Demons & Dragons

by Gina Kincade

  Had his magic indeed been stifled, by him via discipline, if that could be but a possibility, or by another witch her money had paid for to do so? Both scenarios made his blood boil, whipping up a breeze which made his heart skip a beat. With this rousing energy swirling, he followed through with the fantasy, imagining his revenge moment with her though he knew it wrong.

  “Hello, Mother,” he imagined Aubrey’s beast saying. For, since his fantasy, in it, through a fiery breath, the monster would be able to talk. “Mind if I have a word with you?”

  He pictured her wide eyes and open mouth making her look quite unladylike as he landed beside her in the garden of their home during a spring ball. He would then hiss loudly enough for all of the upper ten thousand to hear, “Oh, I am being rude. Let me introduce myself to your friends.”

  Turning to the crowd, he would say, “I am The Most Honourable, The Marquess of Dalysbury.” With his words, the woman would, on a sudden intake of breath, swoon. With a great monstrous clawed hand or paw or whatever it was, he would catch her so she wouldn’t miss his next declaration to those who remained alert.

  “She has kept from you for years her impropriety of being intimate with a man outside of wedlock who was a witch no less. I am the product of her said relations.”

  Then, just so no one was left wondering, he could shift himself back into a man in front of them. Standing there naked, he would shake his bewildered mother by holding fast to the tuff of her dress, forcing her to stay alert. He would allow himself to laugh after doing magic in her presence for the first time of his volition.

  As childish as he knew the fantasy to be, he could not hold back the smile that broke forth on his face. He would then, of course, have to fly away from all of society with Aubrey, leaving his mother to flounder with the truth as the ton shunned her.

  Even with the small bit of happiness he gained from his imagination, he felt the noticeable difference within him. He wanted to seize the vibrations which had trickled through his form since his first transformation. If it were all true, he hoped beyond all his wildest dreams to be able to practice magic along with Aubrey. He also longed to perform more reprehensible acts with her, too, a bit of magic in the bedroom. Wondering what difference their powers could make there, the rake in him wanted to experience more. He wanted to experience anything and everything with her.

  His overactive mind wondered over what spells and enchantments could exist for pleasure purposes. Surely these heightened senses and powers would allow for a greater sexual experience. The sparks in just the slightest touch last night, placed in the right area, would surely be beyond anything they had ever experienced together. He'd experienced the electric tingles from her fingertips on his cock, making him release his seed with just her hand. Never had he even surmised it could be something other than the intensity of being touched by the woman he was so profoundly in love with. Now, he wondered how his fingers shoved up inside of her and sliding easily with her juices might make her scream if he could do the same, focus the energy there. Though, he would be just as happy to have things return to the way they were before, when she didn’t shy away from his touch.

  “What is going through your mind? Your face went from a full, albeit devious, smile to such a frown of sadness in mere seconds.”

  Though her voice had startled him, his muscles easily relaxed again when he saw the morning beauty she'd always been.

  “Just a lot of questions about what I am capable of, what the future holds for us, and such as that.” His heart leap to be in her presence, to have her speaking to him, and her listening to him, even as she looked down at her feet.

  “You were always the early riser.” Apparently, she wasn't yet ready to think through it all this early in the morning.

  “Yes, but now the place is strange, and I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Actually, we do need to talk about when you go back,” Aubrey stated a little too matter-of-factly for his heart to deal with, as it fell to his stomach with a thud.

  “When I go back?” he said. The pitch of his voice had risen in surprise, but he got a grip on his anger before going farther. He no longer wished to be an I. “I will not leave here without you. I came for you. I will not leave until I have done everything within my power to convince you to be mine again. I have no life that I want to live without you, Aubrey.”

  “I just meant you should go soon to ensure your mother still does not find the means to cry rope on Lord and Lady Sanderly. You must promise me not to tell anyone what has happened to you here on this island. This place has been a secret among my coven for decades. As far as the mainland is concerned, after the storm it was deemed uninhabitable. Please, I am sorry I panicked and turned you into a beast, but please…please keep my secret. If…”

  He silenced her by placing his hand over her lips. Stopped by the sensation quivering through his fingers, he saw the same intensity of feeling reflected in her eyes.

  “Is that our magic combined again?”

  “Magic is part of it,” she said after returning his hand to his lap.

  “Can you help me? I have done all I could to ensure my mother’s silence. She will not risk her own exposure now. I need to see if I can truly do magic. There is something inside of me I can no longer ignore. I need to know. I promise to go. Just give me this day. Actually, you have no choice. Being optimistic, I told Ger to come for us tomorrow. I wanted two nights with you first.” He lowered his head, not sure as to the emotions flowing through him, making his pulse race, his heart jump beats. The only things he could be sure of, his love for her and his need to tap into the energy flowing through him. “I promise you will come through this safely. We will not do anything you should not like to.”

  “I am not sure I can trust what is inside of me when I am in your presence.”

  “Need I remind you, the boot is on the other foot now. You used to see me with my money and status as having so much power in the world. Here, you hold the most power. What have you to fear?”

