Throat closing with bitter panic, she yanked away and shoved Lora and Zane toward the shield. “Move!”
“No, damn it.” Zane spun back, eyes fierce. “Let me—”
“Go. That’s an order.” She got between them and the oncoming beast, heart thundering in her ears as she told herself, You’ve just got to slow it down long enough for Rabbit’s magic to recharge. They had trained on scenarios like this. Now it was time to put that training to use. Aware that Zane had followed orders—whatever he might feel for her, he was a soldier at heart—she aimed for the dog-creature’s legs and fired.
She got two shots off and then heard a sour clunk as the machine pistol freaking jammed.
“No!” She yanked at the receiver arm that had come loose, locking the bolt, but it didn’t budge. The huge dog—wolf?—seemed to understand what had happened. Its gleaming red eyes lit and it accelerated, jaws gaping.
“Run!” Natalie screamed.
Cara spun and bolted. The shield was farther away than she thought, the demon closing fast. Panic spurted, along with a thought of, Oh, gods, this is it. And then the world did a weird slow-motion thing around her.
She saw Zane shove Lora into the shield and turn back for her, but the beast was too close, too fast. She could hear it right behind her, could feel the jarring thud of its feet through the worn soles of her boots and smell its rotting stench. Her body tensed for pain, for fear, and incredulity flared at the knowledge that she wasn’t going to make it. She was going to be the second winikin to die in battle, wasn’t ever going to get the chance to live the life she wanted after the war. Her breath sobbed. Please, no.
She glanced back just in time to see the huge creature rock onto its haunches, preparing to spring, and—
“Cara, get down!” The words came from the other side of her, in a deep voice that jolted her like lightning and sped the world back up to normal once more.
Before she could react, a gray-and-buff blur raced past with a bloodcurdling howl of rage, and the hard, heavy weight of a man’s body slammed into her, knocking her out of the demon’s path and taking her to the ground. Her rescuer wrapped his arms around her and rolled them as they hit, so he took the brunt and cushioned her fall.
There was sudden warmth, solid muscle, and the yielding, unfamiliar press of a man’s body. And not just any man: She caught rapid-fire impressions of sun-bleached hair against deeply tanned skin, stormy blue eyes, and an air of wildness that defied the high-tech armband and warrior’s garb. Their legs tangled, and when they stopped rolling, he was on top of her with his hips planted firmly between her thighs. Instead of untangling himself, he reared up over her on one arm and lifted the other to summon first a shield and then a huge fireball, and although her brain was struggling to catch up, her soul already knew exactly what was going on.
“Sven,” she whispered, frozen with the shock of seeing her foster nonbrother again after so long, though her body reacted to the way his magic spit and sparked, prickling awareness across her skin.
He looked grimmer and more tired than he had a few months earlier, when he’d taken off for the south. There were new stress lines cut alongside his aristocratic nose and wide, slashing cheekbones, and his old trademark surfer’s ponytail was a grown-out military brush cut now, gone shaggy and adding to the sense of some wild creature contained within human form. He wore close-fitting armor and the Kevlar-impregnated black-on- black of a Nightkeeper, and he was all warrior as his eyes went to where an enormous gray-and-buff coyote—his bonded familiar, Mac—was fighting with the huge black demon.
“Leave it!” he ordered. Mac quickly tore away and leaped back, and Sven unleashed his deadly fireball with a heave that rippled through his body and into Cara’s.
Hiss-boom! Instantly engulfed in flames, the demon-dog reared back with a horrible, unearthly howl. A terrible stench filled the air as it struggled in its death throes. The other animals too were dead and dying, making Cara suddenly aware that the rest of the magi had arrived and were tightening around the winikin in a protective ring as the creatures melted to stinking black puddles. After a moment, even those faded and disappeared, leaving silence behind.
Dead. Silence.
As her pulse pounded in her ears, she thought crazily that it was the kind of utter quiet that came in the aftermath of a disaster that didn’t cause any actual casualties but had come damn close, to the point where everyone sort of sat there for a second, thinking, What the fuck just happened? Because that was what had to be going through the minds of the other winikin. It was undoubtedly what the magi were thinking as they watched the last of the creatures puff to greasy smoke. And it was what she ought to be thinking too. Because although the Nightkeepers’ former nemesis, the Xibalban mage Iago, had tricked his way into Skywatch twice, no demon had entered the compound in nearly thirty years. Not since the Solstice Massacre.
But although those were the questions she knew ought to be going through her head, her mind had blanked. All she could do was stare at Sven as he levered himself off her and rose to his feet with a loose-limbed grace that sharply defined the muscles under his tight black clothing, making her entirely aware of his body, and the imprint it had left on her own.
Don’t think about it, she told herself, but the familiar refrain barely registered.
There was a low whine and the scuff of paws on dirt as Mac trotted over to stand beside him, then looked at her with his pale green, human-seeming eyes gleaming, his ears pricked and his plumed tail wagging in wide sweeps. Sven and the coyote made a formidable pair, and the sight tightened her throat. It had been a long six months since they had gone down to Mexico to head up the Nightkeepers’ efforts to contain the spread of the xombi virus—an infection that was part magic, part disease, and thoroughly vile. She had worried about them, especially when the reports back from the southern front had grown increasingly grim. But her relief that they were home safe caromed off resentment that she hadn’t gotten any word beyond the official reports, nothing personal, nothing that acknowledged her and Sven’s connection or the fact that he’d been the one to bring her back to Skywatch to take on a job she hadn’t wanted. He’d promised to help her with the winikin… and then he’d taken off without a word. Which was just Sven, and shouldn’t have surprised her.
It had, though, and that was why, as irritation won out over relief, she summoned a flip smile she knew would piss him off, and said, “Hey, welcome back. Did you miss me?”
That was a laugh, of course, because he’d always made it his business never to miss anyone.
CHAPTER TWO
Sven had braced himself to see Cara, thinking through what he wanted to say to her… but as he stared down at her now, caught between the desire to haul her into his arms and the nearly overwhelming urge to shake her until her damn fool teeth rattled, he was floundering because they were way the fuck off his script.
He had planned on getting her in private and talking to her—really talking to her, for the first time in years. He sure as shit hadn’t been prepared to show up just as the alarms went nuts, and to get out to the ball court just in time to see her trying to outrun some godsdamned hellbeast—a demon inside Skywatch, for fuck’s sake!— armed with a jammed MAC-10 and more guts than common sense. He hadn’t been braced to find himself planted on top of her as he’d pulled the magic necessary to take the creature down. And he sure as shit wasn’t ready to be this close to her while his pulse thudded off rhythm with those urges, along with knowledge that he’d just come damn close to losing her.
He rolled off of her, stood, and hauled her to her feet, though the distance didn’t do nearly enough to cool him off. His rehearsed scene had started something along the lines of, I know this is a couple of decades too late, but I owe you an apology.… Instead, he found himself leaning down to roar, “What in the hell were you thinking? You nearly got yourself killed!”
Mac moved to his side, ruff bristling, but then subsided and settled to his haunches with his eyes fixed on Cara. Friend, he sent in the thought-glyphs that were his main way of communicating. Missed friend. But that wasn’t enough to cool the fury riding high in Sven’s blood. Mac existed in the moment—the demon was gone now; he was happy to see Cara now; he was hungry now. Humans, though, had to deal with the past-present-future stuff. That meant that when Sven looked at her, he didn’t see a petite woman with a striking white forelock and exotic deep brown eyes, wearing curve-hugging black pants, an edgy black jacket, and an air of, You and what
