Dreamwater (4 page)

The specter intoned, “She will control the portal of dusk; command shifters of her choosing do her bidding.”

“She’s turning into a ghoul queen?” Mara shivered. Riffa’s power would increase tenfold. Her control on Mara, too. “No wonder the shifters tried so hard to kill her before that happened.”

“It hasn’t happened yet.” The specter grinned. “Tonight, the moon is full and she will receive her full power.”

Damn
. “I bet the shifters can feel it.” She cursed floridly under her breath. “It’ll be a bloodbath.”

He gave her a hard look, and she cursed herself for showing weakness.

“Taking care of security is your job,” he said. “I will focus on helping her lift the veil.”

A heavy weight settled on Mara’s chest. “What veil?”

But she was pretty sure she knew the answer.

The specter gave her a stern look. “The veil between the dead and the living.”

Mara fought back nausea, and the feeling of being trapped and cornered. Riffa was about to tear the veil between the dead and the living, and the world itself would shift. Into a darker, crazier place.

Mara touched her darts, felt the familiar weight of her scimitar on her back, the knives in her boots and belt. She was as ready as she would ever be. “Why didn’t anyone warn me?”

“I was told you can take on anything.”

“Yes.” Anything but this. The dead would latch onto her, try to drag her back to their world. Family, friends. Her whole clan.

But she couldn’t go back to the underworld. Riffa held her soul. Whatever happened, this could well mean Mara’s end. No afterlife. No reincarnation. No return. “When is all this supposed to happen?”

“Any moment now. But it won’t affect us, it will only—”

“Us?” She scowled. “Talk about yourself. When the shifters attack, and the dead try to drag me back to the underworld, I’ll perish.”

He shrugged. “Really?”

Right, what did he care? “Just bear in mind that Riffa will be unprotected.”

Unless she was so strong already she needed no protection. Mara frowned, but then had no more time to ponder because she felt several things happen at once.

The veil tearing, allowing in the cool scent of the shadow world, the cry of distant voices and the howl of the death wind.

The hot smell of fresh blood as shapeshifters crowded outside, crashed against the gates in a wave of life, demanding to be let in.

And among them, through the bond, she felt the white wolf.

She hadn’t seen him since that first time, and had hoped the bond had withered and died. But now her chest throbbed, her heart pounded, and a tide of protectiveness rose inside her. The bond was very much alive.

But Mara couldn’t afford a bond. Being undead was a dangerous line of business. You couldn’t have others depending on you. She grunted with the effort of shutting the white wolf out of her mind.

Then the veil between the worlds parted, the portal opened, and the shadows fell on her like hawks. Among the stinging pain of their claws, she felt the sweet caress of her mother’s soul, her father’s, her friends’. She collapsed to the ground, a cry tearing through her chest. She had missed them, mourned them, had longed to follow them, but couldn’t.

Their hard hands pulled her toward the invisible portal that sucked everything toward its center like an eddy.

“I can’t come with you!” She dug her heels in the soil, resisted the pull. Their love was harder to deny than any pain. Tears ran down her face. “I’ll vanish if I cross with you. Don’t you understand?”

But they couldn’t hear her, only smell her, recognize her as their own. Held in their incorporeal arms, she couldn’t shift into shadow and escape.

The metal gates surrounding the palace grounds broke and the shifters poured inside. Distantly, she heard the specter howl. A werepanther fell on her, but she twisted in the hold of the dead and the sharp teeth missed her throat.

“Release me!” she cried out, but the love of the dead was endless, and closed over her like warm water. She was drowning.

A werelion fell on her, pinned her with a forepaw. Dazed, she looked up into those amber eyes. They narrowed, the mouth opened, yellowed teeth jutted inches from her face. That was it, then. She prayed her end would be swift.

Then something crashed into them, throwing the lion off her.

Which left the tug of the dead stronger than ever, jerking her backward, toward the invisible portal.

Hells
. She took a deep breath. “Close the damn portal! Specter, tell Riffa what’s happening—”

Her breath caught in her throat. The white wolf, ears flat, faced the lion. He snarled, bit and clawed at the much bigger animal, trying to push it away. The lion roared.

The bond inside her pulled like a wound. It was getting stronger, wrapped around her heart. Each act of devotion on the werewolf’s part would make the bond stronger. And the roots reached already so deep inside her that her body arched against the beloved dead to break free and let her reach him.

Bonded!
The word shot through her mind, ripping it.

Mara gasped. “No! Leave me be.” She should be fighting the shifters, fulfilling her contract to Riffa, earning back her soul.

But the bond threatened to tear her heart out.

“Stop this!” She struggled to free herself from the hold of the dead. The wolves surrounded her, growling and snarling, foam flecking their muzzles.

Just great
.

Something white streaked across her vision, and the white wolf dropped among them, biting and fighting to protect her.

Time stopped. Everything froze in a giant tableau. Gray-furred bodies, amber eyes glowing in the light of the full moon, spectral arms and faces. Her vision tunneled, centered on him, blue eyes, soft white fur, strong legs.

Dizziness hit her, her heart thundered.

Her wolf. She had to protect him. Had to hold him close.

Power unlike anything she had ever felt poured through the bond into her limbs.  “Wolf!”

She tore herself free and raced to him. Pulling out her darts, she struck down the other wolves fighting him, methodically, coldly.
My wolf. Mine. He belongs to me.

A small voice in her mind still objected.
Shadows don’t bond. Shadows hunt the shifters.

Mara kept firing, unable to stop.
He’s mine
.

