Arcane Heart (Talents Book 2) Read online

  Fingers brushed nipples with a sensation so vivid, she looked down, half-expecting to find her clothes had disappeared.

  Both uniforms were still there. He was using his feral magic to manipulate her aura. “Oh,” she breathed. “That’s… incredible. I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “You’d be surprised what I can do.” Jake’s smile took on a darker cast as he magically toyed with her, fingers brushing over the vest.

  His left hand paused, tracing the curve of her ribs, dancing over thin skin, gliding downward to find the jut of a hipbone. And across.

  Between her legs.

  A jolt of magic shot right into her clit. Erica inhaled and caught his shoulders to keep from falling on her ass.

  “Like that?” Jake’s voice seemed to brush across her senses like velvet, rich and tempting. He went for her lips again, sipping at her tongue, as one hand played between her thighs and the other danced delicate spells over her breasts as though she was naked. Deliciously naked and aroused.

  Well, part of that was true.

  Jake purred against her mouth -- a sound that became a gasp as she slid a hand down and sent her own magic questing. To find the thick shaft of his erection pressing against his fly. Cupping her fingers over him, she danced a feather of magic the length of his cock from balls to head.

  “You’re living dangerously.” His voice sounded rough.

  She smiled wickedly and closed her teeth over his lower lip, tugging it as she intensified the magic whirling around his eager shaft. “Yes, well, so are you.”

  His lips curled against hers. “Sometimes a little danger can be fun.”

  Erica froze as the words triggered a dark association: Sometimes a little danger can be fun. That had been one of Bobby’s favorite sayings, used before missions, bar brawls, or jumping out of an airplane. He’d even said it the first time he’d taken her to bed.

  And the morning she’d caught him cheating. “Sometimes a little danger can be fun.”

  Jake’s eyes widened in dismay as he felt her recoil. “Erica, I…”

  She stepped back out of range of his hands, his magic. Suddenly the spring breeze felt icy over her hot cheeks. “I’ll… see you later.”

  Jake took a step toward her, one hand lifted, then aborted the gesture. His broad shoulders slumped. “What about BFS?”

  Erica wanted to say no. Wanted to at least put him off. Instead she heard herself say, “I’ll meet you there.”

  Idiot!

  Relief brightened his gaze, and he tried out a tentative smile. “Why don’t I pick you up instead. Ten o’clock?”

  She turned away and headed for her car. All she wanted was to get home. “Sure, whatever. Fine.”

  But it wasn’t fine. Why the hell didn’t I tell him no?

  She knew exactly why. I’ve never been smart when it came to any Nolan.

  * * *

  Why the hell didn’t I tell him no?

  The thought was still circling Erica’s mind as she unlocked the door and stepped into the little two-bedroom apartment that was all she could afford on a deputy’s salary. She was determined to hang on to her savings from her last job, so she had a strict budget.

  If she’d learned anything from six years in the Arcane Corps, it was that you never knew when things would go sideways -- but you’d better be ready when they did.

  She felt stiff, aching, as if now that she no longer had Jake to distract her, her body remembered the brawl with Carson. Biting back a groan, she hobbled past the sectional couch and the butcher-block counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.

  She had the ugly suspicion Carson had left behind an impressive set of bruises, though she hadn’t been aware of them until now. It was damn lucky Jake had charged to the rescue. Maybe she could have taken Carson, but it was likely one of them would have ended up badly hurt.

  Probably her. She was good, but a guy that big was a guy that big.

  As she hobbled down the hall, her gaze fell on a cluster of framed art and photographs hanging in geometric patterns. There was the photograph of her mother before she’d gotten sick: a tall, wiry woman with a tired face and kind brown eyes, her graying hair loose around her shoulders. The woman who’d healed everyone else couldn’t heal herself. And as hard as she’d tried, Erica hadn’t been able to save her either… Her heart twisted.

  Next to her mom’s photo hung one somebody had taken of Whisker Team, the men gathered around Erica, all of them in body armor and holding their M-4 rifles. Bobby Nolan leaned in close to her wearing that familiar smartass grin, Feral gold eyes crinkled in laughter.

  Jake stood next to his brother, but his gaze was fixed on Erica’s profile as she laughed at whatever Bobby was saying. There was such longing in his eyes.

