My Wicked Enemy (7 page)

“You barely touched me,” she said, staring at the growing dot of red on her arm.

Hunger came to life in him, blossoming like a new rose. Blood quivered on her pale skin. He brought his head close to her arm and breathed in. The dot of blood welled and ran into the crook of her elbow. Now he ached. Ached. His tongue touched that scarlet edge. The taste burst over him. Wild and bitter. He’d be seeing true just from this little taste of her blood. He pressed his mouth to her skin and tasted deeper. Deeper and deeper. Sweet, bittersweet taste.

“What are you doing?” She pushed at his head and nearly succeeded in pulling her arm free. “Stop it, I said.”

The throb of the garage door opening broke his trance.

Fuck.

He was totally out of time. He grabbed her head, knife clutched in one hand. “Where’s the talisman?” he said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He was pretty sure she was lying, but there wasn’t time to scare her into telling the truth. “The thing you stole from Magellan. Where is it?”

The car shut off. Xia jumped back, chest heaving, breath burning in his lungs. He didn’t have long, and now duty tore at him. He had to betray his kin yet again. Every goddamned day of his life he was an enemy to his kin, but this was the lowest he’d ever been, forced to steal a talisman he knew would be used as a weapon against his people. Once Rasmus cracked this thing open, he was going to make his current power look anemic. He yanked on Carson’s arm and pulled her off the couch. No more delaying.

“Hey!”

Dragging Carson behind him, he burst into the hallway where he’d felt the shiver along his skin. He followed the sensation down the corridor. Goose bumps broke out along his arm and all down his back. Wherever it was, it was damn close.

He didn’t have time for more than a cursory inspection of how Nikodemus had warded the talisman. He slashed. The edge of the blade severed the wards without finesse. A piss-poor job. He was going to leave signs. Too bad. His orders hadn’t included leaving no trace of his presence. He snatched the talisman from the niche it was hidden in and got burned by a flash of white heat. “Fuck!”

But he had it. The carved stone heated his palm, burned him, actually. Teeth gritted against the pain, he headed for a back window, holding Carson. Magic came off her in waves, and Xia was convinced she was going to blast him.

“What are you doing?” she asked. She stared at his hand and the talisman. A door opened somewhere in the house. The warlord was home. Xia shoved the talisman in his pocket. The magic inside was unstable, because it remained hot. “Give it back. It’s not yours.”

“It’s not yours, either, witch.” If he were free, he’d kill her and be done with it. He saw her intention of warning Nikodemus before she knew herself what she was going to do. He grabbed her arm and twisted it up hard until she squeaked with pain. “Any noise from you, and you’re dead.”

With his free hand, he ducked her head down, and they both went out the window.

Any minute she expected him to plunge his knife into her chest. But he didn’t. Xia dragged her with him along the narrow path between the side of the house and the house next door. She saw a light go on in Nikodemus’s house. On the street, Xia marched her up the hill to a chromed motorcycle parked under a tree. His arm squeezed, compressing her ribs. One-handed, he fished a roll of duct tape from one of the panniers. He put a length over her mouth, then plunked his helmet over her head. She bent at the waist, trying to knock herself free of his grip.

But, in a rapid series of moves, he turned them around so her front was pressed hard against his back, yanking her by the wrists to force her arms around him. He wrapped her wrists with duct tape and then maneuvered them onto his motorcycle. Terror ground at her heart so hard she thought it would burst. With her behind him, he released the brake and let the bike roll downhill. He used his feet to keep them upright. They were blocks away before he started the motor.

He headed the bike up hills so steep she tightened her arms around him just to keep from sliding off the back. His ribs moved with laughter. She was losing all sense of where they were or how long they’d been driving around the city. Cold whipped through her when he stopped the bike on a dark, empty street: commercial buildings, warehouses, buildings made of stucco and tin. Not much traffic.

This was where he was going to kill her. She took slow, deep breaths. Panic would only get her killed faster. With his feet planted on the ground, he cut the tape between her wrists but maintained his hold on one arm. She flexed the other, willing the circulation to start up in her fingers. Her feet didn’t reach the ground, but at the first opportunity, the very minute her feet hit pavement, she intended to run for her life. Still gripping her wrist, Xia turned just enough to snatch the helmet off her head. The edge scraped the back of her skull.

“Get off,” he said.

