Tempt Me with Darkness (Doomsday Brethren 1)

“Did you take Duke with you?”

She sighed. “I am perfectly capable—”

“We know nothing of Caden. He could be dangerous. Or in transition frenzy.”

“No, thank God. Your sister is lovely, but at the moment, I’m worried for my brother. May I?”

Olivia whirled at the sound of a new voice. Waves of light brown hair framed blue eyes so like Lucan’s they broke her heart. Oh my…Mr. Drool-inducing was Lucan’s brother?

“I’m Caden MacTavish. How do you do?” He thrust his hand toward her.

“Olivia Gray.” She shook it.

“An American girl, here? Magical?”

“Not yet.”

“I say keep it that way. Nasty business, magic. I’m hoping I escaped the gene.” He turned back to Sabelle. “Thank you for the escort.”

She nodded tiredly, her golden hair hanging limply at her shoulders. Teleporting across the pond and back must have taken a lot of her energy.

“Sabelle has to find a partner to recharge now, right?” Olivia whispered to Bram after the other two went to Lucan’s bedside.

Bram turned horrified eyes on her and covered his ears. “I am not hearing this!”

Sabelle laughed. Olivia took that to mean yes, and Bram’s big-brother horror was typical stuff. Shaking her head, she wandered to Lucan’s side. Caden followed.

“Hiya, Lucan,” he murmured close to his ear.

Lucan thrashed anew, flipped open those wild black eyes. And howled until the ceiling rattled.

The horror in Caden’s expression spoke volumes. “Where the bloody hell is Anka?”

“We don’t know.”

“What has been done to find her? Sabelle said you know she is neither injured nor dead. She must have been coerced into breaking the bond. She and my brother were inseparable—”

“Except by Mathias, I fear,” Bram answered. “Do you know who that is?”

Caden’s jaw dropped. “That monster? We must recover her immediately before—”

“It may already be too late. I’d like to send someone after her, but we’ve discussed it and realized that’s impossible. Mathias and the Anarki are an imminent threat to all of magickind, especially if he gets his hands on Olivia. We need trained soldiers now, while Lucan…may be lost forever. I cannot spare a moment—”

“Blast trained soldiers! My brother is a man, not simply part of your little war!” Caden snarled.

“And he’s my best friend, but that changes nothing. We fight a foe and an army much larger than us. Lucan may not come back from this. If I stop preparing for this ‘little’ war, there will be more deaths among magickind. Hundreds. Perhaps thousands.”

Caden fisted his hands at his sides. “Another reason I hate magic. Humans can end a relationship, drown their sorrows in whiskey for a few weeks, then carry on. Lucan…”

Bram shrugged. “We brought you here to decide what’s to be done with him. We can’t keep him restrained to a bed forever.”

“Are you suggesting I put him down, like a diseased animal?”

“That’s your decision. I’m merely stating that you may never get back the brother you know.”

“You pompous git. He will recover. I’ll make certain of it. Do you know if Anka is dead?”

“Not yet.”

“Good. Then I’ll look for her. Where does Mathias live?”

“We don’t know. If you want him, you’ll have to hunt him. But I don’t advise it. He’s one of the most powerful wizards of all time. If you go it alone, your parents will only have your life and your brother’s sanity to mourn at once.”

“I refuse to sit here with my thumb up my arse and do nothing.”

“Then help your brother by fighting with us. Together, we stand a better chance of finding Anka. Lucan said that you’ve had human combat training in the American military.”

“I was a marine.”

“You can be useful to both the cause and your brother. A huge portion of the Anarki is not susceptible to magic. We must fight them with guns, fists, and swords, which the rest of the wizards know little about.”

“I practice shooting at a range in Texas. I box regularly. I’ve taken up karate. I learned to fence years ago.”

“Perfect. Join us. We need all the sword arms we can get if we’re going to save Anka and others like her.”

Caden glanced at his writhing, snarling brother restrained to the bed, then back at Bram. He stuck out his hand. “As long as we continue to search for Anka, you have a deal.”

Minutes later, Bram, Ice, Duke, and Marrok were again meeting. Caden was introduced to the lot of them. Bram attempted to contact Shock again. Nothing. On more than one face was the suspicion that perhaps Lucan had been right about Shock’s loyalties to his family…and Mathias.

Despite the fact it was after midnight, training commenced with grim purpose.

Olivia watched them half the night, checking on Lucan periodically. She never got too close to the man-turned-beast strapped to the bed, but she worried for him—and Marrok. Would this be his fate if they ever ended his curse and broke their mate bond? Maybe not. Their bond wasn’t the century-old union Lucan and Anka had shared. Marrok wasn’t magical. And he would gladly embrace death.

The thought nearly crushed Olivia. Selfishly, she wanted Marrok to stay, but of his own free will, not out of obligation or necessity or to avoid Lucan’s fate. In a handful of days, the bond had bloomed with real emotion and filled her heart. She wanted his love and feared it was because she loved him, too. Yes, she’d been craving someone—her mother, her father—to love her whole life. Her yearning for their devotion paled in comparison to her need for Marrok’s.

Watching Lucan’s pain became too heartrending, and Olivia left his room. Bram and Marrok climbed the nearby stairs, deep in conversation. Despite their obvious exhaustion, they made a solid wall of testosterone. At the top, they both looked up.

“Why are you not in bed?” Marrok asked.

Acutely aware of Bram watching, she swallowed all the worries in her heart. “Not tired. Training go well?”

“The lot of them are improving much faster, I daresay, than the average human.”

“Praise?” Bram gasped mockingly.

Marrok snorted. “Do not accustom yourself to it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Bram turned away and strode down the hall toward his room.

