Dark Illusions

by D. D. Miers

  “I want to stay . . .”

  “For how long?”

  “Just for tonight.” At least. Yet I couldn’t let myself admit anything more than that.

  He nodded.

  “No protests? No incessant questioning?” I prodded.

  “I can if you would prefer,” he said, while polishing off his drink.

  Even if I did feel a breath of relief, I still couldn’t push aside the twisting confusion in the pit of my stomach.

  “Nope, no, that’s quite all right.”

  He stepped aside and made his way toward the bed. His bed.

  I swallowed hard as I watched him lay down, his black hair splashing across the pillow of the same shade. He sank into the folds of the raven blankets, leaving me to wonder where he began and the bed ended.

  “You aren’t going to sleep in that chair, Ms. Davenport.” His voice held a softer air to it just then, as if he coaxed rather than scolded me.

  It did at least get me to stand up out of the chair.

  “Just come lie down. There’s plenty of room.”

  I quickly peeled off my sweater, leaving me comfortable enough in yoga pants and a tank top. I may have already been cold, but I didn’t need to sweat under a pile of blankets, either.

  I peeled apart the edge of the blankets and slid under them, every inch of my skin acutely aware of how close Kieron was, even without touching. Turned onto my side, I faced away from him, hoping it would help, but all that succeeded in doing was making my back tingle with the knowledge of his presence.

  “Goodnight, Ms. Davenport.”

  The blankets rustled as he shifted in the bed, leaving my breath pulled in a halt behind my teeth. Part of me expected him to draw nearer, to feel his arm sling around me, but the moment the quake of the mattress stopped, I was left alone in my cocoon I exhaled.

  Oh, hell. He turned away from me again. The man that wanted to devour me slowly and make me scream his name. Over. And over. And over.

  Despite me coming to him, practically offering myself to him.

  This guy was more skittish than a virgin on her wedding night.

  What was his problem?

  And why did he make it mine?

  Chapter Fourteen

  I groaned and rolled over.

  Sunlight pressed against my eyelids, but I squeezed them shut more tightly. No, I wasn’t going to wake up. Not yet. I wasn’t ready to face the world.

  I wasn’t ready to face Kieron again. Not after I humiliated myself by crawling in his bed and he ignored me—again. I pulled the blankets back up over my head and realized I was in the bed alone.

  Where was Kieron?

  Slowly, I rose from the bed, and sleepily padded toward the shower.

  I let the heat from the water soothe my muscles for a long time. I was surprised that no one came to bother me.

  A twinge of worry filled my heart, and I rushed to get dressed.

  I hurried downstairs, my hair still damp, and stuck my head into every room in the house. But I didn’t find Kieron.

  I stumbled into the kitchen, catching my tired feet on the lip of the doorframe, and heard a small chuckle.

  I looked up to see Reagan standing there, with a plate of freshly cooked eggs, steaming bacon and sausage, and pancakes in her hands.

  My mouth immediately watered.

  She smiled. “I thought you could use a good breakfast this morning, especially after your crazy night last night.”

  Well, at least someone cared about me.

  Greedily, I took the plate from her hands and sat at the table, eagerly eating. Reagan sat down across from me, with a plate of her own, staring at me with a smile on her face.

  Everything was salty, sweet, fluffy, crunchy, and juicy. All of the flavors melded into one as I took one bite of sausage, and then another of sticky, syrupy pancakes.

  “What?” I asked, through a mouth full of eggs.

  “Fighting works up an appetite, doesn’t it?” she said, biting down on a piece of bacon.

  I didn’t even answer. I just shoved more pancakes into my mouth.

  Reagan kept the coffee coming, too. I had three cups while I sat there and was pretty sure I was going to be vibrating before I finished digesting everything.

  I sat back against the chair, content. My stomach was full, my eyes were sleepy. I might go up and take a nap.

  Electricity sizzled up my spine. Kieron, damn it, was near. And it was time we had a talk.

  “Reagan, can you give Kieron and me a moment alone.”

