On a Razor's Edge (9 page)

Excited laughter bubbled out of my chest. “I’m in.”

“Where is he by the way?” Ann glanced at the door.

“I gave him the slip. He’ll be around soon. He’s pretty good at tracking me down, unfortunately.”

The large form of Jonas appearing in the doorway punctuated my words. I really missed privacy.

*****

“So this is what it’s come to?” Jonas asked a few days into their protection detail as he watched Sasha. She stood in the clearing beyond the cabins with Toa, working at some spell or other. “This is what more than a decade of good service gets you? Watching some human pet play at magic? The borders are open, our enemy is pushing at us, making a bunch of noise, and here we are, sitting on our asses, staring at some dumb human?”

“How do you know what’s happening with the borders?” Charles asked
more lightly than he felt like asking.

“Unlike you, I keep tabs on my surroundings. I’m not going to let the Boss take us all down because he’s infatuated.”

“Unlike
you,”
Charles returned with an edge to his voice, “I trust the Boss’s judgment. She’s at black power level, Jonas.
Black.
That’s the highest you can reach. Protecting her from getting snatched is ten times more important than chasing some purple
Dulcha
back across our border. Plus, half the time, she summons up all sorts of crap that keeps us on our toes. Maybe you should drop the pity party and be a team player for once. Or do you have interests outside of our clan…?”

Jonas swung his gaze away from a flailing Toa enshrouded in black smoke. Charles felt his skin prickle
within Jonasʼs hostile glare, as if he stared into the eyes of a predator, the gaze flat and unwavering. “Be careful, Boy Wonder. You might be the Boss’s favorite now, but when he gets tired of the human, you won’t be much more than a baby with a Watch Command badge again.”

Charles shook his head, forcing himself to look away. Human males stalked the perimeter of the clearing, using all their senses to guard. If Charles was honest with himself, besides the fact that these
Mata
changed into animals, they had a lot of the same characteristics his kind did. Their vision wasn’t much improved, but their hearing, their smell, and their prowess would top a normal human any day. Plus, they had this extra sense. Somehow magical, they could perceive things.

Charles had no idea how that perceiving thing worked. He could walk up
to one of the shifters, absolutely silent, and he or she’d turn around and notice him as if he’d been as loud as Sasha. At breakfast earlier that morning, heʼd basically tiptoed in. Heʼd made sure his clothes didn’t even make a rustle. But sure enough, a really hot chick with her back to him had asked if he wanted coffee when he was only a couple steps into the room!

How
did she know?
It was a little creepy.

He didn’t want to ask about it, though.
The
Mata
didn’t seem to like his kind much. And of course the Boss and everyone older than Charles hated the
Mata
, so there was that. No one talked about it, but there was history.

“She can’t even do magic correctly,” Jonas growled, bringing Charles out of his reflections.

“She’s new to it. She wasn’t raised with it,” Charles shot back. He noticed a man at the edge of the clearing bracing, readying for a fight. A second later he was stripping out of his clothes.

Sasha paused in her ministrations, halting Toa with her. They
looked toward the tree line. Charles stood as the male’s body blurred strangely, a blast of magic flaring. Skin morphed into fur, creating a huge wolf larger and broader than a Great Dane. Fighting one of them, with the teeth and claws and all that, would be…uncomfortable.

“Cool!” Sasha exclaimed.

A second later, Charles was running at the daft idiot. Toa, thinking just as fast, wrapped himself and Sasha in a white bubble, making a shield. At least one of them had sense. As Jonas joined Charles around the two mages, the rest of the clearing filled with wolves, ten in all, working together in defense like a wolf pack would.

Three members of Charles’
s clan stepped into the clearing; Adnan, Mira, and, “Oh great,” Charles muttered. Darla. They traveled with a member of Tim’s pack, a male that changed into a Tiger, fierce and nasty when pushed to it. Jonas tried to push him to it, often.

Strangely, Toa kept the shield and the wolves kept their lupine form, teeth
bared, surrounding the newcomers. Charles and Jonas stepped forward.

“Why are you here?” Jonas asked
, his attention focused on Adnan. “Aren’t you supposed to be in class or something? This ain’t a daycare.”

