by Tami Lund
“It’s fine,” she said instead. “I think I might have finally gotten it right this time.” She pointed at the book lying open near her elbow. “I missed this line of instruction last time.”
Pacey glanced down at the apparently really, really old spell book that Argyle had unearthed the day before, her lips moving as she read the recipe for “Poison Guaranteed to Work on Warlocks.”
Yes, that stuff existed. An entire book of spells and curses and recipes designed to destroy one’s enemies. Luckily for Becca, some long-ago distant relative who was also a Daughter of Light had thought to write down everything she knew about defeating warlocks. Her handwriting was overly curly and tiny and difficult to read, but it was still better than where they’d been two days ago.
“So,” Becca had said to Argyle that day, “how do I go about destroying these warlocks?”
He hadn’t been keen to tell her initially. “I will protect you,” he kept insisting until Pacey finally stepped in.
“She’ll be running forever,” Pacey said. “I think it’s time to let her do what she was born to do.”
Why couldn’t she be born to be a movie star or, oh, a mountain climber—or maybe a dog whisperer? Why did it have to be Born to Save the World?
Shortly after he and Pacey had a terse, whispered conversation that Becca had been unable to eavesdrop on no matter how hard she tried to focus her magic on exactly that, Argyle had left the house and returned a short time later with the ancient spell book in his hand.
Now it appeared Becca had finally perfected her first potion. Of course, since it was poison, she had no way to determine if she’d actually perfected it, but at least this time she was certain she’d followed the instructions to a T.
Argyle, who was always hovering in the background—if he wasn’t training her until her legs wobbled, a la Buffy and Giles—said, “If you’re certain, coat that blade I gave you with it so you are prepared.”
The blade he referred to rested in a leather sheath that hung on her hip. She was supposed to keep it on her person at all times. She didn’t tell him so, but she took it off to shower and to sleep, because, damn it, she was too new at this game and she was afraid she’d roll over and stab herself while she slept.
And now she was going to add poison to the razor-sharp blade.
Definitely not sleeping with it.
She pulled the small knife out of its holder and held it up to the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window. The handle was embedded with colorful gems and carved with intricate scrollwork, and while Argyle admitted he did not know what all the hieroglyphics meant, he did know that this blade had been given to the very first Daughter of Light by the leader of the gods—who happened to be that woman’s grandfather.
Argyle said it was infused with some pretty powerful magic, but that the magic, like the gods who created it, was finicky at best. Thus the decision to coat the blade with poison.
Just in case.
Becca tugged thick, leather gloves over her hands to protect them while she dabbled with poison-creating concoctions.
Suddenly, she was slapped with an overwhelming sense of pain—searing, blinding agony. She shouted and flung her arms out, knocking over the glass vial filled with poison and sending the knife flying off the counter. Neon-green liquid the consistency of mercury spilled across the granite, leaving a trail of bubbling stone in its wake as it found the path of least resistance straight to the sink, while the small blade clattered to the floor and skidded away, out of sight.
Becca flung the gloves away and dropped to her knees, clutching her chest, which felt like it was burning from the inside out. Pacey screamed. Even stoic Argyle looked pained as his head swiveled this way and that, presumably searching for the source of whatever was happening to Becca.
But she already knew. He wouldn’t see anything.
“Rahu,” she gasped out. “They have Rahu.”
“What?” Pacey asked.
The pain finally subsided, and Becca took a few precious moments to catch her breath. And then she used the counter for leverage and pulled herself to her feet. Argyle watched her intensely while Pacey wrung her hands and gnawed on her bottom lip.
“The warlocks,” Becca said, scanning the floor for the damn knife. She was going to need it here in a minute. “They have Rahu. And they’re torturing him.”
“How do you know that?” Pacey asked.
Argyle didn’t say anything. He pursed his lips though and looked disapproving, and something about the way he watched her told her he knew more than she or Pacey did. But in typical Argyle fashion, he wasn’t letting them in on the secret.
It was frustrating as hell working with gargoyles.
“I don’t know,” Becca said. “But they’re about to hurt him again, and I can’t let that happen, so you’d better get ready, because we’re about to do battle, right here, right now.”
“Right—what? Rebecca, no,” Pacey said. “No, don’t bring them here—”
Too late.
“Rahu!” she screamed, closing her eyes and squeezing her fists and willing him here with every ounce of magic she could gather.
Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.
It sounded like she’d summoned an air popcorn popper instead of four warlocks and a dragon with his wrists tied together behind his back. And blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.
“You bastards,” she shrieked, and she leaped at the one closest to her, grabbed him on either side of his face, and twisted with all her strength. Magic sizzled in the air, and then there was a loud crack and his lifeless body fell to the ground.
One down…
“Well, well, well,” the Cinderella lead singer look-alike said, observing Becca from where he stood across the room, far out of reach. “Looks like the overprotective gargoyle finally let his Daughter of Light learn a few tricks.”
Becca snagged a butcher knife from the block on the counter and flung it at him. He batted it away, and the thing embedded itself in the wall next to a window. She needed that damn blade Argyle had given her.
