Master of Wolves (23 page)

He shrugged and tucked the grail in the curve of his arm like a football. “No time like the present.”

Together, they backed up several paces, then ran for the other side of the pit and leaped.

But as they scrambled over the lip, a glowing sword blade blocked their way. Startled, they looked upward.

An armored knight stood there at the edge of the pit.

Before Jim could get a word out of his mouth, the knight lifted his sword and started to hack down right at their heads. His battle cry rang over the screams of the battling vampires. “For Avalon and for Merlin!”

“Shit.” Jim pushed Faith aside and rolled in the opposite direction. As they scrambled to their feet and danced away from their furious armored attacker, they realized more than a dozen knights were locked in combat with the vampires. “Charlie's going to have a stroke.”

Behind him, Faith saw a woman preparing to hurl a ball of energy at his head. “Stop!” she yelled, throwing up her hands in an
I'm unarmed
gesture. “We're the good guys!”

Jim lunged forward and grabbed the knight's wrists before he could bring the sword down on her head. “I'm Llyr Galatyn's brother-in-law!”

The warrior sneered and tried to jerk his wrists free of Jim's clawed fingers. “Prove it.”

“Okay.” Jim opened his free hand, revealing the cup he still held. “Llyr told me you guys are looking for this.”

The knight's eyes went wide behind the slits in his visor. “Gwen?”

The woman stared, the spell she was about to cast winking out. “That's it! Arthur, it's the Black Grail!”

Arthur?
Faith thought, startled.
King Arthur
?

Cautiously, Jim released the knight and offered him the cup. Giving him a wary look, Arthur took it.

As Jim and Faith watched and vampires battled around them, Arthur handed the Black Grail to his wife. With a flick of her delicate fingers, she opened a dimensional gate.

The four of them watched as the gate lifted into the air and rotated until it hung open and waiting over their heads.

Gwen began to chant, the words rising over the chaos of the raging battle. Her right hand began to glow as the spell took shape within it.

Faith caught her breath in wonder as the Maja tossed the Black Grail skyward and flung the energy blast at it with a final incomprehensible shout. The blast hit the grail with a silent, blinding burst of light.

Celestine's vampires froze, shouting in alarm, as if they'd finally sensed something. The cup began to glow, brighter and brighter until Faith was forced to shield her eyes.

Then the Black Grail exploded.

Spikes of power shot outward, slamming into the former cops, lighting them up until they blazed like stars, their mouths open in soundless screams. One by one, they vanished in a salvo of silent explosions.

Simultaneously, the energy spilled into the gate overhead in a flood of white-hot force. Distant screams of terror sounded, growing louder as more voices joined the rising death shriek.

Until it cut off.

Blinking, Jim and Faith looked at each other, each feeling the other's moment of stunned relief.

“Fuck you.”

The werewolves and Magekind turned in surprise as a trembling furred figure rose from the seared floor beside the pit. Reynolds's feral eyes met theirs from the mask of red that was his face. He was covered in blood. With an involuntary start of pity, Faith realized the vampires had bitten him over and over.

“You haven't beaten me, you bastards,” the were rasped. “I'm going to kick all your asses.” He reached for the magic.

And screamed as he began to burn. Blazing, he staggered, clawing at the flames, shrieking in pain. For just a heartbeat, his gaze met Faith's in fear and pleading.

Then, mercifully, he vanished.

“What the fuck was that?” Arthur demanded, frowning at the empty space the rogue had occupied.

Jim sighed. “That's…a long story. And it's past time you heard it.”

Charlie Myers was
sitting in front of his TV in a wife-beater shirt and stripped boxers when Arthur Pendragon, King Llyr Galatyn, and Jim stepped through the dimensional gate.

The Dire Wolf chieftain gaped at them for a beat, a beefy, florid man with a receding hairline. Who had, Jim thought, entirely too much power for his intellect.

At last his stunned paralysis broke.
“You told him?”
Charlie roared at Jim in fury, leaping out of his easy chair, his face reddening.

