Master of Darkness (15 page)

His head was still spinning from that searing pleasure when she began to suck.

Hard.

So hard those strong, drawing pulls instantly sent salvos of pleasure blasting straight into the base of his brain. The heat she generated with lips and tongue and ferocious erotic suction had him teetering on the verge of climax in five minutes flat.

“God!” Writhing with gritted teeth, Justice throttled his reaction, clawing for control. “God, Miranda, you’re driving me insane . . .”

She drew him and purred a laugh. “Oh, baby, I’m just getting started.”

With that, Miranda slid his cock deeper into her mouth, angling her head down as she tried to swallow him to the balls. She couldn’t quite manage it—he was a bit too well-endowed for that—but she got him deep enough to make his nuts feel as if they were about to blow like hand grenades. Dragging in a desperate breath, Justice grabbed the mattress with both hands, fingers digging into the silk.

She pulled her head up again, slowly. So slowly. Her mouth caressed every inch of his shaft until she reached its exquisitely sensitive glans. Pausing, she danced her tongue over the tight flesh, drawing mind-blowing swirls and runes over the mushroom head.

Probably sketching a spell to blast me into orbit
.

Heat pulsed in the tight balls she held cupped in cool, tapered fingers. Each suckling pull and flick of her tongue built the fire higher, hotter, until it thundered in his skull.

Gritting his teeth, Justice fought his rising orgasm.
Dammit, not yet. I’m not going to come until I’m
in
her.

Then she opened her mouth and swooped down again.

He twisted like a man on a rack, fighting his body’s need to come.
For God’s sake, you’d think I was a sixteen-year-old getting his first blow job.

No casual hummer had ever felt like this. Yeah, some of his past lovers had been a lot more skilled than Miranda, who was clearly making it up as she went along. Yet she reached parts of him none of those women ever had—and he wasn’t talking about his dick.

Miranda touched his soul.

Jesus, that sounds corny.
Yet despite the instinctive protests of ex-cop cynicism, Justice couldn’t deny the truth. She made something deep inside him reverberate like crystal singing to a tuning fork.

It scared the shit out of him. He’d never been this vulnerable to anyone or anything.

But blended with that instinctive fear was a reckless surge of excitement. Justice recognized it as the same adrenalin junky rush he’d once enjoyed as a homicide cop playing cat and mouse with killers. No matter how wild the ride got, he knew Miranda would be right there beside him, watching his back and protecting his heart. Despite her fear, despite his inner Big Bad Wolf, she loved him right to the marrow of her bones.

She deserves roses
, he thought, with the tiny portion of his brain that still could think in the midst of such a storm of pleasure.
Candles and diamonds and romance.

Then she started drawing him out of her mouth one throbbing inch at a time, and he couldn’t think anything at all.

* * *

Miranda smiled around
her mouthful of cock like the Cheshire Cat swan-diving into a vat of cream. Nothing had ever made her feel so deliciously powerful as watching Justice writhe in erotic delight, just from the flick of her tongue.

But as she listened to his deep groans, she reluctantly decided he was a little too close to the edge. It wouldn’t do to let him climax just yet. She released his rosy cock, feeling more than a little smug at his heartfelt groan.
Not bad for a trick I learned from a romance novel.

Before Justice could do more than open his stunned eyes, she rose to her knees, swung a leg across his hips, angled his cock upward with one hand, and sank down. Which was yet another move from one of the erotic romances her mother had forbidden her to read.

Unfortunately, the book hadn’t mentioned that getting a cock correctly aimed was a little more complicated than it sounded. She had to fumble before she found her slick, swollen target with the head. “Ahhh . . .
There
you are.”

“Yeah,” Justice gasped, his eyes a little crazed. “
There
I certainly am.”

Slowly Miranda began to lower herself, letting the thick shaft sink into her tight, slick depths. Stuffing her, stretching her, the sensation raw and overwhelming. He was almost too big, yet pleasure skated on the edge of that pain, shimmering delight following the ache.

The first time they’d made love, her wolf’s hunger had blinded her to everything but her own erotic need. But now Miranda felt every inch of broad, endless cock as she sank lower. And lower. And lower. Until finally her ass nestled against his heavy balls.

