“I’m sure he could do with a healthy ear scrubbing,” Ruby said with a wan smile. “Especially after that fight. Lord knows, he acts like he has wax plugs in them most of the time.”

Actually, that wasn’t the truth. Derek heard everything, didn’t miss anything. He just had his own very definite opinions and judgments about things. Pigheaded man.

“We need to do a cleansing of this area.” Christine wrinkled her nose. “The lingering testosterone is so strong it’ll probably wilt your flowers, Linda.”

“Or fertilize them so they’ll proliferate.” Jocelyn laughed. “Like little rabbits.”

The women continued their gentle teasing, but once Ruby gave herself over to her massaging hands, her attention wandering, Christine glanced at Linda.

“I’ve never thought about having boxing gloves as part of the preparations for a Great Rite,” she muttered. “But we may need them.”

Linda had her own concerns, but she’d seen Derek’s face when Ruby left the kitchen after breakfast. Whatever was between them, it was a deep wound, and it needed healing. As she’d told Ruby, she might not understand all that was needed to face demons coming through a rift. But she knew when magic was needed to help bring connection back between two souls who couldn’t do without each other.

DEREK MATERIALIZED ON TOP OF A SNOW-COVERED mountain, where the wind could whistle through and drive the breath from a man’s lungs, freeze them before he realized he was facing his own death. It was a far cry from the tropical Florida climate of Linda’s property, and it was that sharp contrast he wanted.

He’d meant every bloodcurdling word, still felt the homicidal urge boiling through his veins. He’d walked in just as Mikhael’s knuckles had struck her fair cheek. Even now, in hindsight, it didn’t matter what sick game they’d been playing. He’d seen Mikhael kill before, a sharp, powerful blow with his closed fist that had snapped his opponent’s neck with a pop like a carrot stick. A woman’s neck was fragile, not structured to sustain a strike from a man’s hand, because men were never supposed to hit women like that, period.

His patience was at an end. He’d known she was going down some dark roads, but seeing that feral edge in her gaze, craving the blow a split second before it landed, pushed him past what he could tolerate.

He could recognize trouble building like a white squall line on the horizon, bearing down on an unprotected small craft. Ruby was that craft, and she not only wasn’t going to survive that line; whatever was driving her from inside seemed to want her to embrace it.

She stands against the angels…. I did you a favor.

As ruthless as Mikhael was, it was nothing next to what Derek could be when pushed past this line. Love at the visceral level he felt for her had no boundaries or rules. He’d known he loved her for a long time, but perversely it was learning she’d used the soul magic on him, and everything that had happened since, that had hammered it home.

She was everything to him. He wouldn’t tolerate this happening to her, even if she was the agent of her own destruction, making all the choices. If she was too far gone, he wouldn’t hesitate to embrace Darkness himself, do whatever was necessary to protect her, keep her safe.

And there was the key. The road she’d chosen had something to do with their daughter, driven by a love so deep, so grievous, she hadn’t cared about consequences. She still didn’t. Which meant she was fast slipping beyond his reach.

Fuck that. He snarled, dropping to his haunches like a lion prepared to spring. Fighting what was within him, an enraged bear in a cage of matchsticks, he took the necessary second to clear the field, make sure there was nothing in harm’s way. Then he let it loose. He thrust his hands up toward the sky, as if delivering a fiery message straight to Heaven’s gate.

His power compressed the air into folds around him, and then it launched, shuddering through the air, resulting in a cosmic thunder that boomed out over the vast mountain. A rainbow of fire like the Aurora Borealis gone full Disney Technicolor seared the sky. He split it, caught it in nets he conjured straight out of the clouds, channeled it into forms. Giant dragons shot through those clouds, roared their rage, then spun into funnels of energy that whipped up the air, darkened the sky further.

Those black holes could suck the Earth into them, if he let it go that way. He was a man, but because he was also more than a man, when sorely tested, he had Darkness inside of him as well. Only unlike Mikhael Fucking Roman, Derek could back it up with a destructive force that could take out half the planet.

So many years, so much power. From the moment he’d been born, he’d had a connection to the invincible power of the elements, a child of Earth. He understood histories and cycles, could stand inside a forest and touch each individual spirit inside every tree. Or level the entire landscape with a thought.

Just as the wind that flirted across a field could also send huge banks of clouds scudding across the sky, a never-ending panorama of movement, so, too, could the energy inside him light a candle or ignite an inferno. Years of discipline. He’d studied with so many masters, those with far less power than him but far more knowledge. He’d made the mistakes of ego and arrogance, lived to learn from them, to regret, to move on and do better, to make those mistakes worth it.

