Jerked off balance when Sven dragged at the half-attached cuffs, Zane stumbled and went down to his knees, but when he came up, he had a cuff dangling off one wrist and was holding the .22 he kept in an ankle holster. He aimed at the back of Sven’s head and thumbed the safety.
“Gun!” Reacting instinctively, Cara swung the sawed-off as hard as she could. She hit Zane’s hand and the small pistol went flying, but her grip slipped on the follow-through and the shotgun went off with a roar.
And all hell broke loose.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As the shotgun blast echoed against the background music, one of the winikin shouted and went down, writhing. There was a frozen moment of shock—Cara’s, theirs—and then the others broke and, shouting in drunken fury, hurled themselves into the fight.
She screamed and stumbled back under the onrush, but tripped on something furry and went down. Mac yelped and skittered out from underneath her, then reoriented on her attackers and lunged with a deep-throated snarl. The coyote slammed into the closest—Sebastian, who was reaching for her with blazing eyes. The winikin staggered and shouted in pain as Mac locked onto his forearm with grim intent. Cara scrambled to her feet and fumbled with the shotgun, hands shaking as she tried to get two more slugs loaded. She dropped one, got the other one in, and brought up the weapon to—
“Freeze!” This time it was Sven’s voice shouting the command, and there was a punch of magic behind it.
The sleep spell took hold instantly, dropping all of the winikin except Cara. Their bodies went limp and they fell, some hitting the floor directly, others bouncing off tables or one another on the way down, so the music—it was the Battlefield Band now—gained a bass line of meaty thuds and scraping furniture, along with Mac’s surprised snarl as he tore free from Sebastian and darted out of range of the tree-trunk fall of his body, which was the last to land with a heavy thunk.
And abracadabra, the fight was over.
Or rather, Cara saw with dawning horror, this particular fight was over and a new one was just about to get started. Because this was a winikin catastrophe of epic proportions.
“Oh… shit.” Blood speckled the floor and cloyed the air, and the fallen bodies were strewn like the losers of a battle. But she was the real loser here.
She had shot Breece in the leg. Mac had mauled Sebastian’s arm.
And Sven had magicked the whole bunch of them.
There hadn’t been a case of magic being used against a true winikin since Scarred Jaguar press-ganged the prior generation into the Solstice Massacre. This wasn’t on that scale, granted, but the timing sucked.
Back on his feet now, standing among the fallen with Mac at his side, Sven glared down at Zane. His fists were clenched, his body tight, and when the music swelled in the background, he flicked a hand and killed the stereo from across the room.
The silence echoed louder than if he’d shouted something over the music. More, it made her viscerally aware of his power and shifted something inside her, setting aside her dread for a precious moment and forging a tight pressure in her chest. One that felt like… awe.
He could drop twenty men with a single word and silence music with a gesture. He could throw fire, cast an invisible force field, telepathically communicate with a hybrid coyote, and move things with his mind.… How had all that gotten commonplace in her head?
It was impossible. Amazing. Incredible.
She had grown up dreaming of being part of the Nightkeepers, and while she might not be a mage herself, she was allied to one, connected to one. And, for an hour earlier that day, she had been his lover.
Letting out a soft breath, she tried not to shiver as the sudden heat rushing through her clashed with the cooler air and raised goose bumps on her arms.
He glanced over, eyes dark. “Damn it, Cara, I—”
His armband pinged and Dez’s voice grated, “We heard shots. You’ve got ten seconds before we come in.”
Sven tapped the transmit button. “We’ve got everything under control now, but a couple of winikin are going to need to see Sasha.” With a magical talent for healing and manipulating life energy, she was the Nightkeepers’ answer to first aid.
“Ah, fuck me. How bad are the injuries?”
“Superficial, but they’re going to be pissed when they wake up. I, uh, had to knock out the whole lot of them.”
“Damn it.”
“It couldn’t be avoided. There was a situation.”
“There always is,” Dez said, sounding suddenly very tired. “Okay, we’re coming in.”
The next few minutes were organized chaos as the Nightkeepers poured into the training hall, looking remarkably unfazed by the scattered bodies.
Then again, they probably were unfazed, Cara thought, mind whirling on the strange, shivery currents that were suddenly racing through her body.
Dez muttered a curse, but it didn’t seem to be directed at anyone in particular, and he looked more resigned than angry as he said, “Give me the four-one-one.” Voice flat and careful, Sven made his report. When he was finished, Dez just shook his head. “Yeah. That didn’t go down the way I had hoped.” His eyes flicked to Cara. “You okay?”
She swallowed, then said, “I’m not hurt. As for repercussions… well, the fallout is going to start the moment these guys wake up.”
“Which we’re going to leave until morning,” Dez decided. “If we’re lucky, they’ll think they blacked out.” His eyes went to the two injured winikin, who were being field-patched for the ride back to the mansion. “Okay. Maybe not.”
Turning on his heel, he rapped out a string of orders to the assembled team: Zane and Lora were consigned to two of the mansion’s basement storerooms, which doubled as cells, the wounded were turfed to Sasha, and the others were dispersed to their beds to sleep it off. Things shifted into high gear for a few minutes, and then, with a pop of displaced air as Strike ’ported them back to the main house, the last of the group disappeared, leaving Cara and Sven standing alone in the training hall, amid what looked like the aftermath of a decent bar fight: one tipped-over table, a little blood, and a lot of knocked-over chairs.
She stared at the place where Zane had been lying, and the only thing she could think through the spinning in her head was that there should’ve been more actual damage. Some rearranged furniture wasn’t nearly enough. “Tell me that didn’t just happen,” she said hollowly. “Tell me I’m still dreaming.”
She knew she wasn’t, though. She hadn’t dreamed the cave, the crazy-hot sex, or his confession, and she hadn’t dreamed this.
He moved to her side and gripped her shoulder. “Hey. It’s going to be okay. We’ll deal with it.”
“We,” she echoed, finding that the word jarred.
“Sure.” He squeezed and let go, moving a few feet away to flick a few chairs back upright—one with his foot, several more with his magic.
As before, the show of power stirred her juices. This time, though, there was also a jangling discord, a sizzle of warning. And as he put the table back into place with a gesture, the heat drained away, leaving behind a gruesome realization.
He wasn’t hers to desire, and they weren’t part of a “we.” She wasn’t a member of the Nightkeepers’ team, not really. She was supposed to be the winikin’s advocate… Yet she had fallen entirely under Sven’s spell, and hadn’t even noticed the change. Worse, when the time had come for her to get her justice against Zane and Lora she had hung back while Dez and Sven made their plan. Just like a good little servant.
Nausea pressed, forcing her to swallow hard.
How had it happened so fast? How had she not noticed? And how in the hell was she going to break the
