“Thank you.” Olivia smiled at Marrok. “We’re grateful to you and your brother.”
“It’s our pleasure.”
Naturally, Marrok thought. Bram was now one step closer to the Book of Doomsday.
Sabelle turned away, then whirled back. “Oh, I almost forgot—” She snapped, and into her hands a small leather volume appeared. “This is for you, Olivia. It’s a simple book of spells to get you started. My brother says you were not raised with magic?”
“Not at all.”
“Then this will help catch you up so you can perform a bit of magic before transition. You’ll hardly be setting lakes on fire, but with practice, you’ll master the basics…like hiding the diary from my brother.” She winked and turned away.
The moment Marrok shut the door, Olivia frowned. “Wouldn’t she want her brother to have the book?”
“One would think, but…” He shrugged.
Olivia opened the little volume. “This might help us. What if I got you a hunk of wood? You could carve a hiding place for the diary, maybe something that would…I don’t know, attach to the furniture or mount to the ceiling somehow? And maybe we could find a way to make it lock.”
He stared at her. Naught about Richard. Simply the two of them, working together.
With rising hope, he peered at the furniture, and all sorts of possibilities leapt out at him. Attaching it inside the armoire beside the door or the credenza near the airy windows might do. Or under the massive bed. He could carve something to the book’s dimension to blend beneath the existing furniture.
Marrok smiled. Her solution was simple but brilliant.
“You like that idea?” she asked.
“Love it.” He couldn’t resist kissing her.
Olivia beamed. Mayhap he had been foolish to judge her with so cynical an eye and that growing up apart from magic had kept her spirit less tainted? Perhaps he had misjudged her excitement to meet her father as a foolhardy, impetuous devotion?
Or perhaps she lets you grow complacent before helping Richard once more to earn his favor.
As much as Marrok hated to think it, ignoring the possibility only endangered her and the book more.
Blood will tell. If Olivia was indeed a typical le Fay, hers would soon be screaming.
“You high-handed prick! What’s this bloody summons about? I was cozy with a blonde and a pint.”
Bram stared at the wizard. At nearly six and a half feet tall with blazing green eyes, Isdernus Rykard wasn’t someone anyone intelligent trifled with. Bram didn’t count himself as stupid. But desperate times…Having Ice under his roof was definitely a desperate measure.
The Rykards were a crafty lot—and distrusted because of it. Through the centuries, they had lied and cheated their way into a great deal of property, some of it Rion lands. Despite the fact their rightful owners had enchanted it to be fallow and dead until it passed back into proper hands, they refused to return it. Bastards—the lot of them. And that was little compared to the personal history between them.
But at the moment, Bram didn’t have the luxury of hate.
“If I demanded you appear tonight, Rykard, it’s because Mathias is back and magickind is in a dire situation. You’ve heard that, right?”
“Yes.”
Lucan crossed the room to stand beside Bram. “The events of the past three days are alarming. And will grow worse.”
Bram nodded. “Indeed. The Doomsday Diary has been found. It—”
“Bloody hell, man! Did you grab it? Hide it?” Ice demanded.
“No.”
Ice’s expression was both incredulous and appalled. At this point, Bram could only hope that Olivia would help break Marrok’s curse soon. He had to get that damn diary, before Mathias found a way to steal it.
“When the time is right, we’ll secure it,” Bram assured. “At the moment, Marrok of Cadbury holds it. He is currently upstairs with his mate.”
“The Anarki attacked him this morning,” Lucan added. “We all fought and barely escaped with the book and our lives.”
Ice swore. His face, like well-carved stone, tightened, his narrow eyes glowing a furious green.
“We need your help. Unless you want more abducted women to suffer your sister’s fate—”
“Don’t you dare use Gailene as some rallying cry for me!”
“It’s not my intent to offend, just to help you understand the urgency,” Bram gritted out and turned to address the rest of the men. Lucan silently provided support with a nod. Duke looked on with a studied air of boredom, but Bram wasn’t fooled.
Bram went on. “What of the frightened children forced to perform unspeakable magic? If we hurry—”
“Hurry?” Ice cut in, grinding his teeth so hard it was a wonder he had any molars left. “He’s already got those kids’ souls. We can’t help them now.”
“Do you suggest we wait for Mathias to grow more confident? For the Anarki’s numbers to swell with more magical children and humans they’ve managed to bewitch? When do we take action? When Mathias is knocking down our doors and threatens all we hold dear?”
Like magickind did last time. Bram didn’t say it; he didn’t have to. Everyone in the room knew their people had been slow to act during Mathias’s last ascent to power. No one had wanted to believe someone so evil walked among them. Only a handful of brave wizards had acted, managing to defeat Mathias and rid magickind of such a cancer.
“We all know who brought Mathias down last time.”
“The Brethren,” Duke murmured.
“Shock, you’re late. Do you know about the Brethren?”
They all turned to the man entering the room.
The incoming wizard glared hatchets at Lucan behind black sunglasses, then shifted his gaze back to Bram. “I am capable of reading. I know magical history.”
That wasn’t all he was rumored to be capable of—but everything was just rumor. Shock, like the rest of his clan, kept to himself. His long hair added to his unsavory appearance. Built big for strength and stamina, Shock was a scary bastard on the best of days. On the worst…no one wanted to push the man’s limits. People in his tainted bloodline tended to go mad. Bram wondered how close to that edge Shock was.
The furious wizard was scowling at Lucan as if he’d like to help the man with a one-way trip to his own funeral. Of course he would, given their history.
