Under His Wings (16 page)

Bastien’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Rumors of my
death are greatly exaggerated. I’m very much alive. Although,” he tapped the
wound, “not as pretty as I used to be.”

“You weren’t all that pretty to begin with.” Nicolai
chuckled, breathless, before lunging off the bed and crushing Bastien to his
chest. He wrapped his arms around a man who had come back from the dead and
held tight.

His best friend. Alive.

Bastien laughed, the sound husky and soggy. Nicolai finally
released him but only the distance of an arm’s length. As long as he held on to
a part of him, Bastien couldn’t disappear again.

“I can’t believe this.” Nicolai shook his head and again
felt the twinge of newly healed flesh at his neck. He grazed his fingertips
over the reminder of just how close he’d danced with death. “How?”

Bastien arched a blond brow, held up his hands and wiggled
his fingers. “Magic.”

Nicolai snorted. “Magic my ass.”

Bastien grinned. “Still the difficult and ungrateful
patient, I see.”

Nicolai reluctantly dropped his arm and lowered to the bed.
But not before flipping off his friend. His recovery from what should have been
a mortal injury didn’t surprise him. Not when Bastien was a master healer. Only
he could have brought Nicolai back from the brink of death. When they’d
believed Bastien had fallen, Nicolai hadn’t just lost a friend, the race had
lost the most gifted healer in their long history.

“How are you here?” Nicolai asked. “What happened? Where
have you been?”

His friend sank into the garishly patterned hotel chair next
to the bed with a sigh. With his long jean-clad legs sprawled in front of him
and fingers linked over his abdomen, he seemed to settle in for a helluva
story.

“When Evander ambushed me, I was on my way to find you.”

Nicolai frowned. “I wondered why you were so far from home,
but nobody seemed to know.” Bastien lived in Greece where most of their people
still resided. But when Nicolai, Lukas, Adon and Dorian discovered the place
they’d believed Evander had murdered him, they’d been off the western coast of
Ireland.

“I needed a…” Bastien hesitated, “a break. I thought I’d
crash at your place for a while. Get my head together along with some rest.”

“What happened?” Nicolai demanded. Fear sharpened his tone,
made the words clipped. Bastien was the most dedicated, tireless male he knew.
Even when his warriors had gone limp with exhaustion, he’d witnessed the healer
continue on without lagging. For him to “need a break”, something must’ve been
terribly wrong.

But Bastien shook his head and waved off the question with a
dismissive flick of his wrist. “Not important.” When Nicolai growled, the other
man pointed a back-the-fuck-off scowl at him. “Like I was saying, Evander took
me down with humiliating ease.” His mouth twisted in a self-deprecating
grimace. “Not personal, he claimed. But with my guts hanging outside my stomach
and my face ripped open, it felt damn personal to me.”

Rage tainted his friend’s voice and Nicolai arched a brow.
The healer possessed the most easygoing nature. Nicolai could count on one
hand—his hippogryph hand—the number of times he’d witnessed Bastien angered.
Nicolai studied his friend’s face. The injury must have been severe to leave
such a scar. Bastien stroked the marred skin and shifted his gaze to some
distant point across the room, but not before Nicolai caught the flash of
bitterness in his green eyes. The hard glint was there and gone so fast if
Nicolai hadn’t been paying attention, he would have missed it.

Maybe not so easygoing anymore.
Remorse flickered
inside Nicolai’s chest. The wound wasn’t the only difference in his friend.
Whatever Bastien had suffered it had changed the man in some way. Only time
would tell if it were for the good or bad.

“Later I found out Evander left for me dead on an
outcropping of rocks in the Atlantic.”

“Found out?” Nicolai asked, leaning forward with a frown.
“From who?”

“The one who saved me. A
cruxim
.”

Well damn. Nicolai’s eyebrow jacked higher. He wondered if
it touched his hairline. “A
cruxim
? That far out?” The lovely, ethereal
and deadly creatures usually settled in more densely populated cities where
their enemy—the vampire—tended to inhabit. They were infamous for killing not
healing.

Bastien nodded, his fingers drumming a soundless rhythm on
his stomach. His lashes lowered, hiding his thoughts from Nicolai. “Yes. She
cared for me the three months required for my injuries to heal.”

