She bit her lip and looked away. It was the truth, almost. Taig hadn’t broken her heart. She had broken it.
“I may have mentioned you when I visited them before joining the coven.”
“And every time after that!” her mother hollered from the back.
Lealandra curled her fingers into fists that shook and sent a warning wave of power her mother’s way. The last thing she needed when she was still trying to figure it all out with Taig was her parents storming in and mixing everything up.
“You never told them I was a demon.” Those words fell heavily in the quiet room. She had known the moment her father had said it that Taig would take it to heart.
“Only because I’ve never seen it as a problem, or anything that they needed to know, Taig. I don’t see you as a demon, or a monster, or whatever you think people see you as... whatever you see yourself as.” She caught his cheek with her other hand when he went to turn away and stopped him. His gaze fell to her shoulder. She sighed and stroked his face, keeping her voice low so their conversation would remain private. “You’re a man, Taig, whether you believe it or not, and both sides of you make you who you are.”
“A son of a bastard who broke your heart?” He closed his eyes and drew a long breath.
“I know it’s not right… and it wasn’t what I told them back then… and it was my fault… but it did hurt me. It hurt me a lot. It really did, Taig.” She met his gaze when he opened his eyes.
Her mother called to them again, ordering her to bring Taig through. He didn’t move and neither did she. She stood there, waiting to see if he was going to say anything or just leave her hanging.
“You and me both, sweet cheeks,” he whispered, his eyes full of a strange fire, a combination of affection and pain. Both emotions laced his power, leeching into her through the hold he had on her wrist. It drew a response from her magic. It absorbed the strength from his power and rose within her, hungry for more. Taig released her and looked at his hand. The wound on his palm had healed. Had her magic done it? Normally it didn’t affect anyone else without a command from her. She reached out and stroked her fingers over his palm. Why?
Her eyes widened when she remembered the night that Charlie had died. Her magic had done something similar then. It had tried to make her heal him, even when she had known that she couldn’t save him. The magic had taken control of her in the lobby of the coven too and she had felt a strong need to protect Taig. At the time, she had thought it was her need that had driven it to react but now she wasn’t so sure. Did her magic want to protect him?
“You do that?” Taig said and she shook her head.
“It’s getting stronger.” She touched the mark on her chest and frowned down at it. “The magic is getting beyond my control again. I can feel it pushing.”
“Let’s see what dear old mum has to say about it then and get you somewhere you can have some blood.”
Blood. Just the word made her shiver in anticipation and roused her magic. She could feel how eager it was. It wanted to become stronger. Taig’s blood would give it the strength it desired but would also subdue it enough for her to control it. She nodded, glad that he hadn’t mentioned a price this time.
They walked side by side into the area behind the black velvet curtain. Her father looked up from his position at the back of the room in a small galley kitchen and paused with the stainless steel kettle held in one hand and a white china dragon-shaped teapot in the other. His eyebrows rose in silent question. She smiled her response. Tea would be nice, although she didn’t think Taig would drink it out of anything other than politeness.
Her mother sat at a round blue table, leafing through an inventory. She smiled at them both, a perfect reflection of what Lealandra would look like in thirty years’ time. Lealandra took the seat opposite her.
“So what brings you and Taig here? I have to admit, I’m more than a little surprised to see you with a demon—”
“Half-demon,” Taig said, cutting her mother off. Her mother quirked an eyebrow at the interruption and then continued.
“A half-demon considering that the coven would frown upon such a thing.”
“I’ve broken with them,” Lealandra blurted out and then before her mother could ask why, added, “Things have happened. A lot of things. The safest place for me right now is with Taig.”
“Is someone after you? Why would they be after you?” Her father placed the wooden tray of tea things down on the table. The china cups rattled against each other.
Both her mother and father looked at Taig. His right eyebrow rose. Lealandra sighed.
“Taig has nothing to do with it. Someone has it in for me and I think it has something to do with this.” She took her mother’s hand and brushed her fingers over the ascension mark. Her mother gasped, grabbed her father’s hand, and shoved it against Lealandra’s chest. His eyes shot wide. “They… they killed Charlie… and broke into my place at the coven. Taig is going to track them for me. I’ll be safe with him.”
“Track them?” Her father cast a curious look Taig’s way.
“It’s a doddle.” Taig lifted his shoulders in an easy shrug. “I have their scent now. They’ll be dead in no time.”
“Dead?” Her father frowned. Lealandra wished she could use telepathy on demons. She had never been any good at it and demons were immune. She had tried to use it once on Taig to see if it worked on half-breeds but it had failed. At least, he’d said that he hadn’t heard her. He might have just been ignoring her. She wanted to tell him that talking about killing, even if it was demons and he was in the company of witches, wasn’t the way into her father’s good book. Her parents didn’t condone violence. “What is it you do for a living? You have a few scars there that say it’s dangerous.”
Lealandra’s stomach flipped when she realised that Taig had rolled his black shirtsleeves up and her father meant the marks on his forearms. Gods, she didn’t even want to go there with her parents and she hoped Taig didn’t. If they discovered the sorts of things she had gotten up to with Taig, she would die of embarrassment.
