Spellfire (15 page)

“Maybe.” She hesitated, then nodded. “I think so. Not on purpose, but maybe deep down inside . . .”

“Tell me.”
Talk to me
.

Shadows crept into her eyes, but she said softly, “When I was maybe nine or ten, I found a book on one of the shelves. I don’t know why the Witch bought it—an accident, or maybe a special order someone had bailed on. Certainly wasn’t her style, with flowers and butterflies on the cover. And the magic inside was so different from hers, all about power flows and respecting the earth and all its creatures.” She paused. “Anyway, I used to wait until she was asleep at night, and I’d take the book off the shelf and sneak out to the little garden behind the tea shop, where I’d practice the incantations by candlelight. At first nothing happened, but then, one night, a butterfly came and sat near my candle. Then the next night, there were two of them, then more and more.” Her voice flattened abruptly. “I was up to a dozen when the Witch caught on.”

“She punished you.” One of Rabbit’s biggest regrets was that Iago had killed the bitch before he’d gotten to her.

“Worse. She used me. She snuck up behind me and netted the butterflies, then locked them in a cabinet so I couldn’t set them free. The next day, she pinned them down alive, dried them in the oven, and sold the powder to the owner of the bar next door, telling him it was an aphrodisiac.” Her voice was flat, her eyes hollow. “She made me call them again the next night, and the next. Every night for a week, until they stopped coming.”

Ah, baby
. He hated what she’d been through. Hated even more that he didn’t know what to say.

“I tried to tell her I wouldn’t do it, and when that didn’t work, I tried to screw up the incantation. But she knew. Somehow, she knew, and she made me do it right. I’m not even sure how. I guess I was that afraid of her, that afraid of what would happen to me if it wasn’t for her.”

“You were a kid.”

“Even later, when I was old enough to run away, I didn’t. I just wasn’t ever strong enough to stand up to her.”

“You are now.” When she just shook her head and started to turn away, he caught her hand and drew her back toward him. “Hey, look around you. You just helped banish a dark-magic ghost. You could handle fifty of her.”

She started to argue, but then hesitated. “You think so?”

Something shifted in his chest. “I know so. You’re not just a mage now, Myr, you’re a warrior too. You were ready to bring me down if you didn’t like what was going on. Instead, you helped me nail Anntah. Hell, I bet you could’ve taken him on your own—you’re that strong now, Myr. Seriously.”

“That sounds like something I would’ve said to you, back in the day.”

And it wasn’t the kind of thing he’d ever really said to her before, which was his foul—one of many. He should’ve backed her up better, should have helped make her feel safer. Now, though, the best he could do was say, “I mean it. The Nightkeepers should consider themselves damn lucky to have you on their side . . . I know I do.”

Her eyes darkened. “You’ve got your own magic working now, both halves of it. You don’t need me anymore.”

He knew he should back off; she’d be safer away from him. Instead, he caught her other hand and leaned in, so she could see the intensity in his eyes when he said, “Fuck that. I need you.”

“Damn it, Rabbit,” the words were barely a whisper, but she didn’t pull away. And suddenly there was a crackle of new energy in the air.

“Tell me to back off and leave you the hell alone.” But then, before she could say anything, he closed the last little distance between them, and said against her lips, “Don’t. Please.”

And he kissed her. Because he’d gotten to where he couldn’t
not
kiss her. He needed her warmth and sass, needed the woman who could fry a demon one moment and call butterflies in the next. Most of all, he needed the heat that pounded between them, reminding him that he was alive, and that he wasn’t just fighting against his mother, grandfather and a whole shitload of other baddies, he was fighting
for
the good guys. For moments like this.

He kept his arms loose in case she wanted to break free, but had no real intention of letting her go. And after only a moment’s hesitation, she made a muffled noise of surrender, then twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back. And all he could think was,
Thank fuck
.

Sensations rocketed along his neurons: the softness of her breasts, the curves of her waist and the brush of her hair contrasting with the hard edges of her weapons; the buzz of lust and magic in his veins; and the “Oh hell, yeah” he growled at the back of his throat when she trailed her hands down, latched on to his weapons belt, and pulled their lower bodies tighter together.