“Damn,” Nicolai whispered. “Three months.” For a hippogryph
that was almost unheard of. If the mark on his friend’s face was anything to go
by, Nicolai couldn’t imagine what scars mapped Bastien’s chest and abdomen.

“Yeah, they were bad. For a while there I didn’t think I
would make it.” Bastien inhaled and straightened in his chair. His shoulder
lifted in a shrug. “And since I couldn’t treat myself…”

Healers could mend others, but due some weird, fucked-up
quirk of the Fates, they couldn’t do the same for themselves. Their bodies
followed the same healing pattern as any hippogryph—fast but without the
miraculous recovery a healer’s own hand would have brought.

“Where is she? The
cruxim
that took care of you?”

A silence heavy with pain and more of that fury filled the
room like a blast of arctic air. That same ice froze Bastien’s features into a
hard, unreadable mask—except for his emerald eyes that blazed with such rage
Nicolai fought not to recoil from it. He was familiar with that kind of pain
and anger. Had bunked down with it the last few months.

“I don’t know.” Bastien’s cold reply didn’t invite any
further questions and Nicolai didn’t offer any.

Rising to his feet, he thrust a hand through his hair and
turned to survey the hotel room. The décor was the usual eye-wincing blend of
flowers and plaids. Nothing about it pointed to their location.

“Where are we?”

“A hotel outside a town called Grace Crossings.” Bastien
paused. “Do I want to know why Evander is in this dot in the middle of
nowhere?”

Nicolai glanced down at his friend. “You wouldn’t believe me
if I told you.”

The old Bastien reappeared as he smiled and rubbed his palms
together in mock glee. “Ooh. Do tell.”

Shaking his head, Nicolai searched the room for the
requisite digital clock. One a.m. “It’s that late,” he murmured. “I’ve been out
for three hours.”

“Three?” Bastien snorted. “More like twenty three.”

His head snapped around and Nicolai gaped at Bastien. “An
entire day has passed?”

“Yes.” His friend nodded. “It was a freakin’ mortal wound. I
did my part in a matter of hours, but your body still needed time to recover
and gather strength.”

“Fuck,” he rasped. “Tamar.”

He rushed toward the hotel door, crossing the small room in
several long strides.

“Tamar?” Bastien repeated, right behind Nicolai as he jerked
the door open and strode out into the hall. “Who’s Tamar?”

“I’ll tell you on the way.”

Several short moments later, they exited the hotel lobby,
cast a
gyges
and launched into the early morning sky.

* * * * *

Evander stared up at the two hippogryphs winging across the
black, clear night from his hiding place next to the hotel.

The fury at Bastien’s resurrection from the dead and his
interference in the battle had ebbed to be replaced by grim satisfaction.

Bastien wasn’t a soldier—hadn’t concealed his and Nicolai’s
location with the skill of a warrior. The pair had been almost laughably easy
to find. And now they would lead him to Tamar. Usher him right to the doorstep
of victory.

He waited until Nicolai and Bastien had become small fading
dots before he shifted and shot into the air after them.

* * * * *

Where the hell is he?

Tamar paced the cabin living room, peeked outside for what
seemed like the thousandth time, observed the empty front yard and woods for
the thousandth time and marched back across the room to start the fruitless
process over again.

Worry did a nauseating pirouette in her stomach. Dread
played an endless loop in her head of all the horrible things that could have
happened.

Crossing her arms, she choked back a sob.

Nicolai had to be safe. He
had
to be.

She would know if he was…
No!
Her brain locked down
on that word, refusing to even think it.

“He’s okay. He’s okay,” she whispered, chafing her arms not
so much to gain warmth as to calm the…disturbance inside her.

She’d felt this way once before. Like something else
inhabited her skin with her. Something ancient, wild. It refused to settle
down. Its movements were as agitated as Tamar, as if it prowled the landscape
of her soul, searching, waiting for…what? Nicolai’s return?

The eerie restlessness had started when morning returned and
Nicolai hadn’t. Unlike the first time she’d experienced this sensation, she
wasn’t afraid.

She was too worried to be afraid.

