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The fog cleared and a picture of Ruby looking so young and smiling so brightly floated into view. Brian was there, clearly older than her but still in his young days, grinning back with the confidence of someone who didn’t know loss yet. The two shared a look, standing so close and torn between moving even closer or apart. The intimacy built as heat sparked in her gaze, while his turned darker…
“Mad, seriously…”
The present Ruby cut through the image like a knife, but it was too late as he understood what the two had been to each other. He swallowed when her warmth seeped into his system, then eased her off him when it felt like he was invading an intimacy that wasn’t meant for him.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you guys had a thing.”
“We weren’t…nothing happened,” she trailed off. “It’s all in the past.”
An overprotective surge came at the knowledge that Brian didn’t think so and would probably do anything to be close to her—like blindly jumping into a portal.
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t know. It’s not the priority now.”
She was right. He surveyed below and watched the creatures disperse in groups, perhaps satisfied after killing that one creature. He still didn’t feel good about the trees, the disappearance of the other two leaving him restless. They continued their path at his gesture, stopping now and then to check if a shadow lurked. Then the light was very close and he heard it.
“Mad!”
“Ruby!”
They looked at each other, recognizing the voices. They peered at the light, a sheen similar to Brian’s but with a different feel to it.
“Magic?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I can’t feel it anymore.”
He gritted his teeth, not liking that this was happening to her. He took her hand.
“On three.”
Maddox broke a branch, taken aback when it easily went inside the sheen while the creatures below—two that had continued following them—couldn’t. On the count of three, they jumped, with him landing first and holding on to her so she wouldn’t fall. His gaze landed on Moon first, but there was no eagerness on the boy’s face.
“Brian?” Ruby asked, eyeing the warlock who was standing far apart from the shifter. Then Maddox noticed that they were standing very still, as if…
“Trap,” he barked out, stepping in front of Ruby.
At the same time, something creaked above him, a split second before steel bars swooped down to surround them.
Chapter 6
Ruby held on to Maddox, who was trying to bodily force his way out of the impenetrable bars. She glanced at the two other men in a distant corner, the trance they were in broken as they also tried to get out of their separate steel bars. But Moon’s extra strength and Brian’s hand gestures weren’t working, secluded in their space and unaffecting the bars. A second later, the cage moved, taking them with it to the corners of the sheen.
“Moon!” Maddox called out.
“I don’t think they can hear us,” she said, studying the boy’s lack of response. She glanced at the other side, where the clicking creatures peered at the sheen but didn’t quite meet their eyes. “I don’t thinktheycan see us, either.”
She felt his impatience brimming to the surface as he bounced around the cage, refusing to give up his search for an exit. She sat on the ground, which had him staring in disbelief before he reluctantly sat down, too. Ruby placed her palm on a portion of grass and closed her eyes.
“Any luck on the sensing thing?”
There was a thrumming from the barriers behind her, but nothing else. She dug deeper. “It’s ancient magic, but it doesn’t extend beyond the barrier. Everything else is normal. This barrier has been here for a while now, maybe long before we were born…unless you are like your vampire peers.”
She took a peek, noting his amusement as he shook his head. “No. I follow my human age, but with a few extra years.”
“Same. It can be a hundred years for the rare ones, but those with regular magic can only last a few extra years, too.”
“I don’t think regular witches can control a group of pirate ships at will. Or fly through the skies. Or protect good pirates from a horde of bad ones.” His expression softened. “Or pull me from the brink of death.”
