But magic is a skill learned,
Quinn said,
and like any skill, it can be lost.
Like the priests of Aedh are lost?
I grabbed the water bottle and pushed upright. Pain slithered up my leg, but otherwise it was fine. There was no more bleeding, at least, though I had no doubt the already pretty bruising would get worse.
The priests are not lost. They are destroyed.
That one in the alley didn’t look very destroyed to me.
You did not see him. You only heard him.
True.
I considered the circle for a moment, then tossed some water toward it. The stones didn’t react, allowing the water to arc right through the middle of them. The stream hit one edge of the pentagram, where it began to sizzle and steam.
The holy water passed through the warding stones.
Ah. Good. That means she’s set the wards to react to flesh and blood, not inanimate objects.
Then why did it react to the demon? They aren’t real and living in the human sense of the word.
They are when they’re in flesh form. Sprinkle the salt liberally across the pentagram, then use the water to form two circles around the warding stones. Make sure there’s about five feet between each one.
Why?
I began to spread the salt around, making sure my hand didn’t actually go anywhere near the flickers of red lightning.
Because evil might be able to step over one circle, but it can’t step over two.
I couldn’t see why not, but then, I didn’t know a whole lot about magic, holy water, and demons. Nor did I really
want
to learn anything more.
I finished spreading the salt, covering as much of the pentagram’s surface as I could, then did the two circles. The water sizzled like acid as it hit the floor, burning a light trench in the wood and filling the room with whitish steam.
With that done, I got the hell out of there. Quinn pulled off his sweater and offered it to me as I closed the front door.
I looked at the sweater, then at him. “You don’t like me half naked?”
“I love you naked, but you can’t drive home like that because the cops will pull you over.”
He shoved the sweater my way again. I crossed my arms and pointedly ignored the offer. I had clothes in my car if I wanted them. I didn’t need his, no matter how deliciously warm they might smell. “Why would I be driving home?”
“Because you need to shower and rest.”
“And what will you be doing while I’m showering and resting?” I knew
exactly
what he’d be doing. I just wanted to know if he’d actually admit it. Admit that he was mollycoddling me yet again. I mean, hell, yeah, I was bloody and sore and in desperate need of a bath, but it wasn’t the first time and it probably wouldn’t be the last. And it certainly didn’t stop me from doing my job.
It was scary to think I now actually considered being a guardian my proper job. Lord, how things had changed.
“I’m going to be taking care of our magician.” He placed the sweater on my shoulder.
I shifted my shoulder and let it slip to the ground. “Not alone, you won’t be.”
His obsidian gaze seemed to be growing darker, deeper, until it felt like I was falling into a tunnel—a tunnel I could so easily, so willingly, get lost in. This vampire might not be my soul mate, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something good between us. Something special.
An alarm went off somewhere in the back of my thoughts. I blinked, but the sensation of being caught by the darkness of his eyes didn’t go away.
“You will go home, Riley,” he said softly, “and you will rest.”
The tunnel seemed to be getting deeper and deeper, until it was all around me, swamping me, overrunning my will and my mind. All I could see was the coal-dark depths of his eyes and all I could hear were his words. The compulsion to obey them swam through me, beating at my skin, my nerves, my brain. So much so that I actually took a step back before I realized it. It took a whole lot of determination to stop a second step and remain still.
I knew then what he was doing.
Anger hit, fast and furious, momentarily weakening the force of his command. I slammed down my shields and severed the mental connection between us, but it was too late, far too late. The compulsion had already been embedded into my consciousness, a desire that beat at my senses with every rapid heartbeat.
I clenched my fists and resisted the urge to scream and rant and rave at him. It took every ounce of control I had to simply say instead, “Don’t do this.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t do what?”
My hands were clenched so hard my fingernails were beginning to dig into my palms. The pain helped keep my anger in check, and the compulsion momentarily at bay.
“Don’t play me for a fool, Quinn. I warned you once what would happen if you ever tried to use your vampire wiles on me, and I meant every word.”
He looked away for a second, studying the street behind me, his expression calm, giving little away. If anything, that very lack of expression only increased the fury rising inside me. I
hated
the fact I could never read him as well as he could read me.
Hated the fact he was forcing me to a decision I never wanted to make. And an action I never wanted to take.
He looked back and said, “I’d rather have you angry and alive, than dead.” His fingers touched my cheek, his skin so warm against mine. “Be sensible. Go home and be safe.”
I resisted the urge to press into his caress and jerked my face away instead. “No. And all you’re doing is proving you still don’t trust me.”
“I trust you. I just don’t believe you or the Directorate can handle these people.”
“You can’t go after these people alone.”
“I destroyed them once. I can do it again.”
“Quinn—”
“No,” he interrupted tersely, “I have lost too many people I care about in the past to evil such as this. I will
not
lose you as well.”
His command still beat inside my brain, growing in intensity, until every muscle trembled with the need to obey. I wouldn’t be able to resist it for much longer, and we both knew it. “Even at the cost of never seeing me again?”
He smiled. “You’re a werewolf. You can no more deny great sex than you can the moon change.”
I stared at him for several seconds, shocked that he could even
think
that. And at that moment, I not only hated what he was doing, but I hated
him
.
It wouldn’t last long—couldn’t last long, because it was really only anger, not hate itself. But the words hurt, regardless. Did he really think so little of my integrity that he thought a good fuck could cure me of all concerns? Did he really think I
wouldn’t
go through with my threat? “You have a whole lot to learn about werewolves, matey. Or at least
this
one.”
