by Terri Pray
Because you need him as much as he now needs you.
No, Karol was the only reason she was here. Why she stood staring at the still closed door. They were running out of time to protect her.
When Karol was safe then she could walk away and never look back. To hell with what Gem tried to set up between them. She wasn’t about to find herself hitched to a man just because someone else thought she needed to be with him.
Bullshit. It’s about time you stopped lying to yourself. You had a good time, sure. He’s handsome but none of that explains the pull towards him. Face it, you’re in love. And, with good reason. Come on, he feeds something in you, a hunger you refused to admit you have. And now he’s here, in your life, and you feel complete because of his presence.
Complete.
Cold sweat beaded down the length of her spine, threatening to soak into her dress. Love. No, lust, need, desire, it wasn’t love, no matter what her heart wanted to scream at her. People like her didn’t fall in love. They picked out partners of the moment, enjoyed them and moved on. Lust was a part of magic. Love…sure, it could be but it could also be used against both parties.
A love affair going wrong could result in the worst of all scenarios. Power torn, destroyed hearts, focus lost and a spell then exploding.
How many witches had died over the centuries because of love betrayed?
Too many to count, and now her aunt was trying to get her to accept a new love in her life? Not just any man, but one with a wild card ability, an empath who would never be able to fully shield himself.
A man whose slightest touch set her soul afire.
The small shrine in the corner of the well-tended garden caught her attention, a mocking smile gracing the carefully carved face. The idea of smashing the statue into a thousand pieces had never been as appealing as it felt right now.
Venus. Fate. Lilith. Kali. Hera. Morrigan. Hecate. The Goddess had so many names and faces, and right now she felt as if they were all laughing at her.
“I half thought you’d be late.” He leaned against the door frame. Just looking at him left her pressing her thighs tight together under the soft fabric of her skirt. What she needed was a good potion to shake this off. An antilust spell, or cleansing. Something that would shake him out of her system once and for all.
So why did the idea of doing that leave her feeling almost ill?
“No, I wouldn’t let you down like that.”
“Don’t you mean Karol?”
“Huh?” She frowned, meeting his gaze, almost losing herself in the depths of his eyes. Goddess, she could have spent the rest of her life staring at him. Well maybe not quite the rest. There would have to be some time spent in bed, on the couch, the shower, bathroom floor, front yard…
“You said you wouldn’t let me down, I thought we were doing this for Karol?”
Heat claimed her cheeks, spreading down her neck before she had the chance to speak again. Stupid slip to make. Now he must think she was fixated on him, which wasn’t far from the truth. All she wanted to do was pull him into the living room, throw him on the couch and explore a rerun of their first encounter. “Erm, yes, sorry. I guess I’m not that focused right now.”
“You need to be if we are going to be able to do this.” He closed the door behind her, resting his arm about her waist. She should have pulled away, put a distance between them; instead, she leaned against him. “I’ve missed you.”
Peace. Just being around Darrel filled her with a sense of peace. “We can’t ‑‑ we have to focus on Karol.”
“I’m not trying to force anything with you, Hailey. Don’t think that. I know you came to me for help and if you leave after we cast the spell, leave and never return I’ll accept that.” Pain lingered behind those words, a hope she would stay, explore with him, but he meant it, everything. He’d fight the urge to follow her, track her down and plead for her to return to him. Even though a part of him would die inside should she decide to leave.
Die?
Wasn’t that a little melodramatic?
“We’ll talk about it later. Right now I want to know what plans you have for that bastard Karol is with.” She slipped out from his grasp into the living room. “Just what did you have in mind?” Changing the subject; she’d become good at that over the years.
“I’m going to give him a different perspective on the world.” Darrel grinned, flipping open the large red and black bound book on the table. “One that, I hope, will put an end to his little games.”
“Pardon?”
