Chaos Burning Read online

  “She’s right,” Gage and Dominic said in unison.

  Dominic paused and continued. “I know you want to be fair, Meriel, but this is… well, this is beyond that. This is not combat as defined by our covenant. I know you hate making these choices. But let me do it for you.”

  “No.”

  Dominic and Meriel both turned their attention to Lark, narrowing their gaze as one.

  “I like seeing you both on the same page.” She grinned for a moment before she grew sober again. “This is not the job of the Owen and it shouldn’t be. You let me do the dirty work, because the price is high and not something you need to pay. You have enough to do. This is mine.”

  “She’s correct. Except for the hers part.” Gage bumped her with his hip. “That’s ours, not just hers.”

  “Where is Nell?” Meriel rubbed her eyes.

  “You know she’s going to have to go on leave. Her pregnancy has become more complicated and she needs the rest. Lark is here; let us handle this. This is hunter business. These men need to be dealt with. I know you handled a lot with the situation in the warehouse and the mage we captured. But, Dom, you have a higher calling now. The clan needs you and Meriel unified and concentrating on keeping us on an even keel. If we have your go ahead, we’ll take care of it.” Gage kept his voice calm and his hands in his pockets.

  “All right.” Meriel nodded. “Do what needs to be done. Keep us apprised. Gage, you should take over while Nell is out.”

  Gage sighed heavily. “I think you should appoint Lark instead of me.”

  Lark looked at him askance; she’d been there and done that and look at the mess it made. “Um, no. This is your clan. You’ve grown up here. Put in your time. This is your ground and your expertise.”

  “You’re better at this than I am. We need you. Right now more than ever. You know what it’s like to be under siege all the time. We don’t. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want the job and all. But you’re a better choice for it than I am. That’s the truth. And right now, truth is the only thing keeping me going in the face of all this chaos.”

  She took a deep breath. “Gage, don’t just say that if you don’t feel it. A divided squad won’t be good.”

  “Look, I know you and your sister have a beef about who is really in charge of the hunter team. But you’ve got experience. You’ve run a team for years now. Your squad is tight and well trained. You did that. I don’t doubt Helena’s talent and skill, but I can see yours and I’d be doing a disservice to Owen and to myself and our witches if I played some sort of status game to massage my ego. You’re the better witch to run this squad. Period.”

  She knew she blushed, but they all let her pretend she didn’t.

  “If you’re willing, we’d love to have you, Lark. It’s just temporary until Nell has the baby. You can train Gage in the meantime. Train us all because we need it. The world is changing; we need to change with it or we’ll die out.” Meriel stood straighter and Dominic took her hand.

  “Call me later. Do what needs doing. Lark, you’re in charge until Nell is ready to come back. Gage, I expect you to handle the dissemination of this information to your people. I’ll let the clan know later this morning.” And she and Dominic were gone.

  “Simon, I’ll make sure Lark gets home. You can head out. I appreciate the backup. I know this isn’t your fight,” Gage said.

  Simon snorted and rolled his eyes. “This filth has come onto my property multiple times. Has attacked me and those under my protection. It is most assuredly my fight and I’m not going anywhere.”

  Chapter 8

  “SO you said get in his head and just take it. What do you mean?” Simon crossed his arms, ignored any further offers by Gage to take Lark home and lasered in on her.

  “Every witch has a set of gifts. A tendency toward a certain kind of talent and spellcraft. Some are masters at potions. Some are great with warding. You know the drill. One of my particular talents is the ability to get inside someone’s head. Not all the time. Not with other witches usually, because they have warding against it. And because we have rules.”

  “The covenant you were talking about?”

  “Yes. Sort of our Geneva Convention. We could mess each other up. Mess up Others. What we can and can’t do to a prisoner is very clear. I wouldn’t misuse my magick for kicks or power trips. But this mage isn’t a witch. And he sure as hell isn’t considered a combatant under our rules. This isn’t war, this is hate crime. This is an assault on everything we are. There are no rules to obey here, they’ve made sure of it.” She shrugged.

  “So the covenant says none of this interrogation with the mind spells under defined circumstances.”

  “Exactly. So even if this moron was a turned witch, some of the rules would extend to him. Humans have the most protection.”

  “Makes sense as they’re defenseless against magick.”

  Gage snorted. “Sometimes.”

  “In any case, this is a mage. Three mages. Not human. Not a witch and not a combatant in any defined way. They are terrorists and serial killers. I have no hesitation in using my skill to find out some answers.”

  He breathed in deep and resisted, just barely, telling her he’d beat the truth out of the prisoners. He didn’t want her in danger or doing something she felt bad about. Then again, she didn’t look like she did feel bad.

  “I’m going to video the entire thing, if that’s all right with you.” Gage touched her shoulder and Simon knew he frowned, even if he did catch it and stop.

  “Yes, that’ll be good. I need to drink some water and to get my head straight. I’ll be back in half an hour or so.” She grabbed her bag and Simon followed her out into the hallway.

  “I’m all right, Simon. I just need to go to the gardens on the roof. I need to recharge a little.”

  “I’ll come with you. You can take energy from me. I know you can.” He stabbed the elevator button.

