FIVE
“That pretty well finished my career in the FBI,” Erin told Champion as she looked out the window at the moonlit landscape beyond it.
“They thought you were involved.” He stood to one side, his eyes fixed on her profile.
“Yeah.” There was a knot of tension in her shoulders. She tilted back her head and rubbed absently at it, but it continued to ache. “I damn near got charged with it. They didn’t believe me when I told them what happened. Besides, I had gunpowder residue and David’s blood on my hands and face.”
“They thought you’d killed him in some kind of struggle.” He was quick, she’d give him that.
Erin nodded. “Fortunately the hostage confirmed he’d shot himself, but even then, the brass wondered if the two of us were collaborating for some unknown reason. If we hadn’t passed polygraph tests…”
“But they still didn’t like your story.”
“No. They suspended me pending an investigation.” She sighed and went on rubbing, but the knotted muscle refused to relax. “Finally some shrink suggested the killer—his name was Gary Evans—had exposed us all to some kind of airborne drug that had made us all hallucinate. David had an adverse reaction to whatever it was and killed himself.” Erin shrugged. “That made more sense than the alternative, so I tried to believe it. But even then, I guess I always knew it had all been real.”
“But your career was over,” Champion said, like a man who knew exactly how the system worked.
“I’d been tainted,” she agreed. “They put me on administrative duty while the brass tried to figure out what to do with me. Not that I really cared. I kept seeing David’s death in my nightmares. Every night. Every single fucking night.” She dug in her fingers and pressed.
Suddenly a hand brushed hers aside. “Let me do that.” Reece went to work on the knot with strong fingers.
Erin tensed, wondering if he was going to bite her.
Hell with it. If he did, he’d just put her out of her misery. She relaxed, and the ache began to ease. “Even during the day I thought about what had happened, trying to make sense of it. I kept thinking there had to have been a moment when I could have prevented the whole chain of events. If I could just figure out what it was…” She sighed. “It turned into an obsession. Before long, I couldn’t even eat, let alone sleep.”
“Which probably didn’t make your superiors feel any better.”
Erin laughed shortly. “No, it’s safe to say the concept of an armed and suicidally depressed FBI agent did not fill anybody with enthusiasm.” She sighed as his long thumbs found the perfect place to press. “You’re not really dead, are you?” she asked suddenly. “Or undead. Like those movie vampires.”
“No, I’m most definitely alive.”
“That’s good.” Erin rested her forehead against the cool glass, letting him banish the last of the pain. “Jim Avery came to my rescue,” she said finally.
“The man Parker killed?”
“Yeah. Back when I first joined the Bureau ten years ago, we were stationed in the same podunk field office in South Carolina, investigating robberies. Kind of like me and David, except Jim trained me.”
“That makes for a special bond,” Reece observed after a thoughtful pause. “Must have hurt, seeing him killed.”
“Yeah.” She sighed, remembering the shocked look on Avery’s face when Parker stabbed him. “Another partner I couldn’t save.” Erin shook her head, rejecting the moment of self-pity. “Anyway, after they suspended me, Jim got wind of what had happened. He was trying to recruit agents for the Outfit at the time.” She tapped her bunched fist on the glass. “He was a hell of an agent. When the State Department created the Outfit right after 9-11, they picked him to run it because he was so damn good.”
“Sounds like quite a man.”
“He was.” Having conquered one knot, Reece’s hands worked farther up her neck to find another. She let her eyes close. “That feels good. So anyway, one night when I was sitting in my apartment obsessing about David, Avery dropped by. He had a six-pack and a bag of takeout Chinese. Somewhere between three beers and a carton of fried rice, he got the whole ungodly story out of me.”
“And offered you a job.”
“Which I was about to refuse, until he told me about this Georgia-based Satanic cult he was investigating. The members worshiped somebody they called ‘Geirolf.’ Which was, of course, what Gary Evans called the demon.” She fell silent, remembering that conversation.
“I don’t know what the fuck this Geirolf is, but he’s real. Maybe he does it all with smoke and mirrors like some kind of fucking David Copperfield clone, but he does exist. And he’s using his tricks to get people to kill for him. I’m going to stop his ass.”
“He asked me if I was interested,” Erin said softly. “God, was I interested. I couldn’t turn back the clock and prevent David’s death, but I could, by God, bring in the asshole who was responsible.”
“You went undercover with the cult, even knowing you might encounter Geirolf?” He tilted his head so he could look into her face. “Big risk, even if he was nothing more than the human con man you thought.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t care. For the first time in three months, I felt alive. I walked into the Hoover Building the next morning and handed in my resignation. Two weeks later I was working with Avery to shut the cult down.”
