Immortals After Dark 04 - Wicked Deeds on a Winters Night

It’s more like I’m scared not to assume the mantle. Either way, it has to be done.”
    “Damn it, what you do is a choice! And I will abide it no longer.”
    Browbeaten. Her outrage building, she snapped, “Who the hell are you to order me around? Or to make me doubt what I am and what I was put here to do? It’s obvious to me that if you can’t accept what I am, then I can’t be with you.”
    “Verra well, witch,” he grated, his own anger flaring. “You will no’ pressure me to change my mind in this!”
    “I understand that!” With perfect clarity. He would never change. And she’d be damned if she’d fight a losing battle. “That’s why I won’t even try,” she cried, storming to the bedroom.

    Long after she’d passed by them, the pictures in the hallways rocked on the walls from her turbulent emotions.
    With a vile oath, he stomped down the stairs, outside to the beach, then ran for hours, until sweat dripped and the sun had set. Could magick possibly be this integral to her? Was it as critical as hunting and running was to him?
    When he returned she was deeply asleep, but her palms were dark, and she looked as if she’d been crying. Brows drawn, he felt her pillow. When he found it still damp, he might as well have had a sword plunged through his chest.
    Was he doomed to hurt his female again and again? To make her miserable because he was so unlike her—and so resistant to change?
    Maybe this entire experience, this reincarnation, was to teach him to be more tolerant. That night in the jungle Bowe had recognized that he would have to change to have Mariketa, and had wondered if he could accept such a haunting female, fully—to learn everything about her, about her kind, and even go among them.
    Tonight, he determined that he was going to... try.
    He showered, then joined her in bed, pulling her close. In sleep, he dreamed that the field adjacent to the lodge in Scotland had been planted with an orchard of apple trees.
    When he woke, Mariketa was up and rushing around the bedroom, though it was still early morning. He rubbed his eyes. “What’re you doing?”
    “Leaving. I need to get back.”
    “The hell you are.” He shot out of the bed. “Not without me!”
    She always ogled him when he was unclothed. Now she turned away as if impatient with him.
    When a horn honked outside, Bowe crossed to the window. A water taxi awaited her. The boat driver picked up the bag she’d already set at the end of the pier.
    She truly intended to leave him?
    “Just give me five minutes to get dressed.” He hastily slung on his jeans, then glanced around for his shoes. She always knew where he’d put them.
    At the bedroom doorway, she said, “This really is for the best. It’s obvious that neither of us can change, and I don’t want to spend eternity hiding what I am just to please you.”
    “Five goddamned minutes, Mariketa!”
    “Toxic goddamned relationship, Bowen!” She whirled around, darting from the room. As he charged after her, he spied her flick her hand in his direction. When he reached the threshold of the door, he ran directly into an invisible barrier that shot him back on his arse. “Little bloody witch!” He scrambled to his feet, lunging from one window to another. But she’d sealed all of them and all the doors as well.
    Leaving him? He sank to his knees and stabbed his claws into the wood floor. Never. As he ripped, he smiled menacingly. “Ah, witchling, you underestimated your male.”

46

    M ariketa rolled her eyes when Bowe ducked inside the cabin after taking the steps to the plane two at a time.
    The pilot, a short, nondescript—nonhuman—male, drew the door closed behind him, then promptly readied for takeoff. Apparently, they were to be the only passengers.
    Bowe loped down the aisle to where she sat, then dropped into a seat beside her. “You ken the pilot’s a demon?”
    “Yeah, so? Oh, wait, you’re prejudiced against them as well.”
    “With demons you have a fifty-fifty chance of them being rogue.”
    “He’s the one who was supposed to take me back two weeks ago—when I should have returned.” Her demeanor was icy. “I thought I made myself clear earlier. Nothing’s changed since I left you behind.”
    “Maybe no’ with you.”
    “What does that mean?”
    When the pilot lined up on the runway and revved the twin propeller engines, the plane began to rattle.
    “There’s something I need to tell you... ” Bowe trailed off with a frown