The Beast Within (16 page)

“How about blackmail?”

He jerked his gaze up.

She lifted her chin. “You work with me to find Gram or I’ll tell the whole town you’re opening a portal and summoning demons. You’ll be fired as town wizard.”

It took an entire three seconds to get control of the white-hot fury racing through him. The little mortal had no idea of the consequences of her actions. Without him there to guard that portal until he could fix his fried magic and permanently reseal it, the town would be slaughtered. Forcing the anger back, he considered his options when he saw the large figure come at them from the left.

Mira screamed just as the hulking creature grabbed her up and ran.

B
lind terror blasted adrenaline through Mira. She hit the massive arm clamped around her waist and holding her like a rolled-up rug. Her head and legs hung down and she saw the ground flying by at a sickening rate. Her feet, fists and keys had zero effect. The thing’s skin was leathery and covered in coarse hair. It had to be seven feet tall, three hundred pounds and man-shaped with a serious case of ugly.

Jesus, it stunk like skunk and sewage.

Horror seized her, squeezing her chest and forcing the air from her lungs, until her throat burned with terror. She knew it would kill her, ripping her apart and feasting on her blood just like the demon that had killed her parents. She’d had this nightmare over and over after their deaths.

The thing kept running, bouncing her mercilessly, and from the look of the thickening carpet of leaves, they were heading into the forest.

Oh God, oh God…

She heard a whistling sound. Felt a breeze.

Then she was suddenly released and slammed into the ground, leaves and dirt billowing up around her. She sucked in a breath and felt a spray of hot wet drops splatter over her. Shoving herself to her hands and knees, she saw the troll-thing toppling over, its head gone. Blood poured out the gaping neck. Its thick, hairy body was already caving in and decomposing at an accelerated pace.

She screamed and tried to crawl away.

“Stop it!” the wizard snapped at her. “Get up. Hurry, damn it, you have troll blood on you.” He grabbed her hand, jerked her to her feet and starting running.

Mira stumbled. Her legs felt like noodles. Her pumps were gone, having fallen off when the troll had her, and she was stumbling on rocks and twigs in her bare feet.

Gage wrapped his arm around her waist, lifted her and ran. This time, at least, she was vertical, held against his body. She tried to open her mouth, tried to figure out what was happening, but the pure speed and strength of the wizard stunned her.

He ran up the steps to his porch, into the house and up the stairs, carrying her and the sword, and still leaping up three steps at a time. He blew down a hallway, into a bedroom and finally came to a stop in a huge bathroom. That was when she became aware of the pinpricks of pain stabbing her skin—on her face, her arms, her legs.

Gage set her on her bare feet. “Strip now!” He put his bloody sword on the counter and pulled a BlackBerry out of his jeans and studied the screen while walking to the brown marble shower and turning on the jets.

“Are there any more of those…things?” Her voice echoed in the bathroom. She raised her hands and saw tiny red drops and started to shake. She could still smell that skunk-and-sewage stink. Still feel the terror. She’d been sure she was going to be torn apart, ripped to shreds like her nightmares. She watched as the spots on her trembling hands burned. Deeper. Burrowing into her.

“No. Portal’s closed and a scan shows all clear.”

Ignoring the sounds of Gage moving around, she watched as the little spots spread. “It’s burning,” she mused.

Gage moved back into her line of vision. “No time.” He grabbed her hand and dragged her into the shower. Warm water hit her from three sides, drenching her in seconds. Gage shoved her hands in front of a spray that was at waist level.

The shock cleared, washing away in the water. Mira opened her eyes and said, “You’re naked.” Her body went tight and the prickly burns didn’t seem to matter anymore. The man was sculpted! His dark hair was wet, lying against his skull and touching his shoulders. His face was lean and hard, his silvery-blue eyes had a ring of dark gray. She dropped her gaze to his naked torso. Through the blood and cuts scattered on him, she saw hardcore, lean muscle that roped up his chest, bulged at his shoulders, then ran down his arms. But the most astonishing thing of all were the markings. They started as a triskellion just below his heart and between his ribs. It consisted of three spirals within a spiral done in pure black lines that seemed to actually move. From the outer spiral prongs snaked out into flowing, henna-colored markings up over his shoulders, rolling down his arms, wrapping around his torso and disappearing lower.

She followed those lines and heat burst into her face and chest. The ribbons of color went down his tight stomach, some rolled over his lean hips, and others went down into his pubic hair.

Even his penis had lines, which grew and swelled as his dick rose under her gaze.