She froze there, trying to get used to the feeling of being impaled, breathing in through her nose as she fought the instinct to
get the hell
off
him
. Gradually, as she breathed in the scent of roses and incense, the pain faded, replaced by the slow rise of arousal.

Biting her lip, Miranda blinked down at him. “God. You fill me so full.”

“Well, you are a little . . . tight.” He grinned like a devil. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Neither am I,” she decided. And rose, sliding up his thick length.

Pleasure began to waft like smoke from the slow friction raking along her wet, snug grip. Arousal grew, burning slowly brighter, like the candles that blazed all around them in the gathering dark.

Until she forgot the discomfort of his size. Forgot everything but the sweet, keen delight that intensified with every jog. Warmth grew hotter, building degree by slow degree into burning lust.

Before she knew it, Miranda was riding with furiously rolling hips as Justice bucked beneath her like a half-tamed stallion.

Sliding a skilled finger beneath her sex, he reached up with his free hand to cup her breast. Circling and flicking her stiff clit, he simultaneously teased her nipple while she worked thighs and calves, riding hard, pleasure thundering through her like the beat of hooves.

Fire became firestorm.

Her wolf surfaced with a savage, delighted growl. Justice growled back, sounding every bit as feral.

Miranda ground down on him, the pain gone, loving the thick heat of his cock screwing its way within her wet grip, loving the bolts of delight his fingers teased from clit and nipple. A growl rumbling in his throat, Justice stoked her pleasure higher, higher, higher, a reckless arsonist spraying gasoline over a brushfire.

Her climax detonated, shooting blazing streamers down every nerve she had. Miranda threw back her head and screamed its blinding glory.

A heartbeat later, Justice bellowed in echo. Her body still quivering in the aftermath of her orgasm, she looked down, hungry to watch him come.

He roared again, deafening as a roll of thunder, impossibly deep, inhumanly loud as he soared like a rocket on a tail of flame.

Miranda sucked in a breath, an icy chill cutting through her heat as she watched Justice’s wide, black eyes fill with fire.

And the Wolf.

The black terror of Warlock’s spell choked Miranda like strangling hands clamped around her throat. All too aware of the Wolf looking out through Justice’s eyes, she knew she had to get her panic under control. Fast.

There was nothing that made a predator hungrier than the smell of fear wafting from its prey. She’d have been in deep trouble had she been human. That kind of terror wasn’t something most people could hide.

But Miranda was an old pro when it came to dealing with her emotions and their effect on predators. She’d been only eleven when she realized the scent of her fear brought out the sadist in Warlock. The barest whiff of anxiety or the sound of a heart’s increased beat could inspire her father to acts of demonic creativity.

She’d never been able to avoid feeling fear altogether, though God knew she’d tried. In retrospect, that was no surprise, given Warlock’s fear spell. She’d had to find another way to protect herself.

So Miranda had invented a spell to bleach the stink of adrenaline from her body, while keeping her heart thumping as slow and steady as a clock. She’d only been twelve years old at the time.

Unfortunately, she soon learned the contrast between her panicked brain and calm body was disorienting to the point of being sickening. She avoided using the spell unless she had no choice at all.

Yet Miranda cast it now, just as fast as she could mentally chant the words. She had no choice. If Justice Shifted, she’d be far too close to all those teeth.

So even as Miranda purged the fear from her scent and heartbeat, she smiled sunnily down into the Wolf’s cold, fierce eyes. “I love what you’ve done with the place.” She held her voice cool and steady, despite the howling fear Warlock’s spell induced. “Very romantic.”

The beast faded under a wave of confusion as Justice’s human mind jolted to awareness again. Just as she’d intended. The savage struggle between Wolf and Man flashed across his face like shadows projected on a film screen. Miranda held her breath.

Justice won, thank God.

“You mean all this?” He gestured vaguely at the clearing around them. “I thought you did it.”

“I did the bed,” she told him, relaxing a trifle. “You conjured everything else.”

Which was saying something. They were now surrounded by waterfalls of cream silk and huge silver vases of red roses. Massive sterling silver candelabras illuminated Miranda’s bower with the light from dozens of beeswax candles. A table for two stood a few feet from the bed, filling the air with wafting steam and the scent of blood-rare beef.

Miranda tugged free of Justice’s body, controlling a wince.
I’m going to be sore as hell tomorrow.
As she remembered his explosive reaction, her mouth curled in a private, wicked smile.
But making Justice lose his mind was worth it.

