Dragon Knight (The Collegium Book 3) (20 page)

Leaving Gina to hold the twenty one zombies in frozen immobility just inside the gate was one of the hardest things Lewis had ever done.

The weight of the responsibility she held showed in her expression. Everyone who entered the compound, now, relied on her to keep them safe.

No one needed to be told to hurry.

The house was expensive, luxurious and echoingly empty. Furniture filled it, but lifelessly. Surreal art hung on the walls and in clusters of weird statues.

“Bullet holes,” Kora noted tersely. She had partnered with him when the group split into teams.

Someone had shot repeatedly at something. The bullet holes tracked higher and higher in a rising arc. “The demon manifested and someone shot at it.” Lewis turned slowly in a circle, giving the room his complete attention. “What would you say this room is?”

They’d gone up the main staircase and were on the second floor with a view out to the blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

“Music room.” Kora gestured briefly at a keyboard in a corner. A guitar lay abandoned on an angular sofa. “Probably hidden speakers for music.”

“Would you summon a demon in this room?”

Kora never played the what-if game. “No marks on the floor. A demon summoning brands the demon’s circle of summoning into its site of emergence, which ought to be a circle of containment.”

Lewis ignored the lecture suited to a first year guardian trainee. “Look up.”

The spell was on the ceiling, an intricate pattern of arcane symbols and Latin words. Whether the demon had been summoned in the music room or whatever room was below it, the demon had chosen this room in which to enact its zombie-creation spell. He snapped a photo of the ceiling on the phone Gina had lent him.

Kora knelt beneath the spell, shoulders hunched but her attention determinedly on the floor. She scrutinized the white marble surface. “Scratch marks and…I can’t see any blood, but I expect that if we used luminal, its presence would show.”

Human blood—human sacrifice—to power the spell.

“It’s like a twist on a demon summoning spell, if I’m remembering the medieval Nordic version correctly.” He wasn’t an expert, but the photo was on its way to Gilda’s phone where the chief demonologist waited near Gina, safely outside the compound. Gilda had resisted being kept out of the investigation, but she wobbled when she walked. The demon had hit her hard.

Fortunately, Lewis had another demon expert on site. “Fay!”

Fay and Steve double-timed it up the stairs.

“Damn,” Steve swore, following Kora’s gaze and staring up at the ceiling.

Lewis’s borrowed phone chimed. “Gilda? Okay.” He disconnected, looking at his audience of three. “You heard.”

“Gina’s reaching the end of her magic. We have to move,” Steve confirmed. He walked to the staircase and hung over the edge. “Everyone out, now!” he shouted.

“Go!” Fay seconded.

Her urgency wasn’t just from Gilda’s phone call warning that the zombies would be loose, shortly.

“What?” Lewis demanded.

“I know this spell,” Fay said. “And I know its weak point.” She had her knife in her hand. “Go!”

“You better be on my heels,” Steve said. He ran down the stairs in an awesome act of respect and faith in his fiancée’s powers.

Lewis saw Fay slash her arm as he, too, turned and ran, with Kora racing ahead of him.

Even as he leaped three stairs at a time down the wide staircase, he heard a roar of fire behind him. He braced, just in time, as Steve turned and tried to run back.

For a second the two men grappled. Lewis had the advantage of higher ground, but Steve was desperate. For an instant, Lewis thought of translocating them—and then, Fay was there.

“Idiot.” She grabbed her fiancé’s hand, and the three of them ran out of the house, out beyond the zombies still frozen in place, and through the gate.

“Thank God.” Gina sat down, ungraceful and abrupt, on the dirt.

Behind Lewis, bound to the compound, the zombies keened.

“They’ll burn,” the healer muttered. It was all too easy to consider the animated corpses as alive.

Inside the compound, the house was burning up faster than normal fire could achieve. Flames burst from the roof.

The zombies collapsed.

There was a shuddering not-quite-sigh of relief from everyone.

Lewis couldn’t see the golden threads of magic that the others saw and he didn’t bother reaching for silver sight. He could feel that the demon’s taint had been exorcised; its zombie-creation spell forever destroyed. “It’s okay,” he whispered to Gina.

“Fay’s arm needs treatment,” Steve said.

“Let me see.” The healer jerked from his trance, attention torn from the compound where, through the wrought iron gates, it was possible to see fire burning strongly where no fire should burn. It was incinerating the zombified bodies, burning all traces of the demon’s presence.

“Fay, how did you do it?” Gilda asked. The chief demonologist still held her phone in one hand, hard enough that the screen ought to crack.