“But Parker said they already knew who you were.”
Erin nodded. “Which explains why I made zero headway. So when Avery told me they’d identified the money man behind the deal, I was willing to do whatever it took.” She turned to face him.
Champion stared. “You thought I was financing the cult? And you went home with me anyway? Slept with me?”
She forced herself to meet his incredulous gaze coolly. “I hoped to build a relationship with you I could use as an entrée into the cult.”
“My.” He rocked back on his heels, brows lifted. “You don’t stop at much, do you?”
“Those cultists are killing people, Reece. There’s nothing I won’t do to stop that.” She eyed him a moment before saying abruptly, “But I was a bit surprised by the strength of my…attraction to you.”
His gaze cooled. “Are you implying something, Erin?”
She considered the best way to handle the topic, torn by her instinct for diplomacy and her need to know what he was capable of. Magically and otherwise. “Vampires are reputed to have certain…powers. Especially over women.”
“You mean, did I put some kind of spell on you?”
“Did you?”
His cool gaze heated, but his tone remained level. “No. I can’t work that kind of magic. And wouldn’t, even if I could.”
“You can turn yourself into a wolf.”
“That’s different. My magic works only inside my body. I can change form, I’m damn strong, and I can heal almost any injury not inflicted by a magical weapon, but I can’t cast spells. Sexual or otherwise.”
Erin snorted. “Don’t underestimate yourself.”
She saw the anger drain from that intelligent gaze. “Now you’re trying to flatter me.”
“Not me.” She decided to change the subject. “So what else can you do? Can you turn into a bat?”
“No, too different from my body weight. I can’t become a mist either, with all due respect to Bram Stoker—which, come to think of it, isn’t much. I do a mean mountain lion, though. Tried to do a tiger once, but I don’t have the mass. Ended up looking kind of emaciated.”
The image—Champion as a skinny, disgruntled tiger—was so silly she had to laugh. “Okay. So. Crosses, holy water, mirrors, and sunlight.”
“I’m not a walking corpse, Erin, so the first three don’t bother me. As for sunlight, I get really bad sunburn, but I don’t burst into flames. I do have to sleep during the day, but not in a coffin….”
Avalon
Grace du Lac tumbled back on the bed as the vampire pinned her with his greater weight. He bared his fangs, his eyes glittering and hot, as he held a pair of iron manacles before her eyes. “Now, wench,” he growled. “Now it’s time for you to serve my immortal lust!”
Grace grinned. “God, I hope so.”
Lance lost his artistic snarl in a laugh. “Come on, baby, work with me here. I played big, bad speeder for you, didn’t I?”
“You are a big, bad speeder. I should know—I was the cop who pulled you over. It wasn’t a stretch for either of us. But do I really look like a helpless Victorian virgin to you?” She spread her arms.
Lance’s gaze dropped as he surveyed the body barely hidden by the fine antique lace of her nightrail. The heat in his eyes increased, and he licked his fangs. “Darling, you look like every fantasy I’ve ever had. Come on, love. For me?”
She rolled her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to act. “Oh, no. Please have mercy on…”
The vision crashed in on her.
Images hit her mind like a heavyweight boxer’s punches, one after the other—a horned thing with a mouthful of demonic teeth. A blond woman, her face expressionless except for the rage in her eyes. And Reece, roaring in defiance. Then another image: the demonic thing, standing over Reece and the woman, both of them lashed naked to some kind of altar. The demon lifted a knife in either hand. Muscles worked in bullish shoulders as it prepared to plunge the enchanted blades downward….
“Champion!”
Her husband caught her by the shoulders as she jolted up off the bed. “Hey—hey!” Lancelot said. “What’s happening?”
She slumped in his arms, feeling her stomach roll. “Vision. I…had a vision. It’s Reece. He’s in danger.”
The fear in her husband’s eyes was replaced by relief as he realized Grace was all right. Then his gaze sharpened with concern. “What kind of danger? From whom? That mole he’s hunting?”
“No.” Grace straightened. “It’s something else. Not human, though it’s not Sidhe, either. Some kind of Mageverse alien, maybe. It looked like a medieval woodcut of Satan. And it’s evil.” Her gaze met his. “It’s going to sacrifice Reece and a woman I’ve never seen before in some kind of rite.”
“But he’s still alive now?”
She remembered the demon’s knife. “For the moment.”
