Wilde Card: Immortal Vegas, Book 2 (24 page)

Still, I couldn’t shake the idea that Armaeus was hiding something. If only because he usually did.

He appeared to sleep for the rest of the car ride, then refused help or medical treatment when we arrived at the hop plane, and then again at the Council’s private jet. When we had lifted off for the last time, however, he stood, making his polite apologies, and turned for the back of the plane where the sleeping chambers were.

Simon and I watched him go. Armaeus was barely out of sight before the Fool turned to me. “You ever see him this messed up before?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t known him that long.”

“I have.” He peered to where Armaeus had sat. “Blood dried a long time ago, but dude’s still stiff as a pole and not in a good way. It’s freaking me out.”

“It is?” I frowned at him. “You don’t seem freaked out.”

Simon laid a hand on his chest, his face alight in the artificial glow of his work table. Now that we were back on Armaeus’s private jet, Simon had all the comforts of home—including a workstation fit for a tech god. Before him on the table was the completely dismantled digital reconstructor, its components laid out in exacting precision. “I hide it well. You should go to him.”

Returning my gaze to the back of the jet, I sensed the pull and rightness of Simon’s suggestion. Then I realized who it was
making
the suggestion. “Stop that.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re trying to create trouble.”

Simon grinned. “In this case, the trouble’s already there. I’m simply trying to help it along. Keeps things interesting,” he continued, answering my unasked
why
. “I’m immortal, you’re not. There are a limited number of adventures you’re going to be able to have in a given lifetime. Why not go after them to the fullest? Seems a waste of heart and brain and lungs and bone otherwise. Life’s so dull if you don’t take chances.”

His words resonated with me on a soul-deep level, but then, Simon’s biggest fear in life appeared to be getting bored. When an eternity stretched before you, I supposed your perspective changed.

A rustle against my mental barriers brought up my head. Simon blinked at me, his face betraying confusion. I was officially off Eshe’s payroll, and Kreios couldn’t throw his will as far as Armaeus could. Which left no one but the Magician rooting around in my head.

Except he wasn’t rooting, exactly. The tendril of outreach was far more tenuous than that. Almost unconscious. Like a hand that crept out in sleep, seeking the comfort of connection.

I scowled at Simon. “Are you doing this?”

“Doing what?” Real curiosity gleamed in his gaze.

I tapped my temple.

He shook his head. “I completely got the short end of the stick in terms of mystical powers. Influence and teleportation is great, but talking inside somebody’s brain? That trumps it every time. If I can pick up those skills, I’m totally applying to Arcana U.”

“You can do that?”

He grinned. “You never know if you don’t try.” With that, his gaze dropped back to his exploded device. “Now go check up on the old guy already. His pain is making me twitch.”

I couldn’t tell if I was being manipulated or not, but there was no denying the frisson of pressure stirring in the base of my brain. I hauled myself out of my seat, wincing with a million aches of my own. Shucking off my jacket with its treasure of gold scroll cases, I thought twice about leaving the cases alone. I liked Simon, sure. But that didn’t mean I trusted him.

I slipped into Armaeus’s sleeping chamber and dropped my jacket and the cases on the seat next to the door. As with everything else on the jet, the room was ridiculously luxurious, several times larger than any cabin needed to be. A single, full-size bed centered the space, open on both sides. The room was dark but not soundless: the rushing sounds of the ocean flowed out of speakers, bathing the chamber in a lulling cadence.

Beneath it, I could hear Armaeus’s labored breathing. Decidedly less lulling.

“How bad are you?” I asked into the gloom.

“Return to the main chamber, Miss Wilde. This is not your concern.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

“You’re going to be a really obnoxious old man, you know that, right?” I moved forward, gradually making out Armaeus’s figure. His clothes were laid neatly on the chair beside the bed, and I paused there, picking up the shirt. Four ripped holes stained with dried blood remained on both the front and back. “You keeping this as a trophy?”

“The positioning is useful to note. The wounds were not debilitating, and yet achieved significant blood loss in minimum time. What was the goal in…that…” His voice dropped off at the end. “I need rest, Miss Wilde. If you can stop your interrogation for the moment, I would be happy to engage with you at a later time.”

