Page 79 of Dangerous Heat

“I’ve got fae magic,” he countered, but didn’t give the weapon back.

“You don’t seem to use it much.”

That was as far as the conversation got before an attacker slipped beneath Shan’s wings and came for us. With teamwork that was surprisingly flawless, considering how many issues we’d had personally, I cast a spell to freeze him in his tracks and Cas used the sword to pierce through his heart. For a vampire, that was enough to cause instantaneous death.

Another one got through, and I opened my mouth to start the same process when pain sliced through me, setting every one of my nerve endings on fire. It took me a second to register where the pain was coming from — nothing had touched me. When I figured it out, I let out an involuntary blood-curdling scream.

This wasn’t my pain, it was Ozzy’s.

My familiar was dying, and I wasn’t with him.

Shan glanced over his shoulder at me in shock, losing his focus for long enough to create a break in his barrier. All the attackers pushed around him, but all I could see was red. I darted forward and whirled around, disarming one of the front-line men and stealing his dagger for myself.

Oswald couldn’t come to me. If I summoned him, it would use a tiny amount of his magic and he might need that to save himself. I had reach him through any means necessary.

“Freya,” Shan said in warning, but I was no longer listening.

Even the discomfort from being in heat was gone, every inch of my body focusing on one thing. I used the dagger to slice off the hand of an attacker, and his scream was almost as loud as mine had been. Robotically, I moved on to the next one, hacking and slashing and whispering spells under my breath. Pain seared along my side when a blade grazed me, but it was nothing compared to the overarching pain in my entire body.

If I created a break in the attack, I’d have a second to draw up a portal and bring us to Oswald in seconds.

Recovering from their shock, Shan and Cas were covering me now, each holding a stolen blade. A few of the attacking men fled before we could get to them, and we made quick work of the rest. When there were only a few left, I stuffed the dagger haphazardly into the waistband of my pants and used the pen to draw runes faster than I’d ever drawn them before.

“Go,” I demanded of Cas when the portal swirled with a purple glow.

He listened without question, and Shan followed his lead. I was behind them a second later, but the scene I stepped into wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

Nine or so male bodies littered the floor of a suite similar to ours. Each one appeared dead, but there wasn’t enough blood for me to be certain of that. In the hallway toward the front door, Oswald lay on the floor, small body seeping blood with an arrow sticking out of him. Nolan was on his knees beside him, wide-eyed.

None of that was the weirdest part.

The unexpected part of the scene was the witch standing in the middle of the bodies, cackling. She sounded like witches did in the Null stories; gleeful over the chaos and destruction she was in the middle of. I wanted to attack her, but avoided letting my emotions overwhelm me. Instead, I grit my teeth and stormed over to Oswald.

“What the fuck happened?” I barked.

Nolan didn’t answer right away, looking between me and the other witch. When I reached out to touch Oswald, his body temperature wasn’t right. I muttered a spell and shot some healing magic at him, but it skittered away and did nothing to help.

“Tell me right the fuck now, Nolan, or so help me…”

“He jumped in front of me,” he said, voice faint.

My heart stopped and I looked over. “Why would he do that? It’s much less dangerous for you to be hit by an arrow.”

“It was going to kill me. The men had me held in place, and the archer’s aim was true. I would have died, but he…”

“How are all these men dead, then?”

He nodded his head toward the witch, who had stopped laughing and was looking at us and twirling a strand of her hair. Despite the cackle resembling Null stories, she was pretty and didn’t look old. There was something in her vibrant green eyes, though, and I got the feeling she was older in years than all of us combined.

“You must be the witch he’s bound himself too,” she said, grinning at me. Shan and Cas moved closer, surrounding us. “I have to admit, when I cursed Oswald I assumed he would give his life to save his witch, and not some other man. Meeting you now, I can see why he never would have gotten the opportunity to give his life to save you. You’re formidable, dear. Will be even more so when you give in and take the energy you need from your mates.”

“What are you talking about?” I demanded, not keen to have this conversation while Ozzy was dying beside me. With my efforts failing, though, I knew I couldn’t save his life on my own. “You’re the one who cursed him?”

“Obviously. His last act in life brought me right to him. I was in the middle of a great showing of Cirque du Soleil, too. Whatever. This is the downside of placing curses on people, I suppose. Always needing to be available if they meet the conditions to break them.”

“Meet the conditions to break the curse? What help with that be for him? Can’t you see he’s dying?”

My anger was morphing into desperation, and I fought the way my voice wanted to crack. Being in heat made my emotions erratic, flip-flopping between highs and lows.

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