Primal Cravings (2 page)

“I don’t get your drift,” Tobias said.

“Are you saying that your Cave witches are the bad witches?” Another sensible question from Piper.

“Not all of them, but—yeah—you have to watch and worry about the ones who play with fire. But they’ve always been a tiny, tiny minority of magic manipulators. Taking energy from magma and the deep earth is hard.”

Dee realized she’d been addressing Jake Piper. She made herself look earnestly into her boss’s big golden brown eyes. Piper let out the faintest growl of annoyance that a mere female dared to take her eyes off his fine, superior self. Damned Tribe arrogance. And his big bittersweet chocolate brown eyes, too.

“What else can I tell you, Tobias?” Dee asked. Okay, Tobias had been born into a Tribe, but one that had come over from the Dark side when he was a very little kid.

“Caves and Towers,” Tobias said. “Those words pressed some kind of button.” He shook his head. “Haven’t got a clue, just got a feeling.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Don’t have time for a new crisis right now.”

“You don’t think your current feeling has anything to do with our current op, do you?” Piper asked. “And what do you want me and the witch to do about it?”

He hadn’t sneered the word, not in front of Tobias, but Dee was certain Piper wanted to.
Stop being so bitchy about him
, she told herself.
This is business
. He just put her so on edge.

As Dee chastised herself, Tobias said, “Let’s find out.”

He led them to the Malibu house’s formal dining room. A jerk of his head sent the Angels seated at the table out of the room, taking their breakfasts with them.

They moved to take three of the evacuated seats, but Dee paused as a slight shaking made everything quiver. No one else paid the tiny earthquake any mind. Dee sighed. She was from Chicago. A nice, flat space that didn’t go around wobbling all the time.

She pretended nothing had happened, just like everybody else did when the little tremors hit. Tobias had taken the chair at the head of the table, Piper took his left, so Dee took the right. Tobias held his hands out. Dee let him clasp hers. Piper frowned, but grasped his hand around Tobias’s other wrist.

“You two, too.”

Dee pretended she didn’t know what Tobias meant, but Piper held his free hand across the width of the table to her. “Let’s get this over with, witch.”

“Will you stop calling me a witch like it’s an insult?”

Piper didn’t answer, and Tobias gave her one of his stern looks, the sort he turned on Saffron when the young teenager was being stupid.

“Point taken,” Dee said.

She and Piper touched fingers. The hot tingle of contact was most annoying. She wondered if he felt it, too. He certainly didn’t show it any more than she did. She didn’t show it, did she? It was hard to tell what vampires picked up, no matter how hard the mortals around them tried to shield themselves. You could admire, trust, work with the paranormal folk, but—they were different and you had to remember that.

Dee took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and concentrated. After a couple of seconds she said, “Sealed.” But she added, “You guys aren’t of the craft, this isn’t going to work. And I’m not psychic.”

“You are a pain,” Piper said.

“I agree with that, actually. But, just sayin’….”

“You are more psychic than you think. It is getting stronger the longer you— Never mind.”

“What do you mean—?”

“Think,” Tobias ordered.

She kept her eyes closed and did as she was told. A variation of thinking, anyway. The point of the exercise was to free the mind and let other stuff in. Dee wondered what it was that Tobias was feeling, and let everything go blank.

* * *

Fire slid over Dee’s skin. Fire brought by a caress. Ashes swirled around her while Dee arched against hard hands. Lips touched her, gentle on her shoulder, on her throat. The caresses moved to her breasts, down her stomach, across her abdomen, lower. She raised her head, her lips begging for a kiss. She saw the fangs. Saw the dark brown eyes glowing with heat. Saw Piper.

“Oh, shit.”

* * *

Every door was a mirror, and every mirror was a door. Fire reflected into and out of every mirrordoor. None of it made any sense. He turned round and round and—there stood Melchor.

“You’re dead.”

“In some places. In some times,” his brother answered. He held out a hand. “Join me.”

“In being dead?”

“In our world.” He turned and gestured. Thousands of Melchors did the same.

A man in black appeared. A red stone altar. A naked woman. Her long red hair spilled out like a river of blood off the edge of the stone.

