Hearts Aflame Collection IV: 4-Book Bundle (4 page)

Tara spends her days teaching at the local college
and her nights dreaming of something more, but she never thought that picking
up a strange old book at a used bookstore could change her life like this!
Before she knew it, there were monstrous winged creatures knocking on her door,
and the handsome but mysterious werewolf
Mads
Magnussen
coming through her window!

Tara's careless purchase sets off a chain of events
that put her body and her heart to the test, and soon she realizes that there
is far more to the world than she has ever considered.

It all began in a bookstore.

The day should have been perfect. It was a bright
and warm day, she had just finished grading her students' final papers, and the
university itself was buzzing with the energy of being finally free of a cold
wet spring. It was the perfect day, unless you were Professor Tara Roth, who
had previously dated the man who was making his way down the street toward her
with a gorgeous blonde on his arm.

Tara, who had had nothing on her mind
besides possibly lunch at her favorite Thai place, felt a blush of panic and
shame creep up over her face, and before she knew it, she had dodged in the
doors of the used bookstore.

As the heavy door closed behind her and she watched
her ex pass by with her replacement on his arm, she sighed at herself. It was a
little silly to be this distraught over a relationship that had lasted only a
few months, but she’d had a good feeling that had turned out, as it so often
had, to be false.

“
Oh, Tara dear, welcome back.
Are you looking for more cookbooks?”

Mrs.
Pillson
was the
elderly proprietor of the used bookstore, and she smiled kindly at the young
woman who stood so sadly in the entryway.

Tara Roth was twenty-eight, but with her slender
figure, round face, and mass of ash-blond curls, she could have passed easily
for one of her own students. She tried to dress up in skirts, leggings and
cardigans, but she always had the sneaking suspicion that she looked like a
little girl playing dress up.

She shook her head at Mrs.
Pillson
,
who had a habit of lightly mothering everyone who came in the door.

“
No, I'm still working my way through the last one I
bought, but thank you. Is there anything new?”

Tara figured that even if her love life was doomed
to end in with a whimper rather than a bang, her fantasy life didn't have to.
She was an avid reader and had been since she was a child. It led to her
life-long love of language and words, and eventually, to a scholarship to study
ancient linguistics in France.

She drifted toward the New Arrivals cart that Mrs.
Pillson
pointed out and ran her finger haphazardly across
the spines of elderly romances and self-help books. She was wondering if she
was looking at her future, spent entirely in used bookstores and take-out Thai
when she blinked and noticed something different.

The book was small but thick, and to her surprise,
it seemed to be bound in genuine leather. There was no name on the spine, but
when she opened it up, she was greeted by a vivid red illustration of a dragon
chained to a pillar, surrounded by words she thought she recognized.

It had the look and feel of some of the manuscripts
she had worked with, the ones from the very earliest days of printing, but she
knew that was foolishness. Those books were worth hundreds of thousands of
dollars, and there was a faint sticky spot on this book where Mrs.
Pillson
had probably scraped off an old price sticker.
Still, it was odd and the leather cover was attractive, so she brought it up to
the front.

“
Oh, that's part of that strange lot that came in
the other day,” said Mrs.
Pillson
, checking the price
she had lightly penciled into the front cover. “
Hm
, I
said ten for this, but we'll just say five for you, dear.”

Tara smiled, because if Mrs.
Pillson
continued to treat her like a broke college student, she wasn't going to
complain too loudly.

She only remembered the book after she had finished
her dinner that night. There was still a chilly bite to the spring air, and she
was cozily wrapped in a blanket on the couch. Turning off the television, she
fetched the book from its plastic bag and opened it curiously.

Now that she was looking at it much more closely,
she realized that it was indeed very old. Her area of expertise was in the
words, not the pages that they were written on, however, so she turned her
attention to them instead.

It was not Latin or Coptic, as she had assumed, but
instead it was a code, one used by a group of people who considered themselves
wizards. They were known as the
Sybelline
Brotherhood, and she had done her thesis on them just four years ago. An odd
shock ran down her spine as she realized that this must be a piece of writing
from the same group that she had spent so much time researching.

They were strange men, convinced that they held the
keys to the universe, and now, she was holding something that she was becoming
more and more certain was part of their library. Her excitement rose, and she
hastily opened her laptop, consulting her notes on their strange code. There
were perhaps five people in the world who would have even known where to start
when confronted with this book, and Tara was one of them.

In a fever of excitement, she wrote down the words
that she saw in the book, typing them hastily onto her computer. She was so
consumed by the act of translation that she didn't even look up to see what she
had until she had finished.

“
For the freeing of things once
caged,
and for setting right the wrongs that have been done...” she murmured in confusion.
Deep inside her, she felt a cold shiver, something that chilled her to her
fingertips.

Things are changing,
she thought incoherently, and for a moment, Tara
was almost frightened.

The moment passed, and she started to laugh at her
own silliness. The
Sybelline
Brotherhood was a group
of rich men with too much time on their hands, she reminded herself. They had
produced some fascinating works, and they offered a glimpse into the mystical
minds of the era, but no matter what fantasies they spun, they meant nothing in
the new era. She knew this.

The knock on the door nearly made her jump straight
out of her blankets. Then she remembered that a knock meant that there was
someone at the door and, pulling her robe over pajamas, she went to
investigate.

Her hand was just on the knob when her window
exploded inwards. The shattering glass was terrifyingly loud, and she
instinctively threw herself to the ground, covering her head with her arms.
When she looked up, she realized that she was completely unhurt, but now there
was a wild-looking man standing in her living room.

