Zero to Love (8 page)

“Keefe?” A vision of the big Mindchanger in black leather appeared in her head. He’d looked at her too long at the party. What if he put the moves on her?

Monroe grunted. “Maybe him. Maybe not. I promise to introduce you to the person I set as your guard.”

The shock of his words tore into her gut. This was real—someone was after her, and she no longer had the freedom to come and go as she pleased. Even going to the university would be difficult.

“If you’re set on continuing with your job, I will make it happen, Magda.” His jaw was clenched. Hard. Was he worried about Nick? She’d be working with him in close proximity, as always. Now that she was no longer “with” the art professor, did she even care about the job? The pay was poor, and she wasn’t teaching. Elijah had been right all along. Getting her master of fine arts obviously wasn’t going to pay off—she was destined for a waitressing job as so many other art students were.

She’d been naive. Now she felt as though she didn’t know the person she had once been.

Monroe pressed a forefinger into the soft depression under her chin. The pressure made her meet his gaze. “You aren’t the same as those others, Magda. I can see your talent dancing in the folds of your mind.”

That imagery made her smile. “What is it dancing to?”

“This.” The radio flicked on suddenly, the notes of a ballad spinning through the main living space. The singer’s gritty voice drew a sigh from her. How did Monroe know this was one of her favorite songs?

With his mouth at her ear he swayed her lightly back and forth to the beat. “I know you, Magda.”

While some people might not appreciate the lack of mystery in a new relationship, it only warmed her that he was so familiar. Like slipping into a bath or drinking chamomile tea before bed. Routine that she never wanted to let go.

He twirled her in a circle. The voice grew louder until she felt as if it dug into her very skull and projected through her ears. Wrapping her arms around him, she explored his muscled back under her fingers and reveled in the way he cradled her so perfectly. Protectively.

“Will we shake the Free Wills eventually? Or will I be in hiding forever?” That she wanted to stay with him wasn’t a question. Only a few days, and she felt she’d known him for ages. She belonged at his side. But she didn’t want to live under a veil, hidden away.

“Not hiding,” he said low. Heat trickled between her thighs as if he’d dribbled hot oil there. He made a quiet noise in his chest but continued to sway her around the room. “And I hope to free you and the entire city from the renegades.”

She locked her knees, and their dance ended. She didn’t like his ominous tone. “What do you mean?”

He averted his gaze. She laid her fingers on his jaw and swung his head in her direction again. “Monroe. Talk to me.”

The radio switched off, and silence weighted the room, so deafening her ears buzzed.

“Monroe.”
Thinking his name jolted him more than if she’d said it aloud.

“I shouldn’t speak of it. Someone is always listening to me.”

She jerked in his hold, fingers convulsing on his back. She dropped her hands. “I don’t like this.” While she was meant to place her life in his care to do with as he would, he didn’t trust her.

He drew her back into his embrace.

When he didn’t speak, her mind revolved around the thought that he didn’t trust her.

He caught her gaze for a long minute. Then, with lips pressed into a fine line, he ducked his head.

His words seemed to be amplified in her brain. “I’ve been asked to do something on behalf of my race that will provide us information about the Free Wills. They are amassing an army with the intention of taking over Helgedom. I think you can deduce why we don’t want such an event to take place.”

She shuddered. “So you’ll be…spying?”

He nodded, chafing his rough jaw against her soft one. “It’s why you can’t stay with me, Magda. I’ll take you home tonight and leave Keefe to watch over you while I’m away. It’s important not to leave your house until I contact you.”

“And I’ll use the time to speak with my father.”

His eyes were intense and hard in a way that frightened her. “You need to make him tell you everything he knows. Any information will help us to stop them.”

“How have I remained safe all these years?”

Monroe’s gaze was direct, piercing. Why couldn’t he feed from her? She craved it. Desire flooded her system, and he groaned.

After reaching for the hem of the T-shirt that hung to her knees, he ruched it upward over her bare ass, belly, breasts. He tossed it to the floor, where it lay like a deflated balloon.