Lance sat back on the bed. “We need to take this to the High Council.”
She nodded grimly. “Now would be good.”
The Cell
Reece paced the cell in long strides. Erin sat in the middle of the bed, her legs drawn up under her, her gaze fierce and inward as if she, too, tried to come up with some kind of escape plan.
He hoped she was having better luck than he was. But he doubted it.
As much as he hated to use the phrase, the situation literally sucked. They were trapped together until he Turned her, at which time Geirolf intended to kill both of them in an act of sympathetic magic designed to destroy Magekind.
On the other hand, it could have been worse.
When the demon had pressed that kiss to his forehead, Reece had felt a spell sink into his brain. For a moment, he’d wondered if he’d been placed under a compulsion to rape Erin. They’d dodged that bullet, though he wasn’t sure why. It was the logical thing for the demon to do.
Of course, if the spell hadn’t been designed to force him to attack Erin, what was it going to do?
Geirolf had to have something in mind. It would take sexual contact to Change Erin; as long as Reece kept his hands off her, there would be no transformation.
Which meant he was keeping his cock firmly inside these silly silk pajamas. As appealing as Erin was, making love to her wasn’t worth the death of his people.
Of course, if he did Change her, there was always the chance she’d be able to use her powers to break them out of the cell. That might be beyond even a Maja’s powers, of course. But it was possible, particularly if Geirolf had indeed damaged the cell when he’d escaped.
So what should he do? Changing her could free them, or could simply ensure their deaths and the destruction of the Magekind.
Then again, she might just go insane and kill him.
He didn’t much care for the odds either way.
It was best to hold off, Reece decided. If he waited, some other alternative might present itself. Maybe he’d get really lucky and some Maja would have a vision. Grace was famous for that kind of thing, and since they were friends, she was even more likely to experience some kind of prophetic dream. On the other hand, if he took action now, the odds were too great he and Erin would end up dead.
In the meantime, he owed it to Erin to explain what her situation was. She needed to know all the possibilities so she could help him make the decision. She deserved a choice.
“Erin?”
She looked up from her steepled fingers. “Yes?”
“We need to talk.”
She studied him, her gaze cool with calculation and wariness. “That’s obvious, but the topics are literally endless. What have you got in mind?”
“Why do you think Geirolf locked us up together like this?”
Erin frowned. “He plans to make us one of his human sacrifices as part of some kind of plot against your people. Whoever the hell they are.” She shook her head. “He talked a lot, but none of it made much sense.”
How could he present this in terms she’d believe? Erin might be willing to believe he was a vampire and Geirolf was some kind of otherworldly demon, but she was much less likely to accept the fantastic truth about herself.
“This isn’t going to be easy to believe,” he began.
“Champion, so far none of this has been easy to believe. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like I’ve got a choice.” Unfolding her long legs, she stood and moved toward him. “I caught something about Merlin.” She shook her head. “I thought he was a myth.”
“No, Merlin, Arthur, Lancelot—they all exist.”
She frowned. “I remember reading that historians believe there was a Celtic warlord named Arthur who lived in the fifth century. But Lancelot is supposed to have been the creation of a French troubadour hundreds of years later. How can he exist?”
“They were wrong.” Reece leaned a shoulder against a stone wall and crossed his arms. “The troubadour was actually one of Lance’s descendants. He simply put to music the stories he grew up hearing about his ancestor.”
“So why did it take so long for Lancelot to appear? Didn’t people know about him?”
“People now don’t know anything about me, and I’ve been an agent for the United States government for the past two hundred and twenty-eight years.”
She stared at him. “You’re kidding. Who the hell recruited you—George Washington?”
“Actually, I was the one who approached him.”
“You approached—? Oh, come on!”
“No, really, I’d known George for years. Served with him during the French and Indian wars even before I became a vampire. When the Revolution broke out, I offered him my services.” He shrugged. “He took me up on it.”
Erin grinned. “I’ll bet you’ve got a collection of war stories to make a historian drool.” Then she shook her head. “Too bad I don’t have time to hear them if we’re going to get out of here. So. The legends about the Round Table are true.”
“No, actually, they’re about ninety percent bullshit, but the court did exist. But Camelot was more than knights and ladies, and Merlin was a hell of a lot more than the Druid magician of legend. To begin with, he wasn’t even human. He and Nimue—”
“Nimue. That was the Lady of the Lake, right?”
“Right. They were—well, I guess you’d call them aliens.”
“Aliens.” He watched her struggle with her instinct to scoff. “Like ET-phone-home aliens?”