He needed more than rest, though. And I knew
what
, suddenly. As well as I knew my own body—the body he’d healed more times than I could count, even if it was sometimes against my stated wishes. The magic wielded by the Magician was not the sly subversion of the Fool’s manipulation, nor the blatant sexual trigger of the Devil’s illusions. It also wasn’t the arcane purity of the High Priestess’s spell-borne sight. The Empress’s ability was to make something out of nothing, a gift that clearly brought abundance to her door, though I’m not sure what else had shown up alongside it.

But Armaeus was different. He was the most powerful Arcanan I’d encountered, and his abilities were the most primal. They centered on the most primal of functions too.

I sat down on the bed, and everything tensed—not just Armaeus’s body either. The entire atmosphere around him turned electric with awareness and adrenaline. “Miss Wilde.”

The words were almost panicked, and a trickle of power surged up within me, fast and sure. I wasn’t going to bang Armaeus in his sickbed. That was something between us that could not be broached easily, and this was not the time.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t help him now, when he needed it most.

“We don’t know what we’re walking into, back in Vegas,” I said, leaning over him as my hand trailed up his arm. The energy in the room warmed, then began to dance, and the lights dimmed further. I moved the coverlet aside and winced at the bandages on Armaeus’s chest and across his abdomen. They’d been applied with force and precision, but the blood was beginning to seep through. The silver arrows were not simple weapons, no matter what he’d said. They sapped him of his ability to self-heal, or at least delayed it significantly. “I need you—the Council needs you to be at your best.”

And so did the Connecteds back in Vegas, since he’d sicced SANCTUS on the city. Whether he wanted to or not, Armaeus was going to help save them. Right after I saved him.

“I will heal.”

“Neither of us has time for that. Let me help you.”

“You’re not strong enough.”

I cringed. He was right, of course. When I’d seen him practically explode with ancient magic in the temple room, I’d grasped a whole new appreciation for a Council member’s psychic abilities versus a mere Connected’s. But I was the only one available, and one made do with what one had. “Oh, yeah?” I countered, my words a light tease. “Maybe you should stop underestimating me.”

“You play…a dangerous game, Miss Wilde.”

Armaeus’s voice was a bare rasp, but there was no discounting the undercurrent of energy within it. An energy that had been missing before. Which meant what I was doing was working.

Granted, I had the sensation I was handling pure radium without a hazmat suit, but with any luck, I wouldn’t deal with the fallout until my body was likely to fail on general principles. Those last few years of life probably weren’t going to be worth much, anyhow.

Armaeus’s laughter rumbled, and I smiled. “Someone’s feeling better, if you’re trying to read my thoughts again.”

“You open the door, I will walk through. Always know that.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“As you say.” Beneath my hand, his skin became warmer, almost uncomfortably hot. I skimmed my fingers over his chest, pausing over his heart. It beat frantically against his rib cage. The cadence of its fury was too fast, too hard, but as heat radiated from Armaeus, I could see his body loosen, the corded muscles in his arms and legs losing their tension, relaxing. I could feel the blood rushing through his veins, feeding his muscles, warming him and diminishing the pain to a smaller and smaller force. In its place, the sensual coil of need writhed up, filling him with a different kind of heat. The forces of creation existed in the very center of Armaeus’s being. This was the power the Magician wielded. This was why his every move was a sensual threat. The most basic of creative energies formed the very core of his ability, and he’d had several lifetimes to hone that ability to perfection.

I couldn’t do what he did. But I could, at least…do this.

I leaned forward, pressing my lips against his collarbone. The heat index of Armaeus’s skin jumped to about a million and three, nearly singeing me.

“Enough, Miss Wilde. Stop.”

The command was in my mind, and a warning. I hesitated. In the past, Armaeus had pushed through my own protestations without hesitation, overriding my caution when he’d high-handedly decided that his brand of healing was faster and more efficient than any other.

Right now, efficiency seemed to be a good idea.

I spread my fingers wide above his bandage. In my mind’s eye, the rent muscle and skin fused together, cauterized by the power of his deep wellspring of magic. Directed by my touch.