And if she rode this crazy train even farther out on its
track, she had to admit the…
feeling
…gave her an odd sense of comfort. As
if she wasn’t alone in her vigil.

Another trip to the window. Another stomach-plummeting
letdown.

Another trek across the room.

She loved him.

God, did she love him.

For three years she’d dreamed about him, been fascinated
with him. But those fantasies couldn’t compare to the reality of him. She
inhaled a shaky breath. His kindness, patience, tenderness—he was out of some
fairy tale. And just when she’d given up on those fantastic tales, he’d
strode—or flown—into her life and made her believe in the goodness of people
again.

Okay, so she realized and accepted he would leave her when
this ended. Sort of. Pretty much. Hell. She thrust her fingers through her
hair, fisted the curls. If she were brutally
rip-her-fingernails-off-with-pliers honest, she’d admit even when Nicolai first
mentioned returning her home and walking away for good once he handled Evander,
her heart had wrenched in protest.

Even then her soul had recognized what her rational,
stubborn mind had not been willing to accept. When Nicolai disappeared out of
her life, she wouldn’t be whole any more. His absence would leave a gaping
chasm no one—no friend, no lover—would ever be able to fill. Would she still
have the dreams? Would she even
want
to have them?

God, which was worse? Cutting off all contact and learning
to get on with her existence like an emotional amputee? Or having that small
bit of him in her fantasies, waking up longing for him every morning, empty,
knowing she could never touch him again?

Yes, she understood the whys and becauses that prevented
their being together. He was a mythological beast. She was human. He was the
judge, jury and executioner of terrifying creatures. She was a sixth-grade
social studies teacher. He lived with danger and violence. She wanted bake
sales and TMZ TV.

Two different worlds that had no hope of meshing.

And yet…

She rubbed the heels of her palms into her eyes until gold
stars burst across the backs of her eyelids.
It can’t end like this.
Not
like
this
.

She’d imagined a mutual parting where he was whole…living.
Where he hugged and kissed her before soaring into the sky. Not where he left
her one night never to return again. She couldn’t lose him to death. Watching
him leave her would cause enough pain, but not having him in the world at all?

The sob escaped before she could bite it back.

A shout went up outside the cabin.

Her arms dropped and she stared at the closed front door,
frozen.

When another yell echoed through the walls, she raced across
the room and snatched the door open. Blindly, she rushed over the porch and
down the steps, coming to an abrupt halt at the bottom of the stairs.

A group of men formed a semi-circle on the lawn. Damn big
men. They laughed and grinned, slapping one another on their wide backs and
shoulders.

Her gaze scanned them, their faces unfamiliar. Her heart
plunged toward her feet, the adrenaline that had carried her from the cabin
fading.

Why were they so happy? Where was…

Oh Jesus.

With a shriek, she flew across the yard, her bare feet
barely skimming the grass as she threw herself into arms that were already
outstretched and ready to receive her.

Nicolai snatched her up, crushed her to him. His strength
embraced her, his scent enveloped her. And deep inside, the restlessness
disappeared, satisfied he had returned to her.

Tamar clutched him close, her arms like manacles around his
neck. Relief and joy poured through her in a flood that refused to be
contained. Burying her face in his neck, she kissed the strong column, tasting
his skin. A tremor shook her. God, how she’d feared she would never taste or
touch him again.

“You’d better have a damn good excuse,” she whispered.

His chuckle vibrated over and through her.
To hell with
the excuse
. Just as long as he was here. Now.

“I think mine will do,” he murmured before brushing her ear
with his lips and slowly easing out of her death grip. “I want to introduce you
to someone.”

Reluctantly, Tamar released him but remained glued to his
side. She’d have to let him go one day soon, but not tonight.

“You know of these three, but you haven’t met them yet.” He
waved toward the small group on his left. “Lukas, Adon and Dorian.” Lukas, the
dark-haired olive-skinned one, winked at her. “And this,” he cupped the
shoulder of a tall, very blond man with a vicious scar running down the side of
his face, “is Bastien.”

Tamar jerked her gaze up to Nicolai. The surprise winging
its way through her chest echoed in her voice. “
The
Bastien?”