Darkness Bound (36 page)

“Let her go,” Niles told Gary. “Don’t add dishonor to everything else you’re guilty of.”

With a swipe, Gary hit Leigh in the back, sending her rolling and tumbling across the snow to a wolf who grabbed her up in his jaws and shook her.

“Come on, come on,”
Gary called to Niles.
“Just you and me, buddy, like it used to be, only this time the best of us is going to win. You thought you could always be the leader and I’d follow. Not anymore.”

He lunged at Niles and knocked him backward with the first blow.

“Get Leigh,” he shouted to the others, but he was immediately overrun by the team’s pounding feet that soared over him before Saul hauled him up.

“She’ll be taken care of,” Saul cried.

Gary charged and Niles blessed his own agility, sidestepping the bull-like approach and lunging to grab him by the neck.

“You really believe that myth that we are stronger as men?”
Gary sneered into Niles’s mind.
“You’re a fool but why should I argue?”

“Some of us are!”
Niles cried.

Gary twisted free of Niles’s grip and took his arm between snarling jaws, dug in murderous fangs.

Niles tasted his own blood, spurting from deep puncture wounds.

With the fingers of his free hand, Niles drove into Gary’s nostrils, clamped onto his muzzle, and yanked upward, breaking bones and dislocating the jaw.

Gary’s howl climbed to an endless scream. He lashed out, beating at Niles.

Withdrawing his hand, Niles struck again, and only once, with two fingers into Gary’s eye sockets. He drove deeper and the hound keeled over backward, legs flailing, until the moment when Niles connected with the brain.

With the tearing away of his hand, Niles turned his face away from splattering blood.

Gary was dead.

Without pausing, Niles continued his uphill rush, searching for Leigh. His arm hung useless at his side and he clasped the wounds, kneaded them, stopped the bleeding. He turned in circles, still looking for her, bending his weakened elbow, feeling the trickle of returning strength.

Another wolf came at Niles. Their bodies locked together and Niles whipped the enemy onto his back, laying bare the vulnerable belly.

Niles knew this one was no match for him. His own strength only swelled and his arm approached complete healing. He caught the wolf by the throat, swung him
around above his own head, and heard the creature’s neck snap.

As Niles had known they would, the wolves sprang then, howling their war cries.

Everywhere he looked, there was blood. But it became mostly wolf blood. The three vampires fought, each of them with two hounds as partners, and the hounds struggled on, making the best of their lesser height to land wounding gashes to bellies, the backs of legs, and feet.

Gradually the wolves lost ground.

Adrenaline rushed through Niles. With Saul between them, he and Sean rushed Brande. The hounds’ jaws were wide and slathering. The lightning movements of the vampires turned back Brande’s every attempt to thwart the attack. Another wolf joined him.

Too late.

Saul lifted Brande over his head and smashed him down.

They were winning. Spurred by triumph, the team and the vampires drove the larger pack back.

This would be the last time werewolves would prey on unsuspecting victims on this island.

There was Leigh, on the ground again beneath the foot of Brande’s wolf, Seven. His fangs could have been bared in laughter, only he started to lower his head toward Leigh and Niles knew what was about to happen.

“No!” He leaped, clawing the air to reach Seven. The wolf’s teeth were already hooked in Leigh’s clothing. Niles snatched at that slathering mouth, tore it away and Seven with it.

A broken snag of a tree, driven into the ground during the fight, was something Niles only saw from the corner
of his vision, but his instincts didn’t fail him. With his help, Seven landed on the snag and Niles dragged him over the frozen bladelike wood. It ripped the wolf open from neck to groin, laying his belly wide and spilling its contents on the churned snow.

Niles yelled at Leigh to run, but Saul already had her and was pushing her down the hill.

Yet another wolf reared up to strike and Niles leaped to meet him, then paused, his leg in midair. He heard the attacking cries of his brother hounds, the sounds of the vampires’ whip-strong limbs swishing through the air, but that was all.

Before him, lifted from the ground, the werewolf pack hung, frozen in their fighting positions, their wounds congealed, no blood flowing anymore, no spume flying from their fangs.

The team grew still.

Exquisitely slowly, the wolves blurred and receded, their bodies frozen in their last positions, being sucked away toward the forest on the other side of the hill. And the bodies of their dead floated after them.

Niles flung around. “Something’s doing that,” he said, not caring that the battle had left him naked. “We had them but something’s saving them.”

“Not saving them,” a voice sang out across the hill. “Not from you, but
for
me.”

A short distance away stood the woman Niles recognized from Gabriel’s on the night Phoebe was hurt. Tarhazian, Sally had called her. Gone were the odd Victorian clothes, replaced by a black velvet coat that touched the ground and a crown of glittering black gems. Her angelic face made a mockery of her stance, with arms
upraised and fingers poking toward the disappearing wolves.

“How fortunate that we meet again,” she said. “So sorry to stop you from finishing the wolves, but you will be grateful. They have already done a great deal of damage. But you know that. Without them how would we find out exactly what they’ve done and deal with it?”

The stare she gave Niles was not pleasant. “Of course, we cannot be sure the fae and the hounds will agree on how the story should end for the wolves—or if it should end.”

“Come, Sally,” Tarhazian said, and Sally materialized wearing a tightly pleated muumuu in her favorite red. “You’ve done well to lead me here,” Tarhazian murmured.

Any thought of attacking the Fae Queen would have to wait, Niles realized. He owed Sally too much to risk her life in whatever might happen.

Sally didn’t look toward Niles and the spectacular group of naked men who stood with him. She said to Tarhazian, “I’ll be glad to visit my old friends again. It’s been a long time.”

