Midnight Magic (12 page)

As she ran, a phrase filled her mind. The same sentence, over and over in time to her heartbeat.
I will never care for anyone ever again. I will never care for anyone ever again.
After a time, the words etched into her soul.

Second Prologue

Ely, Nevada

Two Years Later

Rune paced from the kitchen to the living room and back again, hackles at half mast and tail twitching behind him. Marta, his bondmate and the woman who’d rescued him from a trap when he was just a wolf pup, was resting. At least he hoped she was. Something between a whine and a growl slipped past his clenched jaws.

Damn her, anyway.

Didn’t she understand she’d been targeted by the dark gods? Ever since she took to spying on the Lemurians in Taltos, their underground city, things turned to rat shit. Something hideous happened on her last trip. He wasn’t certain quite what because he wasn’t with her, and she refused to tell him. Many moonrises had passed, and she was only just now beginning to talk and think normally.

Rune paused to stare out a large window. The front yard was absolutely silent. So was the road fronting Marta’s house, but then it would be since most of the humans were dead, and gasoline to make their cars run had long since run out.

He shook his fur out and came to a decision. Should he tell Marta now or wait until she woke?

She solved the problem for him. The sound of her footsteps made him spin to face the door into the living room. She was dressed to go out and had shoes on. Not a good sign.

“There you are.” She favored him with a maternal smile, the one that made him want to bite her. She may have rescued him when he was too young to care for himself, but that was long ago.

“Here I am,” he agreed and trained his amber eyes on the woman who meant everything to him.

“I’m leaving for a while—”

Rune’s decision roared out of him. “Not without me, you’re not. Never again. Look what happened last time.”

“Be reasonable.” She smiled again, and Rune felt magic prowl beneath her words.

He slapped up power of his own. “Reasonable has nothing to do with it. Last time they nearly killed you. I wasn’t certain until yesterday you’d get enough of your memories back to be yourself.”

“Neither was I.” Her smile developed grim edges. She sank to the thick Oriental carpet and held out her arms.

Rune stayed where he was. “All the more reason to take me with you. You can merge your senses with mine. Together we’re stronger. It’s why we chose the Hunter bond.”

“Aw, Rune.” Sadness etched lines around her eyes and into her forehead. “You don’t understand. None of us will get out of this alive, but we have to fight until we can’t fight anymore. If we don’t, it’s like turning Earth over to those bastards, and I won’t do that.” She slapped the floor with the flat of her hand. “I won’t.”

“Neither will I.” He gazed cooly at her. “Where are we going?”

“I can’t take you with me. It’s too dangerous.”

“If you don’t take me, you’re not going, either.” The wolf stood his ground, but it was shaky. She could order him, and he’d have to obey. It was how the Hunter bond worked.

Marta looked away, studying her hands. Her long coppery hair was in its usual tight braid, and she was dressed in loose-fitting black trousers and a black jacket, with stout lace-up boots. She was tall, almost as tall as the Lemurians, and she sat with her legs splayed in front of her.

Rune kept his gaze glued to her, willing her to capitulate. He was fully prepared to take her on in combat to keep her in the house, if she refused his company. “I’m not being stubborn,” he said. “I need to be with you for me, not just for you. How do you think I’ll feel if you don’t return? How can I live with myself if you die in a place where I wasn’t there to help you?”

“I could die anyway.” She did look at him then, her clear green eyes filled with something he didn’t have a name for.

“So could I, but if we’re together at least we’ll know we did everything we could for each other.”

Marta nodded once. “All right. I don’t have enough energy to argue with you. We’re going to one of the mining camps to the west of us. Some humans are still alive, and they need my medical skill.”

“How do you know anyone’s alive?” he countered.

She shrugged. “Call it a hunch. I dream things sometimes, and this came to me not long ago. We’ll do a travel jump. It’s not far. If the place is deserted, I’ll bring us right back.” The same, sad smile returned. “With luck, we’ll be home in time for supper.”

“Ready when you are.”

She got to her feet. “Are you going to come closer than that? I already said I’d take you, Rune. Bondmates don’t lie to each other.”

Shame filled him because she’d nailed his reticence. He didn’t trust that she wouldn’t trick him. He made his way to her side and felt her magic as she opened a portal for them to travel to the place she’d seen in her dream.

