Chaos Burning (17 page)

“I brought blond brownies today. I was at Pike Place with Meriel earlier and I had one of these. They were so good I figured you guys needed a few as well.”

“Come in and sit. Over there near my desk. I’m going to call everyone in.”

“Wow, that bad?”

Gia sobered. “Yes.”

Sheila came in with her husband, Shawn, and their son, Carl. The full team was going to brief her? Nervousness edged at her confidence and she shoved it aside the best she could.

“How much do you know about the Magister?” Gia asked her as she placed a brownie on a small plate and handed it left until they all had one.

“Not very much. I know it’s old. I know it’s the big bad. I read up a little, what I could find anyway. Hasn’t been seen for generations.”

“For millennia. The Magister is old. Very, very old. It’s chaos magick. It’s not motivated by greed. By right or wrong.
It has no pity. No compassion. No hatred or fear. It seeks to destroy in epic fashion.”

Oh, just that? A piece of cake. She sighed. “What exactly
is
it?”

“The oldest texts referred to it as an oncoming storm. A mass of energy so vast it blotted out the horizon and took away whatever lay in its path.” Sheila Kelly was petite. She said this as she tucked her feet beneath herself and sipped some tea. She appeared to be a sweet, middle-aged woman who was discussing the new bulbs she’d just planted.

“But is it a being? A group of beings? An alien? Why is it here? Did someone or something call it? Cause it? And how can we kill it?”

Shawn finally spoke. Lark knew he was married to Sheila Kelly, but she rarely even caught sight of him around the office. “The Magister exists to cleanse.”

“Cleanse?”

“In a genocidal sense, yes.”

“Like Hitler? You’re telling me we have a Hitler storm out to… what? Is it connected with the mages? Who and what gets cleaned and why?”

“What is most important to remember here, Lark, is that this is not your typical adversary. As Sheila said earlier, it is not out for revenge. You cannot reason with it. Or appeal to its sense of compassion or logic. It has its own motivations. We may not ever know why.”

“Just that it’s here to kill us all? If there are stories about it, someone must have survived. Someone had to have vanquished it somehow. I want to know about that.”

Gia nodded and then patted Lark’s knee. “I like the way you think. The stories we have are very old, just remember that. But what we do have, even the rumors are fearful. The stories used to scare children of so many races are universally dire. Factually, there hasn’t been the merest whisper about the Magister in well over two thousand years. Even before that it’s sketchy at best. At least here on Earth.”

“But there are creatures older than us. Right?”

Shawn smiled at his wife before turning back to Lark. “You were right about this one. Yes. The Fae have their own
stories about the Magister. Only they call it the Wild Hunt and embody it with animal and humanoid shape.”

“But everyone has to hide from the hunt or they die. Doesn’t it kill anything in sight? So humans as well as others are in danger? And if it’s so powerful why does it need to steal magick from Others?”

“We don’t know where it gets its power. Or how. And yes, there is no master of the hunt. The hunt is viewed as nature’s way of correcting any mistakes. Only on a wide scale. Think on the Magister as a giant storm. Several of the texts we’ve found refer to it as the oncoming storm. A huge hurricane or tornado perhaps.”

“Both draw power from the atmosphere. Both take it until they slowly drain and become less powerful.” She had to think on this awhile.

“It may not be so simply connected to the types of storms we are familiar with. We don’t know how to kill it. Or stop it. We’re still looking. We’ve contacted all the other archives in all the other clans and they’re working on it as well. We’ll let you know what we find out but I wanted to give you what little we had. In short, this is something we’re woefully unprepared for so I’d like you to be extra careful. I know you’re a strong witch, capable and all that. But this… this can’t be dealt with like a rogue werewolf or a witch. Given the scant details of total destruction we’ve found, I think it’s safe to assume the kind of power the Magister has can level city blocks.”

“Where’s it hiding then? If it’s all big and stormy?”

“One of the many things we don’t know just yet. We’re doing all we can.” Gia looked so disturbed it scared Lark and then she got over it. No time for fear right then.

