Gavin held his hand out to Julian’s closet. “Help yourself to one of these if you like.”
Anything of Julian’s would be way too big on her, but she couldn’t resist an offer to be wrapped in something that had belonged to him. “Did you guys really wear these clothes, or did you buy them just to blend in?”
Gavin smiled. “We might have purchased a few new things when we planned to move in next to you, but the rest are worn. You’ve only seen the island side of us, but it’s a great burden of responsibility to lead a clan. Julian and I were frequently in the States, looking after our assets, our females and our people’s protection.”
Kara nodded. How was there still so much she didn’t know about the Demiáre? Jaxon was a silver-wing, but Lace had kept him fairly isolated, so he didn’t always have the answers to Kara’s questions. And as for asking Gavin, she’d only had a week with him before they discovered that Julian was truly dead. And within a week after that, Gavin left Kara and his clan without a word. His promises of a lifetime together had amounted to two awkward, painful weeks.
“What about Aiden?” she asked. “Doesn’t he help?”
“He’s never been the most responsible of the lords. I suppose you could blame it on his upbringing.”
“So he really is Ailexon’s son?”
He crossed his arms and leaned back against the dresser. “Yes.”
“Did he know my mother?”
“A rift had already grown between him and his father by then. If he spent much time with Deanna, he’s never admitted it.”
“He helped me, you know…while you were gone. Mostly, I think he’s an ass, but at least he’s been looking out for me.”
Gavin sighed and smoothed his thick fingertips across his brows in a gesture that made him look worn out. “Maybe, but he hasn’t been looking out for himself. He’s back in the same boat as when we rescued him from Ailexon in the first place. He’s never been one to withstand the pressure when it came to ruling the clan.”
“Back in the same boat? What do you mean?”
“He’s been taking blood from our females.”
Kara swallowed, feeling uncomfortable. “I, uh…didn’t know you guys did that. Julian was the first time I’d seen it.”
“
We don’t
,” Gavin said a little too roughly. “For the Aniliáre, female blood can help connect them to the mortal world, but for the Demiáre, it’s addictive. Ailexon introduced Aiden to it at a young age, perhaps because he wanted more control over him, or perhaps in his own twisted way, he thought he was being a good father. I’m not sure why. In the twenty-six years since we brought Aiden to Mercury Island, he’s done fairly well avoiding all but the shallowest contact with our females. I think Julian’s failure to regenerate and subsequent death must have been harder on him than he was willing to admit.”
“I didn’t know about the blood thing. I’m sorry to hear it. I noticed he was acting a little more moody, but I never figured he was self-medicating.”
Gavin laughed. “Self-medicating? That’s an interesting way to look at it.”
“Losing Julian was tough on the whole clan. I don’t have the monopoly on missing him.” But if she had anything to say about it, she would be seeing him again soon.
Kara rose from the bed and slid the closet door open, eyeing the sparse collection of clothing there. She dragged her hand along the pants and shirts that still had the tags on them, until she came to a sweater that looked as if Julian had owned it for years.
She lifted the sleeve of the worn brown sweater to her nose and inhaled deeply. Although months had passed, she still detected Julian on the fabric. It wasn’t like the new black-wing version of Julian but the man he’d been before he died.
She couldn’t help it when her eyes closed and her face nuzzled into the soft cotton cable. “I’ll take this one.”
Gavin was beside her when she opened her eyes. His hand brushed hers as he took the hanger from the closet and pulled off the sweater.
“Here, let me help you.” He bunched the fabric in his palms, then slipped it over Kara’s head.
The sleeves hung a full hand length past the tips of Kara’s fingers. She chuckled softly and rolled them up past her wrists, then stood back to look in the mirror. The thing was huge. “I look like an elderly homeless man.”
Gavin’s gaze skimmed the curves of her breasts and hips under the brown fabric. “Not quite, princess.”
