Love Bites (17 page)

*   *   *

F
or a long, long moment, there was no sound beyond deep, desperate breathing as they all fought to recover.

“Jesus, that was hot,” Cador gasped, breaking the silence. “I can’t believe I gave Morgana le Fay a pearl necklace . . .”

Percival shot him a glare, and he snapped his teeth shut, losing his grin. Sharing her
had
been incredibly fucking hot, but that didn’t mean Percival had to like it.

Carefully, he started sliding his softening shaft out of Morgana’s no-doubt tender arse. He swung off Marrok’s thighs and half lifted her off the big knight, turning her to face him as he lay down, cradling her as he panted. She looked dazed.

“You know, I think she flew,” Cador gasped. He’d fallen onto his back, arms flung wide. “Her eyes definitely had that subspace glaze.”

“Yeah, I thought that too,” Marrok agreed. “She was starting to look a little vague right about the time you stuck your dick in her mouth.”

“It looked that way to me, too.” It wasn’t the first time he’d sent a woman into subspace—that euphoria born of a combination of endorphins and adrenalin submissives sometimes experienced following a hard session of punishment. For many subs, flying was their primary motivation for playing in the scene to begin with. Making a sub fly was generally considered an accomplishment for a dom, since it took considerable skill.

“How are you feeling?” Percival asked Morgana.

She made an incoherent humming sound that somehow managed to communicate pleasure. The others were right; those green eyes were definitely vague, their pupils dilated.

“High as a kite,” he grunted, and drew her against his chest. Looking at Cador over the crown of her head, he said, “Get us a blanket and a bottle of water, would you?”

Cador might be a bit of a prick at times, but he understood a dominant’s responsibilities as well as Percival did. He nodded and rolled off the bed without complaint to go rummage in the small refrigerator that crouched in a corner of the room. Emerging with a bottle of cold water, he tossed it to Percival and ducked into the walk-in closet.

As Percival coaxed a dazed Morgana into drinking the water, Cador joined them to wrap a soft chenille throw around her bare shoulders. She gave them an incoherent murmur and wrapped her arms around Percival’s waist, cuddling into him like a child. A reluctant smile tugging his lips, he wrapped the blanket more securely around her and settled back onto the bed with the witch in his arms.

He was only distantly aware of Marrok and Cador collapsing onto the bed too. God knew it was more than big enough to accommodate all four of them, and anyway, it wasn’t the first time they’d all dozed off after an exhausting foursome.

Still, Morgana was staying in
his
arms; none of the others were touching her. His possessive inner wolf subsided with a soft mental growl.

*   *   *

A
t first Morgana thought it was the nightmare again, that dream memory of being trapped at the mercy of someone intent on torturing her simply because he could.

But then the pain sharpened, spiraled, became a flaming agony too intense to be anything but reality, paired with the sense of strength being siphoned away to feed the appetite of a killer.

She came off the bed screaming, writhing in the torment the victim felt, the helpless, hopeless sense that death’s great wings shadowed her, about to bear her away. It took her a moment to hear Percival’s voice calling her, feel his hands containing her struggles as the others called bewildered questions.

“SOREN!”
Morgana screamed, but the dragon’s telepathic grip fell away, leaving her shaking with horror and abject fear for her friend.

“Morgana!” Percival shouted, and she got the sense he’d been shouting her name for a while now. “What’s happening? What did you see?”

“Christ, Percival, she had a nightmare,” Cador growled in disgust, throwing himself back on the bed. “Thanks for giving me a fucking heart attack, Morg.”

“That wasn’t a nightmare,” Percival snapped. “Morgana, what did you see?” He gave her a slight shake, then steadied her when she almost fell at his feet as her terror-weakened knees betrayed her.

“Soren,” she gasped. “Huar has Soren and four women. He’s woven a Death Magic spell around them, and if we don’t get to them, he’s going to trigger it.”

