Savage Estate

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Alec had been wrong about walking into a horror movie. This was supernatural territory. How else did he explain someone he’d talked to on the phone only moments earlier now body-checking him into submission?

Simple answer? He couldn’t.

His hesitation didn’t go unnoticed. Rowan’s eyes narrowed.

“You ready to do as I say?”

With that kind of attitude, not really, but the only way to get answers was to go along with everything for the moment. “Go out the way we came in, and I won’t say another word until we’re in the car.”

“I can’t believe you’re trying to make a deal.” But Rowan stepped back, letting Alec’s full weight sag to the floor, and grabbed his wrist. “Fine. Let’s go.”

Alec held true to his word, though being led like a naughty child made him feel like an i***t. Rowan’s strides were long and determined. The only time he slowed was to look around at the broken glass when they emerged from the house. From his angle, Alec couldn’t read the look on his face, but the way a muscle tightened in Rowan’s jaw said he wasn’t completely unaffected by it.

At the car, Rowan surprised him again. “Give me the keys.”

Alec jerked back. “What? No. I’m not letting you drive.”

“You don’t have a choice. You don’t know how to get to where we’re going.”

“Martin said to go to the airport.”

“That was before he went out of his way to send me.”

Rowan crowded him against the door. His hard thighs locked Alec in place, trapping him as effectively as he’d been inside. Anyone peeping out their curtains would think they were lovers, and the unexpected intimacy stunned him into silence. New threats were on their way. That was obvious. But no man he’d ever been with had short-circuited his senses so thoroughly, not Zander or even the economics professor who’d seduced him after his last final. Rowan was pure masculinity, filling every nook and cranny of Alec’s awareness until he displaced all else.

Without looking away, Rowan shoved his long fingers into Alec’s front pocket.

Alec gasped. His thudding heart lurched into his throat as Rowan dragged his knuckles down his hip, but when his jeans stretched to accommodate Rowan’s rooting around, his wayward prick started swelling to make up for the extra room.

Christ, this was the last thing he wanted, but how was he supposed to ignore the heat pouring off Rowan’s body into his own? Especially since Rowan seemed to be taking his damn sweet time finding the key ring.

He gritted his teeth to keep from moaning like a b***h in heat when Rowan finally dragged the keys free. The scrape of the metal across his raw nerve endings disappeared, and he balled his hand into a fist behind his back to keep from grabbing Rowan and demanding an instant replay.

Rowan stepped away, his features unreadable. “Get in the car.”

With his face burning, Alec scooted free, fumbling for the handle. Embarrassed didn’t even begin to cover how he felt. Especially when his hard-on refused to vanish as Rowan jogged around the front of the car. The man knew how to move, whether it was defensively or from here to there, like liquid metal, all grace and sensually sleek.

Rowan slid behind the wheel. “Buckle up.”

Alec obeyed, mostly because then the seat belt would hide his erection. “When do I start getting answers instead of bossed around?”

“After one more thing.”

Rowan pulled a slim flip phone from a pocket and punched in a number as he turned the key in the ignition. “We’re ready.” He set the phone on the dash without disconnecting.

Alec looked back and forth between them. This was getting weirder and weirder by the second, but he was sure anything he asked would be ignored.

An electrical sizzle emanated from the phone. A moment later, the back exploded, just like Alec’s had inside the house.

“Holy shit.” Alec gaped at the ruined remains, stifling the urge to catch it when Rowan started edging forward and it slid off the dash. Melted metal smeared across the gray felt mat at his feet before it came to rest against a McDonald’s bag he’d been using for trash. “It’s a good thing you don’t have an expensive…”

The rest of his commentary on Rowan’s cheap technology trailed off when he straightened. Because instead of driving down a sunlit street in suburban Washington, DC, they were pulling onto a narrow driveway under an archway of thick trees that almost completely blocked out the sky, even though their branches were still bare.

Alec whipped around in time to see his dad’s house wink out of sight behind them. “Holy s**t,” he repeated, this time staring at Rowan. “What just happened?”

“I followed through on my promise to get you out of there safely.” For the first time, Rowan glanced at him and smiled. “You’re welcome.”

“Where are we?”

“The Savage Estate.”

“And where’s that?” Please don’t say another dimension or the moon or something crazy like that, or I will seriously lose my s**t here.

“Montana.”

Alec blinked. He’d been wrong. Montana was still insane. It was practically on the other side of the country. “How is that possible?”

“Martin teleported us. Like he teleported me to your father’s house.”

“How?”

Rowan frowned. “What do you mean? I just told you.”

“I mean how? Magic wand? Fairy dust? A computer somewhere called Ziggy?”

He c****d a brow. “You really think I look like an Al in that scenario?”

