The Gathering

  The Gathering

  Immortals, Book 4

  Jennifer Ashley

  JA / AG Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Excerpt: The Redeeming

  Also by Jennifer Ashley

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Hunter jerked out of a sound sleep, pain in every limb shattering the dark oblivion he’d sought only hours ago.

  All was quiet. Two women lay curled on either side of him, sleeping hard, the three forming a warm nest on this chilly late April Minnesota night.

  The pain eased, and Hunter began to relax. A dream. Must have been. He turned his head, breathing in the soothing scents of the night, his eyes drifting closed.

  The pain smacked him again. Hunter’s eyes snapped opened. His body hadn’t moved, though he’d sworn something had grabbed him and pulled, like giant clamps trying to tear him apart. Hunter sat up, naked and sweating, but nothing was there. No one was in the room but himself and the young women, and they hadn’t awoken.

  There was magic in this; it screamed at him.

  He searched the shadows, ready to blast whatever it was back with his own magic, but Hunter could find no target. The bedroom was dark and quiet, no sign of any intruder, no sense of one. The pain was still upon him, crushing his chest, making him struggle for breath.

  Hunter would know if anyone had entered the house. He’d put his hand to the lintel of the front door when he’d come in, marking wards to keep away both danger and inquisitive neighbors. None of the wards had been disturbed. No death magic had crossed the boundaries, no spell. So what was this?

  Then, as suddenly as it had come upon him, the pain disappeared.

  What the hell?

  Hunter heard a whisper of feet against the carpet, but it was only the cat of the house stalking into the bedroom. It noticed Hunter and sank to its haunches, its slitted green eyes meeting his. It projected in the way of cats, My bowl might be empty. Maybe you should check.

  Hunter slid out of bed without waking the women, eased his jeans over his bare hips, retrieved his sword in its leather sheath from the dresser and padded barefoot to the kitchen, followed by the cat.

  The house was silent. The two women friends lived in an ordinary neighborhood in an ordinary town in northern Minnesota and had found an ordinary method of keeping warm tonight. They hadn’t questioned the fact that Hunter carried around a large sword; innuendo about it in the bar tonight had led to him coming home with them.

  These days most humans were afraid to walk the streets without a measure of alcohol in them for courage. Demon attacks had escalated. People hired witches to ward houses and create amulets of protection, but most weren’t strong enough to deflect demons en masse.

  So humans stayed indoors as much as possible and drank more and laughed louder. Minnesota was farming country, but this year the ground had remained frozen too long, and Hunter heard muttering about crops not being sown on time and strange weevils infesting anything farmers managed to plant.

  The two women in the bar seemed to sense Hunter’s life magic and had purred at him until he’d agreed to accompany them home. After all, protection of humans was Hunter’s Immortal warrior duty, he’d told himself. They didn’t smell of death magic, so they weren’t demonwhores; just friendly young women who enjoyed men.

  In the kitchen Hunter found the cat food and dispensed a measure into the almost-empty bowl. The cat twined itself around Hunter’s ankles, projecting the thought that this human male was preferable to the ones who usually turned up.

  Hunter felt amusement as he put away the bag of food. He’d figured he was the ladies’ boy toy of the night, and he didn’t mind at all. He always made sex fun and asked nothing in return. Once upon a time he’d thought of lovemaking connected with family, children, and happiness, but painful experience had taught him otherwise.

  As he closed the cabinet on the cat food, intense pain jerked him again—deep, searing magical agony that made him want to vomit. Hunter snatched up his sword, eager to kill whoever the hell was doing this to him.

  The cat lifted its head, chewed bits of food dropping from its mouth as it mewled. With that soft sound, the comfortable kitchen shattered into large jagged pieces, hurtling Hunter away from the cat, the warm house, and the Beltane night into cold and darkness.

  He saw a glaring light in the blackness, heard voices chanting in unison. In the middle of the light stood an impossibly tall man with a hard face and coal-dark eyes. He knew the man, had last seen him seven hundred years ago in a battle in Scotland. In front of the man stood a woman in blue robes wearing a garland of flowers in her dark hair. She was chanting, chanting, chanting.

  Hunter started to say, What the fuck? when the world splintered again, and he found himself spinning and twisting uncontrollably through darkness.

  Hunter landed on something hard, the wind knocked out of him. A warm, ocean-scented breeze wafted across his body, then someone with scalding hot breath and a face full of fur licked him across the lips.

  Leda Stowe awoke in the gray light of predawn. The electronic clock on her bedside table told her it was a half hour before the alarm would go off. From the kitchen she heard the slow drip of the faucet that never shut off completely, but other than that, her house held silence.

  She lay still, stretching her witch senses to decide what had awakened her. She heard the usual rush of wind in palm trees outside and the crash of breakers on the beach, the tide at its height. No throb of helicopter or motorboat, not even her animals making noises in the night. But every sense she possessed told her the wards around her island had just been breached.

