A Witch's Beauty

by A Witch's Beauty (lit)

  Mina studied him. "Well," she said at last. "I'm glad I didn't know that the first time we... you know. It would have been a really hard act to follow."

  David's startled reaction turned to the smile that had that still-unexpected ability to make her feel better about... well, everything. Reaching out, he curved a lock of her hair behind her ear. "That moment was a turning point for me. Just as being with you was another."

  "Were their many after Her?"

  "A few. Not like you."

  "Males always say that. It just means it was different from the last one, as the next one will be different."

  That elicited a chuckle, and the sound of it sent a shiver down her spine. Angels really did need to turn it down, she thought irritably. But she was unable to move as he twined that lock of hair around his fingers, wouldn't let her pull away, and the look in his eyes stilled her as the humor died away.

  "There are some incredibly rare people in the world," he said. "It doesn't matter what they endure, what shitty cards they're dealt. Life knocks them down again and again, until anyone with a shred of compassion is saying, 'Don't get up again. For God's sake, just stay down.' "

  When his expression shifted, Mina saw raw, exposed emotion. The simple core of who he was, evident in every tautly held plane of his face, the dark, intense fire of his eyes, the way his long fingers clenched into a fist on her hair, holding her still.

  "But they keep getting up. And there's something in their eyes. It might be almost gone, hidden, dulled, but if you try to force them to cross that one line deep inside them, you'll find it. It's that thing that says, 'I have the fury and the will to destroy the whole world, and I will use whatever weapon I have to end you.' "

  His gaze shifted back to her. "It's not the Dark Blood that let you live through what few could. It's that spark in you. You may use the blood, but the resilience is you."

  She was fairly sure she was about to be consumed by the power of what she saw in his expression, resonating inside her breast, in the pounding of her heart. "How do you know that?"

  "Because you looked at an infant mermaid and had pity for her, enough to risk yourself even as a child." Tracing her face from her temple until he reached the curve of her chin, he caressed her bottom lip with his thumb. His gaze softened, in a way that muddled her mind. "You turned Marcellus's wing into a bat's wing, because deep inside it amused you. Goddess, I want to be around long enough to see you smile."

  He leaned over her then, bracing one arm at her opposite hip. It was a protective and relaxed pose that didn't disturb her. If anything, she felt comforted by that sheltering presence, though a quietly alert part of her was aware of the thin sheet between them, of his gaze lingering on her bare shoulder.

  As he cupped the side of her head, it felt natural to lean into his touch, let his strength hold her as lassitude sank in. It seemed she was always falling asleep around him, and not just because of the exertion of being around him, both pleasurable and life threatening. With him, she slept in a way she hadn't ever slept. Whatever her conscious mind felt, her subconscious trusted him to watch over her, so that it succumbed easily, like now. Of a sudden, all she wanted was sleep. Sleep, with his touch upon her. This male angel who was turning out to be far more than she'd expected.

  "When you talk," she observed drowsily, "the way you were speaking just now, about the Lady, your voice changed."

  "How so?"

  "The syllables, like they're drawn out, musical, but rolling... the I's especially."

  He looked surprised. She could tell he was thinking about it, hearing himself in his own mind. Then his expression became amused. "That is a Southern drawl, sweet witch," he said, exaggerating so she heard it clearly. "Took me a while before I stopped saying 'y'all.' First time I told my platoon to meet me 'rightchere' or said 'idinit,' I got the same blank look you have now, their translation skills notwithstanding."

  "What?"

  "Idinit. As in, 'idinit a wonderful day?' I don't do it as much now, but with Southern boys it always comes back to us, particularly when we get riled up."

  The skin on either side of his eyes crinkled. Unlike him, she didn't care if she ever produced a smile, but she was beginning to wonder if there was anything as irresistible as David's. It stirred warmth in her it shouldn't, helping her to relax further.

  Though her body felt heavy, devoid of energy, her arm seemed to float up of its own accord to his mouth to touch his lips, the sensual bottom curve, as his gaze intensified. Her simplest gestures seemed to arouse an emotional or physical response from him that mesmerized her. It gave her the unwise compulsion to keep making them.

