Too bad, that spell had been a one time deal.
Elizabeth rested her chin on George’s shoulder and gave a big sigh. She needed his help if she wanted to replicate the spell enough to forge the connection again.
It wasn’t exactly a secret what she and Victoria had done, spelling Victoria’s skin, although knowing about it may lead George to wonder who taught them. He didn’t seem to take things at face value.
“We prepared a spell together, which is why Tor connected to me when she used it,” Elizabeth said.
“Prepared how?”
“Not important,” she evaded. “Do you think it’s because my magic was in the spell or because Tor was amplifying that our minds connected so easily?”
“My guess would be both,” George said, not arguing about what she wanted to keep secret.
“Do you know how to make an amplification circle?”
George sighed. “I am an earth vampire,” he said, stating this basic fact like he was reminding her the sky was blue.
“Is that a yes?”
“Do you know what earth vampires do in battle?”
“Throw rocks,” she said, no hesitation there. “My mother could probably collapse a mountain.”
“What?”
“Well, a small mountain, at least.”
“That is not normal outside of amplification. Have you seen her using an amplification circle, then?”
“Uh, no.”
Maybe she should have left her mother out of it. Other than Jill and her mother, she didn’t really have much experience with earth.
“I don’t know how the castle guards missed this on your security check,” George said. He sounded a bit stressed out.
“Lightning,” Elizabeth admitted.
She was already going to jail for tricking the entire royal family. May as well make it count.
George cleared his throat. “Amplification circles were invented for earth. Other types of magic can use them, of course, modified, but the main purpose is to increase the brute strength of earth.”
“Can you make one modified for lightning?”
“For fire, yes. Will that be good enough for your needs?”
“I don’t know, but it’s worth a try. Tor drew the last amplification circle I used.”
George stopped walking. “Why did you use an amplification circle?”
“To amplify,” Elizabeth said. Her tone said that was her final answer.
George squatted. “Off,” he ordered.
She hopped off. He turned around so fast, she tried to back up but fell on her startled ass.
He dropped and crawled over her sprawled body until they were nose-to-nose.
“Add ‘a detailed explanation of my amplification circle use’ to your list of things we will talk about soon,” George told her.
“Daemon already knows about it and he didn’t complain,” she said, lying to George only a little.
She wondered if she should say anything about her familiar before she got into another amplification circle.
At least, she could say she thought about it, before rejecting telling George anything that may affect his cooperation.
“Do you really think I’m so stupid as to let you into an amplification circle without something to guarantee good behaviour?” George asked.
She shook her head.
“You can take my boots again,” she offered.
It was a pretty effective way to prevent escape, given how far they were from the nearest town.
“But that’s the problem with your magic,” George said. “You can take over my mind at any time, read my memories of where I hid your boots, then make me use my earth to get them back for you, wherever they’re hidden, so there’s nothing I can do to guarantee you won’t betray me.”
“I thought you said I wasn’t your enemy,” Elizabeth reminded him, pushing up on his chest. She would never control his mind like that, hadn’t even thought of betraying him. “You can block me,” she said.
“Trust goes both ways,” he told her.
“Really, it doesn’t,” she said. “I already know your deepest, darkest secret and I don’t care. I’m never going to tell anyone. Trust is knowing that I can keep a secret, moron!”
“Your definition of trust seems to carry a lot of implied threat,” George said, finally backing off of her a little.
He looked a bit shaken by her confession of what she knew about him.
Did he really think she had just read that one little memory about his mother and not seen the connections as to why he let his mother burn him?
That bitch had done it over and over to him.
“It’s just your paranoia, George. My definition of trust includes me being totally honest about my knowledge and intentions.”
“Fine, don’t say it out loud. Think about what you know to me,” George said.
George may have sent her thoughts, but she hadn’t opened her mind to him yet. She didn’t have to open her mind to send and receive, unlike him, and he was going to learn that one the tough way.
“You’re a bastard, like literally, and daddy is a demon.”
She felt a bit bad putting it so bluntly when his unguarded reaction hit her. She wanted to yell at him to block, but he must have supposed that there wasn’t anything left to hide, and that made her feel even worse.
“I really, really don’t think any worse about you than I already did before I knew your parentage. Believe me, my father didn’t win any awards for his parental role either.”
George clenched his fists beside her head.
Just one blow from him could kill her and the secret she now knew, if he used his earth strength and was the half demon he really thought himself.
She held her breath and looked into his blue eyes, aware they showed nothing of the deep, ripping currents of emotion pulling him.
“You are aware my mother will have you murdered if she finds out you know this. She would kill your entire family, just to be sure the knowledge stayed hidden.”
He must have read her thoughts back or saw the fear in her own eyes. Her blocks were better than this.
Swallowing back her cowardice, she decided to show George that trust could go both ways.
