Cry Wolf (30 page)

Kelly kept his cock in her mouth just to have it filling her, licking at it lightly as it softened. It took his fingers in her hair to draw her off him. He pulled her head up so that she looked at him from her vantage point at his hip. The burning in his eyes had become a smoulder, but that did not lessen its intensity. The candles had gone out, filling the bedroom with the smell of smoke, ozone from the electrical charge around the lights in the room and wet, ripe earth from the other side of the broken window.

“Do you see now, Kelly?” Abraham asked. “How good it can be with someone who understands what you are? And I can make it even better. I can make
you
better—I can make you more than you are now with that beast on your back.”

Kelly rested her head against his stomach and inwardly sighed. He didn’t understand. She surveyed the damage in the room, just a porthole’s glimpse of the larger picture, and none of it meant anything to him. The last time she had done this much meteorological magic, she had been human, which told her how much worse it would have been if she were only human and didn’t have the werewolf there to filter the magic into something more manageable. And now that he had shattered her usual guards, she wasn’t even sure how much more the wolf could help her.

“What’s going through your head?” Abraham asked.

Kelly allowed him to guide her up into his arms, where he wrapped himself around her and pressed his lips to her hair. It was an unexpected gesture. Kelly didn’t think he had been so solicitous afterwards with the people she had seen in the visions with him.

“I’m thinking this argument is pointless,” Kelly said. “We aren’t communicating.”

He swept his hand over her back. The corset ties and rings disappeared under his palm. Then all he caressed was ink, bloodstain and blissfully aching skin. Kelly regretted the disappearance, even though she knew it was better this way.

“You should fix that window before there’s too much water damage,” Kelly said.

“Why don’t you?” Abraham asked.

“I don’t fix things. I don’t know how.”

“When has that ever stopped you?”

Kelly idly stroked through the hair on his chest then propped herself up, staring at the empty hole where the glass had been. With unusual concentration—almost meditative—she called each and every piece back and melded them together into their original state. When she had finished, the window was mostly repaired, enough to keep the rain out. At least it was only rain now—the worst of the storm had passed.

The glass still showed evidence that it had shattered, reminding her of what thick glass looked like when hit by a bullet, cracking in a spider web pattern. A ghost of that pattern was still in the glass, like etchings instead of cracks.

“And how did you do that?” Abraham asked. He wasn’t in awe—he knew how to do it himself. He just wanted her to articulate her abilities out loud.

“I tell the pieces to go back to where they were, where they were intended to be,” Kelly said.

“What they were made for,” Abraham said pointedly.

“An incomplete analogy,” Kelly said. “The components that make glass once had other purposes. I’m sure the sand that went into it would have been just as content to stay sand. Or perhaps sand would prefer to be the rock it once was, and the rock would prefer to return to the mountain it came from. But it was given another purpose. It was transformed. I could have reduced the glass to its original components, but instead I coaxed it only into its most recent purpose, and it didn’t fight me.”

“Because it’s glass,” Abraham replied. “It cannot make up its mind. It doesn’t know if it’s better as glass or sand or a mountain. It simply becomes whatever it is made. But you are a woman, certainly not glass. You can choose—you can choose what is better for you.”

“I have,” Kelly said. “The problem here is that you don’t agree. And honey, that is not
my
problem. If you thought you could convince me to change what I am by your superior sexual prowess alone, I’m afraid it didn’t work.”

She rolled over, preparing to climb out of the bed and find her clothes, but Abraham wrapped his arm around her waist and pressed himself against her from behind.

“Don’t go,” he murmured from deep in his chest, low and resonant through her.

Kelly lay stiffly in his arms, confused.

“If you aren’t prepared to rid yourself of the wolf, stay until you are ready,” Abraham said. “Help with the organisation. You can teach them magic with me, even if they can never really be like us. You don’t have to decide to rid yourself of it right away.”

Kelly turned around to face him again, encircled by his insistent embrace. “I won’t ever be ready. I’ve made peace with what I am and what it lets me do. I like what I am. I’m not going to change my mind.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, caressing her cheek. “You’re young. You have time. You can still stay.”

