The Immortal's Hunger

Chapter 5

Gareth sat in his car, having moved it across the road from the pub’s front door. The hours passed and, finally, as the last patrons trickled out the front lights were turned off. Ungloving his hands, he found they had generally healed, but the cold persisted, an ache within him that simply refused to give quarter. He fought the need to lash out, to beat against the heavens’ doors, to deliver equivalent pain to those who saw fit to punish him in kind. None of it was possible, yet he believed it would happen. It had to.

Shoving free of the low-slung vehicle, his need to control something choked him. He rose and stumbled into the wild weather, raised his hands to the sky. “Ignis, I praecipio vobis!” Fire, I command you. So close to death and separation from the gods he’d served for centuries, they wouldn’t deny him this, surely.

Flames he still possessed, flames as familiar to him as his reflection, hissed in the torrential downpour, flickering erratically but refusing to wink out. He shook with the effort to control his element. Only the faintest blue of the flame he’d summoned clung to his skin, hovering in the cup of each palm with a tension that superseded the force created by the storm.

Then the tenor of the storm shifted. Rain turned to sleet, pellets of ice sliding down the neck of Gareth’s shirt. The flame he’d called winked out in the face of nature’s onslaught. Gods, he resented the cold.

Without warning, the pub door flew open. Watery light spilled into the darkness and battled it back.

Wide-eyed and moving at nearly inhuman speed, Ashley followed. Her hair whipped around her, seeming to crackle and writhe. Backlit as she was, a faint nimbus built around her until, magnified by her fury, it brightened and blazed wildly.

For a moment it had appeared she was on fire. Gareth blinked and shook his head to clear his vision.

It was the bar. The bar was on fire.

Still looking over her shoulder as she ran, Ashley plowed into him at full speed. Instinct dictated his response. Gareth caught her, hoping to steady the both of them, but her hit was brick-house solid. He grabbed her biceps and down they went, falling into a heap of tangled limbs, shouted curses and pelting rain.

They both hissed at the skin-to-skin contact, and Gareth’s first thought was that he’d burned her with his bitterly cold hands. He let her go and rolled to his feet, shocked to see her skin was clear.

Thank the gods.

An unholy roar erupted from within the bar and something enormous moved.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

Gareth grabbed Ash by the hand, ignoring the pain in his own, and yanked her to her feet. “What the hell happened?”

“Genii,” she said, breathing hard. “Have to—damn! My backpack!”

She started for the bar and Gareth grabbed her round the waist, hauling her against his side. “If you pissed the genii off that bad and then lit his bar on fire? We need to go. Now.”

“My life is in that pack! I have to go back!”

Just then, an enormous fist plowed a hole through the side of the bar building.

Ignoring her efforts to fight free, Gareth curled his body around hers to shield her from the plaster and debris falling around them. The genii was pissed, and bad things tended to happen when geniis lost their tempers.

He yanked the passenger door of his car open and dumped her unceremoniously inside with a barked order, “Buckle up!”

Ignoring the odd sensations winding through his system, he raced to the driver’s side, jumped in and sped away from the curb, engine roaring.

“What the hell happened?” he shouted, the glow of the fire lighting up his rearview mirror.

“Fergus...” She looked over her shoulder. “Gods, he’s not a man.”

Gareth’s brow furrowed. “You thought—”

“And why wouldn’t I?” she demanded. “He’s been nothing but a bar owner and fry cook since I’ve known him. Nothing said he was a...” She snapped her mouth shut, her lips forming a surgically precise line across her lower face.

“A what, Ash?” Gareth pressed. He needed to know how much she knew, how Other she was.

“You ask what Fergus was when you’ve already referred to what he was.” She glanced back once more, gripping the door handle so hard her knuckles appeared skeletal beneath her fine skin. “Is. No, definitely was.”

The fire had grown to a raging inferno, and the giant had collapsed inside the building. Nothing beyond flames moved inside the bar now. That meant there would be nothing left of him by the time the brigade arrived. No body meant there would be no questions the Arcanum couldn’t answer, even if a bit of magickal manipulation was required. Had there been bodies? Or, in this particular case, a body? That tended to complicate things.

Gareth quietly considered what little he could be certain of. That certainty was based on that fact that, in all the years the genii had been in County Clare, the creature hadn’t behaved rashly or in a manner that would draw unnecessary attention its way. Had he been violent? At times, yes. But the genii had never been reckless in a way that would endanger himself. That meant that, whatever Ashley was, Fergus had wanted her badly enough to give up everything he was to take the woman out.

That decided things.

Retrieving his cell, Gareth dialed the Nest. A young man answered on the second ring. At this point, niceties were obsolete. “This is the Regent. Put the Assassin on.”

“Yes, Regent.”

Seconds later, Dylan O’Shea’s voice came across the line, a trace of humor underlying the man’s typically serious nature. “Heard you were finally out for a bit of sport tonight, Gareth. She done with you already?”