“You need to get these clothes off.” He reached for her blouse, undoing the buttons at an astonishing speed.

Mira jerked her head up and grabbed his hands.

His silvery-blue gaze rose to hers. “We have to get all the troll blood off. It’s poisonous.” He undid the last button.

“But you were covered in it.” Her voice came out a whisper.

“I’m magic-born so it doesn’t affect me as much, and I’ve built up an immunity.” He pulled the shirt apart, his stare dropping to the wet bra covering her breasts. Then he pushed the shirt off and tossed it away.

Then her bra.

The warm water cascaded over her bare shoulders and hit her lower back. Gage blocked her front from the water, but his gaze felt more powerful than the water jets.

Her nipples puckered, the skin over her breasts felt tight and sensitive. “You don’t have to stare!”

He flicked his gaze up to her face. “Like you stared? My cock liked it.” He reached behind her and dragged down the zipper of her skirt. Then he crouched, pulling her skirt and panties down. He had her step out of them and tossed them away.

Mira stood there naked, vulnerable and unable to believe she was in a shower with the Wizard of Raven Mist. The wizard she blamed for her parents’ murder. Yet he’d saved her life tonight. Twice. She had to pull herself together. “Get out, I’ll do this.” She reached for his bottle of soap.

He rose. “Oh no,” he said in a low voice that throbbed with a promise. “We work together. Isn’t that what you said?” He picked up a bottle of shampoo, poured out a dollop and began to work it into her hair.

His long fingers stroked her scalp and made her shiver. “To find my grandmother!” He had her off balance. He was ruthless, dangerous, but she hadn’t expected…this.

He pushed her back into the spray and rinsed her hair. Then he turned her so that her back was to his chest. Pouring soap from another bottle, he lathered up his big hands and ran them over her arms. Then her chest. He leaned forward and said against her ear, “These were the terms of your blackmail scheme. Together.” He ran his soapy hands over her breasts, circling them, sliding beneath the heavy globes.

“To find my grandmother,” she repeated, gritting her teeth against the prickles of pleasure.

“Yes, and what do I get in return?” He stroked his palms over her nipples.

A slice of heat ignited and raced down to her groin. “Money!” She blurted it out, wondering why was she letting him touch her.

“I have more money than you can ever conceive. No, I believe”—he trailed his hands down her belly—“I want something more than that.”

Dear God, she was surrounded by this huge, powerful man, and it was confusing the hell out of her. “What?”

He slid one hand down her stomach. “Spread your legs.” He pressed a foot between hers, forcing her to widen her stance. He slid his hand between her thighs, his long fingers stroking intimately against her sensitive flesh.

Mira grabbed his arm, feeling the heat penetrate her fingers where she touched his odd markings. What were they?
Focus!
“What do you want from me to find my grandmother?”

He moved just enough to feather the pad of his finger gently over her clit. Back and forth. And again. Mira’s stomach tightened to a knot of need. She dug her fingers into his arm and fought to keep from moving, from pressing herself onto that finger touching her, tormenting her.

Gage pressed his hot mouth close to her ear. “What are you willing to give me?”

She couldn’t stop herself from blurting out the truth. “Anything.” She’d do anything to save the woman who’d loved and raised her. Anything.

And now the wizard knew it too.

Gage walked into his workroom, still tense with unspent lust. Dragging his ass out of that shower, away from Mira Tate and her hot little body, had taken a tremendous force of will. He dropped his sword and Calia Tate’s melted cell phone on the desk and stared at the sleeping computer monitor. “Rhys, I need a status update. Now.”

Nothing. The monitor stayed dark.

His temper sizzled. Slapping his hands down on the desk, he snapped, “Get your spectral ass over here! I know you hear me! Show up now or I’m sending a hot Latin lover into Phoebe’s dreams.” Phoebe had been the love of Rhys’s life when he’d been alive. Rhys had chosen death-sleep to wait for Phoebe to join him in death, rather than moving to the next plane without her. Since Gage had woken Rhys, he now pined for Phoebe and met up with her in her dreams when she slept.

“What?” Rhys appeared on the screen wearing a chocolate-brown silk robe, his eyes furious. “I told you the portal was sealed and I didn’t detect any more troll-demons.” When he didn’t get an answer fast enough, he went on. “Well? Come on, spit it out, boy! Phoebe has insomnia and might wake up any moment.” Lightning flashed in hot, bright streaks around the image of Rhys on the screen.

