Zola's Pride (6 page)

A sleepy shake of her head as she
stroked his back. “Never on Sundays.”

One of a hundred tiny little details
he didn’t know, and he relished the opportunity to learn
everything about her. “Just us, then?”

“
Unless we want to start
making arrangements to bring the pride to New Orleans.” Her
fingers slid up to tease the back of his scalp. “I have money.
We can find them a place to live.”

Money was the least of it. “So
do I. The problem is how much red tape is involved with a move like
this. That’s part of why I wanted the wolf council’s
help.”

She chuckled. “I did not
immigrate...naturally. There is a thriving business in New Orleans
that focuses on nothing but making red tape disappear.”

“
And if they’re like all
the other thriving businesses like that all over the world, you don’t
just walk up to them with an envelope of cash.”

“
No,” she agreed,
laughter still bubbling in her voice. “You send Alexander
Jacobson. He will do it, because I’ve recently taken on a young
woman of his acquaintance as a private student, and he’s
feeling very grateful.”

He joined in her laughter. “I
see how it is.”

“
Mmm.” Her hand stilled
as she yawned, then nuzzled his chin with sleepy affection. “Rest.
You’ll need it if we’re to do this again in a few hours.”

“
I need you more than I need
sleep.” He kissed her temple and slid out from under the
covers. “I’ll be right back.”

Walker made his way down the hall
toward the bathroom in the dark. As he approached the half-open door,
his skin prickled, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

Something was wrong.

Though he could see well, he wasn’t
familiar enough with Zola’s apartment to notice anything
visibly out of place, and he heard nothing. Not a damn thing to fuel
his indefinable sense of
wrong
.

Still, it remained.

He flipped on the bathroom light,
and his blood chilled. A bag of dirty black cloth dangled from the
mirror by a length of coarse twine. A gris-gris, maybe, one that
Zola definitely hadn’t placed.

The bag clinked as he yanked it
free. He smelled flowers and copper, two scents that exploded in
his nose as he upended the bag on the counter. Rose petals and
pennies tumbled out, along with a small bottle of whiskey and a slim
dime that seemed to spin in time with his pounding heart before
finally settling on the slick tile.

Just like that, he was back in the
bayou, watching his mother bury another wax doll baby under the
raised edge of their ramshackle porch. She’d always whispered
words, low, mellifluous entreaties that faded in the heavy air,
rising to blend with the rustle of Spanish moss in the trees.

Not a gris-gris.
Flowers, nine pennies, whiskey and a Mercury dime. Everything a
rootworker would need to buy graveyard dirt from the departed.

It was a message and a warning, all
wrapped up in bits and pieces of his past. The Scions had come
in while they slept, or even while they made love. Under cover
of magic, they’d violated the safety and sanctity of Zola’s
home.

And yet, no blood had been shed.

Walker swept the contents of the
black bag into the small wastebasket beside the vanity. The
Scions wanted nothing to do with Zola, either because of her
connections or because she’d been blameless in Tatienne’s
affairs—but they’d hurt her if they had to. To get to
him, they’d mow down anyone and anything in their way, and damn
what the Conclave had to say about it.

He made a cursory check of the
apartment, but found nothing. He hadn’t expected to. No one
remained, stealing about the rooms under cover of magic. They had no
need for it.

The Scions had accomplished their
mission and left their message. They knew Walker, knew what lived at
the very heart of him—and the lengths he would go to in order
to keep Zola safe.

And
he
knew where they’d be waiting.

Walker parked his borrowed bike at
the end of the long driveway. Someone had taken a swing at the rusted
out mailbox, and it dangled precariously from its wooden post. He
righted it before he set out for the house on foot, though he had no
idea why.

No one lived here and, unless his
half-brother tired of city life, no one would.

It had been years since he’d
walked the mostly-dirt path. Grass had grown up in the middle of the
road, between the packed ruts, and the heavy canopy of live oaks and
cypress overhead blocked out the light of the moon.

The path lightened, and he could see
the house at the end of it. Walker had barely cleared that thick
cover of the trees when a voice spoke from the sagging porch. “So.
You come alone.”

Walker studied the simply dressed
man and shrugged. “I assumed that was what you wanted.”

A soft footstep made the porch
creak, and a woman appeared at the man’s shoulder. “It is
easier not to have to contend with the Seer’s get, but we were
not sure you would abandon her.”

Abandon.
The word rankled, shamed him. “She has nothing to do with
this.”

The man laughed, rusty and flat.
“No, I suppose not. Taking her from you might right the scales,
but she’s more trouble than she’s worth...as long as you
come with us quietly.”

“
Just me.” Walker
shifted his weight, instinct demanding a fight—though there
would not be one. “The rest of the pride is hers now, and my
life is yours.”

Gravel crunched behind Walker, and
the two Scions on the porch stiffened. The woman tilted her head and
gazed past him. “Does
she
know that?”

Damn it.
Walker turned to find Zola standing there, eyes narrowed. “I
thought I might have gotten away with it.”

She raised both eyebrows, silently
asking if he’d
really
thought he could, then looked past him toward their enemies. “I
know what’s mine. The pride is mine, as is Walker Gravois. Are
you here to challenge me for them?”