They rolled out into high, arid desert, and the remains of a mining camp sprawled about them, buildings falling into disrepair. Bullet holes riddled tin roofs and corrugated siding. Rune sent his senses spinning outward.

Nothing lived anywhere near here.

“Curious,” Marta murmured. “I was so sure.”

Rune’s hackles hit full alert, standing on end the length of his back. “We must leave,” he snarled. “It has to be a trap.”

Before Marta could reply, another gateway opened a little way away. Bal’ta poured out. Marta flung magic at the disgusting creatures, minions of the dark, but she barely made a dent. They stood between five and six feet tall, with barrel chests, and their bodies were coated in greasy-looking brown hair. Thicker hair hung from their scalps and grew in clumps from armpits and groins. Ropy muscles bulged under their hairy skin. Orange eyes gleamed, and their foreheads sloped backward.

Rune had faced them before. At least they didn’t have magic of their own beyond a shared intelligence. The flood had slowed, and he gathered himself for action. He and Marta could take them. They’d faced worse odds. Apparently she agreed, and he felt her merge her consciousness with his.

“I’ll take this side,” Rune growled and thrust himself into the thick of things, avoiding the cudgels and maces they used in battle. Rune knew to stay out of the line of Marta’s magic. He sliced into one neck after another until he was coated in blood. The air was thick with the coppery stench of it. For some reason, Bal’ta avoided him. Something about his animal energy burned them, and he took full advantage of their hesitation.

He glanced at Marta from time to time, grateful beyond thought she was still on her feet. In addition to magic, she held a knife in one hand. A knife dripping blood. Dead bodies piled around both of them.

Rune danced to one side to avoid a cudgel aimed for him skull. He sent out a call for forest wolves, but none came to their aid. Maybe there weren’t any living here—or maybe they didn’t see the point in taking a stand in someone else’s battle.

No matter. He and Marta were winning. Only a few Bal’ta remained. He’d begun to work his way back to his bondmate, when another gateway opened, this one black and edged with flames. A man sashayed through. Rune stopped cold, staring in disbelief. The remaining Bal’ta faded away from that gaping maw; in moments they’d summoned another portal and left.

Rune focused on the newcomer. It had to be one of the dark gods. No one else held that level of deadly beauty. Long dark hair streamed behind him, and he trained his shrewd dark eyes on Marta. She squared her shoulders and stared back.

“Kill him,” Rune urged.

“I can’t,” she ground out. “Much as I’d love to.”

The dark god tossed his shapely head back and laughed; the sound was disturbing, discordant. “Your bondmate is wise,” he told the wolf. “She’s clever not to get too close.”

“Which one is he?” Rune demanded.

“You may as well ask me, since I’m right here.” Dark eyes crinkled in chilly humor, and he mock bowed. “My name is Tokhots. I’m also known as the trickster.” Dark robes fluttered around him, sashed in gray.

While Tokhots had been talking, Marta sidled farther from Rune and severed her connection with him. Worried, he tried to determine just what she was up to. If she planned an attack, he didn’t want to be in the way and ruin things. Nor did he plan to leave her to the mercy of the dark god. Maybe if he kept Tokhots chatting...

“What do you mean by trickster? It’s not a term I’m familiar with.”

Tokhots did a funny little side step. “I play tricks. I’m funny. I’m a hell of a nice guy. If you got to know me, you’d—”

A ball of fire immolated one side of his robes. Tokhots’ pleasant expression shattered, and he batted at the flames—and at jolts of power Marta hurled his way. Rune wanted to launch himself at the dark god, but Marta’s power kept him rooted in place.

Finally giving up on extinguishing the flames, Tokhots shucked his robe, revealing golden-hued skin beneath. “Bitch!” he spat and raced to Marta so fast he beat Rune, who was also headed that way at breakneck speed.

“Don’t bite him,” Marta shrieked. “His blood is deadly poison.”

Rune aborted a leap in midair and crashed to the rocky ground. He’d been about to close his jaws around Tokhots’ neck.

The dark god held a writhing Marta in his grip. “You can’t hurt me either,” he taunted. “One drop of my blood and you’ll be deader than the shades that roam the countryside.”

“What do you want with me?” Marta gave a mighty heave.

