Chapter 16

SIXTEEN

Orson

It doesn’t take long for the Enforcers to set up. I’m awed by their operational efficiency. Obviously, they’ve done this before. They are a well-oiled machine. As each agent arrives, they immediately fall into place and take on their assigned roles. They set up a command center where Max and Braxton review the satellite feed I provided, poring over printouts of the surrounding area with other high-ranking officials. Two dozen personnel scour the streets. For what, I’m not exactly sure, but nobody looks inessential.

I keep my eye on Asha, who, despite the Enforcer presence, seems less guarded than ever. She drifts like litterfall through the streets, directed by a wind whose nature I cannot apprehend. As everyone seems preoccupied with the ramifications of the massacre of the town and its denizens, no one seems to mind Asha. So I take her safety on as my responsibility, trailing her wherever she ventures.

As she crosses the treeline, I turn back to see if anyone notices, wondering whether I should stop her, or perhaps run back to alert Max. It’s certainly beyond the border of his comfort zone, but he’s too wrapped up in Enforcer business to pay attention. Besides, seeing her earlier fight with him, I suspect she wouldn’t want me reporting her movements to him.

I hustle after her, traipsing through the underbrush. She seems not to notice me tailing her, absorbed by a scent I can’t detect, I think. She passes through shafts of sunlight streaming down from the canopy that briefly set her white hair aflame. She’s like a wood nymph, I muse, attended by a delicate and beguiling mystique. She’s the most fascinating woman I’ve ever seen. A fierce defender of her people, willing to suffer hell for their salvation. The world of pain she’s endured has yet to soil her spirit.

At least, that’s what I suspect. After Braxton and I spent the night sharing a room as she and Max slept in the adjoining one, he gave me the cliff notes version of everything she’d been through. My heart broke for her. She lost nearly every person she’d ever loved, spent months of her life being tortured, and then emerged from it all a broken person with the goal to save her people, despite quite obviously needing to be saved herself.

Asha is quintessentially a good person, despite an occasionally gruff and deceptively cold facade. A good person who was dealt a shitty hand and who has still managed to keep a pure soul. It’s remarkable.

For some reason, she fascinates me. How can she possibly exist?

I envy Asha her reason to persevere. I’ve no one left to care for since my mother’s passing. While I spared her more years under the tyranny of my father, his absence brought with it new demons. I should have been there for her during that time, but with circumstances such as they were, I could not be.

My goal was to save my mom, to stop her suffering. And I failed on both accounts.

We can often become our own worst enemies.

Asha spins around, white-blonde hair dancing all around her. It distracts me from the terrible look on her face. When it finally registers something’s wrong, I call out to her. “Asha!”

“Get out of here!” she calls softly to me, looking around nervously.

I hesitate. “Is something wrong?”

It feels like something’s wrong given her tense expression… and I can practically sense her heart racing. There’s also a scent in the air that’s off. Strange and unfamiliar.

A scent my wolf doesn’t like.

Her eyes are wide as she hurries back to me. “He’s here,” she whispers, as though the unnamed threat might be listening.

“Who?” I ask.

But her eyes are tracing some invisible object over my shoulder. I spin around, expecting to find something or someone standing there, but the forest is as it was the moment prior: dense, still, benign.

Still, Asha speaks, like something has just dawned on her. “It was a trap!”

She races past me, and I hurry after her. Then, suddenly, after a quarter mile or so, she comes to an abrupt stop. Her fists raise and beat against the air like the door to a locked cell. “Asha, what’s going on?”

I step forth, expecting to demonstrate there’s nothing in front of her, but instead I rap my forehead against something hard as concrete. I step back, dazed, rubbing the sore spot on my head while inspecting the clear air.

“He’s lured me away and thrown up a shield around the town.”

“Who?”

But rather than elucidate this backstory, she says, “I need your blood.”

I blink. “My blood?”

She nods, stepping towards me. “Like you saw me do with Max and Braxton. It fuels my vampiric magic. The blood I got from Max and Braxton wasn’t enough this time. He must be stronger. I need yours. If I charge up, I’ll be able to tunnel through the wall.” She’s rambling, stressed and afraid, but her point is clear.

She needs me. This is part of why I’m here. I take a breath. It’s not like I have anything to lose. There's no one to miss me if it goes wrong and she kills me. Not that I believe she will. I watched her with Max and Braxton earlier. It was sensual. I felt like a voyeur watching them. But I’ve never been fed on by a vampire before. First time for everything .

I nod, and in the next moment, Asha’s clasped herself around me. I fall back against the invisible barrier and lean as I feel her teeth sink into my neck. It’s a pinch followed by a euphoric high. “Oh my god…” I moan, gripping her soft buttocks to hold her in place.

But her ass is so exquisitely shaped, her body so warm against me, that I start to feel an erection growing in my pants. Her legs tighten around my waist and she begins a slow, hard grinding motion against me. I grow weak and high proportionally, the outflow of blood like a persistent orgasm that only heightens the longer it drags out. “Asha,” I groan, roaming my hands over her back.