The man at the altar held a knife toward Jake. “Do you want to help with this?”

The naked woman on the altar was Dee McCoy.

Chapter Three

“What did you see?”

Dee took her hands away from the two vampires’. “Porn,” she answered Tobias’s question.

“That doesn’t sound very helpful,” Piper said.

Dee wasn’t going to look at him. Not now. Maybe never again. Her nipples were tight and tingling, and she was glad she wore a loose shirt to cover the evidence of arousal. She wiped her palms on her jeans. “Thinking about sex is totally typical when touching a couple of Primes.”

“True,” Tobias answered. “We are born horny as well as telepathic. But did you see anything, Dee?”

“Nope. Visions aren’t my thing, boss.”

Tobias looked at Piper. Dee was all too aware of Piper staring at her.

“Anything, Jake?”

“Mirrors and doors,” Piper answered. “Reflections of reflections—oh, and fire.”

“There was fire in mine, too,” Dee added.

“Anything else?”

Piper didn’t answer for a while. Dee found that she was holding her breath. Her skin tingled with electric anticipation while she waited—Piper had something important to say.

Then Piper said. “I got an impression of being underground.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, Tobias.”

That wasn’t all. Dee was certain that wasn’t all he’d seen. But she also wasn’t certain that this vision thing worked for anyone but Tobias. It would be stupid to question the man’s veracity on what might well have been something he’d imagined—as she had imagined what she’d seen. She might not call him on it, but she tucked her suspicions into the file against Piper she already kept in her head.

And, she freely admitted to herself, that she might not hate and distrust Piper so much if he wasn’t such a sexist pig and she didn’t want to screw him. Badly. Sex with sexists was not something McCoy women did.

The problem with hanging among the hot-bodied, hard-charging males of the Dark Angels was that there were always pheromones and sexual tension floating through the air. It was impossible to escape the constant frisson of lust—especially after a dangerous mission reminded everyone that they were alive. And there weren’t that many women in the Crew, not that a few of the guys weren’t hot for each other too. Dee was used to being hit on, and appreciated being appreciated, but refused to take any overtures seriously. At least all of Tobias’s warriors toned down the horniness when the Dark Angels were on an op, like now, but the undercurrent of lust was always there. Tobias said it was actually good for morale as long as everybody obeyed the rules he’d set down for discipline.

Dee didn’t think Jake Piper got it. Or he was too arrogant in his Tribe Prime identity to pay attention. Dee had to admit he never openly hit on anyone, he didn’t even talk to any of the female Angels unless it was business, but sometimes she caught him looking. His eyes were so dark brown they were almost black, but it was a black that burned when his gaze raked over something he craved.

If that darkfire gaze ever turned on her, Dee didn’t know what she’d do. Gut him, she hoped. But she feared another reaction, so kept her guard up around him all the time.

Piper’s voice drew Dee out of her reverie. “What did you see, Tobias?”

She concentrated on her leader. “Anything?”

“Red rocks,” Tobias said. “I saw a landscape of red rocks.”

Dee took out her iPhone. “Want me to look up red rocks on Google Maps?”

“Most of the Southwest is made of red rock,” Piper said. “Did you get a feel for where, Tobias? Colorado? New Mexico—Mongolia?”

Tobias shook his head. He stood, and she and Piper followed him. “I’ve got a feeling there’s dark magic going down somewhere, and we need to stop it.”

“We’re already a little busy,” Dee reminded their leader.

The Dark Angels’ latest op was trying to save every paranormal person in the Los Angeles area from efforts someone was making to out vamps, werefolk, and everything else with extra-human abilities to the mortal world. Last night had been spent keeping the world from discovering that there was a vampire movie star in their midst. They were protecting the medical facility where the daylight drugs for vampires were administered, and other important supernatural medicine was performed. This clinic had already been bombed once—an attempt to bring mortal fire and police departments with lots of questions onto the property. All kinds of shit like this was being pulled by the bad guys. All sorts of real and present dangers were going on. The last thing the Dark Angels needed was a separate problem involving magic and one of Tobias’s feelings.

