MALACHI DIDN’T KNOW A BLOODY THING ABOUT WHERE Vax lived, but he didn’t need an address book or a map to follow the burning in his gut. He could sense Kelsey, and that was something he could follow.
Fear was a nasty, metallic taste in his mouth as he materialized. She was close; even in the misty form he had to take before his body settled into his mortal coil, he could feel her.
And he heard her.
A raw, tormented scream. His muscles tensed as he stared at the scene before him. Kelsey lay slumped on the couch, her body slack. And nude. He could see her naked torso slumped over the arm of the couch. Her face was flushed and sweaty, and he heard the erratic pattern of her breathing. The cadence of her heart was fast and unsteady.
Vax was by her. As he sensed Mal, he rolled to his feet, one dark hand going to his waist. Deadly silver glinted as Vax brought out his knife.
He’d been touching her, the damned bastard.
“I’m going to kill you,” Malachi whispered as pain ripped through his chest. The pain was so damned massive, he couldn’t think beyond it. Couldn’t think enough to realize Vax was fully clothed. And Kelsey was only partially naked. Couldn’t focus enough to recognize the fading remnants of healing magick rippling through the air.
All he saw was his woman, lying naked on the couch and another man rising from her body.
Malachi closed the distance and reached out, grabbing for Vax. Vax apparently had a healthy appreciation for life, though. Malachi’s hand closed around thin air.
“Back off, Malachi,” Vax said from behind him.
“When I have your guts in my hands,” Malachi rasped, lisping a little around his fangs. He didn’t even bother to turn and face Vax again. Instead, he shifted to mist and re-formed behind Vax, reaching out with one hand to grab Vax’s weapon hand before he whirled and slammed the witch into a wall.
Vax shoved back and jerked away from Malachi with a force that would have broken the hand bones of a mortal. He slashed out with his knife as he moved back, circling away from Malachi. “Calm down a little bit,” Vax said.
Malachi just snarled at him. He lunged for Vax. The witch was fast but not quite as fast as a vampire, and he ended up pinned underneath Malachi.
“I hope you’re ready to die, boy,” Malachi murmured, tightening his fingers. Under the tanned flesh, he felt the pulse of blood and warmth of life. And he could smell Kelsey all over him.
“You’re either blind as hell,” Vax rasped. “Or as dumb as you are big. Now get the fuck
off
.”
Power punched out of Vax and hit Malachi square in the chest, knocking him off. Malachi went flying through the air and hit the wall. Rolling to his feet, Malachi stared at Vax across the room. “I am tired of playing with you.”
“Boys, boys . . .”
The voice was soft, accented, oddly familiar. Turning his head, he saw Morgan standing in the doorway. But shock froze him in place as she looked at Vax and chided, “Malachi has powerful feelings for Kelsey, Vax. I think he misunderstood, but I’d stay away from her if I were you.”
He knew that voice. And it sure as hell didn’t belong to Morgan Wakefield.
Across the room, Vax snorted. “You think?” he drawled as he looked at the blonde witch. He glanced down at himself and said, “I really look like I’m in the mood for romance, don’t I?” Plucking at the shirt he wore, he flicked a glance toward Kelsey. “And for that matter, so does Kelsey.”
At that moment, Kelsey made a low moan. It was the sound of a woman in pain, not the sound of woman recovering from sex. The broken, gasping noise was like a splash of cold water in Mal’s face, and he tore his attention from the scowling Native American to look at her. She lay on her belly, and now that he could see something beyond his insane possessiveness, he could see that she wasn’t completely nude. Denim still encased her long, slender legs.
And the smooth line of her back was marred by angry, jagged red lines.
“Dear God,” Malachi muttered.
“’Tis hardly God’s fault she is lying there.”
The voice was so damned familiar. Dragging his eyes from Kelsey, he found himself once more staring at the delicate blonde. Warm, sky-blue eyes gazed back at him for a moment, and then she frowned, looking at Kelsey. “She never did get the concept that you cannot help everybody,” the woman mused, shaking her head.
