All Knight Long, Book I: One Warlock's Love Story (8 page)

“But that gift acknowledges our bond,” Tau said, as if he couldn’t begin to understand Zander’s anger.

“There is no bond. You are a liar,” Zander replied coolly, as he stomped off toward the bathroom to get dressed.

“I’m sorry that I cut you,” Hung said to Tau, looking at the blood spilling from his neck.

“How about you stop checking his neck out like that?” Giovanni scolded Hung, sounding more like a jealous boyfriend than actually concerned for Tau’s safety.

“You were only trying to help,” Tau told Hung.

“I think you two had better leave. This is magical business, and I need to help Zander work through this,” Giovanni said.

“Leave now? The sun is up, and I’m a vampire, remember? I don’t do sunlight. And I thought you said we were going to have sex all day.” Hung pouted. “Why have I got to leave? He’s the one that lied.” He pointed over at Tau.

“This is serious,” Giovanni explained. “Zander has never been away from home, and he can’t find his family. He’s out of control, and there’s no telling what he might do. I need to calm him down.”

“I should be the one to help him,” Tau said, sulking a little.

“Look, Calvin and Hobbes,
you
found your soul mate and started the shifter mating process last night, but
Zander
feels like he got fucked and lied to last night. I’m sure that you are a great guy...” Giovanni snorted as he cast a spell over the cuts on Tau’s neck to speed the healing. “But there are still a lot of things about the supernatural world that Zander doesn’t understand.”

“So, now why do
I
have to leave?” Hung asked again.

Giovanni sighed. “I have to help Zander. He barely knows how to use his magic, and he’s an emotional wreck right now. A warlock’s magic is directly tied to his feelings. He needs me right now. You can have me later. Now go get dressed.”

Hung eased over to Giovanni like he owned him, grabbed him by his hips, and pulled him close. Then, with all of the practice and natural seduction of a vampire, he leaned in and pricked Giovanni’s neck with his right canine tooth and lapped several sips of blood. When Hung had satisfied his thirst, he walked out of the room without so much as a word. Giovanni swooned.

“As nasty as that was, it is obvious that you two were made for each other,” Tau commented.

“Look Simba, you need to stay out of my business and worry about your own man problems,” Giovanni snapped.

“I hate to admit it, but you’re right. How can Zander not see what
we
have? Maybe I should have taken things slower and told him about my intent to mate, but I know he’s the one. We shifters mate on instinct. I know that is was more than fate that guided us to the same place at the same time. It was something more primal than that. I sensed him as soon as I walked in the club. Everything about Zander feels right to me.” Tau picked up the sheets from the floor in a feeble attempt to straighten up the destroyed guest bedroom.

“I’m sure that he feels it. It’s pretty obvious that you two have... a thing.” Giovanni smiled wryly. “This is all just a lot for him to take in right now. His family has to be his priority. Maybe he’ll feel differently after he calms down. In the meantime, he probably needs to keep the ruby to help him try to find his family. And don’t worry about the room. I’ll fix it later.”

“I’m sorry about the headboard and the wall,” Tau said sincerely.

Giovanni rolled his eyes. “Just go get dressed.”

“I left my clothes in the bathroom, and I think Zander is still in there,” Tau whispered. “I don’t think he is ready to see me yet.”

“Yeah, right. I’ll go get your clothes for you. You had the polyester shirt and JC Penney jeans, right?”

They both laughed.

“Hey, Ginger Snap,” Tau said, before Giovanni exited the room.

“Yes, Panthro?”

“Thank you,” Tau said, bowing his head.

“Don’t mention it. Just don’t leave any fur balls in my bedroom.”

Tau paced back and forth in Giovanni’s guest bedroom like the lion that he was.

“Dammit!” Giovanni yelled from the living room. Hung and Tau raced into the bathroom.

“What is it?” they asked in unison.

“Zander’s gone!”

Chapter 9

Despite the fact that magic came easier to Zander when he was angry, leaving Giovanni’s condominium under the cover of a cloaking spell had been much more difficult than throwing Tau across the room. Tears welled up in Zander’s eyes as he remembered the look on Tau’s face when he took the ruby stone back. He kept telling himself that Tau had lied to him and that Tau had gotten exactly what he deserved, but being separated was breaking Zander’s heart.

