He flexed his hands lightly and consulted his wolf. This morning at Angus’s house, where he had so nearly lost control, so nearly slayed Angus’s second, he would never have considered this path. But in Ruby’s presence, his wolf had been healed, and with an able partner...
Yes, agreed the wolf.
“He’s not Alan,” said Ruby, answering her captor’s question, her voice taut, her eyes wild—though she did not struggle against the hold the fae had on her. “It doesn’t matter who he is. I will go with you if you leave him—leave them be.”
She was trying to protect him. His wolf all but purred—though he liked the idea of the fae touching Ruby no better than Asil did.
“No, I’m not Alan,” said Asil in pleasant tones that would have sent anyone who knew him running for cover. “You may call me Mr. Moreno.”
His last name was not well known because he had used it for less than a century. His prey would not know he was the Moor—would not fear him properly.
Montgomery Clift’s famous lips smiled. “You may call me Mr. Smith, then.”
“His name is Ivory Jim,” Ruby told Asil, and winced as the fae clamped his fingers down with punishing strength.
She didn’t know why she’d bothered correcting him. Asil was neither fae nor a magic user who might be able to use a true name to lend more power to his spells. Maybe it was because Ivory Jim was here—and saying or thinking his name would not call his attention to her more than it already was.
“Ivory Jim,” purred Asil, smiling with white teeth. “I am so happy to meet you.”
And then he moved.
Everything happened so fast she never could remember exactly what Asil did. She wasn’t sure she even caught anything with her eyes—it was like living through a stop-motion scene. One instant she was trapped beneath Ivory Jim’s hands. She heard a great booming sound. Then she was free, still in the entryway of the reception room, but facing the opposite direction she had been, as if she had simply turned around, though she had done nothing of the sort. In front of her was the entry hall, large enough to hold several dozen guests at once, but now holding only Asil and Ivory Jim.
Ivory Jim was scrambling to his feet, having apparently been flung into the sturdy front door—possibly the source of the sound she had heard. Asil waited for him, his back to the doorway of the formal dining room. His eyes shone bright gold in the complex light of the stained-glass windows—for that moment, the uncanny beauty of his face looked almost savage.
“Watch out, Asil,” called Alan from the stairs, where all of herpeople gathered on the landing halfway between the second floor and the first. “Magic attack.”
And at Alan’s warning, she realized why Asil’s pose worried her. His only chance was to keep this physical—and he had given Ivory Jim time to gather magic. Asil covered his eyes before the invisible blow struck him—and then the magic became visible as his body jerked taut. For the length of a lightning strike, Asil glowed with a brilliant blue light.
She could smell burnt flesh and ozone as Asil’s body dropped to the ground—a smoking, blackened heap that still, unbelievably, moved. With a crunch of skin or fabric, Asil lifted his head and looked toward the stairway.
“Alan Choo,” he said out of a mouth that was blistered and bleeding, his voice a rough sandpaper roar, “keep those people back and safe.”
Ruby looked at the stairs, too. Asil’s words had caught Alan as he leaped off the landing. The impact of the command looked almost as if Alan’d been hit in midair by a baseball bat. He was already spinning around as his feet hit the ground and he rebounded back up to the landing like a gymnast on a springboard.
The distraction gave Ivory Jim time to hit Asil with a second blast. Her nemesis strode forward, a smile growing on his face as he closed in on Asil. Ruby caught a flicker of movement—and then Dusty threw himself at Ivory Jim’s feet. The fae stumbled, his magic faltering and dying with the distraction. Dusty disappeared from the floor and his cold presence resonated from just behind Ruby—as if he’d taken refuge.
Ivory Jim snarled and reached one hand out toward Ruby—and she felt the razor-pain as he stole her magic wholesale. Stole it to kill Asil. The beautiful man whom she had helped lure here—because he helped those weaker than himself.
She stared at Asil’s scorched body—naked now with clothing burned away and blistered skin still bubbling in reaction to the last strike of magic. Impossibly, his eyes opened and met hers. She was sure there was some message in them, but she could not read it.
Ivory Jim had come again. Had captured her again. He was going to use her magic to kill a man who had done nothing except offer to help her.
She would not, could not let that happen.
Asil prepared to defend himself. He would give Ruby one more strike—and then he would do what he had to do. But as he met her eyes, he saw his intervention might not be necessary.
It began in the pupil of her eye. The black expanded and then reshaped itself until it was slitted like a cat’s eye. Then the ice blue of her iris darkened to deep velvet gray. The color did not stop there, rolling over her skin and hair and clothing as if an ocean wave had drenched her with gray rather than water—though he could smell water in the room now, as if his thoughts had brought it to life.
There was awhoompin the room, the sound of her magic freeing itself from its bindings. It made his chest tight as if a heavy weather system had just made itself felt in the room—like a forming tornado.
Asil, not one to forget his enemy, glanced at Ivory Jim. A flicker caught his eye—and thirteen steel knives apparated in front of the fae before flashing into motion and burying themselves in the fae’s body. Blood burst from the wounds as Ivory Jim looked down at himself in surprise. Stainless steel was as fatal to the fae as cold iron, and the fae’s knees buckled.
Asil moved, rolling off the floor, crossing the room andgrabbing the dying fae without wasting any effort on gentleness. He tossed the body onto a carpet—one he was fairly sure was a reproduction of an antique.
The floor in the entryway was parquet—if blood spilled on the wood, it might ruin it. The craftsmanship of the people who’d fitted that floor made it as much a piece of art as anything in the Victorian mansion, and he would not let it be damaged if he could help it.
Asil’s burnt skin cracked as he moved, but he was not concerned. He was powerful, he had been hurt worse before—he would heal. He looked at the floor—there were a few drops of blood, but not so much it would soak into the wood through the finish.
