Guardian (The Protectors Series) (33 page)

Stefan’s grim look said the subject wasn’t closed, but he set his beer down and slid off the stool. “At least the blood samples I took from her may help with the antivenom.”

“How’s that going?” A vaccine that could render mages immune to venom would undercut the ghouls’ numerical superiority. Maybe it would even cleanse Griff’s blood, however unlikely that was.

“I have a crude formula I’m not ready to test.” Probing Griff’s face, Stefan’s eyes narrowed. “Watch yourself with her. That pretty face hides a will as determined as yours.”

Griff shrugged.
Pretty
didn’t begin to describe her. Now that he’d met her again, seen her courage and jousted verbally with her,
intriguing
also felt like an understatement.

“Be careful going back,” he said. “As you leave, take that pot on the stove to the downstairs crew. Dumpster diving hasn’t paid off lately.”

“They could get an actual meal at the shelter in town.”

“They want to be independent, I guess. They won’t take much from me if they can avoid it.” The eighteen or so homeless people living on the ground floor had created a community of sorts. He had to give them credit for trying to help each other.

Looking resigned, Stefan hoisted the pot. Griff walked him to the door and locked it behind him. The protective ward sparkled faint green for a heartbeat as Griff sealed it again.

A whisper of power, the barest hint, brushed his mind, and he smiled. She was testing the wards, as they suspected. Subtly but methodically testing. Valeria Banning had intelligence, skill, and integrity along with a lot of raw power. Even wearing only bandages and his shirt, she remained coolly self-possessed.

As for what the shirt concealed…

No. Not going there, even though the memory heated his blood. He had more important goals, and they depended on his convincing her of the truth about the traitor in the Collegium.

If he couldn’t, his best hope of security lay in wiping his info from her memory, a risky process that could leave her worse than dead if his control slipped at all.

She didn’t deserve that, and doing it would go against everything he believed. But if he couldn’t stomach that, telling her the truth would put his life and the lives of his friends directly in the Collegium’s sights.

Only an idiot, or maybe a Pollyanna, would trust her safety to the word of someone who was very likely a murderer. Sitting behind the door with one hand on the wall, attuned to the ward, Val waited for his return. She could break the window, escape through it, but she hadn’t been able to sense the ground. She might be too far up to jump, and in her weakened state, unable to translocate, she couldn’t outrun pursuit.

So her best chance to escape, maybe even capture the man, lay in ambushing him. Even though she still needed a few days to reach full fighting power. Magical healing could only speed recovery by so much, but she couldn’t risk waiting.

The more she thought about him, the more she believed he was Griffin Dare, no matter what name he gave her. The smart play was to proceed on that assumption until she knew otherwise.

His evasion about why he kept her here could only mean he had a purpose she wouldn’t like. Besides, if he was Dare, she had a duty to bring him in for execution. Even though he’d been condemned in his absence, without a trial. That went against her grain, but so did letting a man who’d killed mages roam free.

At least she had surprise on her side. One failure was enough for this week.

A failure he’d saved her from.

Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t hurt him if she could avoid it.

Which was a crazy thought about a man holding her prisoner, a man already sentenced to death. Even if he had rescued her.

Dare had killed too many mages to deserve mercy, no matter what else he had or hadn’t done. Five had died at his hand, including the chief councilor, as he’d fled the Collegium, and he’d killed at least two more, maybe three, since.

She rolled her tight shoulders. As a cadet, she’d met him a couple of times, and he’d treated her, as he did all the cadets, with interest and tact, even when pointing out errors. She’d admired him, maybe even had a crush on him.

She hadn’t been the only one. With his clean-cut good looks, eyes the blue of a sunlit ocean, and tall, muscular body, he’d been a walking chick magnet. And the way he moved…Even then, his skill with a quarterstaff and his tactical abilities were legend.

Then they’d become notorious. Reviled.

Val shook her head. What a waste. But maybe this man wasn’t Dare. Maybe Griffin Dare was long dead, his shredded honor mere dust on a distant wind.

Yeah, and maybe she’d win the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

Once she had him secured, she could find his phone and call for backup.

A faint ripple in the warding warned of its creator approaching. She stood and hoisted the chair, grimacing at the pain in her injured arms and shoulders.

“You’ve been busy, if not smart,” he said through the door.

Did he know she was there, or was he guessing? Or scrying? The chair’s weight dragged at her sore arms.