He cupped her breast through her tight combat shirt, found a peaked nipple, and caught her moan in his mouth. Then he broke the kiss and trailed his lips along her jaw. “Myr,” he rasped against her throat, needing to say it. This didn’t feel like a dream-vision, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

“I’m here.” She pressed her lips to his cheek, his ear.

“Thank the gods.” He kissed her again, long and deep, steeping himself in her scent and flavor, soaking her in and—

Power surged suddenly, coming from a few feet away, and the air sparked red-gold. Cursing under his breath, Rabbit pulled away. “Incoming.”

“I know.”

The two of them were standing shoulder to shoulder, breathing hard, when Anna appeared with a
whump
of displaced air.

Seeming preoccupied, she glanced at them, scanned the village, and let out a relieved breath. “Cool. Glad to see you guys didn’t get into too much trouble while I was gone. You’ll never guess what happened to me . . . Shit. Why are you laughing? What did I miss?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Skywatch

After Myr and Rabbit got back to the compound, the next few hours were a whirlwind of debriefings and “what the fuck?” as the Nightkeepers scrambled to plug the new info—or lack thereof—into their battle plans.

Myr managed to snag some leftover pizza and a Coke in between sitting down with Rabbit, Dez and the royal council; going over what’d happened at Oc Ajal; and hustling to the library, where she was helping Lucius and the other members of the brain trust look for references to the true gods and the ruby skull.

There wasn’t much in the way of peace and quiet in the library—Lucius, Natalie and Jade were constantly coming and going from the racks, pulling scrolls and artifacts for quick-and-dirty translations before turning them over to Myr for some database work. But even that frenetic activity was oddly soothing. Or maybe it was just that she needed some space—any space—without Rabbit in it, some time to process what had happened at Oc Ajal.

She had fought a ghost and summoned butterflies. She had stood on her own, ready to face down Rabbit if she didn’t like what she saw. And she had kissed him—not because she was needy or afraid, or because the magic had overridden her control, but because she wanted to kiss him. For the first time, it had felt like they were meeting as equals, as partners.

Or was she talking herself back into the fantasy?

“We’re on our way,” Lucius said as he came around the nearest rack with a couple of scrolls under one arm, using his shoulder to prop a phone against his ear. “Give us five minutes.” Ending the call, he said to Myr, “Anna and the others can’t find any hidden compartment in the altar. It looks like they’re going to have to break it apart to see if the ruby skull is inside.”

“Ouch.”

The
chac-mool
had been mortared into place with the ashes from generations of Nightkeepers, and the altar had received the blood of practically every mage to come through the training compound since then. It had overseen the marriages of most of the current Nightkeepers’ parents, and held enough accrued magic to make it a serious power sink. It was a constant, a link to their past and a touchstone of the present. Busting it up was
not
going to go over well.

“Jade, Natalie and I are going to head up and see if we can help,” Lucius said, dumping the scrolls at the far end of the stone table where Myr was working. “You coming?”

“I think I’ll keep working on this stuff.” She waved at the pile of printouts and artifacts that still needed to be logged, scanned and cross-referenced.

“I’d appreciate it. The more we figure out about these so-called ‘true gods,’ the better.”

“What do you have so far?” She’d heard the others bouncing ideas back and forth, but hadn’t heard an outcome.

He shook his head. “Not much. There’s plenty on the gods, of course . . . but what makes a god a ‘true god’? Are we talking about all of the sky gods, a subset of them, or what?”

“Which leaves us where?”

“Digging a jackhammer out of storage to have a go at the
chac-mool
?”

Myr winced. “I don’t like that idea.”

“You’re not alone. But the message wasn’t exactly subtle.” He spread his hands, flashing the
jun tan
he wore on his inner wrist, which marked him as Jade’s mate, a love match. The sight shouldn’t have brought a pang, shouldn’t have made her own wrist feel bare, especially now.

“What if there’s nothing in there?”

“Don’t even think it.” But the shadows in his eyes said he was worried too. He paused. “You sure you want to stay here?”

“Positive.” She waved him off and got back to work, only half listening to the subdued commotion of the others leaving, followed by the library settling into an empty quiet broken only by the noises she made when she shifted things from the “to do” pile to the “done” pile, and the background murmur of running water coming from the jaguar-shaped fountain near the door. There was peace in the solitude, and she found herself relaxing as “to do” got smaller and “done” got so big that it started sloping off to one side, threatening an information avalanche.

