Powerful Moves [L.U.S.T.] (Siren Publishing Classic) (2 page)

Lerak raised his hand, first and pinkie finger extended, and pumped the air once before he turned again and disappeared inside the tavern.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!” Tavius caught himself short of slamming his balled fist into the stone wall in front of him. How did the bastard known he was there? More, how long had the elf known?

Obviously, from the moment we exited the ZWRD facility.
Tavius didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to think it, but he knew. He’d been had hours ago. That feeling of being led on a wild-goose chase all night had been right on the money. Lerak had known he was there. The elf played him and led him around like a dog on a leash.

Question is why
?

Tavius raked a hand though his hair and started walking toward the tavern. He had followed the dark elf since sundown. No way would he stop now. Let him catch the son of a bitch again. He just might realm jump the fucker after all. He knew of a fantastic deserted spot on the other side of Terra where the sun shone brightly and the heat index scorched the charts. It would be the perfect place to teach a dark elf who preferred the balmy, gloomy nights that Tavius Zolan was not a man he wanted to fuck with.

And why was Lerak fucking with him so hard tonight? Why not simply go invisible like he did every other time Tavius attempted to follow him?

“Because he wanted you to follow him tonight, you dope.” Tavius stopped short at the realization. Oh yeah, he’d been had, all right. He could think of only one reason Lerak would’ve wanted to be followed. So he could keep tabs on Tavius. So he could prevent Tavius from stumbling upon…what? Or was the question “where?”

Tavius hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his leather pants, his mind reeling. He pulled up a map of the township and outlying area in his memory bank and started to connect the dots. He thought about each place he had pursued Lerak tonight, from the ZWRD facility to the bazaar. He considered each store the dark elf had visited, each person he had spoke to. Then, he thought about the route the dark elf took around the west side of Atnalta to the Atamia Mountain.

Strange that Lerak went that way when the most travelled route to the entrance of the dark elf’s underground city was through the township and due east before heading north. Tavius hadn’t considered that before now.

The dark elf hadn’t gone east when he left the Elvin city either. He had gone south. He had wound his way back to the town center, stopping at a home here or an establishment there until he made it to the main drag. Always moving, never staying in one place long, never moving east until the moment he disappeared into the tavern.

He had looked east, Tavius remembered and spun on his heel so quickly he nearly elbowed a passerby.

“Hey, watch it!”

“Sorry,” Tavius muttered, not sparing the guy a glance. His attention focused on the sky. East. The very same spot Lerak looked just before he turned and gave Tavius that mocking grin followed by a salute. The very same spot where a flicker of gold light remained against the pitch black sky. “Shit. Shit. Triple shit!”

Tavius teleported.

He landed on his feet—he didn’t always when he travelled on barely a thought—in the middle of the Pagan temple grounds. Statues and urns created rows of marble and stone. An upright triquetra glimmered at the end of one. The portal to another realm sparkled gold, symbolizing Earth.

“Looks like you get to take this one from here, boss.” Brink Valen stepped around one of the tallest statues in the row and into Tavius’s path.

“What are you doing here?” He’d considered paring with Brink to catch Lerak. The other security agent was the best tracker on Terra, with the abilities to sense the various species in the realm. Too bad for him and Tavius the guy didn’t possess a single shield to protect himself from the powers those species wielded against him.

Brink shrugged broad shoulders clad in a drape of thick animal fur. “Following a hunch. I got a tip just after you left ZWRD. Something about a large amount of stolen quaxuam.”

Tavius glanced at the triquetra.

“Exactly what I figured,” Brink said. The man was a year younger and a fraction smaller than Tavius, with a head full of curly blond hair and a perfect dimple in his right cheek that made the women in Atnalta swoon. That dimple showed now, though his cobalt eyes revealed nothing of his thoughts. “That much quaxuam could only mean one thing. Someone needed it to build a gate. Your old man told me to check it out.”

“And you ended up here.” Combine the natural powers of the Pagan grounds with the tools to build a gate between realms and the perfect spot for contrived teleportation was created.

“Not right away, but yeah. I got this burning, you know, the whole sense-the-undead-soul burning I get from vampires. So I started following him. Two and two led me here, to this, just as the
F
-er passed through. I would’ve followed but, you know.” Brink shrugged again.

Yeah. Tavius knew. Realm travel didn’t happen without express permission by the regime. Even by those who possessed the natural power of other-realm jumping. Brink did not. Tavius, however, did.

“Who did you follow here?”

“Regulus Le Mort.”

Tavius swore. “The bloodsucker?” Vampires counted for a sizeable population on Terra, but most fed from sex. Regulus Le Mort wasn’t among the most.

“I don’t think he’s planning to come back, boss.”

“He’ll be back.” The loss of a bloodsucking vampire wouldn’t hurt Tavius’s feelings one iota. Unfortunately, he couldn’t allow the plans Le Mort managed to vamoose with him go so easily. “I’ll make sure of it. I’m taking my own way. Close this gate and let the regime know I’ve followed the vampire to Earth.”

“You aren’t going to apply for permission first?” Brink’s eyes twinkled with humor and a spark of admiration.

“No time. You take care of Lerak. The bastard’s likely to be congratulating himself on a job well done in the tavern in town center. Enlist the help of whoever you need at ZWRD. Find out what he got in return for his service to Le Mort. My mission is to find out who Lerak’s working for and bring him in. I just found out who, and to bring Le Mort in, I’ve got to go after him. That’s permission enough for me.”

The last thing Tavius heard before he realm jumped to Earth was Brink’s deep chuckle and the man’s heartfelt declaration. “That’s one crazy mother
F-
er.”

Yeah, he was.

Tavius grinned and, with full-frontal body force, smacked into a tree in the Earth realm.

