Bram clenched his teeth and fists. "Is this the day for difficult females?"

"Bring her with us," Duke suggested. "Question her later, but we're burning daylight."

"Indeed." He grabbed Aquarius by the wrist. "Come along." Aquarius wriggled free. "Forcing me . . . bad karma." "I've had a run of it lately. A bit more won't matter." Bram shoved her toward the door again.

The small woman planted her heels. "I came to see Sydney." She cast fearful green eyes at the other woman. "My cousin, have you seen her?"

"No." Sydney tensed.

Aquarius gulped. "I popped out earlier. When I returned she was gone. I hoped perhaps she'd come here."

Caden's heart stopped. Gone?

"Was she your source?" Caden demanded.

Sydney hesitated, and he could practically hear her thoughts churning until she finally nodded.

Caden leapt to life and grabbed Aquarius by the shoulders. "What is your cousin's name?" The little brunette pressed her lips together in a silent protest.

"Please!" Caden implored. "I think-I'm almost certain she's my brother's missing wife." G.o.d, it finally felt good to ask a direct question. Now that Bram had spilled the truth, he no longer had to think of an angle that wouldn't arouse suspicion or give away magickind's existence.

At his side, Sydney gasped. He looked her way, not sure what reaction he might find. The compa.s.sion softening her face hit him in the chest. Seeing that side of her now, when he needed it, only added to his need to keep her by his side.

Aquarius c.o.c.ked her head. "If she's your brother's wife, what is her name?"

"Anka. Anka MacTavish. Please."

Tearing up, Aquarius nodded. "She couldn't recall her last name. We hadn't seen each other since childhood. A few weeks ago, she came to me near death, shortly after-"

"Mathias raped her."

Dread swelled inside him. He'd never met Anka, but felt terrible for all she'd endured, and what that knowledge would do to Lucan, if he lived. Knowing that she was alone again, where Mathias might find her. . . . He shuddered. Why had she left relative safety?

Aquarius nodded. Sydney enfolded her friend in her arms. Fresh tears ensued. "It was awful. Took her over a week to heal enough to stand. She could remember little beyond her first name and girlhood memories. That's why she came to me. That, and the fact Mathias has no idea I exist."

"Any chance she'll return?" Caden grilled.

"Not certain. She's never left alone before. Too frightened. But I think she left of her own free will.

Nothing in my flat was disturbed. The air didn't feel violent or scary. Lately, she's been having dreams of a happier past. I offered to help her find the parts of her she'd lost, but she was afraid of Mathias harming me and the loved ones she'd left behind."

"She left no note?" Caden asked.

Aquarius eased back from Sydney's embrace and shook her head. "She communicated most with Sydney, as if telling her everything was cathartic." The pet.i.te woman clung to Sydney's hands. "Though she never told you her name, you helped her merely by listening." Caden's stomach plummeted and he tasted the bile of fear and failure as he stared at the ceiling. Dear G.o.d, to have come so close to Anka only to lose her again. Then there was the fact he'd failed Lucan and everyone else.

"How long has she been gone?" he asked Aquarius. "An hour? Two?"

"No more than that," she a.s.sured. "She's weak and hurting, so she can't have gone far. I don't know why she'd leave."

Bitter disappointment pounded into Caden. So b.l.o.o.d.y close. He'd known, known, Sydney's source of information was Anka. And he hadn't been able to reach her fast enough, build trust with Sydney. He'd been too fixated on fighting his feelings for his little firecracker reporter. Then too consumed by his transition. If they didn't find Anka soon, she and Lucan would pay the price.

"She can go far, very quickly." A fact Caden mourned, even as he spoke the words.

"A pop here, a pop there." Duke sighed. "With proper energy, she could have teleported to India by now."

Or she could have already been captured by Mathias, and they all knew it.

"Teleported?"

"Later," Bram growled.

Sydney turned back to Caden. "You were trying to save her all this time?" Caden turned to her. "Yes. I told you all I could. I know I gave you no reason to believe me."

"I'm sorry." Her voice shook. "I'm so sorry. Lucan must be beside himself." An understatement. Caden raked a tired hand across his face. There was no time to rest now. He had to keep moving forward and hope they found Anka before her trail went cold.

He squeezed Sydney's hand, and turned to Anka. "Did she leave anything behind?"

"She brought nothing with her. The clothes on her back were bloodied shreds. I burned them." Duke clapped him on the back, startling Caden. "We'll find her. We'll all help. I know what this means to you. But now we must go."

The other wizard's words moved him. Perhaps he was overwrought and exhausted from the past two days, but Duke had stayed by his side, no matter what. Like one of his platoon buddies would have.

