Possessed (Book One of the Hollow City Coven Series): A Witch and Warlock Romance Novel (7 page)

The rattling in the woods was getting closer.

He’ll keep me safe. He won’t let any harm come to me. I trust him.

Every nerve in her body was tensed to flee. She knew it would be suicide to run into the woods with no idea where she was going. If the Templars didn’t find her, she would find the river or one of the many predators that she imagined hunted in the dark.

She thought of Shayne. She thought of his eyes, his hands, his smile. She thought of his oath to protect her. There was no denying what was between them. Even if she was a mission. Even if he didn’t understand why she needed to prove herself. Even if she needed to drag him halfway across the world so that he could finally see.

Gillian concentrated so hard on conjuring his image that she was unsurprised to see his form appear beyond the fire. She started to smile, relieved, but then she looked closer.

This man was smaller than Shayne. In the light of the flickering flame, his clothes were the murky, muddy color of camouflage gear. He stepped closer.

Shayne would never have looked at her with such hate in his eyes.

“Your man’s dead, and now you’re coming with us.”

A fearful cry rose up in Gillian’s throat, but she didn’t panic. This was no dark forest. This was a threat she had been dealing with since she was a young woman. She let the man come towards her, sitting frozen as if she were terrified. When he neared, his hand reaching for her, she grabbed his arm. She used it to pull herself up while yanking down as hard as she could. When she was up and he was bent over cursing, she gave him as hard a shove as she could manage. It would have sent a less coordinated man stumbling right into the fire. But the Templar was more skilled. He twisted hard, pulling away from her and jerking himself upright all at once.

Gillian spun to run away, but an iron-hard grip latched over her hand, crunching the fingers painfully. With a hard wrench, she slipped her hand out of her glove and pulled away.

For a moment, he was left holding her leather glove, staring at it in shock. She managed to get a few steps away. Then he roared with fury and came after her again. This time, he caught her more securely by her arm, turning her in a wide circle so she came chest to chest with him. In the unsteady light of the fire, she couldn’t make out any of his features. He was just an enormous, terrifying blob that was overwhelming her. Even in her panic, however, she managed to keep her bare hand away from his skin.

“Little bitch,” he hissed. “They need you alive, but they don’t need your legs, little bitch. Did you think of that? I’ll haul you across fifty miles of bad country with your legs broken. What do you think of that?”

Whatever Gillian might have thought of it, Max obviously didn’t care for the idea. He flew from her pocket, launching himself across her torso. Gillian heard the painful crunch when he bit into the Templar’s hand. She knew that rat teeth were notched so that they could scissor apart their food. When they were panicked or angry, they could bite off chunks of flesh. And right now, Max was both.

The Templar howled, shoving her back. Gillian scrambled to scoop up Max’s flailing form. As she did so, however, she forgot about her bare hand. It touched one of the Templar’s, and her vision went red.

She fell to the ground.

Somewhere above her, the Templar was shouting with pain. Suddenly, he stopped screaming completely. A sickening thump of something heavy hitting the ground echoed against the cliffside. Gillian didn’t care. Distantly, she was aware that Shayne was kneeling over her. She could make out his face in the flickering light of the fire, startled and wild with concern. If she had been able to, she would have reached up to comfort him. She wanted to sit up. She wanted to shake in his arms, she wanted to cry.

Instead, she only stared up at him, her eyes wide and glassy. It felt as if she was under a thick pane of ice. She could see him, but she couldn’t feel him or touch him.

I’m so sorry, Shayne,
she thought, and then her vision went black.

SHAYNE HAD ONCE been ambushed by four Templars, while he was drunk in an alleyway in London. He had known that there were too many of them to fight off. He had known that one way or another, even if he managed to take one or two of them down, they would kill him. They almost did kill him, but then John Lancaster had appeared to drive them off. Shayne had been convinced that moment would go down as the time when he was the most afraid. Now he knew that fear didn’t hold a candle to what he felt when he saw the Templar practically on top of Gillian. He was already throwing himself across the clearing when the Templar lurched back. Gillian dropped to the ground like a rock. His first instinct was to go to her, but he knew he had to take care of the Templar first.

