But Imani was having none of that. With lips pursed and gaze narrowed, the woman came forward and grabbed one of Danny’s hands. Caige fought the sudden impulse to yank her back out of the woman’s grip. That was ridiculous. The two were best friends – almost sisters. What was wrong with him?
The magic was getting to him. He needed to get out of there.
“I’m sorry, Lucas. Can I borrow her for a moment, please?” Imani asked and then didn’t wait for a reply before she was pulling Danny several yards away to speak with her in whispered tones.
Lucas felt a warning in the air. The stench of legerdemain was all around him, threatening from all sides. But it was more than that. Danny seemed scared, and for some reason that bothered him even more than the magic. Imani was also acting strange. And there was something else…. He couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Uh, it, uh, was nice meeting you,” Sasha said behind him. Lucas turned to watch the man bow a bit, his own expression very wary and distracted. And then the Russian was jogging off again, glancing once in the girls’ direction before he disappeared into the crowd.
Without thinking, Lucas tuned himself into what Danny and her friend were saying, using his sharpened senses to make out their hushed words.
“… knows you’re here! He knew the second you were within range. You two shouldn’t be here!” Imani hissed.
Danny yanked her hand out of Imani’s and narrowed her own gaze. “I don’t know what the big deal is about Jason knowing I’m here, Ima, but I’m aware that we shouldn’t be here!” she hissed back. “We were just about to leave when you showed up.”
“Why the hell are you here to begin with?”
“Lucas wanted to come – he drove us here and I didn’t know this is where we were coming. Now calm the hell down! We’re leaving.” Danny turned away from her friend to walk back toward Lucas, but stopped when the crowd suddenly gasped as one and then fell silent just as quickly.
The hair on the back of Lucas’s neck stood on end. His skin felt prickly. Every light in the Festival grounds went out, one after another, until the entire area was dark. Lucas could feel the people around him freeze in place, afraid to move amidst the absence of light. Warning bells were going off in his head. His vision automatically adjusted for the darkness, switching to a stark contrast of grays, whites and reds.
From somewhere unseen, a drum began to pound. One beat. Two. Low and slow and methodical. It was a hypnotic sound, capable of stirring the blood. A few onlookers began to whisper amongst themselves.
Lucas felt something soft brush his fingertips and he looked down to see that Danny had found her way back to his side. He wasted no time in taking her hand once more, and she didn’t object. But he could see her clearly in the darkness and her gaze was on something in the distance.
He turned to look. On the opposite end of the Festival grounds, a light began to grow. It was a firelight, perhaps from the tip of a torch, but it expanded in time with the beating drum, a brightening glow in the September night.
There was a sudden flash, and two of the torches along the Festival’s walkway burst into fiery life, momentarily blinding everyone. The drums picked up their tempo, joined by several other drums beating out a fast pulse. A second later, two more torches burst into flame amidst gasps of delight and surprise. Then two more, and so forth, until the expanse of sand beneath the Festival stands and stage was decorated in long, flickering shadows.
Tiki torches around the stage also exploded into flame, revealing the source of the single fire that had lit the darkness only moments before. A tall man with light blonde hair stood at the center of the stage, dressed from head to toe in black swaths of clothing, a black, lit torch in his left hand.
He was relatively far from where Lucas and Danny stood, but even at this distance, Lucas could tell that he was a young man, possibly in his late twenties to early thirties. He was about Lucas’s height, well built, and there was a charismatic air around him that Caige could feel radiating outward like ripples on a pond. It mesmerized the Festival participants, drawing them closer to the stage as the drums beat themselves into a fury.
The hypnotic rhythm crescendoed, powerful and potent, and then it stopped altogether – and the crowd waited breathlessly. The man smiled, flashing perfect white teeth. “Welcome,” he said. He simply spoke the word, but it echoed throughout the Festival grounds as if amplified by invisible, floating speakers.
Magic.
