Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,117
him place them a dozen times before. Rafe was the Monsters clan seer, among other things. His visions came very seldomly, once a year at most. But when they did they came without fail in the most fortuitous manner. For weeks after one of these types of visions, Rafe was sometimes jokingly referred to as “Nick” by his clan brothers – as in, “the nick of time.”
“Did you just pull a Shawn Spencer from Psych move?” Annaleia asked softly, addressing Rafael.
Rafe grinned at her unabashedly, and of course Annaleia couldn’t help but smile beautifully back. Damn, thought Ares. Fucking Gemini.
“I thought I was the only one who liked that show so much,” Rafe lied.
“Nice catch, Faith” said his brother, Dante. He was also smiling, and it was without a doubt a charming smile. The twins knew nothing if not how beguile their way into a woman’s good graces. “But we promise, Rafe was pulling that move long before Spencer ever did.”
Rafael addressed Magnus, who had yet to remove his hand from Annaleia’s chest. “You can’t heal her, Magnus.” He shook his head, just once. “Not now. Not yet.”
Ares watched as the sentinel’s expression went stark with understanding, then dire with concern. He looked back down at his charge, lowered his hand from her chest, and stepped back.
Ares glanced at Rafe, who nodded at the sentinel gratefully. He didn’t want to even think about what Rafe meant by what he’d just said. But the fact that it came from a vision, combined with the fact that Ares didn’t want to think about it, meant Ares already knew damn well what he meant.
Ares turned to Magnus. “Can you travel through a portal?” The rather sad truth was, he honestly had no clue about most of what sentinels could do. He’d had little occasion to call his own sentinel, Cassius. And Cassius irritated him anyway. He was just too pretty. He was really fucking tough, and far too pretty. It got under Ares’ skin. Unfortunately, it looked like Annaleia’s sentinel was even prettier. That got under his skin too.
Magnus smiled, almost as if he knew exactly what Ares was thinking. “I can go anywhere she goes,” the sentinel told him with a nod at the woman Ares held in his arms. “And I will,” he added solemnly. Ares didn’t miss the warning.
“Oh my God you two, now is not the time for a pissing match,” Annaleia said, but while her voice was full of fire, it lacked its usual strength. Ares experienced an immediate switch in focus, all of his attention shifting to her. His eyes took in everything – the bruise on her cheek, the busted lip, her pale coloring. He noticed the way she labored against pain every time she drew in breath and knew she had bruised ribs at the very least. He glanced down at the obvious bullet wound. She’d lost some blood.
If the bloody face of one of the men on the ground and the bloody ear of the other were any indication, before they’d been shot, Anna had put up one hell of a fight – and paid the consequences. And yet between the lot of them, she was the one with the voice of reason.
“Leia, hang in there baby,” he said as his chest ached a little and he nodded at Nathan. The blond Aurum vampire raised his right arm, palm-out to summon a portal. It wasn’t easy doing so in a place this warded, but Nate had recently fed – as in fed on gold blood. His powers were spiking right now and at their strongest. It was why he’d accompanied Ares in the first place and was probably the only reason they’d made it here at all.
It had taken them so long to try to back-track their way to the fake safehouse due to Victor’s wards, Ares had been forced to end his transport, dropping the four of them off in the middle of a random desert. It was Nate who then opened a second portal, allowing them to finally make it back here.
When Nate’s portal opened now, it was once more shot through with purple lightning, the agitated strength of the spell as it worked against the wards patently clear.
The five men didn’t need to say anything. One after another, they stepped into the portal, one of them carrying a serial killer, another carrying what was to him the most precious cargo in the world.