An hour or so later—maybe longer—she was startled to reach for another “to do” and find the pile gone. And when she actually sat back and looked around, she realized she was more than a little woozy from sitting still too long and probably from some leftover post-magic fatigue.

“Time to call it a night,” she said. “You might not have solved any of your problems, but at least you got some paperwork done.”

Except, as she grabbed the soft leather jacket she’d worn against the almost-winter chill, she realized that she’d come to a resolution of sorts. There was a strange sort of peace inside her that hadn’t been there before, one that said if she could go up against a ghost-demon and summon a whole village’s worth of butterflies, she could handle starting something new with Rabbit.

Carefully
, she told herself.
Very carefully
. Because she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes this time. This wasn’t about forever after; it was about taking what they both wanted while they still had the chance.

The cloud-hazed night was inky black, with just a glimmer of moonlight to guide her along the pathway to the cottage she and Rabbit had shared for more than two years. She didn’t hesitate at the steps, didn’t pause before knocking—
bang, bang, bang
—using the sharp, peremptory cadence she’d used back in college, the one that said “move it or lose it, buster.” She caught her breath, though, as the knob turned, then let it out as the panel opened to reveal Rabbit standing barefoot, wearing worn sweats and a black hoodie.

His eyes burned into her, resonating with the leftover heat from their earlier kiss. “You came.”

Adrenaline buzzed in her veins, making her feel powerful. “Were you waiting for me?”

“I was doing my damnedest not to go after you. I would’ve lasted another fifteen minutes, maybe less.” His gaze skimmed over her, feeling like a touch. “Come in. Please.”

She didn’t hesitate. This was what she’d come for, after all.

He stepped back so she could move past him into the kitchen, then shut the door behind her, enclosing them in a four-room cottage that suddenly seemed far smaller than she remembered. It should’ve felt strange, being back there after all this time, but the air smelled of vanilla and patchouli. The twin scents twined together, amping her magic. More, they drew her deeper into the cottage, across the kitchen and living room, and all the way to the bedroom door.

She stopped there, and breathed, “Oh.”

Rabbit came up behind her and stood very close, looking over her shoulder into the room they had shared for so long. Two lit candles sat in holders on the nightstand, one white, one red, both hers. The red one was burned down to little more than a nub, while the white was newer, yet set in wax from a prior white candle, now burned away. Together, they filled the room with warm yellow light, showing where the familiar bedspread was dented in the shape of a big, heavy body curled on its side, with a dog-eared paperback lying nearby.

Her eyes misted at the sight. How many nights had they lain like that together, with her reading and him zoned out on his iPod, the two of them fitting together like the pieces of a puzzle? And how many nights over the past few months had she found herself curled up the same way, alone?

“The candles aren’t because I miss the way things used to be,” he said.

She turned to him, heart lumping in her throat. “They’re not?”

“Not tonight. Tonight I lit them because I was hoping you’d come.”

He stood in the doorway, filling it. But it wasn’t the size of his body or the hugeness of what he was saying that threatened to overwhelm her. It was the excitement that seared through her veins, and the knowledge that she was strong enough to make this work. “A summoning spell, you mean?”

“Hey, it worked on the butterflies.” He paused. “Will you stay with me?”

She didn’t know whether he meant for the next few hours, the night, or for as long as they had left, but she found that it didn’t really matter. “We can’t go back.”

“I don’t want to go back; I want to move forward.” He closed the small distance between them, and took her hand. “This can be whatever you want it to be.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to her temple, her cheek. “Anything, so long as it means I don’t have to stay away from you anymore.”

“Was that what you were doing? FYI, you kind of suck at it.”

He grinned. “Got you here, didn’t it?”

“I guess it did.” Taking a deep breath that smelled of her candles, she turned her head, found his lips, and sank into the kiss she had come for. And, for the moment, at least, she was exactly where she wanted to be, doing exactly what she wanted to do. On her own terms.

*    *    *

Rabbit met the kiss as relief slashed through him. Excitement. Pounding need. He couldn’t believe she was really there, that this was really happening. Even after everything that had happened today, he hadn’t been sure she would be ready to trust him like this again.

That she was seemed like a minor fucking miracle.

His body lit and his heart thudded. His fingers curled around her jaw, then the back of her skull, as she moved against him, bumping her hips and rubbing her belly against his cock, which was already throbbing and hard. But beside that urgency, there was softness, sweetness. Her lips were lush and giving, her breasts gentle curves that were familiar, yet not, like it was new all over again.