Taig rolled his sleeves down.
He leaned back in his chair, so casual that he looked as though he owned the place, and raked his thick black hair back. Lealandra saw straight through him. Her father’s question had made him uncomfortable. There was a lot of stigma attached to demons hunting demons and Taig had lost a lot of friends over his decision to go into that field. But then, he was fine with that. He had seen it as one step closer to drawing a line between the man he thought he was and his demonic side. She had tried to tell him that it wasn’t possible, that man and demon were one and the same, but he hadn’t listened to her. He never did when it came to his demonic side. He could pretend it didn’t exist all he wanted, could kill all the demons in the world, and it still wouldn’t change the fact that his father had been a demon and that blood ran in his veins.
Lealandra took the cup of tea that her mother offered Taig and placed it down in front of him.
“Taig is a hunter.” She took her own cup of tea and ran her finger around the delicate rim of the bone china cup, using it to distract her so she didn’t have to look her parents in the eye when she said this. “He hunts marks.”
“Demons,” Taig said with a sneer.
Both of her parents looked shocked. She had been too at first but then she had realised the reason why he hunted demons—he wanted to kill that side of himself, but he couldn’t, so he eradicated the demons that he could. She wasn’t sure whether he really wanted to kill his own demon side, or whether maybe he wanted to kill his father. She didn’t understand why he would want to do either, unless he blamed his father for his mother’s death. She could sympathise with him in a way. Sometimes, she felt as though the magic was a monster lurking inside her rather than a part of her.
It responded violently to that, pushing through her, filling her mind with dark thoughts. She grabbed Taig’s hand. The moment he looked at her, he wrapped his other hand arou
nd hers, holding it tight. His power flowed into her, abating her own and calming it. The dark haze in her mind lifted but whispered words lingered, demands for blood and power.
Taig’s power rose a fraction and the words disappeared, leaving her mind empty again.
“Better?” His voice was smooth and comforting, full of concern and reassurance.
Lealandra nodded, thankful for the power he had given her and the fact he could control how much he released. She had needed that little bit more. His normal level of power, the level which he unconsciously emitted, wasn’t enough anymore.
“His power can control yours.” Her father came to stand over Taig, studying him with an excited twinkle in his eyes. “Fascinating.”
Her mother murmured an agreement. Taig’s hand didn’t leave hers. She was thankful for it. Holding his hand felt nice and not only because it tempered her magic. The feel of his large hands engulfing hers reassured her, telling her without words that he wasn’t going to leave her and that there was still a part of him that loved her.
“I need to know what my ascension mark means.” Lealandra touched her chest again. “I don’t have long.”
Her mother nodded and then waved towards Taig and her father. “Off you go. Show the boy around the store and make yourselves useful.”
Lealandra looked at Taig. She didn’t want him to feel as though he had to go and, in her heart, she wanted him to refuse and remain with her. She needed his support now more than ever. He squeezed her hand and his look softened enough for her to know what he was trying to tell her. He wouldn’t go far. He would stay close enough that she would still be able to reach him with her magic if she needed him. She brushed her thumb over his as her silent reply. She was glad that he was doing this for her and she would be fine now that she knew he would remain nearby.
He smiled, his ebony eyes bright with it, and then it turned mischievous. She was about to ask him what he was up to when he raised her hand and pressed a long kiss to the back of it.
“Later, sweet cheeks.”
She cursed and glared at him as he rose from the seat. He picked up the delicate teacup, his little finger sticking out demurely, and sipped it very politely before winking at her and following her father. Her anger melted away into a smile at his stupid behaviour and then widened into a grin when she thought about what he had said. He was trying to get her into trouble with her mother but she wasn’t the only one who would get the third degree about his term of endearment. He would too. Her father was bound to mention it and start probing.
“He seems like a nice boy,” her mother said and Lealandra looked away from the curtain and back to her. She nodded. Her mother leaned forwards and glanced at the curtain before whispering, “Have you two ever… you know… when he’s in his de—”
Lealandra gasped. “Mother!”
Her cheeks blazed. She couldn’t believe her own mother had asked such a thing.
“No!” Lealandra hissed, shock making her abrupt, and then calmed down and said, “I’ve never seen him in demon form. He… it’s a long story and not why I’m here.”
Her mother didn’t look as though she was going to let it go now that Lealandra had made it sound interesting. She took hold of her mother’s hand and touched the mark on her chest again, trying to get her to focus.
“This is why I’m here. I need to know what it means and fast. The ascension is coming and someone is after my life. I have to know what’s going to happen to me, even in the vaguest sense.”
A thoughtful expression settled on her mother’s face and she took a pair of half-moon glasses out of a sparkly red case. Lealandra rolled her eyes at the theatrical things her mother had surrounded herself with since leaving her coven and setting up shop in the real world. That had been shortly after her mother had lost control of her power during her ascension and had come close to killing everyone, including her and her father. She had been a child at the time but she remembered the incredible fear and remembered seeing her father face death in order to save her mother’s life.