  “I don’t need to.”

  He indicated she proceed him into the elevator. “It seems to me that you’re refusing me unnecessarily.”

  She was silent for the rest of the trip up.

  “It seems to me you don’t like being refused.” She sauntered through the doors and out onto the large deck surrounded by lush gardens. She put her bag down and then right in front of him she bent and took off her boots and then her tights.

  “You’re going to get cold.” He brushed his fingertips against her cheek as she blinked up at him.

  “I need to have my feet in the earth.” She took a step back and sucked in a deep breath.

  He watched as she stepped from the deck and into the garden. Her fingertips trailed over the leaves, over the velvety softness of the petals of the flowers. The moon hung low and the promise of dawn was just ahead and the light of it seemed to glisten over her skin.

  He’d never seen a witch draw energy before. Not outside battle like the one they’d had in a warehouse just months before. That had been frenzied and violent.

  This witch pulled power from the earth and the air all around her. Teasing, sensual, it was as if she charmed the ambient magick all around into filling her reserves.

  He could see it, the magick, as she absorbed it. Her normally bright blue energy deepened as she took the magick in.

  Right then, she was more pixie than witch, he thought as she smiled, crushing something between her fingers. “Meriel’s father has such a gift.” She inhaled and gestured toward him.

  Mint? “It’s December.”

  “Take a look around here. He’s got roses blooming. In December. The earth up here is so happy.”

  He paused to think, paused to listen to everything around him. Much like she did, he realized. Yes, it felt—he took a deep breath and took his shoes and socks off, following her. “Yes, it does. But so far up here, who’d have thought?”

  “It’s a well-loved spot.” She spun and looked up at the sky. “That means something.”

  A contradiction. So many to this wom
an. An hour ago she’d been in a fight in a parking lot and had taken down two men. Besting them not only physically but with her magick. And yet she skipped, barefoot through the grass, laughing as she paused to touch or smell.

  “We come out here to center ourselves and to focus. The gardens are supercharged and we’re the batteries. So far up here and she’s still living and breathing and taking care of us.”

  She turned, her smile sending a bolt of heat through him. “Can you feel it?”

  He sucked in a breath and all he got was her. That warm, spicy magick that was only Lark.

  He felt it all right. And he was in big trouble.

  “When I was a little girl, my mother would take me and my sister out into the backyard and we’d leave honey water out for the fairies.” She bent to press her face to an explosion of blooms and breathed in deep. “Imagine my delight to find out there were actual Fae, though I was very sad to hear they weren’t tiny. I think this garden needs some fairy doors and honey water.”

  “You’re a very random woman.”

  Surprised, she laughed, taking his hands and squeezing. “I’m not. You just don’t hear the context change because I’m having a conversation in my head.” She kept one of his hands and drew him to a nearby tree and then knelt.

  He followed.

  “I saw this tree and I thought of the little doors my mother made for the trees. Placed here like so.” She pointed at the base. “Like a door into the tree.”

  “You get the whimsy from her. Your mother.”

  “Yes. I got my right hook from my father.”

  She stood, brushing her knees. Without thinking he pulled a leaf from the hem of her skirt and time froze as her gaze met his.

  “I should go back down,” she said without moving.

  He blew the leaf from his palm and used the time he watched it drift to the ground to try to get ahold of himself. Now wasn’t the time to try to figure out just why he was suddenly all hormonal for this woman.

  HE was not for her. She had to remember that. The problem with being friends with a man who looked and acted like Simon was that… well, he looked and acted like he did.

  This was silly flirting. Nothing more. A close moment. A friendship-type moment. He cared for her, as of course she cared for him. But he wasn’t tingly for her as a woman and she would be a total idiot to think it was anything more than the fun back-and-forth they had enjoyed up until then.

  She needed to find her center and for the purposes of interrogating a prisoner, that was not it. Lark took a deep breath and went to her knees, her palms open, facing upward.

  Even just being in the garden had begun to fill her reserves. But when she drew all that magick simply floating in the air all around her, her back bowed as she sucked in a breath.

  He moved to her, she knew this, felt the pull between them tauten. Her eyes flew open to take him in. Wild there in the moonlight as he clasped her hands. His wolf was there, close to the surface. It had ceased to surprise her, just how thin that barrier was between man and beast.

  His magick was warm, golden. It tasted like sunshine, smelled like the heat rising from the trees, that spice of cedar and pine. It filled her up, into every corner, even as she opened her mouth to tell him to stop.

  And instead, found his mouth on hers, more magick pouring into her system until her eyes watered and she dug her nails into his wrists to try to keep herself afloat.

  “Shh.” A puff of air against her lips. “Don’t fight it.”

  Fight what? She knew she was struggling, but not against what.

  “Huh?”

  He stood, pulling her along with him. “We’ll talk later. Right now you have a job to do.”

  Why was he telling her that as if she didn’t know? Why was she so pissy that he was saying what she was admonishing herself with in her head?

  Boys. Damn it.

  Without saying anything else, she managed to get back to the deck and into her tights and boots. He followed, remaining very close to her the entire time.

