This woman smelled like vanilla and cocoa beans and caramel. Not sickness.
Lucas frowned. He downshifted as the car took a rather tight turn, and then he leveled out again and chanced another glance at his would-be savior.
Her eyes were closed now. But when they’d been open, they had been starkly beautiful. Either he’d imagined it, or they were so many different colors, he wouldn’t be able to describe them if he had to. And they were so bright; like gemstones.
Her sleeping face was something out of a man’s wet dream. Her skin was flawless, her eyelashes long and heavy where they rested on her cheekbones. Her slightly parted lips were so full and red, it looked like she’d just been kissed. A lot.
Maybe she had?
With that thought, his hand tightened on the steering wheel, and his fangs threatened to lengthen.
Lucas blinked and his frown deepened. Why the hell do I care? he thought. What the hell is going on tonight!
Lucas shook his head, ran his hand through his dark, wavy hair, and took another tight turn. They would be coming up on the exits for Eureka soon. He’d spent some time in Eureka years ago. It had only been a few months, but it didn’t take Caige long to get the layout of a place.
He only hoped that he could recall the town well enough to find Lucas street without having to jostle his passenger awake.
Whoever she was, she was a knock-out. His gaze skirted up the long, lean length of her legs. She wore tight jeans that made his job easy. Her waist was tiny. Almost too small. He could see her hip bones beneath the denim material she wore. He’d have preferred a few more meals under a woman’s belt, but all in all, she was stunning. And as a bonus, he thought as he laughed a small, bewildered laugh, she has great taste in cars.
The 2009 Shelby Mustang was a beauty. Like its owner, he added.
And then he sighed and shook his head again. This is insane. My bike is totaled. Someone tried to kill me tonight. And some chick picks me up off of the side of the road and then passes out on me.
Christ.
Beside him, the woman moaned and her head rolled to the other side. Lucas gazed down at her as her long black hair shimmered and shifted, exposing a collarbone and the swell of her breast beneath the filmy blouse she wore.
Again, his grip tightened on the wheel.
He’d felt her bare back when he’d moved her over into the passenger seat. She’d obviously been coming back from some kind of date; the shirt she wore was open in the back and made to impress.
Lucas felt sudden pain in his upper gums and angrily forced his thoughts away from the image of the beautiful woman beside him flirting with some unknown man.
You’re a nut job, Caige, he scolded himself. Just find her friend’s house and be done with this mess.
The fog hadn’t let up even a small amount since it had rolled in earlier that night. It sat on the road and surrounding forest now like a tightly packed mass of cotton balls, immobile and dense. So it was with some luck that Caige noticed the exit he wanted without passing it up as it appeared so abruptly out of the mist.
He turned on his signal, pulled off of the highway, and eased onto a side road. Searching for the right signs was like trying to find a certain letter in alphabet soup. He would inch toward a street corner, learn it was the wrong one, and he would turn around and go the other direction. Luckily, the Shelby spun on a dime.
But he was worried about the woman.
There was a purse in the back seat. It probably had a phone in it; and the phone probably had an ICE number.
Caige pulled the car over on a dark curb and grabbed the small purse from the back. He opened it, feeling more than a little guilty for going through someone else’s personal belongings.
Thankfully, there wasn’t much in the purse to go through. A tube of Chapstick, a twenty dollar bill and some change, a small leather notebook with an attached fountain pen. And a Blackberry.
Caige pulled out the Blackberry and tossed the purse back into the back seat. It took him a few minutes to sort through everything, but he found the ICE number just as the black-haired woman shifted in the passenger seat and her gemstone eyes fluttered open.
He gazed down into them as he dialed.
She gazed back. “What… what are you doing?” she whispered.
“Getting help. I have no idea where I am,” he told her.
She smiled at that, flashing white, perfect teeth. She was probably thinking that she couldn’t believe a man was admitting he was lost. Caige’s stomach tightened as he stared down at that gorgeous smile, but the call was answered after the first ring and the new voice on the other end of the line helped him focus on the situation.
“Yeah, is this a friend of-” Caige cut himself off, realizing that he didn’t know his rescuer’s name.
“Danny,” she supplied weakly.
“Is this a friend of Danny’s?” he asked, not missing a beat. The woman on the other end of the line went still. He could almost sense her dawning apprehension.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, all seriousness.
“She’s not feeling too well. I’m on the corner of Harrison and Russ and I need directions to your place.”
There was a brief pause, and then the woman took charge. Lucas listened carefully, noting the deep, throaty sound of the woman’s voice. She was of African American descent; he could tell that much. And she sounded like sex incarnate.
Lucas disconnected as soon as he had what he needed and put the car back into first. In a few short minutes, he was pulling up to a white two-story house and a tall, lithe woman who did indeed look like sex incarnate, was running out the front door to meet him.
Lucas opened the driver’s side door and climbed out of the car.
The woman stopped in her tracks.
He frowned. She looked more than surprised to see him. She looked utterly shocked. And a good deal afraid.
Instantly, he wondered what he had done to cause such a reaction, but his mind was also focused on the semi-conscious woman in the front of the Shelby.