Had Taig’s father done such a thing? The photograph of his parents had such an aura of love about it that Lealandra felt certain that his father would have fought to protect his mother.
Taig didn’t know how his parents had died. He only felt as though they had. If he had seen his father fight to save his mother, even if he hadn’t been successful, she was sure that Taig would have turned out differently. He wouldn’t hate his demon side. He would believe the things that she had told him and the things she couldn’t voice.
She wanted that so much for him. When they had been together, she had asked the neighbourhood demons about his parents. She had learned from some of the older generation that Taig had moved there alone as a young man. They had never met his parents, but they knew his mark, and knew the demon lineage. They had seemed afraid of telling her much more than that, and the few times she had tried to talk to Taig about it, he had cut her off.
Lealandra waited while her mother inspected each symbol in the ascension mark, her thoughts with Taig. She couldn’t hear her father or him in the other room. Either they weren’t talking to each other or they were talking quietly. She unleashed her power a little, releasing the tight bonds she held it inside with so she could sense Taig. He wasn’t nearby. She stretched her magic out to cover a larger area and found him out the back.
There was a small dusty courtyard there. Potted plants crowded the bright sunny space, throwing up their aromas as the warm light caressed them. She had always enjoyed sitting there amongst the herbs and breathing in the quiet as she studied. She pictured Taig leaning against the red brick wall, talking to her father, probably cracking jokes about her and hearing all the stupid tales of things she had gotten up to as a child. She was never going to live this down.
Her father would give Taig ammunition that would keep him amused for decades. He would store the information about her away for use at extremely inappropriate times. She smiled. That was Taig.
“Thinking about him?” her mother said and Lealandra tried to look innocent. Her mother gave her a sly smile. “I can feel you reaching for him. Can he feel it too?”
Lealandra nodded and then admitted, “He’s reaching back. He likes to know I’m safe.”
The sparkle in her mother’s eyes brought a blush to Lealandra’s cheeks, burning them up. Perhaps she should have asked Taig to wait outside rather than submitting them both to her parents. She hadn’t realised that they would make such a fuss and find her bringing a man home so amusing.
“I don’t recognise this one.” Her mother drew her attention to the mark. The connection between Lealandra and Taig shattered the moment her eyes fell on it.
Her heart missed a beat and she touched the symbol.
“Taig’s mark. It’s on the back of his left shoulder.”
“Well, he’s involved then.”
Lealandra rolled her eyes again. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
Her mother peered closer, pressing each mark. “Betrayal, blood, conflict, danger, love and death. That’s quite a cocktail you have there. The order is significant.”
“It is?” Lealandra hadn’t realised that. “Where does it start?”
Her mother pointed to the symbol for death. “You said that someone killed Charlie. Was that the first thing to happen after the mark appeared?”
She nodded. “Charlie died and then someone wrote a message on my apartment wall, saying I was going to die and go to Hell. I left the coven, hid out and then went to Taig for help. When I went back to the coven, I thought that meant I was going to encounter conflict. Gregori tried to stop me from leaving, but nothing happened other than that.”
“Did you take Taig with you? No, don’t answer that. Of course you took Taig with you. You would have been a fool not to. Betrayal.”
“Whose?” Lealandra didn’t like the sound of that. “The coven?”
“It could be, or it could be your betrayal by bringing Taig to the coven and par
ting ways with them. Some would see a witch choosing a demon over other witches as betrayal.”
Lealandra had feared as much but she was still uncertain about the symbol. Could it mean the coven? The person who had written the mark on her wall knew what they were doing. There had been intent behind it. A demon couldn’t lace such a mark with such power. They could only draw the mark as though it was a picture. It had to have been a witch. She shook her head. She was being paranoid now. There was no reason for her to suspect anyone at the coven. But her blood was powerful right now. The magic in it would feed the magic of another, making it stronger. She shook her head again, trying to rid it of such dark thoughts and focused back on her mother.
“Blood.” Her mother looked up at her. “We have always carried powerful magic in this family, old magic that makes demands of us. Your father may have overlooked the marks on that young demon’s wrists, but I didn’t. Tell me, Lea, have you shared blood with him?”
“No, not shared.” Her voice trembled and she couldn’t look her mother in the eye. She sipped her cooling tea and then drummed her nails against the side of the cup. “I have taken his blood. He had a taste of mine by accident the other day and it sent him off the deep end. His blood doesn’t do such things to me. It placates my magic.”
“A more powerful force of nature. Magic as strong as ours would only bow to something it believed was superior. It craves his blood?” Her mother touched her hand and Lealandra nodded. “The blood is Taig then. You will need his power to contain yours. Don’t be frightened of taking what you need. The magic will make demands of you that you must fulfil in order to survive the ascension. Now that your Counter-Balance is gone, you will have no way of controlling your power. Taig’s blood may provide what you need in the absence of the coven. Your father and I are willing to help too.”
Lealandra shook her head against the idea and then nodded when her mother’s look hardened.
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