“If you transform,” Jim told him coldly, “I'm going to kick your ass.”

“I'll help,” Arthur drawled, resting one armored hand on Excalibur's hilt.

“And I will put you on a leash,” Llyr snarled, moving to tower over Charlie. A tall, muscular Sidhe, he was dressed in a dark gray Armani suit that provided a stark contrast with his pale waterfall of hair. Something moved across his chest with the flap of wings and a lashing forked tail—the mark of the Dragon God, Cachamwri. Its agitated flight was an indicator of how pissed off Llyr really was.

Charlie's eyes flicked to the dragon, disconcerted, before he frowned and drew himself to what passed for his full height. His voice rang with self-righteous certainty. “Merlin himself—”

“Was my friend and ally,” Llyr snapped back. “And he would have been appalled to see the Direkind sit back like cowards while we fight vampires you were designed to kill! I have lost three hundred warriors while you”—he curled a regal lip at the Bud on the arm of Charlie's recliner—“Sit around drinking beer.”

“And I've lost a hell of a lot more people than that,” Arthur growled. “There are another two thousand of Geirolf's vampires left. And
you
, by God, are going to help us find that last Black Grail and kill them!”

Unease flickered in Charlie's eyes. He took a step back, lifting his pudgy hands. “That's not our responsibility! Our job is keeping the Magekind in check.” He shot Jim a glare that promised bloody retribution. “Which we can't do with everybody fucking
knowing
about us.”

“We don't need to be kept in check!” Arthur roared back, in a fine royal rage.

“Merlin—”

“If they were going to lose control,” Llyr interrupted, his icy rage a chilling counterpoint to Arthur's fury, “it would have been in the first two hundred years. It's been sixteen centuries—the danger is long past.”

Charlie sneered. “You're just saying that because you married that bitch Diana, and—”

Llyr grabbed him by the throat and smashed him into the wall so hard the house shook. “One word,” he hissed. “One more word, and
you die
!”

Charlie's eyes widened. Jim half expected him to transform, but he simply froze, obviously unable to move.

“I took an oath to Merlin to keep your secret,” Llyr continued in that low, frigid whisper, “Do you think I would have
married
one of you, knowing it would all come out, had there been any need for secrecy any longer?” The smell of Sidhe magic rose, wild and deadly. “When I give an oath, I keep it.” He bared his teeth. “So please believe me when I tell you
it's time to come out of the kennel
!”

Jim's lips twitched to hear the king use Diana's favorite phrase.

Charlie threw a glare at Jim. “I guess we don't have a choice, do we?”

Suddenly Jim had enough. “Give us a moment, gentlemen, would you? Open another gate and go have a beer, or whatever it is you drink.”

Llyr and Arthur looked at him, then at Charlie. For a moment, he thought one or the other would protest.

Then Llyr released Charlie and flicked his royal fingers. The two weres watched as he and Arthur stepped back through the gate.

“You stupid fuck,” Charlie snarled the second the gate winked out. “I'm going to order your entire family sanctioned.”

“No, you're not.” The magic poured into Jim in a hot, heady rush. It was stronger than it had ever been now that he was Linked with Faith, and he suspected his Dire Wolf form was even bigger now.

A Dire Wolf again, he peeled his lips back from his teeth. “Change, Charlie. Come on. I dare you.”

The chieftain took a step back as his eyes widened in alarm. They both knew he couldn't take Jim in a fight. “You wouldn't.”

“Oh, wouldn't I?” He flexed his claws.

Charlie dropped his eyes.

“Pussy.” Jim growled in disgust and called the magic again. “Llyr's right,” he said when he was human once more. “Our secrecy has turned us into cowards. Arthur should have been able to count on us as allies against those monsters, instead of turning to the Sidhe.”

“It wasn't our job!” But the Dire Wolf chieftain looked shamefaced even as he insisted.