  “You reversed my spell.”

  “Lust born of love reversed your spell, as did the help of your ancestors, from what you have said. I have no knowledge of this gift to use it as I want. You do. I am begging for your help. Accept me this way.” Disquieted by the way his voice kept breaking, but being a man couldn't win him the girl this time.

  “I do. My inclination is to trust you, only I fail to trust my own instincts at the present moment.”

  “Speaking of instincts, I have the urge to fly still even though I am no longer a…well, something that can.”

  “And, I can see you are going to be an infernal nuisance until you can. Let us start with something small. Then, we will consider if you are ready to attempt to shift yourself. This is enough of a tangled situation without adding to it an injury.”

  “Thank you, Aubrey. Since I have a penchant toward honesty, I should confess. The sober truth is my own dark desires have been riled, making me uncomfortable and intrigued at the same time.”

  “You are thanking me for what then if you see the magic as dark? Turning you into a beast of the elements? You, my dear, are not dark. Nothing that is within you is. Your mother was wrong. Dead wrong. Let that be lesson one.”

  His heart skipped a beat when she laughed, even if it was only with a stale vigor. “Learned, so I am extolling your gifts. If you had not been aghast of being near to me, I would have remained manacled by my mother’s flummery. I almost presume, if this makes any sense, to be unlocked or free. A part of me was clapped in irons. I dangled after an entity I could not put my finger on, while always feeling inside of me the devil played. I suffered guilt for my own instincts. I would never have believed those instincts could be magic with my upbringing. Yet, the freedom and the strength that came with the beast seem to have stayed with me. I have even retained impulses and physical traits of the creature, as if I was transformed in some ways for good. I feel like I am on the edge of something I have always longed for, yet could never w
ant let alone name. Please, share everything with me.”

  “It is not fitting, what she did to you. If only to right the wrong she laid against you, come, let us get started then. Although, I will admit, training you is going to feel like revenge for her suggesting me into the role of mistress. I am going to have to walk a tight line to keep the goal helping you and not hurting her, though nicely the two tend to a line.”

  In spite of his own animosity toward his mother, he found himself to be diverted without hesitation by attending to each sway of Aubrey’s hips as he followed her.

  “She could have had me hauled before the magistrate," he said, trying not to stumble too badly over the words, "and I would not have undertaken such a displeasing scenario as to be leg shackled to such a brainless woman as Lady Elizabeth. We talked about it before, Aubrey. It was my mother’s grand idea. I never so much as engaged in such idle chatter.” He finally paused his pleadings, noticing how far into the forest they walked. “Where are you taking me? I have apologized, and yet for some reason I feel as if I am being lead off a cliff.”

  “That is only your own apprehensions. I have no such diabolical plan. Well, not anymore.”

  She looked back briefly at him with a smile reminiscent of the one she wore on many an occasion of flirting with him. In any case, he feared she may gain a sore neck at the speed she turned back away from him. Sadly, he knew it probably had more to do with looking at him than a concern for where she stepped.

  “Great, but you failed to say where we were going.”

  “Right, I suppose I did. I am taking you to the center of the island. There is a circle there. It has the most amazing energy flowing within it. It is unlike anyplace I have ever been on earth. When you stand in the middle you feel strong and powerful, like all you have to do is think of something and it will come into creation. Not to mention, the beauty of the clearing. A stone circle was built around the vortex. The vortex itself is within an opening in a field of wildflowers. In this one special part of the island no trees even grow.”

  He could not imagine anything rivaling the beauty of the image before him. He frowned to be wrong again as the strange shapes of the trees they passed deterred his attention. Before long, he noticed the change in her step. She hesitated a bit with each one. He couldn’t imagine the contorted trees bothered her in the slightest, so he assumed something else haunted her mind.

  “What is it, Aubrey?” He reached grabbing her arm, turning her towards him. “I am sorry for my mother’s anger, her cruel words, all she said and did to you… I will apologize for the rest of my days if I have to. The facts are that I love you, and I intend on being with you by whatever terms are necessary for the rest of my life. Otherwise, I guess I will spend the rest of my life trying to be with you.”

  “Thank you for those words, but we must keep going. We have much work to do.”

  He wanted to stop her again, but chose to let it wait. “Why are the trees so tangled here?” He tried to move forward undaunted, though the unseemly way the thick tree trunks curved amongst themselves unsettled something in him, an energy that fluttered at the surface of his skin, at times caressing and others like spiders crawling. The branches twisted around each other and leaned so exaggerated to the side as if they grasped for purchase upon something unseen. Never had he been witness to timber so bewitched. The grim scene insipid, summoned the likes of a gothic tale. He dug into his childhood trying to remember if a story had been told of a man strangled in a forest by oft-beastly trees.

  “They grow according to the energy swirling here right outside of the vortex. Look! We are here,” she said swinging her arm out to the right. The odious cover of woods gave way to sunshine, flowers, and a circle of lush grasses.