His thoughts drifted from Tau to his family, and then the tears began to flow. His family had to be fine. Worst case, they would be mad at him for lying and ground him. He picked up his phone from the passenger seat and dialed each of their cell numbers. Neither his father, mother, aunts, uncles, nor cousins answered their phones. He dialed his Grandmother Zoe last. She always answered before the first ring -- she had to. By the time her phone rang the seventh time, Zander was bawling.

What would have normally been a four and a half hour drive from Atlanta to Zander’s home in one of the southernmost towns in Georgia, only took three and a half hours driving at seventy miles per hour. He wondered if they had any idea that he had left the Litha. He wondered why they weren’t answering the phone. He wondered if it was his family’s caravan that had been attacked on the way to Atlanta.

“Think positive, think positive,” he told himself, but that didn’t console him.

He remembered the time that his Grandmother Zoe morphed into a replica of his Grandmother Nasha and did the Stanky Legg dance in the front yard, and he burst out laughing through his tears. She would call him back any minute -- she had to.

When Zander zoomed by one of the speed traps that southerners always warned their northern relatives about, a police car pulled out after him with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

“I really don’t have time for this shit right now,” he mumbled, and turned his wrist several times, instantly flattening all four of the officer’s tires.

As he gripped the steering wheel, he looked down at the ring finger on his right hand, saw the ring that Tau had given him, and immediately remembered everything -- especially the sex. It was amazing. He was sore in muscles that he didn’t know he had, his legs had just stopped trembling, and his ass was still humming. It didn’t matter now. He had probably blown any chance of ever seeing Tau again after his little temper tantrum. It occurred to him that Tau could have defended himself; Tau could have shifted and attacked him, but he didn’t. Instead, he looked as if his heart had been ripped from his chest. The tears came again.

Zander glanced over at his phone. No one had called.

“Dammit!”

It was as much of an emotional roller coaster for Zander as it was a race home to find his family. He was sixty miles out when he started to get angry for not having been given the magical training that was his birthright. He knew that his parents loved him, but he was starting to think that they had made a critical error in judgment in raising him in the ways of mortals.

He would be home right at high noon, which was when his mother normally steeped her love potions for maximum potency. His father would be at his computer obsessing over fluctuations in the stock market or looking for ways to magically influence local political races without being noticed. Like all magicals, Zander’s parents’ only job was to stay beyond the suspicion of any nearby mortals and appear as “normal” as possible. Most magical families had secured significant wealth several generations ago through the use of magic and just busied themselves with what most mortals would consider trivial pursuits, socializing and traveling abroad. When Zander’s friends asked what his parents did for a living, he would lie and say that his father was a day trader who worked from home and his mother was an art buyer for wealthy investors.

His phone rang, and he grabbed it from the passenger’s seat immediately. It was Giovanni. Zander was too embarrassed to talk to him. After all of Giovanni’s hospitality, Zander had torn up his guest bedroom, thrown a fit, and stormed out without even saying goodbye.

There was no wonder his cousins treated him the way they did, especially that damn Waverly Knight, his Uncle Siran’s oldest son. Waverly was his older first cousin on his father’s side. Zander had always sought Waverly’s approval -- even imagined that he was the big brother that Zander never had -- but Waverly was typically dismissive and sometimes downright mean. Waverly was everything a warlock was supposed to be -- cool, confident, cultured. It had been Waverly who was given responsibility for introducing Zander to the available young witches at the Litha... and now he could possibly be dead.

His phone rang for the sixth time before he decided to let it simply go to voicemail. What could he say to fix things with Giovanni at this point? Not only had he managed to lose a great guy in Tau, he had also probably alienated the closest thing that he’d ever had to a warlock best friend.

The closer he got to his house, the more nervous he became. He turned onto the highway that led to his house. He had grown accustomed to the quiet solitude that his family’s large, country estate provided. Friends were invited over only during times of low magical significance, which left very little opportunity when you considered the various solstice and equinox periods and all of the necessary wiccan activities that led up to them. His phone rang again. It was Giovanni. He didn’t answer -- he couldn’t.