“I don’t know what to think.” He liked that Rowan understood the Quantum Leap reference, though. That lent an air of normality to this whole situation. “All I was supposed to do today was meet my dad for the very first time, and instead I’ve talked to an uncle I never knew I had, was body-checked more than once by Mr. Universe, then got both me and my car beamed across the country—”

“Teleported.”

Alec stared at him. Unbelievable. “Are you actually hearing yourself?”

“I am.” He was more relaxed now than he’d been before. “But you forget, none of this is new to me. I’ve lived on the Savage Estate my whole life, so the fact that Martin can use his magic to move us around the country doesn’t surprise me like it does you.”

“Magic.” That answered one of his questions at least. “The real stuff. Not David Copperfield.”

“Yep, he’s the real deal. He used the phone connection to pinpoint our locations. Yours to get me to where you were in the house, mine to get us back.” Rowan paused. “I’m guessing your dad didn’t tell you any of this.”

“How could he? I’ve had a grand total of one e-mail from him my whole life. You’re telling me he has magic, too?”

“Yes. It runs in the family.”

“But I’m normal. I can’t do anything like this.”

“Are you twenty-five?”

“Well, no. I’m twenty-four.”

“There you go then. Your powers mature when you turn twenty-five.” His gaze turned curious. “Why were you meeting your dad if you’ve never done it before now?”

“He asked me to come up to DC a couple weeks ago.” The e-mail that had completely uprooted his life now made a lot more sense. “He wanted to celebrate my birthday, but that wasn’t it, was it? He was going to tell me about this…whatever it is.”

“I can’t say, but, yeah, the timing does seem like too much of a coincidence.”

At least Rowan didn’t press on the issue. The birthday excuse had seemed reasonable, but in light of the bigger picture, almost scary in its consequences. Martin said his father had bought Alec time. From what? And from whom? If he didn’t even know he would eventually have these powers, how could anybody else?

Icy patches littered the narrow drive, causing the car to skid occasionally as Rowan made all the tight turns. Though the day had been bright and brilliant in DC, watery sunlight barely filtered through the spidery branches overhead. During summer, it would be like driving through a tunnel.

He was about to ask how much farther when the drive widened and then opened up. A two-story refashioned farmhouse stood in the middle of the clearing, with honest-to-goodness smoke drifting up from a chimney on the roof. Painted a rustic green, it melded into the vista as if it had sprung up from the ground like any of the trees. Two men stood on the wide, wooden porch that ran along the front of the house and wrapped around its far side. Both looked older.

Alec’s stomach flipped. One of them was likely Martin. Uncle Martin. Wow. That’s going to take some getting used to. The first blood relative other than his mother he’d ever met. Was it possible the other was his father? If he and Rowan could teleport across the country, couldn’t William do it, too?

Rowan glanced at him with a slight frown as he pulled the car up to the house. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just…” He swallowed down his nerves. “Who’s that waiting for us?”

“Come on. I’ll make the introductions.”

The cold air bit through his clothes when Alec got out of the car, but Rowan seemed oblivious to the frigid temperature as he bounded up the porch steps. One of the men moved forward to meet them. He wore a black winter ski jacket opened at the front to reveal a thin body leaning toward emaciated. His gauntness echoed in the sharp bones of his face, the hollows beneath his dark blue eyes as stark as those beneath his cheekbones. While his blond hair had gone ashen over the years, another testimony that he had to be on the far side of fifty, his gaze revealed no weakness. Hard and intelligent beneath heavy brows, it swept past Rowan to land on Alec.

He softened almost immediately. “Thank God you’re all right.”

Alec slowed as Rowan placed himself between them. “Alec, this is Martin.”

Unsure what else to do, Alec thrust out his hand in greeting. His palm wasn’t sweaty in weather as bitter as this, but he was still shaking from how monumental this was. “Hi.”

Martin glanced down, amusement flickering in his eyes, before returning the greeting. “Let’s get inside. You’re not exactly dressed for Montana.”

As they filed into the house, Alec behind Martin, Rowan at the rear, nobody bothered to introduce the fourth in their group before he disappeared with Rowan down a long hallway. Alec hesitated, wondering if he should follow, but Martin stepped into a front living room instead. The source of the chimney smoke was the massive stone fireplace on its far wall, filling the room with a woodsy smell that made Alec feel like he was camping with the Boy Scouts again.

“Come in, come in,” Martin said. “We need to talk about what you found at Will’s house.”

He glanced once more in the direction Rowan had disappeared. “You don’t want to hear what Rowan has to say, too?”

Martin waved him off. “I’ll get it after his drink. Right now, I want to hear from you.”

The room was inviting, with real hardwood floors and oversized brown leather couches flanking the fireplace. The front bay window had a navy gingham padded seat that allowed an excellent view of the surrounding forest, and along the wall were large velvet cushions, the kind used for large dogs, with fresh indents where the pets rested.

Alec chose the end of the sofa nearest the fire and sank into the soft leather. “For the record, I have no idea what’s going on. I was only at the house because my father invited me. I’ve never met him.”

