Master of Darkness (16 page)

“I sensed their distress and took pity on them,” Maeve explained. “So I summoned my pets to the pool and showed the visitors how to meld with them. In the process of fusing with the creatures’ minds, the aliens enhanced the animals’ intelligence and magic.”

She looked down at the cougar’s pitiful body. “Which has proved the death of poor Erielhonan.”

“What about Smoke?” Miranda asked, referring to the powerful Shifter who was one of Arthur’s allies. “Isn’t he some kind of elemental too?”

Maeve shook her head. “Smoke arrived centuries before the time we speak of. He was one of a group of beings far more powerful than my familiars.”

“We were among the last to flee our universe.” Guinness rolled his bulging eyes. “Mostly because we didn’t have the power to escape any sooner.”

Tenderly, reverently, Maeve straightened the cat’s limbs, then stroked its head in a gesture of farewell. Rising to her feet, she pushed her beaded hair back from her face with bloody fingers. The charms clicked and chimed as she spoke through gritted teeth. “Warlock stole these innocents’ lives and magic. He’s twisted and perverted them.” She curled her gauntleted hands into fists.
“And I will make him pay.”

In grim silence, Maeve began the process of gathering up the victims one by one, and gating away to return them to their grieving kin.

Justice and Miranda offered to take some of the dead themselves, but the goddess told them this was a task she must perform.

So they said their good-byes and watched Maeve summon yet another gate. Her steps slow, solemn, she carried the little murdered dragon through it on a shimmering litter of magic. Guinness followed, his tail drooping in sorrow.

“I have the distinct feeling this is all part of some kind of ritual revenge magic she’s casting,” Justice commented, once the gate vanished.

“Probably.” Miranda sighed, taking a last look around the defiled clearing. “We’d better get back to Avalon. Arthur needs to know about all this crap.”

“I think I remember how to conjure a gate.” Justice narrowed his eyes and concentrated on building an image of Avalon’s central square in his mind, trying to re-create the steps he’d followed when Maeve had summoned them.

Just as he sent the magic streaming into the air, Miranda yelped in alarm. “Justice, don’t! The city wards . . .”

It was like crashing headfirst into a brick wall—at a dead run. The rebound of his own magic knocked him flat on his ass so hard, he saw stars.

Miranda’s pretty face appeared upside down over him, wearing a worried frown. “You okay?”

He blinked. “What the fuck was that?”

“Avalon is protected by powerful wards,” Miranda explained, putting a hand down to help him stagger to his feet. “If the shield doesn’t recognize your magic, it will give you a good hard swat. Keep digging at it, and it will assume you’re a would-be invader and fry you like a mosquito in a bug zapper.”

“Isn’t that a little extreme?” He dusted off his armored backside.

“Not given the invasion of evil vampires a couple of years ago. From what I gather, several Magekind got killed trying to fight off the bastards. After that, the Majae combined their power to make the wards even stronger. Now nobody gets through unless the wards recognize your magical signature.”

The light dawned. “And since I didn’t have the ability to work that kind of magic the last time I was in Avalon . . .”

“The wards don’t know you from Adam.” Miranda flicked her fingers, creating a gate of her own. The city shone through it, wavering like a pale ghost in the moonlight. “Luckily, they do know me.”

Justice smiled slightly, all too conscious of the bloody setting around them. “Show-off.”

“That’s me.” Bowing with a flourish of an imaginary hat, Miranda gestured to her gate. “Milord, your carriage awaits.”

Shaking his head at her antics, he stepped through—and stopped in his tracks as several hundred people turned to glare at him. “Shhhh!” they hissed in chorus.

“Uh, sorry,” Justice whispered as his face heated with a furious flush. He moved aside to give Miranda room to join him.

Turned out, they’d managed to crash the funeral of Kadir and Daliya, the first Magekind victims of Warlock’s new Beasts.

Everyone in Avalon had turned out for the funeral, all of them garbed in their finest medieval clothing of deepest black. The air was full of the rustle of silk and the whisper of velvet, trimmed with jet beads and embroidered in intricate Celtic knots of black silk or metallic silver thread.

