“For what? For being manipulated into a tight spot? We’re both in the same situation, and we’ll both do our best—end of story. I don’t expect that you’ll save the world, and I’d certainly be surprised if I managed to. It would be nice if we both managed to make it out of this alive and unscathed but realistically, that’s unlikely. So, what do you want to do, Lainey? You can run. I won’t chase you, or think any less of you. We can probably get you on a plane out of here and a couple of thousand miles away in less than an hour. Is that what you want?”
Lainey gave a very inelegant snuffle, and then hiccupped again while thinking she was a little tempted by his proposal, if she were honest.
“No.” She dashed her remaining tears away with the back of her hand and blinked several times. “We both know that would only be a temporary solution at best. They want me dead and eventually they’ll find me, no matter where I hide in the world. So…” She swallowed hard. “I’m with you, Mercer, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared. I don’t want to die just yet. Especially, now that I’ve discovered great vampire-style sex, I want to spend a few decades seeing if there’s a chance I’ll ever be able to keep up with you.” That set her off again, and it was a strange mix of hysterical laughter and tears.
“There’s no chance of that ever happening,” he said with a wink, “but we could certainly try improving your stamina. Then we could have a go at the four or five hour sessions I’ve been talking about.” The tears turned to giggles once more and it was with surprise that she found herself back in her bedroom and being tenderly laid upon the bed.
Mercer began massaging her shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension that had built up from the morning’s activities, humming softly as he worked. His fingers were talented. Dipping beneath her jumper, they kneaded and rolled her flesh until she was purring in pleasure. He managed to get her so relaxed that when he eventually voiced a question, she almost didn’t hear it.
“I’m curious, Lainey. What’s your grandmother’s trigger? What does she do in order to release her magic?”
Lainey groaned. His wondrous fingers had stopped their soothing rhythm and though she felt refreshed, she didn’t want to face reality just yet. Oh well.
“A witch never tells anyone what their trigger is. To do so would mean giving another a great deal of power over them, power to prevent or even stop their magic permanently. When I find my trigger, I must never reveal it to anyone. Gran drilled that into me from a very early age. So far it hasn’t been an issue.” Lainey laughed bitterly.
“So what happened last night? What was different from all the other times you’ve tried to release your energy?” He sat there looking thoughtful, while running his fingers through the dark strands of his immaculately placed hair as he considered her newest snippet of information.
“If I knew, believe me I’d have stored it away for future use. I’m as clueless as you are. Each time I try exactly the same technique as Gran taught me. Yesterday was the first and only time, in which anything other than nothing has happened. I wasn’t aware I could even perform magic until last night. I now have a whole load of questions in my head that may never be answered.”
His hand reached for hers and their fingers entwined. When he lay down beside her though, his face looked far too serious. She guessed he was also feeling the weight of the world upon his shoulders, and she thought he bore much more than she did. For a moment, they did little more than embrace the silence of the room around them, comforting each other with an occasional squeeze of a hand. When Mercer rolled over onto his side and released his grip on her hand, he cupped her cheek and stroked it a couple of times smiling faintly at her sleepy form.
“I need to ask you something, Lainey. Think of it as a favour.” He frowned, as if what he was about to ask was distasteful to him. She did not have a good feeling about this, and her eyes stared into his trying to fathom what it was that he might need. “I’m not sure how to ask you this,’ he said gently pressing his lips to her forehead, and then there was a soft sigh before he spoke again. “I’ve bitten Kalliope twice. With a third bite, she can bind me to herself and that will give her the power to make my life worse than an eternity in hell. Much worse. I want to prevent that at all costs. I want to take your blood one last time, and hope you’ll consider my request to try performing your own binding spell upon me.”
Lainey covered her mouth with her hands and shook her head, mouthing her answer.
No! She could only stare at him with what she imagined was a look of horror before anger replaced it.
“Did my grandmother put you up to this?” Her voice was good and mad. “I’m pretty sure the last thing in the world you want is to be forever beholden to a witch. That’s what this would be, Mercer—a lifetime with me!” Her finger pointed at him and then moved back into her chest. “Witches live longer than the average human, Mercer. That’s whole lot of years to be tied to me and more than that, you’d be servile. Whatever I asked of you, you would be compelled to do, and there are many laws regarding a witch and vampire relationship. Distance between us would be painful. You could never bed or bite another female. Your role would be one of worship. I know the thought of that is repellent to you, especially after what has happened to your brother. The answer is no, because there is no good that could ever come of this. The only way you could ever be free of a relationship like that would be to kill me. You can’t ask me to do this. I know you do not love me and entering into a binding spell without love will leave us with nothing but hate and loathing.”
