Magic Unchained Read online

  Throat closing with bitter panic, she yanked away and shoved Lora and Zane toward the shield. “Move!”

  “No, damn it.” Zane spun back, eyes fierce. “Let me—”

  “Go. That’s an order.” She got between them and the oncoming beast, heart thundering in her ears as she told herself, You’ve just got to slow it down long enough for Rabbit’s magic to recharge. They had trained on scenarios like this. Now it was time to put that training to use. Aware that Zane had followed orders—whatever he might feel for her, he was a soldier at heart—she aimed for the dog-creature’s legs and fired.

  She got two shots off and then heard a sour clunk as the machine pistol freaking jammed.

  “No!” She yanked at the receiver arm that had come loose, locking the bolt, but it didn’t budge. The huge dog—wolf?—seemed to understand what had happened. Its gleaming red eyes lit and it accelerated, jaws gaping.

  “Run!” Natalie screamed.

  Cara spun and bolted. The shield was farther away than she thought, the demon closing fast. Panic spurted, along with a thought of, Oh, gods, this is it. And then the world did a weird slow-motion thing around her.

  She saw Zane shove Lora into the shield and turn back for her, but the beast was too close, too fast. She could hear it right behind her, could feel the jarring thud of its feet through the worn soles of her boots and smell its rotting stench. Her body tensed for pain, for fear, and incredulity flared at the knowledge that she wasn’t going to make it. She was going to be the second winikin to die in battle, wasn’t ever going to get the chance to live the life she wanted after the war. Her breath sobbed. Please, no.

  She glanced back just in time to see the huge creature rock onto its haunches, preparing to spring, and—

  “Cara, get down!” The words came from the other side of her, in a deep voice that jolted her like lightning and sped the world back up to normal once more.

  Before she could react, a gray-and-buff blur raced past with a bloodcurdling howl of rage, and the hard, heavy weight of a man’s body slammed into her, knocking her out of the demon’s path and taking her to the ground. Her rescuer wrapped his arms around her and rolled them as they hit, so he took the brunt and cushioned her fall.

  There was sudden warmth, solid muscle, and the yielding, unfamiliar press of a man’s body. And not just any man: She caught rapid-fire impressions of sun-bleached hair against deeply tanned skin, stormy blue eyes, and an air of wildness that defied the high-tech armband and warrior’s garb. Their legs tangled, and when they stopped rolling, he was on top of her with his hips planted firmly between her thighs. Instead of untangling himself, he reared up over her on one arm and lifted the other to summon first a shield and then a huge fireball, and although her brain was struggling to catch up, her soul already knew exactly what was going on.

  “Sven,” she whispered, frozen with the shock of seeing her foster nonbrother again after so long, though her body reacted to the way his magic spit and sparked, prickling awareness across her skin.

  He looked grimmer and more tired than he had a few months earlier, when he’d taken off for the south. There were new stress lines cut alongside his aristocratic nose and wide, slashing cheekbones, and his old trademark surfer’s ponytail was a grown-out military brush cut now, gone shaggy and adding to the sense of some wild creature contained within human form. He wore close-fitting armor and the Kevlar-impregnated black-on-black of a Nightkeeper, and he was all warrior as his eyes went to where an enormous gray-and-buff coyote—his bonded familiar, Mac—was fighting with the huge black demon.

  “Leave it!” he ordered. Mac quickly tore away and leaped back, and Sven unleashed his deadly fireball with a heave that rippled through his body and into Cara’s.

  Hiss-boom! Instantly engulfed in flames, the demon-dog reared back with a horrible, unearthly howl. A terrible stench filled the air as it struggled in its death throes. The other animals too were dead and dying, making Cara suddenly aware that the rest of the magi had arrived and were tightening around the winikin in a protective ring as the creatures melted to stinking black puddles. After a moment, even those faded and disappeared, leaving silence behind.

  Dead. Silence.