With a hand at the small of her back, Marrok led her to their room. Olivia resisted the urge to lean into him. How bad would it hurt when he broke his curse and died? She didn’t want to know.

When they pushed the door to their room wide, pandemonium awaited. Their clothes had been scattered, ripped to shreds. Drawers were pulled from the nightstand and dresser, furniture overturned. Blankets and sheets were puddled at the end of the bed, the mattress hacked into. The ticking was scattered everywhere. The window had been thrown open, and a brisk breeze whipped in.

“What the bloody—Did you have a fit or something?”

The room’s only mirror was shattered, but she didn’t need to see it to know incredulity was etched on her face. “Of course not.”

“Then someone has been here. The book!” He raced across the room, sliding into the carpet, groping under the bed.

His arm tightened, and his look of relief said it all.

“The carving still there?”

He nodded. She undid her simple spell, then he pried the hunk of wood free and clutched the book.

She closed her eyes and felt the lingering presence. “Someone was here not long ago. Look, the window is wide open! Whoever did this escaped through there.”

“What happened? I heard Olivia gasp.” Bram barged in, staring at the room in shock. “What the devil—”

Marrok filled Bram in as he approached the window slowly and looked down. “That is a long drop.”

“For most magical people,” Bram answered, “that’s a hop.”

“Bloody hell.”

Olivia heard the frustration and fear in Marrok’s voice as she turned away and began righting the room. As Marrok joined in, she tried to block out the sense of being hunted, of having her space violated yet again. Mathias was coming hard and fast for her, and for the first time she was truly afraid there’d be no outrunning the bastard.

Bram waved his hand through the air, which fixed the majority of the mess in the room. It wasn’t perfect, but close enough.

Olivia skimmed the magical spell book Sabelle had loaned her. She located a simple repair spell, which worked well enough. The mattress was in one piece, if the seams a bit jagged. She put the sheets and blankets back on, trying to push down her anxiety. If Marrok could see it, he would only worry more. As it was, he watched her, arms crossed, with an unrelenting stare.

“We must ask ourselves who did this?” Bram said. “It must be someone Sabelle or I extended an invitation to enter the grounds. I can feel my protections; none have been breached.”

“It cannot be Lucan, obviously,” Marrok pointed out. “Nor Caden, Ice, or Duke. They were all training with us.”

Olivia swung her gaze to him. “You think my father did this.”

Marrok paused. “Consider, he was here earlier tonight. And we do not know if he left the manor’s grounds, only that he left our sight.”

“The same could be said of Shock—and his escaped brother!”

“True,” Marrok agreed smoothly.

But Olivia wasn’t buying it. “What if Lucan is right, and Shock is Mathias’s spy?”

“And what if he is not? I ask you only to be cautious. Certainly, you see now how desperate Mathias is to reach you and the diary.”

Yeah, it was like a big neon sign. God, what could possibly happen next?

A day passed, then another, a third, a fourth…. Every night she went to bed alone. Every morning, she woke up beside Marrok’s still-warm pillow. The man himself was gone.

No one could locate Anka—or Shock. Lucan slipped further into black madness, as his frenzied thrashing and piercing howls faded to heartrending whimpers.

Bram acceded to Caden’s demands that they find an energy source for Lucan. Given the horrified screaming on the other side of the door, Olivia guessed there wasn’t much sexual healing going on. Bram and Duke remained just inside, in case Lucan attacked the poor woman. They escorted her out in less than ten minutes. When Olivia peeked in on him, he looked marginally revived, but as crazed as ever. No one wanted to say that, if Anka wasn’t found, Lucan should be taken down, but Olivia suspected that nearly everyone had thought it.

Adding to the tense mood at the manor, ever since someone had broken into their room, Marrok had acted like a demented drill sergeant, piling hour after hour of physical rigor onto the men. Near midnight, Marrok showered, ate a mountain of food, curled his body around hers in their bed, then collapsed like a coma victim.

They’d barely spoken since that night. Olivia knew Marrok still suspected her father was somehow behind all this. In her head, she knew it wasn’t impossible. In her heart…she didn’t want to believe it.

Everyone was on edge, Olivia most of all.

Tonight, she’d waited up for Marrok. His touch sustained her energy, and Olivia couldn’t deny she was losing hers fast. But she needed him for way more than that. She missed him. Dare she say she even…loved him?

Had he told her the truth when he’d held her fiercely against the wall, that she had his heart? Or were his words another ploy, like not breaking their mate bond, to hold her at his side? Olivia had no experience with love—of any kind. How was she to know if he cared, or if she was just the means to his freedom? How could she ask a man who might not love her to make love to her? Pain spiked her when she thought of being a burden to him, as she’d been to her mother.

When Marrok slid between the sheets, Olivia ached to touch, feel his embrace. They were mates in magic, but she connected with him in many ways. He was protective, brooding, quick, fierce, stubborn. She loved all that about him, adored that he’d retained his humor through the centuries. She flushed thinking of the way he possessed her so completely. She craved the sense of belonging she found in his arms.

But what did he really feel?

She hated being between her mate and her father. Olivia still hoped Shock—who could hear mental broadcasts, who had failed to show up to guard Marrok’s cottage when the Anarki found their door, who disappeared at the same time as Lucan’s mate—was the guilty party. It fit and it wasn’t hard to imagine the huge, scary wizard was a bad dude. The man’s family had Anarki ties. He’d been invited into Bram’s home and could have broken into her bedroom looking for the diary.

Why couldn’t Marrok at least consider those clues?

“You are shivering, love. Cold?” Marrok muttered suddenly.

“Sorry.” She rolled away—and instantly felt the energy drain from her.