“We turn the tables on him. I plan on making him go through every single emotion he has ever put Karol through. Force him to see it through her eyes.” He tapped the page. “It’s all here. Normally we couldn’t even begin to try it without her being present but your link to her, the rune, and the anger you feel towards him are enough of a carrier for this to be able to work. It’s a form of reverse empathy.”
“Hasn’t that been outlawed by the council?” She moved to the book, tracing over the elegant script with one finger. “I thought I remember being taught it…”
“It’s a reason to be stripped of power, yes.”
“So why risk it?” Power stripped turned one into a normal person. To be stripped of everything that made her who she was. The idea left her cold. It would be far worse for Darrel. All those years of hoping for some form of gift, struggling to see a difference in himself when he looked in the mirror. To be willing to give all of that up, to sacrifice everything he had prayed for over the years all for…for who?
Karol or her?
“It’s the only thing I’ve found that even begins to make sense.” His fingers brushed against her hand. Small shocks played over her skin, tingling a path through her body, surrounding already taut nipples with a thousand unseen kisses. “It’s worth it. To me, I mean.”
“Why?” She struggled to say even that single word.
“Because I’ll finally be able to do some good with this gift, and maybe you’ll…I mean, this way no one can ever be hurt by him again.” His fingers lingered on her arm. “You know if we just separate them he will move on to others, perhaps escalate matters, go straight to violent means. I’m not willing to let that happen. Bad enough Karol has been through this but how would you feel if we let him go ahead and hurt someone else?”
“We could kill him.” Easy to say, hard to do.
“Do you have the ability to do that? I know I don’t. I’d feel it, his last breath replayed over and over until it drove me mad.” He pulled back, returning his attention to the book. “Could you live with the knowledge you’d taken a man’s life?”
She wanted to say yes, to believe she had the ability to live with that.
“I know it’s not in you, Hailey.”
“How?” She didn’t argue with him. She’d pictured Brian dead at her feet a hundred times over, always with the same results. A sick knot in the pit of her stomach that had sent her hurrying for the bathroom every time. Maybe that made her weak? Taking his life would have been almost too easy and the price greater than she was willing to pay.
“Because if it were you’d have done it already. Your aunt has enough connections to be able to put you in touch with an assassin, a warlock, vampire, shifter, or even a human hunter. But he’s still alive, which leads me to believe that, no matter what he’s done, you don’t have it in you to maliciously cause his death.”
Hailey fell silent, her gaze drifting over the table.
The book felt familiar and had to be over a hundred years old, perhaps more. It was old enough that only spells had stopped the yellow-tinged paper from crumbling at the slightest touch. Books like this didn’t come into the possession of normal people. Collectors got hold of them, or the council. He didn’t have that much money, not that she could see, so how?
She blinked, staring at it. “My family grimoire.”
“Yes.”
“How did you ‑‑ I mean ‑‑ only members of the family can touch that.”
“Our link, the bond that began when we looked in on Karol, is enough to let me past the protection wards. But to work any of the spells in here I need you present.”
Her throat tightened. Even the grimoire accepted him as part of her family.
“It belonged to your mother. Gem gave it to me this morning to use.” He reached out for the book, pulling it close. “I was given a dozen of her old books, a few scrolls, and some research notes. Some of them were ones your grandmother put together, but all of them pointed to the spell I needed being in the grimoire.”
“Why you? I mean, why were the other books given to you instead of me?”
“I’ve asked that question a dozen times over.”
“And?”
“All your aunt would tell me is this was meant to be. Just as she did again today when I went to collect the grimoire.”
“Fate again.” She growled the words. “We make our own fate, our own paths, we aren’t bound to the whims of…”
“Then why do you shiver when you look at me? Why are we both here trying to help a woman we could easily walk away from? Why did Gem send you to me after all these years instead of waiting a few more weeks, or getting us to meet sooner?” Darrel glanced up, offering a smile. “You might not believe in fate but I do. I can see it, the twists, strands tangling one into the other. Ideas, hopes, dreams. It’s a part of the gift, the glimmer of foresight I have along with this empathy.”
