Ancient Magic: a New Adult Urban Fantasy (Dragon's Gift: The Huntress Book 1) (9 page)

I moved my arm away from the wound to give him room. I tried to focus on the bobbing of the boat beneath us as he laid his big palm gently against the gash. I winced, then sighed in relief as warmth radiated through me. Slowly, the flesh knitted back together.
 

It was still sore when he removed his hand, but it felt a heck of a lot better.

“Anywhere else?” he asked.

I shifted, wincing as more pain radiated from my back. It felt a bit better than it had at first. “Just my back, but I don’t think anything is broken.”

“Let me see. Turn.”

I turned, pinning my gaze on the open sea. Now that I no longer had a gaping wound in my side, the tension of having him touch me was amplified.

His palm was warm against my back when he laid it right on the part that hurt. He was good at this kind of thing. Even through the pain, his touch felt amazing.

Getting busy with Aidan was not a good idea. Definitely not something I should be picturing in my mind. But it was hard to keep my wariness bolstered when he kept healing me.

Once most of the pain had faded, he removed his hand.

“That’s the best I can do. You need a night to fully recover.”

I shifted, feeling mild pain and pulling muscles, but I was a lot better. He was right—I’d have full mobility by tomorrow.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’d be handy to have on my normal jobs.”

He grinned. “What you do is the opposite of my usual thing.”

“But think of how good you’d be at it. All that experience protecting valuables, you’d have no problem breaking in to get them.”

“I’ll think about it.” He grinned, but I knew he was full of it. “Where to next?”

“East,” I said. “To Norway. The scroll didn’t go far.”

“East it is.”

The wind cut off our words on the ride back, so we didn’t talk. Aidan confidently piloted the boat through the waves and pulled alongside the little dock. I hopped off, and he tossed me the rope. I tied the boat off to the cleat while he hid the key beneath the pilot’s seat.

By the time we were back in the car, it was fully dark.

“We’ll stay at my place tonight,” Aidan said as he cranked the ignition. “You need to sleep to heal. If the scroll were farther away, we’d take the plane and sleep on it, but Norway is only a two-hour flight.”

“What about the demons who were looking for it?”

“If that’s what they were after, they didn’t get the information they needed. And I don’t want you going until you’re healed.”

He was right. Going into tombs at less than one hundred percent was just asking for it. Without my magic, I needed to be physically one hundred percent to make it through the enchantments.

And I really wanted to wash the demon blood off me. I was starting to smell weird, and it was grossly sticky.

“Your place is near here?” Though I wanted to look at him—I wanted to do that way too often lately—I kept my gaze on the moonlit countryside. Hills rolled in the distance, dotted with sheep whose white wool glinted in the moonlight. I knew we were probably pretty close to where he lived. I didn’t have a great idea of the geography of Ireland, but I knew we were in the south, and when I’d raided the temple on his property yesterday, I’d been in the south.

“Yes.” He turned onto a narrow lane that climbed upward. The car bumped over potholes and rocks. “Just down this road. That’s another reason I chose to borrow Mack’s boat. Conveniently located.”

 
We pulled up to the house a moment later.

“I see you like the simple things,” I said as I gazed at the enormous structure. It was all sleek glass and stone, modern, yet it blended with the landscape beautifully.
 

“It’s all right,” Aidan said as he climbed out.
 

He opened my door before I’d even touched it, because I was too busy staring at the house. When I climbed out, my dragon sense tingled. Somewhere far underground, there were treasures. The ones that I’d left behind during my temple raid yesterday.

“Is your house on a cliff?”

“Yes.”

Made sense. I’d entered the temple through a gap in a cliff. That’s why it had been so easy for him to feel the magical disturbance when the demon had gone nuts on me. He’d been right on top of me.

I needed to be better about my recon, it seemed.
 

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get some dinner.”

