Lock and Key

by Evangeline Anderson

  I moaned again and writhed against him, unable to help myself. The feeling of pleasure was like a big, warm hand caressing my entire body, moving over me and setting every single nerve alight. I felt like a light bulb being switched on for the first time, like an empty glass suddenly filled to overflowing with water, like…well, I could go on but let me just say it was amazing—better than anything I’d ever felt in my life and completely, instantly addictive. I was going to want more of this in the near future…if this first bite didn’t kill me, that was.

  Which was a distinct possibility.

  But though he was draining me as he drank, I wasn’t trying to get away from him, I realized after a moment—actually, I was trying to get closer. And it wasn’t just because of the overwhelming pleasure, though that certainly played a part in my reaction. It was because the feel of Griffin’s fangs in me—the feeling of giving myself to him willingly and with no restraint—felt more right than anything ever had in my entire life.

  It was a feeling of connection—a feeling of coming home.

  He is mine and I am his, I thought and knew it was true.

  But as he continued to drink from me, the feeling began to fade—along with everything else. My fingers and toes felt numb and the rustling sound of the canvas snare around us seemed to fade into the background. Black flowers began to bloom in my field of vision and I felt dizzy and weak.

  Blood loss, I thought, though even my thoughts felt fuzzy now. Won’t be…much…longer.

  But suddenly Griffin pulled away, his fangs abruptly leaving my throat. His eyes were still glowing brightly and I could tell the thirst was still on him but somehow he had found the will to stop.

  “All right,” he whispered, as though talking to someone else—someone I couldn’t see or hear. “All right, I’ve stopped! I won’t bite her again!”

  I wanted to ask who he was talking to, but I was too dizzy to form words. And anyway, right after he’d said it, he reached for me again.

  I was sure he intended to bite me a second time. I was already baring my throat but instead of sinking his fangs in again, Griffin gripped the edge of the silver duct tape that covered my mouth in his fangs and ripped it loose.

  The pain of the tape coming loose seemed to wake me from my stupor and I spat out the bite guard at once, more by instinct than anything else. I still felt woozy and uncertain about what was going on but Griffin was looking at me intently, his eyes glowing silver in the darkness.

  “Megan, I can’t do this,” he said hoarsely. “I love you too much—I can’t allow the thirst to kill you. But…” He hesitated. “There is only one way I can think to stop it—to stop all of this and save you. I hope you will forgive me later.”

  Forgive you for what? I wanted to ask, but my tongue felt numb and stupid and I couldn’t form the words.

  Griffin gave me one last, intense look, and then reached up to press the side of his throat to my mouth.

  “Bite me.” His voice was low and harsh. “Bite me and drink my blood, Megan—it’s the only way.”

  75

  The only way to what? I wanted to ask but now my mouth was muffled against his neck.

  “I…can’t do this,” I mumbled, trying to move my mouth away from him. Actually, I didn’t even know why he wanted me to.

  “You have to,” he insisted. “You’re in no shape to do magic and this is the only way I can protect you. Go on—bite me.”

  I opened my mouth to protest again and found myself tasting the salt of his skin. This close his wintry scent surrounded me completely and to my surprise, I found my body reacting to it—to him.

  My teeth weren’t nearly as sharp as his—they were human and blunt and it must have been painful for him when I bit him. But Griffin didn’t even flinch. He only pressed closer to me until I felt his flesh tear and his salty blood rushed into my mouth and over my tongue.

  A swallow was all it took to make me feel much better than I had. And it was all Griffin gave me before he pulled away and looked at me again.

  “Megan Latimer,” he said, his voice low and formal,

  “Blood of my blood

  And breath of my breath.

  Nothing can part us

  Now except death.”

  A chill ran through me—a feeling of connection stronger than anything I’d ever felt before. And yet it was still incomplete. Griffin seemed to think so too.

  “Say it back to me,” he murmured urgently. “Quickly—it’s the only way.”