“Rational people don’t believe in fate.”
“So-called rational people didn’t believe in magic once upon a time. Before then they claimed it was the work of some dark, evil force. Rational people believe whatever they feel comfortable believing.” He shook his head, his smile never faltering. “I’ve had to believe in the Lady Fate. Her existence is the only thing that has made sense. I can’t tell you how many times I have thanked her recently for bringing you into my life.”
Fate. A Goddess. Unseen power. How could she submit herself to a being that didn’t exist? To accept she was a lesser being, no longer in charge of her own destiny? That everything she had been through, losing her mother, standing at her grandmother’s graveside, hearing the pain in Karol’s voice, now sitting back and watching every day as they announced more laws to bind people like her into being lower class citizens, to accept that this was nothing more than the whim of fate?
“Sometimes when you accept a path it becomes easier; the stumbling blocks melt away.”
“I don’t want to believe it.”
“If not for fate bringing you to me when Karol’s pain was at its height, bringing you to an empath that can turn that pain against the very man who has put her through this, then what would you have done to help Karol?” He cleared the distance between them, cupping her cheek in his hand. “If there is no reason for her pain then why are we doing this? Why risk everything? If fate didn’t want us to fix this she wouldn’t have put the answer in our hands.”
Didn’t she ask if I was ready for this? Ready to accept my path? I said yes, so why is it so hard now?
For a moment she wanted to believe the way he did. Putting herself into the hands of a being she couldn’t see, or touch. No, that would mean accepting Lady Fate existed. Believing in a power ruling above her.
“You’re going to have to accept this, Hailey.”
“Why? Why must I believe now when I haven’t had to at any other time?”
“There’s no other choice because without you believing, without you accepting fate’s hand in this, the spell won’t work.”
Another way…there had to be another way. She couldn’t lower herself to accept a deity that…
“You know it, in your heart you know she exists; it’s the only thing that makes sense.” He leaned in, his breath caressing her lips with each word. “There is a higher power. No matter what name you give him or her, there is one. If you want to help Karol, if you really want to help her, you’re going to have to humble yourself before Lady Fate.”
* * * * *
Candles marked a circle on the floor, a perimeter about a pentagram. Wards of protection made from trails of salt sat within the circle, incense burning at the points of the chalk pentagram. Runes decorated at seemingly random intervals within the circle with one larger rune in the center, where they would stand. Old symbols from a time long since past. Sad to say she had had to ask him what some of them meant. She’d forgotten so much of the old lessons.
Her gran would have been disappointed in her.
And she didn’t even want to think about the look her mom would have given her just before she launched into a lecture. Her mother had never been shy about showing someone the error of their ways.
“Are you ready?” He stood outside the circle for now, waiting to enter it until the last minute. Once he did, once he took that step, there would be no turning back. “You still have a chance to back out.”
“Yes, I’m ready.” A part of her wanted to scream “no, let’s find another way.” That the Lady Fate could take a running jump, she wasn’t going to play this game. “At least I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Then we will begin.” His eyes closed as he stepped into the marked off area, the ancient book in his hand. Her feet moved, crossing the boundary into the protected circle with him before she was even aware of it. “What we do here this night we do of our own free will, to bind the pain caused by one man back into his being. That he might know what he has done and never again commit such acts.”
Icy fingers claimed her spine.
If the spell backfired Darrel would be destroyed. All the anger, the darkness, every ounce of pain Brian had inflicted on Karol would then lash through the bonds of magic to sear into his being. Her price? A small thing, the ability to weave magic numbed for a few days, perhaps weeks. No, the true price would be watching Darrel scream in pain, feeling the horror inflicted on him because of their failure.
The connection between them flared fully into life, his gifts reaching through into her link with Karol, seeking it out. Tracing down through the energy that bound the two women and into the pain.
So much heartache.