“Tonight marks the first night of the Harvest Moon,” he continued. “In honor of this event, I give you –” he paused as he raised his right hand, and a ball of fire erupted in his palm. The crowd gasped and then clapped, and he continued. “A light in the darkness!” With that, he pulled his arm back and threw the ball of fire. It sped over the heads of the revelers toward the waiting, yet dark bonfire pit beyond.
The ball of flame struck the enormous pile of wooden crate and pallet remains and exploded into a towering mass of brilliant, raging fire. A few women screamed a little, and the men roared with impressed delight. The children squealed, jumping up and down. But the show wasn’t over.
Above the raging bonfire, amidst the streams of smoke rising toward the heavens, shapes began to take form. The first was of a man, tall and strong. Only his smoky outline could be discerned. But he reminded Lucas of someone, and the image gave him a truly nasty feeling.
The male outline seemed to erupt into flame itself, burning away into oblivion until it was followed by a second shape. This one was of a motorcycle. It also erupted into flame, again amongst the excited, impressed ooh’s and aah’s of the crowd. The last form to take shape was easily recognizable and when it materialized completely, Lucas’s eyes began to heat in his head. His vision was changing again, turning more red.
A massive black wolf sat back on its haunches and lifted its head to howl at the moon. Despite the immaterialness of the smoky outline, the wolf’s howl reverberated through the Festival grounds, echoing hollowly, sorrowfully, before its image was also engulfed by flame and burned away.
The message was clear. Lucas was no fool.
He looked away from the fire pit toward the stage to find that his assumption had been correct. The man on the stage was watching him. Even though he was far enough away that he couldn’t tell what color the man’s eyes were, Caige could feel those eyes upon him, burning into him with nothing short of pure, unadulterated hatred.
There was more magic pouring out from him than Lucas had ever felt or smelled before. The crowd no doubt believed that everything they had just witnessed was due to pyrotechnics and advanced planning and illusion and technology. It was none of those things. The man on the stage was a wizard, and a powerful one at that.
Lucas felt his chest rumble and realized he was growling low in his throat. He was losing control. This was all too much. The wizard obviously had something against him – the burning images were testament enough to that – and whatever it was, it was serious. But this was not the place to hash out their differences. There were children here.
Danny was here.
Lucas tore his gaze from the stage and glanced down at Danny. She too was watching the man with the light blonde hair. Her kaleidoscope eyes were huge in the frame of her beautiful face. His protective instincts were taking over. He needed to get her out of there.
And then he would come back and find the wizard and rip his fucking throat out. He didn’t care what beef the man had with him. The fact that he was magic and hated Caige was enough. It was an itch that needed scratching. And if he died in the process of trying, then so be it. Everyone had to go some time.
But then there was a sucking-popping sound, and Lucas’s head whipped around once more just in time to see the man on the stage vanish. The torch he’d been holding in his left hand dropped to the stage and went out, its smoke curling lazily upward toward the night sky. The people in the audience clapped and cheered and began to disperse.
“We should go,” Danny said beside him.
He looked down at her to find her smiling a small smile, her eyes large and pleading, her expression a mixture of confusion and worry. He found himself wondering what she would have to be confused and worried about.
What had she and Imani been talking about? Come to think of it, who was this Jason person? And why had she been watching the man on the stage – instead of staring at the bonfire like everyone else had been?
What was going on?
Lucas was moving on autopilot now and when he raised his hand and gently cupped the side of her face, he did so without thinking. His thumb slowly caressed the line of her cheek bone and she blinked. He could feel her shiver beneath his touch, a lithe column of trepidation and anticipation, and his own body responded in kind.
She’s mine, he thought. It was an unbidden declaration, uncalled for and nonsensical. He’d barely met her. He knew nothing about her. Yet, logical or not, there it was – along with the crazy powerful wizard who hated him and the crowd permeated with the stench of magic and the uber-rich driver of foreign sports cars who had tried to kill him by running him off of the road last night. The world had gone to pot and made no sense any longer.
