Though Lucan had occasionally granted him freedoms in exchange for aid with a particularly difficult spell or a dark deed he wanted done—the bastard had stayed on intricately warded ground the entire time, so Cian couldn’t touch him—the last had been over a hundred and twenty years ago, and such freedoms were agonizingly brief. The Dark Glass’s magic always reclaimed him after a time, despite his resistance. It didn’t matter how fast or far from it he fled, didn’t matter what Druid wards he wove about himself, after a time—and it was never the same interval; once, an entire day; another time, no more than a single hour—he was simply no longer wherever he’d been: one moment free; the next, back in his prison.

It had taken him some time last night to track Roman and, because he’d been concerned the mirror might reclaim him before he’d succeeded, he’d focused single-mindedly on the task. He had no doubt another of Lucan’s men would soon be coming. And another and another, ad infinitum, until the mirror had been collected and all trace of any who’d so much as glimpsed it, eradicated.

It was the way of men of their ilk—men of magycks, light and dark, those who practiced draiodheacht—to conceal such things as the Hallows from the world. Cian—because common man should not be troubled by the existence of such things. Lucan—because there were many other sorcerers out there (scrupulously staying off one another’s radar) who would stop at nothing to steal the coveted, dangerous Dark Hallows, were they to learn he had them. Contrary to what many thought, sorcerers and witches were a flourishing breed.

A Keltar Druid would have worked a complex memory spell to harmlessly—if properly and painstakingly done—erase the forbidden knowledge from the minds of any who’d encountered it.

But not Lucan. Simpler to kill: minimum effort, maximum pleasure and gain. Lucan thrived on power over life and death. He always had.

Cian smiled bitterly. Anyone in his path was expendable, and the woman was in his path. She was in mortal danger that she couldn’t possibly begin to fathom or hope to survive.

His thoughts both gentled and grew fiercer as they turned toward her. Fiery, determined, courageous, she was a stunning woman, with short glossy black hair curling softly back from a heart-shaped, delicate-featured face, and the most perfect, bountiful, lusciously rounded breasts he’d ever seen. A delectable ass too. He’d seen in great detail each intimate curve in her low-slung blue jeans and snug peach sweater. He’d even glimpsed part of her panties—which couldn’t have covered more than a fraction of her generous bottom, fashioned as they were from little more than ribbons—peeking up from the waistband of her jeans. The orange lacy stuff had been adorned by a bright pink butterfly at the base of her spine, making it seem her panties had been designed to slide up from her jeans to taunt a man’s eye. Men must be paragons of restraint in this century, he’d thought, staring fixedly at the scrap of frothy fabric rising from between the twin globes of her ass, or a bunch of bloody eunuchs. Creamy sun-kissed skin, eyes of jade, mouth of a temptress, Lucan’s assassin had called her Jessica.

As Cian had anticipated, she’d endeavored to convince herself that none of last eve had happened. On those infrequent occasions he’d been glimpsed by the uninitiated, they blamed everything and anything to deny the possibility of his existence.

He, on the other hand, would replay over and over a single moment from last eve, convincing himself it had indeed happened.

She’d rubbed up against him and tasted him. Crushed those round, heavy breasts to his back, nipples hard and poking him through the fabric of her woolen, and licked him.

As if she’d hungered for the salt of his skin on her tongue.

His cock had shot up so painfully erect that his balls had jerked and his seed had nearly exploded out of him right then and there.

The feel of her against his body had caused a thing he’d never before experienced: a violent jolt that had speared straight to the core of his soul. It had been all he could do to force her hands from his hair and pull away. It had taken every ounce of his will to not simply turn on her, drop her to the floor, and spread her for his pleasure. Forget about her assailant entirely. Bury himself inside her and stay there until torn from her body by Dark Magyck.

But nay, not only wouldn’t he let her life be snuffed like some frail candle flame caught in a deadly tempest not of her own making—he needed her.

“Twenty-two days,” he murmured. After more than a millennium of biding time, his vengeance was now dependant upon a laughably finite number of days.

Jessica St. James didn’t know it yet, but she was going to help him get them.