“Is that so?”
He throws me on my bed. “Starting with just how naughty we can get inourbedroom. Now spread your thighs for me, beautiful, so I can feast on you some more before making you scream.”
Oh boy.
Chapter Sixteen
Tiptoeing around a grenade doesn’t make it any less deadly.
The sun rose and with it came a new sensation. I was content, loved, and happy. Yes, the world around us was a shit show, and I suspected it was about to get a lot worse, but I was no longer alone. Hudson Abbot had climbed inside my soul and made his home there, but I had also done the same. There was an invisible thread that linked us together, as fine as silk and as strong as steel.
My mind churned over the events of the last few days. I’d missed something fundamental, and now it became solidified, as clear as the Louisiana sunshine.
“What are you thinking?” Hudson asked from next to me. He’d not changed his breathing or opened his eyes. I wasn’t even aware he was awake.
I twisted in the sheets to turn to him. He was sexy in the morning with rumpled hair and a relaxed face. My eyes drifted down his body, his very naked body. I was pleasantly achy and totally relaxed, but that feeling was about to disappear. Perhaps this is what life is about? Catching the moments we had and using them to form memories to cling to when shit gets serious. I vowed to make room for as many of these moments as possible.
His eyes flipped open as he caught me ogling him. Bah, I was a red-blooded woman and he was all mine, this wasn’t a crime. His mouth curled in a very cat-like grin, self-assured and satisfied.
“The Datura,” I started. It was time to return to reality, at least for a little while.
“What about it?”
“We’ve discovered that it is being used as a delivery method for magic.”
“That’s right.”
“But we aren’t asking the fundamental question.”
“Who is the magic for and why?”
I shook my head as his fingers trailed patterns over the swell of my breasts. “No, magic is a constant, like energy. And what is the golden rule of energy?”
Hudson’s fingers paused and he frowned. “It cannot be created nor destroyed.”
“Exactly. So the question is—where is this magic being drawn from? It isn’t a small amount you could siphon from nature, this magic packs a punch, big enough to infect an entire town.”
“What holds that kind of magic?” he asked.
“The factions. Humans hold a little, vampires more. Shifters share their magic with animals and nature, which puts them higher up on the totem pole. But elementals are at the top.”
“You think your grandmother is stealing magic from her own kind?”
I shrugged even as a cold tingling ran its icy fingers down my spine. “That would be the most logical conclusion.”
“How would she do that? Kill them?”
I swallowed the knot in my throat and shook my head. “No, that would make the magic hard to contain, it would naturally want to return to the earth.”
The horror of what she might be doing made my blood boil. “How then?” Hudson pushed.
“There are rituals, painful and horrific ones, that she can do to remove the magic from the source. If she keeps them alive, their magic will remain in the air, easier to collect and redirect.”
“Perhaps that is what she wants from the vaults?”
The wards clanged in my mind and I grimaced. We were about to find out.
***
