Shifter Magnetism (10 page)

Nic looked down at Lewis. Even ashen, with Nic’s hand around his neck, the man’s eyes showed his triumph. He thought he had Nic by the balls. Nic raised his clawed fist and brought it down on the side of the sorcerer’s face. A broken jaw and swollen mouth would keep him from talking. He hoped. The man slumped, dazed. Nic shook him until he was coherent again.

Nic awkwardly took his gun from the holster. His claws scratched against the metal. “You go in. You free her and move to the far side of the room. She gets hurt in any way, and I fill you full of holes.” He didn’t like this at all. He wanted to go in and get her himself. His semishifted form was strong enough to bend those bars. He hated dealing with magic.

Nic shoved Lewis through the doorway. Lewis stumbled before righting himself and shuffling across the floor still clutching the arm in which he’d been shot. The sorcerer stopped in the middle of the room. The hand attached to the injured arm began to twitch. His fingers tapped his leg in an odd pattern.

“No!” Leila’s eyes were wider than they were before.

Nic’s heart froze. Darkness pooled on the floor under Lewis’s feet. Slowly, it separated into wisps and spread out along the floor. Nic rushed forward into the room and slammed into an invisible barrier. He rammed the barrier with his fists, yet it wouldn’t budge. Stepping back, he fired a shot at the sorcerer. The bullet hit the magic wall with a bang and then ricocheted. Nic dodged and narrowly missed taking the shot in the head. He shoved the useless gun back into the holster.

In the room, the shadows clumped together. Each one appeared to have a pointy head, sharp teeth, arms, and clawed hands. The shadows methodically streaked toward the cage and his mate. The things shrieked and wailed. The sound was harsh on his sensitive ears, and he was sure he would be bleeding from them soon. He redoubled his efforts to break through the barricade.

Leila gripped the bars of her cage. “Nic, you have to get out of here!”

“I’m not leaving without you.” His words degenerated into growls, and he cleared his throat. “What are those things?”

“Shadow people. Twisted souls he’s trapped here. You have to go!”

Nic stepped back and then flung his shoulder against the invisible wall. He had to get in the room, grab Leila, kill Radkin Lewis, and get out. If she thought he would leave her, she was delusional, and he’d explain how wrong the thought was later.

Suddenly, Leila bent over at the waist and screamed.

“Leila!”

Was she hurt? Had one of those things reached her? His body tingled all over. His fur lifted, and his hands began to glow electric blue. He felt the power coursing through him and resumed beating on the wall. This time it shook with each slam against it. He could feel the barrier weakening. He’d take the wizard magic and use it to free his mate.

He watched Leila. Finally, she stood. Her face was distorted, her forehead broader, her snout extended. Her body was muscled, larger, and if possible, curvier. She had black fur shaded with hints of brown. Her amber eyes were trained on Lewis. She’d semishifted and was the most beautiful wolf he’d ever seen. He pounded the invisible wall harder.

He needed to reach her.

She gripped the bars and pulled. The twisting metal was loud and startled Lewis. The sorcerer’s fingers stopped tapping briefly, and the shadow people darted around the room, shrieking and clawing at each other while searching the dark corners. Once the bars were wide enough, Leila stepped through. Lewis began tapping again as he moved away from her. Nic could smell the stench of the man’s fear. The shadow people switched course and streaked toward Leila.

“Watch out, Leila!”

Her head cocked. She turned briefly to Nic before continuing to stalk Lewis. Nic couldn’t have been prouder or more afraid. She was new to the instinct riding her to defend herself and her mate. When she wasn’t hyped up on shifter hormones and semishifted, she would be appalled at what she was about to do.

Nic called her name just as she jumped for Lewis. She took the sorcerer to the floor in a single leap. One hand circled his neck, and the other grabbed his fingers. Nic heard the
snap
as the sorcerer’s fingers broke. Lewis’s bellow was muffled by the restrictions of his broken jaw. He reached up with his good arm, and she bent it back until there was an ominous
crack
. The invisible barrier in front of Nic vanished, and he barely righted himself instead of falling face-first into the room.