“I know you’re standing by the door, beside the hinges.” Amusement warmed his voice. “Where I would.”

He was laughing at her? She would kill him.

“Holding that chair has to hurt your wounded arms.” He paused. “I can stand here until your strength fails. Or I walk in, you whack me, and I drop dinner to clock you with a knockout punch.”

He’d be the one knocked out.

He sighed. “I can outwait you, and I’m not blind or hurt. Give it up and eat.”

Her arms shook. The blasted chair felt as though it were made of granite. She couldn’t hold it much longer.

Now the crazy bastard was whistling! Furious, she smashed the chair against the door. It made a satisfying crash but no cracking sound, no hint of breaking.

She was weaker than she’d known.
Hell, blast, and damnation!
Her one chance, gone. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes, stinging like new venom, and she gasped.

“What’s wrong? Valeria, what is it?”

Stumbling away from the door, she choked on a sob. Hell with that. She would not let him hear her cry.

The salty liquid seared her injured eyes, and a whimper escaped. Her foot caught on the rug and she pitched forward. When her hands struck the braided fabric, it skidded. Val crashed onto her face.

Black agony rolled over her, obliterating the world. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.

Hands closed gently on her shoulders. Power rolled into her, dialing back the agony. Strengthening her.

“Breathe,” he urged, gently turning her onto her back. “C’mon, honey, breathe.” His arm slid under her legs, warm, bare skin to her bare skin, and he cradled her against his solid, cotton-covered chest.

“I’m not—your—honey,” she choked. Yet she couldn’t help turning toward him, resting against his strength, until the pain ebbed.

“Glad to see your grit survived the fall.” He rose, lifting her easily.

She clutched his shoulders for balance and caught scents of bay leaf and sweat. His shoulders felt wide and solid—reliable, she might’ve said if he were any other man.

“Let’s put you to bed. You’ve had enough exercise for one day. Then you can eat, and we’ll put fresh salve on your eyes.”

He wasn’t even angry. What kind of weird game was he playing, being so kind?

Worse, she felt safe in his arms, as though he were the kind of man Griffin Dare once had been, the man who’d led the mage squad who’d avenged her parents.

But that was dangerous thinking. She mustn’t let him confuse her. If he hadn’t kept her here, she wouldn’t have fallen in the first place.

If she felt safe with him, it was only because he’d rescued her, then taken care of her. Like patient-doctor dependence, a weird head game. Like Stockholm syndrome, captive attraction to captor. She had to shake it off.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I tripped.”
Duh.

He eased her onto the bed. “Before that. When you gasped and stumbled.”

“I had a flash of eye pain.” She wasn’t about to admit she’d teared up in frustration.

He drew his arms away, straightening. For an instant, she wanted them back.
Stupid, stupid.

He propped pillows behind her. When he drew the covers over her bare legs, the bay scent teased her nose again.

“This is your bed.” Val tensed. Sleeping in his bed felt far too intimate. Too trusting.

“It’s the only bed I’ve got. Sorry I didn’t have a chance to change the linens. They’ve had only a couple of nights’ use.” After a moment, he added, “I’m taking the couch. I told you, you’re safe here.”

Her heart beat faster with nerves, but she had to push him, had to know if he meant her harm. “Safe? Like a prisoner on death row?”

His frustration spiked in the magic between them, a punch that echoed in her own chest. It must be intense, or she wouldn’t have felt it with her power so low and no physical contact.

“More like a witness in a safe house,” he said.

“Then give me your hand so I can probe.”

“No. I carry secrets other than my own.” Before she could argue, he said, “Straighten out your legs. I have a bed tray to set over them.”

The aromas of baked chicken and warm bread made her mouth water. Her stomach growled, but she ignored it. Chicken. Meat.
A knife to cut it.
She could work wonders with a knife.

“Napkin and spoon on the left,” he said lightly. “You have chicken at nine o’clock, broccoli at noon, and a buttered roll at three. Lemonade at one o’clock beside the plate.”

“It smells good.” A little courtesy couldn’t hurt, so she added, “Thank you.” The way he’d described the food on her plate—that was a clue.

“I hope you like it. I cut everything up already, and I’m sorry, but you’ll have to make do with a spoon. I’m not giving anything sharp to someone who fights with a blade.”

Damn.
She groped for the spoon. Could she transmute it into a blade? Rubbing her finger along the spoon as she heard him walk away, she summoned power. A bit came. Not nearly enough for a transmutation.

