by Jane Kindred
“And then you order Kur’s shade to return from the Underworld. He can’t disobey you, so it should break whatever magical binding is keeping him under. With the dragon awake, when he returns to human form, Dev should be awake, as well.”
“Should be. Are you sure these Underworld gods of yours are going to let him go?”
“The abode of the dead, as I understand it, is constructed of what one imagines it to be. It isn’t a true realm with a single reality. Dev perceives the gods I invoked and is currently constrained by the rules of that construct. Once he’s back in our realm, he’s back. The realm he perceived can no longer impose its rules upon him.”
“Or so you think.”
Rafe inclined his head. “It’s worth a try.”
Ione glanced around the small hospital room. “We can’t do it here.”
“We could wheel him out to the parking lot.” Rafe took out his phone and started texting. “I think I have some orderlies around here somewhere who’d be happy to lend a hand.”
“Orderlies?”
Phoebe laughed. “Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Rafe sent them to the cafeteria because they were smothering me with their happiness at having me back, and he wanted some quiet to work this out.” She paused and put her hand to her diaphragm, breathing out once more sharply. “Kur’s gone.”
“He’s waiting by Dev,” said Rafe. “You need to direct him, Ione.”
Ione looked in the general direction of Rafe’s gaze. “Kur, you need to return to your cage.” She glanced at Rafe when there was no change in Dev’s slack form.
Rafe nodded. “I can’t see him anymore. He must be in.”
And not a moment too soon, as Theia and Rhea, having gotten Rafe’s text, barged into the room as though the entrance were an emergency room door, using a gurney they’d borrowed from somewhere. Theia was wearing a white lab coat and Rhea had managed to get her hands on a pair of scrubs.
“Where do you want him?” they said together.
* * *
With visiting hours over, the visitors’ parking lot was relatively empty. Phoebe, grudgingly, had stayed in bed while Rafe and Ione got Dev onto the gurney and covered him with a sheet, and the twins had wheeled him out.
Rafe offered Ione his blade. “I think the same method you used to bring Dev back the last time should work to release the dragon.”
The last time the dragon had been released, of course, she’d let it bite her and lick the blood from her hand, but she wasn’t about to get technical with Rafe about that.
With his shirt off and quetzal wings outstretched, Rafe repeated his invocation of the gods of the Underworld as he’d done in Ione’s living room, while Ione unbuttoned Dev’s shirt to bare the tattoo and made the cut on her hand. Cutting Dev’s flesh while he was unconscious was slightly more unsettling than cutting into the thick hide of the dragon had been. She was careful to cut just enough to draw blood.
Rafe nodded and waved the twins back, though Rhea gave him an impressive growl of her own when he tried to shoo her farther.
Ione pressed her bloodied hand over Dev’s solar plexus, letting their blood mix. No words were necessary. Beneath the vibration that always moved between them, Dev’s skin was boiling.
Ione jumped back. She’d never seen the transformation from this direction before. It was a bit horrifying to watch. And to hear. Bones seemed to be cracking and stretching inside him as his unconscious body contorted. The clothes tore as his musculature changed, green, scaly flesh bursting through it. Ione should have undressed him. Then again, with the twins ogling him, it was just as well she hadn’t.
The unconscious weight of the dragon as it fully emerged snapped the metal legs of the gurney and Kur thudded to the ground.
Rhea nudged her twin and whispered in a voice that was impossible not to hear, “Which would you rather have? Feathered quetzal or this bad boy? Cuz I’m team Dev. All the way.”
Theia rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Rhe.”
Rafe pretended not to have heard. “Now give him the order, Ione. Tell him to return from the Underworld.”
Ione took a deep breath. “Kur, I command you to return to your physical form in this plane.” Nothing happened. She tried again. “I command you, Kur, to come back to me from the Underworld.” Still nothing.
Ione’s shoulders slumped. “It’s not working.”