“Can’t help it. We have a problem.” He explained about Mira and her kidnapped grandmother. Rhys had heard some of it through the BlackBerry, but Gage filled in the holes. “I can’t rely on my power to find this wizard. I need you to see if you can find anything in Calia’s burnt phone. And search through cyberspace for any sign of them.” Rhys said it was easier to move through cyberspace as a ghost, that it drained less of his ghostly energy. “Find out as much as you can.”

Thunder cracked through his computer speakers. “Phoebe’s asleep! I spent the whole day and night helping you with the portal and trolls. Now you expect me to leave her and run around town, doing what? Just guessing where the wizard might be?”

He didn’t flinch. “Yes.” Holding out the phone, he said, “There might be a clue in here.”

Red flames exploded on the screen. “Why should I?”

He knew why, but Gage told him anyway. “Because I’m the only one who can send you back. When Phoebe dies, do you want to be stuck here? That could happen if this wizard kills me.”

The flames stopped and Rhys shifted his image from wearing a robe to wearing tailored slacks and a crisp white shirt, his hair freshly combed. “What are you going to be doing?”

“Keeping Mira distracted.”

Rhys looked skeptical. “How? She’s not stupid if she blackmailed you.”

“Not a coward either. She stabbed a troll who was trying to choke her in the eye with her keys.” He’d been pretty damned impressed with that. However, now that he knew who she was, he remembered an important detail. “She’s magic-blind. Her parents sought me out all those years ago for a private consultation about their daughter who was one hundred percent magic-blind. Completely frigid. She’ll never know if I’m doing real magic or faking it. I’ll convince her we’re following the trail while you’re finding Calia and the wizard.”

“And if I do find the wizard? Then what? You’re fried and we haven’t found the way to ground your powers.”

Gage didn’t need to be reminded. Seventeen years ago he’d had taken on an apprentice, Jillian. She’d been smart, powerful, beautiful and completely untrained.

He should have told her no. He had been just over two hundred years old and extremely powerful, almost completely full up with power. It was too dangerous a time for him to take on an apprentice.

But he had. Jillian seduced him and Gage had let her. Without his knowledge, she had stolen enough of his power to raise a demon.

Her plan had been to have the demon kill Gage and steal all his power. Instead, she’d lost control of it, and it killed the couple who’d been there waiting to see Gage.

Gage had discovered what she was doing, but he’d been too late to save Mira’s parents. He’d banished the demon back to hell and killed Jillian.

But before she’d died, Gage took his power back from her. He had known what would happen, but he’d had no choice. She’d bargained with a demon and would go into hell when she died. Gage had to take his power back so the demon didn’t get it. And when he did, his triskellion and the mantling that held all his power overloaded and short-circuited.

In short, he had fried. No wizard that Gage knew of had ever recovered from becoming fried.

That was why he’d raised Rhys. His old mentor had stuck by him for the last seventeen years, helping him keep the portal closed, and finding any trolls that got through all while looking for a cure.

Rehashing all this didn’t help. Running a hand through his damp hair, he said, “I’ll find a way to deal with the wizard. We’ve always found a way to keep the town safe.”

“I’ll see what I can find out,” Rhys said.

“Check in on my BlackBerry.”

Rhys nodded, then disappeared in a huge explosion that filled his screen, then faded away like fireworks.

“Show-off,” Gage said. But his mentor was right. He needed to find a way to ground his power and fast.

M
ira dressed in a pair of sweats rolled up at the hem and a white T-shirt the wizard had left for her in the bathroom. He’d said her clothes had to be burned.

Once dressed, she found Gage in a large room the size of a three-car garage that was half chemistry lab and half office. One wall had a built-in desk with five flat panels mounted over it. Four of them flashed images of the grounds around the house. The adjacent wall had a bookcase filled with tomes. The rest of the room had shelves containing jars holding colorful herbs, strange liquids and various items. There was also a stainless-steel industrial refrigerator.

There were two six-foot-long, black granite tables at the far end of the room. Gage stood at one of them with his head bent, his naked shoulders bunching and releasing as he moved.

“I need clothes,” she announced.

“You’re fine.” He didn’t even look up.

“Fine? I don’t have shoes, this shirt is white and you can see right through it.”

He jerked his head up. His gaze hit her face and slid down. Slow. Searching. Seeking.

Her skin broke out in goose bumps, her heart stuttered and her hands grew damp. She’d never felt a gaze like that before. It hit her, sank deep into her skin to light her nerves on fire. She almost felt more exposed than when she’d been naked in the shower with him. “Stop it! Can you manifest clothes magically or can we run by my apartment? I can’t walk around without underwear.”