Malachi had spent most of his life refusing to let too many people close to him. Losing Alys had been a brutal lesson. Even if he wasn’t in love with a woman, losing one he’d gotten close to was painful. Considering the life that had been chosen for him, he decided early on that close friends were a casualty he couldn’t afford, and he had refused to allow many people close to him. His true friends were few and fleeting.
The loss of one of his dearest friends had torn a ragged wound inside of him. Although he had known Agnes was lonely, tired, and ready to go on, the selfish part of him wanted her back.
That wound hadn’t healed. It felt as though a thin scab had formed over it, and hearing this woman speak, looking into her eyes, was like tearing that wound completely open. But not because this was the woman responsible for Nessa’s death.
It wasn’t Morgan he heard.
It was Agnes. Her voice, her eyes—even the scent of her skin. She smelled of lavender.
The way those blue eyes stared at him. Blue.
Morgan’s eyes had been green, deep, mossy green and full of malice and evil. The taint in her was so complete, he could even scent it in the air.
But now it was like he was staring at another woman entirely. Nothing he saw or sensed was Morgan. Even her face seemed subtly different.
She started to hum, and her eyes took on an unfocused look as she started to saunter around the room. By the couch, she paused, staring down at Kelsey’s exposed back. When she looked up, her eyes were clear once more, and sharply blue. Her lips thinned down into a narrow line as she said, “That’s quite a hatchet job you did, Vax. Did we not teach you better?”
A ruddy flush darkened Vax’s lean cheeks, and he snapped, “Apparently not.”
“Then you should have come and got me.”
“If you could stay in your damned head, old woman, I would have. A healer, I am not.”
She made a rather prissy sounding little “Hmmm. That is quite clear. A mess, this is.” Then she reached down over the back of the couch, trailing her hand down Kelsey’s spine.
Malachi’s skin tightened from the magick he sensed in the air as she touched Kelsey. It felt like yet another piece of some unknown puzzle fell into place.
He knew magick. He had always been sensitive to it, most likely a legacy from his long-gone mother. Each witch’s magick had a scent to it, or perhaps a taste.
He’d been around this witch and her magick before. Many, many times. It was almost as familiar to him as the feel of his own powers.
He could hear Kelsey’s voice, remembered the words she had said just before she had left him only hours ago.
“The Council and the Select are going to make a mistake. A big one. And once they make it, it can’t be undone.”
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he muttered as he shook his head.
It can’t be undone.
But the puzzle of this peculiar woman faded as he edged a little closer to Kelsey, staring at the jagged scars he could see on her upper back. As he watched, the healer’s magick settled into her skin, and the vivid red marks on her back began to fade until they were little more than pale stripes across the sleek skin.
Thin little stripes.
But there was another scar. This one was older.
His spine began to itch.
Blood began to pump hot and heavy through his veins, pounding through his head. It coalesced into a roaring in his ears, and it only increased as he moved closer, staring at that scar.
It was twisted and jagged, disappearing under the waistband of her jeans. In his mind’s eye, he could see the entire scar, knew that it thinned down and disappeared just above the soft curve of her ass.
Strength drained out of his legs, and he collapsed. The solid oak of the coffee table caught his weight; otherwise he would have ended up on his ass as he stared at Kelsey.
“It really is you,” he whispered.
It felt like he was seeing her for the first time, all over again.
The first time—no. Malachi couldn’t even remember the first time he had seen her. He had seen her thousands and thousands of times, for well over a millennia.
Even without touching it, he knew how that scar would feel under his hand if he touched it. It looked rough, but it felt strangely smooth.
He knew if he stripped her clothes away, he would find another scar. This one on her left knee. And on her right hip, there would be a heart-shaped birthmark.
“You see now. Took you long enough to understand.”
Looking up over the back of the couch, he stared into familiar blue eyes.
Hell, he didn’t think his brain could function enough to understand a damn thing. But before he could say anything, her eyes clouded over, her expression changing. She sighed, and the sound was morose, full of despair. She looked away from Malachi, her eyes seeking out Vax’s face. “What am I doing here?” she asked.