“What?” Percival exploded. “I thought Kel told Arthur he and the rest of the lizards were going to hunt the bastard down!”

“And they’ve been working on it, but Huar stopped going to clubs and started just snatching people.” Morgana shuddered, picking through impressions, snippets of information Soren had managed to communicate. “Huar’s used Death Magic to kill more than fifty people in the past four days.”

The knights stared at her, horrified. Death Magic was a type of spell that drew its power from torture and murder. They’d become all too familiar with its evil a few years ago, when demonic alien creatures called the Dark Ones had attempted to use it to invade the twin Earths. The Magekind had fought them off, but they’d lost a lot of good people, and too many innocent mortals had been murdered.

“How did you manage to have a vision wearing that collar?” Cador demanded. “I thought that thing blocked your power.”

“It does. This wasn’t a vision.” Morgana wrung her hands and began to pace as she explained, “Huar tortured Soren to force him to contact me. The ambassador’s hurt badly—he and the four hostages Huar used to trap him. They won’t last long if we don’t get to them—and fast. Percival, you’ve got to take the collar off. We have to go save them.”

“That goes without saying.” He bent to examine the collar. “How do I remove this thing?”

She touched the intricate engraving that covered the collar’s lock. “Put your fingers here on the front clasp, and say ‘Release.’”

Percival’s warm, calloused fingers brushed her skin. She hid a shiver of reaction as he spoke the trigger word. Although the sound of the click was tiny—the results were anything but.

Power stormed over Morgana’s skin in a painful, tingling jolt like an electric shock. She shook off the sensation, dragging the collar from around her neck as she called her magic. Energy swirled over her and the three knights, a shimmering wave of sparks that solidified into their armor and weapons a heartbeat later.

Percival drew his sword, checking the blade for nicks. “This time, dammit, we’re calling Kel. Along with every other knight, vampire, and witch who’s available.”

“We can’t. Soren told me Huar swears he’ll kill them all if anyone comes but the four of us.”

“Fuck, it’s a trap,” Cador growled in disgust.

“Of course it’s a trap,” Percival told him impatiently, then frowned at Morgana. “But why go to all this trouble just to trap us?”

“We beat him,” Morgana said, her mind on the spell she was going to have to cast to find Soren, his captor, and the rest of the hostages. “Here we are, creatures barely more than apes as far as he’s concerned, yet he narrowly escapes us with his life.”

Cador swore viciously. “This is beginning to sound more and more like a suicide mission.”

“I’ve been working on a spell that will amplify my abilities just as the collar nullified them,” Morgana told them. “It’s the same basic theory, only in reverse.” Which was true . . . in a sense. More or less. “As we gate in, I’ll shift to dragon form and take to the air to draw him off. When he comes after me, that’s when you free Soren and the victims from that Death Magic spell. I’ll give you something you can use to disrupt the spell. Once they’re safe, you can call in reinforcements from Avalon and the Dragonlands.”

Marrok scowled. “That still leaves you trying to go toe-to-toe with Godzilla until reinforcements arrive.”

“Exactly.” A muscle rolled in Percival’s jutting jaw. “You do know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result? This bastard is almost twice your size in dragon form. He’ll kick your pretty arse again, just the way he did the last time.”

She gave him a smile she hoped showed a lot more confidence than she actually felt. “My amplification spell will take care of that.”

“Uh, huh.” Percival’s hard stare warned her he didn’t entirely buy it. Fortunately, he also didn’t have time to try to find out what she was stretching the truth to get around. Instead he said, “You are fucking
not
going to leave us this time, or I’ll . . .”

“Don’t be absurd.” There was no way in hell she could take the chance of leaving the team behind. If her plan backfired, Percival, Marrok, and Cador might well be the only ones who could stop her.

Even if they had to kill her to do it.