Rafe scratched his head, the iridescent quetzal wings still extended behind him. “Maybe you’re not using the right terminology. Maybe he doesn’t consider it the Underworld.”
“Or maybe it just doesn’t work,” she snapped. But there was no point in taking out her frazzled nerves and disappointment on Rafe. “Sorry. I just...” She shook her head, staring at the dragon sprawled on the ground. “How are we going to explain an unconscious dragon in the parking lot?”
“Just breathe, Ione. Try again.”
Ione closed her eyes, centering herself. “Kur, I order you to return to the earthly plane, to the realm of the living.” She opened her eyes. Again, nothing. “Goddammit, Kur!” Tears of frustration stung behind her eyes and the cut on her hand was also stinging. She’d forgotten Rafe’s earlier advice to keep the cut away from the center of her palm. Ione covered her face with her hands, unable to contain a moan of despair.
While she stood, trying to calm her breathing, she felt Theia and Rhea step up beside her, each putting a hand on one of her shoulders in encouragement. She dropped her hands and offered them to her sisters, taking strength from them. Maybe more of the Lilith blood magic—the “Lilith bond” as Theia had dubbed it—was what was needed.
“In the name of the ancient Lady Lilith whose blood runs in my veins, I order you to come back, Kur. Come back to me. Please.” Her voice cracked. “Bring Dev back.”
Wind from the valley whooshed in and lifted their hair, and Ione could feel the Lilith blood like a wave pulsing through them—trough and crest, trough and crest. And on the asphalt before them, the great beast began to stir.
The twins let go and stepped back instinctively as Ione stepped forward. Kur lumbered groggily to his clawed feet, tail whipping out behind him and thumping against the asphalt, sinewy wings outstretched. Ione was afraid for a moment that the dragon was about to leap into flight as it had before. But as the amber eyes cleared and focused on her, Kur closed his wings against his body and lowered his head as though bowing to her. The long snout nudged forward and snuffled against her palm, and Ione realized it was seeking the blood still dripping from the cut.
She held out her hand but Kur raised his head, blinking his sparkling eyes at her, and with his prickly outstretched tongue between his sharp fangs, he licked her face. Ione was frozen in surprise before remembering she’d pressed her bleeding hand to her cheek a moment ago. The dragon cleaned the blood from her face and then shuddered as the transformation overtook it once more, seemingly as difficult on Kur as it had been on Dev. In a moment the warm brown skin of the man had returned and Dev collapsed onto the pavement in a heap.
Ione went down on her knees beside him. “Dev?” She brushed the damp hair across his forehead, but there was no response. “It didn’t work.” She tried to keep the despair out of her voice. “He’s still in the coma.”
Rafe crouched beside her and pulled back one of Dev’s eyelids. “No, I saw his shade return. I think he’s just wiped out from going dragon and back so quickly.” He squeezed her hand in reassurance then released it as she winced at the sting of the open cut. “Sorry. My bad. But your man’s good. He just needs some sleep.” Rafe smiled. “No worries.”
Across from them, Rhea nudged Theia. This time, both of them waggled their eyebrows at each other in unspoken appreciation of Dev’s sleeping form. Ione glared and yanked the sheet up over him. But she had to admit, it was one hell of a form.
Chapter 28
When
Ione arrived home in the wee hours of the morning after entrusting Dev to Rafe’s care, Laurel was gone. Ione couldn’t bring herself to be sorry about it. Laurel might have finally come to her senses about Carter Hamilton, but Ione was a long way from forgiving her or trying to form any kind of familial bond over their half-blood connection. Even if that blood happened to be Lilith blood.
As Ione reached into her jacket pocket to take out the bike keys and hang them on their hook in the garage, she felt something soft against the lining: the fetish Dev had taken from Carter at the prison. She examined it in her hand. If it was Phoebe’s hair that had formed the fetish Laurel had intended to burn, this one was Matthew’s. She saw now that it didn’t have the subtle chestnut undertones in the light. If this had given Carter his power over Matthew, where was Matthew’s shade now?