“Later, busy here.” He dropped his head.

She walked toward him to see what he was doing.

“Don’t step in the circle.”

She looked down. Sure enough, there was a circle drawn on the tiled floor. What she’d seen of the rest of the house, it was all wooden floors, but this room had a light gray tile.

Her eyes were riveted on the circle, and her stomach turned over. Circles were for dangerous magic—like summoning demons. Staring at the black outline of the circle, she asked, “Is this where my parents were killed?”

“No.”

She looked up to see him open a bottle of water and pour it into an iron pot sitting over one of those chemist burners. His coldness rubbed at her skin. Her parents were nothing to him.

She was nothing to him. He’d touched her in the shower, making her feel vulnerable and desirable. But when he’d gotten the admission he wanted from her, he’d shifted from hot and sexy enough to melt her resistance to cool and efficient. She stalked around the circle to stand across the table from him. “Where exactly were my parents murdered?”

He lifted his eyes. “Not here.” Then he picked up the mess that had been Gram’s cell phone, and using just his hands, broke off a pea-sized chunk. Then he dropped it in the mortar.

“Where?” It was somehow vitally important that she know.

“It was another building. I had a separate lab and office on the property. It’s gone now.” He picked up a magnet and ran it over a grater, letting the pieces fall into the mortar’s bowl.

“Gone?”

His jaw clenched, but his hands were smooth and steady as he scraped the shavings from the grater and set it aside. “I destroyed it. Completely.”

That made her feel a little bit better, but her stomach churned with worry for Gram. “What are you doing?”

“Making a potion to find the wizard. I’m using the cell phone as the link since he used his power to destroy it.” He picked up the pestle and began grinding the plastic from the phone and the magnet shavings.

She tried to keep her gaze on what he was doing, not his chest and arms and stomach covered in those amazing markings. “What’s the magnet for?”

“It creates a magnetic effect between the potion and the wizard.” Setting down the pestle, he lifted the bowl and used his fingers to sweep the ground-up components into the simmering water.

He had long fingers and strong hands. Heat rose in her chest and face at the memory of his hands touching her in the shower. She’d had a couple boyfriends, but the way Gage had touched her seemed more intimate than her previous sex partners.

Probably because he was a wizard, and she’d heard that before her parents’ murder, he’d been quite the partier. Women had flocked to him, and all but begged him to have sex with them.

And she’d been no different, had she?

A flash of silver caught her attention. She shook off her thoughts and watched as Gage took the cap off a silver blade, pricked his finger and then squeezed a drop of blood into the mixture.

The brew sizzled loudly like frying bacon and white fog billowed up into a fast-expanding cloud.

He dripped in a second drop of blood.

The intense fog retracted, pulling all the white smoke back into the potion.

Then the potion sat there, gurgling softly, looking a little bit like a murky-brown whiskey. Gage grasped the handle and poured the stuff into a tall beaker. The mixture bubbled and spit.

“What’s it doing? It’s not going to explode is it?”

Gage picked it up, swirling the liquid in the glass with an intense look of concentration on his face. “The hissing and popping is from the hot liquid hitting the cooling beaker. It brings it down to room temperature in seconds.”

She was intensely curious, and trying to keep her mind off Gage and his naked chest. “Are you going to drink it? With the plastic and magnet pieces in it?”

He raised an eyebrow. “It’s not going to work by staring at it.” Then he drank it.

“Condescending bastard.” She turned and walked around the table to a shelf filled with several crystal balls of different sizes, all on stands. They all looked the same to her—murky. It had always been that way. All her life she’d been on the outside, unable to see, feel or sometimes even hear magic like her family did. They all looked at her exactly the way Gage did. Her own parents had been so disappointed they’d made an appointment to consult Gage about trying to fix her. Except for Gram. Gram loved her the way she was. Tears burned behind her eyes. Blinking them away, she said, “How long will this potion take? We have to find her.”

“Depends on how powerful this wizard is. If he’s created a strong cloak around them, it will take time to break through it.”

“What do you mean you don’t know how long?” She turned, but he had his back to her as he cleaned up the table. “You’re supposed to be a master wizard, one of the most powerful in the world.” Her mind began churning with rapid thoughts. She’d heard stories of his power, of his ability to flash-jump from one place to another, summon and banish demons, call lightning, manifest items out of thin air…but he didn’t know how long it would take to find one old woman and a wizard?