“I’ll stop, I promise,” I whispered against his skin, getting used to the heat, the power beneath my fingertips, the whorls of sensation exploding in my brain and along every nerve ending. “I’ll stop right after I do
this
.”

Before I could lose my nerve, I lifted my body over his, angling my head down to cover his mouth with my own. The moment our lips touched, a flood of heat burst from Armaeus’s midsection, searing through me and setting the entire room ablaze in a crackle of electricity. Armaeus’s arms were around me in an instant, the cry ripped from his throat an agonized growl, and he crushed me to him, fusing us into one being.

Power ricocheted between us with enough force to pulverize my brain cells, but somehow I held on to him. He snaked his hand up to the nape of my neck, locking my lips against his. His tongue slipped into my mouth, tasting and exploring, as if he’d never kissed a woman before and might not ever again. His body was on fire, leashed back with a ferocity that did nothing to hide his rock-hard shaft buried into my belly. He rolled over and pressed me into the bed, and I realized—belatedly—that he was completely naked other than his bandages. Which were only over his chest and abs. My clothes would ordinarily be sufficient barrier, except they were in danger of going up in smoke, and I found I didn’t care—couldn’t care—though as Armaeus finally pulled away from me and stared down, hard, at my face, I could feel the pricks of hysteria pinging at my brain, darkness encroaching on all sides of my vision and pushing in on me, threatening to swallow me whole.

Armaeus’s eyes were dark and fierce, the gold no longer pale but blazing with intensity, his skin flushed with power, his mouth open, his breathing hard. His body moved against mine with primal ferocity, and I realized my hands were no longer cupping his face, but trapped in his grasp, pinned to the mattress. Without speaking, he lowered his mouth to mine again, hungrily assaulting my lips, dragging his mouth over my face, my chin, the hollow of my neck, my collarbone. My core swam with heat and need, and the darkness loomed closer, heavy with threat.

I fought it back. I had control here, no matter that Armaeus’s fists were locked around my wrists, that his breathing was wild, almost panicked. When he lifted himself again, I flicked my gaze south. Though the abdominal wrap held, the upper bandages had slipped from his chest, and perfect, pure skin gleamed around two new scars visible on his pecs, scars that glowed white.

I lifted my eyes to his. Stark, raw power greeted mine, and the darkness edged closer. “Feeling better?” I managed to keep my voice steady, though my own heart was racing.

Armaeus drew in a shaky breath, awareness coming back to his eyes, his fingers loosening on my wrists. He lifted his body off mine, and I instantly felt the loss. “That…was unwise,” he said. The coolness of his tone was almost laughable in the face of his rock-hard body, still vibrating with desire. He rolled to the side, facing me, but his arms caged me. He wasn’t quite ready yet to let me go.

As the darkness receded again, I realized I wasn’t quite ready to leave him either.

“It worked, though,” I said. “You’re stronger.”

“I’m stronger.” We stayed there for a long moment, adrift in a turbulent sea. Then he steered us into more predictable waters. “You’ll be returning the gold scroll cases to Fuggeren this morning.”

I released the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “That was the plan, yep.”

“For a fee, I suspect.”

“That’s generally how it works.” I shrugged in his embrace. “I’m happy to give him dummies, if you think he’ll buy it. I assume we need the real deals to fight SANCTUS.”

He paused a beat too long. “As you say.” Then he moved, winced. “We will need but one of them. The smallest. I can make a passable replica, though. He’ll likely never notice.”

“Then my conversation with Fuggeren will be very productive.” I shifted my gaze back to him. “Can anyone else speak that language?”

“Yes.” He smiled. It wasn’t a good smile. “The others, however, are not a threat at present. Fuggeren can maintain possession of the scroll cases, or sell them at his leisure, and we’ll have full access to Fuggeren, or to whomever he chooses as his buyer. Make sure you give Simon the cases before you hand them over.”

“You don’t think Fuggeren will sweep for bugs?”

“I’m counting on it, in fact. But I doubt he’ll sweep inside. The scroll cases will be delivered intact, sealed, and in pristine condition. The same cannot be said, unfortunately, for Mantorov. That will take some explanation.”

“I don’t think anyone will miss him.”