Danny, he thought. I wonder what it’s short for. As he made his way around the car to her side and then lifted her into his arms, he rolled the name around in his mind. Danielle maybe? Danica? Danny has a nice ring to it, he thought. Unique for a woman.
He came back around the car and started toward the tall woman who was now waiting for him several yards away. She seemed to compose herself, come to some kind of decision, and then started forward to meet him half way.
Danny felt so light in his arms. She’s too small, he thought. Is she actually sick and I just can’t sense it? Bewildered, he realized it wouldn’t matter if she was.
She was warm and her nearness was making him feel strange. Her vanilla scent was enticing; it played havoc with his senses. He wanted to strip her down and find out where it was coming from.
With that thought, he steeled his nerves and tamped down the hard, unexpected desire rose up from out of nowhere. Now was not the time to get physical with the locals. He had to pick up his bike, get it fixed, or buy a new one. He needed to make a few large, important purchases. He needed to get settled in.
This wasn’t the night for following his dick into some stranger’s painted-on jeans. His gums ached again. His hands curled possessively around Danny’s lean body. Her head rested trustingly on his shoulder.
Christ, he thought. “Danny” must be short for “trouble.”
* * * *
Imani wondered whether the gods had suddenly turned on her and her friend. When the car pulled up and none other than Lucas Caige opened the door and got out, she was fairly certain that one of two things was happening.
Either she was dreaming – in which case, she should pay attention because the dream could be some kind of harbinger – or the fates had flawlessly orchestrated something quite elaborate. And more than a touch cruel.
Imani quickly took in Caige’s torn jeans and scraped up leather jacket, along with Danny’s nearly unconscious form in
the front seat of the car and hazarded a few guesses as to what had gone down. All of them involved Caige in some kind of automobile accident, and Danny unwittingly stopping to help.
To be on the safe side, in case this wasn’t in fact a dream, Imani hurriedly erected her own shielding spell to hide the nature of her magic from Caige’s perceptive sense of smell.
Lucas Caige was well known in coven circles that dealt with the werewolf Council. Most werewolves were okay with magic. Most of them were familiar with the covens, their witches, and their enemies – the warlocks.
They accepted one another; the witches and the werewolves.
However, Lucas Caige was one werewolf who would just as soon see every magic user on the planet wiped out by some disease as deal with any of them himself. He had his reasons, Imani had to admit. Lucas had once had an older brother. In Australia, fify-seven years ago, a warlock had killed him.
There had been nothing that Caige could do to stop the man, and the dark magic user was never found. He was never brought to justice. He had cursed Byron Caige with a black magic that ate him up from the inside, stealing his strength. He became tired all the time, dizzy, and slept days on end. Then, one night, Byron Caige simply disappeared. Coven seers proclaimed the alpha werewolf dead and the werewolf council determined that Byron had probably gone somewhere else to die.
At the time, Caige had been an alpha werewolf in charge of his own pack. The Caige family produced very strong men. This was something that every witch knew, as it was their job to understand the history of their magic and what it wrought. However, most werewolves were not aware of Ciage’s past, especially in the US, which is where Caige finally moved after an unsuccessful decade of searching for both his brother’s body and his brother’s killer.
He left his pack and his memories behind and started over.
He moved around a lot, joining a motorcycle gang at one point and eventually settling down in New Mexico with a tattoo business as a cover. Caige was actually quite wealthy; he’d amassed a good deal of money during the twenty-five years that he’d lived as an alpha in Australia.
The dark consequence of what magic had brought to Caige’s life was why he hated magic now, and it was why Imani made sure to cover the scent of her own magic as Caige approached her now with a semi-conscious Danny in his arms.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
“I was in a wreck on my bike. She stopped to help me and then passed out in the front seat. I took over with the driving, but got lost. You know the rest.” Caige nodded toward the house behind Imani. “We should get her inside and get some blankets on her. This damp will go straight through her.”
Imani nodded and turned, leading the way into her home. As she moved, a good three or four feet ahead of Caige, she allowed a comb of her magic to sweep over everything in her path that might scream “Magic!” at Lucas Caige and give her and Danny away.
It was difficult to orchestrate such a feat while trying to keep the very scent of her magic from his awareness. But she figured she’d managed it pretty well when he didn’t say anything and simply followed her through the house, up a flight of stairs, to one of the several bedrooms on the second floor.
“Put her here,” she instructed, turning down the covers so that Caige could gently lay Danny on the mattress. It was their guest room; the bed queen sized, its comforter soft and thick enough to keep even heavy chills at bay. Imani could have led him into Danny’s room, but for some reason she didn’t think it would be a good idea to allow her friend’s privacy to be invaded by him in that manner. Yet.
“What’s wrong with her?” He asked. She noticed that his tone had lowered, growing more serious.
“She has blood sugar problems,” Imani answered quickly. The truth was, she could sense that Danny had two shields wrapped tightly around her, not just one. She was assuming that the extra effort was at least partially at fault for her friend’s current weak condition. But it was still strange that Danny was so out of it, so she didn’t really have an answer for Caige.