“We’re still talking about magic, right?”

Abraham smiled.

“What is this really about, Abraham?”

The green glow of her eyes flared in the reflection of his just before she sank into another vision, a gentle transition this time instead of it hitting her with the force of a blow.

A blissful, naked body of a human woman with mussed ringlets was talking to him, but Kelly couldn’t hear what the girl said, perhaps because Abraham wasn’t paying attention. He pulled his trousers back on and buttoned everything back together, resuming his role as leader, as Father Abraham in his regal robes and his benevolently patronizing countenance. He was gentle but firm, convincing the girl that she needed to leave in such a way that she took no offence to the request. In fact, she kissed his cheek and thanked him, rapture still gleaming in her eyes.

“Look at me,” Abraham said.

Kelly blinked and saw him in the present, naked and open to her.

“My entire life I have had this gift. I have devoted my life to using it for the good of this sad little world, evil and impure as it is.”

“Sleeping with your congregation doesn’t sound very pure to me,” Kelly said.

The curve of his lips became a little hard. “You mistake my philosophy. I can think of nothing purer than the merging of two bodies to create one, one that was meant to be, as natural and right as birth and death.”

That effectively silenced her, at least on that subject.

“Even the way you do it,” he added, softening his gaze again and stroking her lower lip with his thumb.

“What do you mean ‘even’?”

“You are so defensive, my dear,” Abraham said. “I merely mean that I’ve never had a lover quite so enthusiastic, nor quite so enamoured of pain, nor so filled with magic she doesn’t even realise what she is.”

“I never said I wasn’t a witch,” Kelly said.

“I gave you a chance to experience a mere fraction of what you are capable of, and even now you try to push yourself back down again. It is nothing short of degradation, even blasphemy.”

“ Excuse me for not wanting to hurt anyone else,” Kelly replied. “What if one of the members of your congregation out there got hurt? What if I killed them?”

“You didn’t,” he said.

“Even if I didn’t, Abraham,” Kelly said, speaking over his reply although she trusted his certainty, “what if I
had
?”

Abraham leaned in and tenderly kissed her, gentle pressure, warm. “But you didn’t,” he murmured against her lips.

She pressed her hands against his chest to push him back a fraction, just enough that he was not kissing her anymore. For a moment, she could see herself as he did—not the wild woman that Malcolm saw or the hardcore pin-up that the pizza guy saw, but a fierce girl with eyes as bright green and smoothly addictive as absinthe, a woman young enough to have a world of untapped potential—and for now, her imperfections were hidden under a human skin. He wanted her. His body was more than satisfied, but he couldn’t stop staring at her, and not just because he could see his reflection in those cat eyes.

“W-what do you want from me?” Her voice caught, which hurt her pride, but there was something awesomely, terribly intense in his regard, in the burning coals of his eyes, in the way he could not stop touching her.

“Your whole life you have been alone,” he said quietly, brushing her hair away from her face. “You tried to fit yourself in an office, in a werewolf pack, in a coven, but you never found anyone like you. It is a lonely life, isn’t it? Even when you surround yourself with others or contort yourself to try to belong, you never do.”

Kelly bit her lip, and he could not keep away. He kissed her again. Their tongues slid over each other. He drank her in and she sank down into the mattress as he leaned over her.

He kissed down to her sternum. “Did it never occur to you that I have been searching as well?”

Tears prickled her eyes. Kelly willed them dry. She wouldn’t allow him to do this to her. She wouldn’t allow him to make her believe him, trust him. Fuck him, yes, maybe even make love to him, show him what he perceived as submission, she could do all that. But she wouldn’t for a second believe that his honesty and rare vulnerability made him trustworthy or even a good man. But it was hard to tell that to herself when the loneliness of his words reopened wounds—the less enjoyable kinds of wounds—that she’d hoped had scarred over a long time ago.

“Do you want to know what this is?” he asked, tracing the filigree tattoo again.