Adnan raised his chin but didn’t have time to answer
before Darla waved the thought away. “The Boss suspects a leak. We’ve come to warn you and provide a few more bodies . I’m also here to ensure the human is getting a proper magical education.” She eyed Toa with disdain.

“
Stefan sent
you?”
Sasha blurted, hands at her hips.

Darla stared down at the human with
her beautiful face perfectly flat. “I am still in line for the mate title,
human.
He might have a sophomoric interest in you now, but he is a business man. He wants all his future assets in one place. If you don’t work out, who do you think will take the mate title? And if something happens to me, there is Mira.”

Sasha visibly deflated as Toa nodded. The white shield winked out. “Let us get back to it,” Toa stated as he eyed Darla. “You may watch, but you may not interfere. If you have a problem with the way I am going about things, you are free to scurry back to your liege and tell on me, as you see fit.”

Darla’s eyes smoldered as she stared at the blond creep, receiving that strange blue-eyed gaze in return. She flicked her beautiful head and huffed. Toa turned to Sasha.

“Commence.”

“In front of
her?”
Sasha asked in a small voice.

Charles’s heart went out to her, but the Boss was doing the right thing. If Sasha couldn’t pull this off, he needed a mate, and Darla was the best contender.
Still sucked for poor Sasha, though. She didn’t need the reminder that she was human, and might not be good enough.

Chapter 7

“I did it!” Sasha’s glance flew around the living room in the main cabin, landing on Charles. He momentarily dropped his knitting. “Charles, look. The dog-thing found me without shocking me. Finally. It only took the better part of a freaking week.”

A black, smoky blob fizzled at her feet. The intent had been to leave a charm in
a place an enemy might travel. Then, when said enemy stepped through, the magic would return-to-sender with a light hum, alerting of trespassers. In the past Sasha had always gotten one hell of a shock. Today, she’d done it. She was making strides.

They sat in the living area of the largest log cabin, Toa wanting to be indoors to reduce the amount of
distraction for Sasha. Jonas stood by the door, looking into the hall, monitoring someone’s progress toward the room. Either that, or looking at the ghost that set off that charm. Charles, as usual, sat in a chair, ready to have magic blasted at him at a moment’s notice. While Sasha was getting a hundred times better, she still had mishaps. None so far tonight, but Charles knew better than to get his hopes up.

“Good.” Toa glided over to her in that creepy way he had. “That is a moderate charm which those
with less than red power levels cannot achieve. Now we will take the next step up.”

Moderate?
Charles was suddenly extremely glad he was both violent, and great with a sword, because no way could he do that spell with any sort of results. He had plenty of power, but he’d never been great at magical finesse.

Sasha took a big breath as Toa started explaining something to do with the elements fire and water. The man could bore a plant with the way he droned on. Judging
by Sasha’s quickly glazing eyes, her mind was already drifting.

“I shall demonstrate,” Toa cut off suddenly. Sasha wasn’t the only one learning.

Pure white magic drifted into existence, creating a beach ball sized orb in the center of the room. Translucent, it hovered beautifully, reminding Charles of the first snowfall of winter.

“Now, walk into it,” Toa instructed Sasha.

“No.” Jonas straightened, stepping further into the room. “That spell can kill.”

“By
applying the proper defensive magic, and if the sphere is a solid color, then yes, it will kill if the caster has enough power. This sphere, as you can see, is not solid. It will simply be unpleasant,” Toa explained patiently.

“Oh
, fantastic,” Sasha muttered.

“Ah
, yes, baby steps,” Darla said in a silky purr as she stepped into the room behind Jonas.

“What’re you doing here?” Jonas asked in a thick growl.

“
Assessing the level of training. Making sure our star pupil is worth all of our time.  The sooner she fails, the sooner I’ll be back on top.” Darla gracefully lowered herself into a chair beside the door, her legs peeking out from the slit in her shimmery dress all the way to her enticing upper thigh.

Charles’s mouth went dry. He hadn’t h
ad sex in a while. Those damn
Mata
were worse than Sasha for being prudes. Well, not worse, but certainly as bad. And more violent, too. He’d merely
hinted
to one of their females that he was available should she need a ride. He did not appreciate the sudden punch to the balls. It had been completely uncalled for. A simple ‘no thanks’ would’ve done the trick.