Right now, though, she figured she’d better put a little distance between them, just in case his Wolf gained ascendency over his human half.

FIFTEEN

She sauntered over
to the table, keenly aware of his gaze. Two beautifully engraved silver domes sat across from each other, equally gorgeous silver place settings to either side, arrayed on red linen napkins. In the table’s center stood a crystal vase bursting with two dozen crimson roses, surrounded by a cluster of tall, slim white candles. Beside the table, a magnum of champagne chilled in a sterling silver bucket heaped with ice.

Miranda lifted one of the domes to find a thick rib eye steak steaming beside a huge lobster tail and a small silver bowl of drawn butter. A baked potato and asparagus spears rounded out the meal.

Which was pretty damned close to perfect, at least from a werewolf’s carnivorous point of view. Her mouth watered. “Damn, Justice, this smells delicious.”

He rolled from the bed and padded over to join her, gloriously naked. Miranda paused to admire the view, at least until he stepped behind her to pull out her chair. A little nonplussed, she sat down, and Justice slid the chair into place, as skillfully graceful as any Regency buck.

“Are you sure you didn’t do this?” he asked, turning to tug the champagne bottle from its nest of ice before popping the cork with an efficient flick of one thumb. “Because I don’t have the faintest idea how to go about conjuring all this stuff. For God’s sake, this is a Dom Perignon 1966.” He eyed the front of the bottle. “At least, that’s what the label says.”

“Really?” Miranda watched in interest as he filled a crystal champagne flute with the foaming golden wine. “One of Gerald’s magazines said that year goes for something like two thousand bucks a bottle.”

“Ouch.” He tilted the magnum up, obviously trying to avoid spilling any of it. “My tastes just aren’t that expensive. Not that I’d even know how to conjure a Big Mac . . .”

“Justice,
not
knowing what you’re doing actually makes you a lot more likely to do something like this than I would be.” She cut a bite of her steak and moaned in pleasure. “God, that’s good.”

He frowned as he settled into his own seat. “What do you mean?”

Miranda chewed, enjoying the tender, smoky steak, cooked precisely as she liked it. “Because you don’t think you know how to use magic, you give your subconscious an opening to do what it does best: create. Dream.” She waved her fork. “Make your wishes come true.” Miranda grimaced, remembering one or two magical misadventures she’d had as a child. “And that includes your nightmares. Which is why you’d better get the magic under control before you do something god-awful without meaning to.”

* * *

Justice started, remembering
the thought that had flashed through his mind as she’d made love to him.
She deserves roses.
Candles and diamonds and romance.

Now here they sat, surrounded by candles and roses.

And those dime-sized crystals glittering in the rims of the stemware and china? He had the feeling they weren’t cubic zirconia.

“Damn,” Justice breathed. His hands curled into desperate fists. “Miranda, what the hell do I
do
? How am I supposed to get control of this thing?”

“Well, first you need to create a solid mental image of what you want to conjure. The more detailed, the better. I’m talking the way whatever it is smells, tastes—the works. Then you reach into the Mageverse and gather the magic to conjure it . . .”

“Like you do to Shift?”

“Yep. Same thing. Then you . . .”

They discussed the fine art of conjuring something out of nothing while they worked their way through dinner. “You know,” Justice paused to finish off his glass of champagne. “We haven’t reported in to Arthur. He’s going to be pissed.”

Miranda snorted. “Tough. I was kind of busy trying not to get eaten.”

Justice winced, managed a smile. “I’m not sure he’ll accept that as an excuse. He doesn’t strike me as . . .”

“My Wolf!”
The voice blasted through his brain, so shatteringly loud, he instinctively clapped his hands over his ears.
“My Hunter Prince, he has killed them all. Help me!”

“
Maeve!” He reeled to his feet, the goddess’s urgency driving him like a cattle prod. “She needs us—
now
. I hear her calling, and she sounds frantic.”

Miranda rose so fast, she knocked over her glass of very expensive champagne. Neither of them noticed as the foaming liquid spilled across the table. “What happened?” A flick of her fingers conjured armor for them both, identical to the suits she’d created before.

Even as the gleaming steel materialized around her, Miranda hurried back to the bed to collect their weapons. Picking up the axe in its harness, she tossed it to Justice, who caught it neatly out of the air. “Did she tell you what’s going on?”