“I wasn’t insinuating that you’re not learned about magical history. But you were barely alive when Mathias was last in power.”
“I know what happened.”
“After the Brethren defeated Mathias nearly two hundred years ago,” Bram went on. “They disbanded, vowing that if magickind ever saw dark times again, they would reunite.”
“They’ve all moved on to their nextlife,” Ice protested.
“I’m not suggesting we find the old members of the Brethren; I’m suggesting we replace them.”
“Become Brethren warriors to take down Mathias and the Anarki?” Ice no longer sounded annoyed.
“Exactly. But unlike the last Brethren, this group has another task. We have the Book of Doomsday under this roof. It’s imperative we keep it out of Mathias’s hands. So I suggest we pair the old purpose with the new.”
Ice asked, “We protect the book and we defeat Mathias?”
Bram nodded. “Who’s with me? Several of you have helped protect the diary already, but who will officially join the cause?”
“You know I will,” Lucan answered immediately.
Bram acknowledged his friend with a grateful nod.
“I’ll join. Vastly more entertaining than watching my parents plan my brother’s wedding to a human girl,” Duke murmured.
Relief chugged through Bram. With Duke came his powerful connections and a sizable fortune.
That left Ice and Shock—the two hardest sells. Shock had claimed after Mathias’s first attack that he would help, but he’d been largely absent since. The wizard was big and struck fear in others…when he showed up. But in coming here, he was defying his family. That had to mean something.
Shock turned, angling his body away from Lucan. “Look, I have no quarrel with you. As long as I don’t have to work with the bloody mate thief, I’ll—”
“Mate thief?” Lucan snarled. “You and I both issued the Mating Call. She chose me. I did not steal.”
“You waited to ask her until you knew I had, until you knew she was thinking of saying yes. That’s stealing in my book.”
“I didn’t steal anything that didn’t want to be stolen, you bast—”
“Gentlemen,” Bram cut in, his tone a friendly warning. Lucan was his friend, but Bram felt a twinge of sympathy for Shock. “I’ll keep the two of you as far apart as possible,” Bram promised. When Lucan cursed, he went on, “We need Shock, so whatever bad blood lies between you, put it aside for now. Saving magickind is bigger.” Then he turned to Shock. “Thank you.”
Shock shrugged, straightened his sunglasses, then sought a solitary corner again.
“What about you, Ice?”
“What, fall in with a bunch of rich pricks and a madman?” Ice’s harsh laugh could have scraped the paint off the walls. “Hell, no.”
“You want Mathias tearing through magickind?”
“I want to protect what’s left of my family.”
“Then help us stop Mathias.”
“Who’ll stay and protect our loved ones? You’ve got a sister. Imagine knowing that a sick freak like Mathias had taken her, then forced her to subm—”
“Leave Sabelle out of this.”
“Why? Mathias didn’t leave Gailene out of his evil schemes. We just got heartbreak and a mangled body scorched with his brand.”
“Then do something.”
Ice hesitated. “I don’t need a bored rich boy on a Good Samaritan trip for that. I’ll do it myself.”
With a turn, Ice made for the door, his long, economical strides eating up the Italian slate floor. Bram knew the cause needed him. He had to bring out the big guns—now.
“Alone, he’d just kill you, too. Is that what Gailene would have wanted?”
Just then a pop and a puff of white smoke burst in front of Bram’s face. Thank God. He’d been waiting for this: a photo of the body of Auropha MacKinnett, the girl in his vision. Magickind knew of the attack on the family, but seeing the horror and tragedy in the picture made a much bigger impact. Bram hated having to use the girl’s dreadful death to make a point, but he was out of more polite options.
After the smoke dissipated, the image floated in the air. What he saw would scare the hell out of anyone who had a heart—or a brain in their head. “Do you want more innocent women winding up like this?”
He sent the picture across the room, right into Ice’s face. The rest of the men crowded around.
Arms and legs sprawled wide, the young witch looked up from the picture with silent terror in her sightless eyes. Once, she’d been pretty. Now, she looked horrified, violated, desecrated. Blood soaked her thighs and the ground between. Her pubic hair had been removed and the Anarki symbol, Mathias’s signature, had been branded red into the soft skin there.
“Dear God,” murmured Duke as he cast his eyes down.
Lucan grimaced and turned away.
Shock recoiled. “The sick bastard.”
“This will happen again and again if we fail to band together,” Bram stated. “Ice?”
The man’s eyes glowed—fury, retribution, terrible sadness—though he was doing his damnedest to look unmoved. Finally, Ice swallowed and closed his eyes. Then he sighed.
“I’m in.”
In the bathroom, Olivia stared in the mirror and sighed with frustration.
From around the corner, Marrok peeked in on her. “Is something amiss?”
“No makeup, no hair clip, no brush…”
“You had no makeup until we dropped by your flat the other day.”
“But I had your hairbrush to borrow.”
“Is that why there are long hairs in my brush?” he teased.
Her heart jerked at his smile. She really was going to have to watch herself…though part of her feared the warning was futile. She already cared, way more than she should. But why was he teasing her? To smooth over their recent arguments about his lies, placate her after his suspicions about her father?
“I have nothing here,” she groused. “I look—”
“Gorgeous?”
God, the man could be so sweet, it was hard not to fall for him. “Like a refugee.”
“You were unconcerned about your looks at my cottage.”
“Well, it was just us, and you were a horny kidnapper. Of course I didn’t want to look good.”
He laughed. “I will see about obtaining a few common items for us after breakfast.”