He was a man who could afford to lose his temper only to a point, but he’d learned to divide himself between Derek the man and Derek the sorcerer. It was okay for Derek the man to beat the shit out of Mikhael. But it had been many, many years since he’d felt this kind of rage, the kind that could bleed into the sorcerer’s realm, the side far more dangerous when angered.

But it was all too much. He’d had a daughter, a daughter he hadn’t even been allowed to touch. The woman he loved was in grave peril, her very soul at risk. And all of it had gone down while he was out doing what the Powers that Be required of him. In short, he was seriously pissed, resentful as hell, and he was going to make sure somebody knew it, even if it was merely with an awe-inspiring pyrotechnics show.

I am what You created me to be, and I serve You, but there are limits.

Darkness could hover on the edges when such challenges were issued. He felt its attention and presence. He snarled, dared it to get closer. He’d obliterate it in a heartbeat, because this was between him and the Light. The Darkness had no part of it, no matter what it felt spiraling out from his soul.

The dragons were now a flight of phoenixes, cutting great swaths of fire across the darkened sky, leaving trails of multicolored sparks. The earth trembled beneath his feet. The stars were shining brighter through the scudding clouds, everything closer. He could pull the moon into the earth, the stars down with it, hold all of it in his hands and crush them with the anger he was feeling.

But Ruby liked it when the sky was full of stars. A true witch, she reveled in the light of a full moon, would slide off her gown and stand out beneath it, letting that silver sheen glow over her skin. And if he crushed the earth, there wouldn’t be those lavender flowers she liked. Or long, hot baths with her, where she fell asleep against his chest, their toes overlapping beneath the water’s surface, wrinkling into prunes.

The energy responded to the shift, the sliver of feeling that wasn’t rage, that widened the crack between destruction and reason. And because his love for her was powerful, that was the only leverage it needed to slowly turn the tide, ease him back toward balance again.

She had driven him out here, but ultimately, she was what helped him remember what he was. She was damnation and salvation both. The definition of every woman worth a man’s heart.

His lips twisted into a wry smile. He wasn’t a child having a tantrum, ignorant of consequences. He knew there were ways to let pressure off the boiler without requiring it to explode. So, giving himself time to do just that, he transformed the phoenixes to dragons again, had them engage in battle, a spinning of wings and a flash of talons, tumbling through the sky. Kids, playing their computer games, would look up in the sky and think their dreams had come to life. Anyone who tried to capture it on their camera phone would discover technology had no hold on such images; they could linger only in the viewer’s mind.

He created thunderstorms that could wreak havoc, but contained them in spheres that hovered in the sky, oscillating fast, then slow. He was conscious of his breathing, of every cell in his body, in his brain, all of them engaged in what he was doing, all a part of it. He purposefully pushed himself, spending all that rage, turning it into this.

Of course, in time, the need for it started to ease. He wondered if reengineering asphalt so a black Ferrari had a harmless spinout would be okay. It could land in a nice cushiony mud wallow in the swamps. It was a sweet car, though. He’d rather have Mikhael thrown in that wallow, the expensive clothes and pricey haircut covered in sludge. But damaging the vehicle would really piss the gunrunner off.

The dragons now danced instead of fought, spiraled around one another in breathtaking display. Like mating dances. He wished Ruby were here to see it. He wished he’d known the first moment Ruby had crossed Mikhael’s path. He’d have stopped it. He wished he could have stopped a lot of things.

Gunrunner. Yeah, right. What better cover for a Dark Guardian? Mikhael was his mirror image. A cop for the Light, a cop for the Dark, both serving the cause of balance, but Mikhael’s side of it was incomprehensible to Derek. To his way of thinking, there was never enough Light force in the world, always too much Dark. Mikhael’s opinion was entirely opposite. The only thing they apparently shared was the same taste in women.

Of course, if Ruby was tipping toward the Dark, that meant the bastard had actually done him a favor. He could have let her embrace the Darkness fully, but instead Mikhael had fed it rationed amounts, kept its hunger at bay to buy her more time. Time to get herself out of this mess. Time for Derek to get to her, to help.

Yeah, maybe Mikhael had been right, but if he was going to be looking for an FTD thank-you bouquet from Derek, he was more likely to lop off his testicles with a machete first.