Moonshadow (Moonshadow #1)

After he had lashed out at her, the vision had splintered. Now he couldn’t sense her anywhere.

But he knew what she looked like. He knew what her Power felt like. If she had been working in collusion with Isabeau’s Hounds, she had just signed her own death warrant. Didn’t matter when or how long it took. If Nikolas ever ran into her, he would make sure she regretted her collusion before she died.

The fog was beginning to disperse, the veil on the carnage in the clearing growing thin. His clothes were wet with the slain men’s blood. It was time for him to leave, but first he had to cleanse the scene.

Kneeling, he placed his flattened hands on the ground and sank his awareness deep into the land. When he connected with the land magic that was so rich and abundant, he asked it to take the bodies. After a few moments, the land responded. The ground shifted, and the slain Hounds sank below the grass.

Once he had rid the clearing of the evidence of the battle, his attention turned to the Sainsbury bag on the ground. He had almost forgotten why he had stopped in this village in the first place. Gathering it up, he strode rapidly along the path to the nearby car park.

At least he had bought petrol before he had gone in search of a supper he could eat on the road. He didn’t take time to change out of his blood-soaked clothes. Several moments later, as the fog dispersed completely and the late afternoon sun came out in full force, he pulled onto the motorway and sped north.

*

Later that night, Nikolas’s black Porsche flowed along the hairpin curves in the forest road. Dense, heavy foliage pressed in from all angles, drenching the air with the sense of an immense, green life that carpeted the land for miles around, while an early harvest moon hung low over the horizon.

He kept his windows down to let the fresh air stream in, on high alert for the slightest hint of anything out of the ordinary. Gatherings were a calculated but necessary risk, and they always put him on edge. After the Hounds’ attack, he was even more on edge than usual.

Once he had put several kilometers between him and the scene of the attack, he’d pulled over to change out of his bloody clothes and examine the contents he’d stripped from the bodies. The magic items had been relatively uninteresting—either amulets of protection or strength enhancement. There were four mobile phones, all with passcodes that he didn’t have time to try to break at the moment.

He tucked those away to examine more closely later, then he rifled through wallets, pocketed the men’s IDs and cash, and tossed the wallets away. He found nothing to indicate how the Hounds had located him and nothing that seemed to connect them to the unknown woman in the vision.

After examining everything, he continued on his journey, and he’d had several hours to think about what had happened.

Earlier, when the questing, feminine Power had brushed against him, he had bristled and whirled to attack, but now that the heat of battle had died down, he was fairly certain that the woman’s psychic signature had felt distinctly different from both the magical fog and the Hounds.

And the woman he had seen—at first she hadn’t looked afraid or guilty as if she had been caught doing something underhanded. Instead, she had simply looked amazed. He had received the impression of black, curling hair falling into wide, startled eyes. Then she began to reach out to him as if to see if he were real. It had been a gesture of wonder, not aggression.

Perhaps the psychic connection had been an accident. The thought was outlandish, but it wasn’t impossible, in which case, no harm, no foul.

Or perhaps his impressions were wrong and he had indeed disrupted a spy, and the only accident had been that he had caught the other magic user before she could throw another spell. That was the possibility that kept him poised like a weapon, ready to go on the offensive at the first sign of trouble.

While he was lost in thought, the road he traveled narrowed to one paved lane, then the pavement turned to gravel. The steady purr of the car’s turbo engine never faltered. After driving some distance farther, he finally came to a large open clearing. One end was covered with gravel along the edge of a crumbling fieldstone fence.

A variety of vehicles and motorcycles clustered on the graveled end. He pulled the Porsche up beside a large Harley-Davidson. As he cut the engine, opened his door, and climbed out, quiet settled over the area. The cool, damp air smelled like woodsmoke. He reached into the car for his jacket, settled his sword harness into place over it, and slung a heavy canvas bag over one wide shoulder.

Several meters away, the shadowed figure of a large man slipped into view like a knife pulled from a sheath. The figure moved with a leashed aggression, and for a moment an answering aggression flared in Nikolas in response. He controlled an impulse to reach for his sword.

“Nikolas.” The man’s voice was deep, rough, and familiar. Nikolas’s flare of aggression subsided as he realized the approaching figure was Rhys. “When you weren’t here to greet us, we got worried.”

“I ran into a pack of Hounds,” Nikolas replied tersely.

Rhys hesitated. “Is everything okay?”

“They’re dead. I’m not. Situation handled.”

As the other man drew closer, Nikolas took note of the lines of tiredness on Rhys’s face. While they stood close to the same height, that was where the similarity between the two men ended. Nikolas had black hair, dark eyes, and a dark nature, and had a slim, rangy build filled with whipcord strength, whereas Rhys was a wide, solid mass of muscle.

Rhys looked hard and drawn, and a new scar slashed across his cheekbone.

Noticing the direction of his attention, Rhys told him with a tight smile, “You should see the other guy. Oh wait, you can’t. He’s dead and buried too.”

“I expected nothing less.” When the other man reached him, Nikolas hauled him in for a hard hug.

For the briefest of moments, Rhys’s body remained stiff and unresponsive in his embrace. Then the other man relaxed and returned the hug.

When Rhys pulled back, he gave Nikolas a narrow look. “You think running into a pack of Hounds was an accident? Or do you think they somehow found you?”

Nikolas didn’t want to waste time talking about the unknown woman. They had other things they needed to focus on. “When I find out, I’ll let you know.”

“Well, you’re here now, and that’s all that counts, right? Come on.” Rhys slapped his back as he stepped back. “I know we don’t have long, but we can take a few moments before we start. Gareth brought food.”

Nikolas followed him down a narrow, overgrown path toward another clearing and the light of a small campfire. Across the clearing lay a shadowed, ancient ring of standing stones. Nikolas glanced at it before turning his full attention to the group of talking men standing or squatting around the fire.