My Darkest Passion (3 page)

“I—” Her mouth worked. A choked sound bubbled out of her, and she doubled over. Blood trickled from her mouth and her legs crumpled. Despite Harsh’s grip on her arm she landed on her knees, her free hand slamming onto the ground. She dry heaved, and then spit out a mouthful of blood. His coat was askew and exposing more of her than any woman would want to show two men she didn’t know.

Kynan bent down and touched her shoulder, and the storm of magically induced pain leaking from her eased at about the same time Giuseppe Infante arrived with his magehelds.

3

O
nce again Harsh crouched beside Addison O’Henry whose friends called her Awesome. At least now he only smelled stale sweat. Her stomach heaved again, and she spit up more blood. He got an echo of psychic pain from her that reeked of that peculiar and unpleasant marker of what happened when a demon was attempting to do serious harm to a human via an indwell; possession was another word for that. He shot a look at Infante. “Tell your mageheld to stop whatever he’s doing to her. Now.”

Infante moved close, crowding in with his magehelds in a pathetic play at intimidation. Asshole. “If you won’t take care of the bitch, I will. She’s dangerous.”

“That was not a request.” Harsh had a good guess about which one of the magehelds had been ordered to attempt the indwell. In fact, he wondered if Infante hadn’t planned this all along. After three days in that shed, she’d deteriorated to the point were it wouldn’t take nearly as much to kill her. He rose from his crouch. “If you do not order your mageheld to stop, I will lay him out so hard you’ll feel the rebound in your ass.”

Infante pointed at a mageheld who wasn’t doing anything but standing there waiting for the mage to make a mistake. That was a downside to enslaving a demon instead of killing it outright. There were stories, apocryphal he was quite sure, about magehelds who found a way to kill the mage who held them enslaved. If Kynan Aijan couldn’t find a way to make that happen during the years he’d been mageheld, then Harsh doubted anyone else had managed it. God knows he never had.

The woman convulsed, but she was fighting, and that was either a miracle or a mistake, considering how close she was to a fatal cardiovascular event.

He shot a glance at Infante. “Now.”

The mage snapped his fingers at the mageheld who wasn’t doing a damn thing. “No more. But keep an eye on her. She goes after anyone, you can fucking take her head off for all I care.”

Infante’s attempt to convince him he’d done as asked was absurd. Ludicrous, actually. Her convulsion ended, but her breathing turned choppy and shallow. Harsh kept a hand on her, pushing enough magic into her to force her heart rate down to something less than three hundred beats per minute. His efforts had little to no effect.

“Did you hear what he said?” Kynan took a step toward the mage. His eyes were flecked with gold. If Kynan lost control, they were going to be in a world of trouble. Harsh wasn’t so sure he wanted to stop him, if he did.

“Infante.” Harsh knew he’d spoken too sharply. Anger begat anger, and that was not what they needed here. He dug deep for calm. “We seem to have had a miscommunication.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” The mage raised his hands in an
I’m innocent
manner. “I’m not doing anything.”

Then again, sometimes soft words just didn’t work, and you had to bring out the big stick. “Kynan, take them down. All of them.”

One of the magehelds let out a grunt and hit the ground hard. The warlord did like the more violent punishments. Kynan’s hand shot out and another one went down. Infante turned red, but he made a sharp gesture in the direction of another mageheld.

The woman gasped once and went still. Her pulse dropped into the realm of normal.

Kynan’s hand remained around the third mageheld’s throat. “She all right?”

He smoothed a hand across her forehead. Not a wrinkle or line in sight. “I don’t know.”

“Well, find out, would you? I need to know if I get to kill this piece of shit.”

He frowned, immersed in following his train of thought about how a human woman ended up like this when she had none of the magical ability that would make her one of the magekind.

“Harsh? Is she okay or do I need to drop this one, too?”

He waited for her pulse to regulate, then slipped a hand under her upper arm and tugged gently. “Let him go.”

Kynan shoved the mageheld back. “Too bad.”

Harsh gestured at Kynan. “Get her under control again.”

Addison’s eyes flew open, and she lunged upward, her free arm flailing. A scream tore from her throat, rough, desperate and incoherent. The sound sliced through him, and with it came the kind panic that overwhelmed. If he’d not had a firm grip on her, she might have escaped. She wouldn’t have gotten far, naturally. He held her until her initial response bottomed out. Not so incoherent, now, but not in control of herself, either.