She sipped lemonade, and the answer hit her, the reason his description of the food mattered. Carefully she set the glass down.

The sound of his footsteps approached. A thump, then a creak, as though he’d put the chair down and sat in it. “All right?”

“Fine.” Better to know what he intended than to let him toy with her any longer. “Your sister served me lemonade when I interviewed her, not long after I became reeve three years ago.”

For a beat, a telltale moment, he hesitated. “I don’t have a sister.” His voice sounded a hair too controlled.

“You described the food locations for me easily. As though you’d dealt with someone blind before, like Caroline Dare.”

“Just common sense.”

“Common sense says if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck…Few mages train with quarterstaves anymore, but you wield one as though you’d been born using it. You’ve expert knowledge of mage lore but don’t trust the Collegium. And you know how to describe a plate of food to a blind person. Those three factors add up to only one man.

“Cut the bullshit, Dare, and tell me what you want.”

Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia

Present Day

O
f all the helicopter pilots who could’ve flown this medevac run, why did Josh Campbell have to be the one who showed up? Edie Lang snatched a sidelong look at him. His tall, broad-shouldered form seemed to take up more than his share of the cockpit space. Or maybe her unwelcome awareness of him caused that crowded sensation.

His headset and tan ball cap hid most of his sun-kissed, light brown hair but emphasized his profile. Josh’s straight nose and strong chin might’ve graced a classical statue. Intently tracking the burning landscape, his eyes were green today, like his flight suit, but an intriguing mix of green and brown when he wore street clothes.

He still looked as sexy and, unfortunately, as aloof as he did three years ago, when they’d last worked together. They’d been part of a helicopter firefighting crew in Wyoming until she’d left.

Not that their history mattered now.

At least he would get her to the injured firefighter in one piece. Josh had his faults, but no one flew wildfire rescue better than he did. Although fire-generated air currents buffeted the chopper, his piloting skills, combined with a bit of magic, kept it steady above the flaming, smoky swamp.

It was his skill at other things that made her edgy.

She suddenly felt self-conscious about her grimy face and the smoke and ash stains on her fire-resistant yellow shirt and green pants, not to mention her hair that probably looked more gray than blond by now. She’d fought the wildfire until she got the injury call and switched her brain to paramedic mode.

So what if she and Josh had almost done the deed once when they worked together? That’d been a freak incident, a mistake he’d realized before they made it worse by going all the way.

It was just her bad luck this fire was so big that her crew from Colorado and his from…wherever had been rotated into Georgia to fight it.

Unfortunately, their one intimate encounter had etched itself into her memory. She knew every warm, sleek contour of the sculpted form under that flight suit. Those hard, smooth shoulders of his flowed into a firm chest and muscular, well-toned arms. The man was good with his hands in ways that had nothing to do with aviation.

Edie shifted in her seat. Best to get her mind off what had so briefly been and never would happen again.

If only his spicy aftershave didn’t remind her.

The magic they shared resonated between them, but Josh projected all the warmth of a steel door in a freezer. He probably hadn’t expected to see her again any more than she’d expected to see him.

Still, his silence was aggravating. One aborted night together didn’t give either of them a claim on the other, but they weren’t strangers. Damned if she’d put up with his attitude any longer.

“So,” she began, “when did you leave Wyoming?”

“Couple of years ago.” His offhand tone signaled boredom.

Tough for him. “Any special reason?”

“Got a better job.”

“And that would be…?”

He glanced at her, green eyes baffled and brows raised. “Does it matter?”

“We worked together for two summers,” she reminded him, trying not to sound as hurt as his reticence made her feel. Had he really blocked off their time as helitack crewmates so thoroughly? “I’m interested.”

He shrugged. “I wanted a change.”

“So what are you doing now?” Besides irritating her with his minimal responses—deliberately, she suspected.

“Jesus! You just don’t give up.” But his glance this time held wry humor and warmth that might’ve been affection.

It made Edie’s heart turn over. Momentarily speechless, she stared at him, and his gaze softened and warmed. His vibe in the magic between them seemed less distant.

Josh wrenched his eyes to the side, barriers rising again. His abrupt withdrawal left Edie feeling bereft. She swallowed hard, waiting for the needy quivers in her gut to settle. It was so not fair that he could make her feel this way after three years of noncommunication.