  “But he’s not—” Then she spotted him in the doorway.

  “Oh, elhun thing.”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll be in the library,” she said. Reagan edged past him and he didn’t even look at her. His eyes studied me as if I were a puzzle to solve.

  “Would you like some coffee?” I said, instantly ready to be Miss Housewife or something. My cheeks burned at this humiliating revelation of how yet again Kieron affected my action and reactions.

  Damn him.

  “No. I came to talk to you.”

  “Great minds think alike.”

  “I know what I said yesterday morning,” he said, slowly choosing his words carefully. “And I want to apologize.”

  “You? Apologize?”

  “I was out of bounds suggesting—”

  “Suggesting what? What you’d like to do sexually?” My voice rose a half octave. Oh no. He was not pulling this shit again. No more catch-and-release Abby. We were going to have this out now. Anger coiled in the pit of my stomach, ready to strike out at the immortal bastard.

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Because I’m only a mortal girl not worthy of the great immortal Lord Blake.”

  “Abby, I do not mean that.”

  My rage picked up steam so fast I didn’t notice he used my first name, fueled by a case of lady blue balls that had to be the mother lode of sexual frustration.

  “What else can it be? You take up with Stassi well enough when it suits you.”

  “Stassi? What does she—”

  “You fuck her and you don’t even like her.”

  “Ms. Davenport—”

  “Don’t you Ms. Davenport me, you pussy tease.”

  “Pussy tease?”

  “And don’t stand there repeating everything I say. You know damn well what I mean. Since day one I’ve had these insane hots for you, for reasons I can’t begin to fathom. You act as if you don’t like me, and I’m the biggest inconvenience in your unnaturally long life. What’s wrong me? My hair not blonde enough? My tits not big enough? Afraid I won’t suck—”

  “Stop, Ms. Davenport,” he said with a voice of command that stopped me.

  Holy hell. He can do that? But whatever I said sent him to the edge of his control, too.

  “It is not,” he said with arctic cold in his voice, “any of those things. You are what, twenty-three years old? For as long as I have lived, that makes you fresher than a blade a spring grass to me.”

  “What? I’m not good enough for you?”

  “No. You are young and innocent of so many things, and it’s the kind of innocence I lost a long time ago.”

  “Oh, so you are giving me the, ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ speech? The old, ‘I’m too bad to be good for you’ song? Trying to let the mortal girl down easy?”

  “Abby,” he appealed as if my anger made a difference to him.

  My anger and humiliation poured off me. Kieron’s eyes turned black and he advanced on me and grabbed my wrists.

  It hit me. You know that feeling where you’re unsure if you’re dreaming or awake?

  When Kieron touched me, I instinctively closed my eyes, but I when I opened them I was not in Kieron’s kitchen.

  I was in a white forest on a snow-covered hill, illuminated by the moon high overhead. It stood in stark relief against the dark hills beyond.

  At the bottom of the hill was a small creek with water snaking downward into more darkness. I walked to t
he edge. It was barely three feet wide and so shallow I could see the stones and debris below.

  My footsteps crushed through the snow. I shifted my boot to remove an obtrusive piece of wood blocking the water flow. The water rushed down, flowing more equally now. A slight rain fell, giving speed to the water as droplets plopped into the steady path. I reached my hands out and lifted my head, letting the thick and heavy beads hit my face.

  A cold breeze blew through and I sneezed, my hand covering my face as I did. When I pulled back, my hand was crimson. At first, I thought I had a bloody nose, but then I looked down at my hands and they were both covered in red liquid. When I wiped at my mouth, the metallic taste of blood hit my tongue.

  Panic surged through me and my eyes widened. “Oh my god.” I turned to yell for someone to help when I bumped directly into a large figure. His arms gripped mine to stop me from running. A scream had built up in my throat but never came out as I raised my eyes to meet my captor.

  I gasped in horror. My father stood there, covered in blood and cuts from head to toe. He reached out for me but couldn’t speak, his mouth filled with blood that continued to gush out in a never-ending flow.

