Lions' Pride Read online

  Chapter Twelve

  Four AM and he still wasn’t home.

  Jude liked a good, long run. But four hours was getting ridiculous.

  No. Not ridiculous. Fucking terrifying. And it was the second time in two nights he’d vanished on her. If her husband was all right, she’d kill him.

  Their marriage had made them one life shared between two bodies, metaphysically speaking, and were he to die, she’d feel the death as if half her soul had been stripped away. He was still alive, she was sure—but it didn’t follow that he was all right.

  She stretched out her senses, trying to feel him. The wards contained her senses almost as much as they shut out intruders—it kept her heightened sixth and seventh senses from being overwhelmed by too much input—but she could push beyond their confines.

  A silver cord connected them, a silver cord braided of their shared lives, their vow to be together now and forever, this life and the next. She looked inward and examined it using her seventh sense.

  It felt funny—strong as ever, but kinked and tarnished.

  Shit, he was hurt.

  She sent her psychic senses in for a closer look. Tarnished, yes, but not badly. His physical injuries probably weren’t serious, but things were not right with her husband.

  There was something else peculiar about the cord: a strand of copper twisted awkwardly around it. A metaphysical bug?

  She poked around some more. Yes, there was something here, some alien doorway into her soul and, by extension, into Jude’s.

  Copper?

  She thought of Rafe’s copper skin.

  But duals weren’t gifted with magic. Even if, by some genetic anomaly, Rafe had magical talents, he was on Drozz, which should suppress anything of that nature.

  If a person on Drozz could do magic, though—either because it wasn’t quite suppressing a strong innate ability or because they had some damn Agency technomagical device that allowed them to get around the Drozz—it might look like this awkward, tangled mess.

  Agency whore, Jude had called him. Rafe had denied it, and she’d believed him.

  But she’d been wrong before in her life, and now her man was in trouble.

  Mentally, she grabbed the copper strand and gave it a good tug. It was woven in fast.

  Fine, then. Copper was a great conductor—even symbolic copper. Especially symbolic copper, if magic was what you were talking about conducting. Time to call in the geas.

  “Damn you, Rafe Benedict. If you’re responsible for what has happened to Jude, suffer. Bleed inside for what you’ve done to my husband, and do not sleep until you have made restitution. If you’re not, get your policeman ass over here and help me find him.”

  She sent a charge through the copper, a shock that would do Rafe no lasting damage—she had no proof of his guilt, just a strong suspicion—but would blast him with her intent, leave him wracked with guilt and driven to confess if he was responsible or drive him to help her if he wasn’t.

  Then she began the laborious process of tracing out the silver cable, trying to find her husband. Trying to find a clue.

  She couldn’t follow it out of the house. The wards locked her in, blocking her view. Had she reinforced them too much after Rafe’s seemingly accidental intrusion? Or was this some new attack?

  She cast her attention to the wards themselves, looking for anything that seemed odd.

  She missed it the first time around, but on the second pass she spotted an anomaly.

  It was tiny, nothing she would have ever noticed if she wasn’t seeking out wrongness. It looked almost like it belonged there, almost like it was her work. On the surface, it looked green and healthy even to her seventh sense.

  But when she magically probed it, it flared a sickly fuchsia—a color that didn’t exist in nature, even in tropical fish. A stab of pain speared her brain, fast but jarring, an ice-cream headache raised to the power of ten. Some signal flowed through that headache and out into the cosmos: the magical equivalent of a spy-cam, only better than a spy-cam, because it was sending information out, but also keeping information from her.

  She didn’t know how he did it, but Rafe must have planted it. Maybe his jiggering with their defenses had been what let him get sucked in the other night. It would explain why the wards thought he belonged there; he’d already tampered with them to admit him.

  “Agency whore!” He couldn’t hear her exclamation, but she’d make sure he felt it. She reached her power outward. “Suffer. And when you’re done suffering, repent and try to fix the wrongs you’ve done to Jude, to me, to others.”