She met his eyes. He might not love her anymore, but he wasn’t indifferent to her either. She heard it in his voice. “Gavin—” she began, but they both felt it when the ward around Kara’s apartment shook through the walls.
“What the hell?” Gavin looked to Kara, as if to ask what was happening, but then the next thing she knew, his wings were splitting through his black silk shirt as he threw himself over her body.
Chapter Fourteen
The shockwave that rent the air could have been Kara’s imagination. It happened so fast, she wasn’t sure. One minute, the ward around her apartment was shaking, and the next, Gavin was crushing her and dragging her through the sludge.
It was still dark when her back hit the ground, so she knew they weren’t on Mercury Island. Where in the world had he taken her? She blinked and looked past his bulky shoulders, trying to get a breath in with his massive weight pressing down on her.
He scanned her face from just inches away. “Are you all right?”
“Fine, except you weigh a flippin’ ton,” she grunted.
He jumped to his feet, wings still extended. “Stay here,” he ordered and took off around the corner at a run.
“Not likely,” she muttered, dragging her aching body up from the sidewalk.
The streets were packed with people. Rising like a drunkard from a deserted storefront in Julian’s sweater wasn’t helping her image any. She smiled at the wide-eyed passersby and smoothed down her hair. She needed a pair of those damned wings. On a bad hair day, she could just stay incognito.
Kara trotted down the sidewalk in the direction Gavin had gone. When she rounded the corner, she found him staring up at the top floor of her building. A kaleidoscope of colors lit her apartment, shining out through the windows.
A woman stopped and followed Kara’s gaze up to the tenth floor. “Cool! Look at that,” she said to the man beside her, pointing to the apartment.
“Wow. I wonder how they’re doing that,” he replied. Kara wondered the same thing.
“I thought you said the black-wing was gone, Kara. That doesn’t look gone to me,” Gavin said.
“It’s not Julian. If I had to guess, I’d say witches.”
The man standing near Kara broke his gaze on the apartment to turn to her. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
Kara adjusted her saggy sweater. “I said maybe witches did it.”
The woman smiled and nodded, as if to placate her. “Hmmm. Maybe it was.” She tugged the man’s arm hard. “We’re going to be late, honey.”
Gavin turned to Kara with a chastising glare. Oh well, it wasn’t exactly giving away supernatural secrets if the people thought she was crazy. “Why would witches be interested in taking down your ward and attacking your apartment?” he asked.
“It’s kind of a long story. Okay, not that long, but longer than I’m willing to stand here talking to a man only I can see. You don’t think they’re hurting my stuff, do you?”
“I know one way to find out.”
Before he could think of flashing, Kara grabbed his arm. “Gavin! No. Let’s just leave before we cause a bigger scene.” His forearm under her fingertips was like sun-warmed marble, smooth and hard.
“You need to tell me what’s going on, princess.”
“I will, just not here.”
“Look,” he said.
Most people weren’t concerned with what was happening ten stories up—even if it was a cool light show—but Kara followed Gavin’s pointer finger to a couple standing on the opposite side of the street. Instead of just being curious about what was happening up there, they seemed to be focused, maybe even chanting, with their gazes locked on Kara’s apartment and their lips moving.
“Maybe we should introduce ourselves,” Gavin suggested.
Having witches mess with her apartment made Kara furious, but she’d seen enough scary magic in the past few days to take a deep breath and pause. “We don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with here. The last witch I came up against used some sort of spell to paralyze me. It was like he had me on remote control, and I can’t risk that again until I know how to counter it.” It was one of the worst feelings she could remember, to be completely at his mercy, unable to even scream.
“He did what?” The shadows cast by the streetlamps made Gavin’s scowl look scary as hell. “Let’s go meet his friends.”
With a growl, he jerked forward, weaving through the cars stopped at the light, his long legs quickly eating up the distance. Kara bolted after him.
“Stay there,” he warned.
“Why?”
