Circle of Desire (Damask Circle 3)

She swept away the first stone and continued murmuring the spell. The wall shimmered as she swept away the second. From behind her came the noise of flesh smacking against flesh. She swept away the third stone, effectively creating a doorway in the wall. She finished the spell and swung around to see Ethan in midair, diving feetfirst at the pack of zombies fighting to get into the cavern. He hit the first two hard, forcing them back into those behind. The dead toppled like bowling pins, creating a barrier of flesh that briefly stopped those behind from entering.

“Mask,” she said, putting on her own as she tossed a sleep bomb into the writhing pack of zombies.

The dead men at the back scrambled over those still fighting to find their feet. Ethan rose and swung a booted foot, knocking two more back. He didn’t look like he was trying to kill them, and of that she was glad. Right now they didn’t need to alert the mara to their presence.

She grabbed another bomb and tossed it deeper into the tunnel. As rust-colored smoke swirled, she dropped the pack on the ground and ran at the two zombies trying to get behind Ethan. She reached for kinetic energy and flung one back into the smoke. She slid to a stop and smacked the other across the back of the head. The zombie roared and swung around, clenched fists flying. She ducked, swept a leg around his, and knocked him onto his ass. Then she picked him up kinetically and tossed him back into the smoke as well, toppling more zombies in the process.

Dead men were beginning to drop like flies near the cavern entrance, making it harder for those behind to scrabble past. She grabbed another sleep bomb from the pack and lobbed it deeper, just in case there were more zombies waiting in the tunnel.

“You go get the two girls,” she said, putting the pack back on. “Make sure you enter and leave through the gap in the stones.”

He nodded and headed for the small cave holding the girls. She reached for kinetic energy again and began to stack the sleeping zombies, creating a wall of flesh that was as tall as she was and at least two arms’ widths deep. If there were any more of the dead down in that tunnel, the wall would at least hamper their progress for a while. Though she had to hope there weren’t too many more. There were at least fifteen piled in front of her. How many more could the mara have raised in this area without someone noticing something odd was going on?

She half turned to go help Ethan, then stopped. Noise whispered down the tunnel. Nails, clicking against stone.

A werewolf was headed their way.

But how? This smoke was just as effective on shifters as on the dead. Unless the wolf had realized what was going on quickly enough and grabbed something to use as a mask.

“Something else is coming,” she warned Ethan, hurrying across to the small cave.

He’d taken off his sweater and put it over one of the girls. Then he carefully scooped both of the girls up. Neither of them moved or showed any sort of reaction, meaning that, like the other children, they’d been drugged. “Let’s get out of here.”

“You go. I’ll deal with the shifter coming down the tunnel.” She knew if she told him it was a werewolf, he’d refuse to leave her. Especially after her near escape with the last one.

His expression was grim. “I don’t think that’s a good—”

She touched a hand to his lips, stopping his words. “The most important thing right now is getting the girls to safety. I won’t be far behind, I promise you.”

He kissed her fingertips, then nodded. “You’d better not be, or I’m coming back after you.”

His words did weird things to the rhythm of her heart. God, it would be so easy to believe he truly loved her. Except for that moonlit ceremony. Except for the fact that he’d promised himself to a woman she wasn’t, even if it was only in his mind.

She followed him as far as the waterfall and dropped the backpack on the ground. There were a couple of sleep bombs left, and the holy water, but neither was much use against a werewolf.

She ripped free one of the stakes she’d taped to the leg of her jeans, tossing it lightly in her hand as she walked back to the cavern’s center.

The radiating heat of the werewolf’s aura hit her long before she ever saw him. Ethan might have had the moon heat under some control, but in this wolf, the fever raged free. His hunger was a force that seemed to suck the air from the room, leaving her breathless, hot, and very afraid.

Because it wasn’t just lust she sensed. This one hungered for violence as well as sex. Another of the bitten, she thought, and as mad as a rattlesnake. Maybe that was why the mara chose them as guards—they were fast, powerful, and more important, didn’t care who or what they killed.

For an instant she thought about retreating, but she had to give Ethan as much time as possible to get those kids free.

And it was only one werewolf. She could cope with that, surely. She’d certainly dealt with far worse in her time with the Circle.

Yet as much as she kept repeating that statement in her mind, it didn’t seem to help the fear churning her stomach.

A blur of brown hair leaped over the sleeping bodies of the zombies. She clenched her fingers around the stake as the wolf came to a halt and shifted shape. As a man, he was big. Bigger even than Ethan. And like the wolf that had attacked her in the restaurant, he was all rippling muscles and golden skin.

He was also naked. And hard with wanting.

His gaze slid down her body, and she felt like a prize turkey at Christmastime—all fattened up and ready for the plucking. The wolf’s gaze finally rose to hers again, and all she could see was madness. The heat of his aura blasted her skin with his desire, but beyond her breathlessness, she had very little physical reaction. It was as if she’d somehow become immune to this wolf’s fever.

“I smell wolf on you.” He ripped off the mask he was wearing, revealing a mouth that was thin and cruel. “I shall enjoy erasing that scent.”

Bile rose in her throat. Ethan had all the time he was going to get, because she wasn’t about to stand here and play with this madman. She lifted her hand and hit the wolf kinetically, smashing him back against the wall. As he slithered down the rock, she flung the stake at him. At the last moment he saw it and dod

ged. The white ash stabbed through his side rather than his heart. Deadly, but not immediately so.