Obsidian Magic (Legacy Series Book 2) Read online

  I never expected them to go away. She was sitting across from a person whose kind had nearly killed off the world, who possessed magic so strong it had ravaged the country and had taken an army of supernaturals to stop. In a sordid way, I was the face of death. A reminder of a bleak part of our history that had irreparably damaged the world and left a new one in its wake—a reminder who was sitting across from her eating mac and cheese.

  “Do you think I’m a witch?”

  I really wasn’t expecting that to be her next question.

  She seemed optimistically hopeful, so I took a long time to answer, giving the appearance that I was carefully considering the question. I had no idea why she thought that. There wasn’t anything magical about her except for her ability to be perky before sunrise without the help of caffeine. In my book that made her some kind of wizard.

  “Why do you think you might be a witch?”

  “The Cleanse revealed that there were a lot of people who possessed dormant magic. But I don’t think mine is dormant. I feel different, like there’s something awakening.”

  “Do you think it’s your taste buds trying to escape?” I offered with a sly smile.

  “I’m serious, Levy.”

  There wasn’t anything there, but I played along because she needed it. Before, she’d had a casual relationship with the supernatural world, nothing more than her fawning over vampires at a club and her weird obsession with the Master of the city.

  “We can find out. There is a witch I know who can help you.” It was a futile attempt, but if she needed to get a definite answer, I would help even if the answer was no.

  More energetic than usual, she looked at the clock and jumped up. “We should start getting dressed soon.”

  “Dressed?”

  “We’re going to Devour tonight, remember? As Lucas’s guests.”

  I moaned inwardly. I didn’t want to go to Devour; at least Crimson, previously her favorite vampire bar, was tolerable. But Devour was frequented by older vampires, skilled in the art of seduction, and sometimes their presence was an invitation very hard to decline. It was a hedonistic den of pleasure and sin and humans lined up around the block to be one of the chosen few to get in. Savannah was often besotted by the baby vamps in Crimson; she wouldn’t stand a chance in Devour.

  I really wanted to just rest and get an early start on tracking down Conner.

  “I can go alone. I’ll be fine, Lucas will be there,” she suggested.

  Yeah, of course you’ll be fine with the very man who’s responsible for siring most of the vamps who populate that haven of choices you’ll regret in the morning. I wasn’t letting her go within a foot of that place without me. I took my job as vampire blocker quite seriously.

  “Of course. Yay, vampire bar. Hot zombies, let’s do this.” I gave her a little dance of excitement.

  “No one thinks you’re funny,” she said, standing to head for her room.

  “That’s that second time I’ve heard that today.”

  She turned to face me and winked. “And yet you think you are.”

  The moment we walked into Devour, I turned to Savannah and combed her hair forward, draping the long blond waves over her neck and shoulders. “You’re being ridiculous again. They’re not rabid animals.”

  “They’re not, but at least make them work for it. Instead you’re putting all your goods out on display and decorating to draw attention.” I pointed at the black halter she wore and the choker secured around her neck. Adding the formfitting black jeans and three-inch red heels, Savannah looked more in place than I did. She’d made me take off the scarf even after I’d pointed out how well it complemented my peach tank and dark jeans. I didn’t fancy walking on stilts so I’d settled on a pair of one-inch heels, which Savannah didn’t mind. With our shoe choices, I didn’t tower over her as I usually did.

  She scanned the room, and it didn’t take long before she’d garnered a great deal of one vamp’s attention. His dark eyes narrowed and the odd silver ring that circled all vampires’ eyes danced in his. He moved with the lissome grace of most vampires, sinuous and seductive. His hair was just as dark as his eyes, and broad winged cheeks and defined rugged features made him the best prospect for a lot of women who were ready to make a host of regrettable decisions. Savannah saw a provocative, smiling man approaching us; I saw a predator with a fork and napkin tucked in his shirt ready to chow down.

