Renegade (28 page)

After a sleepless night, Griff headed for the shelter. He could fall in with whatever the kids were doing, or help Marc if he needed it. Yet he couldn’t stop thinking about Valeria or wishing she was with him. But seeing him would only hurt her, and he’d done enough of that.

She needs you
, Stefan had said,
and I think you need her.

He wanted her, no doubt about that. But maybe Stefan and Hettie were both wrong. Now that she’d had time to think, she might realize she’d made a mistake in falling for him.

She’d called his reasoning selfish. He’d been sure it wasn’t, but maybe he’d been fooling himself. Hettie’d called him a chicken shit. Maybe he just didn’t have the balls to see Valeria face an uphill climb at the Collegium because of him.

He stopped to let Sam Peters pull his battered red pickup out of the market square. Sam gave him a toot of the horn and a friendly wave, and Griff answered with a two-fingered salute. At least he still had the town and could move around it openly now.

Suppose he called her, tried to see her. She was at Hettie’s now. He could settle this today. If Valeria would talk to him.

She’d tried, more than once, to tell him how she felt, and he hadn’t listened.

Regret and longing squeezed his heart. He couldn’t put this off. Griff swung into a U-turn and put the hammer down.

G
riff drove down the bumpy dirt drive with its live oak trees laden with Spanish moss and past the two-story, white frame house to his usual parking spot in back. Opening the car door, he looked up, and his heart jolted.

Valeria sat on the back porch steps with a glass of iced tea in her hand and Magnus snoring beside her.

He climbed out of the car, into a humid morning that promised to become sweltering as afternoon approached. Griff took his sunglasses off. He wanted a good look at her.

Magnus shot to his feet, tail wagging, and leaped to the ground. Scratching him was the fastest way to get past him, so Griff obliged, but he watched Valeria covertly.

She took his breath away. Green shorts showcased those long legs, and her yellow tank not only clung to her breasts but let those gorgeous, toned arms show. His scrutiny reached her face, her blank expression, and his enjoyment faded.

He wanted to touch her. Ached to.

Needed to.

Stefan had been right. Griff needed her. He had to fight for her, suck it up and deal, even if that meant watching her take flak sometimes. If she would take him back.

She stood, brushing off the seat of her shorts. “I’ll tell Hettie you’re here. Unless she’s expecting you?” Her eyes narrowed.

“She isn’t. I came to talk to you.”

“Oh?” She raised one eyebrow.

Clearly, she wasn’t going to help him out, but she’d gone more than halfway already only to have him knock her back. “I’d like to apologize.”

“Oh.”

Couldn’t she say any damned thing else? Pushing on, he explained, “For not being the kind of man you wanted.”

“We are what we are.” Her voice held steady, but her lips trembled, the pain they betrayed an ice pick in his soul.

Was she hurting at seeing him? Or because she regretted ever loving him? “It’s…I miss you.” Great, another weak lead-in.

Maybe she feared he’d turn ghoul again someday and put her through that hellish wringer again.

“I’m sorry.” Her throat moved in a hard swallow, and her eyes darkened with misery she couldn’t or wouldn’t hide any longer. “I can’t be your pal, Griffin, if that’s what you want. Not now and maybe not ever. As for anything else…” She shook her head. “I can’t be with someone who doesn’t trust me to handle myself or believe in what we have together. So you can go in and see Hettie or toss the ball for Magnus, or you can leave. But we’re done here.”

She turned toward the door. His heart clutched.

She looked so sad, so lonely. He’d done that to her. He’d cost her more than anyone ever should’ve and denied her the one thing she asked in return.

“I’m an asshole,” he blurted out, and he started after her.

A vision flashed over his sight—Valeria standing beside him, fighting dark, smoldering foes with her sword as he swung his staff, a staff bright with magic.

The vision winked out. It might’ve been precog or imagination or wishful thinking. He would worry about that after he’d put things right with her.

At the door, Val froze, blood roaring in her ears. “What did you say?” He probably was just trying the same song, different key, not changing anything. Sometimes hope was a viper.

She heard the sound of his footsteps as he came up onto the porch and stopped behind her. He was so close she could almost feel his body heat in the muggy air.

“You were right,” he said. “About my not respecting your choices. About my giving you up too easily. About you deserving better. I didn’t listen. Hence, asshole.”

Hope sank its fangs in, and she didn’t have the nerve to turn around, to make the bite sharper if this wasn’t going where she wanted it to.

He took an audible breath. “I hear you’ve got this task force. That you’re maybe hiring. I could use a job.”

