Eighth Wand

by December Quinn

“We called them, didn’t we? And they glow, right? So one of them has to be trapped in that jar.”

  “Why would a faerie be trapped in a jar?”

  “Just take the lid off, Kris.”

  He rested his hand on the shiny handle, then hesitated. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake. Yes. Just do it.”

  For all her bravado, though, Kym ducked back when Kristof removed the lid, waiting to be attacked, waiting for the angel of death or whatever that thing was in Raiders of the Lost Ark to soar out and start swirling through the air around her.

  But nothing happened. Whatever hid inside the jar continued to glow and that was all.

  “It’s a stick,” Kristof said, finally leaning over to look inside.

  “A stick?”

  “Yes, look.” He reached in, then withdrew his hand. “Just look in, you’ll see.”

  She did. A twisted, pale piece of wood, about six inches long, slanted across the body of the jar inside. In one end was a hole. The other end was pointed, but dull. She reached out to touch it. Energy jolted through her fingers, through her body, before she even got close.

  “We enchanted it!” Kym’s eyes lit up. “Or, or the faeries gave it to us as a gift. It’s a sign from them, that we really are powerful, that we’re…chosen.”

  “I told you, I told you!”

  Kristof reached for the wand, clearly intending to pick it up and use it. Kym’s fingers closed over his wrist before he could touch it. “Faeries prefer women, Kristof. Only we have the delicate, loving energy they need. You know that.”

  “But I called them. I cast the circle.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Faeries are women, they’ll be more comfortable with me.”

  “They’re here because I told them to be.”

  Kym sighed. “We can argue about this all night, Lord Wolfrunner, but the fact is, we both know I’ll win. Because if I don’t, you’ll never get to fuck me again. And you don’t want that, do you?”

  Kristof knew when he was beaten. “No.”

  “Good.” Kym’s fingers hovered just over the opening of the jar. The light seemed so bright she could see the outlines of her bones through her flesh, but at the same time wasn’t painfully bright. She could look right at it without having to squint. It was the most amazing thing she’d ever seen.

  Slowly, carefully, she leaned forward, letting her hand enter the jar. The wood felt warm and firm against her skin as she grasped it. She smiled, a smile of pure triumphant pleasure.

  Then the world went green and exploded.

  * * * * *

  “Royd, the food!”

  “I don’t want it,” he murmured into her skin, opening the shirt with impatient fingers and nibbling at the tops of her breasts. “I just want you.”

  She gave a yelp. “Your skin is burning. Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine, better than fine.” He gripped her hips and yanked her closer, but the look in his eyes belied his words. He looked dazed, almost as if he wasn’t really there. “I’ll be even better when you get these off.”

  His fingers slid down beneath her waistband, digging into the soft flesh of her behind. Her eyes started to close. His hands burned, searing her skin. She could only imagine how hot the rest of him must be. The thought sent a shudder through her.

  But no. It shouldn’t. Something wasn’t right here, something definitely was not right. Royd felt feverish, his eyes looked glazed. And it wasn’t the glaze of passion she’d seen earlier, either, he really looked out of it.

  “Royd, wait. Stop. Oh…God, stop…” His lips closed around her nipple over her bra, transferring that heat through her entire body. Oh, that was good. Too good to stop.

  But the food…and he’s sick…

  He grabbed her hand and lowered it, pressing her palm against his swollen cock, shuddering as he did so. “Prudence…you feel so good…” His hand moved hers up and down while his eyes fluttered closed. His skin was smooth and damp, his cock hot iron.

  His entire weight rested on her for a moment and she couldn’t hold them up. Together they tumbled to the floor.

  She knew she should stop him, but she couldn’t help it. He wanted her and she wanted him. How was she supposed to say no when her jeans were open and his fingers managed to zero in on her clit so effectively? When his lips on her throat made her blood sing, when the heat of his skin against hers made her want to leap into the fire of him and burn away until nothing was left?