  He was just feet from us and I was prepared to tell him to go right back where he came from when Lucas appeared from the right. I waved at him, and he smiled. His fair hair was several shades lighter than Savannah’s but was an appealing contrast to his dark eyes. Chiseled classically handsome features definitely made him fawn-worthy. He was dressed as usual in a slim-fitting suit that accentuated his sleek and sinewy physique.

  He cut his eyes at the approaching vamp, who stopped midstride and turned casually, looking over the crowd of women willing to fall on that sword and take Savannah’s place.

  She smiled at Lucas and gave him a little wave. I wasn’t sure which vamp was the better choice, but at least Lucas was the devil that I knew. He seemed to care about her safety but he was still a vamp—who fed from humans to survive, was capable of having incidents of bloodlust, was strong and fast and hard to defeat when driven to anger. And the Master of the city and a member of the Magic Council. Things that Savannah didn’t care about—but I did.

  The moment he approached her, he kissed her on the cheek. But there wasn’t anything chaste or innocent about it or the embrace that followed. Seriously, how do you make a cheek kiss dirty?

  “Olivia.” He smiled and sidestepped Savannah, and just before he could treat me to one of his inappropriate hugs and the vamp version of a cheek kiss I shoved out my hand to shake his. He chuckled, a dark melodious sound, and took it and pressed it to his lips. Coolness brushed against my hand, and his lips still beveled into a miscreant smile as he pulled away.

  My gaze drifted from his over to Savannah, who was clearly in swoon mode. And there wasn’t a fainting couch in sight in the modern-chic club. After getting us drinks, Lucas took Savannah by the hand and guided her through the club, stopping to talk to the many guests. Devour was darker than most clubs. Tiny decorative pendant lights gave off just enough illumination to see the details of the deep gray walls and the black, cream, and burgundy leather seating scattered throughout. Small tables were placed along the walls near the entrance and two in each corner. The corners faded into darkness and I could barely see the people cradled into them. One in eyeshot had a vampire feeding. A female vamp wrapped around a man, her face nestled into the curve of his neck. I glanced across the room, and in another corner was a similar scene, but the body part choice was the arm.

  I scanned the club and tried to get a visual on Savannah. The last time we’d been at a vamp bar, she’d been attacked, but while she seemed to have moved on, I hadn’t. When I reminded her of it, she simply dismissed me with a wave of her hand and said, “They were being controlled by someone. We’ll be fine.”

  The good thing about the bar was that no one seemed to hang around, so I had a perfect view of Savannah, who was just feet away from me. As more people came in, we became more divided by stretches of bodies. And the more people came in, the more I had to keep reassessing the best way to get to Savannah if things went awry, or how we could get to an exit. It wasn’t just being in a vamp club that made me think like that. I always did it, and once again I found myself thinking about Kalen’s words: behind every good fighter there was a “tragic story.”

  “Is this how you like to spend your nights, watching Savannah have fun?”

  I turned to find Gareth standing next to me; even in the nearly dark room his light blue eyes seemed bright and enhanced by the cobalt shifter ring that wrapped around his pupils. His lips kinked into a smile.

  “Are you stalking me?”

  He leaned in, his nose just inches from me before he inhaled. “Remember, I know your scent—I can f
ind you anywhere in the city.”

  “Right, because telling me that just made this situation less creepy,” I said, sidestepping him. He moved closer to the bar and ordered a drink.

  He took a couple of sips before he directed his attention to me. “Do you want me to leave?” He gave me an assessing look and I wondered if what he saw was appealing as what I saw. I really didn’t want to admit that he was handsome—okay, gorgeous, and it would be nice if he pretended he didn’t know it for five seconds. The little uptick in his lips took self-righteous arrogance to a different level. I could do without that, too. Once again, I caught myself staring.

  “You didn’t answer my question. Is this how you usually spend your nights, letting Savannah have all the fun?”

  I mumbled as I brought my drink to my mouth, “Apparently I also spend it being followed by a pesky kitten.”