  This time, the jolt she sent through the little spy-node wasn’t gentle. Rafe, or whoever he was working for, might end up in the emergency room with a blinding migraine, a racing heart and a curious compulsion to stop working for the Agency.

  Although frankly she didn’t have high hopes for that. Anyone who managed to screw so subtly with her wards probably had defenses strong enough to block her.

  Scarlet bubbled up around her, that angry power she couldn’t harness. If she could use it, she might be strong enough to break through. Strong enough to get answers. Strong enough to get justice. Or vengeance, if, Powers forbid, it was too late for justice.

  Desperate, she stretched, tapped the red, roiling force of her rage.

  Something reached for her, filled her with heat.

  For a few seconds, fire seemed ready to explode from her fingertips, flare into the offending magical trace and burn back to its source, searing him.

  Her hands caught fire.

  Flames seared her flesh, first blistering, then blackening. The air filled with the smell of charred meat. For a few seconds, she wondered that it didn’t hurt. Then her brain, numb with shock, caught up and the pain walloped her, not just in her burning hands, but all over. She couldn’t get the air to scream.

  For a second, all she could do was stare in horror.

  Breaking through her paralysis, she beat them against her thighs to crush out the flames. Still they burned. She thrust them under cold water, although it wasn’t easy trying to turn on a faucet with her hands on fire. Still they burned. Bones poked through the charcoal that used to be her hands.

  Think. Think.

  The fire had struck so shockingly fast she was locked in witch-sight, seeing magical energies more clearly than physical objects. It took all her will, but she forced herself to look with her physical sight only.

  Her hands were pink and whole, but even knowing they weren’t there in any ordinary sense, she felt the flames. It didn’t make the agony any less real.

  She swayed, willed herself not to faint. It might stop the magic if she did—or it might let it roar over her until she incinerated from inside.

  Think. Think. Ground out the power…

  She tried to shut down the angry magic. The surging power sucked her in, trapped her, wouldn’t let her shake free.

  The back door burst open as if it had been kicked.

  She wheeled around. If it was the Agency, she’d use this power somehow before it killed her.

  Rafe Benedict, Agency whore, loomed in the doorway.

  With failing strength, she tried to direct the flames. She could barely raise her hands. Shock. Definitely deep shock. Soon she’d pass out.

  If burning alive wasn’t bad enough, that would leave her at Rafe’s mercy. Must deal with him while she could.

  She staggered two steps before her knees buckled.

  Rafe was there before she could hit the floor, moving with a dual’s animal speed to catch her and ease her down. As he touched her, Elissa rallied one last time, tried to thrust the invisible fire into him.

  “Shit, that hurts!” He flinched, but kept cradling her. Then he seemed to see her face. “Elissa, are you okay?”

  “Jude…” She wanted to make it an accusation, but it came out more like a whimper.

  “It’ll be okay. Don’t worry. I’m here, and whatever’s going on, we’ll take care of it together.” He pulled h
er closer into a protective embrace.

  As they did, the burning stopped. Her hands still throbbed with heat, but not painfully. Strong energy gathered there, wanting to accomplish her bidding, and it had the force to destroy obstacles.

  She knew how to direct it now. Not at Rafe—he’d come to help her, so he was not her target—but at whatever or whoever had infiltrated their house. She didn’t even need to move her hands, just her mind. A stream of red righteous anger poured forth into that magical spy-cam.

  Something fizzled with a stink of burning circuits and sulfur, cinnabar and ice.

  The power released and grounded, and she collapsed against Rafe, sobbing in delayed panic, in fear for Jude, in sheer confusion.

  “How did you…Why did you…” She couldn’t get the question out through her tears, but he understood.

  “You called me,” he said simply. “You’d said I’d need to come back and you’d let me know when it was time. I woke up hearing you call me. You sounded frightened and angry—and like you needed my help. I came. You called and I came.”