  I vaguely thought I’d heard the words he had recited somewhere before, but I wasn’t sure where. Someone had told me about them, said they were important—life-changing. But I couldn’t remember more than that—couldn’t think of anything but Griffin’s pale gray eyes urging me to say the incantation back to him.

  “Griffin Darkheart,” I said, looking at him,

  “Blood of my blood

  And breath of my breath.

  Nothing can part us

  Now except death.”

  The feeling of connection intensified like sparks from a fire radiating through my entire body. I felt love and devotion and caring and possessiveness all flowing into me—flowing from Griffin, I realized hazily. And my emotions of love and adoration were flowing into him.

  The emotions were too great—too much to hold. I felt them start to overflow—like a cup filled with too much liquid. The love we shared spilled outward and spread like water running downhill.

  Suddenly the canvas hammock we were zipped into—the snare as Winifred Rattcliff had called it—began to shake At first I thought it was because the witches outside were rocking it on purpose but after a moment I realized the hammock was shaking because the ground was shaking.

  I heard screams of surprise outside and a crashing sound like trees falling in the forest and then someone was shouting something over and over about roses…look at all the roses…

  All of this should have scared me to death and I admit it was pretty frightening, but in a distant way. The main thing to me was still Griffin, still the connection we shared and the love flowing between us and over us and through us in a continuous cycle of longing and adoration.

  “I love you,” I whispered, looking into his silver eyes. “I love you forever…this is forever.”

  “I love you forever too, my little witch,” he murmured and again I felt our love crest and rush outward, like a tidal wave flooding out in all directions. Together we had created an unbroken loop of emotion and it was spilling over, flooding both of us and flowing into the world around us…

  Flowing because we had just done the most forbidden thing two Others of different races could do—

  Griffin Darkheart, a Nocturne, was now Blood-Bonded to me, Megan Latimer, a Witch.

  The Edict was broken and not just for us, I sensed—for everyone.

  76

  The ground started shaking even harder and I finally had the thought that it might not be a good thing to be stuck in a canvas sack if the trees holding up the hammock we were in suddenly fell over.

  Griffin seemed to think the same thing at the same time.

  “We need to get out of here, Megan,” he said, frowning. “I love you forever but forever is going to be very short if we can’t get away from this…this emotional earthquake we seem to have created.”

  “You’re right.” I nodded, feeling clear-headed despite my blood loss. The swallow of blood I’d had from Griffin seemed to have restored me completely. Had he healed me in some way? The way Corinne Latimer’s Nocturne lover had healed her when she was on the brink of death?

  It was an interesting idea to consider but right now we had to concentrate on getting out. Avery and Emma and Kaitlyn were out there too, I remembered. I had to rescue my coven-mates from whatever natural disaster it was that we had somehow started by breaking the Edict.

  “I think I could do magic again,” I said to Griffin. “If only my hands were free so I could cut myself somehow. Can you move or are you still frozen?”
<
br />   He struggled for a moment and then was able to lift his arms, though he looked like a man fighting against heavy weights tied to his limbs.

  “I think…her spell…is weakening,” he grunted, as he finally got his hands up to mine and started working on the ropes that held me. “She’s probably distracted with everything going on outside.”

  What was going on outside? The earth was still rumbling as though we were having an earthquake—which is not something that usually happens in Florida unless there’s a sinkhole, (which is something that happens)—and I could hear a lot of screaming and running around too.

  We really needed to get out of the damned hammock-sack!

  “There!” Griffin said with satisfaction and the rope around my wrists abruptly fell away.

  I pulled my arms down, wincing as the blood rushed back into my numb and tingling hands and fingertips.

  “Good,” I said to him. “Now I just need something sharp to cut myself with. Uh…” I looked at him uncertainly. “Is that going to be a problem? Are you still, um, thirsty?”

  He shook his head.

  “The moment we Blood-Bonded, the thirst was quenched. In fact, if you will allow me to offer some assistance, you can cut yourself on one of my fangs if you need to.”