Kelly nodded. She didn’t want him to hear how he had affected her.

“Within the beauty hides the Latin phrase,
‘Illa habet potestatem’
,” he said.

“I never took Latin,” she said.

“It means, ‘This one has power’.”

He rested back against the coverlet, not minding that it was torn or stained. She didn’t mind either as she laid her head against his chest again. He stroked her hair. She sensed sleep sinking over him, but she kept staring out of the ghost-web glass.

This one has power.

That was what her magic had wanted to tell her. No, what her magic had wanted
him
to tell her.

“I have searched all my life for someone like you,” Abraham murmured. His chest rose and fell like calm waters. “Stay with me.”

Chapter Eleven

It was hard to say when she had finally closed her eyes and fallen asleep. The next thing she knew, though, she was completely awake. She sensed the urgent need to remember what she had just been dreaming. She couldn’t afford to forget a prophetic dream, but she couldn’t quite reach the memory.

The room was dark, the world outside just as dark. Although the rain had stopped, the sky was still cloudy, blocking the light of the moon. Even so, there was enough light for her wolf eyes to see every monochromatic detail.

Underneath the even rise and fall of his chest thrummed the steady rhythm of Abraham’s heartbeat. He was asleep, but not dreaming. When she pulled away, he didn’t stir. Kelly summoned an accent blanket from the sofa and covered Abraham with it in case the loss of her body heat woke him.

Her feet made no sound as she crossed the room.

Kelly let instinct guide her, since her thinking mind wasn’t the one running the show when her prophecies forced their hand. She trailed her fingers over the back of the sofa and the side table next to it then brushed the cold glass of a lampshade. She circled around Malcolm and gazed down at him. He had shifted position and had somehow managed to smash his face into the wing of the armchair. He wasn’t an attractive sleeper, with his mouth open and his limbs an ungainly sprawl, but that only made him more endearing.

She couldn’t stay there observing him, so she directed her attention to the covered side tables. She didn’t know what the magic wanted her to do until she lifted the first draped sheet to peek underneath. Her magic suddenly flared up like the candle flames of earlier that evening. She trusted its urging.

She lifted all the blankets off all the tables at once. They flew through the air and collapsed on top of the sofa, exposing to her the things he wanted hidden.

Kelly understood why a witch would want to hide his magical tools and ingredients. It was easy for people to come to the wrong conclusion. Magical implements were a bit like the Roman Rituals for Catholics—a necessity, but sometimes an embarrassment. So when she’d seen that he covered his work area, Kelly hadn’t been too alarmed or suspicious.

Even the books, the chalices, the knives and the bottles of herbs which were revealed were normal enough for a witch that they weren’t suspicious on their own. But the fact that her magic drew her forward—that it had waited until Abraham was fast asleep to wake her—caused an icy chill of warning to return in a cold wax drip down her spine.

She approached the table with the most well-used book, the only one not shelved between bookends. There was a place in it where the oils from his hands had stained the paper, and a few pages were looser in the binding. Next to it stood a quartz crystal chalice and a plain athame, not like the more elaborate one with which he had cut himself. It, too, was well used, the wooden handle smooth from Abraham’s palm.

Kelly held her hand over the book. She whispered, “Show me what your master wants.”

The book’s leather cover opened. Then the pages rustled, rapidly flipping through.

It was a Book of Shadows. The book itself was old, but the writing inside it was not. The spells were of Abraham’s own making. Abraham had had more life to build such a repertoire. Kelly was less disciplined with her own Book of Shadows, preferring a more organic approach to her magic. Hers was mostly for prophecies and potions. She rarely needed spoken spells. She either called to an object or a creature’s magic, or she silently let her wishes be known and the magic exacted her will in whatever form necessary.

Abraham might have left himself room for improvisation as an elemental witch, but she was not surprised to find that he was also a more methodical witch than she and preferred to keep a ledger of his spells. Abraham would want to see the words inscribed in black ink in such a way that they might as well have been carved in stone. His power made the spells, but the book made the spells
important
.