“Go
home,
Riley. Rest and recover from your wounds. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“No, you won’t fucking see me in the morning. Or any other morning.”
“Riley—”
“Fuck off.”
With little other recourse left, I spun and walked away. His gaze just about burned a hole in my back, but I didn’t look around. I strode up the street, around the corner, and across the road. I didn’t see the car, only heard the screech of tires as the driver swung to avoid me. A beer-fueled male hung out the passenger window and made several crude comments.
I swore at him too, then shifted to my wolf shape. I wasn’t in the mood for male attention of
any
kind right now—which just went to show the depths of my fury. The moon was riding high and the fever
should
have had some influence over my reaction to the comments and the man.
I walked on, wishing I’d parked closer. My nails clicked on the concrete, a soft tattoo that echoed in time with the anger beating through my veins. Which is probably why it took me several more minutes to realize the compulsion to go home was nowhere near as strong as it had been.
I stopped.
Go home, go home, go home.
The words were still a mantra in my brain, looping round and round. And yet, like the moon hunger, it was a compulsion that I suddenly seemed able to push into the background and ignore. Why?
I shifted back to human shape. The force of the compulsion jumped back into focus, as strong and as sharp as the moon fever spinning through my veins. My feet moved forward without any real command on my part, padding along the pavement at a decent clip. Shifting back into wolf form seemed to once again ease both compulsions.
Well, well, well.
No one had ever told me that being in wolf shape would ease the fever, but in some ways, it made sense. Werewolves
didn’t
make love while holding wolf form—at the very least, it was considered disrespectful, often an act of degradation, and, at the very worst, an act of rape. If you respected your partner, you just
didn’t
mate in animal form. It was one of those unwritten rules every wolf, young or old, knew.
Besides, what sane werewolf really wanted to ease the moon fever in any other way besides the time-honored, human-style method of mating?
But how many people knew the force of a vampire’s compulsion could actually be muted by changing body form? Quinn’s order to go home had been embedded deep into my human brain, but wearing my wolf skin seemed to somehow transmute that order into something that could be, if not totally squashed, then at least ignored.
Which was a very handy thing to know—not that it would matter anymore when it came to Quinn. He was out of my life, whether he believed it yet or not.
The thought made me swear internally. At him, at my job, at fate in general. Dammit, why couldn’t anything go smoothly?
There were a lot of things I could put up with in a relationship—hell, I’d proven that by putting up with an arrogant, self-centered asshole like Talon for so long. Quinn could be that, and a whole lot more at times, but he could also be an amazingly caring and gentle man, and so totally fun to be with. We were good together, at least when he wasn’t being an ass.
But the one thing I’ve
never
liked is partners who tried to use force to make me do what
they
wanted. It was simply unacceptable.
And that’s the line Quinn had crossed tonight, even if he’d used psychic strength rather than physical strength.
It’s not as if he didn’t know how I felt. I’d warned him more than once. Now I had to back those words up with action.
Had
to. If I didn’t, he’d just ride roughshod over my entire life. Give a vamp an inch, and he’d sure as hell try to take a mile, and Quinn had proven that adage true time and again.
God, why did he have to force the issue? Why couldn’t he have just let me do my job, whether or not it was safe? Life itself was unsafe—death could hit anytime, anyplace. Wrapping me in cotton wool was never going to work, no matter what he thought. I wasn’t the type of girl who enjoyed being pampered and fussed over twenty-four hours a day. I could
never
be that type of girl, even if I
wasn’t
now a guardian. And if that’s what he wanted in a relationship, then he was chasing the wrong bit of tail.
And speaking of chasing,
this
bit of tail had a job to do.
Ignoring the pang of sadness, and the deeper, darker ache that seemed centered somewhere close to my heart, I turned around and loped back toward Jin’s house.
Quinn had moved from Jin’s doorway and taken up residence in the shadows of a garden several houses down. I padded along on the opposite side of the street, keeping close to the cars parked along the curb, using the metal and the shadows to help hide my form. Not that I really thought he’d see me—he was watching for evil, not for a wolf. Besides, I very much doubted the possibility that I could shake his compulsion would even cross his mind.
When I was close to Jin’s house, I positioned myself between two cars, keeping low and deep in the shadows, and waited. There wasn’t much traffic at this hour, but the night was far from quiet. People moved in the house behind me, flushing toilets and turning lights on and off. Laughter drifted on the night air, and somewhere in the distance music heavy in bass played, making me want to tap my paws.
Quinn didn’t move. Neither did I.
Time ticked by. The moon reached its zenith and began to wane. I crossed my front legs and shifted my rear ones, trying to find a comfortable position. The cold, hard pavement wasn’t helping the aches any.
It had to be nearing three when a car finally pulled to a stop in front of Jin’s house. It wasn’t Jin—the legs that appeared underneath the car door as it opened were decidedly feminine, as was the flowery scent that spun through the air.
The car door slammed shut, revealing a short blonde wearing four-inch heels, rolled-up jeans, and a purple crop top. She was a little on the overweight side, but absolutely stunning to look at. Her keys jangled loudly and silver flashed, drawing my gaze. Two letters hung from the ring—MF. Short for Maisie Foster? If it was, she wasn’t the least what I expected a mage to look like.