Hexed

Coyote might be out of magic, but Mick wasn’t. His eyes were still black dark, and fire flared from his fingers. Flame magic licked up the arms of Coyote’s jeans jacket, threatening to burn him alive.

Coyote solved the problem by turning into a coyote. Mick suddenly had his hands full of a hundred or so pounds of enraged beast while Coyote’s clothes fell from him in smoking shreds. Mick’s eyes filled with fire, and his tattoos began to glow red.

“Don’t turn into a dragon!” I shouted at him. “Don’t you dare turn into a dragon!”

Coyote kept snarling, fighting, clawing, and Mick fought him. Maya drew her legs up under her on the sofa and watched. The commotion brought Fremont and Cassandra from the kitchen, but they only stopped and watched in alarm.

Coyote bit Mick on the shoulder, and blood blossomed on Mick’s shirt. Mick’s hands filled with fire, and Coyote’s fur began to smolder.

No way should I shove myself between the ripping, clawing, and fire-striking males, and Coyote had just scared the shit out of me about using my Beneath magic. But I didn’t see that I had any choice. I couldn’t let Coyote kill Mick, the man I loved, and if Mick killed Coyote, I didn’t want to imagine the consequences.

I drew on my Beneath magic, finding it scarily close to the surface. Just a little bit, I thought, nothing like what I’d done when I’d tried to break the wards. The tiniest amount was all I needed. I would separate the two wrestling alpha males and then shut it off.

What rushed up from inside me was a huge blast of otherworldly power that made me gasp with its intensity. I desperately held on to the magic, sweat pouring from me, knowing that if I let the magic go, it would blow off the roof.

“I can’t,” I babbled, the sweat freezing on my face. My breath fogged out. “I can’t.”

I didn’t have to. A pair of thin, but incredibly strong, arms locked around Mick’s waist, tore him from Coyote, and tossed Mick aside. Coyote, still in his fighting frenzy, went for Mick’s assailant, but I leapt between them and yelled at Coyote, “Stop!”

Coyote skidded to a halt, his eyes yellow with rage. The tall, slender man stepped beside me and fixed Coyote with a steady gaze.

“Hey, Ansel,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Mind telling me what is going on?”

Ansel’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact, and that made me edgy. Ansel, an Englishman who’d been turned Nightwalker at age twenty-three when he’d been a prisoner during World War II, was quiet, soft-spoken, and a little nervous. He collected stamps, watched lots of television, and generally kept to himself.

What he was unlikely to do was throw Mick across a room—he was afraid of Mick—and then calmly ask me what was the matter.

“Hex,” I told him. “You all right?”

The night-dark eyes Ansel turned on me smoldered with a deep hunger. Once you’ve been given the once- over by a ravenous Nightwalker, you don’t forget it. Or you die.

“I am a little peckish, my dear,” he said.

And Ansel never called me “my dear.”

“There’s blood for you in the refrigerator. But the electricity’s out, so please keep the door closed.”

Ansel reached out and traced my cheek with an ice-cold fingertip. “Anything you say, darling.”

Mick started for him. I got myself between Ansel and Mick’s headlong rush, a frightening place to be. “Mick, no!”

“Let him come,” Ansel almost purred. “I’m hungry, and dragon blood would be delicious.”

“Mick,” I said in warning.

Mick stopped, but his eyes flashed fire. “Touch Janet again, Nightwalker, and I tear your head off.”

Ansel gave him a derisive look and turned away, only to have his attention arrested by Maya. Maya self- consciously tugged the hem of her skirt down her thighs.

“Ansel,” she said, not sounding pleased to see him.

“Maya.” Ansel gave her a smile full of teeth. “Want to raid the fridge with me?”

“No.” Maya looked away, a woman’s universal signal for “Get lost.”

“You go alone,” I said to Ansel. “Drink at least half that gallon jug of blood, and then come back in here and help us figure out how to break this hex.”

Ansel turned the smile on me. “Anything you say, mistress.”

Gods, he sounded like the mirror. Ansel finally went off to the kitchen. Fremont and Cassandra got out of his way as he went by, and no one followed him.

Coyote, still a coyote, growled at Mick. I planted myself in front of Coyote and raised my hand, palm out.

“Sit!” I commanded. “Stay!”

Coyote gave me a look that said “Fuck you” and then sauntered over to the sofa, climbed up next to Maya, and lay down.

I drew a long breath. “All right. It looks like the hex is working to bring out the worst in us—or at least release that part of us we try hardest to control. Ansel, bloodlust; me, my Beneath magic; Mick, his dragon instincts; Cassandra, it’s messing with her emotional control. Coyote—I don’t know what’s going on with Coyote.”

Coyote growled again. I was aware of Mick at my back, right against my back, pressed all the way along me. His arm stole around my waist, strong and possessive.

“It hasn’t affected me, Janet,” Fremont said. “I’m being strong for you. And I’m coming up with all kinds of ideas to enhance your plumbing.”

I had to love him. “I can honestly say, Fremont, that so far you are the only male here I haven’t wanted to strangle.”

Fremont winked at me. “I’ve got your back.”

“Janet.” Cassandra’s voice was weary. “I can’t keep letting this happen. I can try a summoning spell, bring the ununculous to me, and let him kill me. He won’t have orders to do anything to the rest of you.”

“Screw that,” I said. “You can’t know what this guy has in mind—he might decide that Mick, Coyote, Ansel, and I are a threat to him. Or he might kill us for the fun of it.”

Cassandra’s face crumpled as her tears came again. “I promise you that if I need to be sacrificed to save the rest of you, I’m willing. I’m the one who got you into this in the first place.”

“No one’s getting sacrificed.” Except maybe Coyote or Mick, if they continued to piss me off. “Besides, I have a few ideas up my sleeve—”

My words were cut off by a gut-wrenching moan from the kitchen, which wound quickly into a wail of anguish. I rushed past Cassandra and Fremont and into the kitchen, Mick hard on my heels.

Ansel was bent over the big stainless steel sink on the other side of the room, vomiting his guts out. The gallon jug of blood lay on its side on the floor, the remaining liquid spilling across the tiles. As we piled into the kitchen, Ansel looked at us over his shoulder, blood all over his mouth.

“It’s bad,” he snarled. “The blood is bad. Are you fucking trying to poison me?”

“No,” I said in surprise. “It was fresh yesterday, never out of the fridge.”

“It’s tainted, and it’s cow.”

“You always drink cow.”

Ansel dug his fingers into his mouth and scraped out more blood, which he flung into the sink. “Not tonight, I don’t. I need to feed, and I need to feed now. Either one of you volunteers, or I simply start biting.”

FIVE

MICK STEPPED IN FRONT OF ME, AND FOR once his overprotectiveness didn’t irritate me. “You touch anyone here, and I’ll kill you,” Mick said. His words were quiet, deep, and unshakable.

“Come on and have a go, then,” Ansel said. “I’d like some dragon blood.”