With trembling legs, she slid off his bike and had to concentrate in order not to fall. His fingers remained clamped around her wrist. She ripped the tape off her mouth and drew in fresh air. If he was smart, he’d drag her away from the street. Between the warehouses, or maybe through a fence to a back yard. Fear made her body feel too light, but her head was clear. She kept her weight on the balls of her feet, prepared to dash if he let go or loosened his grip. Into the street was best, she decided. Across the street and into the dark of the largest of the structures.

He pulled her toward him, eyes raking her up and down. “I’ll find you again,” he said. “Wherever you go, I’ll find you.”

“I haven’t done anything to you.” Belatedly, his meaning penetrated. He was letting her go. She stared into his shadowed face. Clarity came to her, a flash of certainty, fueled by what Nikodemus had told her and what she knew from Magellan’s texts. Xia was a mageheld fiend. His will did not belong to him. Some mage, someone like Magellan, controlled his actions. She stepped close and put a hand to his cheek. “I’m sorry for what’s been done to you. It’s wrong. If I knew how to fix it, I would.”

“Back the fuck off, witch,” he said. He slapped away her hand. The corner of his mouth curled. “When I’m free, I’ll hunt you down and kill you. I’ll kill every mage you ever knew. Everyone you love.”

“Give me back the talisman.” She held out her hand as if he owed it to her. As if he was nothing and she was queen of the world.

“Just like every other mage,” he snarled. Anger twisted his mouth and turned his eyes an eerie, interiorly lit blue. “You don’t control me, witch, so the answer’s no.”

“Give it back before Nikodemus finds you and takes it back.”

“Fuck off.” One-handed, he shoved the helmet on his head, cutting off her view of his insanely blue eyes. And then he reached over and pushed her hard enough to send her flying. Her feet left the ground, and she landed hard, scraping the backs of both arms through her sweater.

Stunned, her ears rang with the sound of him revving the motor. She turned her head away from the exhaust. As she watched him go, all she could think about was that he had the talisman and that right now, Nikodemus must believe she’d stolen it and was halfway to Magellan with it, betraying him the way mages always betrayed fiends.

The sound of the motorcycle receded. She was alone. Far away, traffic whooshed along a freeway structure. But this street was silent.

She sat up, slowly, to work her way past the bruises, and stayed on the curb until her head stopped spinning. When her eyes focused, she pulled off the bits of tape still stuck to her wrists. She stood and assessed her condition. Nothing broken, but a great deal was scraped or sore. Her headache, which at Nikodemus’s house had nearly vanished, was coming back full force. Great. She shivered. She had no idea where she was. The combination of wind and fog numbed her joints, and now that she wasn’t distracted by the thought of being murdered, the cold penetrated straight through her. She had no money. Her purse was at Nikodemus’s house. She checked her pockets anyway. Nothing.

Carson started walking. Downhill, since Xia had ridden so far uphill to get here. The streets were wide and dark, not many lights, just locked-up chain-link fences and the smell of cooling asphalt and roof tar. Her everyday world had turned into a dangerous place. She was smack in the middle of a war. If Nikodemus was right and she really was a witch, she had the awful feeling her side wasn’t the good guys.

She tripped over a metal pipe, a short length, a little longer than her forearm, rusted out at one end. She picked it up because there was no other weapon at hand. Whether Nikodemus would come after her she didn’t know, but somewhere out there Kynan was looking for her. She wasn’t going to be unarmed when he found her.

Every so often a car drove past her, blasting music so loud the bass pounded at her ears. One of them slowed down. She ignored the stares and shouts and gestures and kept walking, gripping her pipe. Head down, she counted her steps and headed for the distant lights and sounds of traffic.

The downhill was getting to her knees. Her thighs hurt and her shoes pinched, but she kept walking. The street leveled out for a bit and became residential. Some bars, none too clean from what she saw, a restaurant with dingy walls and paper instead of tablecloths. But mostly homes in various stages of disintegration. Sheets over windows, peeling paint. Barred doors. Her stomach rumbled. Another car pulled even with her and kept pace. A shiny black BMW. She tightened her fingers around her pipe, prepared to—she didn’t know what. Bash someone over the head with it if she had to.

She heard the electric hum of the Beemer’s passenger window sliding down. She walked faster. Colors flashed behind her eyes. The car door opened while the vehicle kept moving, and someone jumped out, running a few steps to keep his balance. She turned, pipe raised, and her blood froze.