Justice felt horribly conspicuous in his armor, still bloodstained and probably stinking of the crime scene’s corrupted magic. He tried to ignore the feeling and concentrate on Arthur, who stood next to the couple’s bier in the center of the city square. The former king was well into one of his thundering Once-more-into-the-breach-style speeches. Henry V had nothing on Arthur when he was on a roll.

“By the time he gets done,” Justice murmured to Miranda, “we’ll all be ready to invade France.”

“Shush!” she hissed, as several people turned to glare. Again.

Justice snapped his mouth shut and managed not to cower in embarrassment.

“. . . gave his life in a heroic effort to stop Warlock’s Beasts from claiming more innocents,” Arthur was saying. Unlike the rest of the crowd, he and the Knights of the Round Table wore full ceremonial armor. Moonlight seemed to blaze off his broad shoulders and helmeted head.

“Kadir fought with courage, even in the face of a horrific death, just as his wife Daliya battled to save him. Neither stinted at giving that last full measure to stop the killers. We will never forget their bravery and sacrifice, and we will honor their memory as we do other heroes fallen in the battle to protect humanity.”

“As for Warlock . . .” His black eyes narrowed, his mouth tightening into a grim line. “He will pay for the deaths of these good people—and for all the innocents he’s murdered in his insane quest for power. We will defend Merlin’s Great Mission, and Warlock and his followers will die, just like all the others who’ve pitted themselves against us these past fifteen centuries.” Arthur paused, sweeping his hard, determined gaze over the crowd, who started back at him, just as determined.

“We are the Magekind, and Merlin did not create us to lose!” Arthur barked. “And we will
not
lose. We will
not
allow that madman to enslave humanity with his corrupted power.
This I do swear!
” The last sentence was a roar, as he drew Excalibur, its enchanted steel ringing like the call to battle.

As one, all the Round Table knights drew their weapons, echoing his words in a thundering shout. “This we so swear!”

All the other vampires followed suit, thrusting their blades heavenward. “We so swear!”

Morgana moved forward, all magic and rippling black velvet skirts. “The Majae join this oath as we send brother and sister home!”

“We so swear,” the Majae echoed, calling their magic in one blazing rush of power. It exploded from their lifted hands, blasting into the flower-piled bier that held both Daliya’s white silk–clad body and her husband’s helmeted head. The platform flared white, glowing brighter and brighter until the raw magic raged in a hot, boiling globe.

The witches raised their arms, sending the globe blasting skyward. There it detonated, raining sparks of golden magic over the empty space where the bier had been. All of it—the bier, Daliya, Kadir’s head, the mounds of flowers—had been consumed by the spell.

Daliya and Kadir were once more part of the Mageverse, returned to the source of all magic.

* * *

The service over,
the black-clad crowd streamed off toward the Great Hall, where the Majae had prepared a funeral feast. “Let’s wait and see if we can catch Arthur before he takes off for the Hall,” Justice suggested.

Miranda nodded, swiping an armored hand across her reddened eyes. “That last part makes me cry every time.”

Justice nodded, his own eyes stinging. “They were good people.”

“You, on the other hand,” Arthur growled from behind him, “are an asshole.”

SIXTEEN

Miranda had heard
of the legendary Pendragon temper, but she’d hoped never to have it directed at her.

No such luck.

Arthur was actually three inches shorter than Justice, yet somehow he seemed to loom over both of them, broad as a fortress in his ceremonial armor, his helm tucked under one arm.
The better to glare at us.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Turning his black, burning stare on Miranda, he snarled, “Why didn’t you answer Morgana’s repeated calls? We thought that damned fairy had fucking
killed
you!”

Miranda blinked up at him. “What calls? Morgana never called me.”

“Yes, I did.” The witch appeared at Arthur’s side as if she’d materialized there like a black-clad ghost. Her narrow eyes glittered with irritation, and her power beat against Miranda’s magical senses like meaty fists. “I sent psychic calls to you no less than ten times today, but you blocked me completely. I couldn’t even tell if you were alive, much less conscious.”