  “Abby? Are you all right?”

  Reagan had her arms at my shoulders, her face pale, her eyes searching my sweating face.

  My heart pounded against my ribcage.

  “My Father . . .” I said. “He . . .”

  Her eyes widened. “Did you have a vision about him?”

  I trembled all over.

  “I . . .” I walked across the kitchen, my legs like jelly, to lean against a counter to hold me up. “I have to find him . . . find out if . . . Reagan, my father, he . . . he . . .”

  Kieron pushed away from the wall where he had been. “What was the vision about?”

  Shivers ran up my spine as Kieron glowered at the both of us. Was he still angry about what I said?

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was in a snow-covered field and he was bleeding out.”

  He scratched at his chin as I spoke, but I knew he wouldn’t reveal anything he was thinking on his face. But the more I spoke, the more frantic I became.

  “Okay, don’t lose your head,” he said. “I am going to send some men out to look, all right? We’ll get this figured out.”

  “Kieron, you don’t think he’s—”

  “I am not going to make any assumptions, Ms. Davenport,” he said. “Just let me go and see what has actually transpired.”

  I watched helplessly from the front hall as he grabbed his jacket and a few of his guards and disappeared out of the front door without another word.

  Reagan helped me regain my composure after my vision; they always left me shaky and despairing. I still hadn’t found a way to master them yet. I knew that I’d hear it from Kieron later, but I just let Reagan take care of me.

  We settled in to watch some movies that afternoon, a cold rain settling over the estate.

  Hours later, still no Kieron. Surely he would have found something out by now? What was keeping him?

  Reagan and I had gone into the kitchen to make something for dinner, and I found myself glancing out of the windows at every sound, every flicker of motion. “As they say in the movies, ‘I have a bad feeling about this.’”

  “Don’t worry, he will be back,” Reagan said, but I could see the echo of fear behind her eyes as she, too, stared outside.

  “Let’s finish watching the movie,” she suggested.

  The light faded through the window when I realized I was developing an eye twitch.

  “Okay, we need to go,” I said, standing up, the blanket I had snuggled under sliding off onto the floor.

  “Go where?” Reagan asked.

  “After Kieron, obviously,” I said. “We need to go find him.”

  “Abby, we have no idea where he went, or what he was doing,” she said. “He told us that he would be back. He told you not to worry.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m worried,” I snapped. “I am getting my coat. Are you coming or not?”

  Reagan groaned but got to her feet.

  “You are so stubborn,” she said. But I knew she must have been worried, too, because she followed me out into the front hall, grabbed her coat off the hook beside mine, and followed me out the front door without another word.

  I let Reagan lead. I knew she would have a better idea of where Kieron went. She kept saying that she had an idea, that he always alluded to certain places where he might go if things were to fall apart.

  I hesitantly followed her, my fingers bitingly cold. I kept them shoved in my armpits, but I regretted the decision to leave the house without gloves.

  Eventually, we wandered toward a cliff that I could see the castle from. The place hummed with magic. I was getting better at detecting it.

  Reagan hesitated in front of the mouth of a cave chiseled into the cliff face.

  “Is this it?” I asked, staring into the dark.

  “Yes,” Reagan said. “Come on, let’s go. Before I change my mind.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Reagan’s hand felt the wall.

  “Ah, got it,” she said triumphantly.

  My best friend, the woman who used to work beside me slinging coffee, muttered a few words and the thing in her hand, a torch, burst into flame.

  “Everyone knows fire spells,” she said.

  “Everyone but me,” I said. “Why didn’t you show me this?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t think about it. It’s something we all learn when we enter puberty.”

  The torch threw light around us in a narrow circumference, while shadows clung to the walls of the cavern. Overhead, huge icicles glittered with the light of the dancing flame. Before us, the cave floor was littered with the shards of fallen ice.

  We walked forward with Reagan feeling the walls with one hand.

  “It’s got to be here,” she said.