  He laughed. “I take it you would like to hear me purr.”

  I frowned. “Are you proud of that one?”

  The half-smile remained as he took another sip from his glass. “I have to make do with what you give me to work with.”

  “The better question is not how I spend my nights but why you are spending it here in a vamp bar. Don’t you shifters have a rep to protect? Being here, in a vamp bar, definitely isn’t a shifter thing to do.”

  “I didn’t have any pressing plans and when Savannah invited me, I thought it would be fun to see you in a different setting.”

  “Instead of jail, in front of the Magic Council, or in front of a supercilious Supernatural Guild leader whose go-to line is ‘I’m going to arrest you.’” I could feel his eyes on me but I had diverted mine to the room as I looked for Savannah. When our eyes met, mine narrowed into a scope, and fixed on her. I am going to get you for this.

  With a coy look of innocence, she smiled and waved. Savannah and I had been friends long enough and she knew my “I’m going to kill you” look. She ignored it and turned away from me and continued her conversation with Lucas and the group.

  “You don’t like your drink?” Gareth asked, looking at my full glass.

  “I do, but I like to stay sober.” One drink wouldn’t bother me, but I didn’t like to have my senses dulled around a bunch of vampires, some of whom were ogling me from across the room. A few had already asked for a nibble, and I was sure they weren’t talking about hors d’oeuvres, and there were a select few who kept trying to get me to hold contact. That was how they were able to compel you. It was illegal, but they weren’t going to let a little thing like that keep them from having a good time in the den of sin.

  We both looked in Savannah’s direction, watching her with Lucas. They didn’t behave like they were people who had met less than a week ago. But most people didn’t behave that way with Savannah because she was so personable.

  “I’m sure if you are unable to drive home, Lucas will make sure you two are taken care of,” he offered in a low voice with a hint of restrained disdain.

  “What’s the deal with you and Lucas?” I didn’t think they hated each other, but there was something strained about their interaction. There was an obvious undertone of the need to be dominant that plagued the interactions between vampires and shifters. Lucas, being the Master of the city, commanded a certain level of consideration and concession from Gareth, and Gareth’s position as head of the Supernatural Guild afforded him a level of authority over Lucas that seemed to cause conflict between the two of them.

  “I like Lucas just fine,” he said after a long drink and several moments of silence. I guessed he needed to numb his lips before the lie passed them.

  I didn’t have to be able to smell or detect a lie to know that was a big one.

  While Gareth’s attention was on Lucas, I found my attention on Gareth, taking in his appearance and appreciating it more than I should have. I needed a distraction, and it seemed like he did, too.

  “Have you heard anything more about HF?” I asked softly, aware that I was in a room full of people who had exceptional hearing. The music’s mesmeric bass tones were loud enough to mask my words if I lowered my voice enough. Clive and several other members of HF had been arrested after I’d stopped them from using the one Necro-spear that had been recovered to do another Cleanse. With everything going on, I hadn’t had a chance to follow up on what had happened. I knew that they wouldn’t stay in SG custody because they were human and the incident between us was considered an act of human-on-human violence, which would be the purview of the human justice system.

  Gareth turned slightly and leaned in, his cool drink pressing into my arm because there wasn’t much room for it as he had closed any distance I had created between us. When he spoke, his warm breath lightly brushed against my ear.

  “He was released on bail a couple of hours ago, but I have someone keeping surveillance on him.”

  I inhaled the masculine musk and caught the dark hints of the predator in his eyes. The diametric feeling of being both drawn to and repelled by him bothered me.

  I slipped my hand between the little space that he’d left between us and nudged him back.

  “We are in public, it’s important this conversation remains between us,” he admonished, but he moved back just a smidge to scan the room. It was starting to fill with more humans than vampires, nearly two to one. I wondered if that was intentional, to give the vampires a better buffet choice.

  “The music’s loud enough, and if you can sense me from across the city, I’m pretty sure you can hear me just fine if you give me a couple of inches of space.”