“I fly combat missions and medevac for the Southeastern Shire Collegium, better known as the Georgia Institute for Paranormal Research,” he said.

The mageborn organized their governing districts by shires, disguising the combined headquarters and government centers they called collegiums as Mundane businesses. The deception allowed them to live and work safely amid their Mundane neighbors. She hadn’t visited Georgia before and had never heard the Southeastern Shire Collegium’s cover name.

“So they loaned you and this chopper to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and reconfigured the rear for medevac?”

He shrugged. “The wildlife refuge has a helicopter service contract, but that bird was already working another fire. The Collegium mages like to be good neighbors, and some of us hang out in a little town near here, Wayfarer.”

“Yeah, I stopped there on the way in,” she managed around the lump in her throat. “Nice place.”

She might be better off if he hadn’t shown her that flash of warmth, hadn’t underscored the brief, bittersweet memory.

Wildland firefighters shared a rare camaraderie. For Edie and Josh, being mageborn should’ve created an ever deeper trust, but the man kept her at the same distance he maintained with every other woman on the fire line.

Except for that night at Compadres Gulch, when grief ripped through the firefighters’ encampment because they’d lost three of their own in a deadly burnover. She and Josh had briefly found refuge in each other’s arms, but his pager had interrupted them, summoning him to make an emergency retardant drop. He hadn’t kept his promise to return afterward.

If only she could forget that incident. He clearly had. The next day, he’d treated her with his usual cool courtesy. As though nothing had happened between them.

What an idiot she was, to regret that after so long.

Edie looked down at the burning landscape. An alligator fled a line of flame consuming the grassy area below. As she leaned closer, worried, ready to help it with just a bit of magical shielding, the big reptile slid into the water. Not that the canal provided much of a refuge with a gray layer of ash covering its surface.

Below the helicopter, charred, blackened cypress trees lined the water like ghostly sentinels. Flames would soon reach the ones the alligator had hurried past and turn them into the same sad specters.

Josh glanced down. “I saw a bear and a couple of deer running from the flames yesterday. The wildlife is suffering.”

Edie nodded. He’d always had a soft spot for the creatures of the wilderness. Too bad she remembered, because that made her soften further toward him, the last thing she needed.

“The smoke’s hard on the people in the nearby towns, too,” she said. “Bad news all around.”

He grunted in agreement, his eyes on the ground below and his barriers still up. Edie stifled a sigh. If only the fire hadn’t cut across the road. Otherwise, an ambulance could’ve come in on the track the bulldozer had made last week, sparing her and Josh this difficult encounter.

Well, difficult for her. He showed no sign of being bothered at all, and wasn’t that a smack in the ego?

The Incident Command Team had thought this area was clear, but fire could travel long distances underground in peaty soil, erupting unexpectedly where there was no one to counter it and making firefighting abominably difficult. This blaze had started from a lightning strike in the expanse now charred and blackened below them, then burned westward, only to surprise everyone by popping up at the tree line to the north near here.

“Coming up on the dozer line. I’ll set down in the middle of it,” Josh informed her.

His deep, smooth voice generated warm ripples of awareness in Edie’s chest.
Blast.
She focused on the ten-foot-wide, rutted track below. As the helicopter descended, adrenaline banished the warm, fidgety feeling and the memories it triggered.

The rotor wash kicked up ash from the area below the chopper and sent embers, smoke, and debris whirling through the air. Landing here was making the line crew’s job tougher, but with water on one side and fire on the other, the helicopter was the injured man’s only way out.

“Good thing this area’s sandy,” Josh said, “not that damned peat.” The tingle washing over her skin signaled his throwing out a magical shield to protect the helo from burning debris.

“That’s one lucky break. Though it switches to peat where that grass is over there.” In the direction she needed to go, blast it. If not for the summer’s drought, the sedge-covered, peat prairies would be underwater, and the fire wouldn’t have spread so easily.

The helicopter descended toward a clearing covered in knee-deep, yellow sedge. At the tree line to her left stood a firefighter garbed as she was, his clothes and hard hat also mottled with dirty gray.

He waved but didn’t try to approach through the debris-laden air of the small clearing.

Behind him lay the usual tall pines, red maples, black gums, and live oaks draped in Spanish moss. To the north, fire roared through the slash pines, devouring the oily saw palmetto ground cover.