"Agreed," Bram said to the group. "Mathias is many things, but not stupid. It won't take him long to track you down, Sydney. And then-"

"And then, we'll take the Doomsday Diary and kill her," said a frighteningly familiar voice.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

AQUARIUS GASPED. SYDNEY AND the men whirled, and her eyes opened wide when she spotted a familiar man and a dozen vicious berobed figures behind him. "Zain!" Before Sydney could process why he was standing at her doorstep with a bunch of blokes in robes behind him, their faces in shadow, he reached through the crowd and grabbed her hair. With a firm fist, Zain yanked her back against his front, positioning her like a human shield. He was wiry and deceptively strong. She struggled, fighting both the hold and the sudden pain. In mere seconds, he wrapped his other hand around her throat and squeezed.

"Let her go!" Caden demanded, lunging for her, fury carved into his face.

Constricting her throat, Zain dragged her out of Caden's reach and surrounded himself with the cl.u.s.ter of hooded figures he'd arrived with. The pressure on her windpipe raked her with panic and her eyes stung with tears. Sydney wished like the devil that she'd been more cautious when Caden had warned her of the danger.

Zain clutched her throat tighter, burying his face in her neck. He inhaled long and loud. Then he growled, the sound ripe with disgust.

"You smell like him." He tossed his head at Caden. "Every pore. Everywhere. The stench of integrity."

"What the h.e.l.l do you want?" Bram demanded.

"As if you have no notion." Zain's laugh was humorless. "Give me that book you're holding, or the b.i.t.c.h dies."

Sydney went cold. What would Zain do to her? At the office she'd gotten an odd vibe from him, but was he a killer? Apparently so, given his implacable voice and cruel grip. Why would he kill her for a little journal that granted s.e.xual fantasies?

Or was the book capable of more?

"Seriously evil aura," Aquarius murmured to Caden.

Ignoring the flower child, he reached for Sydney, fear for her in his fierce expression. His efforts to save her went straight to her heart, even as she worried Zain would hurt him, as well. Sydney wheezed, gasped for air. She flailed, feeling as if he would crush her throat and kill her at any moment.

Barreling past two of the freaks in robes, Caden charged to her rescue, elbowing one in the temple, punching the other in the nose. They crashed to the ground in a heap. Caden stepped over them and lunged for her. Bram and Duke were right behind him, felling more of what must be Anarki.

With a curse, Zain flicked his wrist and opened his free hand. Caden slammed into an invisible wall between them. Again he tried, and again, he crashed against it.

How the devil had Zain done that?

Bram flicked a wrist and a burst of light headed toward Zain-before stopping abruptly. Sydney blinked twice. Definitely magic.

She'd been right all these years. The paranormal existed! Now she had to stay alive long enough to write about it.

"Oh, you can block magic now. Been learning parlor tricks from Mathias?" Bram taunted.

Zain tensed. "I'm learning from a master. And learning well." Caden roared, trying to shove his way past the force field once more, his face mottled red with rage. His blue eyes drilled into Zain's, vowing retribution.

"Let her go!" Caden insisted. "She knows nothing."

"She wrote the article. Your master is holding the book in his hand," he said, then turned to Bram. "It's a simple transaction: the book for the girl."

"Give it to him," Caden barked at Bram.

The blond wizard shot him a long-suffering expression that demanded he be reasonable. "Zain may have trained up a bit, but he's a snot-nosed tot compared to me, inferior in both bloodline and ability. Isn't that right?"

"I know the newly transitioned whelp is two seconds from losing his s.h.a.g if you don't cooperate." Zain squeezed her neck a fraction tighter, and she choked, clawing for air. "Did you know I have the ability to heat a human up from the inside, boil their blood, cook their organs? I'm a human microwave oven." Sydney would have gasped, if she had the air. Unwelcome gray danced at the edge of her vision. She didn't know if Zain could follow through on such a threat, but that death sounded too horrific to tempt fate. Caden looked somewhere between panicked and nuclear. And Bram was dangling the d.a.m.n book just beyond Zain's reach.

"There's something to be proud of," Bram quipped.

Finally, clawing at his skin, Sydney managed to loosen Zain's grip on her a fraction. She gasped in a huge breath, then rasped at Bram, "Shut up! It's my book. b.l.o.o.d.y give it to him." Zain loosed his grip a bit more. "Good girl."

Bram rolled his eyes. "Sorry. If he wants it, he's going to have to fight me first. If he's stupid enough to try to kill you, I'll take the book, disappear forever, and his boss will flay him alive for failing. Again. So, are you feeling stupid?" he asked Zain.