“Not…exactly. For one thing, they weren’t just from another planet, they were from another universe. This one, the Mageverse.”
“Hold on. You’re saying we’re in another universe? Now?” She went to one of the windows. Their cell was surrounded by what appeared to be a garden gone jungle, complete with huge, softly glowing roses nodding in the pearlescent light of the Mageverse moon.
As Reece looked out over her shoulder, a tiny, glowing creature flitted up to land on one of the roses by the window. She—and it was definitely a she, with those delicate breasts—folded butterfly wings and parted the petals until she could reach into the flower’s heart. She drew out minuscule fingers covered in glittering pollen.
“Please tell me that’s not what it looks like.”
“Sorry. It’s a fairy.”
“Jesus.” Erin blinked as the tiny Sidhe began delicately licking the pollen from graceful fingertips. Her hair was as pink as cotton candy. “Hey, you think we could get her attention, ask her to get help?”
“Worth a try.” He reached out and tapped on the window. The fairy looked up in alarm and stared into the window. Her big eyes narrowed, and she lifted one tiny fist to extend a finger before flying angrily off.
Erin blinked. “Did she just flip us the bird?”
Reece found himself swallowing a snort of laughter. “Looked like it. I don’t think she could really see inside. The Magekind have good relationships with the Sidhe. I can’t believe she wouldn’t help, if she’d known we were locked up in here.”
Heart pounding, Janieda beat her wings as fast as she could. She had to get to the palace and Llyr.
She had to warn her king that something new had been locked up in Geirolf’s old cell.
Something dangerous.
She’d seen it the moment she’d stared into the magic-darkened glass: a vision.
The king, his beloved face blank and slack in a sleep that was more than sleep. And a woman—a human, her hands surrounded by a nimbus of magic. It was one of the Majae Llyr had been trying to court.
Janieda’s heart contracted at the combination of jealousy and foreboding she felt. Ceasing her frantic wingbeats, she landed on a tree limb and looked back the way she’d come.
No. Telling Llyr there was someone in that cell would be a mistake. Her lover would insist on investigating.
And he could well pay for his curiosity with his life.
Erin frowned, craning her neck to peer outside. “So this is—what? A magical universe that mirrors our own? The landscape out there looks more or less like Earth.”
“It is Earth. It’s just the part of Earth that extends into the Mageverse. The laws of physics don’t work the same way here. Will has a lot more influence than it does back home, for one thing.”
She considered the idea thoughtfully. “Actually, that might explain a few things. There’s been an experiment or two that suggests thought can influence quantum particles.”
Reece nodded in agreement. “Yeah, when you get down to the subatomic level, the barriers between the two universes break down. But otherwise, it’s tremendously difficult to get Mageverse energies to function back home.” He gave her a searching look. “Unless you’re a Maja.”
Erin frowned, trying to put the pieces together. “So Merlin and the Lady of the Lake are from Mageverse Earth.”
“No, actually they were from some other Mageverse world altogether. They were travelers—missionaries of a sort.”
She rocked back on her heels. “Missionaries? Like saving souls and that kind of thing?”
“Not…exactly. For hundreds of years Merlin’s people had been visiting other worlds, and they’d noticed a disturbing trend. Intelligent races have a bad tendency to kill themselves off in their adolescence, either through war or by causing ecological disasters.”
Cop that she was, Erin didn’t find that news particularly surprising. “Huh. Wonder if that explains why we haven’t had much luck picking up radio signals from other intelligent races?”
He shrugged. “That, and most of ’em don’t use radio. Eventually they discover Mageverse energies work a lot better. Anyway, Merlin’s people—we call them the Fae—decided to do something about that. But they couldn’t just show up and dump a bunch of technology and philosophy on less advanced people.”
“Who’d probably just end up killing themselves even faster.”
“Right. So what the Fae did was come up with a kind of bootstrapping concept. They’d visit planets and create a group of guardians to whom they’d entrust the powers of the Mageverse, along with a knowledge of the Fae’s advanced technology and philosophy. Then the Fae would leave them to prevent their people from destroying themselves. But only from behind the scenes. The guardians were forbidden to reveal themselves.”
“Why all the secrecy? Why not just come out of the closet and say, ‘We’re here. This is what you need to do.’”
Reece shook his head. “Think about it. Up until the last couple of hundred years, they still burned witches on Earth.”
“Good point.”
“Besides, the idea isn’t just to plop an alien culture down on top of ours. The goal is to enable humans to survive long enough to develop their own advanced culture. The best way to do that is for us to remain as far under cover as possible.”