“What?” She turned to him. The longing in his face hit her like a jab to the heart.

“A job,” he repeated. “Under your command.”

He looked serious. But was he?

“You know that means I decide who takes point. You’re okay with that?”

“Yes. I’ll type and file if that’s what you want. I’ll hate it, especially if something happens to you, but I’ll do it. I’ll even live at the Collegium if that’s where you’re headquartered.”

She stared at him. If she yielded now, and he let her down, he would break her heart again.

“I love you,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, with the magic. I don’t know if ghouls will come after me. But I do know that I want you. For better or worse, powered or not, for the rest of our lives.” Could she believe him? Trust him one more time?

“I mean it.” He held out a hand to her, his eyes pleading. “Touch me. Connect with me, and you’ll see.”

Hesitantly, she laid her fingers in his warm, callused palm. Their bond flared to life and in it rang the truth of his claims.

Joy burst out of her in a shuddering, elated gasp. She flung herself into his arms.

Holding her close, he groaned, and then his mouth found hers.

“Well.” Hettie spoke from the doorway.

They let their kiss break but not the embrace. Smiling against each other’s lips, they took one last, whispery taste before they looked to her.

She grinned. “Took you long enough, boy.”

“Too long.” He planted a kiss on Val’s hair. “Sometimes I’m slow.”

“We’re working on that.” Val leaned into him, and his chuckle flicked happiness over her heart.

“About time, too.” Hettie surveyed them over her glasses. “In my day, goin’s on like that meant wedding bells. We do right nice weddings hereabouts, especially in October, when the weather cools down some.”

That sounded perfect to Val, but she looked at Griffin, checking.

He smiled with happiness lighting his eyes. “You did realize that was a proposal?”

“It sounded like one, but I guess I didn’t formally accept. So yes, I’ll marry you.” As his smile spread, she added, “In October if you like.”

“I do.” He lifted her hand to kiss it, then folded it against his heart.

“Excellent.” Hettie gave them a sharp, approving nod. “Griffin, I’m sure your folks’ll have ideas. You just let me know however much or little y’all want me, or any of us, to do. The gazebo out back is pretty, or that little chapel in town. Whatever you want, we’ll do it up right, ’cause you’re family.”

Her lips curved slowly. “Now I’m going back to my biscuits and y’all can go back to sparkin’.” With another little nod, she marched into the kitchen.

Val smiled up at the man who held her heart. “Sparking?”

“I think that’s what they called serious making out at one point.” Grinning, he turned, tugging her body against his definitely aroused one. A jolt of pleasure and need almost melted her knees.

“Whoa.” She clutched at him, wrinkling her nose at the satisfied smile on his face. “Okay, I’m with the program.”

“Good, because we need to make up for lost time.”

His head swooped down, and he took her mouth. No tenderness this time.

Breathless, Val laid her head on his shoulder. “You know,” she said, listening to his heart beat, “she’s right. We are family here, with her, her nutty dog, and this town. More than I ever felt at the Collegium.”

“Me either, obviously.” He rested his cheek against her hair. “It’s a nice feeling, having a place to belong.”

“I tried to tell you that you had a place with me.”

“Yeah, yeah. And that’s your last
I told you so
.”

“For now.” Glorying in the closeness of his body, his arms around her, his mind and hers mingling, she laughed up at him. “By the way, you’re hired. And don’t worry, I’m too smart to waste your field experience on an office job.”

“A wise move since I’m a lousy file clerk.” Grinning, he slid an arm behind her knees and lifted her. “Let’s go upstairs and seal the part about belonging to each other.”

“But Hettie’s inside fixing breakfast.”

“She won’t mind. She’s family.”

“Besides,” Hettie called from the kitchen, “I want little ones around here again. Y’all get a move on.”

Stunned, Val stared at Griffin, who laughed. “One thing at a time,” he called back as he started down the hall. “Let me get her married first.”

“I like the sound of that.” She brushed his hair out of his face and let her fingers linger over the thick, soft strands.
My husband
, she thought, and his hold tightened.

“According to your father, acknowledging our bond publicly makes us as good as married in the mage world.”

“That’s great, but we’re taking care of the Mundane world, too, rings and all.” He grinned, and his satisfaction rippled through her mind. “Forever used to be a pretty grim prospect in my old life, before you. Now I can’t wait.”

“Neither can I.”

In the bond they shared, happiness reverberated, spinning and glistening through them. He walked into his old room, kicked the door shut, and laid her on the bed.

He smiled as he stretched out beside her. “You promised me I would go home one day, that we both would.” His eyes softened. “Today, with you, I’m home. Finally.”