Fay leaned against Steve and extended her arm to the healer. “Ironically, it was a variation on a spell I was studying last week in a Gothic grimoire in Copenhagen. A spell that riffed off a demon summoning incantation to try and enslave humans. There is no evidence that the spell ever worked, but I know it needed human sacrifice and the spell caster’s blood. In this version, the demon must have used its own blood—or the equivalent—and that’s what the fire is burning. I had to take ownership of the spell.” She shuddered violently and Steve wrapped both arms around her. “Then I could destroy it. Fortunately, the spell had an affinity to humans and I think that’s why my blood could replace the demon’s, particularly with the demon banished. Thank you,” she added to the healer, as he finished sealing the wound on her arm.

“We’re going,” Steve said.

“The fire will attract attention,” Kora agreed. She nodded at Shawn and two other guardians. “We’ll stay and walk through the site later.”

The rest of them got into the two cars. Shawn had left the keys in the ignition, for whoever might have needed a swift getaway. Lewis started up that car, the engine turning over roughly, and headed back to Mérida with Gina silent in the passenger seat beside him, and the healer and two more in the back seat. They left the car three streets away from the portal and made their way to it, meeting Fay and Steve and their carload there.

Fay’s stepfather, Jim, welcomed them with relief.

The portal’s actual owner had returned, and appeared far less happy to see them.

Lewis gave his thanks and the evidently unwelcome news that other Collegium members might need to use the portal over the next couple of days.

The Mexican porter shrugged and spat a comment in condemnation of the demon’s presence so close to his home. The matter was settled.

Not quite.

Gina had been silent all the way back to safety. Now, she halted at the edge of the portal. Fay and Steve had already gone through, taking Paul O’Halloran’s hand to return to New York. “I want to go home. Home to Cape Cod.”

“Emmaline’s portal?” Jim asked.

“Yes.”

The older man studied her face and evident exhaustion. His gaze flicked to Lewis, holding her, and back to Gina. “I’ll take you to her.”

“Thank you,” Gina said.

Lewis nodded his own thanks, but he felt cold.

Gina hesitated a moment. Then she touched his chest lightly, over his heart, and turned away. The portal vanished her and Jim.

“She saved us as surely as Fay did,” Gilda said. “But there’s a price for that.”

And Lewis thought he might be the one to pay it. Alone, he took Paul O’Halloran’s hand and stepped through to New York.

Gina stepped out into the cellar of Emmaline’s home and into Riaz’s strong, relieved hug.

Emmaline took care of courtesies, thanking Jim, who gave a very Australian, “no problemo” response, and stepped back into the in-between.

“What’s happening?” Riaz demanded.

But Emmaline had seen Gina’s face . She tugged her gently from Riaz and into a cherishing hug. “Riaz, what have I told you about a porter’s role?”

“A client’s business is a client’s business,” he recited in a sing-song resigned tone. “But Gina’s family.”

Emmaline smoothed Gina’s hair away from her face with a papery-soft hand. “All the more reason to respect her privacy. Would you like a ride home, dear?”

Gina thought of the peaceful walk through familiar countryside, so different to the tropical landscape around Mérida. It would be soul-healing. But even better would be to be truly home, in her jewel of a house, showering away the day and crying where no one could see. “A ride would be great.”

“I’ll drive you,” Riaz volunteered. “And I won’t ask any questions.”

Gina’s laugh cracked. She swallowed. “Thank you.”

Riaz was as good as his word. In fact, he was silent till they drove down her driveway. “Emmaline never trusted the Collegium. I used to think she was just paranoid, a bit of a conspiracy freak, but there’s been nothing but trouble since you got involved with Lewis.”

“The Collegium does more good than you know. Than I hope you ever learn,” Gina added with a shudder as she thought of the demon and zombies. “And the ironic thing is, Lewis didn’t find me. I found him. I invited all this change into my life.” She got out of the car. “Thanks for the lift, Riaz.”

She felt him drive out through the wards of her home. She was alone.

The red kitchen door swung open of its own volition, urging her in. Her own magic was exhausted. Not burned out as Lewis’s had done, but scraped to the edge.

In the North West Passage, how had he held onto his control, forcing out more and more magic over the agony of it pulling from the core of him?

In the hot Mexican sun, Gina had known she wouldn’t be able to do it. She’d felt her control over the zombies tremble. Her ability to wring out that last degree of magic was simply lacking. The agony wrenched at her. She would have failed Lewis and everyone if Fay hadn’t broken the demon’s spell when she did.

Gina’s muscles ached from all the panicked running through the day, and her skin had dried with the sweat of fear on it. She dragged herself up the stairs, shed her clothes and stepped into the shower. The hot water cascaded over her. She turned her face up to the spray, and cried.

