LITMIR.BIZ

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in her panic. “Please don’t hurt me,” she begged him. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

      Sagan gripped her tightly, drawing her flailing body up close so he could hush softly against her ear.

      “Shh, Valera,” he soothed her. “I know. I know what you are and how different you are from those we call our enemies.” He smiled with bemusement as he pulled back to look at her. “And you know what I am, don’t you?”

      “No,” she breathed, her entire body still trembling with her post-fear adrenaline. “I mean…not exactly. I think you are a Nightwalker, but I don’t know which kind. Can you read my mind? Are you a telepath? Is that how you know?”

      “Yes. But telepathy is not so selective as you might think. What made you think I would only learn of the magic, but not of the person behind it and her good intentions? What you must think of my people to feel we would come after you without discretion? And clearly you know nothing of Shadowdwellers or you would never have chosen this place to hide in.”

      That remark baffled her, but she focused on one part of it.

      “Shadowdweller? I’ve never met a Shadowdweller before. Thank God.”

      He knew she meant that if she had, that would mean her past associates had gotten a hold of one to imprison and torture. But all it had taken was seeing them capture a Demon and watching it go through its tortured transformation to convince her that something was very, very wrong with those who had taken pleasure in its pain and terror. While the others used the end result to prove to themselves that the creature they held was evil, Valera had known that nothing that caused anything to suffer so much in the process of stripping it of its beauty and civilization could ever be called good or righteous as they would have her believe. In the end, the transformed Demon monster left in the magical pentagram had been nothing to her compared to the magical monsters waiting with avarice to force the imprisoned thing to use its power for their benefit.

      “As you see, your magic can easily kill us, intentional or not. You radiate light when you call your power, and it sears us almost instantly.”

      “Not always,” she said quietly, turning her eyes down as her lashes dampened. “The light only comes with certain spells. Usually aggressive ones. But I can…”

      Rather than explain, she turned in his embrace slightly and with a simple sweep of two fingers she sent the muffins popping out of their pan and let them drift onto the plate nearby in a neat little circular arrangement. He could see how simple it was for her; how effortless.

      “It’s a harmless telekinesis,” he noted. “You are using it in a passive capacity. Peacefully.”

      “Although the use of it for household chores is a bit of a gray area on the good and evil scale. Too much of it for convenience’s sake is considered abuse. I’m perfectly capable of doing that without magic. If I were sick or disabled, then it would be different. It would be necessary. But there’s no harm in a small demonstration.”

      “Not as long as light isn’t involved,” he mused with an expression that teased. She grinned finally and playfully pushed against his chest.

      “Quit it. I’m just glad you don’t want to kill me.”

      Sagan lifted a brow at that, even as his mind turned back to what he did want to do to her. Valera obviously saw the change in his thoughts and intent because she tried to press away from him again.

      “You should eat something,” she said awkwardly, her cheeks turning pink. Then she gasped and looked up at him when she placed a double entendre to her own words and her whole throat and face began to burn bright red. “I meant muff—muffins. Or I can make you some eggs.”

      Sagan laughed at her, unable to resist the impulse at all. She buried her face behind her hands as he hugged her reluctant body close. He enjoyed her softness and warmth, but more than that he delighted in the opportunity to laugh. Not that Sanctuary was an unhappy place to be, but like any job it had its heavy responsibilities and its definite complications. As one designated to hear the confession of sins and given the responsibility to dole out proper penance, it made for a constant flow of seeing his people commit negative acts. Most were minor, of course, and there was the enjoyment of teaching to break it up, but the serious sins were very serious indeed and few who sinned with such depth would repent, forcing him to make final judgment on them.

      “Ah, Valera,” he sighed with genuine feeling. “I will let you feed any appetites you wish.”

      With that promise to her, he let her escape his hold. She turned away and he saw her rub her knuckles against her blushing cheeks as she reached for one of her skillets. The height was easy and obviously designed for her specifically. Sagan leaned back against a counter, folding his arms across his chest as he watched her. She moved by rote, her actions quick and practiced as her mind worked on trying to sort out her feelings and her needs.

      He felt her need.

      How long has it been, he wondered, since she last was with a man? Cloistered away from the world as she was and taking her insular personality into account, he imagined it had at least been nine years…the amount of time he had gleaned from her thoughts that had passed since she had moved here. The priest found it strange that of all the places in the world she could have chosen, she had picked a spot that was all but on top of the Shadowdweller city. Knowing that Drenna and M’gnone both worked in very convoluted ways sometimes, he couldn’t dismiss the idea that he had been meant to find her. But who had led him there? The pure and insightful Drenna, or the mischievous and tempting M’gnone?

      Perhaps it was a little of both. Or perhaps that was simply what he wished it to be. Was he looking for any excuse to brush back the consequences of his rule-breaking behavior? He had never before been so tempted, and that rang of troublesome sin. He needed time to think more clearly on this. At the very least he knew it was of profound importance to his race as well as the other races of the night that he had found a creature of good magic. Others must be warned of this. It meant that they could no longer kill necromancers with a totality of purpose. It meant there could be repentance. She had proven it. She had proven there could be reclamation of a stained soul with time and guidance.

      It meant she would change everything.

      Valera was hurrying through the house, pulling down window shades and tacking fabric tightly to windows that had no shades. Anything to keep out the light. Luckily, most of the windows had storm shutters to protect them against the ice storms and blizzards of the northern territories. Sagan had gone into her darkened bedroom to protect himself, and when she returned from out of doors, she suspected he was still there in spite of the sufficient darkness throughout the house. Diffuse light still hovered close to the windows, but he had said that would be harmless so long as he kept a safe distance from it. She nervously kept checking her work, terrified it would not hold and he would accidentally be injured. She had never been so grateful for the endlessness of Alaskan darkness. It would fall again within just a few hours and he would be perfectly safe.

      She walked into the back bedroom and knew instantly that he had gone to sleep. Valera knew he needed the rest very badly, his vibrant body working on borrowed energy as it recovered from the deadly poisoning that had nearly killed him. She had yet to ask him how he had come to be the way she had found him, but she had also realized that the nature of his existence deemed he be very careful about what he revealed to someone. Even with her good intentions, she could slip and give away knowledge his people could not afford others to know. Now she understood quite clearly what he had meant by his evasiveness being necessary to protect a great many others. It protected an entire culture.

      But Valera wished so badly that she could learn about his society. Her hunger for familiarity with all things magical and supernatural begged her to plumb him as the valuable resource she knew him to be. Not only about his own race, but about the other Dark Cultures as well.

      Still, she was realizing he would no more risk their safety and well-being than he would his own. So she spent a few hours combing through the information in her office, searching for anything she had that could tell her more about him. Finding

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