Lost in Magic (Night Shadows Book 4) (14 page)

“Ali,” Mick said, his focus remaining on Boris. “Keep your back to the wall.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

All hell had broken loose in the space of a few seconds. Ali dragged the bleeding Warner to the nearest solid wall, keeping Mick between them and Boris. They hadn’t yet reached the wall when a giant wave reared up from the sea and crashed through the open-air balcony on the far side of the room. Seawater flooded the space up to Allison’s ankles by the time she’d pressed her back to the wall, one hand locked around Warner’s elbow to keep him in place. The water was cold, but the temperature was oddly grounding.

She’d barely looked away from her flooded, sandal-covered feet when one of the two baby palm trees in the room ripped from its bed of soil. As she watched, Mick held out a hand toward the tree and its trunk seemingly fell apart, chunks and ribbons of bark falling into the dirt until the palm tree came to a startlingly sharp point.

A stake.

Mick had made an honest to goodness stake out of the trunk of the palm tree.

And Allison realized, then, that the only words she’d heard throughout either phenomenon were coming from a seemingly terrified Warner. She cut a glance to him out of reflex, finding him clutching the bloodied towel to his forearm and staring in wide-eyed shock at the three before them. But he wasn’t making any move to flee and blood was no longer dripping from his arm. Both were good signs.

“So you found your water witch,” Boris said, his voice diverting Allison’s attention. “Smart. And the palm tree is a nice touch. I’ve honestly not seen that before.”

“Enough chatter,” Rhea declared, an ethereal echo to her voice that seemed to fill the room. She swept her arms out to her sides, rolling her wrists until her splayed fingers were facing the high ceiling, and Ali felt the water around her ankles pull in toward Rhea. Toward Boris. Like an unnatural current.

Boris bared his fangs for the first time as he dodged the suddenly-flying spear of palm tree. He was nimble for an old man.

As she watched Boris roll fluidly to his feet, splashing the thin layer of water that remained on the ground, an odd thought struck Allison. How old must he have been when he was Turned? Why would any vampire go out of their way to Turn an old man? Or did vampires actually age, just very, very slowly?
And how old would that make him?

“
Vestigo
,” Mick called as he swept his extended arm in Boris’s direction. The makeshift spear spun in the air, hovering still for a moment, before flying off after Boris like a homing missile.

“What…?” Warner said, the pitch of his voice a little off. “What the hell is going on?” An edge of panic was starting to set in.

Rhea blocked Boris’s escape route with an arch tidal wave that brushed the ceiling and Allison dragged her attention back to Warner for a moment.

His widened stare was locked on Boris and the flying palm tree.

Oh boy.
He looked like he was about to start screaming any second. And while Ali figured the random tidal wave had probably distracted the crew of the
Euphoria
for a few minutes, they were making far too much noise as it was. The last thing Mick and Rhea needed was the distraction of being caught in a fight with a vampire.

“Warner,” Ali said, reluctantly placing her hand on his nearest bicep. She kept her touch light—for her own sake—but pushed just a little with her fingertips to get his attention.

He looked over at her, but the confusion and fear in his eyes didn’t fade. “What the
fuck
?”

She actually felt bad for him then. He was creepy and frighteningly obsessive, sure, but he didn’t deserve to have been dragged into this. He hadn’t even deserved to have his arm sliced. And though involving him in
anything
had never been her intention, Allison realized it was ultimately her fault he was there now.

“Just try to breathe,” she offered, doing her best to keep her voice calm. Honestly, watching the fight really was surreal. It was like the ultimate 3D movie experience, but worse. Worse because the danger was
real
. “Just focus on keeping your breaths steady. Everything will be fine.”

She should’ve known better than to say those words.

“Ali!” Mick’s outcry startled her into spinning around even as the water at her feet sloshed enough to throw her off-balance.

Allison stumbled and a tall shadow came over her.

Boris.

Her eyes widened and she instinctively threw herself to the ground to avoid his reaching hand. She tried to take Warner with her but lost her grip of his shirt sleeve. Warner cried out, the sound full of pain, and then Boris was gone. A heartbeat later the spear that had been following him around slammed full-force into Warner’s face.

Boris reappeared in Ali’s line of sight, several feet back, and calmly wiped a smear of blood from his chin.

Bile rose, hot and fast, in Allison’s throat when she realized that was Warner’s blood. She barely swallowed it back before something heavy fell over her legs, pinning her to the still-flooded floor.