“I know.” Eschewing a seat, Martin leaned against the back of the couch opposite Alec, resting on his forearms with his hands clasped in front of him. “We talked a lot about whether or not he should contact you. He really did want you to have a normal life.”

Alec laughed. The notion that anything today could be remotely normal was ludicrous. “I can’t believe I’m actually sitting here.”

“What did Rowan say to you?”

He decided to go straight to the point. “That this is all magic.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t have any other explanation for how I got here, so I guess I kind of have to.”

“Good. That’ll make this easier. Now tell me everything that happened to you today, from the moment you got to DC to the time you walked through my front door.”

The story was halting at first, mostly because he wasn’t sure what exactly Martin wanted to hear. His thoughts kept bouncing between the fact that he was sitting in his uncle’s house, the details of what had happened in DC, and, oh yeah, he was sitting in his actual uncle’s house, like it happened all the time and this was a routine visit. But Martin never interrupted him, so it was simpler to get into a flow. He talked about ringing the bell and debating the odds his father was in the backyard. He mentioned how eerie the fence and tree were. He even described how he’d felt like the idiotic blond in horror movies.

The only time he censored himself was when he reached Rowan’s arrival. He didn’t think Martin was interested in how hot he thought Rowan was, or that he got turned on every time Rowan felt the need to pin him against whatever flat surface was closest.

“I’m sorry about your phone,” Martin said when he was done. “But it was the only connection I had to you.”

“Yeah, Rowan said you used it as a homing beacon.” He tried to make a joke of it. “I guess if this is going to become a regular deal, I better invest in cheap flip phones like he had.”

The attempt shot right past Martin. “That might be awhile. Until I find Will, I can’t let you leave the estate. It’s too dangerous.”

“But what’s too dangerous? I still don’t know what’s going on. You said he was protecting me. From what?”

“Mages are popular targets for the people and creatures out there that know we exist. Many believe that if they can’t control us, they have to eliminate us. In the past twenty-five years, almost half of all the children born to us have died before their maturity. And when I say died, I mean killed.”

The fear he’d thought was gone when they’d left DC behind returned with a vengeance. “So someone’s trying to kill me?”

“Someone’s trying to kill all of us who evade their authority,” Martin corrected. “Will thought leaving your mother to raise you would protect you. He runs the risk of exposure living where he does, but he’s warded his house as best he can. The tree, for instance. The symbols in the trunk anchor some of the protective magic Will used, and by making it a part of the tree, he was able to take advantage of the tree’s natural root system to let the magic bleed throughout his plot of land.”

“But it wasn’t enough.”

Martin shook his head. “Someone must’ve found out about your visit.”

“Why would he contact me now if it would put me in more danger?”

“Because your powers will mature in a few days. Will believed you’d be safer if you could defend yourself. He was going to offer to take you in and train you.”

Something in Martin’s tone set off an alarm. “You didn’t agree with him, did you?”

“I thought it would expose you unnecessarily, yes. But Will loves you too much to leave you vulnerable like that.” The corner of his mouth lifted in what probably passed for a smile for him. “He might not have been around you in body, but he was always there in spirit. The hardest thing he ever did was leave you behind.”

The lump that had settled in his stomach rose to his throat. He didn’t want to cry in front of a near-stranger, even if he was family, but hearing someone attest to his father’s feelings for him might’ve been one of the best gifts he’d ever received.

“How do we find him?” Alec asked.

“He might find us first,” Martin replied. “From the sound of it, I think he counted on me getting you out of there safely while he drew the threat away. He hadn’t been gone for very long when you arrived, remember? And he had enough time to lock his private office so only you could enter it. I’ll bet anything he was fine when he fled.”

“And he couldn’t have used the door like anybody else?”

Martin lifted a brow. “Would you have investigated if it hadn’t looked like there was trouble?”

No, he wouldn’t have. He would’ve turned around and fumed about his absentee father some more. Then, on the way home to Miami, he probably would’ve been snatched up or killed like Will didn’t want.

He sagged in the sofa. “So what do I do now?”

“We wait.” Martin straightened. “Think of this as your home for the time-being. We’re family.”

“Am I supposed to call you Uncle Martin?”

“Call me whatever makes you comfortable. Is your bag still in the car?” When Alec nodded, he headed for the door. “I’ll have Graham get it out and take you to a room you can use while you stay here.”

“Who’s Graham?”

“Rowan’s father.”

That must’ve been the other man. “Do they work for you?”

“In a way. Graham’s my familiar.”

“Your what?”

Martin paused at the door. “I’ll have Rowan explain it all to you after he’s recovered from the teleporting. After all, he’s going to be yours when you leave.”

He gave Alec no room to ask more questions. He simply swept out of the room, calling for Graham.

Alec couldn’t have voiced one, anyway. His brain was stuck on yours.