“No. All I got was an impression of fear and rage.” He slung the axe harness around his armored torso, shrugged it into place, and buckled the straps. “And I can’t even imagine what would get that kind of reaction from the Mother of Fairies.”

“Doesn’t sound good, that’s for damned sure.” Miranda scooped up her athame and slid it into the sheath she conjured around her waist. “Do you know where she is?”

“Yeah, she sent me a . . .” Justice paused, groping for words to describe the magical knowledge now shimmering in his brain. “. . . Well, something like GPS coordinates.” He gestured, creating a point of magical energy that instantly expanded into a wavering oval. “Through here.”

It didn’t occur to Justice that he had no idea how to create such a portal until they’d already stepped through it. “How did I do that?” Frowning, he stared over his shoulder as the gate vanished like a popping soap bubble.

“Oh, Jesus,” Miranda whispered, such horror in her voice that he forgot the mystery and spun into a crouch, ready to defend her.

It should have been a pretty place: a leafy forest pool fed at one end by a foaming waterfall that tumbled down the black, rocky face of a cliff. Trees surrounded the clearing, bright with autumn glory in the golden spill of morning sunlight.

Warlock had turned the bucolic setting into a scene of mass murder.

Corpses lay curled on the forest floor surrounding the churning waterfall pool. Most of them had been bound, either with ropes or chains of enchanted steel. Wounds gaped in throats and chests, and drying blood in a dozen alien shades splashed the lush soil.

Just a few feet away, a unicorn sprawled on its side, cloven hooves hog-tied, its snowy throat slashed so deeply, its horned head was almost severed from its neck.

A nine-foot corpse sprawled nearby, brawny limbs lax in his bonds, skin the gray green of moss matching the bushy thick green beard. The—man’s?—huge biceps bulged, his wrists manacled behind his back, a length of chain binding them to his chained ankles. Apart from a massive gold helm, he was naked, and was definitely a “he.” Horrific wounds slashed his skin like gaping purple mouths, and a lake of violet blood surrounded him.

A small gold dragon—only about ten feet long, which made it a child by dragonkind standards—lay on the opposite side of the pool. Its scaled head had been hacked from its neck. Justice winced, imagining the grief of its parents.

All around the larger corpses lay tiny bodies he first mistook for dead dragonflies because of their shimmering, transparent wings. When he looked closer, Justice realized the bodies between those wings were unmistakably human, though only a few inches in height. These must be the Demi-Sidhe he’d heard Belle mention; magical beings who were genetic cousins to King Llyr’s Sidhe.

Walking among the carnage, Justice saw each of the tiny bodies had been stabbed by a thin blade. An ice pick, maybe, or a stiletto . . .

“My God.” Miranda sounded hoarse with horror. “Warlock has gone completely insane.”

“I don’t think so.” Justice crouched on his heels to examine the huge green victim. “Look at how deliberately this one was stabbed. Each wound is roughly the same depth, the same width, as if they’d been punched by a machine. There’s no sign of the crazed emotion you’d see in a serial murder. This killer was as businesslike as a farmer slaughtering a pig.”

“But don’t you sense the
evil
here, Justice?” She gestured at the bloody chaos around them. “The whole clearing reeks with it.”

He shrugged. “Oh, this was definitely an evil act. But it wasn’t an act of passion.”

Justice rose to his feet and continued around the clearing, examining the scene with the analytical eye of the homicide cop he’d once been.

Had it not been for all the bloodshed, the clearing would have been breathtaking in its natural beauty. Huge mounds of blossoms surrounded the trees with flaming petals of crimson, orange, and gold. Their delicate perfume battled the smell of blood and the overwhelming reek of evil.

In the center of the clearing lay a pool ringed with flowering plants and foaming around the foot of a waterfall. The falls danced down the black, craggy face of cliff, filling the air with the thunder of falling water.

But just as intense as the sound was the sense of pounding power coming from somewhere overhead. Justice looked up, following the bouncing tumble of the water. Just above the point where the falls tumbled over the cliff, the wavering oval of a dimensional gate hovered like a ghost.

It was like no other gate he’d ever seen. Most portals were as unstable as soap bubbles. This one hung suspended in an energy lattice as solid as the crystalline structure of a diamond.