“I tried to reach you, too.” Guinevere moved up behind her husband, her expression concerned. “I got the distinct impression you were blocking me. Or someone was, anyway.”

Morgana curled her lip. “Which was not well done of you, my girl. I realize you’re not technically a Maja, but when you accept a mission of such import, you should at least have the courtesy to report in!”

Miranda wasn’t sure if the suspicion she saw in their eyes was real or simply a product of her own paranoia, but suddenly she was acutely aware of being Warlock’s daughter. Did they really suspect her of spying for her father? Despite the anger that thought inspired, she tried for patience. “Look, you’re right—I should have reported in, but things have been a bit chaotic. Justice’s control of his new Hunter Prince powers isn’t quite . . .”

“So he did pull it off. Is that Merlin’s Blade?” Arthur interrupted, his attention focusing on the haft of the axe, protruding beyond Justice’s left shoulder as it rode in its harness. He frowned, cocking his head. “I assumed it would be a sword.”

“You mean this?” Justice asked in a deep, rumbling growl that made the hair rise on the back of Miranda’s neck. She turned to stare at him in alarm as he grabbed the axe handle and jerked, spilling the big weapon into his waiting hands. Reaching to his touch, its fist-sized gemstone rained blue sparks to the cobblestones.

Morgana actually took a step back.

Arthur studied the weapon with interest, his gaze flicking from its massive battle-axe blade to the Celtic engraving on its haft.

He can’t sense the axe’s magic the way we can
, Miranda realized.
Or he’d be a lot more worried
.

“Well, it definitely has a little juice,” he drawled.

“Oh, it does,” Justice purred back, in a guttural voice that sounded nothing like his usual pleasant baritone. “In fact, it has more than a ‘little’ juice.”

Arthur might not be a Maja, but he was damned well an Alpha Male, and he knew when he was being challenged. His black eyes narrowed as he looked up into Justice’s gaze—a gaze that at the moment was far more wolf than man. “You planning to do something with that blade, boy?”

Justice’s nostrils flared. Miranda was pretty sure he didn’t like being called “boy.” “What do you think, old man?”

Arthur grinned, all teeth and ferocity. Excalibur sang as he drew it, its magic flaring golden as it flooded Miranda’s senses with power. “You want to play, Wolf Boy, I’ll be happy to oblige.”

“Ahhh . . .” Miranda began, fighting panic. She didn’t think the vampire seriously intended to hurt Justice—but she wasn’t sure Justice knew that. And as for his intentions toward Arthur . . . “I don’t think that’s a good idea, sir.”

The former king’s lips peeled off his teeth. “My dear, I can take anything your furry friend can dish out. The question is, can
he
say the same?”

“Arthur, my ‘furry friend’ turns into a wolf the size of a mastodon,” Miranda snapped, abruptly in no mood for idiot posturing. Especially knowing just how close to the edge her lover really was. “He damned near ate me earlier today. He didn’t even know who I was. Getting his oars back into the water is the reason we’re so damned late.”

“
Ate
you? Literally?
Justice?
” Arthur’s brows flew up in astonishment as he stared at her, visibly dumbfounded. “But the boy is crazy about you!”

Her cheeks heated. Damn, did everybody know? “His wolf half was in control, and it didn’t recognize me. Jogging his memory wasn’t easy, either. Justice’s conscious mind is in the driver’s seat at the moment . . . more or less.” Miranda glanced at her lover, who, thank God, looked shamefaced. She’d apparently snapped him out of it. “But it’s not a good idea to goad him, because if his Wolf gets out, things could get seriously ugly.”

“She’s right,” Justice admitted roughly. “I’d rather cut my own arm off than hurt one hair on Miranda’s head, but the Wolf . . . The Wolf is another proposition. If it escapes again, somebody could get hurt. Badly. And I don’t want that someone to be Miranda—or any of the rest of you.”

“‘Then will the Hunter Prince be free,’” Gwen quoted softly. “‘Then will he rule in bloody vengeance or bend his knee to his spirit’s feral king.’ Daliya wasn’t kidding, was she?”