"You holier-than-thou f.u.c.k!" Zain snarled. "If you leave here with the book, you'll disappear forever, no matter what I do. If I kill Little Red, however, the younger MacTavish could turn completely mental, like the elder, which reduces the able ranks of your Doomsday Brethren even more. You're the stupid one.

You have three warriors, one of them unable to fight after I kill Red, and I've got ten Anarki remaining.

Do you really think you can defeat us?"

Bram's confidence didn't slip an inch. Sydney began to suspect he was off his trolley. Zain had a very good point; they were totally outnumbered. The fact Zain was talking about her death as if it was a fait accompli hardly comforted her.

"For G.o.d's sake, give him the b.l.o.o.d.y book!" she snapped at Bram.

He merely raised a superior golden brow at her. Duke's expression was no less a.s.sured. Were they utterly mad?

Now that she could breathe, Sydney stomped her foot on Zain's instep at the same time she rammed her elbow into his abdomen, grateful for the self-defense cla.s.s she'd taken last year. Zain grunted in pain. In the ensuing moment of surprise, she darted away and ran toward Bram, hand outstretched for the book.

The wizard held it away from her, then shot Caden a glare. "Control your woman or I will."

"You'll pay, b.i.t.c.h!" Zain shouted as he worked to stand upright and charged Bram.

As Caden restrained her, Sydney railed at him. But something inside her savored his touch. His arm around her, holding her close, breath in her ear, made her feel alive. Safe.

Quickly, he shoved her behind him. The blond wizard tossed the book at Duke, who caught it in an efficient grab. Before she could blink, Bram waved his hand. Something that looked like a magic wand appeared.

A wand, seriously? How Harry Potter.

Sydney had barely completed the thought when Bram brandished the wooden stick, jolting Zain with a burst of energy that hit him like a live wire, making the other man jerk and sizzle. Some of his minions rushed toward Bram and Duke, wands suddenly in some upraised hands. The others . . . Oh, G.o.d! Now that they stepped into the light, she saw they were little more than skeletons with rotting flesh dripping from gray bones, staring out from under their hoods. Their eyes promised pain.

"Retreat!" Bram demanded, waving his wand with an efficient flourish that made two of the robed figures crumple into unconscious heaps next to those Caden had subdued earlier.

Someone dragged Sydney close with an arm about her waist while Caden clung to her. She screamed until she turned and saw that the second arm belonged to Duke. Bram reached out for Aquarius, who'd been watching in wide-eyed, uncharacteristic silence.

Before Bram could secure Aquarius against his side, one of the mutants in robes grabbed the little woman and tossed her in Zain's direction, waves of her light brown hair streaming behind her like a flag. She shrieked, the terrified sound making the hair on the back of Sydney's neck stand up.

"No one is leaving!" Zain insisted as Aquarius landed against him.

He absorbed her smaller body with a grunt, then trapped her in his arms, gripping her below the b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Aquarius jerked, gasped, green eyes popping wide. Suddenly, she loosed a bloodcurdling scream. A moment later, her face turned red, then purple, then swelled into something terrible.

Sydney wriggled against the arms holding her back, struggling to reach her friend. Between Caden and Duke, their grips were unyielding.

"Do something. Save her!" Sydney screeched.

As her words pinged off the walls, Aquarius's eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell limp in Zain's arms, her entire body bloated, skin blistered. Was she even breathing?

"No!" Sydney flailed and cursed, redoubling her efforts to get free.

Neither man budged an inch.

Retaining his grip on her, Caden kicked one of the corpse-like attackers, delivering some martial arts trick that snapped the minion's spine in half. Blood spurted everywhere. Black blood, just like Chloe had described. Sydney gaped on in horror.

"Humans converted to magical zombies, just like the dead soldiers in the tunnel. Oh. My. G.o.d," she whispered.

"Yes, Anarki. Conscripted men minus a soul." Caden kicked another half-dead creature who tried to sneak up on Bram. Again, the body broke apart and bled black as he collapsed.

Bram, who had been fighting off the others in robes, rushed to her side again. All around was a pile of unconscious Mathias followers, some rotting, some not, littering the ground. Now, only Zain and two of his robed peers stood.

"Put the girl down," Bram said. "Call off what's left of your lackeys. They're no match. Let's fight this fairly, you and I."

Zain scoffed. "I don't give two f.u.c.ks about fighting fairly. The girl is alive." He jostled Aquarius in his grip, and she bounced like a rag doll, making Sydney cry out. "But only just. Give me the book and I'll let her live. If not . . ."

Sydney's heart nearly stopped.