“We both are.” She drew him down for a long, tender kiss, their first on the road to forever.

Nancy Northcott’s childhood ambition was to grow up and become Wonder Woman. Around fourth grade, she realized it was too late to acquire Amazon genes, but she still loved comic books, science fiction, fantasy, and YA romance.

Nancy became an attorney but eventually realized her internal superheroine needed more room to play. She left the legal profession to teach at the college level and to write freelance articles and novels, most recently blending her extensive knowledge of fantasy into her own stories. A sucker for fast action and wrenching emotion, Nancy combines the romance and high stakes she loves in her new contemporary mage series.

Married since 1987, she considers herself lucky to have found a man who not only enjoys a good adventure story but doesn’t mind carrying home a suitcase full of research books. Nancy and her husband have one son, who also likes a good adventure story.

For more information, visit Nancy’s website,
www.nancynorthcott.com
.

Wayfarer, Georgia
Present Day

T
oo late, too late, too late.

The refrain pounded through Special Agent Camellia “Mel” Wray’s brain. Each repetition slammed into her heart. She took a slow, deep breath that didn’t ease her pain or her guilt.

She should’ve been here, should’ve come when Cinda first asked her, not let work get in the way. Sick in the depths of her soul, she hitched up the knees of her gray slacks and knelt in the grass by her music teacher’s crumpled body.

On Cinda Baldwin’s other side, the medical examiner, Dr. Harry Milledge, also knelt. The thin, gray-haired man watched Mel over his glasses but said nothing, giving her time to process. Somewhere behind her, the sheriff and two of his deputies waited.

Headlights from the sheriff’s department cruisers cast harsh shadows over Cinda’s face, and the blue flashers gave her contorted features an eerie tint. Her agonized expression eliminated any hope she’d had an easy death. Mel brushed a strand of white hair off Cinda’s cold forehead.

“You all right, ma’am?” A stocky deputy who looked to be in his midtwenties crouched beside Mel. Hastily, he corrected, “I mean, Special Agent.”

Ma’am.
So familiar and, in the South, so automatic. Cinda had been
ma’am
until Mel grew up enough to become a friend and not just a student. She’d been the only person outside the family who still called Mel by her old, more girlish nickname of Cami.

Mel sucked air into her tight chest. If only the night weren’t so muggy. But what could you expect in Georgia in September, a few miles from the vast, wet expanse of the Okefenokee Swamp?

“I’m fine, thank you.” Guiltier than homemade sin, as people back home would’ve said, but not about to hurl. This wasn’t the first murder scene she’d attended, just the first involving a friend. Why the hell hadn’t she driven the four-plus hours from Atlanta sooner? Her team had cracked the human trafficking ring’s code at midday, but Mel had waited for the busts, for the feel-good moment when the first of the teenaged victims was reunited with her family.

If Mel had left sooner, arrived here before Cinda’s assailant, Cinda might still be alive.

Mel locked the guilt away. Later for that. “I confirm this is Lucinda Baldwin, the owner of this property.”

At least this cottage in the woods was far enough out from the town to avoid curious onlookers. Only Mel’s silver Toyota Camry, the sheriff’s two cruisers, and an ambulance sat in the drive. The yellow crime scene tape ringing the front yard seemed unnecessary.

“How well did you know her?” The deputy had his notebook out now, and a pen.

“We’re from the same town, Essex, up in eastern North Carolina. She was my music teacher for ten years.” She was also the only person who’d encouraged Mel to pursue playing her flute even though her dad scorned it as impractical. “We kept in touch, visited once or twice a year.”

“What brings you here tonight?”

“A visit, as I said earlier. I’d planned to spend several days with her.” Mel hesitated. Saying Cinda wanted an FBI agent to check out some weird things wouldn’t win points with the locals, but they should know she had been nervous. “She said she’d seen some strange things, odd-looking people, eerie lights back in the woods at the full moon. Did she ever report any of that?”

“Not so’s I know, but I’ll check.” He pursed his lips. “Lights mighta been the local Wiccans, especially at the full moon, but you never know. Lots of strange things been seen in the swamp for centuries. Right many Indian legends about it.”

Wiccans and swamp hoodoo. Mel swallowed a sigh. No wonder the town of Wayfarer, Georgia, had a New Age weirdo reputation.

She glanced at Dr. Milledge. “What can you tell me?”

“Officially, nothing.” He waited for her nod of acknowledgment before he added, “Seeing as how you carry that federal badge, though, I don’t mind saying she has strange wounds.” He opened Cinda’s blouse to reveal four deep punctures on the right shoulder.

