Page 28 of Taken By the Blood God

“I guess I’d better hurry up and do that,” she murmured, staring at the water bottle as she twisted it between her hands. “Since you want to free Davian as soon as possible.”

“Minerva, look at me.”

Her expression was unreadable when her eyes lifted to mine.

“I have no doubt that you are capable of anything and everything you wish to do. If you wish to access your Conduit abilities, you will.”

The laugh that passed her lips was little more than a gust of air and held no humor. It sounded sad and a little bitter.

“I wish—” She stopped talking and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I wish. I’ll just have to figure it out.”

She sighed and straightened her back. “We should eat and get moving. I think we should spend some time watching the coven using your brother as their own personal recharging station. Then we can decide the best time to stage our rescue mission.”

“That sounds like the first step to our plan,” I replied, letting the subject drop.

Minerva picked up a sandwich and began unwrapping it. “Good. Does that mean I get to decide the rest of our plan?”

“Have you ever raided another coven’s facility while being seriously outnumbered before?” I asked.

She frowned as she stared at me. “No, why?”

“If you had, then the answer would have been yes. Since you haven’t, I think two heads will be better than one in this situation.”

Her eyes narrowed at my use of the cliched phrase. I knew she was beginning to suspect that I wasn’t as ignorant of the modern times as I pretended. Probably because of slip-ups like that.

It was another truth for a later time. In a place where there wasn’t a coven of warlocks who would notice if she tried to fry me with magic.

Chapter

Thirteen

Minerva

Our planning session ended up being short.

Mostly because we both realized we had no idea what we were up against yet, so it wasn’t an efficient use of our time to argue over our plans now.

The entire time we talked Talant acted as though what had happened earlier, well, hadn’t occurred. In fact, he said nothing even the slightest bit flirtatious. Not a single innuendo or smoldering look. Both of which were typical for him.

I should have been relieved. I should have been moving on. But my brain was stuck on the things I felt with him earlier and the words he said to me after.

If he really felt that way, why had he withdrawn so completely?

Was I being ridiculous? Absolutely.

But after several years of celibacy and now the strongest orgasm of my life, it was understandable that I felt discombobulated. At least, that’s what I told myself.

Once it was established that we couldn’t make plans until we knew what we were dealing with, Talant called downstairs and asked Gerald for a map of the town. The man brought itup within a few minutes, all smiles and asking if we needed anything else. It was strange and disconcerting, especially since I knew he’d never met Talant before. Yet he acted like he was a regular guest at this hotel. A familiar one.

It was a frightening type of magic that could accomplish that with no potion, without even a direct line-of-sight to the target. Talant had cast this spell from half a mile away at a diminished capacity. Now that he was back to full strength, what would he be capable of? Would I be putting the people of Devil Springs at risk by bringing him and his brother back to the town?

I had to push that thought to the side. One problem at a time. But I would keep it in mind as we dealt with the warlocks siphoning power from Davian. I needed to have my own back-up plan if things went awry.

Well,whenthings went awry, not if. Because it was guaranteed something was going to go wrong. It always did.

The table was too small to lay the map flat, so Talant spread it on the end of the bed, smoothing out the folds as best he could. I opened my mouth to offer a scrying spell, but he waved his hand over the map, whispering words in a language I didn’t recognize.

Though I didn’t understand what he said, I knew it was an incantation by the way magic began to sizzle in the air around us. Talant’s power felt hot, like the noon sun in the summer. Waves of heat that would burn you if you were exposed to them for too long.

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