  Foremost in her mind were the threats from the animal “collector” from whom Mukasa, the African lion in her largest enclosure, had been rescued. Diego Valdez, head of a Mexican drug cartel, had been incensed when an animal rescue organization had liberated the abused Mukasa, and he’d vowed to have his lion back, by force if necessary. This little island of rock and beach, though technically belonging to California, lay very near the waters of Mexico.

  Leda lifted the tranquilizer gun she kept next to the bed and opened the box in the bedside drawer to load it. Tranquilizer darts worked equally well on a human being as they did on a big cat in a frenzy. The intruder would be out long enough for her to call the Coast Guard or the DEA who patrolled these waters.

  She pulled on a T-shirt and khaki shorts and slipped on her sneakers. Her enclosures at the moment held only two animals, the lion Mukasa and a Japanese bear called Taro. Taro was waiting until facilities were ready for him in Hokkaido, where he’d be transferred back into the wild. Mukasa’s fate had yet to be determined.

  Valdez’s threats aside, both animals were valuable to unscrupulous collectors who would sell them for untold sums, dead or alive. Leda’s wards were strong, her air magic enhanced by the trade winds that blew continuously across the island. No one should have been able to breach them.

  She walked onto the veranda with the rifle in one hand and her radio in the other. The radio was bette
r than a cell phone out here, because she knew there would always be a Coast Guard dispatcher on the other end. She hung the radio on her belt, then reached behind the door and snapped switches that flooded the compound with light.

  Taro reared up against the twelve-foot chain-link fence of his large enclosure, grunting a greeting. He was a curious animal, liking to watch everything she did. Leda felt a measure of relief that he seemed unhurt and unbothered.

  Mukasa, on the other hand, did not appear. Leda walked down the wooden steps and quietly across the sand. She saw nothing out of the ordinary—no boat rocked next to her sailboat at the end of the little wharf, the helipad and airstrips down the beach were empty, and no lights glittered on craft out to sea. Leda heard nothing but the wind in palms and the roar of waves sliding up the beach.

  Something moved in Mukasa’s enclosure beyond the pool of light, something upright and human that skulked in the shadows. Leda let herself get angry. The threats of the drug lord enraged rather than frightened her, especially after what Valdez had done to the noble Mukasa.

  She drew power from the air and traced a rune of protection with the toe of her sneaker, pouring her magic into it. A faint yellow glow danced from the rune, the color of air magic.

  She cocked the rifle and aimed it at the gate. “I see you in there,” she called. “Come out. Now.”

  Mukasa walked into the circle of light, growling the deep grunt of an irritated lion. Relief trickled through her that he was still alive, unhurt.

  “I’m waiting,” Leda said clearly. “I will fire this weapon and believe me, I’m a dead shot.”

  She sensed the man in the enclosure homing in on her rune in the sand. What was he—witch? Demon? But she felt no death magic from him. Of course, a strong demon or vampire could hide its death magic—not a comforting thought.

  He walked forward and stopped behind the inner gate. Each enclosure had two gates with a small passage between—opening and closing one gate at a time ensured that the wild creature inside wouldn’t charge out whenever Leda or her assistant had to enter.

  The man inside stood a good six inches taller than the six-foot gate. The lights of the compound glinted off golden highlights in his hair, but the shadows masked his features. She sent a cautious tendril of magic toward him. What was he?

  The returning blast of power nearly knocked her over. He exuded life magic; it roared out of him to crash like the breakers on the beach. Sand whirled, and before her startled eyes, it rushed to fill in her rune of protection at her feet, erasing it completely.

  Leda steadied the rifle. “Come out,” she repeated in a hard voice. “Leave my lion alone.”

  Mukasa padded over to stand beside the man. The lion, with his full mane and massive girth, came up to the man’s chest. She watched, amazed, as Mukasa rubbed his head against the intruder’s torso.

  “Is she always like this?” the man asked Mukasa. His voice was deep and low, and had a place in dreams of the most erotic kind. It was a voice that hinted at sultry nights and cool linen, and pleasure Leda could scarcely imagine.

  Mukasa made a faint answering noise in his throat. The lion remained still as the man opened the gate, moved through the passage in what Leda could only describe as a saunter, and started to open the second gate.

  “Close the first one behind you,” she called.

  “Why?”

  “Because he’ll get out, that’s why. Mukasa is smart enough to run around you.”

  “He wants to come out. He wants to see what’s up there.” The man pointed to the dark cliffs lifting from the palm-lined beach. The hand that made the gesture also held something long and thick, a sword or some such weapon.

  “Close that gate, or this dart goes into your chest.”

  The man looked back at Mukasa. “You’ll have to stay behind for now, my friend.”

  The lion grunted as though he understood, then turned and walked back into the deeper part of the enclosure.

  The man closed the gate behind him and opened the second gate. He shut that one as carefully and stepped into the light.

  Holy Goddess of the Moon.