  As her pulse pounded in her ears, she thought crazily that it was the kind of utter quiet that came in the aftermath of a disaster that didn’t cause any actual casualties but had come damn close, to the point where everyone sort of sat there for a second, thinking, What the fuck just happened? Because that was what had to be going through the minds of the other winikin. It was undoubtedly what the magi were thinking as they watched the last of the creatures puff to greasy smoke. And it was what she ought to be thinking too. Because although the Nightkeepers’ former nemesis, the Xibalban mage Iago, had tricked his way into Skywatch twice, no demon had entered the compound in nearly thirty years. Not since the Solstice Massacre.

  But although those were the questions she knew ought to be going through her head, her mind had blanked. All she could do was stare at Sven as he levered himself off her and rose to his feet with a loose-limbed grace that sharply defined the muscles under his tight black clothing, making her entirely aware of his body, and the imprint it had left on her own.

  Don’t think about it, she told herself, but the familiar refrain barely registered.

  There was a low whine and the scuff of paws on dirt as Mac trotted over to stand beside him, then looked at her with his pale green, human-seeming eyes gleaming, his ears pricked and his plumed tail wagging in wide sweeps. Sven and the coyote made a formidable pair, and the sight tightened her throat. It had been a long six months since they had gone down to Mexico to head up the Nightkeepers’ efforts to contain the spread of the xombi virus—an infection that was part magic, part disease, and thoroughly vile. She had worried about them, especially when the reports back from the southern front had grown increasingly grim. But her relief that they were home safe caromed off resentment that she hadn’t gotten any word beyond the official reports, nothing personal, nothing that acknowledged her and Sven’s connection or the fact that he’d been the one to bring her back to Skywatch to take on a job she hadn’t wanted. He’d promised to help her with the winikin… and then he’d taken off without a word. Which was just Sven, and shouldn’t have surprised her.

  It had, though, and that was why, as irritation won out over relief, she summoned a flip smile she knew would piss him off, and said, “Hey, welcome back. Did you miss me?”

  That was a laugh, of course, because he’d always made it his business never to miss anyone.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sven had braced himself to see Cara, thinking through what he wanted to say to her… but as he stared down at her now, caught between the desire to haul her into his arms and the nearly overwhelming urge to shake her until her damn fool teeth rattled, he was floundering because they were way the fuck off his script.

  He had planned on getting her in private and talking to her—really talking to her, for the first time in years. He sure as shit hadn’t been prepared to show up just as the alarms went nuts, and to get out to the ball court just in time to see her trying to outrun some godsdamned hellbeast—a demon inside Skywatch, for fuck’s sake!—armed with a jammed MAC-10 and more guts than common sense. He hadn’t been braced to find himself planted on top of her as he’d pulled the magic necessary to take the creature down. And he sure as shit wasn’t ready to be this close to her while his pulse thudded off rhythm with those urges, along with knowledge that he’d just come damn close to losing her.

  He rolled off of her, stood, and hauled her to her feet, though the distance didn’t do nearly enough to cool him off. His rehearsed scene had started something along the lines of, I know this is a couple of decades too late, but I owe you an apology.… Instead, he found himself leaning down to roar, “What in the hell were you thinking? You nearly got yourself killed!”

  Mac moved to his side, ruff bristling, but then subsided and settled to his haunches with his eyes fixed
on Cara. Friend, he sent in the thought-glyphs that were his main way of communicating. Missed friend. But that wasn’t enough to cool the fury riding high in Sven’s blood. Mac existed in the moment—the demon was gone now; he was happy to see Cara now; he was hungry now. Humans, though, had to deal with the past-present-future stuff. That meant that when Sven looked at her, he didn’t see a petite woman with a striking white forelock and exotic deep brown eyes, wearing curve-hugging black pants, an edgy black jacket, and an air of, You and what army? Well, yeah, he saw that. But he also saw the girl she’d been.

  He saw her at ten, galloping bareback on her fat spotted pony, with her hair streaming out behind her like a white-striped black banner.

  He saw her at fifteen, returning to the ranch battered and bloody, cradling a broken wrist and defending the chestnut filly who had tossed her, seeming unaware that his heart had stopped at the sight of her injuries.

