Her scream was trapped beneath another hand and she threw her elbows back hard, trying to make contact with ribs or belly or anything she could reach, but whoever had her was too strong.
Not human, but not quite like her, either.
Definitely not that pigeon.
As she struggled against the figure, trying to strike the heels of her stilettos against the tops of booted feet, she tried to mentally grasp the assailant’s magic—taste the essence of what made the person a little bit like her.
There was only chaos there. No emotion she could name, just wildness and mistrust of her—or maybe life in general.
Her head swam and eyes crossed. Her body was going limp and weak.
What did…what did he do to me?
The assailant dragged her backwards, and her heels scraped against the asphalt as her body drooped against his.
She couldn’t move.
Couldn’t keep her eyes open.
The attacker had pulled his hands away from her face, though. She should have been able to scream, but she couldn’t convince her lungs to draw in enough air. She was growing more and more lightheaded, and not just from a lack of breathing. Her abductor had drugged her somehow—anesthetized her.
“Why?” Mary croaked as her eyelids drooped and her body went number, limper.
The person—the man, for his grunt was most certainly male—didn’t respond. But, just inside a narrow door she hadn’t paid attention to during her retreat, he stayed still long enough for her to crane her head back and look at him.
Uncombed chin-length dark hair. Smoldering brown eyes. Skin that saw the sun and had certainly been kissed by it. Aristocratic nose, and full, decadent lips.
He wasn’t handsome in the way of their kind, all of whom could be equally frightening if they gave up their denim for leather, and traded their motorcycles for longships. He didn’t have their roughened, warrior quality. He was the elegant man in the portrait of Smith Toft at Fallon’s social club, but not. He was two generations removed. Younger. Gaunter.
Wilder.
His eyes took on a golden cast she could have sworn was that of an animal, and she couldn’t make her body move enough to jerk in his arms.
“What’s wrong with you?” she tried to ask, but she couldn’t. Mary was frozen.
He kept moving. He pulled her through the doorway into the neglected old building, and then it was lights out.
Chapter 2
Andreas paced in front of the cold wood stove and shook out the tingles from his hands and arms.
He shouldn’t have touched her, but he’d panicked. Drugging her hadn’t been ideal. No rational man would have done such a thing.
Also, he didn’t like touching people anymore. The magic that made him what he was made the effects of touch linger too long and too brutally.
What choice did I have?
She’d been too close to discovering him, and he was in hiding for
a good reason.
Pausing, he looked at the unconscious woman draped over the sofa he’d covered with drop cloths. She looked comically out of place in his building’s basement. She was prim and proper, and so pretty and blond. “Perfect Viking wench.” He scoffed.
She was just like all the others in Fallon. They judged what they didn’t understand, and hated what they couldn’t have. They’d proven their narrow-mindedness when the Afótama queen had taken one of their men as a chieftain. Andreas heard the things the people in Fallon said about Oliver and Contessa. They called Oliver a traitor, and worse—but Oliver had done what he’d need to do to be happy. He’d embraced the magic and claimed what was his, even though what he’d gained had the taint of the Afótama about it. He’d joined their collective and became a part of something cooperative. He’d embraced the magic that Queen Contessa had pulled the stopper from. The long-absent power flowed from the old Viking gods back to the people they’d been ignoring for so long.
“Good for him,” Andreas spat. “Someone should get a happy ending.”
Andreas sure as shit wasn’t going to get one—not when the locals found out that the magic hadn’t stopped pooling in Norseton. It’d spread farther—all the way to Fallon, perhaps beyond. Andreas had some. He had inherited his family’s magic. Unfortunately, the Tofts’ magic was a curse that had been dormant for so long that they no longer feared it. There was no one left to tell Andreas how to control the affliction. He was the last Toft in Fallon.