Chapter Forty-Seven
There was nothing for it. He was coming for her; that was a given.
So the only real thing for Angel to do now was turn the tables on him. Switch from defense to offense.
She was just finishing the final spell when she began to sense him in the forest nearby. But rather than the warm-belly, sexual-thrill sensation he usually gave her when he was somewhere in the vicinity, it was only the fact that he’d triggered one of her wards that alerted her to his presence. She’d set them up everywhere.
She felt his brush with her magic as if he’d unwittingly pulled on a string attached to a bell. Gotcha, she thought right back. But she was so nervous, his slip up actually made her go completely still. She listened carefully, even holding her breath.
Angel figured Jake would have expected her to run from him. If she were anyone else in her shoes, that’s probably what she would have done. And that’s one of the reasons she didn’t do it. The other reason was that this assumption worked in her favor two ways. If he was sure she would run, then most likely he and David would split up. Jake would track her from behind, riding hot on her heels, and David would transport ahead in whatever direction Jake told him she was most likely headed. Which would leave Jake alone.
That’s what she wanted.
The other benefit was that Jake would be so busy concentrating on hunting her down, he wouldn’t be thinking about things like wards. He was already proving her right.
When a second of her wards went off, Angel turned in the direction of his approach and drew her gun. But the instant she had the weapon gripped firmly in her hands, it was kicked from her grip with shocking force, sending pain radiating up her arms.
The gun hit the dirt, and Angel stumbled, realizing Jake’s cunning. He’d tricked her.
Clearly he had caught on to what she was doing when he’d tripped the first ward. He set the second one off on purpose to throw her attention in the wrong direction. She’d been facing the away from him when he’d come into the clearing. Now he was behind her, and she was unarmed.
Angel gritted her teeth and spun to face him, whipping out with angry momentum and practiced speed. But he blocked her attack, knocked her off balance, and blocked her second attack as well. Fighting with him was draining and confusing. He never dealt any real damage, but he moved fast, and she was forced to keep up the same pace. The the night was so dark, their movements too quick, and Angel started to feel disoriented.
No, she told herself. Focus. This is what he wants.
She concentrated, thanking her lucky stars for the mental walls she’d erected as she’d set up this trap. Otherwise, it all would have been moot; he would have simply entered her mind and either controlled her with vampire influence, or used her own thoughts against her, defeating her at every turn.
The fact that he’d tried to do just that became clear when he blocked her next few punches and then grabbed her arms, holding them tight rather than simply allowing her attacks to deflect. Once he had both of her wrists, he shook his head admonishingly and smiled.
“Tsk, tsk Angel, you’re locked up like Fort Knox. What’s the matter, you don’t trust me?”
“You want the honest truth?” she asked as she tugged ineffectually against him. She wasn’t actually trying to get away. She was maneuvering, or trying to.
“I find it preferable,” he said, smiling easily. He was so damn perfect. So tall above her, leather-clad and bound in muscle. With his glowing green eyes and his fangs just barely peeking behind his lips, it was difficult for her to concentrate, even with her wards up blocking his power over her. He was doing it on purpose, letting just enough of his monster show. He knew it would throw her off her game. And it was working.
“The truth is,” she told him, “I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anyone in my life, Jake.” And that really was the truth.
The glow in his eyes pulsed, shifting in its intensity as if his eyes were connected to an electrical outlet and someone was fucking with the plug. His body braced in front of her. She could see it in the way he slightly straightened, and the veins in his strong forearms became more pronounced. She could also feel it in the tightness of his grip.
“But you’re not Jake,” she finished.
Jake’s handsome face hardened. He was visibly subverted by her words, but she didn’t want to think too much about it, because it gave her just enough of an edge to finish springing her trap.
Angel dropped down suddenly, putting the entirety of her weight on the wrists Jake held so firmly in his hands. He wasn’t expecting the sudden shift, and it knocked him off balance, forcing him to let go even as he stumbled forward. Angel hit the ground, slid forward, and rolled over, kicking up in a round house that caught Jake brutally in the face and snapped his head to the side.
He crashed to his knees from the shock of the impact, but recovered with inhuman speed, and was back on his feet before she’d fully reached her own.
Angel double-checked where he was standing and hastily spoke the words of the spell she’d so carefully set up. “Immobiles nunc somnum altum!”
The magic ripped from her being like someone tearing a grimoire in half and burning the stolen pages, but the spell activated at once and hit home hard. Jake was instantly wrapped in coiling ropes of strong magic that whipped out from the ground beneath his feet and held him fast.
He dropped to one knee again, and gritted his teeth. When he found her with his eyes and held her gaze with his, Angel experienced a brief, fleeting panic that he would somehow break free of the trap. But it had been made specifically for him – with the pendant he’d given her as its main ingredient.
And it held fast. Little by little, Jake weakened. The red left his eyes, shifting to yellow. The yellow faded to green. The green glow was the last magic to depart, until at last, Jake knelt before her, his strong body temporarily defeated, his magic all but fully drained away. He dropped his head, and Angel spoke the final words that would seal the spell. “Somnum absoluta.”
The entire spell weakened her immensely, leaving only a few tattered remnants of her veritable book behind. Two or three pages, two or three spells and that was all. But when Jake dropped to his side unconscious, she accepted that it had been worth it.
One down, she thought as she shivered and dizziness swept through her. One to go. She braced herself, stood slowly, and made her way to Jake’s body. She knelt beside his boots and dug down into the dirt a few inches away. His boot prints marked the space where he’d been standing moments earlier. From between the prints, Angel pulled a shining silver object.
She raised her hand and let the pendant drop to the end of its chain. The chain glimmered in the moonlight, but the bear claw emitted a bright emerald green glow that pulsed with pent-up magic. This was Jake’s power. Temporarily stolen, and temporarily stored.
Unfortunately, no one could extract it from the bear claw but him. It was simply a vessel for the magic to fill as it was taken from him. After a day, it would fade away as Jake naturally regained his power through rest and time.
Angel slipped the pendant around her neck, tucked it beneath her shirt again, and pulled the cuffs out of Jake’s back pocket. She studied them carefully. Standard warden anti-magic cuffs. They would need to be reinforced or they wouldn’t hold a vampire for long. Luckily, anti-magic didn’t mean they couldn’t be enchanted. It simply meant that anyone wearing them couldn’t access their own magic.
This meant Angel had to cast another spell. She sighed and muttered the words to a strengthening spell. Yet another page was torn from her already demolished book. She could almost hear the page slipping away on the wind. But again it couldn’t be helped.
Angel knelt behind Jake’s beautiful sleeping form and pulled his strong arms behind his back, locking them in place. She took a moment to admire him helpless and bound before her – she couldn’t help it, really – then stood once more.
She didn’t have much time. David was still out there somewhere.
Angel needed to find Jake’s pack. He was a tracker. If he’d been tracking her the way he normally tracked people, it would mean he had a pack full of spell components somewhere nearby. He’d probably dropped it when he tripped her ward, so that was the first place she should look.
She was hoping he still kept it stocked the way he had when they were working together. Of course, at the time he’d pretended that the spell components were just personal cultural items, but she’d already begun to suspect he was a mage at that point.
If it was stocked the same way, it would have food and drink in it, and a number of other useful items. Smart wardens knew that if you had to carry a pack anyway, you may as well load it with necessities. Just in case.
Angel patted Jake gently on the shoulder. “You just make yourself comfortable big guy,” she told the sleeping man before she strode into the forest, praying time would be on her side.