One of the other band members started to rush her, but Rahu, who had been on his knees, looking as if he were trying really hard to stay upright, abruptly lunged forward and twisted, stretching out his bound wrists into the guy’s path. He caught the warlock in the shins and sent him sprawling on the tile floor.
Argyle grabbed the guy’s arms and held him up while commanding, “The blade, Rebecca. Summon it and plunge it into his heart.”
“Summon it, right.” She ought to be an expert at summoning by now. She’d done it accidentally enough times. And this last time had been on purpose. “Blade, come here.”
The butcher knife stuck into the wall shook with more and more intensity, like it was trying to break free of its prison. Not the blade she meant to summon, but no matter. Becca shouted, “Argyle, move!”
He released his hold on the warlock and dove out of the way just as the knife flew across the room and stabbed into the warlock’s back. The impact propelled the man forward onto his stomach, and Becca stepped on his shoulder blade, grasped the knife, pulled it out, and then used it to slice his head from his shoulders.
According to the spell book she’d been studying, the blade had to be infused with magic or coated with poison, otherwise it wouldn’t kill a warlock unless it was used to separate his head from his body.
“Sure would be nice if the appropriate killing method wasn’t quite so gruesome,” she noted.
A ball of red light slammed into her, and Becca screamed as pain raced through her veins. She collapsed to the floor, writhing, trying and failing to focus her magic on making it go away. All she could do was ride it out, until, blessedly, it stopped.
Gasping, and with tears streaming down her face, she pushed up onto her hands and shook her head to try to clear it. When she was able to focus, she noted that one warlock was holding Pacey with an arm around her middle and his other hand wrapped around her neck. Argyle stood across th
e room from them, his gaze darting from Pacey to the lead singer.
The lead singer had Rahu. He was holding the dragon by the hair with one hand, while the other held a blade against his throat.
Becca’s blade. The one Argyle gave her.
“How the hell did you get it?” she demanded.
The warlock dug the blade into Rahu’s skin. Becca could see blood bubbling next to it.
“Stop!” she cried.
The warlock chuckled and then leaned close to Rahu’s ear. “See? I told you she cared.”
Rahu didn’t react, probably because, well, there was a blade pressed against his carotid artery. Thank God she hadn’t managed to coat it with poison after all.
“Now that I have your attention,” the warlock said, “here’s how this is going to play out. Daddy over there is going to—”
“Daddy?” Becca said, automatically twisting her head to the left. Argyle shifted his gaze to her.
His eyes.
They weren’t blue—she’d gotten that from her mother. But they were the exact same shape, his thick, dark lashes were the same, those gold flecks in the middle—it was all the same.
As hers.
“Rebecca,” he whispered. Argyle.
Her father.
She fell back against the counter as her legs began to shake. “That doesn’t make sense,” she muttered.
The warlock laughed. “You didn’t know?”
He glanced at Argyle, who was standing so still he might as well have shifted into his gargoyle form. “All this time you’ve been protecting her, and you never told her? Oh, that’s rich.”
Becca shook her head. “That’s not right. I have a dad. Had.” She looked up at the warlock. “You killed him.”
“Nope. I killed your mom. Your dad’s standing right there.” He briefly pulled the knife from Rahu’s throat to use it to point at Argyle.
Rahu slammed the back of his head against the guy’s chin. It was enough impact to send him staggering a few feet backward while Rahu lunged out of reach. Argyle’s body shimmered as he hurtled himself toward the warlock.
Who plunged the magical blade into Argyle’s stomach.
“No!”
Someone screamed, Pacey, most likely, since it sounded feminine.
“Becca! Becca, look at me!”
She finally focused on Rahu, who was shouting at her. He lifted his bound wrists, and she realized he wanted her to cut the ropes. With an almost dismissive wave of her hand, the butcher knife flew across the room toward him. Rahu winced but held his ground, and the blade sawed through the bindings.
As soon as he was free, he shifted into dragon form, which was breathtaking to behold but also pretty much destroyed this wing of the house, since he was way too big even for the eight-foot ceilings.
The warlock who was holding Pacey apparently had a fear of dragons, because he released her and started to run. Rahu plucked him up in his powerful jaws and shook him like a rag doll before dropping him at Becca’s feet. She grabbed his head and twisted, breaking his neck.
Pacey had rushed to Argyle’s side, and with her arm around his waist, she was half-dragging him away from the chaos. At least he was still alive.
Becca hoped he’d stay that way, because she had a hella lot of questions and, clearly, he was the one with all the answers.
Before she could focus on that, though, she had a warlock to kill.
“Okay, you know what?” the warlock said. “I’m sick of this shit. I admit, it was fun toying with you, but you’ve killed my three closest, er…I wouldn’t exactly call them friends, but, well, we played some damn good music together. And now I have to find new band mates, and that really annoy—”
Becca flung a ball of white light into his chest. He screamed. She honestly wasn’t sure how she did it, but hey, whatever worked at this point.
But then he threw a ball of red light at her, and, damn it all, that shit hurt.