  He tugged her jeans down, tearing her panties away, and shoved himself between her legs, exposing her to him. He spoke words she did not understand, in a language so beautiful it made her throat ache. The Faerie tongue, the language he’d spoken earlier when he made the little silver pen for her.

  Mist filled the room. Prudence couldn’t see through the silvery fog, but she could feel. Feel as Royd’s hands massaged her, stroked her, made her spread her legs even wider and tilt her pelvis up to him. He pulled on her, twisted her clitoris between slick fingers, then pushed them inside her and scissored them. Her hips leapt and she realized she was begging him, words spilling out of her mouth, until finally the thick, hard length of his cock slid into her, filling her so completely she wanted to cry from the perfection of it.

  He set a relentless pace, ruthlessly plunging into her again and again. His arms braced against the wall over her head, holding his chest above her. She lifted her face to lick the salty-sweet skin, to scrape her teeth over the powerful muscles of his chest and the ridges of his ribs.

  Her entire body shook and shifted on the floor with his every powerful thrust, her cunt trying to grab him, squeeze him, not let him go. The heat of him inside her was like nothing she’d ever experienced, it was like having sex with fire, and she thought they might both go up in flames before they were done. She tried to tighten her legs around his hips, to tighten her arms around his shoulders, but she seemed barely in control of her body. Her muscles refused to respond to her; they were too busy clenching and releasing, obeying Royd’s unspoken demands for her submission.

  “Yes, Prudence, yes.” His muscles corded beneath his skin. All she saw was him, the silver mist filling the air behind him. He was a ghost, a searing hot cipher taking her more thoroughly and violently than any man ever had and she was about to explode from it with more force than she’d ever experienced.

  “Royd!” The scream seemed to come from deep inside her, from way down where her soul hid. To Prudence, looking through slitted eyes as she came, the scream seemed to rend the air, parting the silver mist. Her fingers scratched at his hips, his thighs.

  He shouted her name in return, turning it finally into a wordless groan. His cock throbbed and pulsed inside her, drops of sizzling sweat fell from his chest onto her breasts. Above her, his face twisted, transforming itself into something so beautiful and powerful, so strange, that she convulsed again in fear and pleasure. He really wasn’t human. The glimpse of another world, another race, she got in that moment sent her into paroxysms of awe.

  Finally he collapsed onto her, his skin still blazing hot. She hated to do it, but she pushed him off. She couldn’t take that kind of heat for long, not when she already found herself gasping from exertion.

  He rolled away, then sprang up to a sit. “Hungry now,” he said. “Where’s the food?”

  She stared at him for a minute. She’d hoped whatever fever it was that possessed him would fade after they had sex, but clearly that wasn’t the case. The queer glitter of his eyes, the flushed tone of his skin, hadn’t changed. She pointed to the bags. The food would probably still be warm enough to eat. She’d only got home a few minutes before.

  How on earth he’d managed to call that kind of response from her in such a short time she didn’t know, but he had. Her body felt as if someone had picked her up, wrung her out, and laid her on the floor. If she hadn’t been truly hungry, she probably wouldn’t have moved for a week.

  She’d only just met him, but she knew enough to know two th
ings. One, she wanted him more than any other man she’d ever met and, two, that something was seriously wrong. There was no way this could be normal behavior for him. Not the passion—that she’d come to expect—but the loss of control.

  The warrior she was starting to know, the warrior she felt an amazingly deep connection with, was simply not the man who tore into the bags of food and took a bite of paper and hamburger together, then spit the paper out. Her warrior did not groan and roll his eyes in delight at the cheap food, nor did he shove French fries into his mouth a handful at a time. If she hadn’t been so worried, the sight might have made her laugh.

  “Drink? Thirsty,” he mumbled, grabbing one of the Cokes and tilting it up. She leapt forward in time to set it back down before the lid came off and inserted a straw. He sucked greedily, making affectionate little noises in the back of his throat.

  “Royd, I really think maybe you should take it easy. You’re not used to—”

  He growled at her and turned away.