A crew of ground pounders in yellow and green dug a fire line or cut trees ahead of the advancing blaze. Edie, Josh, and the firefighters had to get the wounded man out before the flames reached this area.

Josh set the bird down as easily as a sheet might float onto a mattress. “Go.”

Edie traded the helo’s comm net headset for her hard hat, grabbed her pack, and hopped out. While she and Josh performed a quick “Helicopter 892 to Bravo unit paramedic” radio check on her two-way, she slid open the back door and pulled out the folded Stokes litter and its insert. A few quick steps brought her to the low mound of sandy soil at the plowed track’s edge, clear of the rotors though not of the mess they raised in the air.

Her boot narrowly missed a smooth black object protruding from the piled-up soil. Its curved surface glowed faintly purple-red.

Weird. She started to go on, run do her job, but something about the half-buried object drew her to kneel beside it.

Cautiously, she touched it. A faint vibration penetrated her protective gloves and raised a chill on the back of her neck. This thing carried some sort of magic. They could figure out what kind later, but better not leave it for Mundanes to find. Who knew what it could cause?

“Bravo paramedic, everything okay?” Josh’s voice crackled over her radio.

Other voices broke in on the channel, so Edie flashed him a thumbs-up and jammed the cantaloupe-size orb into her pack. As she swung the pack onto her shoulder, dizziness blurred her vision. Crap, it was hot out here. A shake of her head cleared it, and she ran toward the waiting firefighter.

They quickly introduced themselves. Hurrying into the trees with Rob Dawson, Edie asked, “What happened?”

“We cut a big pine that fell the wrong way and knocked another one down on him.” The man’s dark brows drew together in his sooty face. “He’s not doing so good.”

“Let’s get to it, then.”

A flash of red at eye level warned them both to jump back. A burning chunk of wood landed between them, igniting the dry grass.

“I got this.” Dawson used his Pulaski, the combination axe and hoe tool, to churn sandy soil over the flaming spot. He jerked his head behind him. “That way. His name’s Phil Moss.”

Edie ran. Damn, but her pack felt heavy all of a sudden. No time to worry about it now, though. Through the smoke, she spotted another yellow shirt and Forest Service hard hat, a lanky, blond firefighter kneeling by a wounded comrade.

She dropped the litter and knelt beside the injured man. Soot smeared his face and his dark hair below the hard hat. His features were tight with pain.

“Hi, Phil. I’m Edie. I’m going to take care of you.”

Where the hell was Edie? Drumming the fingers of his free hand on his knee, Josh peered into the smoke. The flames to the north roared toward the frantically working crew. Their laboriously dug line wasn’t going to hold the blaze, not with the wind picking up. He’d adjusted the rotor controls on his upgraded Huey II to minimize backwash, but it still blew debris around. The sooner she finished her assessment and got her patient to the aircraft, the better.

His thumb hovered over the button on the control stick that would key the radio mike. He’d heard her call for help to carry the heavy litter, seen seven firefighters leave the line and run toward the trees in response. She’d be moving soon. Besides, she wouldn’t appreciate having him interrupt her while she worked. She knew they needed to get going.

What she didn’t know, never would know, was how tough he’d found sitting here while she ran into the smoke. He’d been attracted to her for a long time, back in Wyoming, even though he’d known pursuing that was stupid.

The loss of his mom, a deputy sheriff killed in the line of duty when he was eight, still raised an ache deep inside him. So did the memory of his dad’s descent into alcoholism afterward. No child of Josh’s would ever go through what he and his sisters had experienced.

Never date a women in a dangerous job
was his mantra. Steering clear of them cut the pool, but there were still plenty of women who didn’t go charging into danger every day. There’d been no point in pursuing his attraction to Edie.

Until Compadres Gulch.

Even then, he should’ve held himself back, but he’d been so damned glad she wasn’t one of the lost. Grieving for their dead comrades, he’d needed the reassurance of her living body in his arms.

Thanks to that brief encounter, he knew every curve, every warm, smooth surface her mannish protective clothing obscured. Her faint jasmine scent under the sweat and the smoke today had evoked the memory. Her scent then had filled his nostrils while awareness of her had blown his mind and driven back the sorrow and fear.

He’d managed not to think about that time, mostly, for the past three years, but he could still feel the firm roundness of her breast in his palm, the sweet, taut nub of her nipple in his mouth…

And now he was sporting wood.

Great. Just freaking great.