“Yes, please.” This guy knew the way to my heart. I followed him into the foyer. Lights turned on as soon as he walked in the front door, illuminating a simple but beautiful foyer. The ceiling soared overhead, and a modern glass chandelier shed gleaming light on the wood floor. Maybe if I didn’t put all my money into the holy trinity of boots, jackets, and weapons, I could live in a place a bit closer to this.

Nah. I liked my set-up.

“Pick any bedroom upstairs and get cleaned up. I’ll get dinner on.”

I waved a hand down my bloody front. Most of it wasn’t even mine. “What? You don’t like me like this?”

His gaze met mine, and there was more than humor in his eyes. Heat. “I’ll take you however I can get you.”

I swallowed hard. Oh, man. He was bringing out the big guns. Desire coiled within me. Though it was stupid, I wanted to take him up on it.

“I’m going to get that shower.” I turned and ran up the stairs.

His low laugh echoed from below. It pissed me off and turned me on at the same time.

Idiot.

But I didn’t know if I was talking about him or me.

CHAPTER SIX

When I finished with my shower—which took longer than expected because the freaking thing had eight shower heads, and I’d had to try every one—I called Nix on my comms charm.

“Well, Cass? What happened?” Her voice came through clearly.

“I didn’t get the scroll. But I have a bead on its location. We’ll get it tomorrow.”

“Good.” The relief was clear in her voice. “Because Dr. Garriso didn’t know much. He said the scroll has been lost for at least three hundred years. When it was first stolen, the Order of the Magica and the Shifter Council sent out a search party. But they never found it. No one has heard about it since. It just disappeared.”

“Weird.”
 

“Yeah. I spoke to Del. She’s almost done in Nicaragua. When I asked her about the Scroll of Truth, she didn’t know anything either.”

“No surprise. If she’d known there was a threat to us, she’d have told us.”

“Yeah. Just figured I’d try. You never know what she’s read about.”

True. When she wasn’t beheading demons, she was big into books. It was why she was our Seeker. Most of the treasures I hunted were written about in ancient scrolls and texts. They provided the information I needed to find them.

“How’s everything else?” Nix asked.

“What else?”

“Uh, you’re hanging out with a super-hot, super-powerful, super-rich dude—who we all like, by the way—and you can’t think of what else I might be asking about?”

“Oh, yeah, that.” I blew out a breath. “I mean, he’s cool and all.”

“Cool? Yeah, he’s cool. I met him. Tell me something I don’t know. Something good.”

“Well, he’s healed me twice. And he’s funny.” I thought back. Being with him made me happy. I barely knew the guy, but I was getting butterflies over him. Yet I was also afraid of his ability to sense what I was. It was whiplashy. I needed to get my head on straight.
 

“But he wants me to find this scroll,” I said. “Which, I’ll remind you, could totally spill our secret. And all that power you say he’s got…well, yeah. He’s got it, all right. He turned into a griffon today.”

“A griffon? Whoa.”

“Yeah. With that kind of power, it’s easier for him to sense other supernaturals’ power. Even if I don’t want to use mine, I’m scared that if I hang out with him long enough, I’ll be in a situation where I’m forced to use it and I’ll reveal myself.”

Nix sighed. When she spoke, her voice was grim. “Yeah. That’s serious.”

“Deadly.”

“All right, well a girl can hope. I’d like you to get a life, you know. Date, meet a guy, all that.”

“Uh, like you do?” We kept to ourselves because of our secret and our work. Connor and Claire didn’t know we were FireSouls, and they were our only real friends. With survival and running our business being our priority, dating hadn’t been on our agenda much.

“Yeah, yeah. I see your point,” Nix said. “Look, take care of yourself, all right?”

“I will. I’ll be back soon. Remember—if I show up with the scroll, be ready to duplicate it real quick. Otherwise, I’m going to destroy it.” Then I would have Aidan to deal with.

“I’ll be ready.”

“Miss you.”

“Back at you,” she said.

I reached up and tapped the silver charm with my finger, dimming its magic, then followed my nose toward something delightful.
 