* * * *

Elena Cabot’s running shoes crunched over fallen limbs and leaves left from the previous autumn. It was a divine sound, a welcome reprieve from the horns and ruckus of the city. She loved Atlanta, all the lights, the action, the excitement. But she would gladly trade it any time for the quiet, soothing sounds of nature.

A sliver of moonlight and a scatter of stars guided her along her favorite mountain trail. She ducked her head to avoid a low-hanging tree branch even as she admired the hanging moss clinging to its bark. The isolated darkness offered a companionable silence just the way she liked it. The only sounds were that of the nature around her and her own level breathing.

A bead of sweat trickled down her temple. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and slowed her pace. Working up a sweat was a good thing, but reaching the end of the trail before she was ready would defeat her purpose of tonight’s hike.

She wasn’t supposed to be out here after dark. There were signs posted outside the park entrance that told her as much. She ignored those signs in favor of a much-needed one-on-one with nature.

She understood the reasons for the after-dark rule. There wasn’t a park ranger on duty. It was the dead of night in the middle of the great big wood. Anything could happen. She knew of a few times in the past when anything
had
happened. One disobedient hiker went missing on this trail several years ago. Another had been found mutilated some eighteen months later. A bear had been the official blame for that one, though Elena knew that was a crock. She had been one of the agents to track down the out-of-control were-bear responsible.

It didn’t bother her knowing people met their end here and that others went missing without a trace. If she let little things like mysterious disappearances or rogue were-bears frighten her, she was in the wrong business.

A faint crack echoed through the silence. Elena stopped and tuned her night vision until she saw as clearly as if the sun were shining. Less than a heartbeat later, she dimmed her vision once more, keeping the power on-line only strong enough to easily see through the dark, to see the raccoon that had made the sound.

Elena smiled, taking soft steps toward the raccoon, wanting to enjoy the moment without disturbing the serenity. This was why she came here tonight. She needed this time alone with only true nature around her. She needed to feed her abilities with the super-charged powers of the elements offered here. She needed the time to think, to consider, and to figure out her next move.

Cedric Steele needed help. Exactly what kind or how much remained to be determined. She only knew her coworker and closest friend was behaving strangely, and it worried her. She tried to get to the bottom of it. She started with the obvious approach, inquiring with the polite and clichéd “Is something up, Cedric?” To which he replied, “Nothing out of the ordinarily.”

That was bullshit, and she wasn’t buying it. When the something didn’t seem to get any better, she went for the balls out, “What’s going on with you, Cedric?” That time she got a simple one-word response. Nothing.

So something morphed to nothing, and nothing eased her mind about the something. If it had been anyone else she likely would’ve let it ride. But Cedric wasn’t anyone else. He was her best bud, her partner, her…

Another crack followed by a slightly louder rustle stole the rest of the thought. Another raccoon? She started to turn when she caught the flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, felt the harder breeze on her cheek. No. Not a raccoon. Not an animal, at least not of the small fury variety. She barely had the chance to think “vampire” before she heard a loud thud followed by a male grunt.

Elena whirled, her hand reflexively going for her Glock even as her night vision amped to maximum power. What she saw would’ve made her laugh if her heart hadn’t been lodged securely in her throat. Not ten feet off the trail, a man hugged an enormous oak tree as if he had smashed right into it.

A very well-built, very delicious-looking man, she noted. Arousal stirred in her center even as she steadied her gun on his broad bicep.

“Hold it, buster.”

“I’m already holding it, muirnin, and my name isn’t Buster.”

Muirnin?
Forget the way the FM-radio DJ voice flowed over her like silky melodic notes. What kind of endearment was “muirnin”?

“It’s Tavius.” The well-built bod peeled himself off the tree and stepped back. He turned to face her and, oh man,
GQ
’s best had nothing on this guy. One thin, dark brow arched over one expressive electric-blue eye as his gaze landed on the barrel of her Glock. “You can shoot at me if you want, but I promise you’ll miss.”

“Don’t be so sure. I’m a sniper, a sharpshooter.” And she’d been trained by the best. A mentor who was former Army Ranger turned FBI turned agency. Thanks to the strict instruction he gave her and the brutal practice he put her through, she had gained sheer confidence to go right along with her skill. “I don’t miss.”

Tavius grinned, a slow tilt of his lips that put her in mind of handcuffs, whipped cream, and black leather.

Elena barely suppressed a moan as whips of heat slashed at her pussy.

“Unless that gun fires spectralites, you’ll miss no matter how good you are, muirnin.”

“Stop calling me that,” Elena snapped.

He radiated sex appeal. So much so that it seemed to crackle like power in the air between them. It made it difficult for her to think beyond hot, sweaty bodies and tangled sheets. She shook off the image and shifted her focus.

“And what are spectralites?” Why did she get the sudden impression she was being ignored?

Probably because I am
.

Damn it, here she stood less than ten feet from this man, holding a gun on him now aimed directly at his chest. His very impressive, broad, rippling, enticing chest that was so not what she should be focusing on now, and he was looking everywhere but at her! Ugh, men could be so infuriating.

“No time to explain.” He spared her a glance through those truly remarkable electric-blue eyes. They were eyes that would send bolts of erotic ecstasy through her center as he gazed down at her, his cock hard and positioned to plunge in her tight, sopping channel.

Elena’s grip on her Glock tightened as the muscles in her pussy did the same. Unfazed by the conglomeration of hormones going on inside her, he returned his attention to scanning the woods around them. Not that she could expect him to know the randy effects merely looking at him had on her. It wasn’t like she started to glow a bright do-me red when she got hot enough to fuck.

The power hovering around them seemed to thicken, making it harder to breathe. He appeared unfazed by that, too. Couldn’t he feel it prickling along his skin?