  He opened his mouth and I didn’t hesitate a moment. Holding the pad of my right thumb to the point of his left fang, I pressed gently and felt the sharp little pain as he pierced my skin.

  A rush of pleasure came right on the heels of the pain and I was tempted to get lost in it—and in Griffin—all over again. But the rumbling and quaking and screaming outside let me know that would be a bad idea.

  I really didn’t know any spells except for the few easy ones I had failed at in Elementary Casting and none of them seemed like they would fit my purposes. So I simply thought, Let Us Out, and sent the power I could feel coursing through me outwards in a kind of mental wave.

  Immediately the canvas sack opened. But when I said opened, I don’t mean the zipper unzipped on its own—I mean the sack blew apart—ripping itself to shreds that exploded outward, leaving Griffin and me suspended only on the cloth base of the hammock, which still swung precariously between the two dead tress.

  It was full dawn now and I blinked my eyes, trying to get adjusted to the light. I had a confused impression of people running and shouting and a huge dark shape in the sky casting its shadow over the proceedings.

  “Megan—the trees!” Griffin said urgently. “They’re coming down!”

  I saw that he was right—the dead trees that held up the hammock were beginning to tilt inwards towards each other. Looking down, I could see why.

  Remember how I said that sinkholes are a thing in Florida? In fact, they can be a real problem. Well, a sinkhole the exact size and shape of the Hallowed Glade had suddenly opened beneath us and the trees were barely hanging on by their roots to the little soil that was left. As I watched, it crumbled away completely and the trees tilted inward as we began to fall down into the darkness.

  I didn’t even think this time. I wrapped my arms around Griffin and shouted, “Up!” as loudly as I could.

  And then, somehow, we were flying.

  77

  Well, not flying exactly, more like hovering in the air. We were as high as the tops of the trees—the ones that hadn’t fallen, anyway, and I had a much better view from up here.

  I could see that the whole interior of the Hallowed Glade was gone now and all that remained of it was a deep hole in the ground that seemed to go down forever. The perimeter of thorny vines was still there around the edge of what had been the glade, but they were much more colorful than they had been.

  “Roses,” Griffin breathed in my ear. “They’ve bloomed.”

  He was right and I thought I had never seen so many roses in my life. They were all as red as blood, so thick and full that you could scarcely see the vines they were attached to anymore. Even from where we were, floating high in the air, I could catch their sweet scent on the cool, early morning breeze.

  “The prophecy,” I murmured and remembered the single red rose I had seen in Avery’s scrying bowl after the picture of the Witch Queen and her Blood Knight had faded.

  “What prophecy?” Griffin asked, frowning. “The one you heard the Rattcliff witch talking about?”

  “Exactly,” I said but there was no time to explain right then. Speaking of Winifred Rattcliff, she was standing defiantly at the edge of the roses and pointing a finger at Avery, who was tied to a tree just outside the ring of thorny vines. Emma and Kaitlyn were tied in a similar fashion to other trees outside the ruins of the Hallowed Glade. I saw tear tracks on my coven-mates’ faces but they had their chins raised defiantly as they stared up at me and Griffin.

  “We have to help them,” I said to him urgently. “She looks like she’s threatening them!”

  In fact, that was exactly what Winifred Rattcliff was doing.

  “No closer!” she screamed up at me, her face an ugly mask of hate and envy. “Come even an inch closer and I’ll lay a death curse on him!” She pointed at Avery who glared back at her.

  “Don’t listen to her, Megan!” he shouted. “Do what you need to do—I’m not afraid!”

  “Listen to me!” the senior witch insisted, “Go now and never return to Frostproof. If you don’t, I’ll kill all your friends—every last one of them—slowly.”

  I’d had about enough of her threats. Since I seemed to be hovering in mid-air without any problem, I thought that disarming Winifred Rattcliff, so to speak, shouldn’t be too hard.