“And it will be much longer yet,” Tarhazian said with a sly smirk. “Until I don’t have any more use for you here.”

Sally bowed subserviently, but Niles saw her unhappiness.

Brande and his pack had completely disappeared, taking their wounded and dead with them. Tarhazian and Sally also faded into the night.

Leigh arrived at Niles’s side and pushed an arm around his waist. His team seemed unconcerned at having her stand among their nude bodies.

“Can you still see them?” Saul asked Leigh quietly.

“Yes,” she said. “I see them all. They don’t look like wolves anymore. They’re men and they’re talking as they go and arguing.” She turned her face up toward Niles. “Who were you speaking with?”

“A powerful Fae Queen,” Niles said.

“One who fortunately isn’t our enemy. Yet.”

L
EIGH!
I
T’S DARK
and cold down here.”

Leigh clung even tighter to Niles, clutching a big blanket around them. “I warned you to travel as a hound,” she told him. “All that fur keeps you warm, not that you ever feel the cold anyway. And I’m not complaining about your dress code.” She held him so close they stumbled.

“It’s your icy skin I’m thinking about,” he told her.

They had climbed down the stairs from the bluff to his home—her home, too, Leigh realized, but she had insisted they were going onto the beach. The tide was low and a half-moon showed in shades of lemon and gray through a membrane of royal blue cloud.

Only a short distance from the moon, that royal blue cloaked to black.

“I want to take you inside,” Niles said, holding her close. “Aren’t the pebbles hurting your feet?”

“I’ve got shoes on. You’re the one who’s barefoot.” She giggled. “And bare-assed.”

“Leigh!” He sounded genuinely shocked.

“Not ladylike,” she said, running a hand over the part of him in question. “I don’t mind if you want to go without clothes all the time. At home, that is. I don’t want any other woman seeing you.”

“Thanks—I think.”

He rubbed her back and she sucked in a sharp breath. Saul had worked on her with his healing hands before they left the others. Energy had flooded back into her body, but the bruises and some of the cuts would take a little longer to go away.

Leigh gazed over fine ripples on the inky water, ripples edged here and there with fluorescence. “This is why I’m here,” she told Niles. “Chimney Rock Cove, the waters and what’s beneath them. And what comes from that rock out there.”

Niles was more interested in trying to keep Leigh covered up than in anything she said.

Time to show him what she was coming to believe. The fountainhead of the Deseron, supposedly extinct but far from it, lay out there.

They reached the water’s edge and she kicked off her shoes.

“Please, Leigh. I think you’re delirious. Aren’t you hurting? Aren’t you exhausted?”

She reached under the blanket to caress him. “Not at all. But I feel as if I’ll explode with joy, and I feel very, very sexy.”

He groaned. “Then we definitely need to go to the cabin.”

“Why?”

“Just because we do. I’ll take you to bed and love you till you are exhausted and pass out from weakness.”

Leigh put first her toes, then her feet into the water.

As she stared out, a pattern of glittering silver formed. It came to rest at her feet but spread straight out to where the rock was and opened in a circle as if to surround it.

And the water was soft and warm, caressing her skin, beckoning her deeper.

She wrapped the blanket around Niles, touching her nose to his when she saw how dark and troubled his eyes were. “It’s all right. Sometimes even the strong have to be led.”

In a swift move she tugged her sweater over her head and ran her fingers through her hair, shaking it and reveling in the sensation of faint breeze slipping around her neck.

Her jeans followed the sweater and she stood there in the faint moonlight in nothing but her flimsy bra and panties. And she struck a pose just for him until he made a grab for her.

Leigh hurriedly waded out of reach. In water almost to her knees, she unhooked her bra and tossed it away.

“Leigh,” he moaned. Then he was quiet for a moment before he said, “You sparkle. What is that? Little points of light flashing from all sorts of places. Are you a witch? Have you been keeping a secret from me?”

Her panties were removed with less grace and she fell up to her neck in that sparkling water. “This is all mine,” she called. “Until I can find the mystical missing Deseron master to take over and teach me the ropes, I’ll just have to go on instinct. Instinct pulls me into this water, into this light. If I sparkle”—the hand and arm she held up gave off bright flashes—“that backs up what I’m telling you. I feel strong here. I’m getting stronger with every moment. I don’t hurt—except for needing you. Come in, Niles.”

He threw the blanket aside and ventured into the water, heading straight for her.

Leigh turned away and waded as fast as she could, then broke into a strong sidestroke, trying to draw him as far from the shore as possible. “Do you see the path on the water?”

“Yes, but I don’t know how. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“It could be that now we are mates, you will have some of my powers.” She trod water. “Do you think that means I’ll start being able to turn into a hound?”

He broke his stroke but only for a short while before driving forward again and reaching her. He tried to stand, but the water was too deep and they clung together, legs tangled together, holding each other’s faces.

“You will never become a hound,” he said, and she drew back at the anger in his voice. “It was forced upon me, and helping to make hounds acceptable, desirable even, became my job. And with your help, I’ll succeed. But what happened to me will not happen to you. I want you as you are—always.”

Running her hand along his jaw, Leigh smiled. “Hah, look at you.” She pointed to his shoulders and arms. “You’ve got the magic shine, too. Mm, I think I could slide all over you.”

Taking her by the waist, Niles held her still and gradually raised her until her breasts settled on top of the water. “Ah,” he said softly. “Now there’s a sight to make me think about all kinds of slippery, sliding things.”

He grabbed her against him and kissed her open-mouthed, moved his tongue to touch as much of the inside of her lips and cheeks as he could reach.

Leigh’s core burned and pulsed.