“Yes, it was. It's past time we started pulling our own weight, and you know it. Call a meeting of the clans, Charlie. Tonight. We need to meet with Arthur and Llyr and decide how to kill the rest of these bastards.”

Charlie stared at him. “The clans are going to blame me—and you, too.”

“Not after Llyr and Arthur get through with them. Call the meeting, Charlie.”

With a sigh, the chieftain picked up the phone.

 

Faith lay naked
on a mound of pillows as the sun streamed down on her from the skylight overhead. A couple of feet away, Jim stood wearing only a pair of worn, paint-smeared jeans, a brush in one big hand as he worked at a huge canvas.

A week had passed since the showdown with Celestine and the vampires. There had been so many questions to answer, so many loose ends to tie up, they'd barely been able to steal any time together. And when they had, they hadn't done much talking.

“So how'd the latest meeting with the clans go?” she asked, enjoying the heat of the sunlight on her face.

There had been three clan conferences so far as the Direkind, Sidhe, and Magekind met to decide on a strategy for finding and destroying the last of Geirolf's vampires. The first had been the most personally nerve-racking, since for a while Faith had thought the gathered weres would kill her and Jim both before they had a chance to speak.

Luckily, Llyr had come to their defense with a combination of eloquence and terrifying power. Not even the Direkind, it seemed, wanted to piss off the Heir to Heroes.

Which also meant nobody was inclined to lay one hostile claw on Llyr's in-laws, the London clan.

Now Jim shrugged and leaned closer to the canvas, plying his brush in tight, skillful strokes. “It was pretty ugly for the first hour or two—the Dire Wolf from Russia still isn't happy the Magekind knows our secret. But then Arthur and Llyr went to work on him, and he ended up on-board. How'd your interview with the Atlanta chief go?”

“Surprisingly well. Turns out they fired Ron.”

He looked over the edge of the canvas at her. “You're kidding!”

Faith smiled slightly. “A store camera caught him banging his dispatcher in his patrol car.”

Jim shook his head. “Hound.”

“While they were both supposed to be on duty. She's gone, too.”

“Revenge is sweet.”

“And a little nutty. Met with that SLED agent and somebody from the FBI yesterday, too.” As the last surviving member of the Clarkston Police Department, Faith had known she'd face questions from South Carolina's State Law Enforcement Division.

Telling the truth was, obviously, out of the question for a number of reasons, chief among which was that nobody would believe it anyway.

Luckily, Faith had help developing a cover story from Guinevere and Llyr. The Magekind were old hands at staging believable catastrophes to explain whatever they'd been engaged in.

In this case, they'd blown up Celestine's plantation and planted enough fake bodies to answer the question of where all those cops had gone.

After a short debate, everybody had agreed that revealing the entire department had turned corrupt would do nothing but add to the agony of the cops' families.

Instead, Faith told investigators that Ayers and his officers had discovered a member of a New York Satanic cult was in town, planning another terrorist attack. It had been a believable detail, since the cult in question was one of a number that had been in the news last year for a series of murders. Though the public didn't know it, the cult's killings had actually been sacrifices to Geirolf.

Faith explained that Ayers and the Clarkston cops had tried to launch an operation against the terrorist. She theorized that when they entered her hideout, Celestine detonated the fertilizer bomb she'd built, killing them all.

Again, believable. Celestine was already wanted in the murders of her entire family, after all.

Sheri Miller, her memories having been mercifully altered by Magekind magic, corroborated the story, as did several county dispatchers. She told investigators she'd tipped the cops off about Celestine's plans after she'd escaped an attempt to sacrifice her.

Faith explained that Ayers ordered her to protect the girl while the rest of the department staged its raid on Celestine's plantation. As a result, she'd escaped being caught in the blast.

Now, questions answered, Faith had finally joined Jim in Atlanta. She knew the investigation would probably go on for months, but the outcome wasn't really in doubt.

And if it ever was, either Llyr or some Maja would convince officials otherwise.