  Okay, so telling him to eat food he’d never had before more slowly was out. And if she didn’t eat something herself soon, the food would be gone at the rate he was going. She grabbed a hamburger and a carton of fries and started eating, still watching him.

  He rocked back and forth, eating, nodding his head like a toddler eating cake and ice cream. This couldn’t possibly be the way faeries ate, could it? No, he’d been fine that morning.

  He finished the food and stood up. Light from the sunset came through the sheer curtains on the windows, limning his damp body in gold. Pru’s breath left her body in a whoosh. She’d seen him naked before, but not like this. For a minute, she forgot everything, forgot her worries and just stared.

  Muscles moved smoothly under shining skin as he prowled across the floor toward the television. “Where is the music? I want the music.”

  “You won’t find it there,” she said. “That’s MTV. Try a different one. Hit the buttons.”

  Well…faeries danced, right? It was in all the faerie tales. That’s what people did when they spent their night-that-was-twenty-years in the Faerie Realm. All the stories had dancing. So last night he’d fallen asleep before he could dance, she guessed.

  He found a satisfactory channel and started moving, spinning around, twisting his hips, lunging forward. She’d never seen anything like it. She couldn’t describe it, couldn’t even say if he was a good dancer or not. It simply mesmerized her.

  His hair flew behind him as he spun and leapt, landing so lightly she didn’t hear his feet hit the creaky floor, then rising again so high she thought his head might go through the ceiling. It was a dance of passion, a dance of mystery, and just as she felt herself completely carried away by it, just before she got up to start dancing with him, he stopped, swayed and collapsed in a heap.

  Chapter Eight

  “Kym! KYM! Are you okay? Wake up, please!”

  Rough hands shook her, fingers digging into her skin. It hurt and she pushed feebly at them. “Get off me…”

  “Oh, thank Goddess! Kym, you’re alive!”

  “What? Why wouldn’t I be—oh.” She sat up, shaking the cobwebs from her brain. There had been a blast of light, something so powerful and bright it made her head scream even as her body convulsed in ecstasy… “I’m fine, Kristof. I’m okay. It was the power.” Her eyes widened as she looked at the wand, now lying a few feet away on the floor. It no longer glowed. “That thing is…I don’t know how a sad sack like Prudence got a hold of it, but oh my God…dess,” she finished quickly, glancing at Kristof to make sure he hadn’t noticed. “That is not of this world, Kris.”

  He made a face. “Really? What tipped you off? The glow or the flash of light it gave off as it threw you across the room?”

  She looked around. She was indeed on the other side of the room, by the wall with the unicorn hanging on it. Unicorns were Kym’s mystical animal and she kept the hanging here on the walls of their Ritual Space—they always spoke of it with careful capital letters—to help her focus. “Oh.”

  “Oh, yeah. Now I think we should call Lady Ravenancia right now, Kym, and get her over here. We need a fourth-degree Priestess Queen to help us deal with this kind of power.”

  “I don’t think we need her. I think if I just try touching it again, if I pick it up—”

  “No! I can’t watch you do that again, kitten. I thought you were going to—” his voice dropped to a whisper. “Be damaged.”

  “What, like a broken back?”

  “No, like mentally. You know, driven insane by dark magic.”

  Oh.” Her eyes widened. “Oh. I hadn’t even thought of that. Never mind, though. I am fine, and I really do think I can get it. It wanted me to pick it up, Kris. It wants me. It’s the faerie energy, it called me, please let’s try one more time.”

  Kristof stared at her, then glanced at the wand again. “How about if I try it?”

  Kym bit her lip and nodded. She knew the wand wanted her. The faeries wanted her. But it was worth a try. If they didn’t have to share this with Ravenancia, they could have it all to themselves, which was infinitely preferable to anything else.

  He tiptoed across the floor and knelt beside the small piece of wood, his palm hovering over it. “I can feel the strength,” he whispered.

  “Try an incantation,” Kym whispered back. “Try saying some Power Words.”

  Kristof nodded and took a deep breath. “I am Lord Wolfrunner,” he intoned. “Vashula vashula absadamanta. Vashula vashula absadamanta.”