In the back of his mind he was more than half-afraid that he might be dozing, drooling on his Clive Cussler. But if that was the case, fuck, he never wanted to wake up, because this was nothing like the nightmares.
It’s real,
something whispered inside him, cutting through the wonder and the almost-fear that if he opened his eyes he’d be back alone in the bed, smelling her scent without her being anywhere near. But he wasn’t alone, she wasn’t far away, and this was really happening. He knew it from the way her fingers curled into his waistband, sealing them together, and from the sexy purr she made in the back of her throat when he changed the angle of his mouth.

He caught her wrist, kissed her fingers, and then parted from her to draw her down to the bed they had shared for so long. They didn’t say anything; there didn’t seem to be any need for more words.

The mattress dipped beneath him and poor Clive headed for the floor as she followed him down to the bed and straddled his hips, pinning him and rendering him a very willing prisoner. His hands found her waist and slid up as hers reached for the zipper of his hoodie and tugged it down. Her eyes lit when she found he wasn’t wearing anything beneath it, and she spread the edges of his sweatshirt wide, baring his chest, with the new layer of ridged scars. She sobered and traced the marks with her fingers, and where before the scar tissue had been numb, now they caught fire and throbbed with a sensation that wasn’t quite pleasure, wasn’t quite pain.

He caught her hand. “Don’t. I got what I deserved.”

She flattened her hand over the worst of it, over his heartbeat, but she didn’t argue. Instead, she shifted to kiss the spot where the whip marks intersected, and then, looking up so their eyes met, she said, “Moving forward, right?”

“Moving forward.” Emotion roughened his voice and gave the words the force of a spell. Sex magic poured through him, buoying his excitement and revving his system into overdrive. And for the first time, her magic rose up to answer his as they kissed—she wasn’t holding back anymore, wasn’t blocking the buzz of energy. This wasn’t the connection they’d had before, when their powers had been joined. Instead, the sex magic spiraled out into the air surrounding them, ramping up the heat and throbbing with the beat of his blood in his veins.

Suddenly he couldn’t lie there beneath her anymore. He surged up and over, reversing them so he rose above her, caging her in with his legs and arms.

She grinned and started to wiggle out from underneath him, as she had so often done before, turning her preference for being on top into a game. Now, though, he tightened his arms and dropped his head to nuzzle her neck, kiss her throat, nip at the soft skin behind one ear. She shuddered and moaned, and went pliant beneath him in a sudden capitulation that burned through him.

“Gods, Myr.” His voice was ragged, his cock so hard it hurt, wanting—needing—to be inside her.

He braced himself over her as he dragged his teeth to the dip at the base of her throat and kissed her there, lingering until she arched against him. Her hands came up to grip his waist, then dug in on either side of his spine. Snagging the hem of her shirt, he tugged it up and off, then shucked his hoodie, managing the moves with barely a pause in kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, her temples and then, when she dug her nails into his skin and sought his mouth, her lips.

Then, finally, he lowered himself so they were chest to chest, touching along the lengths of their bodies. He groaned as her soft warmth seeped into him, filling the empty spaces and lighting the shadows, reminding him that he might’ve been doing fine without her, but he was so fucking much better
with
her.

“Damn, I missed you,” he rasped, pressing his cheek to hers.

She had been his first, his only, and being skin-on-skin with her after three very long—and very life-changing—months reminded him of the way it had been at the beginning, when he’d first been learning how different an orgasm could feel with someone else involved. More, with
her
involved. Those had been heady, crazy days, first at Skywatch and then at college, where he’d gotten his first taste of feeling like he really belonged somewhere, and belonged to someone special.

Back then, he’d thought he knew it all, could handle it all. Now, he didn’t feel like he knew anything, and was just doing his best to fucking cope.

Except for right now. Right now was perfect. It was magic.

“Don’t,” she said, and reached up to kiss him, not trying to escape now, but curling around him instead.

He didn’t know what she was denying—don’t think, don’t worry, don’t what? But then she moved beneath him, sliding down so his aching cock found its way to nestle between her legs, chafing against the layers of cloth that still separated them. And the blood drained from his head, carrying with it the last of his rational thoughts.