Boris smirked down at her, the expression full of confidence. Allison immediately felt like a pawn on a chessboard. Or a child’s toy moments before the child ripped it apart. This was all a game to him, she realized. He was
enjoying
himself. They were fighting for their lives and he was barely exerting an effort.

How is that possible?

There was something they were still missing. But she wouldn’t figure it out just lying there, waiting to become his next snack.

Allison pulled in a deep breath through her nose and tried to squirm her way out from under the gut-churning weight over her calves. But it was too much. She’d never been a bodybuilder type. She didn’t even run daily. And despite knowing better, she turned to look, to see if she could angle her way free. Knowing what was weighing her down and
seeing
it atop her were two vastly different things.

Warner’s body, complete with crushed, bloodied face, was crumpled over her. Bleeding into the seawater around her. If she looked hard enough she could even see what she suspected were some of his brains mixed in with tufts of hair.

The vomit returned with force and she barely turned her head to the side in time to keep it from pouring down her chest.

****

Mick roared, his stomach and heart clenching simultaneously, as Boris moved to take advantage of Allison’s panic. He managed to grab hold of the shrapnel his spear had become and pull it together enough to shove a makeshift wall between Allison and the evasive vampire, but before he could re-fashion it again Boris vanished from sight.

“Get to her,” Rhea snapped as she rode a wave to a tabletop and used it for leverage. She spotted Boris before Mick did and every drop of water around them responded to a command she hadn’t needed to voice.

Mick ignored whatever spectacle she was making and darted toward Allison, doing his best not to look too closely at Warner’s mangled body. He may have detested the man, but he’d never have willingly crushed his face in with a palm tree.
Sloppy.
He’d used a homing beacon spell on the tree, hoping to literally pin Boris down. It hadn’t even
occurred
to him that Boris would be fast enough to let it lock on and
then
dodge it at the last second.

Mick was just glad, as perverse as it was, that Boris hadn’t been using that insane speed to kill Allison. No, Warner had been his target all along. He’d even had the time to take a bite out of Warner first. Boris was too fast. It wasn’t right. All vampires were fast—they were the fastest supernatural species, in fact—but Mick had chased vamps before. They weren’t
that
fast.

He shoved the pointless rumination from his mind as he knelt down beside Allison’s heaving body and brushed her hair from her face as gently as he could. “Hang on, baby,” he whispered, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to pull her free of the deadweight on her legs. Though Rhea had pulled all the standing water to her the floor was still slick enough that he managed to tug Ali free on the second try.

She wasted no time wrapping her arms around his shoulders and sobbing. He couldn’t blame her.

“I’m so sorry, Ali,” he murmured into her hair.

“Thare!” Rhea shouted, a warning in her voice. Apparently her earlier maneuver had failed.

Mick tightened one arm around Ali and wrapped his magic around the fallen shrapnel nearest him. He ground the wood and leaves into a ball and spun, hurling it back at an angle level with his throat. And it hit.

Boris grunted and spiraled backward, taking several steps to find his balance. He wiped at his jaw again and Mick knew he’d at least finally drawn blood.

Rhea saw her opening and dropped the largest wave she could manage over Boris’s briefly stationary figure.

A flicker of motion caught Mick’s attention and he snapped his gaze to the doorway in time to see it swinging open. A flash of fear licked through him, knowing he had no good way of explaining a damned thing, and the next thing he knew the remaining seawater rolled over both him and Ali. The water encompassed them, lifting them from the ground, and Mick heard one of the men in the doorway call out in shock.

Ali gasped against him, this time for breath, just as the water rose to obscure his vision. He had enough warning to think he should’ve taken a bigger breath, too, before his stomach bottomed out and he realized they were falling.

Chapter Twenty-Four

It was a good thing Allison wasn’t the type to get seasick. After having been washed out the proverbial window in Rhea’s effective-but-unusual effort to evade being caught, Ali and Mick had found themselves afloat with nothing but a water witch to keep them from drowning. Or, worse, catching hypothermia.

Mick kept his arms around Allison as Rhea somehow used the water like a sort of raft, waves holding them mostly aloft and shielding them on both sides as she propelled them away from the
Salty Sweet Euphoria
. And as Ali watched the ship get smaller her eyes alighted on the large, brightly painted word
Euphoria
on the side. She couldn’t help but think that was one word she wouldn’t be using to describe the cruise in retrospect. Except, perhaps, her brief moments in Mick’s arms.

But I guess that’s all over now.

It was a thought continued to haunt her sometime later as, under the cover of night, Rhea guided them ashore. The trio washed up on a seemingly random beach like debris caught in the tide. Just as Allison began to shiver from the cold of the water and the night air the water receded—every single drop—leaving her dry. Not a lot warmer, but dry. It was something.