He slit the man’s throat with the same motion that he had used to dispatch the man’s three friends. Finally, he could kneel next to Gillian. Strangely enough, the first thing that he noticed was that one of her gloves was off. It left her bare hand pale in the light of the fire. Still more strange were her eyes. They were dilated so wide her gray irises were nearly gone. The look on her face was one of pure terror.

He didn’t know what he was saying. He knew that he called her name. He knew that he was shaking her. He even tried slapping her gently to rouse her. Instead, she remained stiff. It seemed like every muscle in her body was locked tight. She had gone into some state where she couldn’t see or hear anything around her.

Finally, mercifully, her eyes rolled up in her head, and she went limp. For a moment, he feared the worst. Then he found her pulse, strong and steady. She had simply blacked out. Though he hardly liked her lying insensible on the ground, it was still far better than that all-consuming terror.

As gently as he could, he picked her up and lay her in the shelter of the cliff face. He turned his attention to the Templar he had killed. For a moment, an old and ugly instinct rose up in him. He wanted nothing more than to slash at the body, even if it was already dead. There were things that men had once done after battle was over, terrible things. Instead, Shayne took a deep breath. He dragged the man into the woods, well away from the fire. The scavengers would make short work of him. He knew that this man would not have any electronic equipment or supplies to scavenge. None of the three others had anything either. They had come on this mission as clean as possible.

When he returned to the campsite, Gillian lay where he had left her. He was struck by how small she looked. She had curled over on her side, making herself as compact as she could. She looked like a street child, hiding from the eyes of those who would do her harm.

He came to sit next to her, and found her leather glove on the ground. For a moment, he looked at it. He lay it in front of her so that it would be the first thing she saw when she awoke. He was coming to some conclusions about what she could do. No matter how much he wanted to hold her, no matter how much he wanted to pull her into his lap and cuddle her, he had to hold back.

Shayne hesitated for a moment, and then made a decision. From where he sat, he eyed the perimeter line of their camp. It was mostly bare rock and gravel except for the area where they rested, which was cushioned by the parachute and some pine boughs. There would be nothing that would catch fire. Under his watchful gaze, a line of fire flared up, surrounding them. The flames burned with a soft orange glow, entirely under his control. Slowly, the temperature of the space they inhabited warmed. Soon, it was as cozy as a cabin. The curtain of flames protected them from the wild beasts and from the chill of the night.

Now that they were safe, Shayne felt his body slowly come down from its towering height of adrenalin-fueled rage. He could be calm now. He could do his real job, which was to protect Gillian.

“I haven’t done such a great job, have I, Granger?”

He wanted desperately for her to respond. He wouldn’t have cared if it was with one of her sharp-tongued quips or even a single suspicious look. Instead, there was only silence. Something had scared her badly, and he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t know how to fight it. But it was more than just not knowing how to handle the situation, he realized. Ever since he’d first met Gillian Granger, ever since that first glance on the train, she had made something stir inside him. He didn’t know what it was. It was as if there was a connection between them. No matter where she was, he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Even when he had been roving the darkness, intent on the kill, there was a strange awareness of her in the back of his mind. And in a sudden moment of clarity, he now knew it would always be like that.

Shayne had once known a Wiccan woman who had sailed with the Vikings. At first he had thought that she was a captive, taken from the fair green lands to serve in the frozen north. When he revealed his misconception, she smiled, invited him into the courtyard, and taught him exactly how helpless she wasn’t. She had been a
skjaldmaer
, a shieldmaiden, one of the sisterhood who fought. He’d barely been able to fend off her barrage of blows with his buckler. One night, while they sat with the fire between them, she had told him about wyrd.

“It’s more than fate,” she had said, her eyes golden through the flames. “It’s a calling. When you find it, it tells you who you are and what you are meant for. There’s no quarreling with it because it’s you. There’s no resisting it. You might as well tell the blood in your body to run backwards.”