  He saw her at seventeen, propositioning him in the back barn with the sweetly inexpert kiss he’d never forgotten, saw her eyes fill when he turned her down and rode away, not knowing it was one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

  He saw her at twenty-one, when she tracked him down in a crappy one-room apartment to drag him to Skywatch, overriding his protests with three words: “You owe me.” And he sure as shit had owed her. He’d broken her heart that day in the barn, and he hadn’t done it gently, because he’d been feeling none too gentle himself.

  He saw her a few months later, when he told her to leave Skywatch, claiming that she didn’t fit in and he didn’t need her, trying to make the break a clean one for both their sakes, because those not-so-gentle feelings had come back like gangbusters, only to come up against roles, rituals, and the end of the damned world.

  He saw her at twenty-three, when she had come back to Skywatch to lead the rebel winikin, looking confident, capable, dead sexy, and nothing like the girl she had been, yet somehow exactly like that girl.

  He saw her just now, facing down a hellhound with no armor, no shield, and no backup. And because unlike Mac he could imagine the future, he also saw what would have happened if he hadn’t gotten there when he did. It wasn’t tough to picture—gods knew he’d seen plenty of bodies over the past six months. And he’d be damned if he added hers to the list.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Back off, Nightkeeper. I was just doing my job.”

  “It’s not your job to get yourself killed,” he grated, then leaned in closer to make his point, putting them nose-to-nose. He could feel the soft warmth coming off her skin, smell the faintest hint of flowers and spice turned sharp by the scents of battle. And he was all too aware of the magic riding high in his bloodstream, making him want to do things he had long ago filed under Bad Idea. Gritting his teeth and willing the images away, he ground out, “The winikin can’t afford to lose their leader.”

  She scowled. “I know what I’m doing.”

  “Bullshit. If Mac and I hadn’t just rolled in when your mayday came through—”

  “One of the others would’ve saved my ass,” she interrupted. “And there’s no way I was going to hide behind the shield and watch Zane and Lora die.”

  “Zane. Right.” If he’d had fur it would’ve bristled. “Any reason he didn’t send you and Lora ahead and cover you?”

  “Because I ordered him to get his ass moving, and it wasn’t like we had time to stand around and rock-paper-scissors it.”

  “Sven!” Dez called. “Get over here.”

  Growling under his breath, Sven looked to where the other Nightkeepers were gathered beside the charred, smoking pyre, no doubt in the first stages of a “what the hell were those things, and how the fuck did they get inside Skywatch?” conversation. “We need five minutes,” he called.

  “No, we don’t.” Cara took a big step back, creating a gap between them that felt far greater than a few feet of space.

  “We’re not finished.”

  “Oh, yes, we are.” She held up a hand. “Look, we had a deal. You do your thing and I do mine, and we leave the past in the past. Remember?”

  Yeah, he remembered, all right. It had sounded good at the time, back when she’d first returned to Skywatch and they had been trying to find a way to coexist without things getting personal. Now, though, he wanted to get personal, to a degree. He needed to make things right—or at least own up to what he’d done wrong. The past six months had changed him, he hoped for the better.

  He exhaled through his nose. “Look, Cara, I—”

  “Something’s wrong,” she interrupted, attention fixed on the others, where there was a sudden flurry of activity, a few shouts. “Come on.” She was in motion before he could call her back, beelining for where JT was suddenly faced off opposite Carlos, both of them red faced and furious.

  Sven cursed and strode after her, knowing she was right. Duty called. And wasn’t that a bitch?

  As Cara headed toward the others, she was too aware of Sven walking beside her, Mac dogtrotting at his heels. The two moved alike, making her think of wide-open spaces and the kind of freedom she was suddenly dying for, because she was raw from the funeral, shaky from the attack, and churned up over Sven’s unexpected return, which could spell trouble. The rebel members of the winikin mistrusted her old connection to the coyote mage, thinking it put her closer to the traditionalists or, worse, the Nightkeepers themselves. That meant she needed to watch not just her own step, but their perceptions, as well.