Morgana frowned, realizing that she could no longer take the risk of keeping the team in the dark. Not when the odds were she was going to have to risk Mageverse Fever in order to defeat the dragon.
Oh,
she thought,
Percival’s going to be furious.

Didn’t matter. She couldn’t let the team walk blindly into such a deadly situation. “Look, there’s another aspect of this I think I’d better make you aware of.”

Percival gave her a narrow-eyed stare that held entirely too much perception. “Why do I get the sudden feeling I’m not going to like whatever you’re about to tell me?”

“Because you won’t.” She sighed and hesitated, groping for words. Explaining this was going to be touchy as hell. “Look, almost all Majae have unconscious limitations on how much power they can draw on from the Mageverse. That’s a good thing. Human minds—even the minds of witches—can’t survive full contact with infinite power like that. “That’s why so many young Majae go insane from Mageverse Fever.”

“We know that, Morgana.” Cador glowered at her, impatient. “If you’ve got a point, get to it before somebody dies.”

“I don’t have that unconscious limit.” Approaching Percival, she stared up into his eyes. “I never have. Nimue told me once she thought it was from trying to draw on Druid healing magic from the time I was a mortal child. It’s so difficult to reach the Mageverse’s magical forces from Mortal Earth, I destroyed any unconscious barriers I ever had.”

Percival stared at her, searching her face with worried eyes. “And that’s not a good thing.”

“No. It’s not.” She raked her black hair out of her face and looked away. “Because if I try to draw too much, if I drop all my conscious mental barriers, I could end up just as insane as any new witch with Mageverse Fever.”

Percival froze, staring at her. After a moment, he said, “But why didn’t you get Mageverse Fever fifteen centuries ago? Why did Nimue let you drink from the Grail if you had the potential to go insane?”

“Nimue was concerned about that after I passed her test, but she believed I’d be needed even under the circumstances. She decided to take the risk.”

“Why the fuck haven’t you mentioned this before? Christ, you’ve had fifteen fucking centuries!” Cador demanded. “I mean, this strikes me as the kind of shit Arthur would have liked to know.”

“Because it never seemed relevant before.” She turned to start pacing again. “Look, up until recently, we’ve never had to fight anything but plain vanilla humans. Yeah, they were tyrants, terrorists, communists, anarchists, whatever—but they didn’t have
magic
. The power I had naturally was more than enough to deal with them.” Morgana sank down on the bed, feeling suddenly weary. Which was just too damned bad. “Then things got . . . complicated.”

“Geirolf and his cultists, you mean,” Percival said, referring to a demonic magic-using creature from another universe. “And after that came the Dark Ones and the werewolves and Warlock.”

“Exactly. There’ve been a couple of times in the past decade when I’ve had to get a little close to the edge, and things . . . happened.”

“What kind of things?” Percival asked quietly, a muscle rolling in his jaw.

Morgana swallowed as bloody memories rose. “Remember when Warlock invaded Avalon with his werewolf army? It was daytime, and I was alone. He sent four of his wolves to get me. They’re immune to magic, of course, and when they attacked, I . . . panicked. I knew throwing magical blasts at them was a waste of time, so I pulled on all the power of the Mageverse and cast a spell on myself to increase my physical strength.”

Cador blinked. “You can do that?”

Percival ignored him. “What happened, Morgana?”

“I don’t know.” She glanced blindly around. “The next thing I remember, there were . . . pieces in my foyer. Blood and fur and chunks. Somebody’s leg. Bones.” She gave Marrok a fleeting smile. He didn’t smile back. “At first I thought you’d gone berserk and saved me, but then I looked outside and saw it was still daylight. I had to have done it, but . . .”