Her mind was wide open to him, and he fell into the psychic connection, drowned in it. Images leapt from her to him; unwanted, unwelcome, and so vivid he could practically touch each and every one of those recollections. They came colored with disbelief. Denial. Horror. She hooked into him without focus, without any intent to do harm or to seek solace, for that matter.

The private wards he had in place thinned dangerously. “Warlord!”

“Got her,” Kynan said.

The connection between them shut down.

“Ms. O’Henry.” His sharp tone penetrated because at last she turned her head to look at him. Her too-big eyes were a stark and icy blue. With full respect for her abilities, whatever the source, he touched her forehead and pulled her back to the present. She slapped away his hand, but he let that pass. For now. When he was certain she was back, he said, “You will be not harmed. My word on it.”

She used him for leverage to steady herself. At the last minute he remembered to get out of the way enough for her to keep his suit jacket closed around her. He’d fastened just one of the buttons, not that it made much difference, seeing as two of her could have fit in it.

Infante crowded in again, but Kynan blocked him by being a hell of a lot bigger. Simple, but effective. The mage pushed him. Kynan didn’t budge, and Infante reacted with predictable fury. He had plenty of vitriol to go around, the mage did. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, you fucking bastard hotblood?”

Harsh summoned his blandest expression. Without much success, it seemed, since the mage stopped in his tracks. Then again, maybe it was Kynan’s glower that made Infante back down. The magekind were a trying lot of assholes. He wanted to take the woman’s side just because Infante was so annoying.

“I’m damned lucky she didn’t cut me open the way she did my mageheld.” Infante appeared to believe he deserved Harsh’s sympathy. Poor mage, losing a slave who would not have died if he’d been free. “Well?” Infante said.

“Well, what?” Harsh was delighted to pretend he was baffled.

“Take care of her.” Infante and his magehelds moved closer again.

Kynan stepped in front of Addison. His focus locked on Infante, not the magehelds, because the power to command those magehelds came from the mage. No one knew that better than Kynan Aijan.

Head cocked to one side, eyebrows arched, Infante made a rude gesture. “Are you two out of your minds? For fuck’s sake, she’s dangerous, or didn’t I make that clear?” Harsh felt the pull of Kynan’s magic, and so did everyone else. The mage’s flush deepened. “Are you threatening me? You.” He gestured to the mageheld who’d been trying the indwell. “Get her back in that shed. All of you. Double the warding this time.”

That brought another warning growl from Kynan. “Your guy comes one step closer, he’s dead.”

The mage grinned in a way that showed his teeth. His gaze flicked to Harsh. “I should have known you fucking demons can’t be trusted.”

Kynan leaned forward. “I don’t give a shit what you think.”

“Tell your magehelds to step back,” Harsh said. “All of them.”

“Tell that monster to back off.” He stabbed a finger in Kynan’s direction.

He made sure he kept a straight face. “Kynan. You’re frightening the mage.”

“So?”

“So frighten him a little less, please.” Harsh didn’t relax when Kynan complied. He didn’t relax when Infante’s magehelds mirrored the retreat, either. No one, in his opinion, had backed off enough.

“You want to prove you’re serious about this deal with Nikodemus,” Infante said, “you deal with her now. She’s a killer. A cold-blooded murderer. Or does Nikodemus not mean what he says about protecting my kind from your kind when they attack?”

Harsh sent a meaningful glance at Addison, who even now was barely conscious. “Yes, a grave and immediate threat.”

“She killed five of my magehelds. Unprovoked.” Infante drew on his magic, and Harsh decided if the mage used any of it, he was a dead man.

At Harsh’s side, Addison lifted her head. He tightened his grip on her upper arm. “It is a shame you find yourself with five fewer slaves. But you’ve only yourself to blame for that.”

“Take care of her the way you promised or there’s no goddamned deal.”

The woman stared at Infante with an intensity that sent a chill down Harsh’s spine, and that made him wonder, again, if Infante didn’t have a point. “Fuck you,” she croaked. “Fuck you to hell—”

Infante backhanded her. Her head snapped back. Harsh caught the mage’s wrist in one hand to keep him from hitting her again. “That’s enough.”