She remembered the force at the temple upending the altar like Jesus with the money changers’ tables—the force that had punched Dev in the gut and held Laurel in place. The fire might have cost them Phoebe, but it had stopped Laurel from being the instrument of that deed, from committing an act so heinous that she would have forfeited her autonomy to Carter. Just as Carter claimed Matthew had. Maybe Matthew had done evil in life, after all, as unfathomable as it was for Ione to believe.
During his attempt to take Rafe’s power, Carter had revealed a vision to Rafe of Matthew’s last hours, wanting Rafe to see how he’d corrupted his apprentice. After using Barbara Fisher to seduce Matthew, Carter had directed a shade to possess him, using Matthew’s hands to strangle her. Caught up in Carter’s persuasive half-truths, perhaps Matthew had let the shade in willingly to take her life—just as Laurel had been about to take Phoebe’s—an act that had bound him to Carter forever.
And Matthew’s shade-turned-jumbee, freed from Carter, had tried to stop Laurel from making the same mistake, the only way he could. Whatever else Matthew had done, it seemed he’d acted, in the end, with good intentions. Ione could at least see to it that his soul was finally allowed to rest.
At the outdoor altar, she performed an unbinding spell, unbraiding the fetish and cutting each strand in two before burning them individually with an exhortation to be free. She threw in a Memorare prayer, just in case. Ione might not be welcome in the church any longer, but she wasn’t quite ready to give up the traditions of her childhood entirely. She was a daughter of Lilith and a child of God.
Too wound up to go back to bed afterward, she made herself some tea and watched the sun rise over the side deck before going out to putter in her garden—which had been trampled by a dragon not long ago and by Rafe’s work crew shortly after that. Most of what she’d planted was native to the region, but there were a few perennials that needed cutting back before the first frost.
Ione was on her hands and knees pruning her lantana bushes when the crunch of boots on the gravel walk made her look up.
Dev smiled down at her, dressed with uncharacteristic casualness in a pair of black jeans and an oatmeal-gray thermal undershirt. She realized the clothes must be Rafe’s. Though they fit him extremely well.
Dev slipped his hands into the back pockets. “Good morning. Hope I’m not intruding.”
Ione got to her feet and brushed dirt from her knees, feeling strangely self-conscious after all they’d been through. “Of course not. I’m glad to see you looking...more yourself.”
“I understand I have you to thank for that. Again.”
Ione tucked a flyaway strand of frizz behind her ear with a shrug, realizing she hadn’t done anything with her hair since yesterday except tie it back. “I understand I have you to thank for getting Phoebe back. Honestly, I don’t know how to thank you for what you did for her. I don’t really know how I can ever thank you—”
Her awkward ramble was cut off as Dev stepped in and cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. His touch set off the familiar tingling vibration in her skin until it spiraled around her from head to toe, a fairy godmother’s magic wand spinning its transformation before the ball, setting every nerve ending on fire. When he separated their mouths, Ione swayed against him.
“You smell delicious,” she murmured, feeling slightly drunk.
“Like toasted marshmallows?” he offered, and Ione laughed. “Listen, I came to tell you that I’ve filed my report with the Conclave.” That sobered her up.
Ione stepped back, rubbing her forearm where the thorns of the lantana had scraped the skin. “I know.”
“You know?” Dev cocked his head, invoking Kur’s demeanor.
“Laurel showed it to me. And I suppose you had to do what you felt was right, no matter—”
“Wait, how would Laurel have had a copy? I just filed it this morning.”
Ione wanted to believe he was telling the truth, but he’d echoed the words in the report when he’d come to stop her from avenging Phoebe. “I saw your signature.”
Dev’s brow wrinkled. “And what did this report conclude?”
“That I’d broken my oath.”
His golden-brown eyes were troubled. “You believed I would write that?”