“You had a blackout.” The muscle in Percival’s jaw ticked faster, and his gray eyes grew hot. “You went berserk, had a blackout, and ripped
four
eight-foot werewolves apart. And you never mentioned it to me.” His voice began to grow louder. “You’ve been going out on missions with my team to fight supernatural creatures you knew you’d have to use magic against, and
you never mentioned the possibility it might drive you insane?
”

I
didn’t completely ignore the danger, Percival,” Morgana protested, though she flinched at his rage. “That’s why I started working with Soren to begin with. He began teaching me draconic magical techniques to help me learn to maintain control. I can manage far more power now without losing my grip. Yes, there are limits, but . . .”

“Limits?” The word was practically a hiss of fury. “But you
never
said a word to me?”

Morgana’s shoulders slumped. “I was afraid of your reaction if you and the team thought I might go mad. I was afraid you’d reject me, that Arthur and the Magekind would think me untrustworthy.”

“Hell,” Cador exploded, “you
are
untrustworthy! You . . .”

“Cador, shut up!” Percival snapped.

“Look, I thought that even if we ran into another Warlock, I’d have so much backup from the rest of the Majae, I wouldn’t have to draw on a dangerous degree of power. Except that now . . .”

“Except now,” Percival finished grimly, “if we don’t show up to fight that fucker Huar alone, he’ll kill four innocent women and the Dragonkind ambassador. And you’re afraid you’re going to have to draw on so much power to fight him, it’ll drive you insane.”

“Yes.” Morgana’s voice was barely audible even to her own ears. Taking a deep breath, she added, “You may need to kill me, Percival.”

At those words, fury blazed in the knight’s gray eyes as he stared down at her—fury and fear. For her?

“Don’t be a drama queen, Morgana,” Marrok growled, his tone scornful. “They’ve never had to kill me, and I’ve been known to cause as much destruction as an F3 tornado once I get going.”

“Yeah, but the kind of damage Morgana could do would be more along the lines of a thermonuclear bomb.” Percival’s gray eyes blazed, coldly furious. “Not just buildings blown apart but craters the size of Manhattan filled with molten lava.”

“Yes,” Morgana admitted, her voice barely audible.

“Tell me straight, Morgana. No lies, no bullshit. If you really did go mad—
Could
we kill you?” Even as he asked the cold question, there was anguish in his eyes.

She swallowed. “I . . . don’t know. But once I take care of Huar, you’ll be able to call in Arthur and the rest of the Magekind. With enough magical backup, you could do it. Probably.”

Cador buckled on his sword belt and snarled. “Fuck me. Fuck us
all.
”

“That’s enough, Cador,” Percival snapped.

The knight glowered, but subsided at last, evidently recognizing that his team leader had been pushed too far.

Percival stalked over to Morgana to stand looking down at her, his gaze conflicted, torn. She stared up at him miserably, all too aware of what she might do to them all if the situation went bad.

To her astonishment, the knight’s expression softened. His hand lifted, stroked a black curl back from her cheek. “Okay, do it. We’ll be there for you.”

Her eyes stung, forcing her to blink hard. “You always have been.” Her voice sounded rough-edged.

From the corner of one eye, she saw Cador and Marrok exchange a “
We’re definitely fucked”
look.

*   *   *

K
nowing she’d have to go in as hard as she possibly could to save Soren and the others, Morgana began drawing on as much power as she dared, dragging in great psychic torrents of it. Now so much magic filled her brain, it felt as if a swarm of bees buzzed inside her skull until she wanted to jitter in place like a hyperactive toddler.

Even if she managed to pull this off, Morgana knew the fallout would be devastating. Her relationship with the team would never be the same; she doubted they’d ever trust her again.

But if she thought things would be easy given all the power she’d inhaled, Morgana quickly realized otherwise. Just reaching Soren through the remnants of their psychic connection had been far more difficult than it should have been. Huar obviously intended that she be able to establish only enough of a connection to track the ambassador, not communicate with him.

Morgana, of course, wanted to know more about the trap the draconic fucker had obviously set for them. Despite the monster’s magical defenses, she’d managed a quick scan of the death spell and Huar himself. She hadn’t liked what she found.