Not that she’d have shared if she did.
“What does she need?” Caige asked then. Imani glanced up at him. His tall, strong form was rigid with apprehension and his pitch-black eyes were locked on Danny’s form. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking; that wasn’t one of her abilities. Witches could sometimes project thoughts into a subject’s mind, but it didn’t go both ways and it was incredibly draining.
However, from the look on his face, she guessed it had something to do with attraction. Lust, definitely. And very real concern. Which was strange. Why did he care so much? He’d only just met her.
Because it’s Danny we’re talking about, Ima, she told herself. And she’s a dormant. And she has been dreaming about Lucas. Even without the dreams, Danny was too lovely, too innocent. She was sure to attract someone like Caige eventually.
Hell, Jason Alberich was bad enough.
Imani had a feeling that life was about to get really damned interesting.
“She needs rest and some juice,” she replied. “Maybe some medicine. But I have everything here.” She turned to face him fully and he finally gave her his attention. It was obvious that he didn’t want to take his eyes off of Danny.
“You have been very kind to help her like this. You don’t even know her.”
“She stopped to help me. It’s the least I could do.”
“No,” Imani shook her head, her own gaze darkening. “The least you could have done was rape her and leave her to die on the side of the road somewhere while you made off in her car.”
Imani waited for this to sink in and if the look on Caige’s handsome face was any indication, he didn’t like the sound of it at all. Not one bit. His expression had hardened into a killer’s mask. Cold. Determined. She wondered if his fangs were out. His mouth was shut, so she couldn’t tell. But he didn’t volunteer to say anything just then, either.
“You didn’t hurt her – a beautiful stranger at your mercy. Instead, you brought her here. That means a lot. So, accept my thanks Mister…” she waited for him to fill in the space.
It took him a moment.
Ah, she thought. So the fangs had come out. Goddess, her mind sighed. He already had it bad for her.
“Caige,” he finally said. His voice had lowered yet again, and it was slightly gravelly. Like a wolf’s growl. “Lucas Caige.”
“Mister Caige, thank you.”
“It’s Lucas.” He nodded once, and then turned his gaze back to Danny. She was sleeping peacefully, her blue-black hair fanned out across the pillows and reflecting the lamp light in the room like the feathers of a raven.
As always, Imani was impressed with her friend’s magical abilities. She’d managed to keep the shields up even as she’d slipped into slumber.
“You live around here?” Imani asked. She watched him carefully as he, in turn, watched her friend.
Without taking his eyes off of Danny, he said, “I do now.”
Interesting, thought Imani. I wonder what the hell that means.
“Okay then,” she began, “you can take her car to your place.” At this, Caige’s head whipped around and his dark, penetrating gaze pinned Imani to the spot. She continued. “In Eureka, it’s faster than calling a cab and somehow, I don’t think that Danny will mind.” Not in the end, anyway. “She obviously trusts you.”
“How do you know?” he asked, his gaze narrowing a little.
Imani blinked, temporarily thrown by the heat and weight of those dark eyes. And then she asked, “How do I know she trusts you?”
He nodded silently.
“I can tell,” she said. “If I thought she didn’t, I wouldn’t offer to let you take the car. Believe me, she really likes that car.” Imani turned away from him and walked to the door of the bedroom. Caige was forced to follow her. It was easy to see that he didn’t want to, but the man had no choice. There was only so much lingering that a complete stranger could do before it was simply unacceptable. br />
Imani led the way down the stairs to the first floor and the front door of her house. Caige didn’t need any more hints. He waited by the door as Imani handed him the key to Danny’s car. She made certain to take the Cobra emblem off of it first. It wouldn’t do to have Danny’s prospective lover attacked by a car full of magic-venomed Cobras.
“Just have it back relatively early, if you don’t mind,” she told him gravely.
He nodded and managed a smile. “Will do. Thank you.” Then he turned toward the small table against the wall by the door where Imani kept her grocery lists beside an antique lamp that her grandmother had given her in her will. He picked up the pen she kept there and jotted something down. He turned and handed it to her. “Here’s my number. Call me if you need anything.”
Imani blinked at the number, her brow furrowed. She knew he meant that literally. Lucas Caige had enough money to get them anything they might need.
But Imani wasn’t supposed to be aware of that. So she faked her confusion.
And Caige fell for it. “Just give me a call if she doesn’t get better soon, okay?” He gave this order with a bit more force, though he tried to make it sound more like a suggestion than an order.
Imani nodded placatingly. And then Lucas stepped out into the night and Imani closed and locked the door behind him. Within a few seconds, she heard Thor roar to life and pull out of the lot.
Imani pressed her back to the door, exhaled, and closed her eyes.
Chapter Four: “Boil, Boil….”
“Danny.”
Dannai frowned in her half-sleep and rolled over. Her skin felt numb; she was still suspended in the fog somewhere between dream and dawn.
“Danny.”
A voice cut through the dense mist, like a face wafting into view and drifting away once more.
“Danny!”