Charles huffed with the memory as
Toa turned. As if on a hinge, his shoulders swiveled, sparing one glance for the new arrival. She gave him a scorching glance and licked her lips, probably desperate for a drop of his blood. Toa turned back to Sasha just as slowly, somehow failing to get wood. Unlike Charles.

“Walk through the sphere please, so you can try it.” Toa elegantly gestured
Sasha toward the floating ball. “You only seem to learn when you experience something. I am simply instructing in the approach that is most likely to be received.”

“Okay, but what’s the point of it?” Sasha asked dubiously, stalling. “You can see it. Why would someone just walk into a magical ball? I think I’d avoid it.”

“In battle, you can create one of these and send it floating. If you have sufficient energy, you can take down a few unaware or distracted fighters.” Toa gestured her forward.

Sasha’s
eyes flicked to Darla’s chair. The other woman winked, her smile smug. Taking a determined breath, Sasha stepped forward slowly. As her face and torso drifted into the bubble, she gave a huge jolt.

“Holy—
ˮ

She stepped back quickly, rubbing her arms.
“Dang it, Toa. That hurt!”

“Yes, it is not pleasant. Now you try.”

Charles suddenly did not want to be in this room. If she managed to do the spell, he’d have to test it because Jonas ranked higher than him in the violence department. If Toa’s spell hurt, hers would probably blast his face off.

For all the work Jonas did with this detail, it was a wonder
heʼd come with them at all. Charles had no idea what the Boss was thinking on that score. Jonas hated Sasha, didn’t want to be here, but wouldn’t let her out of his sight, thus being a hostile nuisance to everyone else. Plus, he didn’t help with any of the unpleasant stuff. If he wasn’t so damn hostile and wound up, Charles would have mentioned it.

They all needed to get laid. That was one of the problems right there.

“Okay,” Sasha said as the white sphere melted back into the air. Her brow creased.

“Show me, please,” Toa instructed in his sing-song voice.

Sasha put up her hand, palm toward the ceiling. A colored wisp drifted above her skin, deep red. Now orange. Quickly to gold.

“Slower, please,” Toa said.

Sasha’s lips parted, her breath falling out of her open mouth heavily. Her other hand clenched at her side as the wisp eased past burnished gold and into white. She was trying to slow the draw, but based on her rigid body, having a hard time of it. Finally, the wisp was a deep, bottomless pit of black, sucking in the light around it. Full power.

“Good. Now…” Toa gave her a sweeping hand gesture.

Jonas stepped out through the doorway, an orange shield blocking Sasha's magic. Toa flicked up a white shield as red wrapped around Darla. Charles was last, nearly having forgotten to raise his shield. If the Boss trusted Jonas, there was no reason Charles shouldn’t. Especially in the face of whatever was coming.

“Okay,” Sasha said again, her brows dipping down her nose in concentration. “I’m trying to create a moving sphere to sideswipe people who aren’t paying attention. I’m aiming for pain, not death. Okay…”

She put her hands up, palms facing each other. Blackness materialized in front of her like pixilated smoke. Her brow started to glisten as she concentrated, her fingers trembling. The black took shape, ball-like, though too dense. Then denser.

“Not so much,” Toa warned in a gentle voice.

Charles started to cringe.

Perfectly round now,
outsides glistening like it was coated in oil. Charles’s skin started to tingle furiously, magic crackling the air. The ball started to wobble, losing shape but not density.

“I’m losing it,” Sasha said through clenched teeth.

Toa stepped forward. White frost enveloped the black, freezing the oil slick. Another moment had the outside cracking like ice, both Toa and Sasha now battling with flexed bodies and grim faces. In a whoosh, magic flooded the room, pounding against Charles’s shield, threatening to erode it away. Darla shrieked as her red was sandblasted, her hands in front of her face in a defense posture, pain lacing her expression.

In another second it was all over, Sasha and Toa left panting in the middle of the room, Darla with a crazy mask of rage.

“
This
is what you’ve learned?” Darla spat, standing up with a red face.  “You’ve been here for two weeks! You’ve been in classes for weeks before that, and
this
is all you can do? You can’t even control your magic, let alone contain it. You’re dangerous, human. No wonder the Boss sent me. There’s no way you can lead our people. You can’t even look after yourself!”