Jim straightened away from the canvas and rolled his powerful shoulders. “By the way, I got a call from Tony Shay's mother. She's invited us over for dinner on Friday. She wants to meet you.” He smiled slightly. “So do my mom and dad. I thought we'd go see them on Sunday.”

“Sure.” Faith put a hand back and massaged the tight muscles in the base of her neck. She'd been posing for almost an hour. “Can we take a break? I'm feeling a little stiff.”

Jim gave her a wicked smile. “Now that you mention it, so am I.”

She returned that smile with one of her own. “Oh, really?”

Actually, she knew exactly how stiff he was—she could feel it through their Spirit Link. It teased her own need even higher.

Her posttransformation Burning Moon had ended, but her hunger for him seemed no cooler. Which was something of a relief, since in the back of her mind she'd wondered how much of their new love was a product of pheromones.

Turns out they could generate plenty of heat all by themselves.

Jim moved across the polished floor of the studio in a slow, seductive stride, his pale eyes heavy-lidded. Paint smeared his bare, muscular torso, and those faded jeans did little to hide his thick erection.

All afternoon, Faith had sensed his growing need through their Spirit Link. She strongly suspected he'd been fantasizing about just what he was going to do to her when they took a break. Only iron discipline had kept him working as long as he had—that and his determination to paint the portrait of her he'd apparently been dreaming of since they'd met.

Her heart pounding, Faith settled back on the peach silk covered studio bed. He'd sprinkled peach rose petals over her pale skin, and now they slid off her belly and fluttered down her breasts.

She looked down at the petals, then gave him a mischievous feline smile. “How are we ever going to get them arranged the same again?”

“I'll fake it,” he said, and slid an arm around her to draw her up into his kiss.

Jim's mouth tasted like the honey and biscuits they'd had for breakfast, flavored with dark woods and wild magic. His hands felt warm and strong as he drew her against him, his tongue stroking slowly into her mouth. She opened for him, reaching up to cup the back of his dark head, savoring the wet slide of his kiss. One big hand tangled possessively in her unbound hair. Licking, suckling, they nibbled gently at each other's lips, tasting each other, savoring the sweet pleasure they felt.

With a low rumble of passion, Jim pressed into her, tumbling her backward on the slick silk. Faith laughed, a happy little bark of joy as he landed on top of her. “Why, hello there!” Purring, she wrapped her legs around his lean waist.

He smiled, the sunlight illuminating the pure, glowing silver of his eyes. “Hello, yourself.” Cupping her cheek, he gazed into her face, content for the moment to simply look at her.

Faith traced her fingertips along the arrogant angle of his cheekbone, then down to his mouth. His lower lip felt like velvet, a bit damp from the kiss.

“You're beautiful,” Jim breathed.

He meant it. She could sense the wonder in him, how the bright green of her eyes entranced him, how he loved the faint dimple on the left side of her lip, the stubborn line of her chin. Faith smiled at him and let herself feel her own delight in him—his tough, handsome face, his seductive mouth, that big, hard body. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

His lips quirked. “Sounds like we've got a mutual admiration society going here.”

“Y' know—I think that's part of the whole ‘hopelessly in love' thing.”

“Good point.” He rolled onto his side, the better to look down her slim, naked body. His fingers slid down to cup her breast, stroke the nipple, tease it to an aching point. Pleasure rose, slow and lazy. He played gently for a while, exploring down the length of her, testing the rise of her rib cage, the hollow of her navel.

Faith let her head fall back with a soft moan as the pleasure rose with every slow caress of his strong hands. When she finally looked down at herself to track the progress of those clever fingers, she found smears of cobalt and peach, emerald and crimson streaking her pale skin from his demanding touch. She glanced up to flash him a smile. “You've marked me.”

He grinned, masculine satisfaction in his eyes. “Every chance I get.”

“Maybe I should return the favor.” Faith traced a fingertip through a dot of wet crimson on his chest, then drew a line of brilliant red across his cheek like war paint. Tilting her head, she considered the effect. “It suits you, my handsome warrior. My wild lover.”