Prison was a long time. It’s been years since I’ve been inside someone. Years since I’ve touched a woman… been inside of a woman. Yet, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a woman this badly before.

Suddenly, every moment of admiring her from afar seems to crash through my mind. The attraction that I’ve felt since the first moment I first saw her feels crisper. Without fear of losing my new position, or the brothers’ watchful eyes, I want to do something bad.

Something that neither of us will forget for a long time.

I imagine undoing her pants, sliding into her, and pounding into her sweet body, claiming it for my own. No part of me cares that the brothers touched her. All I want is to slide into her warm body, touch her firm breasts, and claim her as my mate.

My wolf likes that thought, too. He sits up inside of me, watching, waiting.

Her teeth break from my throat, and I whimper in protest. She licks away the mess from my neck then plants a soft kiss there. My body trembles with a need for more, but I fight the need down. She doesn’t want me. Yet. I can be patient.

I feel her breath against my skin, a gentle touch I’ll keep feeling long after, and memorize this moment with her still pressed against me. Logically, I worry that our connection was some vampiric trick, but it didn’t feel like it. She pulls back and looks me in the eye, the two of us panting in a small pocket of air that separates us.

She slides down my body, her eyes never leaving mine. One last intimate experience of her touch. Then she charges past me. I fall backwards but catch myself and shake my head. I turn around, shocked by how abruptly everything has changed. “No more barrier?”

“Keep close behind me,” she says, her expression fierce, “or it will crush you.”

What will crush me? I’m not sure, but I’m not waiting to find out.

I hurry to follow her, and we make our way back to the town. She’s reeled in by some invisible line, it seems, pulling her along. When we reach the houses and streets again, everything’s quiet, eerily quiet, which sets my wolf on edge. We round a corner and I discover why.

Gathered in the middle of an intersection kneels the entire Enforcer platoon. Max and Braxton are among them, and everyone looks to be suffering some sort of night terror. Their eyes follow ghosts conjured within their minds, and their bodies tighten as though shocked by a constant stream of electricity.

But most alarming is the sentient pile of black ooze rising in the center. When it spots us, it hurls a hefty ball of purple magic towards us. I follow Asha’s lead and throw myself out of its path. It zings by and crashes into the charred frame of an SUV. Metal pieces scatter.

By the time I think to counterattack, Asha’s two steps ahead, summoning a shimmering orb of silver light that sails across the intersection and strikes the creature. It fails to knock the monster over, but instead it appears to envelop the muck in a silvery, gossamer net. With a gurgling voice like boiling pitch, it bellows, “You cannot defeat me, Asha. So take your chance and leave now. I’ll even let you escape with your three males.”

“Please, listen to me. This isn’t you.” She holds out her hands, presumably feeding the forcefield, encasing the muck-beast. I can tell it causes her great strain. I stand helpless on the sidelines. If that creature wrecked this town and took down these Enforcers, men and women of varying types of supernaturals, there’s nothing I can do against it. Trying would be suicide.

“You’re better than this. You have a good heart and a good soul. Remember who you are.” Her voice cracks and her arms tremble.

“I can see into your heart, Asha,” the monster says. “You are weak . Take your boys and be gone. But understand, this isn’t the end.”

She keeps trying. Sweat beads her forehead. Tears fill her eyes and the silver net shivers, moves, grows, and shrinks, but doesn’t stop the creature.

“Last chance,” the creature calls, and I swear there’s pleasure in its voice.

Asha turns to me, and a tear rolls down her face. “Help me get Max and Braxton out of here.”

My heart races, and I think of this town. The charred bodies. The destruction and the death. “What about the others?”

“Just do it!” she says, her words half a plea and half an order.

We gather up Max and Braxton and haul them away from town, dragging their limp bodies into the forest to a distance Asha deems safe. They slowly stop twitching as we drag them to safety, but neither man gains consciousness. It’s strange to see them so helpless, their complexions a sickly green.

What the fuck was that thing and what did it do to them? Calling it a Blood Mage hardly seems to do it justice. If that’s what Asha could become … I shiver at the thought.

“Stay here,” she orders.

I grab her arms as she tries to run back. “What are you doing?”

She shakes my arm off. “Whatever I have to now that you three are safe.”

Then Asha races back and I chase after her again, her words ringing in my ears. Whatever she plans to do, I have a feeling it’s bad. Definitely something Max would want me to stop, but more than that, some deep part of me feels responsible for protecting her. But by the time we reach the intersection, the beast is gone.

And all the Enforcers are dead.

She collapses to her knees and I rush to her side. Through tears, she says, “I could have stopped him if… if I gave into the darkness. But I thought I didn’t have to. That I could still try to save everyone.”

I ask who again in vain while holding her, trying my best to comfort the woman I think I’m falling for, but nothing I do matters. She sobs in my arms, her broken words filled with misery. Filled with guilt over the people she can’t save.

God, what must it be like to suffer the way she has?