Horned God, the fucker was terrifying. The last time she’d sensed an aura of black magic that strong had been when the Magekind had gone to war against the demon Dark Ones. She could still beat the bastard—Death Magic had its limits—but the price she might pay to do it scared the living hell out of her. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up killing everybody she was trying to save. Including Percival and her team.

As if that wasn’t enough, she had to figure out how Percival was going to free the hostages from Huar’s death spell. Lacking the time for anything else, she’d cobbled a counter spell around the collar, since it had already been designed to nullify magic.

She dared take no more than a moment or two to cast the spell, making up for the lack of the precision spellcraft by pouring as much raw power into the collar as she could.

“Morgana!”
Soren’s weak voice said in her mind just as she finished.
“Huar says if you don’t arrive in the next twenty seconds, he’s killing one of the women.”

“Fuck!” Morgana snarled, and thrust the collar into Percival’s mailed hands. “Grab your weapons and prepare to jump. He’s about to start killing women.”

Magic boiled from her hands, pouring into a point in the air and instantly expanding into a wavering doorway, revealing a clearing in the midst of Mageverse trees the size of redwoods. She moved to leap through the minute the gate was open, but a hard hand thrust her back. Percival lunged in front of her, Cador and Marrok leaping in to join him on either side.

Morgana bit back a curse and clawed more magic from the Mageverse as the four of them charged, forming it into a hemisphere of dancing golden energy before them.

Huar’s first blast hit the shield the instant they were through the gate. The spell barrier held against the eye-searing explosion of sparks, but just barely.

Desperate, Morgana dragged in yet more Mageverse energy until it felt like her skull was on the verge of detonating like a suitcase nuke. “Horned God, that fucking dragon might be stronger than a Dark One!”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I’m shifting. Get the hostages.” She blasted toward Huar on a wave of magic, feet leaving the ground as she flew at her foe like a cannonball. Not something she’d usually chance doing, but she needed to get the hell away from the knights so she’d have room to shift. Otherwise she ran the risk of accidently crushing them as her body became thirty feet of dragon.

“Don’t goddamn get killed!” Percival bellowed after her.

“That’s the least of my worries,” Morgana muttered, and began to shift as she flew toward Huar, who charged to meet her with an ear-stunning roar.

*   *   *

P
ercival watched, breath held, as the smaller black dragon slammed into the scarlet beast. Huar looked even bigger than he had the last time they’d fought him. The dragons roared in overwhelming blasts of sound, their bodies thudding together.

Worse—much, much worse—was the sense of raw, greasy evil the dragon emanated like a roiling stench. Adding to the malevolent effect, twisted black shapes writhed over Huar’s crimson scales, evidently draconic magical symbols.

At first Percival thought they were some kind of paint, but a moment later he realized they were actually inscribed into the scales as if branded there.

“Big, Red and Scaly is definitely up to his horns in Death Magic,” Cador said, staring at the sigils, his lip curled in revolted horror.

“We have
got
to kill that creature,” Marrok growled. “We can’t let him get away this time.”

“Don’t worry, he’s dead.” Percival dragged his eyes away from Morgana and her desperate battle with Huar. They had to free the dragon’s victims and get help if she was going to survive her suicide mission. “This time tomorrow we’re all going to be wearing dragonscale boots.” He managed a crooked grin, despite the fear for her that tied his gut in knots. “Or in Morgana’s case, dragonskin stilettos.”

But when he turned and got a good look at what waited for them in the center of the clearing, Percival forgot the attempt at humor in sheer, frigid outrage.

Soren, in dragon form, lay imprisoned by a swirling green lattice of glowing draconic symbols shaped roughly like an egg. Women surrounded his painfully contorted body in four pitiful, bloody heaps. They lay unmoving, not even appearing to breathe.

Morgana bugled a draconic battle cry. Percival looked up, his heart leaping into his throat. Above his head, the two dragons dove at each other in a raking pass of claws.