“No,” Justice said. “No, she really wasn’t.” He shrugged, his expression almost defeated. “As to blocking Morgana’s attempts to communicate, I probably did that myself. Not consciously, but Miranda tells me I sometimes do things with my power without intending to. I conjured a really impressive steak dinner and a magnum of Dom Perignon ’66 earlier this evening, and I had no idea I’d done it until Miranda brought it to my attention.”

Morgana frowned. “That’s not good. Using magic unconsciously can be extremely dangerous. You need to gain control of it before you do something truly regrettable.”

Miranda nodded. “Which is what Maeve told us. She said Justice needs to learn both control and combat tactics. And considering what Warlock has been up to, the sooner, the better.”

Arthur stiffened. “Exactly what
has
Warlock been up to?”

“Killing people,” she told him bluntly. “And using their lives to work death magic.”

Arthur stared. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah,” Justice muttered. “That’s it in a nutshell.”

* * *

Justice was working
hard on a fireball when Morgana asked in a tone of polite interest, “Why do you think you tried to kill Miranda?”

He flicked his gaze up to stare at her in a blend of astonishment and rage. The fireball instantly inflated to the diameter of a basketball, a roiling blaze of blue werewolf magic. It had been a dim tennis ball a moment before, and he’d had to work his ass off to manage that much. Merlin’s Blade, tucked in its harness, spilled sparks down Justice’s back as he spoke through gritted teeth. “I didn’t try to kill Miranda. That was the Wolf.”

“What do you think the wolf is, William?” She cocked her head, ebony hair spilling over one armored breast in a gleaming wave. Like Justice, Morgana wore light practice armor. “It’s you. Perhaps a part you don’t want to admit to, but still, it’s you.”

It took a real effort not to tell Morgana just how full of shit she really was. He’d never liked the arrogant leader of the Majae. She was just a little too convinced she was always right, a little too willing to use her considerable power to get her way.

He was hardly alone in his dislike. To his knowledge, Belle and Gwen were the only people in Avalon who actually liked the cold-blooded bitch—and that included Arthur. Her half-brother seemed to regard her with a kind of wary respect, but damned little affection. He’d apparently been the victim of her scheming a few too many times. True, she always acted out of the best of intentions, but that was little comfort to the many targets of her manipulation.

Which, apparently, now included Justice.

Unfortunately, Morgana also knew her stuff when it came to magic, which was why she’d appointed herself Justice’s teacher in the use of his new abilities.

“Look, I
love
Miranda.” He looked across the practice field where Tristan was working to teach her a new parry while Belle kibitzed from the sidelines. “I’d sooner cut my arm off than hurt one red hair on her head.”

“And yet your wolf half tried to eat her.”

“The Wolf is a creation of Merlin’s Blade. He’s that damned Hunter Prince Daliya talked about in her prophecy.” His tone hardened. “What he definitely is not is some kind of projection of subconscious hostility.”

Morgana lifted a dark brow. “Why not? Miranda’s given you plenty of reason to be hostile. Up until recently, that girl treated you like the hired help, despite the fact you were obviously so infatuated with her, the waves of sweet longing threatened to send me into insulin shock.”

His fireball grew so hot, it started giving him a radiant burn across his cheeks. “I’m sorry you found my passion so distasteful.”

Morgana shrugged, somehow making even that gesture elegant. “I’m used to it. This town is full of people who exchange gooey glances. But that wasn’t how Miranda treated you, was it? To her, you were just the bodyguard who sometimes made himself useful by saving her life. She didn’t even notice how you felt. Or if she did, she didn’t care. That had to gall a man so proudly Alpha.”

Justice turned and tossed the fireball into the bushes around the practice grounds. They exploded into flame with a roaring
whoosh
. He froze, appalled. “Shit!”

Morgana gestured, and the fire winked out, smothered in golden sparks.

“I really didn’t intend to do that,” he told her, a flush climbing his face. “That spell was burning my fingers.”