The woman paused at the top of the
porch steps. “Gravois is coming with us. He must answer for
what he has done.”

Zola strode forward until she stood
at his shoulder, then reached down deliberately and curled her hand
around his. “He stays. You leave.”

She was strong, beautiful. Defiant.

His.

Walker gripped her hand and looked
down at her, his chest aching. “They fight as one,” he
whispered, “but so do we.”

“
Always.” Her fingers
tightened until her grip bordered on painful. “Do you challenge
us, Scions?”

In response the man pulled a gun and
leveled it at Walker’s head, finger already squeezing down on
the trigger.

Walker released Zola’s hand
and ducked into a roll as magic surged through the night. One kick to
half-rotted wood brought down the corner of the porch, and the Scion
stumbled and dropped his gun.

He dove for it, but Zola was faster.
Her first kick sent the gun skittering under the groaning porch, and
her second swiped the man’s legs out from under him, spilling
him to the too-tall grass. A second later the woman—the
shapeshifter—leapt from the crumbling steps in a full-body
tackle.

Zola bucked and rolled, using the
Scion’s own momentum to throw her aside. Walker caught the
woman off guard, drawing her attention. As the child of a Seer,
Zola’s natural resistance to magic made her a better adversary
for the spell caster.

And she pressed that advantage,
coming to her feet just as the man fisted both hands and raised them.
Magic cut through the cool air, prickling along Walker’s skin,
but the brunt of the power rolled off Zola as she spun again,
lightning fast, and clipped the wizard’s jaw with her heel.

His grunt of pain made his partner
turn for a split-second, and Walker slammed his elbow into her
temple. She staggered, and he caught her around the throat. “Will
you go?” he demanded. “Leave and never come back to New
Orleans?”

She replied with a snarl and a knee
driving toward his groin as magic snapped again, this time slamming
into
him
.
His vision blurred as pain and magic mingled, and he lashed out,
instinct driving him.

He struck her in the throat with the
blade of his hand. The delicate bone protecting her airway snapped
and she fell back, choking for air in loud, heaving gasps.

It wouldn’t take her long to
recover. Walker struggled to focus, to shake off the spell so Zola
wasn’t left to fight alone.

The sharp crack of gunfire echoed
around him, a second before a warm body crashed into him. Zola’s,
by the scent and feel. She bore him to the ground and rolled them
until his hip bumped into the collapsed end of the porch.

“
He’s got the gun,”
she whispered, a breath of sound against his ear. “Firing from
under what’s left of the stairs.”

“
The other support beam.”
The porch had been rickety even in his youth. One more well-placed
blow might bring the entire thing down on the hidden Scion.

“
Can you get to it if I
distract them?”

He was still seeing double, but he
nodded. “Get the shifter. I’ll handle this guy.”

Her lips brushed his cheek in a
whisper-soft caress, and then she was gone in a swirl of near-silent
footsteps across the untamed grass.

One shot fired into the night, but a
second later he heard the Scion shifter’s grunt of pain as Zola
pounced on her, tangling them up so the wizard wouldn’t get a
clear shot at her.

As Zola grappled with the shifter,
Walker eased around to the edge of the porch. A shot whistled past,
and he cursed. Without rounding the house, there was no way to sneak
past the caster under the porch.

Screw this.
He scrambled up the collapsed side of the porch, the wood creaking
under his weight. Another loud report, this one accompanied by a
blaze of pain in Walker’s arm.

He’d been shot, and he didn’t
give a damn. He roared his anger and punched down through the boards
to close his hand in the man’s hair. He managed to slam his
adversary up against the wood three times before the listing porch
collapsed.

“
Walker?” Zola’s
voice, edged with worry. “Are you all right?”

He closed his fingers around
the gun and groaned as he rolled to his back. “Peachy.
You?”

An uncertain pause, and she echoed
the word back to him in her accented English. “I am hoping that
means good.”

“
It means I’ll make it.”

The sound of flesh on flesh
followed, a muffled grunt and then silence. “She is alive.
Unconscious, but alive. I will call the Conclave. The Scions. Offer
her for your pardon. A life for a life, yes?”

A life for a life.
How could the Scions refuse, when the woman’s defeat rendered
her life forfeit? “I think that’ll work out just fine.”
Underneath him, the shattered boards shifted, and the spell caster
groaned. “Maybe even twice over.”

Zola rose and crossed the yard, the
moonlight glinting off her features. “Are you injured?”

“
Just a scratch.” Walker
rolled off the flattened porch and landed on his knees. “My
jacket’s ruined, though.”

“
Fool.” Her fingers slid
into his hair and down, cupping his neck. Her words drifted to
French, low and intimate. “I love you too much to lose you to
stubborn pride. But if you walk into another trap without me at your
side, I will kill you myself.”

“
I screwed up, but never
again.” Leaving her was, without a doubt, the most idiotic
thing he’d ever done. Zola didn’t need his protection.
She just needed
him
,
and he knew the feeling. “We fight together?”

“
As one. Always.” Her
lips seized his in a breathless, desperate kiss, over almost before
it began. “And now we call Alec Jacobson. He has a cage in his
basement for situations like this. I’m afraid you will find
they happen more often than not, if you stay here.”