At the same time, Kynan growled, and his hand snapped out. He struck the nearest mageheld in the center of its forehead. The demon’s head jerked back, and then it collapsed. “You touch her one more time, and I’ll fuck up the rest of them, too.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Awesome. Did you try to kill this asshole mage?”

“Yes.”

“Did someone order you to kill him?”

“No.”

“Did you kill his magehelds?” Harsh asked.

“I don’t know.”

Kynan laughed, but it wasn’t a joyous sound. “You don’t know if you cut out some poor fuck’s heart?” That had to be conjecture on Kynan’s part, but whenever there were mages and knives, some demon died horribly. A ritual murder, even one gone wrong, would explain how a human ended up feeling like kin. “I think that’s something you’d remember.”

“I didn’t do that.”

There was something ugly in the way Infante stared at the woman, but the mage kept his distance this time. “You heard her. She admits she attacked me. What more do you need?”

“Ms. O’Henry, please do not move.” Harsh reached into his coat pocket, an awkward motion, since she was wearing it, and fished out his fob. He pressed it without taking his attention off the woman, Infante, or his magehelds. The Mercedes beeped. “I realize that we do not yet have a formal agreement, but I assure you Nikodemus takes an attack on any mage in his territory quite seriously.”

“Terminate her now. So I know Nikodemus means what he says.” Infante was practically spitting, and Harsh was losing patience. At the moment, she was no threat to anyone. She was still cut off her from her magic, as well as physically injured and at the edge of collapse.

“And I have told you that we will deal with this very serious matter.”

“Buncha fucking liars, all of you hotbloods.”

“If she needs to be terminated, that will be done.”

“I want her dead now.”

Addison’s mental status sharpened. “What you did to me—”

The leading edge of Infante’s magic glanced through Harsh on its way to Addison, and it hurt. It fucking hurt. Locked down as she was and physically weakened, she was defenseless. She rocked back on her heels and let out a soft grunt before she went limp. If Kynan hadn’t moved quickly, she would have crashed to the ground.

Harsh took two steps forward and closed the fingers of one hand around the mage’s throat. Infante’s eyes bugged out. “I’m going to enjoy watching you die.”

“Whoa. Hey.” With his free hand, Kynan grabbed Harsh’s wrist and yanked. A gurgling sound came from the mage’s open mouth.

The magic Harsh kept warded off battered his defenses against it, roaring to be let free to deal with this asshole Giuseppe Infante. No competition. Ever. Harsh’s stomach turned at the thought that he might lose control of those wards even as his fingers tightened on Infante.

Kynan put a hand on Harsh’s shoulder, and if he understood how close Harsh was to losing his internal struggle, he didn’t let on. “Hey. My friend. Mages need to breathe.”

He pushed all that sick and sickening magic away. Locked it away tighter yet. He loosened his fingers, but didn’t remove them because he didn’t trust the mage. Not for a second.

Infante sucked in a breath and stared into Harsh’s eyes. “Get your filthy hands off me.”

“No.”

He shook his head several times. “Maybe you’re the one needs to die.”

Harsh didn’t answer.

“Does Nikodemus know about you?”

“He does.”

Infante drew on his magic again, and Harsh was right back at the edge of losing it. Kynan’s fingers tightened on his shoulder. “You’re an abomination,” the mage said. He took a step back, out of Harsh’s grip. “You and her and every goddamned monster like you.” He flicked his fingers underneath his chin. “You ought to be dead or under control, every one of you. Starting with that bitch who tried to murder me.”

With the sizzle of that other magic still filling him, and without looking away from the mage, he said, “Is she all right, Kynan?”

“Still breathing.”

He glanced to his left. Kynan had the woman tight against his side, but she was out cold. Decision made. “She’s coming with us. If you do anything to prevent that, I will tell Kynan Aijan to level every single building on this property.”

“How about we save time and I do that now?” Kynan said.

Harsh glared at the mage. “Understood?”

Infante made a show of straightening his coat. “Your promises are bullshit.”

“Get her in the car, Kynan.”

The warlord swung her into his arms and headed for the Mercedes. Harsh kept his arms free, and his spine went cold when the mage slowly smiled.