  He didn't touch her, though she could sense his desire to do so as she moved to his cheek, into the loose hair falling forward on his bare shoulder, and buried her fingers there, beneath that curtain.

  "Jonah said human-made angels often retain characteristics like that," he continued conversationally, but his eyes remained locked on her face. The hand braced next to her hip was stroking it with his thumb. "Until they feel comfortable enough to let those things go. He says I'll likely lose it when I reach maturity at fifty, or when I can let go of my human roots without regret or worry. Whichever comes first."

  When I mature at fifty. Why that should bother her, since living beyond the next few days seemed to provide an immediate challenge, she didn't know, but his hand on her head made her hurt anew. Though she didn't want him to stop touching her. And she didn't want to think anymore.

  "Riiiiled..." she drawled, her eyes drifting closed. "I get riiiled. A lot."

  David held his breath. He wished one of his powers was the ability to hold time still a moment, or at least rewind, for he was almost certain he'd seen the tiniest curve at one corner of her mouth.

  He kept up that simple stroke along her face while her breathing evened out. He wished he could erase the tension in her features that didn't leave her, even in her dreams. But he nursed the fantasy that the slight smoothing of her brow as she succumbed to sleep might be due to his touch.

  As much as he loved to arouse her, bury himself in her, there was something almost sacred about watching over her sleep, as if he were being given a gift she'd never thought she'd bestow on anyone.

  If only she'd let him try to heal her scars. Not just the recent ones. Repair her left side, the damage in her mouth. Though fortunately, his kisses didn't seem to bother that. He just wanted to give her less pain.

  She uses the pain for something.

  He'd made a nearly fatal mistake earlier, assuming he had a complete picture when he didn't. He wouldn't do that again. Particularly when he'd watched her do it twice now, use extremes of pain to achieve that balance when it was almost past recall. However, what if he could give her the pain she needed? Those enticing, erotic rituals with the daggers, the shallow cuts along her skin. He'd found her response fascinating, despite himself.

  She avoided stresses that could unbalance her. What if giving her lesser amounts of pain, in measured intervals, would allow her to handle rather than avoid those stresses, allowing her to do more? Wouldn't that be preferable to resorting to destructive extremes or chronic pain she exacerbated by living in cold climes?

  That said, he knew his motives weren't entirely altruistic. There was no coincidence between his desire to take over that responsibility and the fact such a transition would make her dependent on him.

  Time to turn his thoughts elsewhere, for the moment. Get those first-aid supplies, so he could care for her while she slept, minimizing her discomfort. Then do another quick trip out to find her some food and other things to make her feel more at ease here. Before they moved on to the place he hoped he'd convince her could be home for a while.

  Fifteen

  MINA surfaced slowly. As she usually did when she emerged from the landscape of her nightmares, she carefully evaluated her surroundings for several minutes before moving, not giving away that she was awake. It took an extra moment to recall where she was and why. She'd b
een part of the ocean for so long that even when she'd drifted off, David's hand upon her, she'd felt the rocking of her body, the rhythm still with her. Just as her missing parts of flesh still reminded her of their presence. Some things imprinted on the mind and didn't leave.

  Since her dreams were never peaceful, what was uppermost in her mind as she roused was her flight from the Citadel. The mindless bloodlust that had taken over, that David had recklessly drawn upon him. She'd made a conscious choice in her losing battle with the Dark One blood, to let the bloodlust infuse the dragon rather than the witch part of her. She'd known which one was likely to cause less damage. Still, she remembered how he'd risked the clutch of her talons. If she'd caught him, she could have rent him in two and ended him.

  Forcing her thoughts from that, she moved on to her second waking ritual, which was finding something mundane and even possibly pleasant to think about, in order to drive back the dark and bloody dreams that accompanied her sleep. She found something almost immediately.