  Squeezing my thumb for another drop of blood, I said,

  “Hands at your sides and mouth shut tight.”

  A look of surprise came over Winifred’s face as she suddenly snapped to attention like a soldier, her arms straight at her sides and her mouth shut in a white line. I saw her trembling, trying to break my hold on her, but clearly she couldn’t move.

  Well good, that was how I wanted things.

  “Little witch,” Griffin murmured in my ear. “If you’re quite done flying, I think it would be a good time to land. We are not the only ones in the sky.”

  I looked to see what he was talking about and saw the huge, dark shadow I had glimpsed earlier still soaring above us.

  “Is that a…dragon?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around the idea. The thing was immense.

  “I believe it is,” Griffin said dryly. “And since we don’t know its intentions, I think we should land and possibly take cover.”

  “Bigger than a barn,” I heard the Academy Healer mutter in my head, “And some of them breathe fire!”

  Her description didn’t begin to cover the reality of the situation but I could certainly see the prudence of what Griffin was saying. Plus it felt kind of strange to be hovering in mid-air over the vast, seemingly bottomless pit where the Hallowed Glade had been only a few minutes before.

  “Over and down,” I said, squeezing out another drop of blood. Thank goodness my thumb hadn’t stopped bleeding yet!

  Griffin and I drifted gently through the air, like we were a kite being flown by a careful child, and settled on the ground, just outside the ring of rose-thorn vines.

  We landed right beside Winifred Rattcliff, who was still frozen to the spot and giving me a murderous glare. Two of her witches and her daughter Nancy had come to try and help her and they were doing various spells and saying words of power which seemed to have no effect.

  “You bitch!” Nancy snarled, turning on me as I took a step towards them. “Let my mother go! How dare you be-spell her?”

  She charged towards me, lifting a hand to slap me but I wasn’t having any more of that.

  “Freeze!” I snapped, glaring at her.

  Nancy froze in mid-air, her arm still upraised as a surprised look came over her face. The other witches who had been trying to help Winifred Rattcliff—as well as the two Weird Sisters who always hung around with Nancy—cast nervous glances at each other and began backi
ng away.

  I probably would have let them go but Griffin murmured in my ear, “Stop them, Megan. You need to know who your enemies are.”

  I could see his point—after all, I didn’t know any of these witches, except for Nancy and the Weird Sisters.

  “Freeze—all of you,” I said and they all stopped in their tracks, looks of guilt and hate and shame stamped on their faces.

  “Do you know these women?” I asked Griffin, frowning.

  “No.” He shook his head. “But I’m sure your coven-mate will.”

  Which reminded me that Avery and Emma and Kaitlyn were still tied to trees at the edge of what was now a giant sink-hole.

  Feeling ashamed of myself, I ran to free Avery while Griffin turned to help Emma.

  “Thanks, Princess,” Avery said and gave me a shaky hug when I got him loose. “I’m so glad you’re okay! I thought that evil bitch had your number for sure. I never expected to see you come out of that awful body bag alive!”

  “Well, it takes more than a little evil plotting to bring down a Latimer, right?” I said lightly.

  Looking over at Griffin, I saw that he had finished untying Emma and she was rubbing her wrists and thanking him—a bit shyly I thought.

  My mind went immediately to Kaitlyn but when I ran to help her, she was already loose from her tree and Ari Reyes was there, wearing nothing but a pair of ragged shorts.

  Kaitlyn was peering at the big Drake uncertainly from behind the curtain of her long black hair and he was just standing there, his tall, muscular body tensed with uncertainty, as though he wasn’t sure what to do or say next.

  “Uh, hi,” I said, feeling like I was interrupting something, though I wasn’t sure what exactly.

  “Hi, Megan. Wow—that was some show!” Kaitlyn said, giving a shaky laugh as I came up to her. She was talking to me but still looking at Ari, I saw.

  “It certainly was,” a new voice said.

  We all turned and saw Headmistress Nightworthy striding over the grass, still wearing her stiletto heels.