“I... She said the Covent had learned of Kur and that it was your only option if you wanted to keep your position.” The stray hair had blown back into her eyes and Ione reached to tuck it back again, but Dev did it for her.
His hand lingered at her cheek. “I see. I suppose I can’t blame you for believing I’d do that, but I assure you, love, that’s not what my report says.”
Ione’s heartbeat quickened at that little word. “What...what does it say?”
“They do know about Kur. Because I told them. And I informed them that, following an exhaustive investigation, which has been an utter waste of the Covent’s money and a political witch hunt against an outstanding and unimpeachably honorable high priestess, I’ve concluded you were completely blameless in your actions regarding the necromancer Carter Hamilton. And I resigned my commission as assayer.”
“You...what?”
“I figured as assayer I’d be shipped off immediately to the next investigation, which might be anywhere in the world. And I don’t want to be anywhere in the world. I want to be right here. With you. Always.”
Ione blinked up at him, finding the chatoyant gold of his eyes mesmerizing. “Oh.”
Dev slipped his arms around her waist and drew her to him. “Is that all right with you?”
She managed to nod, her toes beginning to go numb as every inch of her awareness became focused on the firm insistence of his desire where she pressed against him. “Mmm-hmm.”
“You okay, love?”
That tiny little word made the tingling vibrate on its own frequency, and Ione let out a soft, moaning hum in reply. She’d been a fool to doubt him—and to doubt her own feelings.
Dev studied her with amusement. “You seem to have become monosyllabic. If not downright preverbal.”
Ione slipped her arms around his neck, reveling in the vibration between them and in the sheer relief of giving in to the pull of need and desire, fated or not. “Mmm...hmm.”
Dev’s lips teased her neck. “As long as you’re preverbal, shall I take you upstairs and render you completely insensible?”
Ione couldn’t suppress a grin, though she still had her face buried in his chest. “You have a way with words, Mr. Gideon,” she murmured. “How can I possibly refuse?”
Dev clucked his tongue in disapproval. “I see we’re back to square one with complete sentences.” He tipped her chin up to look her in the eyes as he began working through the buttons on the front of her shirt. “Perhaps I can find something under here to keep you quiet.” He slipped off her sleeves and dropped the shirt to the ground, and then tugged on the front of her bra. “I think I might be able to make this work.”
As he reached behind her to undo the clasp, Ione caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Her
nosy neighbor stood in front of her driveway across the street looking scandalized. Ione held the cups of the bra in place as the clasp came away.
Dev followed Ione’s gaze with a little lift of his eyebrows. Before Ione could stop him, he’d whisked the undergarment from her hands and was waving it in the air in greeting at her horrified neighbor.
“Lovely day for it!”
Ione covered her mouth with her hands, trying not to laugh out loud at the look on “Gladys Kravitz’s” face, but it only got worse when Ione realized she was covering the wrong bits. “Lovely day for what?” she managed to gasp.
Dev slipped the straps of the bra onto a twig of dead lantana. “A marshmallow roast, of course.” He winked and tossed the twig bearing the two padded white cups into the waning embers in the fire pit.
Ione lost all pretense at composure, laughing so hard she could barely stay upright as her neighbor stalked into her house in righteous indignation. Still laughing uncontrollably, she found herself being whisked off her feet and carried into the living room through the open glass door.
Dev deposited her onto the couch. “I don’t know what’s so funny.” He shook his head at her as he unzipped her jeans and began working them down. “It is a lovely day for it. Your neighbor’s just going to have to get used to it, because I expect there will be a great many lovely days for it from here on out. In case you didn’t know, witches’ familiars mate for life.” Dev dropped the jeans to the floor and peeled back her panties. “Ah, now there’s my warm, gooey, sweet treat.”
The last of Ione’s laughter died away into a delicious moan.
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from TAMING THE HUNTER by Michele Hauf.
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