“Exactly, Dee,” Tobias said, probably having just plucked all that out of her head. “That’s why I’m detaching you two from the Los Angeles op. I’m giving you and Jake a separate assignment to take out the magical threat. Whatever it may be,” he added.

But….

Dee didn’t say it, she was too disciplined for that, but her heart lurched and her guts twisted. Her mind went blank for a moment. She looked from Tobias to Piper. For a hint of an instant he looked as appalled as she was, before he managed to get his expression under control. Neither of them argued. The Dark Angels were the supernatural world’s military.

“Yes, boss,” Piper answered. “We’re on it.”

We?
What did Piper mean,
we
? Dee drew herself up angrily. Then she realized that by saying that one word—we—the ex-Tribe Prime had acknowledged her existence. A step in the right direction? Or acknowledgement that there was no other option.

Good soldier though she was, Dee had other responsibilities. She held up her palm. “First things, first, boss. I promised Jerame I’d cut off his wings. I have to do that before we go—what?—witch hunting?”

Chapter Four

Neither the
nephelim
nor the witch wanted him in the master bathroom with them, but Jake ignored their silent disapproval and accompanied them anyway. He leaned with his arms crossed against a tiled wall of a room bigger than any place he’d ever called home back in the goodoldbad days among his Tribe brethren. He’d always been good at leaning, lounging, and watching. Paying attention without being noticed was one of his strongest survival talents.

“We don’t need a chaperone,” was her complaint.

“We’re a team now,” had been his excuse to come into the bathroom with the pair. “Where you go, I go.”

It had been very hard for him not to grab her and kiss the sneer off her face. After seeing her naked on the altar—no, that was imagination. Jake was still careful not to look at the large mirror over the bathroom’s double sink. He was shaken from the mirrors and flames inside the vision. If he looked into the mirror would he see Melchor looking back at him? Standing beside him?

Their last conversation, Melchor’s last moments rolled through Jake’s head.

“The Reynards are coming. We can’t get out. We don’t have a choice,” Jake told his brother. He fought the temptation to run toward the Clan Primes. He wanted to get it over with. He’d wanted to get it over with for a long time. But he had to give it one more shot with Melchor. They were the only ones left of an ancient vampire Tribe.

“There’s always a choice, bro,” the other Leviathan Tribe Prime said. “The war’s never going to be over.”

It was for Yakov. “We can have a new life.”

“I’m not turning into a pussy with pulled fangs. That’s no life.”

Five Primes rushed into the room. There was no place to run anymore. The Primes were Clan Boys, fully armed, and not just with fangs and claws.

Jake held up his hands in surrender.

Melchor rushed the Primes—laughing.

Jake would always wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to join his brother in a glorious fight to the death.

But enough of memories. Enough of dreams seen in mirrors.

Right now he was standing far enough to the side of the mirror’s surface that his own reflection wouldn’t show in the glass. Where had mortals gotten the idea that vampires couldn’t see their own reflections? Or was it that they didn’t have reflections?

Jerame’s needs were both medical and magical. Psychological, too, in Jake’s opinion. Jerame believed that if he let his wing stubs grow out he would turn into a demon. Jake didn’t understand Jerame’s thinking, but he envied him at the moment. The
nephelim
had his shirt off, and the witch’s hands were on him. They were wielding a knife, a needle, and sharply scented ointment. She whispered as she worked. Magical spells, Jake supposed, as he couldn’t understand a single word she said, if those melodic sounds were words at all.

Dee McCoy had a beautiful voice. She was not the most beautiful mortal female he had ever seen. He had thought her ginger hair and the freckles dusting her cheeks quite unattractive when he’d first encountered her. But when she’d spoken it had been music. When she turned around he was mesmerized by the sight of tight jeans molding to her perfect, pert ass. Her breasts were perfect, her waist narrow, hips round and womanly. And she smelled good.

It had nothing to do with perfume or soap—the Dark Angels got into some situations where they ended up sweaty and unbathed for days at a time. But every time he was near Dee McCoy, no matter the state of her grooming, Jake was bathed in her unique, spicy scent. He’d discovered through discreet enquiries that no one noticed the witch’s natural perfume but him. Jake fantasized that the warm spice flowed through her untasted blood.