“I know. I’m sorry if I sound unappreciative of how much you’re doing. I have enough for now. Enough to tell Meriel so she can make her own reports even as I contact other hunters.” She took a few more notes and then stood.

“We’ll call when we find out more.” Sheila walked with her to the elevator. “Please stay safe. We like you. And not just because you bring sweets.” She smiled and Lark felt a little better as she left.

Chapter 14

HE
dressed carefully and pretended that he hadn’t been waiting for her for the last hour when she came in.

Naturally he’d constructed a plan. Lark Jaansen was sharp. She didn’t miss a thing, which meant he had to be at the top of his game to make this work. If she got spooked by how fast he was moving or his natural aggressiveness, he’d have to remake hard-won progress. And patience was not his strong point.

But she didn’t have her usual sort of burst of color and energy when she came in. The need to take care of her roared into place and he tried not to be gruff when he took her coat. His hormones surged as his beast wanted to take over. The man pushed back. He would soothe and protect at the same time.

“I have steaks grilling. Go take a shower. I promise to have a drink and some food ready when you get out.” If he’d told her she looked tired or that she needed to rest, she’d resist because that was how stubborn she was.

She narrowed her gaze at his smile. “Why are you being so nice? I already let you kiss me.”

Damn, she made him laugh.

He shook his head. “I’m a nice guy. I’ll take a kiss when I’m ready to. Right now you need to shower and then to eat. Then I’ll see if I can’t get my lips on a few more parts of you.”

She blushed. “Incorrigible.” But she trudged down the hall and toward the room she’d be staying in. “Be out in a while.”

She was in his den. On his land. She’d be safe here and he could protect her. This all soothed his agitation as he went out to check the steaks. He looked out over his land as he thought about going home.

It’d been a year and a half since he’d been back, though he’d been in more regular contact with his brother who lived in San Francisco part of the year so he got news about home on a regular basis.

But it wasn’t the same as being there in person.

He missed it. Missed his father’s house and the sound of his family all around. Raucous and chaotic, his siblings and cousins all over the place. Babies to their elders laughing, fighting, working, living.

He missed it, but he couldn’t fully own his path while he lived there. He’d served his family, his pack. He’d trained and protected and spent hundreds of years in service. But one day he’d woken up and realized he wasn’t satisfied. There was more and he wanted to find it.

He’d had to be away to finally achieve what he was meant to. Where he could build his own history and control his own damned life.

Where he could be his own Alpha, which suited him just fine. And he supposed it suited his brothers too because they could be closer again without the constant tension about who was in charge. Who would lead the pack when their father stepped down. He didn’t want that upset. It had never seriously crossed his mind to challenge his brothers or his father for leadership.

But that didn’t mean he was all right with settling for a life where everyone else made the rules either. No, he wanted to be in charge all right. And it wouldn’t have been possible there.

So he came here and created his own pack. The woman in his home right at that moment was more than worthy of
sharing this life with him. Though he had no illusions it would be easy. Especially at the beginning. She was an alpha too in her own unique way.

It wasn’t that she completed him, or that he couldn’t live without her. It was that she filled his life in ways he knew clearly now that she was in it. Remembered the absence of from before she stepped up to him at Sea-Tac the month before.

Lark Jaansen wasn’t just a female he was interested in for a while. She was it. He’d lived a long time, long enough to stop pretending she was anything less than his heart’s and life’s mate.

She was everything he could possibly want in a woman and he meant to have her. Forever.

He found himself excited by the future for the first time in a long while. Anticipating what he could build with his ass-kicking little witch.

WHEN
she came back out at last she’d braided her hair into pigtails, which sexed her up and rendered her young and fresh all at once. All his carefully created cool and calm sort of melted away and rather than let it agitate him, he found her even more fascinating.

She took the glass he held out and sipped. “Thank you. You’re a master martini maker.”

“Comes with owning a bar I guess. Sit, the steaks are ready.”

“Nice out here.” She tipped her head back and breathed in deep. “I’ve smelled too much death today.”