Rune thought she might free herself, but Tokhots tightened his hold. “You’ve become an inconvenience. I sent the Bal’ta as a diversion until I could get here.”

“What happens next?” Marta’s voice was steady, but Rune sensed her fear, and it filled him with fury. He worked his way closer to the pair, not moving very fast.

“That’s for me to know.” Tokhots laughed again.

Caution departed. Rune judged the distance and leapt. So what if he died? At least Marta would go free. The air around him thickened, holding him suspended above the ground. Darkness dropped over him like a curtain until he couldn’t see. He thrashed against the magic holding him and plummeted to earth, landing hard on jagged rocks. Ignoring pain, he vaulted toward where Marta had been, still running blind in unnatural darkness.

She wasn’t there. Neither was the dark god.

He still couldn’t see, but he could smell and hear. He employed both senses, ears pricked forward and nose snuffling so hard it began to bleed.

Nothing.

Marta’s scent was strongest right where he stood.

Rune threw his head back and howled his desolation to the skies. He’d failed. The dark god had his bondmate, and he had no way to go after them.

By the time the darkness receded, his throat was raw with grief. He called for other animals, birds, even insects, to tell him what they’d seen. If they knew anything, but no one answered.

Despondent, guilt-stricken, Rune put one paw ahead of another. No point in staying with the dead Bal’ta. Tokhots would never bring Marta back here.

The dark god had taken his bondmate on a oneway trip. Rune knew, as clearly as he knew anything, she’d never run by his side again. She was still alive, but her life force ebbed through their Hunter bond.

Soon she’d be no more, and it was his fault. If he’d been quicker, hadn’t hesitated...

He shook his head hard and broke into a run.

Chapter One

Aislinn pulled her cap down more firmly on her head. Snow stung where it got into her eyes and froze the exposed parts of her face. Thin, cold air seared her lungs when she made the mistake of breathing too deeply. She’d taken refuge in a spindly stand of leafless aspens, but they didn’t cut the wind at all. “Where’s Travis?” she fumed, scanning the unending white of a high altitude plain that used to be part of Colorado. Or maybe this place had been in eastern Utah. It didn’t really matter anymore.

Something unnatural flickered at the corner of her eye and she tensed. Standing still bought trouble with a capitol T. She swiveled her head to maximize her peripheral vision.
Damn! No, double damn.
Half-frozen muscles in her face ached when she tightened her jaw.

Bal’ta—a bunch of them—fanned out a couple hundred yards behind her, closing the distance eerily fast. One of many atrocities serving the dark gods that had crawled out of the ground that night in Bolivia, they appeared as shadowy spots against the fading day. Places where edges shimmered and merged into a menacing blackness. If she looked too hard at the center of those dark places, they drew her like a lodestone. Aislinn tore her gaze away.

Not that Bal’ta—bad as they were—were responsible for the wholesale destruction of modern life. No, their masters—the ones who’d brought dark magic to Earth in the first place—held that dubious honor. Aislinn shook her head sharply, trying to decide what to do. She was supposed to meet Travis here. Those were her orders. He had something to give her. Typical of the way the Lemurians ran things, no one knew very much about anything. It was safer that way if you got captured.

She hadn’t meant to cave and work for them, but in the end, she’d had little choice. It was sign on with the Lemurians—Old Ones—to cultivate her magic and fight the dark, or be marched into the same radioactive vortex that had killed her mother.

Her original plan had been to wait for Travis until an hour past full dark, but the Bal’ta changed all that. Waiting even one more minute was a gamble she wasn’t willing to risk. Aislinn took a deep breath. Chanting softly in Gaelic, her mother’s language, she called up the light spell that would wrap her in brilliance and allow her to escape—maybe. It was the best strategy she could deploy on short notice. Light was anathema to Bal’ta and their ilk. So many of the loathsome creatures were hot on her heels, she didn’t have any other choice.

She squared her shoulders. All spells drained her. This was one of the worst—a purely Lemurian working translated into Gaelic because human tongues couldn’t handle the Old Ones’ language. She pulled her attention from her spell for the time it took to glance about, and her heart sped up. Even the few seconds it took to determine flight was essential had attracted at least ten more of the bastards. They surrounded her. Well, almost.