  Not only did his voice come from erotic dreams, so did his body. A tall, hard body in nothing but a pair of jeans that rode low on his hips. A tattoo of some kind peeked over the waistband. He had arms thick with muscle, a chest of honed pectorals dusted with golden-brown hair, hips tight below a narrow waist, thighs filling out the denim, and strong, bare feet.

  The lights of the compound accented the gold in his hair, and the eyes that studied her from an impossibly handsome face were emerald green. Leda suddenly imagined those eyes half closed in seduction, fixed on her as though she were the only woman in the world.

  Bedroom eyes, her mother would have called them. Watch out for those.

  The man held a sword sheathed in leather, its hilt thick and plain. A fighter’s weapon.

  “Put your sword on the ground,” she commanded.

  To her surprise, the man obeyed. He gently dropped the sword and looked at her expectantly, bare toes curling in the sand. “Why did you bring me here, witch?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “To fight?” he went on, as though he hadn’t heard her. “Or for sex? I hear some slaves hate women summoning them for sex, but me, I’m all for it.”

  Slaves? Summoning? Sex?

  “I didn’t summon you.”

  He took a step toward her. “Do you have anything to drink? I could murder some coffee.”

  “Stand still and tell me who you are and why you’re messing with my lion.”

  He didn’t stop. Another step, then another, drawing him closer. “I’ll make the coffee, I’m good at it. Then we can talk about the summoning. Or your lion. Or sex. Whatever you want.”

  Was he insane? Probably. Too bad, but just because he was utterly gorgeous and exuded life magic that nearly floored her didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

  The man kept walking toward Leda, leaving footprints in the sand. His smile was lopsided, his hair mussed, sand clinging to his jeans and bare torso. Delectable.

  “Did Valdez send you?” Leda croaked.

  “Who’s Valdez?”

  She felt his magic concentrate and slide around her, and knew her own power was nothing in the face of his. His magic could make her drop the gun, fall to her knees, give him the animals, anything he wanted. Her island, her home, and he’d take it over with a sheathed sword and a crooked smile.

  Leda shot him.

  His green eyes widened, and he glanced down at the dart protruding from his left pectoral.

  “A tranquilizer?” he said in mild surprise. “How interest—”

  His right leg folded under him, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he toppled limply to the sand.

  Chapter Two

  When Hunter awoke, the sun was high. He lay on a bed scented with the beautiful woman who’d shot him, a smell like the sea mixed with lemon and fresh air.

  His woman stood in the bedroom doorway speaking quietly to a fairly tall man who carried a big radio, the annoying noises of which had woken Hunter.

  She looked as lovely as she had over the barrel of her shotgun. Sun-streaked brown hair had been pulled into a sloppy braid, probably to keep it tamed while she slept. Unbound it would hang to her hips, and be lush and thick as it spilled over Hunter’s hands. Her eyes were deep, dark blue like the middle of the ocean on a summer day.

  He imagined those eyes heavy in passion, her hair pooling on Hunter’s chest as he held her in his arms—on this bed maybe. She could ride him and purr with contentment as he cradled her, bathing his senses in her.

  She wore shorts that revealed long, strong legs. Not slender, bikini-model legs, but tight, muscular legs tanned from the Pacific sun. She was tight all over, as though she worked out, but she retained a soft femininity that stiffened a certain part of him.

  The other fact that stiffened him was that she hadn’t put on a bra. Her white T-shirt clung to her chest, her pink-brown aur
eoles plain to see. The man with her was trying not to look, with limited success.

  Hunter yawned and stretched, sinking into the soft pillows of this woman’s bed and liking it. “Where’s that coffee?” he demanded.

  They broke off their conversation and stared at him. “Who are you?” the woman asked.

  “I’m Hunter. Who are you?” Hunter swung his legs out of the bed, still dressed in his jeans, which had gotten sand all over the nice white sheets. “Just point me to the kitchen. I’ll find the coffee myself.”

  The man blocked his way to the door, eyes narrowing. “You don’t have any ID.”

  ID. ID. The people of the twenty-first century were obsessed with ID. Time was you could tell someone your name, and they’d take you at your word. Nowadays, you had to prove it with cards and photographs. Even a letter from your parents wasn’t good enough anymore. Not that Hunter’s mother liked to write letters. Destroy entire cities, yes; pen correspondence, no.

  “Must have left it in my other pants,” Hunter said. He stretched again, loosening cramped muscles. “What was in that stuff?” he asked the woman, rubbing the back of his neck. “My head hurts like hell.”

  The woman gave his body an appreciative glance but pretended not to. She liked what she saw—a good start. The man just looked annoyed.

  “You live here?” Hunter asked him.

  “I’m with the Institute,” the man answered as though Hunter should know what “The Institute” was. He pulled out a leather wallet and opened it to reveal an official-looking license. A man who liked ID and lots of it. “Ronald Douglas. Give me a good reason I shouldn’t call the police and have them take you in.”