Primal Bonds

The sword was here, calling to her. Gritting her teeth, she followed its song, which grew louder and more joyful as she neared it.

Andrea dropped down and dug in the grass and soggy earth. She had to go down a long way, covering herself in muck before her hand encountered something hard. She pulled it out of the gripping mud, the sword singing with all its might.

So the sword was here, safe and sound. But where the hell was Sean?

The ground around where the sword had lain was saturated with blood. Sean’s blood. The blood was drying, no longer fresh, but the dampness of the grass ensured that her fingers came away red.

Andrea hoisted the sword, ran back to Dylan and Jared, and crouched next to Jared.

“What happed to Sean?” she demanded. “Tell me.”

“They tried to get the sword,” Jared whispered. “Sean fought them so hard. Drove them off.”

“But what about Sean? Who took him away?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t see.”

Andrea put her hand on Jared’s chest, again felt the flutter of his heartbeat, so swift and faint. It was useless to ask him any more questions. “Lie still. We’ll get an ambulance.”

“No. Human hospitals will kill me.”

He was probably right, and Andrea didn’t have the heart to argue with him. But she could try to help him at least. Jared was cruel and nasty and selfish, but he didn’t deserve to die in such pain and alone, so far from home.

Andrea pressed her hand to his chest and closed her eyes, searching inside herself for the healing magic.

Except that she already knew that her magic would not be strong enough. The threads that were Jared’s life force were snarled, too tangled to unravel. He’d been battered, bones broken, muscles and organs tattered by claws and by bullets.

When she’d healed Ely, Andrea had boosted her power with the Fae magic of the sword. Shaking, she wiped as much of the mud and grass from it as she could, laid it across her knees, and wrapped one hand around the blade.

The sword kept singing to her, not as loudly now, and she understood with abrupt clarity that the runes etched on the blade and hilt were forming words in her mind. They must be part of the spells made by the Fae woman long ago, and the words spoke of peace.

The sword’s threads flowed into Andrea’s body then out through her fingers, joining with her own healing magic that she poured into Jared.

But it wasn’t enough. The sword helped a little, but Andrea felt nowhere near the surge of magic she’d experienced when she’d healed Ely.

Come on. Give me more.

Even as she thought it, she knew that there would be no more. The missing factor from this healing was Sean.

When she’d helped Ely, Sean had held the sword’s hilt while Andrea had held the blade. The sword had drawn from Sean’s amazing Goddess-touched aura and combined it with Andrea’s healing gift to make Ely whole again. Sean the Guardian was the second part of the equation. The magic of the sword’s original makers—the Shifter man and the Fae woman—had manifested again in Andrea and Sean. Both of them were needed to make the healing work.

Beneath Andrea’s hand, Jared’s body weakened. She saw in her mind the faint threads of his aura suddenly fade and wink out.

Andrea gasped. She plunged her healing magic again into Jared, but she found the threads brittle and black, snapping under her touch. Andrea, Jared’s voice came to her, sounding happy, and then he was gone.

Andrea opened her eyes and jerked her hands from Jared’s body. Dylan leaned down and gently closed Jared’s blind eyes.

“You tried, lass,” he said softly.

“But it didn’t work. I wasn’t strong enough.”

“He was already gone. You eased him into his death, let his end be painless.”

Andrea stroked the silver blade on her lap, the runes still whispering to her, trying to comfort her. She and Dylan sat silent a moment, as was traditional when a Shifter died, each sending a prayer to the Goddess.

“If Callum or his Felines took Sean, they wouldn’t have left the sword,” Andrea said as Dylan helped her to her feet. “So that leaves who? If it was someone trying to help him, then why did they leave Jared?”

“I don’t know, lass. Maybe whoever it was thought Jared was already dead. Or maybe they just didn’t give a damn. But we’ll find him.” Dylan’s voice held determination.

Andrea’s breath hurt, but with her fear came rage, a killing anger. They’d taken her mate. A female defending her mate was the most fearsome of Shifters, and whoever had done this to Sean didn’t yet know the meaning of terror.

Andrea and Dylan couldn’t leave Jared’s body behind for the humans to find. Though Jared had been an ass**le who’d made Andrea’s life hell, every Shifter deserved to be sent to the afterlife by the Guardian. Andrea helped Dylan wrap Jared’s body in a tarp and ease it gently into the bed of Dylan’s pickup. Dylan laid another tarp on top and secured the tailgate.

They followed Sean’s blood trail through the grass onto the pavement behind the closed bar, and there the trail vanished. By the scent, someone had backed a vehicle there and must have then driven away with Sean’s body. There were no tire tracks on the solid asphalt, nothing to indicate what kind of vehicle it had been or in which direction it had gone.

Andrea didn’t want to give up and drive away, but there was nothing they could do. Dylan started the truck, and Andrea held the sword in her lap, her hands around both hilt and blade, as though the sword would give her some clue. It didn’t; the damn thing only kept whispering musical words that she couldn’t understand.