Zola's Pride

Chapter Four

Walker woke with Zola draped over him, a living dream that had haunted him for years. His third time waking and reaching for her, and she came to him as readily as the first, wrapping her legs around his hips.

“Slow.” More than a whispered promise to her, it was a pledge to himself. They’d both waited so long, and they deserved to have each other in every way imaginable.

He kept his pledge until she bit his ear and whispered, “Mine.”

He lost himself then, surging deep. Mine. More than a word—a claim, one that matched the way her body welcomed his. Pleasure overwhelmed him, pure instinctive satisfaction.

Completion.

He belonged here, exactly where he was.

Afterwards, he licked the sweat from the hollow of her throat and smoothed her hair back. “Do you have classes tomorrow?”

A sleepy shake of her head as she stroked his back. “Never on Sundays.”

One of a hundred tiny little details he didn’t know, and he relished the opportunity to learn everything about her. “Just us, then?”

“Unless we want to start making arrangements to bring the pride to New Orleans.” Her fingers slid up to tease the back of his scalp. “I have money. We can find them a place to live.”

Money was the least of it. “So do I. The problem is how much red tape is involved with a move like this. That’s part of why I wanted the wolf council’s help.”

She chuckled. “I did not immigrate...naturally. There is a thriving business in New Orleans that focuses on nothing but making red tape disappear.”

“And if they’re like all the other thriving businesses like that all over the world, you don’t just walk up to them with an envelope of cash.”

“No,” she agreed, laughter still bubbling in her voice. “You send Alexander Jacobson. He will do it, because I’ve recently taken on a young woman of his acquaintance as a private student, and he’s feeling very grateful.”

He joined in her laughter. “I see how it is.”

“Mmm.” Her hand stilled as she yawned, then nuzzled his chin with sleepy affection. “Rest. You’ll need it if we’re to do this again in a few hours.”

“I need you more than I need sleep.” He kissed her temple and slid out from under the covers. “I’ll be right back.”

Walker made his way down the hall toward the bathroom in the dark. As he approached the half-open door, his skin prickled, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

Something was wrong.

Though he could see well, he wasn’t familiar enough with Zola’s apartment to notice anything visibly out of place, and he heard nothing. Not a damn thing to fuel his indefinable sense of wrong.

Still, it remained.

He flipped on the bathroom light, and his blood chilled. A bag of dirty black cloth dangled from the mirror by a length of coarse twine. A gris-gris, maybe, one that Zola definitely hadn’t placed.

The bag clinked as he yanked it free. He smelled flowers and copper, two scents that exploded in his nose as he upended the bag on the counter. Rose petals and pennies tumbled out, along with a small bottle of whiskey and a slim dime that seemed to spin in time with his pounding heart before finally settling on the slick tile.

Just like that, he was back in the bayou, watching his mother bury another wax doll baby under the raised edge of their ramshackle porch. She’d always whispered words, low, mellifluous entreaties that faded in the heavy air, rising to blend with the rustle of Spanish moss in the trees.

Not a gris-gris. Flowers, nine pennies, whiskey and a Mercury dime. Everything a rootworker would need to buy graveyard dirt from the departed.

It was a message and a warning, all wrapped up in bits and pieces of his past. The Scions had come in while they slept, or even while they made love. Under cover of magic, they’d violated the safety and sanctity of Zola’s home.

And yet, no blood had been shed.

Walker swept the contents of the black bag into the small wastebasket beside the vanity. The Scions wanted nothing to do with Zola, either because of her connections or because she’d been blameless in Tatienne’s affairs—but they’d hurt her if they had to. To get to him, they’d mow down anyone and anything in their way, and damn what the Conclave had to say about it.

He made a cursory check of the apartment, but found nothing. He hadn’t expected to. No one remained, stealing about the rooms under cover of magic. They had no need for it.

The Scions had accomplished their mission and left their message. They knew Walker, knew what lived at the very heart of him—and the lengths he would go to in order to keep Zola safe.

And he knew where they’d be waiting.

Walker parked his borrowed bike at the end of the long driveway. Someone had taken a swing at the rusted out mailbox, and it dangled precariously from its wooden post. He righted it before he set out for the house on foot, though he had no idea why.

No one lived here and, unless his half-brother tired of city life, no one would.

It had been years since he’d walked the mostly-dirt path. Grass had grown up in the middle of the road, between the packed ruts, and the heavy canopy of live oaks and cypress overhead blocked out the light of the moon.

The path lightened, and he could see the house at the end of it. Walker had barely cleared that thick cover of the trees when a voice spoke from the sagging porch. “So. You come alone.”

Walker studied the simply dressed man and shrugged. “I assumed that was what you wanted.”

A soft footstep made the porch creak, and a woman appeared at the man’s shoulder. “It is easier not to have to contend with the Seer’s get, but we were not sure you would abandon her.”

Abandon. The word rankled, shamed him. “She has nothing to do with this.”

The man laughed, rusty and flat. “No, I suppose not. Taking her from you might right the scales, but she’s more trouble than she’s worth...as long as you come with us quietly.”

“Just me.” Walker shifted his weight, instinct demanding a fight—though there would not be one. “The rest of the pride is hers now, and my life is yours.”

Gravel crunched behind Walker, and the two Scions on the porch stiffened. The woman tilted her head and gazed past him. “Does she know that?”

Damn it. Walker turned to find Zola standing there, eyes narrowed. “I thought I might have gotten away with it.”

She raised both eyebrows, silently asking if he’d really thought he could, then looked past him toward their enemies. “I know what’s mine. The pride is mine, as is Walker Gravois. Are you here to challenge me for them?”