“Block me from your inner thoughts, only, if you want. Keep your secrets. Circle what is dark, deep, and personal. I won’t test the walls you build.”
He was an open book still, but she felt the walls starting to go up.
She tried to show him how to construct them, reminding him to keep it a wave, not brick.
The only one that had gotten away was Victoria, and the blood bond his mother had contrived by forcing him to rescue his sister, was one of the worst things he had done, putting his sister under his mother’s power.
He had been desperate to save Elizabeth that fate too, keeping her from his mother’s demon lover when—
George blocked her.
She supposed he still had secrets worth protecting. It showed rapid progression that he was able to sense what thoughts she was seeing in his mind and block her from them when he wanted.
“I would really like to know what kind of threat your mother is to me,” Elizabeth said.
The last thought he had, had been tied to such dark emotion that it left her feeling frozen under George.
“Deadly,” he replied. “Don’t ever trust anything she says.”
“And who is the demon?” she asked, not hiding what she had glimpsed before the wall went up.
“There are some things you are not ready to know yet,” he said. “I don’t mean that in a patronizing way. I told you once before that there were things that go bump in the dark that an innocent witch like you should never have to know about, and I meant it. Leave some of the dark things for monsters, like me.”
Elizabeth kissed him. She kissed his monstrous face all over, planting butterfly brushes of her lips on his forehead, cheeks, nose, and chin.
She saved his mouth for last, a single, sweet brush of the li
ps together.
It was impulsive and she regretted it immediately, pulling away.
Too much, too easily misunderstood. It was almost cruel. She tried a bright smile to lighten the moment.
“Still a beast, I guess that one only works in fairytales,” she said.
“You kiss all of your enemies?” George asked, not letting her dismiss the moment so easily.
“No, only the ones worth redeeming,” she said. “We’re still not friends, George. I’m sorry if that was misleading. I won’t—”
His chest rumbled over hers. For a second, she thought it was a growl, but the deep sound turned into a laugh.
“You’re worried about hurting my tender feelings?” he mocked, his eyes still crinkled up with amusement. “You can play much rougher games with me, as long as it goes both ways,” he said, throwing her words back at her.
Just what had she started?
Sisterly Bond
George wanted to play games with her!
Only if she was in charge of the rules.
She cleared her throat, pointedly ignoring his proposal for now.
He looked at her pink cheeks and smirked, but didn’t push it. She’d been the one to make the improper advance this time, and he was going to back off to let her approach.
What a clever male.
“One amplification circle, please,” she icily requested, trying to sound prim to make up for her lapse in judgement.
“I’ll take your boots and block your mind,” George said, blinking and shuttering her glimpse into his playful side.
At least, he hadn’t asked her to strip entirely.
She pushed him away and stood up to pull off her boots, levitating an inch off the rocky ground.
He frowned down at her feet.
“I’ll pretend pointy rocks are making me contemplate mending my evil ways, so I don’t have to walk all the way to the castle bootless,” she said.
He tried handing her boots back to her but she refused.
“The soles get fried sometimes when I use lightning,” she explained.
The boots got put aside.
George didn’t draw a circle like Victoria.
The studious princess drew from the outside, meticulously, even if faster than Elizabeth due to her practice. You could tell she was drawing from a picture in her head, stopping every few seconds to look down at the glyphs as if comparing them to her mental picture before moving on to the next.
George just drew, making himself the fulcrum. It reminded her of her eleventh-grade calculus teacher drawing a perfect circle freehand on the board in just a few seconds, the exact same, every time.
It was the kind of muscle memory that let you ride a bike, no matter how many years it had been.
George had learned to draw circles young, probably much younger than Victoria, and he excelled at it. She could feel the power radiating off of the clean lines as he drew.
Did he dismiss this as merely being a regular earth magic thing?
“Wow!” she said, unable to keep her excitement in.
“I slay a dragon in front of you and you say nothing. This, gets a ‘wow’?”
“Let me play with it, please,” Elizabeth begged. It had to work.
“Do you remember how to use it?” George asked, stepping out of the circle to add glyphs.
He did pause then, a few times, as he added the modifications for fire magic.
“Uh, yes. It hasn’t been that long,” Elizabeth admitted. Like, just last week.
George finished drawing and put the chalk back in his pocket. She really had to get into the habit of carrying chalk and knowing better how to use it.
“Come here,” George said, standing up fully and dusting his hands off.
Geezus, he was huge. Most of the time, she had been too busy yelling at him or fighting being turned on to pay attention, but in the quiet moments like this with him, she felt very much like the little one he called her.
She handed George her hand and let him help her as she delicately picked her way over the chalked lines.
Air magic made it almost redundant to do so but she didn’t want any wind disturbing the clean chalk outlines.
Once she was in the centre, he let go and stepped back.
George was going to watch.