  Sighing, Erica scrubbed both hands over her face and limped into her bedroom. It was tiny, barely big enough for the oak queen-sized bed and bureau. A cream comforter sprigged with tiny yellow roses covered the bed, matching the drapes on the window looking out over the back yard.

  Colored pencil sketches hung on the walls, pieces she’d done in idle moments on deployment. Jake posing with Clarence, his hands buried in the cat’s mane. Kurt and his tiger Familiar, Stoli. Dave Frost kneeling beside Smilodon, wearing a grin almost as toothy as his tiger’s.

  But the sketch that never failed to give Erica a pang of grief was the one she’d done of Bobby and Selena shortly before their plane was shot down. The rest of the team and their Familiars had escaped serious injury, but Selena was hit by shrapnel and bled to death. Bobby managed a hasty magical fusion with the lioness that had saved her spirit, if not her body.

  Unfortunately, sharing a body with a wild animal proved every bit as hard as fused Ferals always said it was. Bobby found it difficult to control Selena’s animal temper and instincts 24/7, instead of only when he drew on her magic. His good-natured attitude quickly gave way to an unpredictable temper that forced Erica to walk on eggshells around him.

  Until the night in Afghanistan it had all really gone to hell.

  Staring at the sketch now, Erica’s mouth twisted in pain. Even after two years, the memory had lost none of its merciless, crystalline detail…

  * * *

  As Erica approached the B-hut that was her home on base, a female voice moaned in pleasure, the sound carrying clearly through the thin door. Great. One of her roommates was getting some. Grimacing, she started to turn away.

  A deep male voice growled, “Yeah, that’s right…”

  The blood drained from her face, leaving an icy cold that was followed a heartbeat later by a white-hot blast of raw fury. Whirling, Erica grabbed the doorknob and jerked it open. They didn’t even bother to lock it. Stalking inside, she slammed the door with a gunshot bang. “What the fuck is going on?”

  Bobby, bare-assed between Tammy Eckhart’s thighs on her roommate’s narrow bunk, glanced back at her over one shoulder. “Isn’t it obvious?” His golden eyes glittered, and his teeth flashed as his lip curled.

  Erica clenched her fists, wanting to punch him right in that perfect nose. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

  “Oh, shit, Erica!” Tammy bolted from the bed and start scrambling around in a desperate search for her clothes. “Sorry, sorry, I knew I shouldn’t have…”

  Erica made a mental note to find a new roommate -- among other things. “How long has this been going on?”

  Bobby rose slowly to his feet, thoroughly naked. At least he was wearing a condom. Though, adding insult to injury, his erection showed no signs of deflating. He shrugged in a negligent lift of one powerful shoulder. “Only since I fused with Selena.” His eyes glittered as his mouth pulled into a tight smile. “You know how it is with a cat’s libido.”

  “Bullshit. Selena is female. The only time she gets horny is when she’s in heat.”

  “Yeah? What your excuse?”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You think I don’t see the way you watch Jake? I’d kick h
is ass, but you’d probably like that.”

  Her jaw dropped. “I have never cheated on you. I would never cheat on you.”

  “Maybe it would have helped if you had. Sometimes a little danger can be fun.” He smirked. “Always worked for me.”

  She rocked forward, fist cocked. And stopped, eyes burning with unshed tears. Punching him was beneath her.

  “Go ahead. Do it.” For a moment some emotion flashed over his face, but she couldn’t tell what it was.

  Automatically, she checked his aura to find it blood-red. Pain. He was hurting almost as much as she was.

  His lip curled again. “Never mind. You don’t care that much.”

  Eyes stinging, Erica whirled to stalk out of the cabin. His harsh bark of laughter was the last thing she heard before the door slammed shut behind her. She was heading for the enlisted club with every intention of getting hammered when Dave called from behind her, “Harris! We’ve got a job.”

  Perfect. Just perfect.

  An hour later, Erica found herself on a Huey trying to ignore Bobby as they flew into a barren stretch of the Hindu Kush mountains. The hills there were riddled with limestone caves, and Afghanis had been using them to live in and fight from for thousands of years.

