Authors: Christine Warren
“I thought you said you didn’t do much magic?”
“I don’t. I just let the magic that’s already here read mine.” Ignoring any further comments, as well as the huge knot in her stomach, Tess closed the door again behind them. By physically pushing it shut. “This way.”
She felt a sense of urgency she couldn’t define. Something told her she needed to hurry, but she’d glanced at her watch just a moment ago, and she knew she wasn’t late. So what was going on?
Taking the lead once more, she hurried along the dingy corridor with its cement block walls until she came to a choice of passages. Straight ahead, she knew, lay an old wine cellar that now served as a storage room. The left passage led to a maze of corridors that never seemed to end, even if Tess knew it was an illusion meant to confuse anyone who happened to get past the door and wander down here uninvited. The council chamber was just a few dozen feet down the right-hand path. So why didn’t Tess want to take it?
Rafe noticed her hesitation and frowned. “Is everything okay?”
Tess nodded her head. “Fine. I was just thinking for a second.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You can’t remember which way to go?”
“No, I remember. I’m just remembering something else, too.”
“Like what?”
“Like,
duck!
”
Faster than she would have thought possible, Tess moved, throwing herself against Rafe so suddenly that she actually managed to knock him off balance. And that was good, because if he’d been on balance, there would have been a great big smoking hole right where his head had been. Tess knew that for a fact, because she could see it in the cement wall just beyond where his head and been.
“What the hell!”
That was just what Tess wanted to know, too, but at the moment she was too busy tugging Rafe down the center passage to bother asking. “Would you come on?” she hissed. “Something really weird is happening here.”
Rafe growled and pushed her in front of him as they raced down the hall. “I figured that out when someone shot at us. That was someone shooting at us, was it not?”
“Well, he didn’t have a gun, but otherwise, yeah, I’d say that was pretty accurate.”
“Who is ‘he,’ precisely?”
Tess shoved the door of the wine cellar open and darted inside, urging Rafe in after her. As soon as he made it in, she slammed the door shut and began backing away from it.
“Tess,” Rafe repeated impatiently. “Who is the ‘he’ who was shooting at us?”
She blinked. “My grandfather.”
Twenty-one
Rafe just stared. He could not have just heard what he’d thought he’d heard. “Did you just say your grandfather is trying to kill us?”
He watched her jerky nod. She’d gone ghostly pale, and he thought he could see her skin glistening. He knew he could smell her fear.
“Yeah. I mean, technically, with that blow he was just trying to kill you, but the me part of us was definitely next on his agenda. Providing I’m remembering what I’m remembering fairly accurately.”
“Do you usually? Remember accurately, I mean?”
“God, I hope not!”
“Why not?”
“Because I think I remember him killing me.”
Rafe swore and shook his head. He refused to even contemplate the idea of Tess dying. It was not going to happen. Not for another sixty or seventy years at least. “What are you talking about? What are you remembering, Tess?”
She shuddered. “I told you when I see things, it’s like seeing déjà vu a few seconds ahead of time. It’s not enough time to change anything, just to get really scared. And to warn you that he won’t hesitate. He won’t think twice, so you can’t count on him to.”
“Tess! What the hell does that—?”
He never got to finish his question.
The door slammed open as if it had been kicked, catching Tess in the hip and sending her sprawling right into the path of the bolt of sickly green energy that shot from her grandfather’s fingers in time to his half-chanted words. She took the blow directly to her chest, and Rafe saw the singe marks on her clothes when she went down. She hit the floor like a crash test dummy, and he roared in denial.
“She’s not dead yet,” Lionel Menzies drawled as he stepped into the small room. He had the sour smell of the mentally unbalanced and the rich, earthy fragrance of someone who was very clever indeed. “I’ll get to that later, after I’ve dealt with matters between the two of us. Right now, you and I need to do a little negotiating.”
Rafe tried to step toward Tess’s limp form, but Lionel said a few words and suddenly there was a shimmering, malevolent green wall between Rafe and Tess.
“Ah, forbidden love,” Lionel said. “Isn’t it tragic? But I’ll warn you to stay away from her. I want to talk to you.”