And he wanted Danny like he’d never wanted another woman in all his life.
Here, in this place of fire and night, she was a beacon of goodness, a port in a storm, and he was quivering beneath the weight of the gale all around him. The feel of her skin beneath his touch was doing things to him. He wanted to feel more. He needed to feel more – like a dying man crawling to an altar.
Lucas couldn’t have stopped what happened next if he’d tried. He took her face in both of his hands and drew her closer, his hold on her inexorable, his thirst unbearable. He could smell magic everywhere – but Danny’s sweet scent licked at him, smoothed over him, and made him forget. He could hear her breathing go ragged, hear the quickening beat of her heart, and all other sound faded away.
Danny raised her arms and pressed her hands against his chest, as if she could stay him where he was and prevent him from doing what he was going to do. But she couldn’t. Nothing could have.
So as he leaned in and whispered her name across her lips, she closed her eyes, at once as lost in him as he was in her. Lucas moved in for the kill. He could not suppress the growl that escaped him as he claimed her lips with his own, at last tasting the sweet salvation her pouting mouth had been promising him all night.
She was delicious. He was delirious. The essence he had scented on her from the very beginning was concentrated here, vanilla and sugar and sweet, supple satisfaction. He took all he could get, wanting more with each passing second. The fires that burned in the torches around him were spreading – he could feel them engulfing him in their heat. His cock hardened and throbbed; his grip on her tightened, and he pressed deeper, his tongue delving and licking and drinking her in.
He forgot about the wizard and where he might have gone to. In that magical moment he couldn’t have cared, he was so spellbound.
Danny moaned against him and his hands slipped around her neck, gripping, loosening, and moving further down. He wanted to strip her right then and there and take her in the sand. He was losing control.
I have to get her out of here.
With that thought, he pulled his lips from hers but retained his grip on her body, holding her fast against him. “Let me take you out of here,” he whispered, hoping she would understand what he meant – hoping as he’d never hoped for anything that she would agree.
Danny gazed up at him, her pink, swollen lips parted, her gorgeous, strange eyes heavily lidded, her breathing quick and ragged, and Caige went a little crazy inside.
Please, he thought, pleaded – begged.
Danny nodded just once, and that was enough. Lucas fought the urge to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder. Instead, he grabbed her wrist in one swift, sure grip and spun her around to begin pulling her across the Festival grounds toward the parking lot and the motorcycle that waited there.
He never noticed the other men watching them. He couldn’t sense them, couldn’t see them, couldn’t smell them. His entire world had become Danny, and he had no idea they were there.
Chapter Six: “Fire Burn”
Jason watched the werewolf pulling Dannai through the parking lot, and black magic infused his system, begging his mind and body to use it. “What do I have to do to you, Danny?” he whispered to himself, his tall strong form nearly trembling with pent up wrath. How many edicts did he have to declare? How many lies did he have to tell the oracle Lalura before she forced her young adopted charge to obey her commands and heed her warnings?
Jason turned from where he stood on the cliff top, looking down over the festival grounds. Beside him were three large men dressed in black. He addressed the nearest one. “Separate them and bring her to me before he can touch her.”
“Yes sir,” the man replied. He turned to his companions and the three of them vanished, leaving nothing more behind than the thinnest tendrils of charcoal smoke and the smell of Frankincense. Even that was caught by the sea-side breeze and lifted swiftly away.
They would know what to do. The Akyri were not magic users, strictly speaking. They weren’t werewolves. But they were not entirely human by all standards either. The Akyri had lived for countless centuries alongside werewolves, and yet the latter had no clue as to their existence. They were very smart and very good at hiding. They depended upon the black magic of warlocks in what could only be described as a symbiotic relationship. In return for the power that wove through the fabrics of their being, the Akyri performed services for their warlock hosts.
A few of them had even managed to mate with warlocks over the years. Their offspring were terribly enigmatic creatures who normally went the route of black magic, keeping their other supernatural nature hidden from the world.