She had never performed this kind of magic quite so openly in front of a vampire. Feeling a little performance anxiety, she brushed non-existent dirt from her pants.
Daemon hadn’t complained about her magic aptitude last time he spied on her circle work.
She breathed in and out, feeling the air and her magic filling the space.
George patiently waited, crossing his arms.
The lightning trickled out of her at first. She didn’t want to blow up George’s circle. Last time, she built her magic to the point she could call out her familiar.
This time, she was sure she didn’t need anything so flashy. Slow and steady, a simmer instead of a boil.
She looked into George’s dark, blue eyes, almost an abyss of mystery, letting him ground her mind as a focal point, while her magic bounced back from the circle, harder and faster.
Okay, it was going to be a little flashy. Static electricity built, making the baby fine hairs on her body stand up, and probably messing with her hairdo, as well.
Levitating higher, she pushed and pulled, stretching those brute lightning muscles she usually kept tightly restrained. This was heating up fast.
Her power crackled along the borders of George’s chalked barrier and back to her, climbing in jagged white hot bolts that were blinding against the sky.
The lighting rose with her as she levitated even higher, unable to see George’s eyes as more than dark orbs reflecting her magic show.
She felt like a plasma ball used to demonstrate electricity, the electrode being zapped over and over with jagged lines of power. Her body glowed as she absorbed it all, incandescent with raw energy.
“Going to try now!” she shouted down to George.
He had uncrossed his arms. She hoped she hadn’t just moved from potential kingdom threat into a category for which George locked up in the dungeon and threw away the key.
She tried out her ping first.
A lighting bolt shot out from the circle and hit a boulder, not even ten feet from where George was standing. It cracked and smoked.
Fantastic, she almost set a rock on fire. She was definitely headed to the dungeon.
“Sorry!” Elizabeth shouted down.
George looked at the smoking rock and then back to her. She prepared herself for a lecture.
He laughed, really laughed, and stepped into her circle. Apparently, he found her very amusing today.
“Bring me up!” George called to her.
Victoria had told her that the amplification circle provided no protective barrier. Lesson learned. Her enemies could just welcome themselves into the circle with her.
She levitated George. He wobbled a bit at first, unused to the feeling of bobbing air under his feet, but by the time he reached her side, he was stable.
“Too much lightning for what you want,” George said. “I’ll absorb the excess, while you take what you need to send your mind out,” he offered.
She was careful to keep the air under his feet as he moved behind her.
He put his hands on her shoulders and traced them down her arms, seemingly indifferent to the electricity racing up her skin and jumping to him, where his hands contacted her.
When he reached her hands, he took them into his grasp and pulled them from her sides, reaching out until her arms were at right angles from her body, his bigger arms winging her from behind.
He took all their weight, sparing her air magic having to hold their arms up in that position, as well.
“I may have to feed again when we’re done,” he warned her, a whisper in her ear.
“Sure,” she agreed, not thinking about it right now.
She let her head fall back against his chest a
nd closed her eyes, concentrating on the feel of his breath and hers, syncing them together, slowing down and feeling all the energy buzzing over her skin, his hands, linking their chi through his touch, like when he had supported her while she talked to Victoria earlier.
“Try Jill first,” he suggested. “Her mind is the most familiar to you.”
This time her ping was like a drop of water falling in a deep well, echoing back up to her as her mind travelled further than she was used to sending her thoughts.
She hit the nearest town and picked up random thoughts, but not her sister. Ignoring the blips of others, she pushed further, pulling harder on the lightning.
The noise from the other minds started to become a dull roar, reminding her of when she was a child and didn’t know enough about blocking.
Squeezing George’s hands, she yanked lightning and shielded against the noisiest minds that she knew weren’t Jill.
If there was a sudden onslaught of Maerenians complaining of headaches, then it would probably be her fault.
“Any luck?” George asked, not rushing her, but he must have felt the magic draws.
“We’re really damn far from the edge,” Elizabeth complained, sucking in a big breath before pushing even harder.
George may have groaned behind her. She was drawing right off of his chi as fast as he was spindling the lightning.
She wondered if it felt a little like she was feeding off of him when she took magic from their connection.
When she finally pinged her sister, it was a very faded echo. Even amplified, she wasn’t sure it would work.
“Glinda, this is ET trying to reach home. Can you hear me?”
The response was delayed so long she almost gave up.
“Wick... ed?”
Elizabeth squeezed George’s hands again and this time she really yanked.
There was no missing his response this time.
His hips rolled against her from behind and his punched out fangs traced the shell of one of her ears, while he growled.
She needed to hurry this up.
“Are you okay? What about Tor and the dragon? Did you meet grandpa yet?”
Another long pause gave Elizabeth too much time to feel the overheated male behind her. Their hands were sweating, but he didn’t let go.
No Witch Way Out (Maeren Series Book 2) Page 36