  “The portal?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you don’t know where it is?”

  “It’s not like Kieron’s portal. These natural ones shift on their own. But they usually don’t move far from their last location.”

  Reagan’s hand slipped into a deep crack and her face lit up, then deflated just a fast.

  “Damn, it’s already moved,” she muttered.

  “But what is this?”

  “The portal leaves behind pockets, cracks in the wall of the cave.”

  Reagan made it sound like the most natural thing in the world that a magical portal would bore holes into solid rock. Reagan moved ahead and I followed only to slip on a fallen ice crystal. I braced my hands against the wall to keep myself upright when a roaring filled my ears. An eerie blue light filled a fissure in the wall, and I saw a glowing ice-blue oval stone in the center, casting light within the tiny chamber.

  “Reagan!” I called excitedly. “It’s the Relic.”

  My soul instantly recognized it as it called to me, chanting my name. Abby, Abby, Abby, it pulsed. I shoved my arm in to grasp it, but frustratingly it lay beyond my reach. Damn it!

  “Abby!” cried Reagan ahead of me breaking through the roar. “Hurry. It’s not safe here!” The chilling sound of the baying of ice hounds came toward us, growing closer by the second.

  “Reagan!” I yelled, trying to get her attention again. And then two things happened. The crack in the wall ceased glowing and huge crystals from the ceiling crashed in a deafening roar. I covered my face to protect it from stinging shards and when the sound stopped, I found a wall of ice blocking my path to Reagan.

  Despair washed over me like a tidal wave. I stood in the damn passageway and my friend stood on the other side, facing ice hounds and utter danger.

  What the fuck could I do? I was the Keeper of the Relic I had no magic. All this was my fault. I led her into danger because of my stupid, stubborn, impulsive actions and she was going to die because of them.

  Every failure within me collided into one enormous ball
of repressed emotions. I leaned ono the walls and a pulse started radiating from my hands. I wasn’t sure what the hell was happening, but I knew it was something important. A breakthrough of sorts. Light and heat vibrated outward, and I realized what it was. Magic. Magic flowed from me.

  I placed my hands against the wall of shattered ice and focused. I centered my thoughts on all the pain, and anger inside of me to draw it out. I let it pulse through my veins, across my skin. It was in me, of me, around me. I began to cast my magic. I knew now how to gather it.

  I breathed it in, breathed it out.

  Was this what it felt like to use magic? To harness it and control it?

  I gathered a mass of swirling, blue energy in my palm and stared at it. I could have gotten lost in its depths, feeling as if it held all of the answers of the universe in its swirling, woven strands and ties.

  Without thinking, without effort, I placed my palm against the ice.

  Open.

  And with the sheer force of my will, the wall blasted out away from me with a loud crash.

  There was Reagan, facing the sound of the hounds, her sword in one hand and her torch in the other.

  She glanced over her shoulder to see me and, her face paled, her eyes wide with panic.

  “Abby . . . no!” she screamed.

  Didn’t she see that I wasn’t afraid anymore? That I had learned?

  I swirled the magic around me and used one of the thin tendrils of it to snake out around me as a shield.

  I unsheathed my sword, and stood there, ready to face the beasts.

  “Abby!” Reagan cried, tears in her eyes.

  I readied my stance, glaring ahead of me at all of the pairs of beady, blood-red eyes staring back at me.

  The world moved around me, but I wasn’t a part of it. The magic pulsed against my palm, ready to guide my blade. My sword hummed as it slashed through the air, seeking contact.

  An ice hound leapt at me. Seeing one for the first time with its razor-sharp fangs, I knew I had to make sure it wasn’t my last.

  Magic swirled and moved my arms at just the precise time to slice the neck of the beast. Black ichor spurted as the creature fell mid-leap to the floor. Yowls of other beasts rang through the cave at the sight of their fallen comrade. They growled, one by one emerging from the shadows to advance on where I stood. Twenty beasts revealed themselves, of varying shades of muddy gray and yellow teeth that promised pain.