Mel’s head went light. She took a deep breath and forced herself to focus on the punctures and not the fact this was Cinda. “Not much blood for wounds like that.”

“No. There’s a fifth on the back of the shoulder, as though from a grip. Five more at the base of the spine with what might’ve been the thumb dead center, by eyeball estimate, on the lumbosacral plexus.”

The description, the reference to that nerve junction in the lower back, jiggled something deep in Mel’s brain, but she couldn’t bring it forward.

“Shoulder wounds are just about over the brachial plexus,” he continued, indicating the nerve junction at the right shoulder. He unbuttoned the checked cotton the rest of the way and gently folded the right side back. With one finger, he traced a deep, short abdominal cut. “Under here’s the liver.”

“The killer meant to cut out her liver?” Mel jerked her eyes aside and swallowed hard against a sick taste in her mouth.
Focus, damn it.
She hadn’t survived in the FBI by being squeamish.

Then again, a murdered friend could never be just another case. The guilt and the loss and the bone-deep outrage over what Cinda had suffered threatened to choke her. She shut her eyes to stem angry tears. Later for that, too.

Blowing out a hard breath, she looked back at the doctor. The kindness in his eyes deepened her guilt because she didn’t deserve it. If only she’d left Atlanta sooner.

“I couldn’t say what was intended,” he replied, “not from this wound alone. It’s odd, though.”

Odd, yes, and another poke in the depths of her brain, another fuzzy image she couldn’t bring clear.

“Cause of death?” Mel asked.

“No guesses.” The doctor shook his head. “Not until I take a closer look. We’re ready to transport, if you’re done.”

“Yes. Thank you, very much, for talking to me.” She might be a Fed, but she had no jurisdiction over a local murder. The sheriff and his team had allowed her this much out of professional courtesy.

Mel stood and made herself turn away. Her hands were shaking. She jammed them into her pockets.

The deputy offered her a cup of water. She took it with a word of thanks. She hadn’t realized he’d gone to get it.

“Can you help us find next of kin?” he asked.

“She doesn’t have any family left. I’m her executor.” Knowing what that might imply, she looked the deputy straight in the eye. “Aside from small personal bequests to friends—including me, unless she changed that—she left everything to the North Carolina School of the Arts.”

“But she lived here in Georgia?”

“She liked the atmosphere in Wayfarer.” Until lately. “She had a friend down here. Hettie…something with a
T
.”

“Miss Hettie Telfair?” The young man’s brows rose.

“That sounds right. I’d have to see Cinda’s address book to know for sure.”

“I guess that’s it for now, ma—uh, Special Agent.”

“‘Ma’am’ is fine.” Any term of respect would do. At age thirty, Mel had been on the job long enough to lose the insecurity that came with being young, female, and a law enforcement officer. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else, of course.”

“We’d appreciate that.”

As the deputy pocketed his pad, Sheriff Dan Burton walked over to her.

“Odd case,” the short, burly man said.

“Yes. Worse when it’s a friend.” Mel kept her back to the bagging and lifting going on behind her. The idea of Cinda in that bag clawed at her heart. She tried to focus, convince herself this was a routine investigation. “Any witnesses?”

“The woman who called 911 was driving by when her headlights hit a white male bending over Miss Cinda. He ran right in front of the car. Description puts his age as midtwenties, height around five six, blond hair.”

He paused, frowning. “She said his eyes were purple, swore to it, but I’m thinking that’s a trick of the light.”

“Or contact lenses,” Mel said. “Some people try hard to look freakish.” Even murderers.

The sheriff eyed her speculatively, his face tense in the eerie light. “Seein’ as the deceased was a friend, you gonna try to pull the Bureau in on this case?”

Mel shook her head. “No grounds, and we both know it. I want in, though.” She met his narrowed eyes with a level stare. “Unofficially. I’m on leave from the Bureau for the next two weeks. When I saw you all here…I’m not too proud to do legwork, and I know how to take orders from the officer in charge.”

He studied her for another few seconds. “I’ll need to get a look at that will, of course. If you’re clear, I got no problem with you helping out.”

Clear
meant not only that she inherited too little to be a motive for murder but also that she hadn’t had time to come here from Atlanta after work, kill Cinda, and then pretend to drive up after the sheriff’s crew arrived. That was okay. That was procedure.

Mel nodded. “Thank you, Sheriff Burton. You’ve been very kind. If you can suggest a motel nearby, I’ll write down my work and travel schedule for today and get out of your way.”

She’d planned to stay with Cinda, but that would never happen again. Mel set her jaw against a rush of grief.