The Akyri would carry out this task in a manner that made it look completely innocent. Accidental. Then they would bring Dannai to Jason unharmed. And more importantly – unmarked.
In the meantime, Jason was feeling edgy. Danny’s defiance and waywardness had been eating at him more and more of late. She’d grown into a stunning young woman, intelligent and kind and free. It was that very freedom that burned in Jason’s veins. He wanted to take it from her. He wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything. She was a bird and he wanted to cage her. She was a witch – a very special one. She belonged with her own kind.
She belonged with him. He was the coven’s herald. Her place was at his side.
Jason glared down at the parking lot where Lucas Caige’s motorcycle had driven away moments before. He felt his green eyes darken, pupils expanding as the blackness within him begged to be release. Again, he denied it.
Leaving a strange popping sound in his wake, he vanished from the cliff top and reappeared in his tent. It was a actually one of the rooms in his mansion, disguised through the use of shielding magic. Its reinforced tent exterior was much nicer on the inside than it would have otherwise been. Rugs adorned the floor, a king-size bed took up one corner, and torches lined the log walls. He waved a hand and they leapt to life, filling the tent with a sudden crackling light.
He then placed his hands against the lip of his work bench, leaned on his extended arms, closed his eyes, and sent out a mental call. There was a little witch on the festival grounds, a new and young one by the name of Brianna. She was only twenty. She had a cherubic face and short blonde curls and a plump little body that was capable of the most adorable suffering.
She wasn’t Dannai. But he needed a release and she would have to do for tonight. He felt her answer his call at once, and Jason broke the connection to open his eyes.
He had company. He narrowed his gaze and remained where he was, his back still facing the tent’s flaps.
“I know who you are,” Jason said as he pulled off his black shirt and tossed it carelessly onto his work bench. Behind him, the visitor paused in the opening of the tent, and Jason could almost hear him smile. “And
I know why you’re here,” he continued calmly.
“Very well,” the man replied coolly. He had a deep, authoritative voice and a presence so strong, it heated the air around them. Jason turned to see the man slowly stride to a nearby chair and lower himself into it. “We’ll forego the introductions.” He had long blonde hair, sapphire blue eyes, and the build of a werewolf.
Jason slowly faced him fully, crossing his well-muscled arms over his broad chest. The light from the torches in the tent flickered across the thin sheen of moisture covering his own sculpted body.
The man’s blue eyes flicked to the torches and back again. “You like to play with fire,” he began with a slight smile. “And I’m guessing the young Dannai is as fiery a spirit as you’ve ever known.”
“You want me to help you destroy Malcolm Cole,” Jason interrupted, cutting to the chase. He knew damn well why the werewolf was sitting there in his tent. He shook his head, smiling his own cruel smile. “You’re in over your head, Phelan. The Clan Council wants you dead. You abducted a marked dormant – the Overseer’s granddaughter, no less. Killing Cole won’t change any of that.”
Gabriel Phelan grinned, flashing his infamous fangs, and then he sat back and draped his thick arms over the back of the cushioned chair. “Oh, I know,” he said slowly. “This has nothing to do with the Council or even Cole. This is personal.”
Phelan sat forward and pinned Jason with those deadly powerful eyes. “I know what you are, Alberich.” He stood, as fluid and graceful as the stories of him told, and his gaze settled on the assortment of tools Jason had hung on the wall. “And I know your secret.”
Jason’s gaze narrowed. He said nothing.
Phelan glanced at him over his broad shoulder. “A woman like Dannai is hard to break. It takes patience and a deep understanding of both the female body and its psychological processes. I would offer a few tips to the task – however,” he turned back to face the whips on the wall and then bent and threw open the top of a black leather chest against the same wall. It revealed an assortment of restraints and manacles that Alberich used in his performances… and elsewhere. “I’m guessing that you already know many of them.”
The Spell Page 7