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  "Of course not," the thing said. Her eyes watered at the brimstone in its breath. "I don't want you to." To Erin it added, "And you shouldn't be able to, either."

  She shrank back as it leaned toward her and sniffed delicately. "You smell of magic, girl. One of Merlin's get, I suppose. Not turned yet, luckily—just enough Latent ability to be resistant. And my power is still too reduced to overcome your will." It shrugged. "I'll just have to make the best of it."

  Erin tried to stiffen her shaking knees and called on every bit of childhood lore she could remember. Hell, it was worth a try. "I order you to leave, Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ the Lord!"

  The thing stared at her in astonishment, then threw back its horned head and laughed. "Oh, I'm not your devil. Though I suppose you can be forgiven for making that mistake, given my current guise."

  Light flashed. Suddenly the thing was simply a man in an elegant black suit. She would have thought him human if it hadn't been for the red eyes. "I actually prefer this one, but the other is better for impressing mortals," he said, his voice perfectly ordinary now. Shrugging, he turned toward her partner. "David, dear boy, I find myself in a difficult situation. My pawn's death enabled me to enter this universe, but I'm still weak and terribly hungry. I need another couple of sacrifices, and I need one of you to make them. Since your partner is resistant to my influence, it will have to be you. Shoot the naked blonde, would you?"

  "Fuck yo—" David began, then broke off with a gasp of horror as he pivoted mechanically to point his Glock at the woman lying bound on the crates. She stared up at him in terror. "Shit. Oh, shit. Stop it!"

  "David!" The thing, whatever it was, was doing something to him. Hastily shoving her own gun into her shoulder holster, Erin grabbed for his wrists. She tried to knock his weapon up, but it was like hitting a steel beam. Desperately she fought to pry the Glock from his hands, but his fingers seemed fused to the grip.

  "On second thought, why don't you kill your partner first," the demon suggested.

  "No!" David yelled, even as he clamped one hand over her shoulder with a grip like a vise and jammed the muzzle of the gun against the center of her chest. Stunned, Erin looked up into his panic-filled eyes as her blood turned to ice. "Erin, Jesus Christ!"

  She tried to jerk away, but he was so damn strong. Helplessly she writhed in his grip, staring into his white-rimmed eyes. "David, let me go!" As she fought, every panting breath carried the smell of her partner's Brut aftershave.

  And his fear.

  "Shoot me!" he gasped. "Erin, you've gotta—"

  "Oh," the demon said softly. "All that terror and doomed love! Delicious."

  A last-ditch idea hit her. Erin wrapped both hands more tightly around the gun and kicked out. Hooking her foot behind his left ankle, she shoved him over, using the momentum of their tailing bodies to finally force the gun upward and clear of her body.

  But instead of stiff-arming the weapon above his head, as she'd expected, David bent his arm, shoving it directly under his own chin.

  Erin screamed, "No!"

  "Pull the trigger," the demon said.

  The deep, full throated roar of the Glock seemed to stop the world on its axis.

  She dimly heard the demon's voice over the ringing in her ears. "Well, that wasn't at all what I had in mind. And I still need another death." He sighed in disgust. "I suppose I'll just have to find another dupe."

  Erin felt his cold presence vanish, but she didn't look around. She was still staring into her partner's empty, fixed gaze as she lay sprawled across him.

  In the distance, sirens wailed—their backup finally arriving.

  Too late.

  CHAPTER 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 aimed 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.

&
nbsp; "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."