Sometimes justice wasn’t enough. This was going to be one of those times, damn it, but seeing the killer punished was the only thing she could still do for Cinda.

Every turn of the chopper’s rotors, every breath Dr. Stefan Harper’s badly wounded comrade drew brought them closer to the Collegium, the mages’ base near Brunswick, and its state-of-the-art operating suite. The equipment there would give Stefan’s patient, his friend, a chance to live. If they reached the OR fast enough.

“Stay with me, Javier,” he murmured, praying the unconscious man would hear him. Stefan knelt by the stretcher, both hands over Javier’s heart. His magic infused the slight, dark-haired mage’s chest, sealing the damaged blood vessels as best he could, keeping the heart beating and the lungs pumping.

“Blood pressure,” he rapped out. He couldn’t check it himself without losing focus on his task.

“Seventy-two over forty-eight and dropping,” Ellie Ferris, the petite, blond medic kneeling across from him reported.

Hell. That was way below the bottom of normal. Over his shoulder, he called, “Someone get an ETA from the pilot.”

The shrapnel wounds in Javier’s chest were too numerous for Stefan to stop all the bleeding. They had to reach the OR fast.

“Josh says thirteen minutes, give or take,” Tasha Murdock reported grimly. Her boy-short auburn hair and long bangs were tangled, matted with sweat from the morning’s battle, but she didn’t seem to notice. “What can I do? Do you need a power boost?”

Stefan shook his head. More power wouldn’t block the leaks, and the shrapnel would wreak further havoc if he simply summoned the little bits of metal out. A sword wound would’ve been so much simpler to heal.

At least he could use magical CPR, not drive the shrapnel deeper with chest compressions and make things worse. That was too dangerous to try until they were at the OR. Unless Javier died. If that happened, magic wouldn’t work anymore, but the Mundane, or normal human, technique might.

Damn it, he could feel the BP dropping. He glanced at Ellie, who pumped air into the cuff on Javier’s arm.

“Fifty-one over thirty,” she said, her voice flat.

Hell.
They weren’t going to make it. Only one very dangerous strategy might push the chopper home in time. “Get us a tailwind.”

“On it.” Tasha sprang toward the front. “Batten down, everybody, now,” she shouted over the rotor noise. “Darren, with me. Leslie, Max, open the doors.”

Stefan heard her as though from a distance, his attention still focused on the pale, unconscious father of two. But he couldn’t think about Javier’s kids now. Better to focus on the vitals while Tasha and Darren hooked up safety harnesses, leaned out the doors, and raised the wind.

Stefan and Ellie braced themselves while holding onto Javier’s stretcher. At least the other wounded were stable. Their injuries, various venom-tainted slashes from ghoul talons, needed more treatment but weren’t likely to be fatal.

The three others on stretchers were strapped in. By now, as the doors ground open and wind rushed through the chopper, the eleven who were uninjured or walking wounded were buckled in or hanging onto something. None objected to the risky maneuver, not when Javier’s life hung in the balance.

Midmorning sunlight streamed into the cabin. The whoosh of the rising breeze drowned the
chukka-chukka
of the rotors. The helo leaped forward, canted sharply to one side and jerked before the pilot mastered it again. Good. They weren’t going to crash, but would they gain enough speed?

The weather workers had to limit the power they poured into the atmosphere. If they didn’t, they could screw up area conditions and cause a tornado or worse. Destroying Mundane homes to save a mage was not an option.

“Someone get me our ETA,” Stefan shouted over his shoulder.

A few moments later, Max James’s deep voice said, “Ten minutes out, Doc.”

Shit.
“Keep me posted on the time,” Stefan ordered.

Their dawn raid on the ghoul nest had better be worth it. They’d wiped it out completely, seized all documentation, but didn’t yet know whether those records contained any useful information. Like whether the ghouls’ allies, demons from the Void between worlds, still meant to open a gateway to Earth. They’d tried last month without much success and at a high cost to the mages.

“ETA, eight minutes,” Max reported.

Not fast enough. “Stay with me,” Stefan murmured. Maybe they’d get lucky and nature would boost their tail wind.

Ghoul use of dark magic left them unable to eat anything other than fresh kill or to breed among themselves, so they kidnapped mages and Mundanes as breeders. And occasionally as snacks, though they usually kept animals for food. The raiding party Javier led had liberated nine humans, two mages, and assorted livestock. It was damn good work, no matter what the captured records did or didn’t reveal.

“BP forty-six over twenty-three,” Ellie said.

Max added, “ETA, five minutes.”