The tears were cathartic. Exhausted but functioning again, she forced herself downstairs to eat a quick, early dinner of toasted cheese sandwiches. She ate them on the front porch, looking over the dunes to the ocean.

Lewis and all the Collegium guardians were amazing. She couldn’t imagine feeling like this after every mission. There was no elation, no happiness at the job accomplished. There was only relief, no, disbelief, at surviving. And one guardian hadn’t survived.

Gina sipped hot chocolate, a comfort drink. Lewis would have to tell the man’s family. He wouldn’t leave the responsibility solely to Kora, not when he’d been there.

And tomorrow, all of the guardians would be ready to do this all over again.

For the first time, Gina saw Lewis’s distance and detachment for what it was: a coping mechanism.

“But he doesn’t need it with me.”

Explanations had taken forever. Lewis had managed to shower and change and grab something to eat.

The guardian who’d died in Mérida hadn’t had a family. That didn’t mean no one mourned him. The mood at headquarters was somber.

And through it all, Lewis was conscious of his need to see Gina, to be with her. She, perhaps more than any of them, had suffered. Fay, Steve and the Collegium team had experience and training to support them. Gina had gotten through on courage and determination. He was proud of her. He worried for her.

“Go,” Steve said finally, just before midnight.

Fay and Gilda were still intent over some ancient book opened beside a stack of other books. “Just a little research while the details are fresh in our minds,” Gilda had said, and the other demonologists in the Collegium had agreed with her.

“Fay has fifteen more minutes,” Steve added, louder.

Fay flashed him a small, tired smile. “Five, I promise.” Her smiled widened to include Lewis. “Go to Gina. The Collegium is safe. The final, formal report will wait till tomorrow for sign off.”

“And there’ll always be more work, tomorrow.” William, the chief healer walked in, looking exhausted himself. “Everyone, go home.”

Lewis went to Gina.

Gina woke to the soft whisper of the bed coverings being lifted and a large, warm body stealing in beside her. “Lewis.”

He’d translocated in, not disturbing her wards, but coming to her.

“Lewis!”

His mouth captured her cry. The kiss was hot and desperate and she pressed into him. His chest was bare. She ran her fingers over his skin, around to his shoulders, pulling him over her.

A moment’s resistance. He braced himself above her. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, oh yes.” This beautiful man, all hers to love.

He rolled, bringing her over him. Then his hands slid under her nightgown, pushing up along her hips, over her stomach, up to claim her breasts. He squeezed. She kissed him. The harder she kissed him, the more he teased her breasts, his fingers constrained by the tight satin. She tore her mouth from his, sat up and stripped off her nightgown. Now, his hands were free to shape her breasts.

But his hands left her breasts, slid down her body and traced the edge of her tiny matching knickers. “Satin.” Her legs were parted as she knelt over him, and his fingers skimmed the frail covering dampening from her arousal. His chest heaved. “How should we get these off you?”

“You still have briefs on,” she managed to point out.

“I thought it politer, since I was invading your bed.”

She dropped down, hands bracing either side of his head, hips lowering to follow his teasing fingers. “Invade away.”

She squeaked.

“No?” But he left his fingers where they were, slick with her moisture, tormenting her.

“Definitely yes.”

He smiled. They kissed. Then his hands were everywhere and so were hers and the last of their clothes were gone. No barriers, only fevered anticipation until finally, wonderfully, he was inside her and his rhythm was fast and urgent, demanding and getting her reckless response. Pleasure burst, and he followed her over the edge, shouting her name.

For Gina, consciousness faded from pleasure to sleep. She tried to speak, and mumbled. She was hazily aware of Lewis tucking her against him. That felt good, a different kind of good. She nestled closer.

  She woke to the pale light of dawn. A clear dawn with birds singing outside and the distant, very faint sound of a summer sea.

Lewis’s hand rested over her right breast, fingers gently curved and still.

She twisted to see his face. He slept, a relaxed, openness to his face. Very carefully she turned so she could study him. His lashes were long against the lightly tanned skin under his eyes. His mouth was firm even in sleep. Such a beautiful mouth, capable of passion. And his ears. He really did have lovely ears. They sat neatly against his skull, his short blonde hair just reaching them.

Gina traced a curl of his ear.

The morning was cool, making her glad of the heat radiating from him and the light quilt covering them. She didn’t remember pulling it up, so he must have. The only drawback was that the quilt hid his superb body.

She couldn’t resist temptation. She mightn’t be able to see, but she could feel. She stroked the muscles of his shoulder, down to his chest, lower to his stomach.

The corners of his mouth curved. His eyes opened. “Good morning.”

Her heart stuttered. There was joy in his smile and something a lot like love. “Good morning.”

“Can I ask where your hand’s going?”

She grinned, slowly inching back up his body. “Not where you hope.”