  It had worked. He was innocent—or at least not involved in Jude’s disappearance—and he’d come in obedience to the geas she’d placed on him earlier and her summons tonight.

  Came pretty quickly, too. He was half-dressed, shirtless on this chilly night, as if he’d grabbed a pair of jeans off the floor and a jacket off a hook and bolted.

  She pressed against his bare chest, feeling the cat-warm heat of his skin against her cheek, hearing his heartbeat, wearing nothing more than one of Jude’s T-shirts thrown on over her nakedness.

  It shouldn’t matter.

  He was a beautiful man, sure. Under other circumstances she’d have enjoyed the view of his broad, bronze chest, smooth and hairless and sculpted, the lines of his thighs and ass in a pair of jeans that fit a lot more interestingly than his uniform pants the other night. She was in love, but that didn’t mean she was blind.

  But Jude was in trouble. Rafe was here to help, and he offered comfort she desperately needed. The warmth spreading through her body, filling her belly, weighting her pelvis with need…that was inappropriate. A physical reaction, unthinking and instinctive and made stronger by the danger she’d faced, that was all.

  She stiffened in his arms. He smelled of cedar and sage, with an elusive hint of the clean cat scent that made her want to nibble on Jude’s hair and ears. She wondered how Rafe would taste.

  She made herself pull away, but Rafe’s grip tightened.

  She set her mouth into a grim line, put her hands on his chest to push away, whether she wanted to or not.

  Froze.

  It felt like the first time she touched Jude—the heat, the erotic rush, the sixth and seventh senses screaming yes, yes, the drawing in of green and gold and red power from the place where her skin met his.

  Sheer want and magic, dancing together.

  It wasn’t right. It couldn’t be.

  Donovan teaching was clear: you might meet many sexy, attractive people in your life, and before you met your one true partner there was no reason not to have fun with them. But there was only one who was right for you, who would be your heart and your home, who would help your magic reach its fullest potential, and you’d know it by the dance of want and power when you touched each other.

  One person, not two.

  Yet she danced for Rafe as she had for Jude. And she hardly knew the man.

  “Do you feel that?” Rafe’s whisper was awestruck, almost frightened. “Where you’re touching me, I’m waking up. Like you’re siphoning off the Drozz and bringing me back to life. Something’s dancing inside me, Elissa, and you’re doing it.”

  Dancing? Without magic, he shouldn’t feel the dancing.

  “Impossible,” she said, although her palms were heated and tingling as though she was working magic on him. As though she was negating the drug.

  That was all she said, because he kissed her.

  Her mind screamed that this was the wrong man, that the right man was out there in danger and she was kissing someone else, someone she wasn’t even sure she could trust.

  Her body didn’t care.

  His lips caressed hers gently until her mouth opened against her conscious will. Then he groaned into her and pulled her closer and began to ravage her as if she were prey for his long-neglected cougarside.

  Her nipples sprang to sensitive, aching life, pressing against the fabric of Jude’s shirt. Her sex slicked. Her other senses picked up a nimbus of energy surrounding them, green and gold and red and bronze and green again, but a grayed, subdued green, sage and cedar and pine like Rafe’s smell. Her hips rolled, attempting to rub her sex against Rafe.

  The flames roared to life in her palms, but this time they didn’t burn her. They were waiting until she needed them, safe and contained.

  She wanted…needed…

  Chapter Thirteen

  She scrambled to her feet, crossing her arms in front of her defensively as if that would fool Rafe into not seeing her puffy nipples through the thin yellow fabric.

  Elissa couldn’t stop looking at him. Rafe was shirtless and gorgeous, his lips red and moist. And while her brain firmly said no, every cell of her body screamed to kiss him again and take things from there.

  “Jude’s out there, hurt. I think the Agency has him,” she said, forcing her voice to flatness. “We need to get him back.”

  “I think I felt that, but I was dreaming. I thought it was a nightmare.” He took a deep breath that seemed to center him, but his eyes were still wide and dark with desire. “Do you have wireless access?”