“Fuck,” Percival growled, and hurried toward them, pulling the collar out of the belt pouch Morgana had conjured for it. “Soren? Ambassador, are you conscious?”

Though the ambassador didn’t lift his head, his eyes opened. His pupils, normally reptilian slits, were dilated into huge circles in thin rings of iridescent irises.

Though Percival had been ready to duel Soren the last time they’d spoken, he felt only pity for his rival now. Huar had cut magical symbols into the ambassador’s scales with some kind of blade, perhaps even his claws. So much gore ran from the snaking cuts that blood loss could well have been responsible for Soren’s obvious disorientation.

But Percival knew it was more than that. The Death Magic spell itself was responsible, draining the life force from Soren and the women and feeding that elemental energy to Huar.

Who meant to use it to kill Morgana. The idea that the creature would dare hurt her filled him with a rage more intense than anything he’d ever felt, even when his brothers had been endangered.

It was then the knowledge hit him like the blow of a battle ax: he loved Morgana. Arrogant, powerful, maddening though she was, he had loved her for centuries. That was why he’d wanted her with such desperation. And deep down, he wasn’t even surprised by the depth of the love he’d denied so long. Though he’d always told himself his hunger for her had been born of frustrated desire, he’d secretly known better. If it had been a matter of sexual obsession, he’d have eventually gotten over it. After all, he was surrounded by beautiful, seductive women who were eager to submit to whatever he cared to do.

But none of them had been his Morgana. No one else would ever do.

Above them, dragons roared. This time Percival knew he didn’t dare look up. He couldn’t let himself be distracted by his own chilling fear for his witch. He had to pull it together, do his duty by Soren and the four women. For one thing, breaking the Death Magic spell would deprive Huar of at least some of his magical strength—which might help Morgana survive. Squaring his shoulders, he started forward.

“Stay back,” Percival snapped at Cador and Marrok, even as he walked right up to the swirling, lethal energies. The lattice spun faster as he approached. He swallowed, hoping Morgana was right that the collar and its counter-spell would protect him. “You don’t want any kind of contact with the bastard’s Death Magic at all.”

Then he drew back the collar as if it were a circular blade and sliced it through the nearest whirling strand of magical energy. The strand parted like wet spaghetti hit with a meat cleaver, except with a hiss and a puff of stinking smoke. Any sense of triumph Percival might have felt was blunted by the wave of nausea and weakness that promptly rolled over him. He wanted to think it was just an effect of that god-awful reek, but he knew better.

He’d felt the aura of the spell brush across his knuckles. That slight contact had almost sent him to his knees.

If this feels that bad to me, what would it be like inside the spell with no protection at all? Soren and those women would be in agony even if they hadn’t been tortured.

Yeah, Huar needed killing—with extreme prejudice, if not outright glee.

Two massive bodies slammed together overhead with a meaty thud. Morgana roared in furious defiance. He looked up, heart in his throat, to watch her wheel and rip at her foe, then dart away.

Dragging his gaze away from the witch he loved, Percival shook off the waves of weakness from the Death Magic spell and started working his way around the spell’s egg-shaped boundary, taking the collar to it in long, ripping strokes. Each pass destroyed more and more of the dancing green symbols, but with every swipe, he grew sicker.

Finally he took a step and his knees gave. The collar seemed to weigh more than his broadsword at the end of a two-hour duel. He lost his grip on it. A hand grabbed his shoulder before he could hit the ground, a beefy arm sliding around his waist.

“Percival, what the fuck?” Marrok growled in his ear as the big man steadied him. “What’s wrong?”

Cador bent and scooped up the collar. “It’s a Death Magic spell, ’Rok. It’s like fucking around in a radioactive field. He’s probably considering puking on your boots right about now.”

Then Cador, cheerfully whistling, went to work on the spell himself with long swipes of the collar. If he started turning green a moment later, it didn’t seem to stop him.