“We’re just trying to keep you safe,” Vax said quietly.
She lowered her lashes and smoothed a hand over the back of the couch. “You cannot keep me safe. They are already looking for me. She should have let it be.”
More was said, but Malachi barely heard any of it. Once more, he found himself staring at the long line of Kelsey Cassidy’s back, entranced. He reached over to touch the scar, and his fingers shook. It was every bit as smooth to the touch as he knew it would be, and her skin was warm.
When he breathed in, it seemed like he was taking in Kelsey’s warm, subtle scent for the first time. “This is unbelievable,” he muttered, closing his eyes.
Did she know?
Or maybe he was just losing his mind. After more than a thousand years of them sharing dreams—and bloody hell, she had only been alive for seventy years. How could he have been dreaming of her for so long?
In his mind, he heard a ghostly echo of her voice from long ago. Ages. It was one of the first times she had talked to him.
“I am nothing. I am no one. For now—”
“Why didn’t I see this before now?” he murmured, reaching out and brushing her golden-red hair back from her pale face.
He captured one wildly curling lock of hair and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “All that time, and I’ve been waiting for a woman who hadn’t even been born yet.”
“True love is worth waiting a lifetime for.” He looked up and met the familiar blue eyes. There were tears glowing there as the woman murmured, “Even if it means you’ll spend your life waiting for something that never comes.”
He had nothing to say to that, though, and there was no time. The woman’s blue eyes chilled, and her face lost all expression. “They are coming.”
The explosion of magick that flooded the atmosphere was not subtle. It was harsh and raw, pounding at the shields Vax kept around his home with the intent to rip the shields open. The shields held, though. Malachi had to admit, he was a little impressed.
“They found us pretty damn fast,” Malachi muttered.
“Locator spell,” Vax said grimly. “There were traces of Kelsey’s blood left in the rubble of that wall when it came down around us. Dawn’s using it to track her. Figures wherever they find Kelsey, they’ll find her.” He glanced toward the petite blonde, his face tight, eyes as dark and stormy as thunderheads.
Another weak moan escaped Kelsey’s lips, this one a little louder. Her breathing became erratic as she moved closer to wakefulness. Mal eased off of the table, crouching by Kelsey’s side. As her gold-tipped lashes lifted, he murmured, “How do you feel?”
“Lousy.” She closed her eyes again and murmured, “Where did you come from?”
“Disney World,” he said dryly.
She started to push up onto her elbows. Malachi couldn’t keep from lowering his eyes, and just as she realized she had lost her shirt, she froze. Not soon enough though. He could see the soft, delicate curves of her small breasts, even the soft rosy pink of a nipple before she eased back down on the couch. He tugged the maroon throw from the back of the couch and draped it over her before moving back to sit on the edge of the table.
Power swelled again and slammed into the shields. Kelsey winced a little as she wrapped the throw around her torso. As she sat up, her eyes met Mal’s once more.
Two thousand questions danced on the tip of his tongue, and there wasn’t really time for any of them.
“We have to get out of here.”
Vax shook his head. “Not together. We have to split these two up. But we have a little bit of time. Dawn has about a hundred years’ worth of shields she has to break down. That’s going to take a while.”
Kelsey rubbed at her eyes with her fingers and muttered, “This is a damn mess I’ve made.”
“You did what you had to, Kelsey,” Vax said with a shrug. “Remember that.”
Malachi closed his hands into fists, and then forced them open. Rage, tension, and fear warred inside him. What he was going to do went against every instinct he had, but he had to make sure Kelsey stayed safe. So he needed to handle the Select
now
. “Vax, take Kelsey. She’s in no shape to watch her back, so you’re going to have to do it. I’ll stay here and deal with Dawn and the others when they break through.”
“Deal with them how?” Kelsey asked darkly. “By handing her over to them? You don’t know what’s happened. You wouldn’t listen to me.”
“I will not be handing anybody over to anybody,” Malachi responded. Then he glanced at the blonde woman. She was standing in front of Vax’s stereo system, fiddling with the volume buttons, spinning the little dials, her lips pursed and thoughtful.