“She is working with more than twice the flow you are,” Toa said calmly, completely unruffled by her tirade.
“You could not possibly understand the effects of drawing that much power, since you reside in meager red. I will only say that it is slippery and dangerous, and you will never experience it no matter how much, or whose blood you take. You, simply, don’t have the ability to hold it. Now, Sasha, letʼs chat about what went wrong as we ready for bed.”

Sasha’s gaze had fallen, now focused on the floor in front of her feet. She stuffed her hands in her pockets, following behind To
a like a kicked puppy. She didn’t raise her eyes in defiance as she passed Darla and out the door. Toa might not have been worried about Sasha’s lack of material progress, but Sasha clearly was.

Charles wished he knew
what to say to her. She would learn control of her magic, Charles was certain—that girl rose to the occasion when she had to. But she wouldn’t believe him if he told her that.

That bitch Darla didn’t help matters
by throwing it in her face, either.

As Sasha disappeared, Jonas stepped to the door to
follow, having entered the room again after the magic was diminished.

“You got it, bro?” Charles asked as he dropped his knitting into the basket beside his chair. “I might get a quick workout before I tuck into bed. I didn’t get to kill any of Sasha’s creations today.”

Jonas spared him a glance before nodding. When he turned back, he ran smack into Darla.

“Running away so soon? I thought maybe we could—
ˮ

Jonas’s hand came up…and
wiped
Darla away as if she was a curtain covering the doorway. Limbs flailing, she went staggering out of the way, Jonas already strolling out. Charles couldn’t help laughing.

“What is his problem these days?” Darla
muttered as she straightened herself out. Her heat-soaked eyes hit Charles, now the only one in the room, almost as an afterthought. She paused for a moment, and then her body seemed to lose all its bones and kinda slink down into a shrine of sex.

Oh
, no.

Charles tried to stand
in a hurry, but his hard-on got painful when her dress gave in to gravity and shimmered down her nude body. Perfectly round breasts stared him in the face. This was the absolute
worst
time to be sex starved.

“You’ll do,” she purred with a sultry smile, crossing the room.

“No, no—I have stuff to do. And I don’t like giving blood. I’ll just…”

Her tinkling laugh filled up the room as she
stopped right in front of him. Her knee bent forward and nudged his legs wider apart. She stepped closer, his legs pushed out to accommodate her body. She bent low, her breasts passing by his vision as her beautiful face leveled with his. Her tongue slipped across his bottom lip.

“Feel how wet I am, Charles.”

She raised her leg and braced it to the side of his groin, just barely putting pressure on his pounding dick. Her hand grabbed his and directed it to the middle of her thighs, the tips of his fingers brushing her wet slit.

The pounding
got ten times harder to ignore.

A
breast graced his lips, its budded nipple nudging. “C’mon, Charles, I won’t bite if you really don’t want me to.”

He
rubbed deeper, working the wetness, not needing guidance anymore. His tongued her taut nipple, causing a low moan from Darla. She was crazy, and vindictive, and unpredictable, and would definitely bite him if he stopped paying attention, but…

“What’s a little sex among fri
ends?” Charles muttered, opening his mouth and sucking in her breast. Two fingers worked into her, feeling along the inner wall, as she pushed into him with a groan.

“I underestimated you. You know
exactly
what you’re doing,” Darla breathed, pumping her hips into his hand.

She leaned back, popping her breast out of his mouth
.
Grinding into his hand now, she fed him the other breast, her hips swooping into him expertly. He wasn’t the only one that knew what he was doing. She might give him a run for his money.

But he’d rise to the occasion like a champ.

He massaged with his thumb as his fingers plunged, working the suction at her nipple just right. Her breathing started to get labored and her movements more frantic. She clutched his hair in two fistfuls and yanked, screaming while she orgasmed in giant body spasms.

“Oh
,
yes,
Charles!” Darla slowed and languidly took her knee off of his leg.

She smiled down on him.
“My turn.”

Her hair swished over her shoulders as she bent, her
deft fingers working the fly of his jeans. Cool air assaulted his erection, giving him the best kind of shivers. Before he could acclimate, her hot hand had his shaft and she was running her palm against him firmly.