“We’ve got a problem.”

Dylan’s voice changed in an instant. “Tell me.” All teasing was gone, replaced with a well-earned and accurately described deadly seriousness.

How much to say in front of the woman? Gareth glanced at her and found her staring at him, her slim face paler than a full moon’s blaze on a clear night, her eyes wide.

“Assassin?” she asked on a shaky breath.

“You have her with you and you’re speaking in front of her, Gareth?” Dylan bit out. “There better be a good reason.”

No help for it. He’d either have to have this conversation with her in the car or set her on the side of the road. He wanted her warmth more than he wanted privacy, so talk in front of her it was. “Aye. She and Fergus had a wee bit of a mash-up at the pub.”

“The genii did what, exactly?” Dylan asked.

“Well, exposed his true nature and apparently threatened her, though I’ve not got the whole of it out of her yet. But I will,” he added harshly, steering with his knee as he raked his fingers through his hair and pushed the wet mass off his face. “End result was that the bar burned down and Fergus with it.”

Dylan’s silence lasted several heartbeats. “She’s Other?”

Gareth glanced at her. “Yes, though I’ve no more information than that.”

The Assassin’s curse was long, low and colored the air blue. “You can’t bring her here without knowing the danger she poses. Not with Kennedy’s lifeline tied to mine. If your woman—”

“I’m aware of that,” Gareth said between gritted teeth. “And she’s not ‘my woman.’”

“She’s in your possession, she’s yours,” Dylan countered.

“And if I’d said the same to you about Kennedy?” he asked so low he hoped Ash didn’t hear him.

“I’d have knocked your teeth out,” Dylan said, unexpected amusement winding through his words. “But only because I knew they’d grow back.”

Gareth huffed out a humorless laugh. “You’re a right thicko. I’ll hole up tonight and find a way to get her out of the area before I return. We’ll need to renegotiate the treaty with the genii as they’ll discover I’m the one who drove off with her.”

Dylan’s silence reined the moment, then he did the unthinkable. “I’m sending Rowan to handle her. If you have to kill the woman—”

“Spare him that.” The minimal warmth he’d been able to steal from the brief contact with Ashley fled as if chased by the monsters that haunted him. “I’m already damned, and well you know it.”

“I don’t accept that.”

“I’ve seen the end, Dylan.” The words were barely a breath. “It’s inevitable.”

“I’m sending Rowan. Until then, keep in mind your limitations,” Dylan said quietly. “I won’t lose you.”

Gareth wordlessly disconnected the call with a swipe of his thumb and dropped the phone in the console. Ash opened her mouth to speak, but he shook his head. “Not right now.”

I won’t lose you, Dylan had said.

The irony of the statement left Gareth aching with the brutal truth.

He was already lost.

* * *

Ashley listened to Gareth’s side of the conversation. Most women would have been offended. She’d been thrilled. He had no intent to try to lay claim to her beyond her body. He’d then promised the Assassin—surely not the famed Assassin—he’d be spending the night with her tonight.

Bottom line? He was perfect. No commitment issues. No expectations. Strength enough to defend her if her epithicas rendered her unconscious. She didn’t think that would be a problem, though. Not if she got sex and, more importantly, orgasm. It would diffuse the hormonal storm building inside her, making her harder to track. And since Gareth had picked her up off the pavement, she’d felt invigorated, her core temperature running hotter than normal. Had to be the thrill of survival. Or adrenaline. Okay, it was the fertility cycle. Whatever. What she knew for certain was that she had more energy than she’d ever had once her cycle began to crash in on her. Odd, but she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth let alone check its teeth. No, she was far more likely to mount the damn thing and spur him forward in order to gain as much ground on life as she could.

There was only one thing left to accomplish. She needed to convince Gareth to remain with her through her entire epithicas versus ditching her in the morning. If he was tied to the Druidic assassins, he was literally perfect. But how to convince him to stay? There had to be something in it for him, and she’d lost everything she’d owned when her pack burned in the bar. She couldn’t even offer to immediately replace lost wages seeing as she wouldn’t be going back for her paycheck. It would take a trip to her bank box, and she doubted he’d carry her across the country for something so mundane as money.

Panic both pushed and pulled her to act and react, respectively. She was effectively homeless, temporarily penniless and left without the few contacts she’d stored in her cell. Worse, though, was that she’d lost the only picture of her mother she’d had. An old and worn etching, it had been the only possession that mattered to her. She wanted to cry, and she never cried. It had been rule number one for so long that the urge caught her off guard.

She rubbed her clenched hands against her denim-clad thighs. She’d started over more than once. She’d do it again. And the picture of her mother? The lump in her throat thickened. Her only solace was that nothing and no one could steal her mother’s memory from her. It would have to be enough.

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