Rhea moved a few feet up the slightly sloped beach and collapsed in the sand, breathing heavily. “That is that last time I rescue anyone from a cruise ship,” she said.

Ali kept her hand in Mick’s as they moved until they were parallel with Rhea, but a few feet over. He pulled her into a sitting position at his side and tucked her beneath his arm. “Do you know what happened to Boris?” Mick asked.

Boris.
It’d probably been a couple of hours since Allison’s head had been clear enough to think that name. Had that only been hours earlier? It simultaneously felt like weeks and yet only minutes. She thought she remembered seeing him get washed overboard right before she herself had been engulfed in seawater. But then again, she’d been mid panic attack and everything had happened so quickly. Maybe she’d hallucinated that part.

“I lost him,” Rhea said. The exhaustion in her voice didn’t hide her frustration. “Bastard got away.”

“Damn.” Mick tightened his arm around Ali. “Think it’s too much to hope he drowned at sea?”

“Probably,” Allison heard herself mutter. In her gut she didn’t feel like Boris was dead. But hopefully he was out of her life.

“Thare,” Rhea called, the frustration gone from her voice in favor of a tone of authority. Mick tensed beside Ali but said nothing. “In the morning we leave for the Council. If you argue, so help me, I’ll drown you.”

Allison squeezed her eyes shut as Mick released a breath. “I gave you my word, Rhea,” he said. “But what do we do about tonight?”

The sound of sand shifting drew Ali’s attention back to Rhea and she saw the other woman was pointing up beyond the slope of the beach, toward a not-so-distant building. Only then did she realize they had washed up on what appeared to be a private beach.

“I left the slider unlocked,” Rhea said. “Help me to the hot tub and you can make yourselves comfortable. But no shower sex.”

Allison’s face burned and she imagined she must have turned as red as a tomato.

For his part, Mick grunted a sound of agreement and stood. Rhea deigned to allow him to help her stand, obviously exhausted, and Allison climbed to her feet as the pair began the ascent to the house. She followed up the sandy shore, noting for the first time that most of the beach was obscured from view on either side by massive boulders. Really, it was a perfectly private beach.
Is this Rhea’s?
She had a hard time imagining Rhea would take them to her personal home. Unless she hadn’t had a choice in the matter.
And how much choice did any of us have, really, in that fight?

“Nice place,” Mick commented as Rhea stepped forward and slid open the double wide sliding glass door that led inside.

“It’s a rental,” Rhea replied. She leaned her weight on the doorframe and pointed down the deck. “I’ll be here, but feel free to pretend I’m not.” She paused, leveled a firm stare on Mick, and added, “The master bedroom is mine. You two can share the second.”

Mick just nodded and held a hand out to Ali, who gladly took it. But she paused as Rhea made her way further down the deck, toward the Jacuzzi tub she’d indicated. “Thank you, Rhea,” Ali said. It felt odd to thank the woman who would, in the morning, be taking away the man she suspected she’d fallen in love with, but Rhea
had
saved their lives. In her own way.

Rhea stopped and looked back over her shoulder at Ali. She studied Ali for a long second before inclining her head so slightly Allison wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined it. Then she continued toward her hot tub without a word.

Allison allowed Mick to lead her inside and quietly slid the door closed behind her, leaving it unlocked for when Rhea was done.

And all of a sudden it hit her how close to over it was.

Mick would leave with Rhea in the morning. Chances were good she’d never see him again. How messed up was it that only in the past few hours had she finally accepted the depth of her feelings for this man? And now she had to sit back and lose him?

“You must be exhausted,” Mick said quietly. He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Does anything hurt?”

My heart.
But it wouldn’t have been fair to utter those words out loud. She wasn’t sure where he stood, but she knew enough to know he wasn’t looking forward to the morning any more than she was. She couldn’t dump even more guilt on him. So she swallowed her initial response and said, “I don’t think so.” She was sore everywhere, but she doubted she had any injuries.

“Ali,” Mick murmured, coming to stand closer to her, “I’m so sorry about earlier. About everything.”

The guilt and sadness in his voice tugged at her and she lifted her gaze to his. She didn’t need to ask to know what he meant. And even though she was tired and she probably stank to high heaven, she rested her head on his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his torso. “You don’t have to apologize. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was.” His arms came around her and held on tightly.

Allison sighed and fought the urge to lift her head to kiss him. “Do you think there’s a spare toothbrush in this house somewhere? If nothing else, I desperately need to brush my teeth.”