  She paused before heading down the hall toward the doors where the prisoners were being held. “Thank you for sharing your energy with me.”

  He frowned and then nodded. “Next time don’t make me push it at you. It’s freely offered, use it.”

  “Don’t spoil it by being a dick.”

  “A dick? You’re being a dick by not just accepting the offer right off.”

  “I told you I didn’t need it.” She said this through a clenched jaw, which sort of defeated the nonchalance she’d been aiming for. “I appreciate it. But I had plenty from the air all around and the earth at my feet.”

  He took her upper arms and hauled her close. “I won’t have you endangering yourself more than is necessary.” And then set her back and opened the door before she could respond.

  Only because Gage was just inside did she manage not to sniff and flounce past.

  And then she was back on the job and everything else fell away.

  “I’m going to go in to video for you. All right?” Gage asked.

  “Yes, yes, good.”

  She took one last drink of water and opened the door to the cell. Immediately she felt the restraints of the spells on the space. Spells that would allow only certain people to use magick in the room. Even what sort of magick used was controlled here.

  Lark pulled a chair to where one of the mages sat on the edge of a bed. “Here’s how this will work.”

  He began to speak and with a quick move of her wrist, he shut his mouth.

  “I’m talking. As I was saying, here’s how this will work. You can tell me what you’re doing and who this mysterious him is. Or I can just riffle through your brain to get the information myself. It’s up to you.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “Watch me.”

  He looked nervously to Gage, who continued to film without speaking. She knew without turning around that Simon stood at the door, just inside. She and Gage had had to readjust the wards to allow him inside when they’d first arrived. Funny how he took up space there as if he’d always done so.

  She frowned and forced her thoughts back to the task at hand and the mage she sat across from.

  “What’s your name?”

  “There are rules. I know there are.”

  “Yes, there are. Unfortunately for you I’m averse to rules and you’re not covered by those rules anyway. You’re not a witch. You’re not a human. You’re a mage. Your actions were not covered by the covenant either. Which means you’re mine. However I want you.”

  She sat back, crossing her legs and slowly kicking her foot back and forth.

  It could have been the steely gaze, ha, or the big man videotaping, or the giant at the door. Probably partly all three. But just as she leaned forward to speak, the prisoner did instead.

  “My name is Andrew McCay.”

  She didn’t take notes. They’d go over the videotape later on.

  “All right, Andrew. My name is Lark Jaansen. Why did you attack me?”

  He clammed up and she was done. “I’m going in, Andrew.”

  “You can’t do anything near what he can.”

  She rolled her eyes before she closed them and began to spool up her magick. It came easily, readily, warm and pliant. Good signs. If it had been recalcitrant, she may have doubted this path.

  So Lark followed her gut and slashed through his paltry mental shields and found herself in his head. Not bothering with finesse, she boldly riffled through his memories until she froze at the sight of something very, very scary. Uh-oh.

  Though she was in, totally immersed in Andrew McCay’s head, she felt the heat of a hand on her shoulder. Simon. Did her panic show to them? It must have if he was at her side. She needed to rein in her fear and keep going. For the moment though she took what he offered.

  The magick he’d shared with her flared in recognition. Helped her fight past the fear and get back to work.

  When she finally surfaced some minu
tes later she got to shaky feet. “Got what I needed.” She turned and left the room without another word.

  “What the fuck did you see in there?” Gage locked the door as they all left.

  “In a minute. Let’s get you away from this fool.” Simon handed her a bottle of water and she drank deeply. Using that much magick would leave a mark on her system.

  A guard came in and took over for Gage as they headed just a few doors down to a small conference space.

  “He’s small potatoes, is Andrew McCay. He’s a low-level Enforcer. Finds their prey and reports back. They have teams of snatchers now.”

  “Teams?”

  “This isn’t as low rent as it was even a year ago, Gage. Something else is going on. I’ve been thinking this myself. The patterns were pointing at more organization with someone at the top calling the shots.” She shrugged. “His orders were to grab me and bring me to Cyrus.”

  Up until just a few minutes before they’d all believed that Cyrus Pasqual, a turned witch and a former compatriot of Gloria Ochoa’s, had been in charge of the mages who’d been targeting the witches for kidnapping. He’d been injured in the showdown at the warehouse a few months before, but he’d managed to escape and had remained on the loose, a thorn in their side.

  “We know about Cyrus and that’s not what made you so pale in there. One moment you had this expression of total concentration. The next you stopped, bolt still and went very, very pale. You panicked, I saw it. What were they going to do to you?” Simon’s expression was so intent, it startled her.

  “There’s more. Something more than Cyrus. Andrew came with Cyrus, but Cyrus isn’t in charge. Not anymore.”

  “Another turned witch?”

  “No. Gage… when we were attacked earlier one of them kept talking about how I’d be afraid when I met him. The usual sort of spooky taunt they use, you know. So I figured he meant Cyrus.”

  She gulped the rest of the water in the bottle.

  “Stay.” Simon stood and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get you water.”

  “Thanks.”

  He left quickly and she turned back to Gage. “Gimme a sec.” She opened her othersight and wove a protection spell, one that would scramble anything they said in that room.