  His voice dropped, a barely audible drawl. It was so low that I would have missed it if I hadn’t read his lips and caught the last part of the sentence. “But can you hear me?”

  I pushed a little harder; it was like trying to shove a brick building out of the way. His shirt didn’t do much to hide the deep, solid lines of his muscles, and as I pushed into his chest, I could feel what my eyes were focusing on. He immediately tensed under my touch. His attention moved from me, drifted over the room and set on his target—the messy pile of blondish hair sticking up. His nephew and three other people were near the corner. I thought they were all human until one turned to look around the room; the emerald shifter ring, which was always darker than their natural color, had a hint of glow in the dim light.

  Avery raised his drink to his uncle and smiled, defiant. Oh, yes, there is the family resemblance—the stubborn gene. How did I miss it?

  “He can be here,” I said. As much as Gareth might not have liked the idea of his nephew hanging out in a vamp bar, he had every right to do so and have the drink that Gareth was eyeing. Supernatural rules were different than human laws. The legal drinking age was eighteen. It looked like Gareth believed his irritating nephew who’d stolen his car should be locked in his room and on house arrest, as opposed to hanging out in the same bar as him. But when life gave you lemons you made lemonade, or in Gareth’s case, you made a pitcher of it and tried to ruin your nephew’s fun.

  “Excuse me for a moment.”

  “You’re not even trying for the ‘greatest uncle award’?” I teased.

  In silence, Gareth invited himself over to join Avery and his friends.

  I watched as he tipped his glass to his nephew, and after a few minutes they were laughing. I couldn’t help but smile; when he wasn’t behaving like there was a jackass contest and he wanted to make sure he placed, he was warm and charismatic. I stared—too long—and eventually he caught me. He smiled, enchanting and charming, and I drifted to it, drawn like most to his primal allure. I had to nearly yank my gaze from him.

  “And you want me to believe you’re not interested?” Savannah said, her pink glossed lips twisted into a combination of a smirk and a frown.

  “I never said he wasn’t handsome. It’s just complicated.”

  “What’s complicated? He’s hot—so hot. And you need to have a hookup or something.”

  “I like to keep things casual, you know that.” I didn’t intend
to do it but I fixed her with a hard look. My life was a little too complex to do anything other than casual and nothing about Gareth seemed casual. He was intense. Very intense.

  Savannah was physically next to me, but she was distracted—her full attention was on Lucas.

  “You can go back over there, I’m okay.”

  “Not until you agree to stop being the weird woman at the bar gawking at everyone like you’re at a circus and they just brought out the freaks.”

  “I have better manners than to call them freaks. Besides I’m rather fond of calling them hot zombies and their menagerie of fangirls and boys,” I said with a grin. I peered over at Gareth.

  “He’s really an okay guy … and seriously—look at him. He’s yummy. You can’t tell me you’re not interested, at least a little.” Tilting her head in quiet consideration, she studied him.

  He looked over his shoulder with a half-smile and a glint of amusement played at his eyes, and he relaxed more into himself. I leaned into her, lowered my voice until it was barely audible. “He can hear you.”

  Her smile quickly slipped and her lips pulled into a tight line.

  Now look who’s gawking at everyone like she has front-row seats to the freak show.

  “Are you serious? Even with the music?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  “Yeah, even with the music,” I said, turning from her to answer, but at that point there wasn’t a lot that could be done, and we hadn’t said anything that he didn’t probably already think about himself.

  “And so can Lucas,” I added.

  Her eyes widened, and then she frowned. He drank blood to survive and had been on the earth longer than her grandparents, and his enhanced hearing was the thing that she took issue with? Savannah was an odd mixed bag that I would never understand. She studied Lucas for a few minutes before directing her attention to Gareth. His lips were still kinked into a miscreant grin, which quickly faded. I felt it probably seconds before he sensed it, the wave of magic that crept into the room.