Mick dropped a kiss to the crown of her head and loosened his hold on her until he was holding her hand. “Let’s go looking,” he said. “Rhea might have a spare you can steal.”

****

“Feel any better?” Mick asked as Allison curled up against his side in the queen-sized bed. They’d found an entire package of unused toothbrushes in the master bathroom and pilfered two—Mick figured he’d reimburse Rhea sometime later—and then they’d opted to take turns showering. He knew he was tired and as much as he’d have preferred to join Ali in the shower again, aside from how rude it would be knowing their makeshift hostess was just outside, he was fresh out of condoms.

But it was probably better this way.

He’d be leaving in the morning for the Council. He wasn’t exactly sure what fate awaited him or how long it would be until he was “free” again, but even then, if he knew the Council at all, he’d have eyes on him for years to come. If he ever managed to get back to Baltimore he’d be a lucky man. And he couldn’t express how much he hated that it had to be that way.

He owed Ali so much more than this final night.

He’d known from the moment he’d laid eyes on her on the ship that she was special. That she could captivate him in a way he’d never experienced before. But he’d never imagined, not until they’d made love for the first time, just how powerful a hold on him she could have. Even then, the true depth of his feelings didn’t make itself known to him until that fight. The moment before he’d realized Boris was going for Warner. The moment when Boris had appeared directly in front of Allison and she’d blindly thrown herself down in an effort to get away from him.

Mick’s heart had stalled in his chest. He’d forgotten how to breathe, let alone
move
. Maybe if he’d been better prepared for that feeling, more aware of his own feelings, he’d have been able to stop what had happened next. But he hadn’t, and instead Warner had paid the ultimate price. That was something Mick would have to live with for the rest of his life. Something he could only atone for by training harder to make sure he never made such a sloppy mistake again.

And he’d have years to dwell on that.

Years without Allison by his side.

Allison hummed an affirmative, oblivious to his spiraling thoughts, and snuggled closer. She wore nothing but a shirt she’d borrowed from Rhea’s closet and Mick himself wore only his boxers. Having her curled up next to him, one leg sliding over his and her fingers resting over his chest, was the best sensation. He hoped he’d be able to remember it on the nights he lost sleep over missing her.

“What’s wrong?” Ali’s soft question drew him back to the present and he snaked an arm beneath her, curving it around in order to rest his hand on her hip.

“Sorry,” he offered.

Ali swatted lightly at his chest. “Don’t apologize. Talk to me. Tell me what’s got you so distracted.”

Mick opened his mouth to try and answer her question but the words wouldn’t come. He just didn’t know quite what to say. Ultimately, he settled for the best he could muster. “Everything, I guess.”

He could practically feel her frown of disapproval. He definitely heard it in her tone. “You can do better than that, Mick.” She paused. “Is it tomorrow? Are you worried about what the Council will do to you?”

“Not really,” he replied. “I’m more worried … about how I’m going to handle losing you.” It was hard to be that open with someone. He hadn’t felt so vulnerable in a long time. Probably not since his parents had died.

Allison’s hand stilled. “Do you have to?” Her question was soft and perfectly matched the way he felt.

“Ali,” he said, “the Council’s not going to let me take a leave of absence just because I met a woman.” He swallowed and held her tighter. “Hell, if anything they’ll tell me the pain I feel in missing you is part of my punishment.”

“Then you work for monsters,” Ali said. “Not allowing you basic human rights like
time off
is just cruel.”

Mick felt his lips twitch with wry humor. “Maybe,” he agreed. “But it’s out of my hands. Although I’m sure this stunt has cost me any chance at being indicted into the Council when I’m older.”

“You would want that?”

“I thought I did, once,” he admitted quietly. Again he remembered the frustration he’d felt at being stationed alone in California. Frustration that had been immediately followed with confusion after his life was saved by a kind-hearted werewolf. That experience, though one he’d initially resented, had changed the course of his life.

It had led him to Allison.

“And now?” Ali asked, digging her fingers a little into his chest as if in anticipation. “What do you want now?”

Mick reached over with his free hand and covered hers. “Now I just want to stay with you. I’m tired of hunting, of fighting someone else’s war. Of constantly living with one eye open.”

“Mick,” Ali said, her voice almost breathless and surprisingly watery. She slid her hand from his and lifted herself, leaning over him and letting her damp hair fall around them like a soft, brown curtain. “I don’t want to lose you.” A single tear escaped the corner of one eye and trailed down her cheek.

And he knew then how much this was going to hurt her.