept the mageheld’s power trapped.

Infante plunged the knife into the mageheld’s chest and sliced down. The smell of blood sent Harsh’s stomach into revolt. Seconds later, the mage thrust his hands into the demon’s chest and yanked hard. He shouted once, a sound of triumph, and then he did something Harsh had never seen another mage do. He bit down on the mageheld’s heart as if he had fangs instead of blunt human teeth. Seconds later, the mageheld’s psychic energy was his.

Kynan, still un-human, roared, possibly straight into Harsh’s head, “Get her in the house.”

He yanked on Addison’s hand and gave her no choice but to run with him. She was holding herself together, but, whether from the lingering effect of the ritual or her reaching the limit of her unstable control, Addison’s magic folded in on itself and then exploded out, unfocused, without direction, scary as hell and, unfortunately, ineffective. Until the moment Petrasov got caught in the edge of the vortex. The mage fell, screaming, to the ground.

Infante remained on his feet, one blood-soaked hand reaching toward Addison, blood running down the sides of his mouth. He clenched the murdered demon’s heart in his other hand. He screamed something that accompanied a flare of magic he probably intended to ignite the air. It didn’t work because Kynan grabbed Infante by the back of the neck. The magehelds who’d been far enough away to survive Kynan’s earlier kill radius converged to protect the two mages.

Strengthened by the killings and the copa, Infante gestured and one of the magehelds split off from the remaining ones and charged Addison. Harsh banged the front door open. Her free arm shot out and jammed against the door frame. He whirled on her. “What the hell are you doing?”

She twisted her torso and looked behind her to where Kynan was alone with the mages. “Help him.”

But, Jesus, she was already reacting. Tiny flames licked around the SUV, and they weren’t from anything Kynan was doing. Flames coalesced from a spontaneous combustion of the very ground itself, moving toward the mages as if each tendril of fire had a purpose. She created the growing conflagration from the heat of her magic, and it heated her skin, scorching his fingers where they touched her. It scared the hell out of him that she could manifest enough power to do something like that.

The mageheld racing after them leapt the twenty feet to the porch and would have crashed into them except Harsh put his full weight forward and drove his hand between the creature’s eyes. He shoved his magic along that trajectory and sent it deep into the mageheld’s brain. The mageheld dropped with an ugly thud. Harsh swept down and brought the demon’s magic to safety.

The fire around the SUV vanished, not coincidental to Addison losing focus. In that space of time, Kynan had taken out three more magehelds and, to be honest, it looked like he was playing with the ones who were left.

Infante finally realized the numbers no longer favored him; he’d lost Petrasov, only now rolling to his feet. Most of their magehelds were dead or incapacitated, and Kynan Aijan wasn’t done killing. He blurred as he reached for one of the last magehelds. When his hand came back, he was holding the other demon’s heart.

“You don’t get this one, Infante.” There was a whump that shook a startled cry from Addison, and the remaining magehelds collapsed. Kynan’s voice carried in night air. “Fucking mages. You know what’s good for you, you’ll get the hell out of here before I forget I can’t kill you two pitiful fucks without a sanction.”

“Fucking cowards,” Kynan yelled over the roar of the SUV’s engine.

12

M
ost of the time Addison didn’t know whether it was morning or afternoon, let alone the date. Heck, she barely noticed whether it was night or day. She started out sleeping for hours—days for all she knew. Now she could hardly sleep at all. According to Harsh, the primary cause of this disruption in her sleep cycles was an aftereffect of being a human who’d survived what they called assimilation. As Kynan so bluntly put it, what was left of Bejar after his body died was now part of her. Permanently.

Her body had healed during those early days. Most of her bruises were gone, the cuts faded. The gash on her forearm had faded to a pinkish scar. She had a lot of nightmares. Inevitable when she managed to sleep, but now that she seemed to have a case of permanent insomnia, her nightmares about Infante sometimes started up when she least expected it. A noise or a smell or even just because, and she was back in those dark, dark days.

Today, whatever day that was, she sat outside on the bottom step of the back porch, watching a line of quail dash from the barn to the oak tree to her left. Harsh lounged beside her, his legs outstretched, weight on his forearms resting on the top of the porch. He tipped his face toward the sun, and his dark hair fell away from his face. Too perfect to believe.

She made eye contact with Kynan, and they both got all uptight again. That problem wasn’t getting any better either. Still in a constant state of one-upmanship, despite what she’d seen him do the night Infante and that other mage attacked.

What she’d seen during the attack was burned into her brain along with the unpleasant fact that she couldn’t forget the way she’d felt when she’d tried to use the kind of power Kynan and Harsh took for granted. The feeling was more intense than drugs, and she didn’t like it. At all. Even though she wanted that rush again.

She knew she could do what Kynan had done. And when Harsh had killed that mageheld right in front of her, she’d seen what and how he did, and now that knowledge was a part of her.

Just as horrific as all the other memories she wished she didn’t have. She now knew it was possible to send a targeted pulse straight into a demon’s physical brain and kill it. Game over. There wasn’t any coming back from that if you weren’t a demon. And if you were, then you’d better hope there was another demon there to keep you from getting eaten up by someone like Infante.