Guardian (The Protectors Series) (26 page)

Drawing more life energy from the forest, he listened. His recharge was ramping up his power, but every moment they waited increased the risk of being caught.

Stefan nodded at Mel. “All clear.”

“I take point,” she whispered. “I’m armed.”

“No. I will.” He gave her a look that stopped her argument. “I’m armed, too, just not with a gun. And my weapons are better against this enemy.” He reveled in finally being honest with her. This might be their last time together. If they failed, he didn’t want to die with deception between them.

“Right.” Mel’s eyes sparkled. “I’ll cover your very fine rear.”

They eased through the door together. The compound lay quiet in the warm afternoon. Fueling his power as they ran for the nearest truck, Stefan drew in sunlight like a Hummer sucked gas.

The fifty or sixty yards they had to cross looked like miles, especially since he couldn’t yet translocate the two of them.

“Hey,” a male yelled. “Stop!”

Mel and Stefan ran on, but the lab director and two men rushed from the lab, angling to intercept. They’d reach the truck first.

“This way.” Tugging Mel left, Stefan put up as much of a shield as he could, despite the power drain.

The
brrrrr
of automatic weapons made her jump sideways toward him. The shield wouldn’t stop all the bullets, but the ghouls were shooting into the ground. Impacts kicked up dirt inches left of her feet, and his heart lurched with fear for her.

If only he could blast these bastards. Translocate. He drew more power from the sunlight and the forest, pulling it in much faster than was safe, his lips curving upward as it sizzled through his veins.

Mel’s face tightened in fury. She whirled to face the gunmen, flipped the switch on her weapon to full auto, and sprayed a short burst of fire. Ghouls dived for cover. Damn, he was in love with a hell of a woman.

Now shots came from beside the truck.

“Give it up,” the lab woman shouted. “You’re surrounded.”

Yes, indeed, they were. But he was recharged.

Despair darkened Mel’s eyes when she turned to him, but he smiled at her.

“Screw this.” He yanked her behind him and shielded, spinning silver magic around the two of them. Targeting the propane tank and the truck concealing the gunmen, Stefan blasted pure, fiery energy from his palms.

Behind him, Mel gasped.

All the way busted now.
But they were getting the fuck out of here.

Stefan’s blast punched into the propane tank, and the fire ignited it. A massive explosion thundered through the air and rocked the ground.

When he turned and locked his arms around her, the stunned, uncertain look on her face jabbed him in the heart. “Trust me, love,” he said, and translocated.

E
verything went dark, and bitter cold pressed the breath from Mel’s lungs.

She must’ve taken a bullet, head or heart, and now she was dying.

Suddenly, they were in a forest, pines and oaks and cedars. As her eyes focused, reality shifted again, to the cold and dark, then to more forests, then the chill of nothingness, and then back to a forest.

This time the forest didn’t vanish. Breathing hard, Stefan looked down at her. “Are you okay?”

Her brain needed a minute to click in, to realize he must’ve done this. Mel backed away from him.

“Mel? Love?”

“One minute,” she choked. She was freezing, colder than the air around them. She rubbed her arms briskly. Had to think, sort this out. They’d run into the yard, been seen, come under fire, and then…Stefan glowing, shooting silver fire out of his hands. Now they stood on a hillside overlooking a small valley, with mountains all around.

Mel gulped air. “So this is translocation?”

“Yes,” he said carefully. “Sweetheart, are you okay?”

Her nerves jangled. She could feel her sanity hanging by a cobweb. Was this what Mom had felt? Did Mel, too, have a sensitivity to magic?

Stefan stood near, one hand out but not touching her, and the fear in his face penetrated her shock. “I’m…okay,” she managed, and took his hand.

He drew her into his arms, sharing his warmth. Leaning against him, she gathered herself, trying to think. “Are we safe now?” That was the priority.

“For the moment. Unfortunately, I can’t translocate as far when I’m traveling with someone. A quarter mile in one flash would be lucky, and we jumped three times. We should be about a mile from the nest. I’ll need to recharge before I can do it again.”

He stepped into a patch of sunlight and turned his face up to it. “Sweet, they’re going to be after us. We should call for help, and fast.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Struggling to track this, to stay in focus, she popped the magazine from the Uzi again. One good burst of ammo left, maybe two if she used good trigger discipline. She flipped the switch back to semiauto. One round at a time would be the rule unless they needed covering fire. She slid the Uzi’s sling over her head to cradle the weapon in front of her.

“Can you poof us a cell phone now?”

A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I can’t make something out of nothing. We need to find a business, a house, and ask whoever’s there to make a call for us. I can screen us, make us look normal.”

Mel’s fingers dug into her arms. She was okay with his magic in general but not crazy about having it used on her. After a moment, she blew out a hard breath. “Okay. We find people and call the Bureau.”

“I’ll find a place and keep you safe until we can get help. Ghouls are weaker in daylight, but mages are stronger.”