The woman paused at the top of the porch steps. “Gravois is coming with us. He must answer for what he has done.”

Zola strode forward until she stood at his shoulder, then reached down deliberately and curled her hand around his. “He stays. You leave.”

She was strong, beautiful. Defiant.

His.

Walker gripped her hand and looked down at her, his chest aching. “They fight as one,” he whispered, “but so do we.”

“Always.” Her fingers tightened until her grip bordered on painful. “Do you challenge us, Scions?”

In response the man pulled a gun and leveled it at Walker’s head, finger already squeezing down on the trigger.

Walker released Zola’s hand and ducked into a roll as magic surged through the night. One kick to half-rotted wood brought down the corner of the porch, and the Scion stumbled and dropped his gun.

He dove for it, but Zola was faster. Her first kick sent the gun skittering under the groaning porch, and her second swiped the man’s legs out from under him, spilling him to the too-tall grass. A second later the woman—the shapeshifter—leapt from the crumbling steps in a full-body tackle.

Zola bucked and rolled, using the Scion’s own momentum to throw her aside. Walker caught the woman off guard, drawing her attention. As the child of a Seer, Zola’s natural resistance to magic made her a better adversary for the spell caster.

And she pressed that advantage, coming to her feet just as the man fisted both hands and raised them. Magic cut through the cool air, prickling along Walker’s skin, but the brunt of the power rolled off Zola as she spun again, lightning fast, and clipped the wizard’s jaw with her heel.

His grunt of pain made his partner turn for a split-second, and Walker slammed his elbow into her temple. She staggered, and he caught her around the throat. “Will you go?” he demanded. “Leave and never come back to New Orleans?”

She replied with a snarl and a knee driving toward his groin as magic snapped again, this time slamming into him. His vision blurred as pain and magic mingled, and he lashed out, instinct driving him.

He struck her in the throat with the blade of his hand. The delicate bone protecting her airway snapped and she fell back, choking for air in loud, heaving gasps.

It wouldn’t take her long to recover. Walker struggled to focus, to shake off the spell so Zola wasn’t left to fight alone.

The sharp crack of gunfire echoed around him, a second before a warm body crashed into him. Zola’s, by the scent and feel. She bore him to the ground and rolled them until his hip bumped into the collapsed end of the porch.

“He’s got the gun,” she whispered, a breath of sound against his ear. “Firing from under what’s left of the stairs.”

“The other support beam.” The porch had been rickety even in his youth. One more well-placed blow might bring the entire thing down on the hidden Scion.

“Can you get to it if I distract them?”

He was still seeing double, but he nodded. “Get the shifter. I’ll handle this guy.”

Her lips brushed his cheek in a whisper-soft caress, and then she was gone in a swirl of near-silent footsteps across the untamed grass.

One shot fired into the night, but a second later he heard the Scion shifter’s grunt of pain as Zola pounced on her, tangling them up so the wizard wouldn’t get a clear shot at her.

As Zola grappled with the shifter, Walker eased around to the edge of the porch. A shot whistled past, and he cursed. Without rounding the house, there was no way to sneak past the caster under the porch.

Screw this. He scrambled up the collapsed side of the porch, the wood creaking under his weight. Another loud report, this one accompanied by a blaze of pain in Walker’s arm.

He’d been shot, and he didn’t give a damn. He roared his anger and punched down through the boards to close his hand in the man’s hair. He managed to slam his adversary up against the wood three times before the listing porch collapsed.

“Walker?” Zola’s voice, edged with worry. “Are you all right?”

He closed his fingers around the gun and groaned as he rolled to his back. “Peachy. You?”

An uncertain pause, and she echoed the word back to him in her accented English. “I am hoping that means good.”

“It means I’ll make it.”

The sound of flesh on flesh followed, a muffled grunt and then silence. “She is alive. Unconscious, but alive. I will call the Conclave. The Scions. Offer her for your pardon. A life for a life, yes?”

A life for a life. How could the Scions refuse, when the woman’s defeat rendered her life forfeit? “I think that’ll work out just fine.” Underneath him, the shattered boards shifted, and the spell caster groaned. “Maybe even twice over.”

Zola rose and crossed the yard, the moonlight glinting off her features. “Are you injured?”

“Just a scratch.” Walker rolled off the flattened porch and landed on his knees. “My jacket’s ruined, though.”

“Fool.” Her fingers slid into his hair and down, cupping his neck. Her words drifted to French, low and intimate. “I love you too much to lose you to stubborn pride. But if you walk into another trap without me at your side, I will kill you myself.”

“I screwed up, but never again.” Leaving her was, without a doubt, the most idiotic thing he’d ever done. Zola didn’t need his protection. She just needed him, and he knew the feeling. “We fight together?”

“As one. Always.” Her lips seized his in a breathless, desperate kiss, over almost before it began. “And now we call Alec Jacobson. He has a cage in his basement for situations like this. I’m afraid you will find they happen more often than not, if you stay here.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “I grew up around here. I know the lay of the land.”

“Then you know it will never be boring.”

Living in a plastic bubble wouldn’t be boring as long as Zola was with him. “Are you sure you can forgive me for sneaking out on you?”

A hint of laughter bubbled up as she reached into her pocket for a phone. “This time. But only if you take over my class full of adolescent male shifters. Perhaps a weekly reminder of the crippling effects of male ego will teach you a valuable lesson.”

It was far more than he deserved, but there was no way he’d squander a chance to make up for the hurts he’d visited on her in the past—the distant and the not so distant. “Make your call, Zola. The faster we get these two out of here, the faster we can be alone.”

The faster he could convince her she’d made the right choice.