Rafe froze and let his hands drop back to his sides. He assessed his options and found that most of them sucked. “Isn’t that why I’m here? To talk to the council?”
“The council be damned. You’re here to talk to
me.
”
And that was news. Rafe had, perhaps naively, believed that being invited—well, maybe
summoned
was a better word, now that he recalled the letter—to appear before the Witches’ Council meant appearing before the Witches’ Council. “All right. About what did you wish to speak?”
“Don’t play dumb, Mr. De Santos. It doesn’t suit you.” Lionel watched him with cold pale blue eyes that looked nothing like his granddaughter’s. “We’re here to talk about the Accord. It’s always been about the Accord.”
Rafe shifted, eyes watching Menzies warily. “Tess seemed to think that our opinions about the Accord aren’t that different. We both seek to preserve it until we can find the time that best suits revealing ourselves to the human world.”
Lionel laughed. “Don’t assume you know my goals, boy. I’ve been working to set my plans in motion for longer than you’ve been alive. I certainly don’t intend to let you derail them now.”
“Is this the part where you share your nefarious schemes, while the conveyor belt carries me closer to the spinning saw blades?” Rafe glanced behind Menzies to where Tess lay silently on the floor. God, she looked still. And pale. He bit back a curse.
“You watch too many movies, boy. I’m not planning to kill you. At least, I only plan to kill you as a last resort.”
“If you don’t plan to kill me, why did you nearly take off my head a few minutes ago?”
“Purely accidental, I assure you. I was aiming for my granddaughter. I’m afraid I allowed emotion to get the better of me again in the first instant after I saw her. I had loosed the energy before I remembered that she’s worth more to me alive. At least for the next few minutes.”
Again?
Rafe felt sickness and rage boil up in his stomach.
“You were behind that attack,” he said, staring at the insane old man before him. “You hired someone to try to kill your own grandchild. Why, if she’s worth so much to you?”
“Another momentary lapse,” Lionel dismissed. “I’m afraid that when I first learned the little fool had given herself to you, her lack of loyalty made me quite furious. I acted without thinking when I hired that thug. I thought better of it soon enough, but aborting those kinds of actions is just so difficult sometimes. Once I learned that she had survived, and I saw her influence on you firsthand, I knew she might prove useful to me until I had secured your cooperation. Even if the very sight of her makes me sick.”
In that moment, Rafe knew he would kill this man, if only because Tess didn’t deserve an unfeeling monster for a relative. She deserved better.
“Now,” Lionel continued, “ignore the girl for a moment. First, I’m going to tell you why you need to help me make sure the Accord fails here and now.”
“Fails?” Rafe jerked back, stunned. “But why would you want the Accord to fail? And why now? Another two or three years and such measures will become obsolete on their own. All you need to do is be patient.”
“I’ve been patient for forty years. I have no more time for patience!”
“Then what do you have time for?” He could feel his own impatience rising, impatience and rage: the frustration at being unable to get to Tess and the rage at the man who had hurt her. “Aside from attacking the people who trusted you.”
“They are expendable. And if my granddaughter had been half the witch I had hoped for, she never would have ended up this way. A real witch has the ability to protect herself.” He glanced down at her still form, lip curling in a sneer. “It makes me wonder if her mother was quite honest with my dear son, Geoffrey.”
Rafe ignored the insult to Tess and reconsidered his options. They all sucked. Until he could get to Tess to protect her, he didn’t feel comfortable ripping out Menzies’s throat. Not that the image didn’t beckon to him like a siren’s call, but he wouldn’t risk Tess’s safety. Not even for that. He couldn’t shift while Tess was vulnerable and unarmed and alone, and shifting was about the only thing he could do. A frontal assault would be a really dumb idea.
Of course, it might be his only idea …
“Don’t look so glum, De Santos.” That cold voice snapped Rafe back to attention and frustration. “I’m willing to refrain from injuring her, and you. You just need to agree to cooperate.”
“With what?”
“Pay attention,” Lionel snapped. “With dismantling the Accord. As I just said.”
“But you still haven’t said why.”