A growling noise caught her attention and she looked up. The dragon held something in his mouth.
The jewel-encrusted blade.
She snagged it from between his jaws. Her hand flared with that bright white light as soon as she wrapped her fingers around the handle.
She flung it across the room.
The blade hit the warlock in the chest. White light exploded from the point of impact, growing in intensity until his entire body glowed for a few seconds, and then it disappeared as if it had been snuffed out.
Just like his life.
He dropped to the floor, his eyes wide and staring at nothing at all.
Rahu shifted back to human form and caught Becca as the adrenaline drained from her limbs and her legs suddenly were no longer able to hold her upright.
“I got you,” he whispered, lifting her into his arms and cradling her against his chest. She pressed her ear against the heart steadily beating there, closed her eyes, and promptly passed out.
Chapter Fifteen
She slept for sixteen hours straight. And Rahu watched her the entire time.
Okay, maybe not the entire time, since he had been exhausted and a little worse for wear himself. He’d needed shut-eye too.
Still, he didn’t leave her side, whether he was asleep or awake.
So, of course, he was the first thing she saw when she finally opened her eyes. And then she smiled. And then she rolled him onto his back and straddled his thighs and kissed him as though she really did, well, care.
She broke the kiss to paw at his clothes, tugging his T-shirt over his head and then trying to shove his shorts down his legs. “Hey,” he said, “maybe we should—”
“Later,” she commanded, and who the hell was he to argue? Especially when she sank down onto his shaft and began rotating her hips just so and, gods above, he swore he saw fireworks exploding behind his eyelids.
Hell, he probably did. She was a freaking god, after all. She could make all kinds of shit happen.
When they were once again lying side by side, gasping for breath and too sated to move, she said, “I’m starved.”
He laughed. “Déjà vu.”
She glanced around the room. “We’re at your friend’s mansion? How did we get here?”
“We flew. Pacey’s house is pretty much destroyed—sorry about that, by the way.”
“Yeah, I’m okay with it, considering the outcome.”
“Well, anyway, Pacey took Argyle to the guesthouse, and I sort of wanted to give you a break from all the family drama, so I brought you here.”
She closed her eyes and groaned. “Family drama is right.” Then she opened her eyes again. “Is he okay? Argyle, I mean?”
Rahu nodded. “Ketu’s been giving me periodic updates. Argyle is fine. He’d like to see you. But there’s no rush. Or, if you don’t want to talk to him, I’ll make sure he understands he needs to leave you the hell alone.”
She smiled and leaned over to kiss him. “Thank you for being my champion.”
He chuckled. “You’re the demigod in this relationship.”
She pushed up onto her elbow. “We’re in a relationship?”
He slanted his gaze to the side. “Er…”
“Because that’s what I want.”
He focused back on her, staring into those beautiful blue eyes that held so much depth, so much…love. Yeah, he could actually see it in there, swirling around, and it was all for him.
Him.
"I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
She sighed. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have believed you anyway. But maybe we should agree: no more secrets.”
“Agreed.” He paused. “My dragon thinks you’re our mate.”
“He does?”
Rahu nodded.
She smiled. “I think I’m happy to be your mate.”
“You are?”
“Why are you so shocked?”
He shrugged. “Because I’m not worthy of your love.”
She snorted.
“No, seriously.” He sucked
in a deep breath, blew it out slowly. “There’s something you need to know about me.”
“Uh-oh. Is this going to be another dramatic family secret? Because that I’m not sure I’m ready for.”
He winced.
“Okay, just kidding. I can handle it. What is it?”
“I’m a half-breed too.”
“A—you are? You’re a dragon and a witch? Really?”
He shook his head. “My dad was human.”
Her eyes widened, and he waited for it. Waited for her to frown, for sadness to creep into her eyes. For her to tell him that he wasn’t good enough to be her mate, no matter what his dragon thought. The fact that he was half human, not even magical, while she was a freaking god, well…definitely not a match made in heaven.
“I don’t care,” she said.
“What?”
“I said, I don’t care. I love you just the way you are. And I agree with your dragon. We’re mates, Rahu. You’re stuck with me at this point.”
He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in for a hug. Burying his face in her hair, he whispered, “I love you, Becca.”
She responded by showing him how much she loved him in return. They’d barely finished when there was a knock on the door. Rahu tugged the blanket up to cover them both and called out, “Come in.”
The door opened and Ketu popped his head inside. “Hey, you’re awake.”
Becca gave him a little wave from where she was buried up to her nose under the covers.
Ketu grinned. “There are a whole lot of people here who’d like to say hi, if you’re up to it.”
“Who?” Rahu demanded.
Ketu winked. “Come downstairs and find out.” And then he retreated out into the hall and closed the door.
Rahu sighed. “I hate when he does that.”
Becca chuckled and pushed the blanket away. “Come on, let’s go take a shower. And then we’ll head downstairs to see what he’s talking about.”
And damned if they didn’t get physical in the shower too. Becca claimed it was him; Rahu insisted it was her.
It’s the two of you together, his dragon said.