He kissed her, and this time, their lovemaking was a playful tussle. She shrieked with laughter as he tickled her before she attempted to wrestle him into submission. Her failure was also her success as she found herself pinned beneath him and deliciously open to his touch. Loving him was so easy.

Loving him was so fraught with risk.

“I have to get back to the office,” he said with a glance at the clock. It was barely seven a.m.. He wound her hair around his hand and tugged gently.

She wanted him to stay, and knew the Collegium needed him, today, in the aftermath of the demon’s discovery and banishment. “Someone, Zhou at any rate, will probably want to question me. May I come with you?”

“Please.” He kissed her.

There was a semi-bitter delight in sharing the morning routine with him. Showering, eating breakfast, dressing. He’d brought a suit with him, and she watched him knot a subdued blue tie.

“I wish…”

He looked a question at her.

She shook her head. “Never mind.”

“I used Emmaline’s portal.” Lewis held her denim jacket for her as she shrugged into it, a little touch of caring. “The Collegium is coping with enough without discovering that I can translocate.”

“Was Riaz polite to you?”

“Yes. Concerned about you, but he seemed to decide I might be more help than threat to you. Am I?”

Gina paused in tugging the denim jacket straight. When she hesitated to turn to Lewis, she realized he was watching her in the mirror, anyway.

His arms went around her. His head rested against hers. “Yesterday was awful. It was tough on everyone, but especially tough for you because you don’t have the training or experience of the rest of us. I was proud of you. You saved lives, Gina. Including mine.”

She covered his arms with hers, hugging his care to her. “I dreamed of the zombies before you came last night.”

“We all collect nightmares,” he said somberly.

“And banish them.” She turned in his embrace. “I’m glad I was with you, yesterday. I’m glad beyond words that you’re safe. I thought I’d lost you. Morag broke her non-interference policy and mentioned a demon and that you wouldn’t be able to use the power of the Deeper Path against it. Then she wouldn’t help.” Remembered hurt, a cut of betrayal, weighted her voice with sadness.

“Sometimes the hardest thing is to stand aside and let those we love fight. You fought, Gina. You were a true knight, dragon or otherwise.”

Lewis ignored the cameras in the elevator and kissed Gina good-bye. He was only peripherally aware of silver energy holding the elevator doors closed an extra few seconds. He found it harder to ignore the elevator’s agitated electronic beeping. He released the doors and Gina.

She smiled at him and strolled out to catch up with Zhou and his team of forecasters.

Lewis watched the doors close and let himself be carried up to the presidential suite. There, waiting senior mages pounced.

For a month, he’d tolerated these demands on his time. In periods of change, people needed reassurance, and he—without magic—was an unknown quantity as president. On the other hand, these people were all adults and trained mages of substantial experience. As commander of the guardians, he’d never been ambushed this way. It was wrong that they treated the president so rudely.

Across the room, Chad stood in front of his desk. He met Lewis’s gaze and gave a frustrated shrug.
What can you do?
the shrug asked.

True, the invading mages were difficult and importunate, but Lewis wondered if he’d been handicapped by more than his own steep learning curve of the presidential role. Neither Chad, Haskell nor Shawn were experienced personal assistants. They’d been learning on the job. A first-rate PA would have controlled this crowd. Chad knew only that he couldn’t corral them with magic. He hadn’t learned the art of the disdainful stare, the calculated wielding of authority borrowed from Lewis.

Which reminded him that perhaps he hadn’t exercised his own authority sufficiently.

“If you want to babble, go down to the foyer,” he said blightingly. “If you want to report information, do so to your head of department. If you wish to question me, you don’t have that right.”

A couple of people gasped.

“The board questions me. It is the appropriate check and balance to presidential power. This—” a condemnatory sweeping glance of the crowded room—“is a waste of everyone’s time. And undisciplined. Out, now. Chad, I thought the board meeting was for ten o’clock?”

“It is.”

“Good.” Lewis strode through the crowd and into his inner office. He shut the door.

Instantly, outside, the babble returned.

He shook his head and crossed to his desk.

Two hours later, he dealt with the board in just as brusque a manner. Kora reported on the mission to Mérida and fielded any questions, while he eyed off his fellow board members. They seemed subdued.

Finally, Neville summed up the mood. “Zombies are sensational enough to have caught everyone’s attention. However, Gilda,” a nod to his fellow department head, “and Fay Olwen seem confident it’s not a spell easily replicated since it required both a demon lord’s ‘blood’ and major magic. And we all know that demon lords are rarely summoned.”

“Although we must be vigilant,” Gilda said.

Neville nodded impatiently. “So, now, on to other business.”

And that’s when the board surprised Lewis.