She pulled out her knives and slashed her way to him, pushed dead bodies off him with a strength she didn’t know she possessed. He was bloody, a wound gaped open on his foreleg, a new one on his hind leg, another on his back. Blood laced his body, a crimson filigree hem.

Her chest constricted, her eyes stung. The bond inside her ticked like clockwork, the spring coiling tighter with every breath.

“Shift!” she commanded him, even as she knew she shouldn’t be doing this, she should shut this bond down.

But she couldn’t.

The shifters swarmed the palace, jumping on the festooned balconies, through the narrow windows. Riffa’s link in her mind pulsed with pain, bringing Mara to her knees.

The white wolf’s fur rippled, waves of muscle and bone rose and fell, and the tide of animal skin receded to leave a naked man sprawled on the concrete — pale, his short hair white, the blood a shocking splash of crimson against his skin.

Albino
.

The face was handsome, the jaw strong, the straight brows framed a direct, ice-blue gaze that bore into her mind. Heat rushed through her, and she knew the bond was directing her, but she didn’t care anymore.

“What’s your name?” she asked, the bond stretching between them, then contracting, pulling them together, until her hand touched his shoulder, his hot skin. Her breath hissed.

“Azer.” His voice was deep and smooth, a warm current.

“Azer, you’re mine.”

***

Mara pulled Azer out into the cobbled street, his hand in hers burning hot. Maybe Riffa was dead — or maybe Riffa was alive and stronger than ever and would call Mara back to punish her for leaving.

But for now there was only Azer.

They needed a safe place to consummate the bond, skin on skin.

As they walked, his flesh knitted, and his white skin flowed over the wounds, leaving no scars. Trying not to stare, she led him in the narrow streets of the city centre. A mortal leading a naked person by the hand was by now so normal nobody would even look twice. Anyone seeing them would know he was a shifter and she his keeper.

Tenderness, lust and anger raged through her. “Why me, Azer? Don’t you know what I am?”

“I do, I know. But the bond pulled me.”

Gods of the underworld, she loved his voice. It trickled down her skin, inside her veins, made her warm in places she didn’t know were cold. “What do you mean?”

“The bond was there before I met you. It called me to you.”

“Nonsense.” But she wasn’t sure. Even incomplete, the bond had been stronger than her tie to the world of shadows, so strong she had broken free from the dead and rescued him. As if the bond had been growing inside her for a long time, not just a few days, the threads weaving, knotting, filling her. “How can that be?”

“Anything is possible.” His hand tightened around hers. “Maybe you are more human than you thought.”

Was that the answer? She entered the courtyard of an inn, got a room, and found it to be acceptable. The bed creaked when she sat down. “Riffa will shred my soul for this.”

“Riffa isn’t above everyone.” He sat, placed an arm around her waist, and drew her close.

For a lone wolf, he seemed quite fearless. “Who are you?”

His lips branded her. She sought his mouth, kissed him. He tasted of blood. His hands reached under her blouse, pulled the knives out of her belt, the scimitar from its sheath across her back, laid them on the floor. He winked and tore her blouse off, leaving her in her leather straps. He cupped her like water, drank her like firebrand.

The bond pulsed in her whole body, a need beyond physical. She needed to meld with him.

When he tugged at her clothes, she slipped them off like old insect skin. Things were slipping out of her control. She had never had a man. But she needed him, would die if she didn’t have him.

He pressed his pale body against hers. His ice-blue eyes found hers as he filled her up, making her sigh.

The bond tightened like her body, tingled and throbbed, spilling from her mind to her chest to her belly. The mind link to Riffa began to ache like an old scar. The pleasure built inside her, feeding the bond. She trailed her hands on his naked chest, so white and strong.

He growled. She looked up to his face and gasped. His hair rose in a blinding crest, and his fangs lengthened like some saber cat’s, arching down toward her.

“Azer?” Her body shivered and cramped, then began to lose solidity. “What in the Shadows is going on?”

Azer leaned over her, his oversized fangs inches from her face. “Feel the joining?”

The bond burned and spread like burning liquid, filling her up. “What are you doing to me?” She knew she should panic, but he felt so good, like a part of her she hadn’t know was missing. She clutched at his hips. “Gods.”

He laughed then, softly, and moved faster inside her.

Mara gasped as her body broke into particles, losing solidity, and flowed against the sheets. Her link to Riffa buzzed. The pleasure still built inside her. How was that possible?

He threw his head back and howled. She saw it then, the mark appearing on his chest, the crown. “You’re not a lone wolf.” She knew now who he was, and anger filled her. “You used me. You tricked me.”

But she wanted him, wanted this. 

The king of the werewolves said nothing as her body flowed like a cloud around him, half-solid, half-liquid. His eyes closed. He pushed deeper, and the pressure inside her rose to a towering crest. She cried out when it broke, and she splashed like a wave, dissolving into pleasure.

She had lost all control.

And so did he. His essence spread inside her, hot, imbuing every particle.

She wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. Her body tried to solidify again, to reform.

But he was still inside her, and she couldn’t pull together.

As he stared down at her, his eyes narrow, she realized she didn’t want him to leave her alone inside her body.

He smiled then, as if he knew her thoughts.

The bond filled her up like a glass, spilling over the edges. The pack’s will, the pack’s thoughts filled her mind. She smelled wet earth and rotten leaves and small animals burrowing in the ground. The full moon sent energy through her, made her skin tingle.

Her link to Riffa and the Shadow world resisted, but the pack’s will was strong, their leader’s will was overwhelming, and it enveloped the link like a velvet sheath, quieting it.

“You are mine,” he said and she knew it to be true. Relief, fear and anger warred in her.