He had scoffed at her. He was his own master. He had found his way to the Magus Corps because they would give him the tools to do what he liked best. He liked to fight Templars, he liked to help those who deserved it, and he liked to wander. He had never thought of the Magus Corps officers as his masters. In some ways, it was a miracle that he had worked for them as long as he had. Shayne knew no master.

He looked down at Gillian. Something connected them. What had the shieldmaiden said? You will know what you are meant for.

“I am for you,” he whispered, testing the words out.

They resonated within him, and he found himself yearning for her even more. He shook his head, as though he could shake off the feelings. He told himself that they were likely brought on by the stress of the night. He had been hunted. He had done some hunting of his own. He had a sense of responsibility to Gillian. Those were rational things. They comforted him, or at least they did until Gillian thrashed in her sleep.

“No, no, I don’t want to see this,” she murmured unhappily.

She went still again. Just when Shayne started to relax however, she sat straight up, staring at nothing in the darkness.

“No, please,” she cried.

The sound she made was a cross between a groan and a sob, a sound so pitiful it was enough to break his heart. He reached to touch her shoulder, to guide her back down to the pallet, but she moved faster. With a snake’s instincts, she latched onto his hand, holding it tightly. She was like a blind person searching for a guiding hand.

He looked down at her bare hand on his.

It had been easy to overlook the gloves. He had thought that it must be an affectation, or that she was cold. Or perhaps she was hiding scarring, or some kind of mark. Instead, her hand on his looked entirely natural, slender with fingers that were long and lovely. But her bare hand was clamped so hard on his that her tendons stood out.

“Shh, it’s all right,” Shayne murmured, covering her hand with his. “It’s all right. There’s nothing here that’s going to hurt you. I swear, I’ll protect you. I’ll protect you, I will.”

Her face turned towards him. Though her eyes were open, there was a glassiness to them that told him that she wasn’t really seeing him.

“Do you promise?” she whispered intently. “Do you swear?”

“Oh Gillian, I do,” he said. He had never meant anything more in his life. “I do swear. Nothing will harm you. Nothing will touch a hair on your head.”

She relaxed slowly by degrees. Finally, her punishing grasp on his hand released. She still looked miserable, but it was more utter weariness than actual pain.

“Go to sleep,” he said after a moment. “When you wake up, I’ll be here.”

She actually managed a smile at that, faint and wistful. Suddenly, Shayne wanted nothing more than to find everyone who had ever hurt her and destroy them.

“All right,” she whispered. “All right.”

She fell back down to the pallet. It was different this time, however. It looked like slumber, not the drained unconsciousness he had seen before.

Shayne glanced up at the night sky. The stars above were brilliant and gorgeous. He knew he would see them spin across the heavens before he could sleep. He settled in for a long wait. Once in a while, he reached down to touch Gillian’s hair, making her whisper softly in her slumber.

• • • • •

Gillian was aware of being angry. She was furious. She was poor, she was hungry, she was always in pain. There was a red beast that lived inside her, and sometimes, when she wasn’t careful, it would slip its leash. Then terrible things would happen. Though she might have said that it was an accident, that she was ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ she never was. She lived for the moments when the red beast could be released.

She was so angry, all the time. Perhaps there had been other emotions at one point, but the anger pushed them all out of the way. There was only the anger. Sometimes the anger allowed hate or fear a little room to breathe, but most of all, she was the anger.

Gillian caught hurried glimpses of a life that she was only partially sure wasn’t her own. There was a shaved head in a broken mirror. She saw an enormous dog, snarling and kept on a chain all of its ugly life. She saw the face of a frightened brown girl. She saw a desert sky that was lit up with fire. She knew that her body was big and tough. It had been honed, but then it had been thrown away. She knew what it was to be a full foot taller than herself. She knew what it was to be handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police car.

She also found salvation.

On a bench outside the courtroom, right before the reading of her sentence, a man came to her. He was dressed all in black, and in his tie there was a silver pin, shaped like a sword. It held her attention hypnotically as the man spoke.