He didn’t answer, just ignored her.

She narrowed her eyes on his powerful back. “You didn’t use magic to banish the trolls.” He’d used a sword, although he’d been faster than any mortal she’d even seen. Wizards were magic-born and not mortal. Magic-sensitives were mortals born with varying abilities to feel, touch and sometimes manipulate magic, but they were still mortal. And of course, magic-blinds like Mira were mortal and the bottom of the food chain, considered by magic-borns and magic-sensitives to be the worker bees of the world. “Why is that, wizard? Why didn’t you just blast those trolls back to hell?”

He turned from the sink and strode toward her with a powerful, ageless grace that silenced the sound of his boots on the floor. He was in front of her before she took her next breath. “You’re questioning me?”

How many times had some magic-sensitive given her this exact same attitude? “Damn right I am. It’s my grandmother’s life at stake and I’ll do everything within my power to get her back.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Your power? And what power would that be?”

Maybe she didn’t have magic, but she was smart, determined and resourceful. Ignoring the way he towered over her, she said, “I have the power to destroy you and your cushy little job as the town wizard. I know you have a portal on the grounds here somewhere. I’ve seen those ugly-ass trolls.” She took a breath and added, “If I need more, I’ll find it. Who knows what secrets you’re hiding here?”

His face transformed as he rolled out a slow smile and he lifted his hands to rest them on the shelf behind her, trapping her between his powerful arms with those beautiful markings. “You’ve seen all of me, my little blackmailer. I have no secrets from you. You’ve seen just how far my power goes.”

His scent surrounded her, soap and amber mixed with a wild electric tang that she could almost taste on the back of her tongue. “How far your power goes?”

“My mantling, Mira. The lines that flow out from my triskellion. They are the power I’ve built since being branded a master wizard.”

She looked down at the symbol, the three spirals within the spiral. “The circle that never ends,” she said, watching as the spirals seemed to turn like a lazy fan. “It’s a brand? Like a cow is branded?” Master wizards and their traditions were secretive and mysterious.

“Branded by our mentors. If we are true and have acquired the level of control required, the red-hot brand won’t hurt. From then on, our power grows and spreads in the mantling.”

She looked at the henna-colored ribbons trailing out from the triskellion. One curled up over the muscles in his chest, over the contours of his shoulder and wound around the muscles in his arm until it finally vanished just past his wrist. “You’re covered in that…mantling…everywhere.” She remembered the way his penis looked as it had engorged. A hot need pulsed deep inside her, making her shift with a restless ache. She wanted to touch him, trace those lines…. She had to get herself under control. “How long did it take to get this much power?”

“Nearly two centuries.”

She jerked her head up. “Two…how old are you?” She could feel the heat from his arms stretching past her face, and almost hear a faint hum. As if his mantling whispered.

“Two hundred and nineteen.”

“Years?”
She gaped at him. She’d known wizards weren’t mortal but…“You look thirty-something! How can you be this…
hot
…and so old?”

His eyes crinkled at the edges. “Good to know you think I’m hot. I was branded at thirty-six, and all the power running through me slows aging.”

Unable to resist, she looked at his triskellion, at the pure black lines that swirled into those three separate spirals, then flowed into the outer spiral, then branched off into the mantling. The beauty and symmetry spellbound her, drew her. Yet, as she stared, she noticed that the turning spirals didn’t quite rotate in the same rhythm. Something was off and disturbing the balance of one spiral feeding into the next. She lifted her hand and laid it over the triskellion.

Gage sucked in a breath and didn’t move.

His skin was hot, but it was the vibration of those lines that told her his magic was
alive.
It felt like velvet ribbons sliding up around her fingers, circling her hand, cradling her wrist and starting to trail up her arm. It was incredibly sensual and almost unbearably intimate.

It was as if she were touching more than the man, actually touching the very magic that defined him.

She knew then that Gage Remington was everything she was not.

She jerked her hand back.

Yet velvety power still caressed the sensitized skin of her fingers, hand and forearm. The touch kept swirling and seeking, making her shiver and need something she couldn’t define. A longing welled up in the deepest part of her chest. “No,” she said, shaking her hand at the wrist, trying to disconnect, to separate back into herself.

The sensation began to slow and she looked down at her hand.

Curing up around her wrist and arm was a single henna-colored ribbon, just like Gage had all over his torso.

She gasped, then locked her gaze on the wizard and demanded, “What did you do?”