She threaded her fingers into the longer hair at his nape and drew his mouth down to hers. If her mind was indeed empty, she was determined to fill it up with as many memories of him as possible.

* * * *

Monroe strode across the town square, plucking stupid food from the atmosphere.
Mr. Furry Paws on the counter this morning… Toenail polish is chipped…

He scraped his fingers through his hair, still feeling Magda’s touch to the marrow of his bones. After having her in his bed all day, his mind wouldn’t let her go. He could still taste her musky sex on his lips as well as the honey of her emotion. Fuck, to taste her mind…

Keefe had better keep his goddamn feelers to himself.

As Magda had walked down the sidewalk to the front door of her house, Keefe had slunk from the shadows to Monroe’s side. On the front stoop, she’d turned around to look at them.

Immediately Keefe had reached out for her thoughts. As the rumble of rage built in Monroe’s chest, his friend snapped his powers back.

“You’re right, man. I can’t lay a feeler on her.”

“Good, and don’t fucking try again. Just do your job and keep the Free Wills from her.”

But once she was in her bedroom with the thought catcher, not a Mindchanger on the planet could hear her. She was off the radar.

It drove Monroe wild. Just knowing she was out there in the city, her mind ticking, brought him ease. But the minute she was with that thought catcher—it was as if she didn’t exist anymore.

He kept to the shadows as he moved down the sidewalk. The city was quiet tonight. He’d been to the park and found it vacant aside from a few lovers entwined on metal benches. The Free Wills wouldn’t be prowling the park anyway, and he wasn’t going to hide behind a tree and uncover their plans.

He scoured an alley as he passed. No human or Mindchanger there. Just a rat scuttling back and forth from a dropped sandwich to its hiding place.

His thoughts returned to Magda. If he wanted, he could send out his mind and zero in on her father. Were they having that conversation? If so, they must be in her bedroom—not a tinkle of her thoughts reverberated within Monroe.

Swallowing hard against the urge to growl his frustration, he tried to focus on his task. Weeks ago, a Mindchanger elder named Van Es had appeared at Monroe’s shop and set him on his task.

The city was plagued by Free Wills. Every day the Mindchangers lost more of the good people of their race to the evil renegades who promised more food. Just how they planned to draw more humans into the city was beyond him, though. Beyond Van Es too, which was why he asked Monroe to find out.

The task was harder than Monroe had ever dreamed, especially now that he had Magda to consider. In a short time, protecting her had become his sole mission.

How had it happened? One minute he was trying to scrounge some boring thought from her to provide him energy, and the next, she was right
there
—deep in the center of his heart.

After raising a hand, he rubbed the spot. Wrong of him to drag her into the dark underworld of the Mindchangers, yet what choice did he have?

I had a choice not to tell her about the spying.

He pressed his lips together. The last thing he should have told her was that. If a Free Will got her down and ripped the thought from her, Monroe had massive problems on his hands. Once the Free Wills discovered the Mindchangers were searching for their weakness and a way to toss them out of Helgedom, a full-blown war would result.

And Magda would be caught in the middle, a pawn.

But some instinct told him that if there ever was a safe place to store this information, it was in Magda’s mind. After all, the corners of her brain were fogged. Snippets of thought and memory that he didn’t understand and couldn’t totally see lived there.

Later he’d ask Keefe if this was the case for him too.

Why couldn’t he and Keefe feed on her thoughts? The Free Will on the campus lawn had half extracted the dream from her. How?

Maybe because they stole from her before.

A quiet step on the wet asphalt alerted him that a woman stood there several seconds after he detected her presence. She emerged from the shadow of a storefront and fell into step with him.

She drew a deep breath. In her mind he saw that she caught Magda’s scent on him. She moved closer until their arms brushed.

“What brings you out, Elise?”

The young human sucked in another breath through her nose. “What is that I smell on you? It’s like…flowers or…honey.”

He jerked his gaze to her face and saw not one hint of playacting there. Besides, how would she know he thought of Magda as smelling and tasting of honey?