Lionel stepped forward, his tall frame casting a long, disfigured shadow as he passed under the single, bare lightbulb in the small cluttered storeroom. “Because now is the last chance I have. We’re nearing the end of our ability to remain concealed. You said it yourself. Soon, vermin like you and the damned werewolves will be able to walk among human society. And witches—the true heirs to the world—will be viewed as nothing more than another kind of freak. We’ll be lumped in with you degenerates. If we’re going to act to seize our power, the moment is now. If we strike now and reveal everything to the public immediately, I can control the situation. I can make sure the masses see the distinction between witch and Other. We will become their allies in the struggle against the rise of the unnatural creatures—”
“Holy shit,” Rafe breathed. “You are not just crazy, you are absolutely, certifiably insane.”
Cut off from his vitriolic rant, Lionel narrowed his eyes. “Insult me all you like. It does nothing to change my plans. I don’t require that you assist me willingly.”
The witch stood almost directly under the light now, and the angle cast his face with strange planes and angles. Rafe saw the contrast between dark and light and tensed. Lionel raised his arm, pointing his fingers at Rafe’s chest.
“I am one of the finest witches of my age. I can
make
you cooperate.”
Rafe paused, weighing the risk of one rash act.
“Do you think I’m hesitant to bespell you, De Santos?” Lionel’s voice became louder and more strident. “I am not, you know. I’ll do whatever I need to, no hesitation at all.”
Hesitation.
Rafe remembered Tess’s words and stopped hesitating. He leapt forward. Straight at the lightbulb above the old man’s head.
* * *
Tess woke to the sound of glass breaking and opened her eyes to see not much more than she could see with them closed. The room around her was pitch dark.
She started to sit up, hoping it would help her get her bearings, but ended up diving right back to the floor, rolling out of the way as two large forms collided in the spot where she had just been sitting. She heard a curse and the growling scream of a big cat and added a curse of her own. Just as soon as she got out of the way.
Stopping when she felt a stack of folding chairs at her back, Tess frantically tried to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Her grandfather would have made some comment about how if she were a better witch, she’d be able to cast a spell and get some light, but he was otherwise occupied.
Trying to keep a three-hundred-odd-pound jaguar from feasting on his intestines.
She could hear the sounds of the struggle, but it was quieter than she expected. This was the closest she’d ever gotten to an actual physical fight, and she’d always pictured them being louder, with lots of screaming and shouting and bellowing and the roar of the crowd. Instead, all she heard were grunts and harsh breathing and the sound of flesh and bone making impact. And since the crowd consisted of her, and the last thing she felt like doing was cheering, the scuff of bodies against the concrete floor provided the only accompaniment.
Her eyes followed the sounds and finally picked up a flicker of golden light in the blackness. Rafe’s eyes. They glowed with a predatory fury as he wrestled across the floor with her grandfather. Thankfully he was managing to keep Lionel’s arms occupied and too busy to cast, or things would have been even more difficult for him. As it was, fighting Lionel Menzies wasn’t like fighting an ordinary seventy-five-year-old man. Her grandfather had the strength of magic, and had probably cast some sort of protective spell on himself before coming after them. Tess would have. If she could have.
Damn it, but she felt useless. Here she was cowering up against a row of metal auditorium chairs while the man she’d fallen in love with—damn it again—tried to save their lives. Couldn’t she at least do something?
Damn it a third time, but why couldn’t she have been born with some real talent instead of this stupid, useless, no-good, insignificant, nuisance making—
She broke off and stepped to the side just seconds before her grandfather managed to pull away and stagger back against the spot where she’d just been standing. Operating on the strange autopilot of her mini talent, she grabbed a folding chair and lifted it over her head. She was waiting when her grandfather raised his hands and pointed toward Rafe’s glowing eyes.
He opened his mouth to sneer. “Now, De Santos,” Lionel shouted, “you’ll—”
The metal chair smacking down across the back of his head kept him from finishing his sentiment.
“Shut up, Granddad.”
It might have been a more dramatic moment if she hadn’t followed him to the floor.
Thankfully, she wasn’t out long. Probably only a couple of seconds. She came to, feeling the warm, rough scrape of a Feline tongue against her cheek.