in pain even as the goddess tried to curse him, her words misshapen by the drug’s impact. Unfazed, he dropped his blade and rode her to her knees, holding her there with his good hand as the drug worked through her system.
Smoke boiled around him and filled his lungs. He looked up. Dagda’s balls. The collision of black magicks. Ethan’s house was burning down around them.
The calculating part of his mind said to leave the woman and let her be recorded as a casualty of the fire. There would be no inquiry.
But it was the other part of him, unfamiliar and unwelcome, that demanded he discover the truth about the woman. Smoke thickened around him as he looked at her, crumpled on the floor. Violence flooded him. He despised indecision, despised being cornered and forced to choose between two impossibilities. Throwing his head back, he roared his fury to the heavens. How could he, for even a moment, believe he had a choice?
What he was going to offer her was no kinder a fate, but he couldn’t leave her to die this way.
Sweeping her up, Dylan rushed to where the front door had been, flinging magicks ahead of him to fold the wall open. Racing across the lawn, he reached the warlock’s sports car and dumped her unceremoniously in the passenger side. Her eyes tried to track, but she couldn’t make them focus. With the dose he’d given her, she’d be out for hours.
Her mouth worked slowly, and she tried to speak around a tongue that felt too large for her mouth. “Muh...” She blinked slowly. “Muh...”
“Easy. You’ve a good while before your time comes.”
“Eth...an.” She licked her lips. “Get... Eth...”
Ethan. She was trying to say the warlock’s name.
Under any other circumstance he would have left the man as a casualty, yet it was clear she wanted him saved. Pain struck his chest hard and fast. He’d not be entering a burning building on the whim of his mark. Of course, the man might have knowledge the Order could use in managing the woman until Samhain.
Not like you to lie to yourself, his subconscious whispered. You go back in there, you’ll know exactly why you’re doing it and it’s not for information. It’s for the woman’s peace of mind.
Kennedy continued to fight to say the warlock’s name, the short sound coming further and further apart as she sunk into unconsciousness.
Danu’s prophecy was driving him mad, if he’d even think of returning to the house. It was the only logical reason he could accept that explained the connection he had with this woman, his concern for her well-being. She was his mark, not his heart mate. Yet inside, before she’d collapsed, he’d felt their hearts beat together, their rhythmic parallel a shock. He’d experienced the taste of her fear and known a moment of complete confusion. The combination of events had thrown him off so much that he’d discarded his blade for fear he’d inadvertently cut her.
Never, in his hundreds of years, had he experienced such need for a woman. Danu’s prophecy had said nothing of this, had spoken only of finding his truth in her, but not that it would cost him emotionally. He couldn’t afford to feel. A lifetime spent avoiding wasted emotion left him certain that wasn’t part of his personal absolution in this matter. Still...
With a low, heartfelt curse, he sprinted back across the lawn and into the blazing house. Finding the man and hoisting his unconscious form over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, Dylan ran for the car, slid the driver’s seat forward and hoisted Ethan into the backseat.
Kennedy had nearly rolled off the front seat, and he had to resituate her before he could get out of there. He leaned the seat back and buckled her in. A few words of simple magick and the engine rumbled to life and he roared out of the driveway.
Sirens sounded in the distance. Neighbors were in their yards, no doubt initially drawn by the epic boom he and Cailleach had caused when their curses collided. One of his ears was still bleeding, and he needed to get the pilot on the phone.
He and Cailleach... He hadn’t cursed her. No, he’d claimed rights to the woman when he’d yelled, “De réir Danu, I éileamh an bhean is mo chuid féin!” By Danu, I claim the woman as my own! So foolish. But he couldn’t ignore the thrill that heated his blood at the ancient declaration. Yet she’s not only mortal and bound to die, she’s also bound to do so by my hand. Dylan pounded his fist on the steering wheel. Danu had charged him with finding some critical truth that would save the world from the course it was on. What could he possibly learn in eleven days?
Because that was all the time he had left before the Order would rebind Cailleach. And it was Kennedy’s lifeblood Dylan would spill to seal the wards.
Kennedy. He couldn’t think of her in terms of a name, only an assignment. Anything more would tear at the fragile sense he had that she was somehow more, that Danu had entrusted her to him not as a means to the Council’s end, but as the only means to prevent his own.
He tore down the street, unconcerned with witnesses at this point. If he had to wipe minds, he’d wipe minds, but getting to the airport was his primary priority. He grabbed the facial wipes he’d stuck in one pocket and began scrubbing the black grease paint off his face. There was a franticness to his motions he didn’t initially recognize. When he did, he threw the fouled wipe onto the floor with a curse. An adrenaline cocktail with a straight anxiety chaser. Ever since the woman had opened the door at the hospital, the mix had been a steady rush through his veins. Not once in his history as the Order’s Assassin had he doubted his ability to carry out a job. But tonight, for the first time in his long life, he’d hesitated.
Fire trucks and police cars raced by as he made his way out of the neighborhood. No one looked at him twice with the fire’s fascinating devastation.
Dylan turned onto the highway and accelerated as fast as he dared. Digging out his cell, he called Gareth. The phone rang four times before the other man answered.
“H’lo?” He yawned, then grunted as he presumably stretched.
“Get up.”
His voice changed from sleepy to alert in an instant. “Dylan? What have you got?”
“I’ve got a heavily sedated woman and a wounded warlock in a stolen car. I’m headed to the airport. Call ahead and tell them I’m coming. I’ve ruptured my right eardrum, can’t hear well enough to ensure they repeat the orders right.”
“I’ve got a pen. Go ahead.”
Dylan relaxed a fraction. “I can’t have a flight plan filed, so grease those wheels. Send two of the local lads down to the hangar to...help. The warlock will be at the airport, so—”
“The hell I will,” Ethan slurred from the backseat, forcing himself to sit up. He tipped over, hit his head on the door panel and was out again.
“The warlock?” Gareth prompted.
“Make sure someone looks at him. He needs medical care and will undoubtedly need more before this is over. Stubborn Yank.” Dylan looked at the woman slumped in her seat. “Have Flaugherty meet us at the other end. Riordan, too. The woman is going to need a bit of medical attention herself.”
“You knock her around?”
“Piss off.” The possessive snarl crawled