  The American military had spent the past year digging the local branch of the Caliphate out of those mountains. Now they had to clean up the mess -- the weapons caches, the pockets of resistance, the MEEDs and spell traps. A team of Marines had discovered a cave that had evidently been a Caliphate base, judging by all the MEEDs they’d found. Erica had been ordered to disarm them while the rest of Whisker searched for more.

  She’d gone into a lot of nasty spots, but none of them made her as twitchy as these fucking caves. The only illumination came from the flashlights mounted on her rifle and that of her Marine guide. The cave floor was littered with loose rocks, and the rough limestone walls narrowed unpredictably, studded with outcroppings that could snag a uniform or gear.

  And then there were the bats. She could hear them squeaking and fluttering somewhere in the dark.

  As if that wasn’t nerve-racking enough, the caves stank of human waste and the reek of malevolent Caliphate magic, a smell compounded of the herbs they used and the chickens they sacrificed. They used human sacrifices for the seriously nasty spells. There was a reason good Muslims hated the rebel sorcerers. The Caliphuckers wanted power, and they were willing to murder and terrorize their own people to get it.

  All in all, this wasn’t the sort of mission she liked tackling in her current frame of mind.

  It took her the better part of an hour to break all the spells, but at last Erica and her guide headed back to the tunnels to rendezvous with the rest of Whisker, who were still searching for Caliphate traps.

  Barely a hundred yards away from Whisker’s reported location, she heard Bobby’s full-throated roar, followed by a man’s dying scream and Jake yelling his brother’s name.

  Erica’s heart catapulted into her throat. Ignoring the Marine’s warning shout, she broke into a run, chasing the bouncing light of her rifle flash. A heartbeat later, the tunnel filled with the echoing thunder of a single rifle shot. “Medic! I need a medic!” Kurt bellowed over the radio.

  Rounding a bend in the tunnel, Erica stopped dead in horror.

  Kurt and Jake knelt by Bobby’s side as he writhed on the rocky ground, the two men fighting to stanch the red, gaping wound pumping in his throat. Just beyond them lay a crumpled body that could only be Dave.

  “Shit!” Erica charged past them to drop to her knees beside her fallen friend. Which was when she saw why they weren’t trying to help him.

  Dave lay flat on his back, eyes staring sightlessly upward, his head twisted at an impossible angle. Checking for an aura, she saw nothing at all. He was already gone. God, I hope he fused with Smilodon! Blinking away tears, she leaped up to join Kurt and Jake as they worked on Bobby.

  “We need transport for these men,” Kurt snapped at the Marine without looking away from his patient. “Direct your people here, and make sure somebody called for that chopper!” The man nodded and ran back the way they’d come.

  “Can you do anything?” Jake demanded as she shouldered in beside him. His blood-splattered face was too pale, set with pain, dazed with shock.

  “I’ll damn well try.” Taking a deep breath, she reached for her Talent, though she knew she didn’t have the raw power it would take to keep him from bleeding out. And even if she had, she didn’t have time to draw a healing spell. Arcanist magic took too fucking long.

  It didn’t matter. She’d do whatever the hell she could.

  Bobby stared up at her, his eyes wide, his mouth working over the ruin of his throat. Erica pushed Kurt’s hands away and pressed her own to the wound. Blood seeped around her hands as she poured power into the injury, fighting to slow the bleeding. “Damn it, Bobby, hang on! Hang on, the chopper’s coming…”

  His lips moved. He shouldn’t have been able to make a sound given the damage, but his magic spoke for him, vibrating the air around him. “Sorry… Love you… sorry… so…”

  And he was gone.

  * * *

  Erica turned away and started stripping off her uniform, eyes stinging. After this long, it shouldn’t hurt this damn bad, but guilt had a way of making sure some wounds never healed.

  If she’d finished disabling the traps ten minutes sooner, she might have arrived in time to warn Bobby before he triggered the spell. If she’d had the power, maybe she could have slowed the bleeding long enough for him to make it to a hospital.

  But even beyond that old, aching guilt, she was left with the same agonizing questions. Why hadn’t he spotted the spell? He should have been looking for it. It was a Caliphate sorcerers’ base, for God’s sake. They’d all known there were spell traps. Hell, that was why they were there.