  She noticed for the first time the incongruous presence of a laptop case on the kitchen floor. Rafe had come over without a shirt, but with his laptop. “Powers, you’re a worse gaming junkie than Jude!” she joked, because joking balmed the pain. “Seriously, yes. Set up wherever you’re comfortable.”

  “This place clean? No way an Agent could see in?”

  “Not any more, I hope.” Briefly, she told him about the spy-cam.

  “You sure it’s gone? It sounded like you blasted it to kingdom come, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  She probed, then nodded. “It’s gone. But I still can’t trace Jude. I can feel he’s out there somewhere. The cord between us is intact. I just can’t see where it’s going.”

  A solemn nod. “If you were the Agency, wouldn’t you have everything warded to the nth degree? Mostly they fuck with duals these days, but any kind of suspicious Different activity is their department. That includes blood magic and other seriously nasty shit. You’d want super shields to seal it out—or in, if something went wrong.”

  “Got a better idea?”

  “Why do you think I asked about the computer? Their magical security is great. Non-magical…well, everyone has a weakness.” Within minutes, Rafe was set up at the kitchen table and logging in to what looked like a website for a dairy cooperative in Cortland County.

  “What the…”

  “You think you could just go to theagency.us.gov or something?” He smiled, a feral grin that looked like Jude’s when he was doing something to raise the middle finger at the normies.

  “I thought you didn’t work for the Agency.”

  “I don’t. But I’m pretty sure the chief of police does. When some random hacker put a key logger on the chief’s machine, Jeannie in IT did a little reverse engineering before she took it off. Then she let me know. Jeannie’s girlfriend’s a coyote—a real nice girl, but you know coyotes are always just staying on this side of trouble on a good day—and Jeannie figured it pays to know the enemy. So she and I have been keeping an eye on what the chief’s been up to.”

  “How did Jeannie know you were a dual? I don’t get the feeling you talk about it.”

  “She’s IT. No secret is safe from her.”

  While he talked, Rafe entered a series of passwords that increased in length and complexity. Finally the graphics on the screen spun, and when it resolved again
the site didn’t look anything like a dairy cooperative. “Of course,” he said, “it took a while because I had to get in through the work network, using a back door I made sure stayed open on my personal machine. Wouldn’t want them to trace it back to you.”

  She nodded, pretending she had some idea what he was talking about. She knew how to use the programs she needed for work, and how to do a basic Internet search, but these were deeper mysteries, as baffling to her as magic was to most humans.

  “Bingo!”

  She looked over to see Rafe’s expression change from elation to dismay. “No, not bingo. I’m in…but there’s nothing here to help us.” He moved over, let her see. “Look—it’s a log of operations in this area, like a police log, only weirder. There’s nothing about Jude on it, not even if you read between the lines.”

  She read the brief, enigmatic descriptions of arrests and had to agree. “But that’s good, right? That means whatever happened, the Agency doesn’t have him. Maybe he headed out into the country, shifted and lost track of time. He’s done that before, just not for so long. Or he fell or got bumped by a car when he was running.”

  Rafe shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe he hasn’t been booked yet. It takes a while to process paperwork, even for normal cops. I’m not sure the Agency has to do paperwork, except for their own convenience. Or maybe whatever’s going on is so secret they’re not even reporting it to themselves.”

  “But why? It’s just Jude. He’s an ordinary guy. Is this about him eating that damn dog?” The hot power built again, and she forced herself to let go of the anger. “You said you were going to gloss it over.”

  “I did. No reports filed, nothing. But who knows what the spy-cam might have seen.”

  A lot. An awful lot.

  “I thought it was you, at first,” she admitted. “Spying.”

  “It wasn’t. Couldn’t do magic to save my life, even without Drozz. Oh, shit.” He buried his face in his hands for a second, then looked up, his expression annoyed but determined.