On my way, I peeked my nose into an elegant family room and an enormous library, but it wasn’t hard to find the kitchen. I’d been grateful not to see any food laid out in the elegant dining room that I’d passed before I’d reached the kitchen. Fancy dining rooms weren’t really my natural habitat.

“How do you feel about pasta?” Aidan asked as I walked into the bright kitchen. It was all gleaming white and stainless steel, and even though nice kitchens weren’t really my thing either, I couldn’t help but like it.

My gaze landed on the big bowl in the middle of the kitchen table. There was salad and bread too, but it was the noodles tangled up with veggies and sausage that really got my attention.

“Fabulous,” I said as I met his gaze. His hair was wet. “You managed to take a shower and make all this?”

He grinned—damn, I wished I could get over how good he looked when he grinned—and said, “I can’t claim credit for the pasta. There’s a housekeeper. Iona. She lives in the cottage out back. She made it but had to get back in time for her TV show.”

“Well, thank her for me next time you see her, because this looks amazing.” I sat down and reached for the pasta and piled my plate high. I didn’t even bother to look at the salad, not when all this Italian goodness needed a home.

“Pasta fan?” Aidan asked as he sat down.

“You don’t even know.” The first bite was divine. Al dente noodles, rich sausage, flavorful veggies, and the sharp bite of some kind of cheese. Gorgonzola? “Heaven.”

I plowed into the food.

“How exactly are you able to find the artifacts?” Aidan asked after a few bites.

I glanced up, my mouth full. I swallowed and got ready to deliver my spiel. “I have a bit of Seeker blood. My mom’s side.”

“That’s strange,” Aidan said. “Seekers usually don’t have other powers. And you’re a Mirror Mage, too?”

That part actually was true. I found that hiding lies with the truths helped. “Yep. A weird combo, but it works for me.”

“I’ve never met a Seeker. How do you find the artifact?”

“Yeah, Seekers are rare.” From my research, I knew that Seekers found artifacts basically the same way I did, so at least I could tell the truth. “I’ve never met another either. For me, when an artifact is far away, I get a feeling for its general location. Like I have a map inside me. It’s kinda hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“All right. Once I have a general idea—like Norway—I go there. When I’m closer to the artifact, I get a better idea. I keep narrowing it down. Eventually, it’s like I have a string tied around my waist that pulls me there.”

I shut my mouth abruptly. I’d never shared that much detail with anyone before. Glossing over was more my style. What was it about him?

“What about you?” I asked, hoping to distract him. “You turned into a freaking griffon today. But you’re more than just a shifter.”

“Just a shifter? I’m
the
shifter.”

I grinned. “Oh, so now you’re cocky about it.”

He grinned, not embarrassed. “It’s the truth. It’s hardly bragging if it’s true. And I want you to like me.”

“Ah…” I did not know how to deal with flirty Aidan. “So, you’re
the
shifter. And you have powers you’re hiding. Big powers. Even a week mage like me can feel them. What are you, exactly?”

“That’s a bit forward.” He smiled.

I shrugged. It was a slightly rude question, but I didn’t care. There wasn’t a lot of outright fighting or warfare anymore—it was the modern age, after all—but supernaturals had a long history of duking it out with their magic. In any kind of fight, you had an advantage if no one knew your gifts or weaknesses. Hence everyone’s silence on the matter, and Aidan’s interest in getting the Scroll of Truth.

“Come on, impress me,” I said. He already had, though. He was a griffon, for magic’s sake. And he’d more than proven himself in the fight today.
 

“Shifter and Magica,” he said.

So it was true. A hybrid. The first I’d ever met.
 

“And you’re the Origin,” I said.

He shrugged. “The real Origin died millennia ago. She was my great-grandmother about six hundred times back. She was the real first shifter. I have her gifts, but I’m not the actual Origin.”

“But you still go by the name.”

“It’s good for business.”

“Which is?”