  Her hand had been cleaned and bandaged, the broken finger re-splinted. Someone had also wiped her body down with soap and water, cleaned her hair, brushed it. Used to living in the water, it was odd to think of using it to clean oneself, but she'd been so sandy and sweaty in her human form. She felt better.

  While she found it astounding that she'd slept through all of that, since she knew it was David's doing, the surprise was short-lived. She'd been exhausted, and for good or ill, she was beginning to have a tentative trust in him. Which of course was a mistake.

  As she sat up, something slipped across her throat. Feeling a black silk cord there, she unhooked the choker after figuring out the magnetic clasp to discover a polished piece of turquoise, carved into the shape of a tiny angel.

  Things were changing. Her life always had been a certain way. Now, in the course of barely two days, she'd been confronted with a flood of new experiences. She was on land, in an abandoned human town, in the middle of the desert. Except for the time she'd gone to the surface to help Anna, there were very few times she'd ventured more than a handful of feet from the water's edge, and only when absolutely necessary. The deep, dark depths of the ocean kept her as protected as any environment could, or at least she'd always thought so. But now, it was just her and David, in a place no one would expect them to be. It was warm and dry, and there was no one around to see her interest in the things that had always fascinated her when Anna spoke about them. She touched the brush that was still sitting on the folding chair. It was plastic and red, and some of her hair was in it.

  As she moved around the room, her hand closed over the angel pendant, smoothing the polished stone with her fingers. Her life worked because she'd rigidly controlled her environment, her access to others who could possibly disrupt it. Now she was bemused to recognize her rhythmic gesture as a replacement for that, an automatic reassurance of the one thing that seemed stable, for the moment. David.

  She'd read about soldiers returning home from war, exploring how the warrior felt, stepping off the screaming chaos of a battlefield into a sunny kitchen with warm coffee, a wife's smile and relaxed chatter about changing the wallpaper. Whatever that was.

  When she'd trawled the surface for sun-dependent water plants and come upon merpeople, sunning on a temporary raft of floating driftwood they'd woven together, she'd thought of that. The way they laughed and talked, easily dozing while a couple of them kept a casual watch, knowing they had little to fear.

  No one but David knew how she'd collected books from wrecks. While she handled her spell books and scrolls as the precious grimoires they were, she took equal care of the dog-eared paperback books, for in the lives and struggles of the humans she found more kinship. Yet she stayed hidden in the water, because that was where she was constantly reminded of what she was, and it felt safer. There was no one to watch her back; she had to depend completely on herself. So staying where she knew the terrain and environment had made the most sense.

  Now she had someone who claimed to be willing to watch her back. And he'd made the decision to bring her on land, where she could not only see the things that had fascinated her, but be away from the world that knew everything about her, their tolerance always precariously dependent on how inconspicuous she made herself.

  She'd read Arabic poetry, fairy tales, espionage, books designated as "horror" that were full of dark, all-too-familiar shadows from her dreams. Romances, populated with heroes who were confident and virile, heroines who were spirited but ready and willing to be swept off their feet with the right incentives.

  As that thought took her mind in a different direction, she remembered that a couple of the books she'd salvaged were set in towns like this. Westerns, the spines called them. With a saloon-wasn't that what David had called this building?-and a long, dusty street on which gunfighters squared off. The general store sold peppermint candy and the air outside would have been punctuated by the sound of clopping hooves, a horse jingling the bit as he shook his head to rid himself of trail dust. His rider would tie him to the hitching post and push through the saloon's swinging doors, looking for a whiskey and a pretty girl.

  In the specific book she'd read, the cowboy had removed his hat when he'd seen the saloon whore. Salome, who used to be Sally, a farmer's daughter before misfortune brought her to whoring and serving drinks, had been caught off guard by it. She'd grown a hard shell, hard as the hardest mollusk-which of course had been Mina's mental comparison, since the author's terse voice hadn't provided an analogy-but it was as if that gesture of automatic respect and kindness had targeted a weak area she hadn't even known she still had. For a brief flash, she'd felt like the girl she'd once been, what she could have been. And something more than what she was now.