Kynan grinned at her. He made a motion to whoever was driving the car, and the door swung shut. He grabbed the back of her upper arm. “Gotcha,” he said.

He was much, much taller than her. Carson brought up the pipe, but he caught it midswing and crushed it into so much powdered rust. He stopped walking, forcing her to stop, too. She drew a breath to scream, and he grabbed her, hand over her mouth, while he stood with his head cocked, studying the buildings. She worked her mouth open and tried to bite him, but his palm was over her mouth, not his fingers. He dragged her up the stairs of a stucco building with a battered mailbox at the top of the cracked stairs. Someone had taped a For Rent sign in the street-facing window.

Once she realized he was taking her inside, she fought. But he was much bigger and stronger, and when she started kicking, he just picked her up and threw her inside, hard enough that she hit the floor and rolled several feet.

“Leave me alone, Kynan.” She scrambled to her feet, eyes darting every which way, looking for a way out. Somewhere to run. “Magellan will never know if you let me go.” Her plea might have been spoken in ancient Egyptian for all the effect she had on him. They were inside an empty house. Vacant. He walked to her and grabbed her by the shoulder in a merciless hold. He marched her through the house, away from the windows and toward the back, where darkness seethed with malice. She twisted and brought up a knee, but he slammed his body against her. Her head hit the wall hard and opened a cut along the side of her head. Warm blood trickled down her temple. Carson prayed Nikodemus was angry enough to come after her.

“You seem to have figured out a few things since you ran off,” he said.

“Yes,” she said. She focused on keeping her breathing even. “Yes, Kynan, I have. I know what Magellan did to you. I know you’re not free.” Words bubbled up, low and desperate. “I’m a mage—maybe I can fix that.”

He laughed. “Carson, you couldn’t touch your magic if your life depended on it.” He slapped a hand on the wall above her shoulder. “You forget, I’ve been watching Magellan poison you since I brought you to the house. You’re expendable, Carson. You always have been, and when you’re gone, he’ll just send me out to get him another witch or mage to use up.”

Her stomach felt like a rock. Nikodemus had been telling her the truth.

“Seems like you know a lot now. So maybe you know what this means: I’ve been released from the prohibition against harming one of the magekind.” He put his head by her ear. “You do know what that means, right?” He grabbed one of her hands and pinned it against the wall. “Did you manage to find out about that?”

She stared into his gorgeous eyes. Thick black lashes. Golden-brown irises. “It means Magellan sent you to kill me. It means you have no choice.” She dropped her voice. “You never have.”

“You learned fast while you’ve been free.” His mouth came closer to her ear, close enough that his breath heated her cheek. He licked blood from her temple. “What’s it like, Carson? To go where you want, when you want? To look around and know you can do whatever the hell you want?”

Her head was pounding again. She might just float away from her body. “I hate him, too,” she whispered.

“He told me to bring him your eyes and your heart when I’m done.”

Carson stared back at him. She wanted to be sick, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.

He pressed her against the wall, trapping her there with his arms and body. He was erect. He rolled his hips against hers to make sure she knew his physical state. While he leaned against her, he traced a finger along her lips. “Every time I looked at your mouth, I imagined you on your knees. Did you know that? In my head, you’re always naked, and you’re touching me, your mouth on my body, and I can do anything I want. What I want. The way I like it. I’m going to have your mind, Carson, and when my cock is hard inside you, I’m going to make you come. You’ll hate it, you’ll hate every second of every minute while I bring you.”

She felt him slipping into her head and threw up a wall, the way she had when she was trying to stop Nikodemus.

“It won’t last, Carson.” He growled. “You can’t hold out on me forever.”

“I hate him as much as you do.”

He snarled, a sound more animal than human. “Nobody hates Álvaro Magellan as much as I do. Not even you.” She felt his presence around her, heavy and monstrous and trying to get into her head.
Walls,
she thought. Her mind was protected by a wall. The sense of him receded. “I killed your parents for him, Carson. I’m the one who took you from your loving family and gave you to Magellan. Poor little orphan. Raised by the man responsible for your parents’ murder.”

She shook her head.

“On your knees, Carson. The way you saw me with Magellan.” He pushed her down. “Do it. Just like that. That’s how we’re starting. You do to me what I have to do to him.”

Carson fought to keep her mind walled off. She might not be able to use her magic, but Kynan was right about one thing. She was free, and she could do whatever she wanted. “I’d rather die.”