Chapter 10

“How could he get out without you hearing him?” Tau snarled.

“What are you trying to say?” Giovanni asked, eyebrows raised.

“You knew he was upset. Was it too hard for you to keep an eye on him? Was that just too much responsibility for you?”

“Let’s not forget that you are part of the reason that he got so upset in the first fucking place,” Giovanni spit.

“I knew you were a damn mess when I first met you.” Tau pulled his large hands through his hair, obviously frustrated.

“You’ve already been thrown into one wall by a warlock this morning,” Giovanni reminded him. “Let’s not make it two... or three. If I get started slinging your ass around this room, I just might not stop.”

“I’d choke the shit out of you before you could even get started,” Tau hissed.

“Stop!” Hung yelled. “This arguing isn’t doing any good. You both want the same thing.”

Giovanni and Tau went to their mutual corners, never taking their eyes off of one another.

“You both should go get dressed,” Hung said, palms raised. “I’ll fix you something to eat, and then we can figure out what to do next.”

Giovanni softened. Not only was Hung a good fuck, but he seemed like a good guy, too. Giovanni was the last person on earth to be looking for love or anything close to it. Everyone that he had ever cared about had let him down, and he wasn’t keen on getting too attached to anyone too soon. It had taken months and months of online chatting with Zander for Giovanni to begin to trust him. Giovanni did a good job of acting as if he didn’t care about most people or things, but he did care. He wasn’t sure what Hung wanted, but Giovanni would keep his eyes open until he found out.

Tau headed off to the guest bathroom while Giovanni went to his master suite yapping all the way.

“There’s fruit in the refrigerator and granola and honey in the pantry,” he called. “Just throw it all in a bowl for me. If you can find some rancid meat in the back of the fridge, you can give that to Tau.”

Tau rolled his eyes. “I see that you know your way around the kitchen.” He propped himself against the kitchen island.

“You could say that.” Hung handed the plated raw steak over to Tau. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you tend to get pretty good at quite a few things. I’ve actually studied at the Academia Barilla and the Lenotre.”

“You’re pretty lucky to have lived along enough to attend two of the best culinary schools in the world.”

“I see you know something about world travel and culinary schools,” Hung said with a smile.

“A little,” Tau admitted, looking around the kitchen for a utensil. Hung found the utensil drawer and tossed him a knife and a fork.

“Speaking of luck, it looks like we both got pretty lucky last night, huh?” Hung winked.

Tau sighed. “I don’t know about how lucky we are. I seem to have lost Zander, and you are dating the devil.”

Hung laughed. “Gio isn’t that bad. I like the fact that he is full of contradictions. He tries to act all hard and callous, but you can see from his concern for Zander that he is really a sweetheart. And don’t get me started on his sex game... crazy!”

They both burst out laughing and gave each other high fives.

“What the fuck is this?” Giovanni said, idling into the kitchen.

“Tau was thanking me for the steak,” Hung said solemnly. Tau snickered.

“Uh huh,” Giovanni said.

“This is for you,” Hung said, offering Giovanni his granola, fruit, and honey breakfast. Giovanni rolled his eyes and accepted a kiss on the cheek from Hung. Tau and Giovanni ate in relative silence while Hung straightened up the kitchen. Hung gave Tau a smile and a wink while Giovanni wasn’t looking.

Tau cleared his throat. “So what’s the plan?”

“I have to go find Zander,” Giovanni announced.

“I’m going with you,” Tau declared.

“No, you are not,” Giovanni sang.

“Where do you think he went?” Hung asked.

“Home. It’s the only logical place for him to go,” Giovanni smacked through mouthfuls of granola, while repeatedly dialing Zander’s mobile phone.

“So you know where he lives? You’ve been to his house?” Hung asked.

“Not exactly,” Giovanni said.

“So what are you going to do?” Hung asked.

“I don’t know. I could cast a locater spell to track him if I had something that belonged to him, but he took all of his things with him when he left. He didn’t even leave a sock or a funky pair of drawers,” Giovanni huffed.