Running a hand through her dirty hair, Mel struggled with her thoughts. He’d kept this world from her, from Dan Burton, who trusted him. Burton had needed his help. So had Cinda and the other victims. But Stefan had kept silent.

He was watching her, waiting for her reaction. Mel forced herself to meet his concerned gaze. “Just trying to process all of this.”

“Of course.” He drew his hand to her lips, and her heart turned over. Her fingers tightened on his.

Carefully, he said, “I understand how you feel. I know we need to talk, but we can’t stop moving. We have to put more distance between us and that nest.”

Mel nodded, and they set out through the woods. No wonder he’d wanted to ease her into his abilities gradually. What he could do was…astounding. It could be useful to law enforcement, too, and that was a sore spot. Maybe, if mages broke the news of their abilities to the public as carefully as he’d done for her, people would accept their powers for good, not bad.

She glanced at his tired profile. Before she said anything else, she had to figure out exactly how to express her concerns, but this time, she had to have the full truth.

They set out through the woods. Stefan opened his senses, reaching, but heard only birds and small animals. Traffic, a road, would be much better. He’d translocated westward, more or less at random. Might as well keep walking that way.

“What would you have done,” Mel asked, “if we’d popped into the middle of a crowded supermarket?”

“Ghouls prefer isolated locations for their nests, so that was unlikely. If it had happened, I would’ve used a glamour to make us appear to be wearing normal clothes and then borrowed a phone. Or jumped out again.” He glanced down at her. “So how are you doing with all this?”

“It’s a lot, but I’m getting there. It’s that or assume I’m hallucinating.” One corner of her mouth lifted in a wry smile. “I think I would hallucinate something better for myself than skin-mag couture.”

Stefan laughed. If she could joke, maybe she really was okay. “I might hallucinate you into something from Victoria’s Secret,” he suggested cautiously.

“If you do, dream us up a nice car, too, would you? One with heated seats.”

“It’s on the list.” Steeling himself, he asked, “Do you have other questions?”

“Only about a zillion.” She shook her head. “What you did was amazing. You got us out of there. I’m grateful. The translocation thing is going to take a little more time getting used to, though.”

“I know. I wish I could’ve done this in one shift. It’s disorienting the first few times.” He paused, watching for her reaction. “I hate to say it, but if they come after us, we’ll have to translocate again.”

Mel’s nose wrinkled, but she shrugged. “We do what we have to.”

His heart warmed at the words. Maybe she would remember she’d said that when they got around to his not having told her the whole truth sooner.

Shit
. But he couldn’t think of any other approach he might’ve taken.

She gave him a considering look. “Now that I know what you can do…hiding what you were from me must’ve been miserable for you.”

Stefan shrugged. “I didn’t plan to hide forever.” In a dry voice, he added, “I was trying to figure out how to tell you, especially after everything with your mom, but I couldn’t find the words.”

Mel sighed. “I love you, Stefan, but we shoved a lot of issues to the side back there, not least the fact that you kept quiet when you knew what was attacking people in Wayfarer.”

“I didn’t—”

“After that encounter at Boone’s, you had a good guess, so why didn’t you say something?”

“It’s complicated, and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you everything then, but you can ask me anything now, sweetheart. Anything.” After what they’d been through, there was no way to keep the full truth from her. She’d figure it out on her own and probably even realize the place he worked was a cover for the mage community. She’d already guessed about his friends. More important to him, though, was that she accepted what he could do. She wasn’t backing away.

And he was done lying to her, no matter what the Council might say.

She cocked her head and gave him a considering frown. “The way you say that, as though something dictates…” She pursed her lips, studying him, but he wouldn’t press her. At last, she said, “What happened to the bodies in the swamp? There were five dead in that clearing, yet only the ones resembling our perps mysteriously disappeared.”

“I hid one of them,” he admitted. “I don’t know exactly what happened to the others.”

Mel nodded slowly, her brows knitting. “Did you have anything to do with the corpse at the hospital vanishing?”

“I set it up.”

Her frown deepened. “Why hide the bodies?”

“Because knowing about ghouls opens the door to knowing about mages, and we can’t let that happen.”

“
We
being mages.”

Her flat tone ramped up his uneasiness, but surely she would understand when she knew everything. “Mel, what I’ve told you is secret. We’ve guarded and protected the non-mage population from predators like ghouls for thousands of years. These are the deepest secrets of my kind. We can’t afford to have them exposed.”

She stopped and turned to him. The hurt in her eyes jabbed his heart. “So that’s why you told me a little at a time? Why you kept saying we had to take it slowly. Did you have to get some kind of permission to be honest with me?”

“Not exactly. I had to notify our governing council that I was involved with you and wanted to be open with you.” When she flinched, he hastily said, “It’s for your protection, too, love.”

“Oh, really?” She arched a brow. Her face was cool, but the hurt in her eyes wrenched his heart.