  In the corner, Mina found the basin of soapy water and damp cloth, carefully folded gauze pads and packets of wipes with a strong chemical smell she assumed had been for tending her wound. He'd respected her wishes and not used his healing power. However, the array of items suggested he was a very particular and adept thief, a scavenger himself. Perhaps it was her corrupting influence.

  She went back to the brush. Salome had had a silver-backed brush with a porcelain handle, her prized possession from her mother. She'd used it on her hair while the cowboy watched in the close privacy of her room. He'd surprised her by sitting down behind her on the bed, taking it from her hand and brushing her hair himself. Closing her eyes, Mina recalled the passage, not questioning why she'd read it so often that she knew it by heart.

  For once Salome didn't feel like a receptacle, a tool, but important for her own self. She knew it was dangerous, but there came a time a girl was ready to risk everything, just so she didn't have to feel the way she always felt. Even if it was for just a minute...

  Mina raised her hand to her brushed hair. David had tied it loosely into a long tail on her shoulder with another piece of silk cord. While she didn't sense him near, he'd left two feathers in a dusty cracked bottle, his way of saying he was within calling distance.

  Fingering the brush, she lifted and pulled it through the tail of her hair, testing it. Loosened the cord and did it again, starting at the scalp. And she remembered, through the shadows. His hand, following the track of the brush while she slept, working out tangles, disturbing the black storm clouds of her dreams with stray bits of soft, silver moonlight.

  Laying the brush down at last, she turned to the remaining folding chair, because what she'd noted on it when she made her first circuit around the room had called the Western novel to mind. Lifting the stiff yet silky fabric draped over the back, she recognized what she imagined a saloon girl's dress would look like.

  Did books open portals? Were Salome and her cowboy here somewhere, or were her thoughts conjuring things? Perhaps she had died, struck out of the sky by Jonah and his angels, and this was her odd, drifting afterlife, caught in the dream world of a favored book. She couldn't complain, especially since she'd imagined a far worse afterlife. Examining the dress
, she found it was velvet blue, the skirt split and trimmed in black feathers along the split and the off-the-shoulder neckline. Stockings and what must be garters. Elbow-length gloves.

  Thinking, or maybe not really thinking, she awkwardly drew the glove on her non-disfigured hand. Tight, silken, hugging her fingers and wrist, sending a frisson of sensation coursing through the underside of her arm and down the side of her breast. Unexpectedly, it tightened the nipple, as if David were standing behind her, sliding up her rib cage, where she'd feel the heat of his touch even if she was wearing the thin garment of the dress. She picked up another lace piece, with rows of tiny holes and lace ties. Holding it against the dress, she figured it out. A corset.

  Well, she was naked at the moment. And while she was certain David had probably gone in search of more conventional clothes for her, she considered the dress. Pulling it over her head, she faced with wary pleasure the task of figuring out how it should be worn.

  DAVID knew he needed to seek Citadel counsel on how to supply Mina's needs without constant pilfering, but he'd wait until things had settled down there. The phrase "timing was everything" was more universal than he'd once realized.

  Gauging her size, he'd found some things he knew would be comfortable for her and help her blend in. They also could be carried in the hiker's backpack he'd picked up.

  He was a bit more problematic. While he could compel humans not to "see" his wings, at his age and level of experience it only worked in focused attention on one or two humans, not large groups. Of course, he wasn't planning to take her to a Major League Baseball game or shopping at Wal-Mart. Though he couldn't help but think how she'd react to either one of those things.

  That was the least of his concerns, however. While she'd slept and he'd cared for her and shopped, he'd reviewed the events of the past couple days.

  Yes, she was half Dark One, and therefore the darkness was an intrinsic part of her. Mina insisted that a balance between light and dark was necessary, and he no longer disagreed with her on that. But there were so many shades of gray she'd never attempted to maintain that balance. What if she could go to a baseball game? Plant a garden. Sleep unmolested. While he didn't know what went on in her dreams, he'd yet to see her rest in her sleep. It was obvious the place she went was a place no one would wish to go when sleeping.