It outraged him that she did, even as he admired that she did her job so well. “Tell me about what you learned today.”

She ate with gusto, something he also liked about her. She wasn’t afraid of what she liked. And she liked to eat and drink and laugh. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t realize just how sexy all these things were until just recently.

The story unfolded as they ate and alarm, already a spark in his belly, bloomed into heat riding up his spine.

“What’s next then?”

“I’m talking to one of the Elders from the Cascadia Wolf
Pack tomorrow. I need to call Helena tonight. This is more than just witches now, we’ve got to seek out leaders from Other groups to discuss this with them.” She ate for a while and he let her process before she spoke again.

“I came up here thinking you all just had a problem with some mages on your hands.” She shrugged. “Easy enough. I figured I’d shoot some people, use my magick, train, be trained, have some laughs and go back home.”

“And now?”

She met his gaze. “Now things are different. Far more complicated than I’d ever imagined. The resolution here… well, I don’t know, but I don’t think we’ll win from sheer guts or magickal talent. We seem to be outclassed in that area. I need to figure out how to beat this foe.”

He had faith in her abilities.

“How did it end before? How was the Magister defeated?”

Her brows flew up. “We don’t know. It comes and goes, but it’s been a long while for those of us on this plane of reality. The records are obviously not very helpful.”

He noted the way she hesitated over the name. Understood it, even as he wanted to shout it, to show the Magister he wasn’t afraid. But that was foolhardy. Because old magicks like the Magister should make any thinking being afraid. He remembered the awe and fear in his grandmother’s voice as she told him and his brothers the stories when they’d been young.

“I’d like to head home to speak with my father and brothers. To explain and get my people prepared. See what our Elders have to say about the threat.”

She nodded. “Good idea. I have a conference call with the hunters from several other clans tomorrow too.”

“When?”

Lark looked up from her plate to regard him carefully. She was sharp. He’d never get away with anything but what she chose to let him get away with. Which was… alluring.

“Ten.”

“Good. You can come with me then. I’m not heading home until later in the afternoon.”

“Come with you where?”

He put some more roasted vegetables on her plate. He’d made them for her, to keep her fortified and strong. It gave him a moment of pause, felt sudden, this need to protect and care for her.

And then he accepted it. Accepted he’d been taking care of her since that first night when he brought her to his home from the airport to feed her.

“To Lycia of course. Who better to speak with my father about what’s happening? You know all the details. It only makes sense.”

Instead of arguing, her features lit. “Really? I’ve never been on the other side of the Veil before.”

He didn’t trust how easy this was.

“I’ll pick you up from your building at three then. We can have dinner there.” Which wasn’t an entirely accurate word for the huge feast that his second-mother would arrange when he came home.

“Will they all frown at me for eating vegetables too?”

He laughed. “Some of them will. But I have the feeling you’ll charm your way past that. You have a gift for such things.”

“I do?”

Did she not understand? Even after last night and the time they’d had that morning? She wasn’t being coy. He could have resisted coy.

“Would you like to sit in the hot tub? Look at the stars?”

“Is that where you’re going to tell me what you’re thinking?”

Her face was entirely scrubbed clean of any cosmetics and she wore her emotions so openly right then. It got to him, much like most of the rest of her did. She was honest with him. Which he respected and he figured he’d have to return that honesty or risk blowing what he knew had the potential to be the best thing in his future.

“Some of it.”

“All right. My muscles are still sore from last night. Speaking of that, why aren’t you at work?”

“I’ll tell you when you’re done eating and in a bathing suit in my hot tub.”

*   *   *

LARK
winced as she caught sight of the bruise on her side when she changed into her suit. It had gone a dull yellowy-green. This was alleviated a little by the room she stood in.

He’d filled it with flowers and the bedding was now ultrasoft, and yet an explosion of color. Bright blues, purples and greens. The pain faded as she took it in. He’d done it to make her comfortable. Knew enough about her to understand she’d like the space better this way. Disconcerting. And charming.