Ignoring Elise’s question, he took a right down a side street. Five more turns, and they had left the light part of Helgedom behind. Now they were entrenched in black shadows and evil. The very air thrummed with it.

Taking Elise’s arm, Monroe guided her so her spine was against a concrete block wall. He hovered over her and stared into her eyes. “What have you found out?”

She didn’t try to rub against him or seduce him in any way. Long ago he’d made it clear that he wasn’t going to give her what she craved. He never fed from her. If she wanted a fix, she’d have to find it from another Mindchanger.

“There’s talk of a target,” she whispered.

“What kind of target?”

Her dark, glassy eyes begged him to take from her. He clicked open a part of her mind that he had used his powers to lock.

She threw up every sexual image she could, but he pushed through them and saw her in the midst of a group of Mindchangers who were slowly sinking into the Free Wills’ clutches. If there ever was a suitable woman for this job, it was Elise. She wanted something from Monroe that he wouldn’t provide, so she went to other powerful Mindchangers in hopes of satisfying herself. As a result she ran with the most influential of their race.

Many of them loved to couple with Elise, taking everything she offered. That was why Monroe had hidden his talks with her under a protective barrier. Almost no one in the city was powerful enough to crack that fog, and therefore Monroe’s secrets couldn’t spill out.

As he flipped through the snapshots in Elise’s memory, she recounted the events to him in a hushed voice.

“I went with Rock to this gathering. At first I didn’t know what we were there for. Well, I was there as a food supply.” She gave a wan smile that revealed she didn’t really love being used as much as she wanted Monroe to believe.

She went on, her breath washing over his cheek. “There was a bonfire, and they were luring humans in to feed from them.”

Monroe nodded for her to continue.

Drawing another deep whiff, she turned her nose against his shoulder. “Are you sure that isn’t honey?”

“It’s exactly what you’re smelling. Forget about it,” he grated out. “Go on.”

“The Free Wills came around soon enough. Fire and humans always draw them to a feast. They emptied a young man after promising him drugs. By the time they were finished, he couldn’t even stand up or tell anyone his name.” She shook her head, disgusted, and Monroe squeezed his hand into a fist.

That the Free Wills used people this way enraged him. Yes, he had to do everything in his power to stop them. For the sake of the vulnerable humans as well as his Magda.

Half a block over, he felt a Mindchanger coming their way. Monroe planted a hand on Elise’s waist and shoved her against the wall. Lowering his head, he pressed his lips to the corner of her mouth to make it look as though he were kissing her.

She moaned, her body giving off pheromones, nipples hard, pussy pulsating. She wriggled, and he locked her between him and the wall, holding her firmly with his mouth and mind.

Her thoughts and emotion blossomed. Her emotion was nothing like Magda’s—Elise possessed an obsession with him. He allowed himself to suck one tiny scrap of her obsession into his body, swelling with the food.

If he looked into her eyes, he might end up stealing a thought instinctively, and that couldn’t happen. The approaching Mindchanger changed direction, leaving them alone.

Her chest rose and fell as she twisted her face a fraction so their lips connected.

A sharp pain on his lip sent a spike of adrenaline through his system. He shoved her away and clapped a hand to his bleeding mouth.

Elise’s eyes flared wide, fear and shock rippling in their depths. Sprigs of her black hair bounced around her face as she trembled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

He probed her mind and saw that she really hadn’t meant to bite him. But Magda’s flavor was there on his mouth, and a primal hunger had driven Elise to do it.

Staring at her hard, Monroe swiped away the blood oozing from his lip.
The sting. I need it
. Hadn’t Magda’s mind practically chanted that while they kissed? What was going on?

Elise plastered herself against the wall as if trying to sink into it and disappear. “This target they’re seeking, it’s a human woman. She belongs to them already—they claimed her when she was a child.”

He nodded. “I’m aware.”

“The Free Wills, they promised Rock and the others all the food they could consume if they joined their ranks and helped them find her.”

“And where are they looking?”

“The south side. They say she works there.”

At the university, yes. The bastards.

“Then you must stick close to the south side, Elise. I’ll pay you handsomely.”