He ran to his mate’s side and knelt. She was staring at the mewling Lewis, squeezing his throat and releasing periodically. “No, Leila. Give him to me. You don’t want to kill him.”

She squeezed the sorcerer’s throat so tightly he started to turn blue. “But I do.”

“Mate!” He put dominance in his voice. Her focus snapped to his face as he knew it would. This was not the time to indulge her. “Give him to me.”

“He was going to kill me and then you.”

“Give him to me.”

She managed to hold his gaze longer than he expected. Pride welled inside him. His mate was an alpha female. They would certainly need to leave the area as soon as possible. An alpha mated pair would be too much for his alpha to take. He watched as she eased her hand away from the sorcerer’s throat. Nic hit Lewis, and the man lost consciousness. The milling shadow people faded.

“We need to leave this place,” Leila whispered.

He helped her to her feet and dragged Lewis out of the room and up the stairs. On the front lawn, he dropped his shift and reached for his cell phone.

“Steady your heartbeat and shift back, Leila. I need you to call someone to clean up this mess and take Lewis into custody.”

Leila paced back and forth, releasing small snarls every time she looked at Lewis. “I can’t.”

“Force the wolf back. You aren’t in danger any longer. We’re safe.”

Leila closed her eyes and took deep breaths as he waited. This was something she had to do on her own. The relationship between a shifter and his or her animal was personal. Normally, she would have managed her first shift as a toddler, but there wasn’t anything normal about their situation.

Slowly, the fur receded; her features and body resized and returned to normal. “I so wanted to twist his head off. I know I should feel bad about that.”

“Why should you feel bad? Here, call someone. This place needs to be handled, and he needs his powers stripped at the very least. If we can find any bodies on the property, I might be able to throw him in a human jail.”

She took the phone from him and sighed. She dialed and put the phone to her ear. “Hi, Mother. We have a situation. We need a cleanup team at a sorcerer’s house.”

Mother?
Why was she calling her mother? He concentrated on what the other woman was saying on the other end of the call.

“What sorcerer? Why in the world would you be anywhere near a sorcerer? If this is a joke, Leila, it is in bad taste,” the woman said.

“Why am I here? He tried to capture me and my mate.”

“Mate!” Nic and Leila winced at the same time as her mother began yelling. A human would have heard what she was screaming.

“Mother!” Leila shouted over the other woman. She told her the address to Lewis’s home. “Get a team here and let Daddy know. This is his problem.” She ended the call and passed him the phone.

“Who are your mother and father?” Nic had his suspicions.

“My parents, Zuria and Aton Barclay, are the leaders of our Council. My mother is considered the most powerful natural witch in North America.”

So not only was he about to meet his in-laws at a crime scene, he was also going to be explaining to them the mistakes they’d made that had led to a murderous sorcerer capturing their child. He was going to do all this as if he wasn’t already the enemy wolf who would be taking their daughter away. How was this supposed to work? What if Leila changed her mind about staying with him and let her parents sway her? He had to make her see his side before they could influence her.

Nic ran his palm over his hair. “Your parents have a serious problem on their hands. Radkin Lewis has been loose, maiming and killing. Evil psychopath Acer Kano’s entire house reeks of death. We have a lead on another sorcerer, and there could be more on the fringes of your little divided Council.”

“I’m going to suggest you phrase that a bit differently with my mother.”

“We can’t let them cover this up, Leila.”

“I don’t know if the Council has the experience or skill set for hunting rogues. You’re a detective. You’ve been trained to find clues and follow leads. I don’t know one witch or wizard on the Coldwell PD, do you?”

She began to rub her arms, and Nic was reminded his mate had just come through about five traumatic experiences, including her first semishift. She was smudged, straws of hay stuck haphazardly from her hair, and her sundress hadn’t fully survived the change in her mass when she’d shifted.

She needed to be held and stroked, not grilled and accused of ignoring the ills of her kind. He pulled her closer, making a soothing sound in his throat when she resisted. Her body stayed stiff, her arms crossed even as he pulled her into his chest and wrapped his arms around her. He gentled her with a soothing rub to her back and the low rumble that vibrated up from his chest.

“You did well today, mate.”