Had Karol ever stopped crying?
There, the link back to Brian, stronger than she had imagined it would be. Bonds forged over years. Each harsh word, every cruel remark or cutting look adding to them.
“Lady Fate, face of the Goddess, three images that spin, weave and cut the threads of life, we beg of you to watch over this endeavor. Should there be a price let it fall on us, not on the woman we seek to free from pain this night.”
Too late to back out. Even if she hadn’t stepped into the circle it would have been far too late.
“Lady Fate, I offer my spirit, the gifts you saw fit to bestow upon me as payment if you so wish it. I ask for aid not for my own glory, not for any personal gain, but to help one lost. To protect a soul scarred by the cruel words and deeds of another. We ask. I ask for your help.” His voice trembled, a touch of fear reaching through the link that bound them. All it would take to destroy the spell, to have it backfire on them would be her failing to make her plea.
Her body shook as she placed her hand in his.
Believe. She had to believe.
“Goddess, Lady of Fate…” She half swallowed the words. “I have not believed in this facet of your existence. I have mocked, tossed aside your existence, now I find myself seeking your aid and I know not what to say.” Panic surged through the link that bound her to Darrel, fear that they had made the wrong choice, that her disbelief would condemn them both.
“Lady, I want to believe, not for myself but for Darrel, for Karol, for my aunt, not for myself. I beg you to have some patience with me as I struggle with this path I find myself on.” Never before had she felt so helpless as she did now, giving up all her self-made beliefs to help another. Not knowing if she would be answered, if this would be a pointless exercise. No, it couldn’t be for nothing. She wouldn’t risk the spell backfiring on Darrel, ruining him, d
estroying him.
“Fate, I ask…no, I beg of you for your help. There is a woman, a friend of mine for many a year who hurts. She is trapped with one that offers only pain, humiliation, degradation, and now he risks her children. She is flawed, as are all human beings, yet I know she has done nothing to deserve the pain he has inflicted on her. I beg you for your help. Let us turn the pain back on him, let him feel what he has caused, let him taste the anguish that he may never bring such hurt to another living being.” She faltered, Darrel’s hand squeezing hers. “I beg you for your aid.”
Nothing happened. Whatever she had done, it wasn’t enough. No reverse of pain, not even a flicker crackled through the already strained connection.
What had she done wrong?
Had she missed something?
Goddess, no. Have I denied you for too long? Please, if that is true then punish me, not Karol. She’s been through too much already. I should be the one to pay the price. Not her, not her children.
Her knees bent, head bowing as she slipped her hand free from his grasp. Never before had she knelt, not in prayer, in spell, not even when her mother had died. It wasn’t a part of her. Pride, she knew that too well. Humility wasn’t in her make up. Now it had to be.
“Lady Fate, I beg of you, hear my words, hear my plea. I don’t care what you take from me, what price you wish me to pay, but I beg of you to help Karol. I know what I ask is far more than I have the right to request of you. I have not been a dutiful daughter of magic. In truth I have denied you with nearly every breath in my body.” Had she been wrong all this time? Did Fate really exist?
One the candles on the points of the pentagram extinguished and relit in a heartbeat in the path of a shadow that circled the room before it took its place in front of the two hopefuls.
“Lady?”
Just a shadow? No, it couldn’t be, not if she wanted the spell to succeed.
“Lady Fate, Goddess, mother, protector, please. I beg as I have never done so before. I plead with you for your aid. No matter the cost to me, no matter the pain or price I must pay I will do it, but this wrong must be stopped. If not by me, by another.” She didn’t want to fail, to let Karol down or condemn Darrel to the pain that would follow. “I give myself to you, in all that I am, all that I will be. I surrender to your control, your whims.” Her hands sought out the floor, fingers splayed, incense stinging her eyes even as she flattened to the floor, stretching her hands out towards two points of the pentagram. “I come to you as a supplicant!” She screamed the words, repeating them until her throat became raw.