Energy poured through the opening, blazing with such intensity, it infused the water flowing past the gate with magic. But definitely not a magic native to the Mageverse. This was a force more primal than that, more alien—and far more powerful. It was as if someone had opened a gate to the birthplace of creation. Gazing up into the wavering oval, Justice felt the skin creep on the back of his neck with an almost religious awe.

By rights, a pool fed by such fantastic power should have blazed to his senses like a star. Instead, the water . . .
stank
. It wasn’t a physical stench—more a psychic reek, as if the murders committed around the pool had polluted it with a flood of sewage.

“Death magic,” Miranda said, her voice low, choked. “All these people were human sacrifices in a death magic spell.”

Justice turned to find her crouching over something in the thick underbrush. Moving to join her, he looked down at the ground she stared at so intently. “I don’t see anything.”

“Not with your eyes.” She shot him an impatient glance. “Use your magical senses.”

Justice let his eyes slide out of focus and concentrated. Viking runes suddenly appeared, glowing blue on the rich black soil, following a long, curving arc that circled the entire clearing.

The smell of death abruptly intensified until he gagged, damn near losing his lunch at a crime scene for the first time since he’d been a rookie. “God, what
is
that smell?”

“Like I said, death magic.” Miranda rose and wiped her hands on the leaves of a nearby plant, grimacing like someone who’d put a palm down in shit. “Going by the runes, I’d say the spell was designed to funnel these beings’ power and life force into my father. Which would mean an exponential increase in the magic he can command.”

Fighting his gag reflex, Justice breathed deep, trying to judge the degree of decomposition in the stench. “I don’t think any of these poor bastards have been dead more than a few hours. If that’s the case . . .”

Miranda nodded, her expression grim. “. . . Warlock is a lot stronger now than he was even a few hours ago.”

“It’s far worse than that,” Maeve said, her voice icy with rage. “Warlock fed on more than just these innocents’ pitiful lives.”

Justice glanced around as the Sidhe goddess emerged from a stand of thick brush on the edge of the clearing. She wore the tall form of her goddess persona, now dressed in armor forged from emerald metal. The limp body of a cougar lay draped over her mailed arms. The cat’s thick fur was smeared with blood from a slashed throat.

“Is that the cat we saw talking to you earlier?” Miranda asked, moving closer to look down at the animal. “The one you sent to the King of Trolls?”

“Yes, my messenger, Erielhonan. And that’s King Dovregubben himself.” Maeve nodded grimly toward the huge green corpse. “Apparently, Warlock’s Beasts ambushed the two when they arrived here to discuss the new sword I was to make for the Troll King. When I felt Erielhonan give his life, I gated here hoping to avenge him. Unfortunately, I could not overcome Warlock’s monsters.”

“What?” Miranda gaped at her, horrified. “But you have so much power . . .”

“Not enough. Not since Warlock used some of these sacrifices to strengthen his Beasts.” She gestured at the pitiful corpses. Her eyes glowed hot with magic and rage. “The sorcerer cut Dovregubben’s throat as I fought to get through the shield he’d raised. I could only watch as he syphoned away not only Dovregubben’s power, but the magic of his kingship.”

“Oh, hell,” Justice growled, his stomach sinking.
Yeah, we’re fucked.

“That’s not even the worst of it.” A cluster of ferns rustled behind Maeve, and Guinness emerged from the leafy emerald fronds. “The spell—and the sacrifices that fed it—were designed to augment Warlock’s power with the pool’s magical energy.”

“Which for centuries has been fed by the Elementalverse.” Maeve moved to kneel beside the pool, laying the cougar on the ground as tenderly as a mother putting her child to bed. “That adds up to a great deal of power for the thieves.”

Justice gazed up at the gate. “What exactly is this . . . Elementalverse?”

She glanced around at him. “A dimension parallel to this one, a universe where magic is an even more powerful force than it is here. My familiars—”

“Me, for one,” Guinness put in.

“—were creatures of pure magic who fled the warring gods there.”

“I’m not sure I’d call them gods, exactly,” the dog said thoughtfully. “But they were extremely powerful, and vicious as demons. They’d have killed us all if we hadn’t fled through that gate.” He wrinkled his muzzle in a grimace. “From the frying pan into the fire. We were all creatures of pure magic, you see, and the alien magic here threatened to tear us apart.”