she was afraid, and hated herself for it. rowan looked at gabriel's face, which frowned slightly as though he was having an unpleasant dream, and wished desperately that at least she could right this wrong. but she had nothing to give, no healing powers to call upon. she had only herself.

rowan stopped still, wondering. she didn't know whether it was madness to hope, whether such a thing could bolster him at all. but he was still her mate, and it was better to try than to just sit here and wait for him to be taken away or to stop breathing altogether. now she did sneak a glance at the two figures engaged in heated discussion a small distance away. lucien, smoke still streaming from his mouth, gesticulated angrily at a lonely looking stone arch while his companion folded his arms across his chest and glared back. neither acknowledged her presence. good.

still, she knew there would not be much time. extending a nail, which she lengthened immediately into a claw, rowan slashed across one abused wrist so that blood began to flow freely from her body. with the other hand, she gripped gabriel's head and propped it on her lap, pressing the wound to his mouth. the thick crimson liquid spilled into his mouth, down the side of his chin, and he showed no sign of response. rowan gritted her teeth, willing the blood and all it contained into gabriel. her magic. her strength. above all, her love.

"come on, gabriel," she whispered. "if i can eat fish and chips for a week and get some energy from it, you can certainly do something with this. drink, baby. drink."

she didn't know if he heard her or was just reacting to the flow of liquid, but gabriel swallowed once, then again. it was weak at first, but his sucking grew steadily stronger as he drank. rowan cradled his head in her lap, eyes closed, concentrating on her connection to this man. to her wolf, her warrior shifter. it felt so natural, sending her energy into him, even as she got to feel his body reawakening in return.

lucien roared. she tensed, holding gabriel tighter because she knew they had finally noticed what she was doing. when she opened her eyes and looked down, gabriel's looked back, bright and alert and full of concern. rowan, robbed of the right words, shook her head gently, removed her wrist, and gave him a soft kiss on lips she herself had warmed. then massive claws seized her from behind, ripping her from gabriel's returning heat and lifting her into a sky full of emerging stars she had almost forgotten. above her there was nothing but the steady beat of wings, the sound she hadn't managed to escape after all. still, as she watched gabriel grow smaller and smaller, saw his mouth move while he shouted words she couldn't hear, she could not feel total despair.

he would live, for now. in these last moments before he vanished from her life, she would focus on that. she had at least given him a chance, slim though it was.

such a shame that hers were all gone.

chapter 15

"she's gone, shifter."

gabriel knelt in the sand, staring at the far-off black shape in the sky that was rowan and lucien. she'd saved him. after all his reluctance to let her face the enemy on her own, she had proven herself brave as any warrior, and she had saved him. he knew it as surely as he knew anything, could still feel her blood racing through his veins and setting his weakened body to rights.

just as he'd known her kiss had meant good-bye.

he'd tried to stand, to run after her and the monster that was carrying her off. but his legs didn't seem to want to hold him, and he'd managed to stagger only a short way before falling to his knees here and shouting her name until he was hoarse. but there was nothing he could do. the andrakkar had won her after all.

she was gone.

and slowly, awareness returned.

gabriel swallowed, wincing at what he'd done to his throat with the shouting. his head pounded dully, and his tongue felt as dry as the desert he now found himself in. it was still evening here, he saw, though the light was going fast. he saw nothing but a dead and barren landscape full of crumbling structures and slinking shadows that left him uneasy.

though he hadn't yet acknowledged it, he was also aware of the voice that had spoken. he knew he wasn't alone. he'd also recovered enough of his wits to understand that this was bound not to be a good thing.

"i see that damned dragon was right; you aren't quite dead after all. perhaps you'll still be of some use to me." the voice was soft, but there was a quality to it that set all of gabriel's nerves on edge. it grated, scraping painfully against his ears. he turned his head slowly to the figure who was waiting just to the left of him, and if he'd been in wolf form, his ears would have immediately flattened to his head.

he had never seen anyone quite like the creature who regarded him with a sort of clinical interest through painfully red eyes. the man was tall, slim, and willowy and garbed in a simple gray tunic and leggings. he had no hair to speak of, just a smooth pate of skin so white it looked powdered. the rest of his features were normal enough, though there was an unshakable sense of wrong-ness about him, malevolence surrounding him like an aura. and those eyes ... gabriel was reminded of every gore-fest of a horror movie he'd ever seen, and decided that none of them contained anything as remotely horrifying as the eyes now looking at him. it was like gazing into an abyss- cold, inescapable. endless. but not empty. in the abyss of those eyes lived things that would always be hungry.

gabriel shuddered, unable to help it. the creature, who had folded his hands patiently behind his back while gabriel studied him, smiled.

good christ, his teeth ...

he wanted to scream, but managed to tamp it down. teeth like that were made for one thing, and one thing only-tearing flesh.

he was going to have to be very careful it wasn't his.

