Page 24 of The Alpha's Warlock
Freckles raised his eyebrows. “Eighties movies. Very nice.” He sounded mildly respectful for the first time since he’d popped up out of the woods like an asshole. “I doubt your schwartz is bigger than Dor’s, but stranger proportions have been known to exist in nature. That aside.” He smiled a little private smile, one that was definitely aimed at Dor, and not at me. I looked back and forth between the two of them. Dor had his lips pressed tight together and an angry furrow between his eyebrows. Jesus. I hoped I didn’t need to find out any more than that about whatever was going on between those two. “I want to talk to you. Both of you. And I think I can provide some information about your current predicament in return, not to mention a quick exit from this miserable bit of wilderness. We can talk somewhere more comfortable.”
“Back off first,” Ian said. “I mean it. I want Nate out of range of that sword before we agree to anything.”
Dor and Freckles exchanged a speaking glance, and then Dor ambled away a few steps and sat down on a rock, leaning back and tipping his face up to the watery sunlight. Ian seemed to wilt a little in the face of Dor’s perfect, insulting nonchalance. He lowered his hands, and he retracted his fangs enough to look almost human.
“I’m sorry,” Freckles said. “I’ve been remiss. I’m Charlie Fenwick. Nate, you might know me better as ‘that fucking cocksucking bloodsucker that tried to kill me,’ which is what your dear departed father used to call me, I understand, with his usual eloquence.”
“You’re a vampire,” Ian said. “You’re a vampire? You don’t smell like one.”
Charlie looked down his nose at us, a gesture he shouldn’t have been able to make work with the nose he had, pert and freckled as it was. “Rude. And your mate’s not the only one who’s able to use magic for concealment. The difference being, Dor’s works better.”
I listened to them with half an ear, my mind whirring away. My father had carefully, even obsessively, avoided going into Lancaster, a larger town than ours about forty miles away. I’d always known it was because he had a history with Lancaster’s one and only supernatural bigwig: a vampire with a strange bodyguard no one could properly identify.
Apparently they’d never considered the possibility of magic ninjas. “Did you really try to kill him?” I asked. Charlie cut off abruptly; I’d interrupted him, and I wasn’t even sure what he’d been saying.
“Yes,” Charlie said after a beat. “I only have one regret. I’m sure you can guess what it is.”
“Nate,” Ian said out of the corner of his mouth, although why he thought that would help given a vampire’s supernatural hearing, I didn’t know. “If he tried to kill your father, we can’t trust him.”
“Are you listening to yourself? Aside from the question of, whodidn’ttry to kill my father at some point, can you really blame him?”
Ian blinked at me. “Yeah. Okay. Fair point.”
“Anyway, if he’s the vamp I think he is, there’s really no point in trying to fight him. He’s like a million years old.” Vampires grew stronger and stronger the longer they aged, becoming immune to strong sunlight and silver and gaining a variety of mental powers, and this one had Dor and his sword, to boot. Did I want to follow scary Tweedledum and scarier Tweedledee to wherever they wanted to take us? No. Did I want to stand here in the woods without a working phone or a plan? Also no. Did I think they could beat us in a fight? Definitely yes, but I knew better than to say that out loud in front of Ian. We probably didn’t have much choice, and the choices we did have all sucked. “Trying to off my father’s more of a feature than a bug,” I said to Charlie. “We’ll come with you. But keep your swords and fangs where we can see them.”
Charlie nodded. “Deal. Dor? Lead the way.”
Dor unfolded from his boulder, stood still with his eyes closed for a moment, and then reached out his hand, curling and turning it as if he were opening a doorknob, even though there was nothing there.
Except there was. I saw it first with my magical sense, a faint ripple and twist in the fabric of mundane reality; then it became visible to my eyes, a crack of emptiness like someone had drawn across the world in front of me with a black marker. The gap widened until it was big enough to walk through. Unless you were Ian — then you’d need to turn sideways. I still didn’t know what the hell Dor was, but my respect and my fear both cranked up a notch. That was some serious magic, and it wasn’t human magic, either.
“Is that why he calls you Door? Because that’s all you’re useful for?” Ian asked, gaping at the magical gateway. I winced, but it was too late. Dor and Charlie were already both staring at him like he’d grown a second head, and that head was drooling on itself.
I opened my mouth to try to do damage control, something likeI apologize for my mate being a moron, but Charlie beat me to it. “Do you call your little warlock ‘Unimpressive Finger Lightning’?” he asked coldly.
Since my mouth was already open, the words just fell out. “Okay, first? Fuck you. And second,you’recallingmelittle? I’ve met gnomes taller than you!”
A heavy silence fell. I saw a glint between Charlie’s lips; his fangs were dropping. Oh, shit. Ian saw it too, and a low growl vibrated out of his chest.
“It’s short for Doran,” Dor said, as calmly as if there weren’t multiple magical creatures about to go for blood in his immediate vicinity. “And if you’re done letting them bring you down to their level, Fenwick, maybe you could go through first so they know it’s not a trick.”
Charlie’s pale, freckled face flushed bright red, and for a second I thought there’d be blood after all. “Fine,” he said at last. “Fine.” And he flounced through the dark doorway and was gone.
“After you,” Dor said, with a wave of his hand. “I have to go last, to close it.”
Ian looked back and forth between the dark crack in reality, me, and the who-knows-what with the big sword. He was clearly struggling with the choice of either sending me through the gateway first, leaving me alone with whatever was on the other side — which would include, at the least, a seriously pissed-off vamp who was way out of my league in a fight — or walking through first himself and leaving me with Dor instead.
“Come on,” I said, taking pity on his warring alpha instincts. “Put your arm around me and we’ll squeeze through together.”
Ian instantly wrapped his arm around my waist so tightly I almost couldn’t breathe, and tucked me against his side, carefully keeping me on the side of him away from Dor.
We awkwardly shuffled past and then hesitated in front of the opening. I pressed myself up against Ian as close as I could, and we had to turn sideways, just as I’d predicted. Like that, we stepped through together.
Chapter 15
Out of the Frying Pan…
“A cocktail lounge?” Whatever I’d been expecting when I stepped through Dor’s door, it wasn’t booths upholstered in blood-red velveteen, a long polished-wood bar, and a small stage set with a microphone and a chair. I would’ve just called it a bar — I mean, I didn’t have any pretentions to being Frank Sinatra — except thatRuby’s Cocktail Loungewas written on the wall over the bar in loopy gold script. “Seriously? And where are we?”