  A spark of green flew from the wand. Kristof yelped and leapt back. Kym pushed him forward again.

  “Go on, it’s working!”

  He gave her a dubious look, but knelt again by the wand. “Vashula vashula absadamanta.” He lowered his hand almost to the wand. Kym’s heart leapt in her throat. It was going to work! Together they would have the power of the Fae at their fingertips!

  Kristof’s fingers closed over the wand. Instinctively, Kym moved closer, placing her fingers over his. Their eyes met and he nodded again. “We’ll do it together.”

  The wand sparked green again as they picked it up, but this time there was no explosion, no flash of blinding light.

  “I think it likes me.” Kristof smiled. Kym returned the smile, but she wasn’t so sure. The wand liked her better. It had led her to the jar, hadn’t it? Why else would she have suddenly wanted a cookie jar? She never ate cookies.

  But it really was an awfully pretty little jar and she did like china…

  No. The wand wanted her. She was happy to humor Kris for the moment, though. “It sure does,” she said. They both still spoke in hushed tones. “Maybe we should try doing something with it?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, casting a circle?”

  “I already cast one.”

  “I think it’s been broken, don’t you? Besides, this will cast a real one. Not that yours aren’t real, of course,” she added, seeing the look on his face.

  “Okay.” Together they walked in a circle, speaking the words of the casting. A thrill shot up Kym’s spine when she saw light was indeed pouring out of the wand, a curious flickering orangish light that reminded her of fire. It was mesmerizing and when they had finished the cast and stood in the center, she felt different than she ever had before, different from how she felt in her other circles. Energy sparked and swirled in the air around them, heat caressing her face. Shapes moved in the shadows just outside the ring.

  “This feels weird,” Kristof whispered. His voice echoed oddly.

  “I know.” Their grip on each other’s hands tightened around the wand. “Should we try to do any magic?”

  “I don’t know. I still think we should call Lady Ravenancia.”

  Something moved. A face glowed briefly in the orangish light, then disappeared. Kym yelped. It wasn’t…it wasn’t a human face. It wasn’t unattractive, but she could clearly see even in the one glimpse she got that the ears were longer, the nose sharper.
r />   “What?”

  “Didn’t you see that?” Look, there!” Another face. This was starting to feel like a very bad idea, indeed.

  “We need to close the circle,” Kristof said. His voice shook “Now, before it gets any worse.”

  Sweat made their hands slick as they called the circle back, walking it in reverse, their bodies pressed together. Kym could have sworn she heard speaking, a language she’d never heard before. She could have sworn she saw another face before the last of the light returned to the wand.

  Kristof was right. Best that Lady Ravenancia deal with this. This was scary. Witchcraft wasn’t supposed to be scary.

  * * * * *

  “I’m so sorry, it was so stupid of me,” she said again, wiping the cool cloth across his brow. It felt so good he could almost forget what a complete ass he’d made of himself earlier.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “It was. I’m the one who’s been Miss Clever here, figuring out about the time difference and everything, I don’t know why it never even occurred to me that ibuprofen might be like Faerie heroin.”

  “Heroin?”

  “It’s a drug. It alters people’s consciousness.”

  “I got it when you said ‘drug’. My English is quite adequate.”

  “I know, I just—I’m sorry.”

  “Prudence.” He caught her wrist in his still hot fingers. The bed beneath them moved slightly. “I was making a joke. I don’t blame you. If anything I’m…” He took a deep breath. For a man who’d just bragged about his grasp of her native tongue, he wasn’t very good at finding the right words now. “I owe you an apology. My behavior earlier, my…assault of you…it was shameful, and I am ashamed.”

  “Oh, that.” Her face colored pink. It made him want to pull her into his arms and hold her to him so tight neither of them would be able to breathe. “You don’t have to apologize, I mean…it was amazing, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “But I should not have forced you.”

  “You didn’t force me. I wanted to.”

  “You wanted the food.”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.”