  Except she knew exactly why Bobby hadn’t seen the trap, didn’t she? He’d been too distracted by what had happened between them that morning. Jake had told her later that he’d seen his brother’s shoulders brush the wall, seen the sigils burst into the air as the trap sprang. Bobby had frozen in shock as the Caliphate spell rolled over him, maddening his cat.

  Then Dave had bumped into him -- and he’d whirled, manifesting with a roar of rage. He’d broken his friend’s neck with a single swipe of one paw. Bobby had gone for his brother next. Frozen with astonished horror, Jake would have died too, had Kurt not shot Bobby in the throat.

  In retrospect, it was astonishing he’d managed to put a bullet through the manifestation at all. The magical shell should have deflected the bullet, allowing Bobby to kill Kurt and Jake in the same maddened attack. And probably Erica and the Marine too.

  Jake believed that when he killed Dave, Bobby had regained just enough self-control to realize what was happening -- and deliberately thinned his manifestation. If that was true, he’d basically let Kurt kill him. And yes, that did sound like something Bobby would do.

  “Sorry… Love you… sorry… so…”

  “Damn it, Bobby,” Erica muttered, blinking away tears. She’d cried enough. It was time she was over this.

  Chapter Five

  It didn’t matter how many times Adrian Fleming killed a man with magic, he never got tired of it. True, there was something to be said for the hands-on approach. He loved being there to watch as a target went from human to a lump of meat. It didn’t matter how -- stabbing, shooting, beating someone to death with his bare hands -- it all gave Adrian an incredible buzz.

  But killing with magic was like being God. To touch the target’s bright spark of life -- and snuff it out. Feeling the target die, drinking in his or her liberated life force, the raw stuff of the world’s magic. Adding it to Adrian’s own power…

  No other high could touch it. Not smoking Tink or Stroll. Not jumping out of an airplane or surviving a firefight or strangling a woman as you fucked her -- nothing else was as intense, as addictive.

  Best of all, once you’d es
tablished a mystical bond with your target, his life was yours. You could drop him at a whim. And he had no idea he belonged to you. No idea you’d become his personal god.

  Every time Adrian tattooed a target, he had to be careful they didn’t see the erection it always gave him. Wouldn’t do for them to get the wrong idea.

  Fucking idiots.

  For people who hated Arcs, those Human Heritage morons were quick to let perfect strangers tattoo God knew what on them. Yeah, Adrian’s work was beautiful, but they only had his word he wasn’t an Arcanist. And he lied like a motherfucker.

  True, he’d made a profession out of it for twenty years, so he was good at it. But still, it took a dumbass. That and their combination of ignorance and viciousness made fucking them over an absolute joy.

  His cock hardened as he headed for the basement that was the sole reason he’d rented the house. When you were suckering a bunch of anti-magic bigots, you couldn’t afford to let them spot your spell circle or magical paraphernalia. Thus the deadbolt that opened with a key, newly installed on the battered door.

  The house otherwise had little to recommend it. Having been built in the 1970s, the brick split-level was in desperate need of renovation, between peeling paint, chipped linoleum, and filthy, matted carpeting. Strategic yard sale purchases enhanced the trailer trash effect: a sagging couch, a recliner upholstered more in duct tape than anything else, and assorted other scratched and dented particle board furniture. All of which perfectly suited his cover identity of Andy Jones, scuzzy HHer tattoo artist.

  Flicking on the bare bulb that illuminated the stairs, Adrian started downward. As always, he had to ignore a niggle of claustrophobia as he descended into the windowless box with its cinderblock walls and poured concrete floor.

  He’d laid out the intricate spell circle in colored chalk after Virginia Laurel told him she wanted Carson gone. Then he’d waited, giving the man plenty of time to get settled into his cell at the county jail. It wouldn’t do for some guard to resuscitate him.

  It was icy in the basement, and gooseflesh rose on Adrian’s bare arms and chest, pebbling the skin under his intricate tattoos. Any Norm looking at them would see only the surface images that covered every inch of his skin: wolves, snakes, eagles, dragons, skulls, demons, and ghosts. There was something hypnotic in the intricate line work, in the flowing rhythm of each shape swirling into the next. His Arcanist mother was a hell of an artist, and she’d been treating him as her living canvas all his life. Adrian had returned the favor, since she’d started teaching him the art when he was in kindergarten.