“I’m not surprised, I could feel the heat from here. I suppose I’m lucky you didn’t throw it at me.”

“I don’t hurt women.” Belatedly processing what he’d just said, Justice winced. “That probably sounds chauvinistic.”

“More chivalry than chauvinism, I think. Which, God knows, I see a lot of around here.” She examined him, her gaze so cool and analytical, he felt like a lab rat in an experimenter’s fist. “But then, you were raised to be protective, weren’t you? That instinct goes all the way to the bone with you.”

Justice shrugged. “My dad was a cop. So was his dad. And we all worked for the same county sheriff’s office, even if it was years apart.” Old grief stabbed him with a bitter, familiar ache. “My father went down in the line. Surprised two armed robbers trying to knock over a convenience store. One of them grabbed the clerk and put his gun to her head as he dragged her toward the door. Dad shot him, but he had to take his eyes off the other robber to do it. And
that
guy had a sawed-off. The funeral was closed-casket.” He fell silent, lost in dark memories. “Granddad was in his second term as sheriff at the time. Dropped dead at his desk three weeks after we buried Dad.”

Even Morgana winced at that. “I trust they at least caught the killer.”

“Oh, yeah. He got the death penalty for killing a cop, though I was pushing thirty before the state managed to carry out his sentence.”

She studied him, one dark brow winging up. “How old were you when your father died?”

“Thirteen.” He absently conjured another fireball, this one even bigger and brighter than the first. “My sisters were five and seven at the time. Dad’s death benefits got socked away to send us all to college. Mom had to work two jobs just to keep us in peanut butter and Ramen noodles.”

“Son of a hero with two little sisters.” Morgana rocked back on one armored boot, watching him like a particularly entertaining lab rat hard at work in a maze. “I’ll wager you did a great deal of babysitting.”

“Yeah. In between mowing lawns and delivering papers. And pizzas, once I was old enough to drive.”

“I didn’t realize Ramen noodles were that expensive.”

“They’re not.” He shrugged. “But add in orthodontist bills and school clothes . . .”

“I see your point.” She fell into a contemplative silence. Just as he conjured a second fireball and started juggling the two, Morgana observed, “Raising a hero can’t be easy. Your mother must be ruthless as hell.”

Both fireballs swelled and grew considerably hotter. “My mother’s dead. Pancreatic cancer. Three years ago, not long before my Bite.” At least he hadn’t had to tell Deborah Justice he’d become a werewolf. Nor had he been forced to explain why he’d quit the department. Which was a good thing; he’d never been able to lie to his mother worth a damn. Deceiving his sisters and their respective families had been bad enough.

But after he damned near Shifted during a fight with the murderer of a five-year-old girl, Justice realized he couldn’t remain both a homicide cop and a werewolf. Too many killers attempted to resist arrest, which never failed to piss him off. And when Justice got pissed, he tended to get furry.

He realized he’d eventually out himself—and drag the rest of the Direkind along for the ride. The world just wasn’t ready to learn some people actually
could
turn into seven-foot wolves.

Fortunately, not long after he’d quit, Justice discovered the werewolf Council of Clans was looking for a new wolf sheriff. Elena Rollings, who was both a cop’s wife and a councilwoman, persuaded them to give him the job.

At least until they’d decided to go along with Warlock’s plans. Justice had disagreed so violently, they’d fired his ass and replaced him with Galen Vandenberg. Vandenberg was a member of the Chosen with no law enforcement experience whatsoever, but he had known how to follow orders and keep his mouth shut. That was apparently all they required.

“So there you are,” Morgana said softly, watching Justice add a third fireball to the pair he was magically juggling. “In love with a woman who not only won’t give you the time of day, she’s actively afraid of you. You, everybody’s big brother, protective man of the house from the age of thirteen. No wonder you tried to eat her. And no wonder you can’t admit it to yourself.”

“Dammit, I didn’t try to eat Miranda,” Justice snapped, concentrating furiously on his fireballs. He was afraid of what he’d do if he let any of his attention drift to the witch. “That was the Hunter Prince.
Not me.
”