He was tall enough that he seemed like a giant in
her home, and she froze as his startlingly bright blue eyes roved the room. He
saw her crouched by the door, and with a sound like a bestial growl, he strode
toward her as she tried desperately to push herself to her feet.

His hand clamped like an iron band around her
shoulder, hauling her to her feet, and he loomed over her, menace etched in
ever line of his body.

“
Where is it?” he growled. “You have it; you must
tell me where it is.”

Gulping back a whimper of fear, Tara tried to tell
him that her purse and her wallet were on the table, that he should take it as
long he left her alone, but she couldn't make the words come out. Her voice
shivered and shook, and for a brief moment, the intruder looked almost
repentant.

He started to speak, but then the knocking at her
door came again. No, not knocking, pounding, and to Tara's shock, she saw the
door, heavy and steel, start to bend inwards.

The man swore in a language that Tara's distracted
mind recognized as Scandinavian of some sort and thrust her behind him.

“
I'm sorry,” he whispered. “Damn
me
for a fool but I have led them right to you.”

She knew that she should be running to her bedroom
where she could lock the door, or that she should take her chances going
through the window that had been broken. Instead, she skittered back and away,
unable to take her eyes off the man who was staring so ferociously at her door.

“
Come on, come on, you feathery son of a bitch.”

The man crouched like an angry animal, and as they
both waited, the door bent further and further until one final blow flattened
it, revealing the thing behind it.

Tara caught a glimpse of wings tall enough to brush
her ceiling, and a face that was ruined with scars before the thing was borne
to the ground by a snarling whirlwind of fur and teeth.

Her brain refused to believe what her eyes told
her. Where there had been a man, there was now a wolf, and it hit the thing in
the door with a demented snarl. She was frozen to the spot, unable to do
anything, unable to breathe or scream or call for help, but then she saw the
winged being wrestle the wolf to the ground. The menacing growls turned to a
pained, choked howl, and now she acted on instinct alone.

It took two steps to the large heavy vase on the
table,
and three steps to the fight on the ground. With a
calm and grace that would always surprise her in years to come, she brought the
heavy vase down hard on the winged thing’s head. The vase shattered into a
thousand shards, and the winged thing uttered a startled shriek that sounded
like sharpened nails over chalkboard.

It drew away for a moment, giving the wolf enough
of a chance to bound to its feet and chase it again. The winged being seemed to
decide that that was enough, and in a flurry of feathers that dragged a cold
wind into the room, it plunged out the window and was gone.

The adrenaline that had been holding Tara up let go
abruptly, and she wound up on the floor, her teeth chattering hard. She
couldn't seem to keep her eyes open, and the next thing she was aware of was a
pair of warm, strong hands wrapping around her shoulder.

“
Oh, hell below,” the man swore. “Are you hurt? Did
that bastard harm you?”

He’s back
.
The wolf is gone and he is back.

She shook her head as best she could, but she
couldn't make herself speak. The man stared at her, confused and concerned, and
it occurred to her that he was quite handsome. He was clean-shaven, with
features that were perhaps a little too rugged to be conventionally handsome,
and his mouth, even when twisted into a worried frown, was almost shockingly
sensual. His hair, she could see now, was a deep brown, cut too long for
fashion, and with just a hint of a curl at the ends. He filled up the space
like a stone, solid, immoveable and strong, but she had seen how fast he had
moved, and how powerful he was.
 

She was too shocked and cold to do much more than
whimper when he lifted her up in his arms, and then all she could do was be
grateful for his warmth and the solid bulk of him against her.

“
I'm sorry, precious, but we have to move,” he said
urgently. “That coward's gone, but his friends will be back, and though I wish
to god you could take them all out with
pottery, that
just won't work.”

She chuckled a little dryly at his words, but even
that took enough effort that she fell silent, burrowing into his comforting
warmth. The smell of him was warm and woodsy, and underneath it, there was
something so elementally male she couldn't resist a soft sigh.

He made a clicking sound with his tongue to get her
attention, and when she looked up, he nodded.

“
This is important, love,” he said softly. “Where's
the book?”

In all of the fright and fear of the past few
minutes, she had forgotten about the book that seemed to cause it all. After a
blank moment, she pointed at the table, where the leather-bound volume sat so
innocently, unharmed by the flying glass.

The man who held her so carefully picked it up with
reverence, sliding it into the inner pocket of his long leather coat, and with
nothing more than that, he leaped out the broken window, carrying her safe and
sound in his arms.

***

When she woke up, Tara had dim memories of moving
with great speed, of being carried by a man who seemed unnaturally strong, and
of feeling almost shockingly safe. The remnants of those memories clung to her
when she awoke, and it took her a few moments to realize that she wasn't in her
own bed at all.

Instead, she realized that she was sleeping on what
felt like a feather mattress, tucked tight under a thick quilt that smelled of
pine and sage. Startled, she sat up, and by the light of the fireplace nearby,
she saw the shape of the man who had taken her.

“
Who... who are you?” she asked, her voice stumbling
and small. She staggered to her feet, relieved to see that she was still
wearing her flannel pajamas. She took a few lurching steps toward the man,
suddenly furious, and he held his hands up.

“
I'm not going to hurt you,” he said softly, and she
could sense real regret in his voice. “I'm sorry that what happened last night
occurred, but if I hadn't stepped in, it would have been a lot worse,
believe
me.”

Tara shuddered at the thought of the scarred,
winged thing that had broken down her door, shaking her head.