  Sure enough, as she drew nearer, a couple of the rebels shot her dark looks that accused her of fraternizing. Or maybe the accusation was inside her, coming from the heat that was still vibrating through her body, singing a familiar inner refrain of, He’s back, he’s back, he’s back, just as it had when she was younger. Back then she’d thought each time he came home that he’d finally be ready to settle down, stick around, be there for the people who needed him.

  Focus, she told herself, shoving aside the lingering heat and the churning excitement that belonged to the too-optimistic girl she couldn’t afford to be anymore. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she reached the winikin. They gave way, muttering and shifting, letting her into the group and then closing around her, shutting Sven on the outside.

  As she reached the center, JT snarled, “Fuck this,” and spun and stalked away in the opposite direction, shoulder-checking a couple of guys who didn’t get clear fast enough.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dez shaking his head as if to say, Typical, but she knew that JT might have a temper and a major shoulder chip when it came to the Nightkeepers, but the fiery rebel wasn’t irrational. If he was in a mood, there was a reason.

  Just as she turned to ask her father what the hell was going on, another of the newer winikin, Sebastian, caught her arm. “You going to show us yours?” He was a hard-edged fiftyish man who had lost his wife and child in the massacre and made no secret of his hatred for the magi… and right now, he was looking at her like she was the enemy. His eyes were hard and harsh, his grip rough enough to put a stir of fear in her belly, though she didn’t—couldn’t—let it show.

  “Godsdamn it, Sebastian.” She yanked her arm away. “What the hell are you—”

  She broke off as he shoved back his right sleeve to bare his forearm… which now wore a black, tattoolike mark of two interconnected ovals, along with eyes and a gaping beak, and the hint of feathers. Cara froze as her heart thudda-thuddaed in her chest, kicked off rhythm by shock.

  Oh, holy shit. It was the mark of the owl bloodline.

  And it hadn’t been there before the funeral.

  Cloth rustled and a few more of the rebels pushed up their sleeves to bare their forearms, which now bore their bloodline marks. She saw an eagle, an ax, a curl of smoke, and two others she didn’t recognize. But she sure as hell recognized the despair in their eyes. She’d seen it in her own right after Carlos had forced her marks on her, indenturing her to Sven and putting her under Nightkeeper law whether she liked it or not. Because where the Nightkeep
ers’ forearm marks were the symbols of status and power, the marks of the winikin made them into servants, pairing the aj winikin “I serve” glyph with smaller bloodline glyphs.

  The rebels hadn’t chosen to have their souls linked to those of specific Nightkeeper children, and they hadn’t been through the marking ceremony.… Yet they were suddenly wearing bloodline marks, as if the gods themselves had commanded it.

  “Well?” Sebastian demanded. “Where’s yours?”

  Oh, shit. Her stomach clutched and she reflexively clasped her right wrist beneath her jacket, which suddenly felt heavy and too hot. The coyote and the aj winikin had faded when Sven sent her away from Skywatch, leaving her with a chronic low-grade malaise that hadn’t cleared up until she returned to the compound. Still, though, she hadn’t gotten her marks back when she returned, and she’d been damned grateful to have that freedom. Now, though…

  She took a deep breath and pushed back her sleeve, then hissed out a long, slow breath. Because her arm was bare, and she didn’t have a clue whether that was a good thing or not.

  By later that afternoon, as Sven’s debriefing with Dez in the royal quarters headed into its second hour, the Nightkeepers knew three things about the attack: One, the blood-ward surrounding the compound hadn’t been deactivated to let the creatures through; two, there was no evidence of a magical hot spot within Skywatch that might’ve been used as a conduit to bring the creatures up from the underworld; and three, there hadn’t been any detectable power surges suggesting a spell other than Rabbit’s fire magic.

  In other words, they didn’t have a fucking clue how the things had gotten in.

  More, the brain trust—aka Jade, Lucius, and the Nightkeepers’ ancestral library—couldn’t figure out exactly what the attackers had been. They didn’t seem to have been true demons—too easy to kill; they were too big to have been demon-possessed animals of earthly origin; and they didn’t match up to anything else in the records.