“They can see you, Kara.”
She rocked to a stop and picked up a flyer tumbling in the breeze, trying to look to anyone watching as if she was simply retrieving the happy hour coupon that had blown into the street. She retreated back to the sidewalk and looked up in time to see Gavin, all six and a half feet of him, grasp the man and woman by their necks.
To anyone who couldn’t see Gavin pick them up off their feet, it might look as though they’d suddenly righted their posture and grown an inch. The lights in Kara’s apartment went out at the same time Gavin’s fingers squeezed.
The woman yelped and clawed at Gavin’s hand, but the man looked as if he was mouthing another chant. Kara curled her hands into tight fists to keep from shouting
Look out!
But clearly, this wasn’t Gavin’s first experience with witches. Before Kara could twitch in his direction, he shoved the man against the nearest wall, dragging the woman along in the process, and mashed the male witch’s face up against the building’s façade, effectively halting anything else he had to say.
When the woman’s cry got the attention of the people passing them on the sidewalk, Gavin flung her down and released the man. He fell unconscious, his nose leaving a small smear down the side of the wall as he slid to the ground.
Gavin turned and started walking, and Kara hurried to meet him at the corner. “Should we go up now and see what they wanted with my apartment?”
“If I had to guess, princess, I’d say that was an attack upon you, not something designed to get their hands on your latest clay sculpture.”
“Oh.” She almost tripped on a seam in the sidewalk, her legs feeling a little wobbly. Why the hell did the witches want to mess with her when she had every intention of following through on her deal with Claudius? And why would he want her to call him if she saw any more witches if he was the one behind it?
“If there were two on the street, there are probably two more upstairs,” Gavin continued. “I can go up and look, but we might want to beat wings before they regroup.”
Kara thought for a moment. The ring her father gave her was on her finger, and her mother’s journal was in Jaxon’s hands. “Yeah. Let’s go. Abbey and Jaxon aren’t going to be returning soon, and I don’t have anything in the apartment I’d want you getting hurt over.”
Gavin laughed. “That’s sweet, but I wouldn’t mind bashing a few more heads together if I wasn’t your best escape route.” He glanced around for a moment. “You see that parking structure over there?” He pointed to a garage a few spots down.
“Yeah,” Kara replied.
“The stairwell.”
She had an idea where this was going, so she walked to the parking structure and took the first door to the stairwell. Gavin was right on her heels. As soon as the doors closed, he folded his silver-gray wings around her, completely cocooning her in. Because of his height, she couldn’t see a thing beyond the soft feathers brushing her back and sides.
“Where to?” she asked. “Let me guess—Mercury Island. Looks like Aiden was right. I was going to end up there one way or another.”
He brought a hand to her cheek and brushed her hair back. “We don’t have to go back if you don’t want to. With the state Aiden’s in, maybe it’s better if we make our own way anyhow.”
“Can you take me to Julian’s tree?”
Gavin shifted and let a weighty breath out through his nose. “I can take you partway there, but the sacred land has ancient, powerful wards. I won’t be able to flash or use my wings once we cross over the tribal boundary, so we’ll have to hike the last part on foot.”
“I can do hiking.”
“Wait here while I grab another shirt.”
She didn’t know if he went to Mercury Island or his apartment, and she’d be damned if she knew how the flashing didn’t bother him as much as it bothered her, but less than a minute later, he was back in the stairwell with the straps of a small duffel bag clutched in his hand.
She hadn’t seen silver-wings travel with luggage before, but she supposed if they could take a sword or a person, a bag wasn’t a problem. Too bad it wasn’t so easy for her to just pop back to her apartment to grab something.
Humph.
Wing envy. Yeah, she had it.
Gavin wedged an arm tightly against her lower back, and the next thing Kara knew, she was moving through the thick tar of space, crushed, suffocating, until seconds later, they emerged in a moonlit field, their feet touching down on piles of fall leaves.