  As he paused on the edge of the aureole, she welcomed him in by gathering his hand into hers. Radiant energy flared from betwixt their palms, and she squeezed his hand so he would not follow his inclination to let go. Her grin expressed tenderness as opposed to the askance turn of her head. His entire being jolted as he walked through a supernatural sort of unseen veil. Once within it, still grasping back at her gentle hand, the tingles of power journeyed from her palm to his. The strange sensations of his potential intensified.

  “This place yields a most amazing persuasion of, well, I dare simply call it, power,” he mumbled, his glance going back and forth between their joined hands and their surroundings.

  “Yes, it is the energy which resides here. Now, hold out your palms and face them up toward the heavens.”

  He did as she requested, unwavering even in the face of how his hand ached with the loss of her skin against his.

  “Now, my Lord, look out at your palms and visualize a ball of white energy swirling there. It is already there, but you need to make it visible by seeing it first in your mind.”

  Her playful use of his title, the one she always used when they made love, ignited the blaze already kindling inside of him. To his amazement, a ball of near-blinding white light formed in his hand the minute he saw it in his mind. Then, it went out just as quickly, as the sight of it jostled him.

  “Did you perchance see that, too, or did I genuinely conceptualize it alone?” His schoolboy excitement felt foolish, and he turned up one corner of his mouth ruefully. Despite his familiarity with false conjurers and their bag of tricks, what he felt when the ball of light formed in his hand could not be grossly overstated by any means of any writer of romantic literature or poetry. The execution of such as this utterly defied any expectation he had formed on the walk here this morning.

  “Yes, it was surely there for an instant.” Her face wore the same fervid expression of open-mouthed wonder surely mirroring his own.

  He guessed to some degree they had both come here logically skeptical. In her excitement, she inadvertently gravitated closer to him than she had dared before. Even when holding his hand, she'd kept him at a stiff-armed distance. He found himself to be quite dumbfounded when she said with a girl’s excitement, “You have magic within you, Edmund. See, you have magic within you!”

  She hugged him. When his slight erection bumped against the mound between her thighs, the shock took his breath away. She had not pushed him away, so he stayed connected to her. His chest touched her breasts, his cheek brushed against hers, and his hands laid flat on her back. The sensations went beyond anything he had experienced. In the normal course of things he would have succumbed to the temptation to make love to her in celebration of the moment. A devastating shiver went down the length of his spine.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, as she pushed graciously out of his embrace.

  “You have done well for yourself. Try again.”

  “As you wish,” he said boisterously.

  Then, he caught a faint trace of apprehension replacing the love which had briefly shown in her eyes. She had cautiously dulled her emotions again, not allowing even her expression to reveal too much. Unsure as to why, his logical onslaught of inner discourse did little to alleviate the strange sense of loss with her gone from his arms.

  Despite his concerns, his determination defied reason. He imagined the ball again in his mind. With little effort, it appeared again as easily as it had the first time.

  “Now, maintain it. Keep the image in your mind, and the ball of energy will remain in your hands.” Her voice had returned to the dull monotone of a schoolmistress as the light glistened with the energy he had hidden within him. “Now, turn it blue, then red, and then purple. It is a great exercise to enhance your skills and your control of them.”

  “I am doing it,” he said with nil to none emotion in his tone. Like a child scorned, he did not give any manner of disclosure as to what this meant to him as the ball changed colors.

  “Edmund, your father must have been a very powerful witch. I do not know how you stifled such powers all these years. And, I don’t know how in the time we spent together, and in the most intimate ways we spent it, how I could not have gotten any inkling of it. Perhaps I was dist
racted with other matters.” The blush upon her cheeks warmed him a little. “Of course, and I mean no offense, suffice it to say I have met your mother. She could scare a wild animal into submission. Or, perhaps magic had a part in hiding them.”

  He had thought he discerned a hint of empathy, and seeing the tears glistening over her eyes confirmed it. “You have a great amount of power within you to have accomplished such a spell with little formal training, even taking into account the energy of this circle. Because you tapped into it with such ease, your father may have been a descendant of one of the witches who lived here long ago. You should try to find him when you get back to the mainland, even if you have to do so without your mother’s help.”

  “I do not know… I am…” He huffed out a breath, finding it a burden to keep his true thoughts from her.

  “What? You are what?”

  When she swiped at the tears which had run about on her cheeks, he finished with his side of the games. He refused to stifle anything else. He would not steel himself against the possible rejection she held over him. He had not done so yesterday, and he declined to start now. “I am afraid. I have already lived a parent’s disapproval.”

  “How much is the risk worth to ease the soul? I would believe something inside of you needs to know, at least, who he is. Where is the devil-may-care attitude I fell in love with?”

  “Love?” He raised his head.

  Instead of an answer, she sucked her bottom lip under her teeth and only blinked her acknowledgement of an answer. It was something. If he had not lost her love, he could work forever to regain her trust. The thought settled in his brain. The idea of leaving here, leaving these new powers and leaving her, doused his mood and any hope of another energy ball.