“What I didn’t tell you, what I was working up to telling you, is that my friend who died, Krista, told the bass player in our band what she and I really were. He flipped on her, tried to blackmail our families. He would not stop talking, even when Krista denied what she’d told him, even when a couple of mages disguised as teenagers accosted him in an alley and called him crazy, trying to scare him. He told the tabloids. It was a huge mess, with reporters spying on us, following our parents, staking out the mages’ gathering place.”

“You should know I would never do that.”

“Of course I do, but the Council can’t assume that. The thing is, Mel, I tried this with you years ago, and you didn’t take it well. I had to go easy because I didn’t want to lose you again. And if you hadn’t handled this, if you’d talked to other people…”
God, she’s going to hate this. I hope she won’t hate me.
“The council would’ve had no choice but to do what they did then. They went into Mack’s mind magically and deleted his memories.”

Her eyes widened in shock, then in horror.

Doggedly, he continued, “It’s a last resort, taken only when the Council believes the entire mage community is at risk and there’s no other way. And we had to move, change our names. Everybody was mad at Krista. She couldn’t handle the guilt over the way the memory wipe changed Mack, so she killed herself.”

Mel’s face hardened. “They had no right to invade his mind like that.”

“I’ve spent years researching other ways to handle these situations, but the brain is a delicate thing.” Desperate, he took her arm. “Love, I couldn’t let that happen to you. I wouldn’t, so we had to go slow. I had to be sure.”

Shaking her head, she blinked back tears.

If only she would look at him. “Mel, I love you. You love me. Don’t shut me out.”

She pressed her lips together and took an audible breath. Quietly, she said, “You asked me to trust you, so I didn’t press. But you didn’t trust me because I’m not like you.”

“That’s not it at all.”

“Yes,” she said, “it is.” Again, she shook her head. “I know why you didn’t confide in me nine years ago, but I thought things had changed. I can’t help feeling that every time I think I know you, know what’s going on, there’s something else you’re hiding from me. Even after everything we’ve been through…it hurts, Stefan. I don’t want to talk about it anymore right now.”

If they didn’t, her misgivings might harden, but pushing her had never been a wise tactic. Stefan held his peace.

Trudging uphill, then picking their way down, they headed west.

The superghouls could translocate. Would any come after them? Were there any to send?

Thanks to the sunshine coming through the trees and the abundant vegetation around them, he’d regained enough power to screen himself and Mel. He would have to drop that screen from time to time, though. Mages could scry, and would, seeking him, just as the FBI would be on the lookout for her.

He didn’t know whether superghouls could scry, but if traitor mages were helping the ghouls, they could.
Shit
. “Mel, I hate to say it, but we need to get farther from that nest.”

“Crap.” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Okay.”

“Hold on to me. Focus on me, and you won’t be so disoriented.”

He wrapped his arms around her, gathering his power. She came into his arms willingly, and that was some comfort to his aching heart. With the gun down at her side, Mel slid her free arm around his neck. Even standing this close, body to body, with awareness of her humming through him, there was a wall of reserve between them.

Stefan tucked her head under his chin. “Ready?”

“Go.”

He jumped out of reality, into the space between life and death, to reemerge halfway up the hillside to the west. They started walking again. Mel still looked unhappy, and the furrow between her brows was a bad sign. Once they were safe, when they could sit down and really hash things out, he would assure her that things were different this time, that he would never let her go.

Half an hour later, he caught the sound of passing cars. “I can hear traffic over there to the right of us.” He steered her toward it.

A dozen more steps, and he got a peek at the road. A few more, and he could see the side of what appeared to be a convenience store with gas pumps outside.

“I can change our appearance so we look normal,” he said. “We can go in and ask them to make a call for us, say we had car trouble.”

Mel nodded. “You go. I’ll wait here.” When he frowned, she shook her head. “It’s not that I don’t believe you can do it, Stefan.” She gave an uneasy smile. “I don’t think I can walk out there, wearing this, and trust that other people can’t see my butt hanging out of this scrap of nothing. ”

He could understand that, but… “I don’t want to leave you here alone. They could still be following.”

“I’ve got two bursts of ammo if I’m careful,” she said. “You’ll hear it and come running.”

Stefan ran a hand over her hair and let his fingers linger on her cheek. “I’m proud of you, sweet.” Her eyes softened, but the misgivings and the hurt lurking in their depths meant a tough conversation still lay ahead.

“Just ask them to call 911,” she said. “That’s easier than making up some story. The sheriff or whoever will call the Bureau, verify my identity, and we’ll assemble a strike force to take that place out.”

Rather than argue with her, he gave her a nod. “Stay out of sight.” No point telling her he was erecting a magical screen around her while he was gone.

Stefan glamoured himself into khakis, a blue polo shirt, and flip-flops. The simple action brought unexpected pleasure. Magic flowing smoothly in his veins after days of being cut off from it felt damn good.