Her back arched a bit at his words, and her arms loosened. She was preening, and he smiled against her hair. He hadn’t known his mate before she was a hybrid, but he knew the she-wolf in her now wanted to be stroked and praised. He kissed her jaw directly under her ear, and she uncrossed her arms completely and clutched handfuls of his shirt. Slowly, he reached up and tugged the straw from her curls before sliding his fingers into her hair and rubbing her scalp.

She whimpered against his chest and wound her arms around his waist. He savored the moment as he reflected on how close he’d come to losing her. In the end, she’d saved them both. He held her even as cars and utility trucks rolled slowly down the drive toward them. He turned her slightly away from the incoming convoy.

She nuzzled him. “My parents are in the front car.”

He didn’t let her go. She made no move to pull away, so he knew she still needed him. Her needs would always come first. He would make nice with the parents, as she’d had enough hassle for the day.

He watched over her head as the front car pulled up next to them and parked. The other vehicles stopped, and people began to climb out.

Her parents were a revelation. Her mother wore a red, stylishly cut suit and three-inch heels. Even he could tell they were designer. Her hair was styled in an intricate updo, and her makeup was perfect. Had he met her under different circumstances, he would have guessed she was a hard-nosed businesswoman, not the local Council leader.

Leila’s father was tall and slim in his black-and-gray pin-striped suit. Though he towered over his wife, the animal in Nic knew she was the most dangerous. Her gaze traveled over her daughter in his arms and then over him. The firm set to her mouth didn’t appear welcoming.

“What is going on here?” Zuria Barclay asked.

Leila raised her head and turned to her mother but did not release him. “This is my mate, Nic Lobo.” She paused, and her mother simply stared at him. “He’s also the detective working the Brain Surgeon case you’ve seen in the news. The Brain Surgeon is a sorcerer who tried to kill me by stealing my soul and magic. Nic saved me.”

Her father nodded at the trussed-up body of Radkin Lewis. “This is the Brain Surgeon?”

“No, he got away the night he attacked me. We were investigating Radkin Lewis, and he captured me in his torture chamber. Daddy, he isn’t the only sorcerer in the area practicing fatal magic.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Barclay, there is no way for the human police to hold these men. You must be responsible for your people.” Telling them what to do probably wasn’t a good place to begin their familial relationship.

Zuria waved her well-manicured hand in the air. “You’ve captured this one, and we’ll deal with him. It seems as if you can’t keep my daughter safe, Mr. Lobo. She will come home with us. Leila, I can’t believe you would be as reckless as to allow yourself to mate a shifter. We have a wizard all picked out for you. No matter. The mating is magic. I’ll fix it with magic.”

Leila gasped. “No, Mother.”

Nic’s wolf pushed its way to the forefront. Its only thought was to protect and keep its mate. He wouldn’t allow anyone to take her from him. Leila’s witch mother wanted to take her away from him with her magic. He felt the partial shift as his wolf took over to help him achieve the goal they both wanted. He only paused for a moment as he remembered he couldn’t kill or maim her parents.

He growled a warning at them to stay back. “No one will take my mate from me.”

Leila tried to put herself between Nic and her parents. Nic tossed her over his shoulder and backed away. He had her in his SUV and was pulling away even as he felt a buildup of power surrounding him. Instinctively, he pulled on the magic he’d attained in their soul exchange. He pictured an invisible wall surrounding them both and then accelerated as he heard Zuria Barclay scream in frustration.

“We need to train you if you’re going to be using magic now,” Leila said conversationally. She paused for a moment. “If you don’t want someone calling the police because they see a werewolf driving an SUV, you should calm down or pull over.”

The tranquility in her voice relaxed him, and he eased out of the semishift yet didn’t stop driving. “I won’t allow your mother to null our mating.”

A soft hand caressed his arm. “I don’t think she can. The most she could do would be a forgetting spell. Even then, we could find our way back to each other. This mating feels compulsive inside me, almost as if I would be drawn to you no matter what.”

She was right. He would know a piece of his soul was missing if she was taken from him. Their bond was preternatural. His wolf would know and seek its other half. He had a feeling her parents wouldn’t stop trying to separate them, but he would be ready. He would do anything to keep her. The only thing that would ever separate them would be his death.