"finished looking?" the thing said. "good. i am jagrin, arukhin. your new master. technically you'll belong to the king, but i'll be overseeing your ... training."

gabriel said nothing, cringing a little over the relish with which jagrin had said the word "training." a soft noise distracted him then, a sly skittering that had him whipping his head around behind him. he caught sight of a shadow melting away behind one of the massive bricks that were scattered about this place like the forgotten blocks of a baby giant.

"pay no mind to that, shifter. they won't hurt you." jagrin grinned, and it was hideous. "unless i let them, of course."

"what the hell are you?" the words were out before he could stop them, but jagrin didn't appear to mind.

"why, i am daemon, shifter. blood kin of the vampires of your world, ally to the dragon. and now master of you, a very special pet indeed. i must apologize for your condition ... i will be having words with whoever drank from you." an ugly expression flitted across his face. "more than words, possibly. unfortunately, the sarasin mirrors we use to communicate do not always show me everything i would wish to see, but they are what we have. still, the dyim lucien is so fixed on did me a great favor by restoring you. i would have thanked her if he hadn't been in such a hurry to have the bitch." he grimaced. "lust is so entirely useless. daemon are rarely afflicted with it, thank the gods."

gabriel must have made a sound, some disgusted, furious sound in the back of his throat, because jagrin suddenly looked at him more sharply, his interest more keen. gabriel hardly cared, so overwhelmed was he by the need to get to his mate, to prevent her from being violated by that scum of whatever-the-hell-dimension this was. she was his, damn it! and the thought of her with lucien, of him hurting her, taking her by force ...

gabriel was suddenly overcome by a wave of nausea. how was he supposed to get out of here? another shadow slithered through the stones, and he could feel it looking at him, heard it slide a tongue over dry and hungry lips before moving reluctantly on. there was a faint smell like curdled milk, like rotting garbage.

he began to sweat, though the air was cool.

"well. interesting. the red-haired witch must be quite something to have ensnared the both of you so entirely." he stepped closer, squatting down to study gabriel as one would a particularly fascinating insect. then jagrin closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, savoring the air around him like a fine wine. gabriel could only watch, using all of his willpower not to shrink away.

"mmm," sighed the daemon. "i can taste your fear. your pain. delicious. i can only imagine what your flesh would be like." he opened his eyes again, and there was a new and terrible hunger in them. "just a small nip wouldn't hurt, i suppose. a reward, i think, for my own cleverness in having gotten you in the first place. after all, you're going to be a very useful boy, aren't you? arukhin blood is said to have been quite potent for the darker spells ... and perhaps we can finally work out how to shift ourselves so we don't have to depend on those disgusting dragons."

"you ... you depend on the dragons?" it was the only thing he could think to say, but he had to keep the conversation going no matter how disturbing it got. there had to be a way out. or maybe he could lure jagrin close enough to rip into before the snacking began, though he had a bad feeling the daemon was smarter than to set himself up for that. jagrin tipped his head to one side, smirking. he knew gabriel was stalling. but there was nothing for it.

"mmm. mordred andrakkar thinks he's so special, a descendant of the drak himself. just ask him. but we are all children of the gods, are we not? narr, god of night, son of the drak, fathered my kind. why should we not have the ability, somewhere within, to change these weak and useless forms? but we need the dragons for protection, so taking one to study is out of the question. your kind, however, is long gone from coracin. who is to know if we keep just one?"

so this was going to be his future? experimented on and tortured so that these creatures could better fight the dragon who'd made it all possible? lucien andrakkar, you are a flaming stupid ass, and i hope i get to tell you that someday, right before i rip your bloody throat out, he thought.

"i don't suppose you've discussed this with lucien," he commented. jagrin shrugged.

"he cares for nothing but the witch. and he didn't ask. he'll make a much better ally than his father, who is often inclined to watch us more closely than we'd like." he looked faintly amused. "though of late, i must say, he's been somewhat consumed with hunting down a rogue group of arukhin who had the audacity to continue existing in another realm. the attempts he's made ..."