“But you said you work for the government,” Erin pointed out. “That doesn’t sound like you’re hiding to me.”
“I haven’t told the Feds about the rest of Magekind. As far as my contacts know, I’m just a lone vampire who happens to have a patriotic streak. And even so, there are damn few folks who know about me.”
“I’m just amazed some senator hasn’t held a press conference and outted your ass.”
“Which is precisely why members of Congress have never been in the know. Besides, anybody I decide to tell usually gets a visit from a Maja fairly soon thereafter. One spell later, they acquire a deep inability to discuss me with anybody who isn’t already in on the secret.”
“Huh.” Obviously deep in thought, Erin wandered over to the table to look over the plate of cold meat, bread, and cheeses. “Then how did Parker find out?”
“He’s a magic user working with my FBI contact. I suspect he read the information out of the guy’s head.”
Erin picked up a knife and sliced off a chunk of cheese. “Nice of the Demon Lord to provide munchies, huh?” She eyed the cheese narrowly. “Since he plans to sacrifice us, it’s probably not poisoned.” She took a healthy bite.
“Might be laced with aphrodisiacs, though.”
She choked. “What? Why would he—?”
“I’m getting to that.” Watching her eye her food dubiously, he added, “I don’t really think he did anything to it. He probably figures we’re going to be here a while, so you’ll need something to eat.”
Erin shrugged and nibbled cautiously. “If you say so.”
Walking over, Reece picked up a pitcher and poured them each a goblet. He was a little too close; when he inhaled, his senses filled with her lush, erotic scent.
Cut that out, he told himself, and moved to a safer distance. “I got off the subject. Where was I?”
“Merlin,” she supplied, taking a sip. “Hey, wasn’t this Dom a minute ago? Tastes like brandy now.”
“Pitcher’s enchanted.” He took a sip of his own and grimaced. It still wasn’t blood. “Anyway, Merlin and Nimue arrived on Earth around 500 A.D. to start setting up Earth’s guardians. The first question they had to deal with was, who did they trust with the power?”
“Yeaaaah.” She sliced off a chunk of meat and started making a sandwich. “I can think of a lot of people I wouldn’t give it to. Parker, for example.”
“Right. So they spent the next century testing people all over the planet. In Europe their first converts were Arthur and his half sister, Morgana Le Fay.”
Erin plopped a piece of bread on top of the stack she’d made and took a healthy bite. “Did they really commit incest and have a kid?”
“Right, Mordred.” A waft of air current carried the scent of her hair to Reece’s sensitive nose. His cock twitched behind the silk of his ridiculous pajamas as he tried to remember what they’d been talking about. “They were teenagers, didn’t know they were related. That’s another story. Didn’t end well.”
“So where did the vampire thing come in?”
An image flashed through his mind: the raw sensual pleasure of sinking his fangs into the thin skin over her pounding pulse. He cleared his throat. “Fae males and females have a kind of symbiotic relationship. The females absorb and manipulate Mageverse energies; that’s basically what they eat. The males can’t do that. The only way they can use that energy is after it’s been processed in their partner’s bodies.”
She looked at him around her sandwich. “Okay, you lost me.”
“It’s like animals and plants. Plants can convert sunlight into what they need to survive. We can’t, so we eat the plants. But if you actually eat your females, your race isn’t going to survive very long, so the males evolved into…”
“Vampires.” She took another bite.
“Right. By drinking a small amount of a female’s blood, the vampire could obtain the Mageverse energy her body had processed and converted.”
Erin sipped her wine thoughtfully. “I’m not sure that makes a hell of a lot of sense.”
“Neither does disco. Some things just happen.”
“Funny.”
“I try. Anyway, when Merlin and Nimue began creating their race of guardians, they used a template they knew worked: their own. So you ended up with vampire Magi who were stronger than hell, and witch Majae who could work spells.” As he took a deep breath, her scent teased him. Feeling his cock harden, he buried his nose in his goblet and took a deep breath, trying to drown his senses in the pungent smell of the brandy.
Where the hell was all this lust coming from? He’d been fine at first, but the longer he was with her, the more the Desire gnawed at him.
Oh, hell. His stomach sank. Was this Geirolf’s spell, kicking in at last?
And if it was, how was he going to stay away from her? Especially knowing how she tasted, how her smooth, soft skin felt under his hands, how her tight, wet sex gripped him…
Spell or no spell, Reece thought, I’ve got to stay away from her.