“I’m prepared for the consequences. I’ve thought this through very carefully. What I cannot prepare myself for is a life of servitude to Kalliope. I would do anything—anything—to prevent that from happening. Name your conditions, for I will comply with them all but I don’t want to go into this battle with a chance of becoming her lapdog, if it can possibly be avoided.” He leant down towards her, and grabbed a fistful of her hair as his eyes consumed hers. “I stand a chance of happiness being bound to you, Lainey, however slim that chance might be. With Kalliope, there is no chance. There is only misery, regret, and endless pain. It would be a hideous life, especially for one who is un-dead.” He smiled ruefully and his eyes were now glassy with his plea. “If I promise I’ll do my best to keep you happy, will you do this for me?”
Lainey closed her eyes and tried her hardest to push him away. “No. No, you can’t ask me to do this.”
“Please, Lainey. If our situations were reversed, know that I would do this for you.” His eyes pleaded with hers and she knew that she could not deny him his request, though she knew she would regret her weakness later. There was one small ray of light though. Magic was required to complete a successful binding and there was little chance of that happening from her fingers.
Staring at the ceiling for a moment, she bit her lip hard before promising him what little she could. “Fine.” She sighed heavily. “You can take my blood, Mercer, and I’ll try to perform the spell but you know as well as I do that my magic is nearly non-existent. I very much doubt I’ll be able to complete the binding but you have my word I’ll give it all I’ve got, and then some.” Never before had she hoped her magic wouldn’t work.
They tried four different attempts at the binding spell. No flicker of magic appeared, and the desolation in Mercer’s eyes was almost worse than having denied him the farce of the pairing in the first place. He kept insisting she try again when she failed.
“One more time, Lainey.”
In the end, it was she, who put a final stop to the awful mess. She had given all she could. It wasn’t enough.
Dream Weave
Clutching a small vial of clear liquid in her delicate hands, Lainey was running. With her lungs burning and her hands frozen into tight fists, each pound of her footsteps against the concrete beneath her sent a jarring thud through her body. They had been up before the first rays of dawn and overnight, the world had turned into a cold and vicious place.
It
was Kalliope’s doing. Somehow, she had managed to get inside their heads and now held them trapped within a dream weave. Dressed from head to toe in black with sneakers on their feet, she had attired them for speed and agility which was jolly decent of her, since the things she kept throwing at them as they raced along her chosen path were nothing short of hideous.
The realm that they now found themselves in was dark, hostile and full of hidden nasties. The landscape was continuously changing, the hazards were constant, and nothing was quite as it seemed.
Mercer was a constant presence inside her head barking commands, which she had to obey immediately, such as jump left, step right, lie flat, or stand still. It was only through his acute senses that they had managed to stay alive this long. The logical part of Lainey’s brain told her that this was only a simulation, and that nothing inside it was real but her emotions told a different story. The pain was real, the fear was sharp, and Kalliope was far more powerful than either of them had realised. It was a given that she could get inside Mercer’s head after they had shared blood, but she shouldn’t have been able to control Lainey too. Her ability to manipulate, both of them, so easily was not just frightening it was downright terrifying.
“Stop!” Mercer’s voice barked the command with a little more urgency than the last time he had said it, and Lainey skidded to a halt.
The loamy dirt track they had been running along was now a sheer cliff face and it was crumbling beneath her feet. Feeling her body suddenly become weightless, it was with horror that she found herself dropping like a stone into a chasm of foaming white water beneath her, laced with large jagged grey rocks. A hand enclosed itself around her wrist and she felt herself yanked forcibly upwards and back. There was no time to stand still for the terrain all around them was collapsing. Mercer flung her into his arms, and then with a burst of vampiric speed he outran the decaying forest only to find them now at the mouth of a raging river, which had burst its banks. The earth below had turned into knee-deep mud and with each step forward, they sank deeper into the boggy ground.
Mercer tightened his grip around Lainey’s body looking over his shoulder for another route, but there was no going back. The disintegration continued behind them and if they stayed where they were, they would be falling into nothingness inside of five minutes. The path ahead looked no less uncertain, with their only options being trapped in mud or drowning in water. Frantically looking from left to right and gaining no answers, he looked helplessly at Lainey. “Can she kill us inside here?”
Mercer had to wait for his answer for just then the swell of the swollen river sucked them free of the mud, and they were swept away on the tide. Tightening his grip, he tried his best to keep both of their heads above water. Everywhere was a swirling mass of churning white foam, and its hiss was deadly.
“Don’t know,” choked Lainey as a mouthful of salt water flooded her mouth. Bobbing up again into the spray, she yelled, “Still trying to figure this out.”
Her fist closed tightly around the vial she held and she wondered if she would break it but thankfully, it held firm.
“You and me both,” spat Mercer as he twisted his body around, making sure it was his back and not Lainey’s that slammed into a large slab of granite. The stone jutted out with fierce angry edges and it tore into his flesh, but he didn’t make a murmur.
“You’re hurt,” shrieked Lainey, who watched the smear of blood upon the rock before it sailed quickly out of view.
“I’ll heal.” He flicked his wet hair out of his face and managed to get a firmer hold on Lainey, holding her higher in an attempt to make sure that she could breathe. Navigating between whirlpools and pressure waves, he began scanning the area for an escape route. There was definite urgency to his calculated movements. The water was only a few degrees above zero and if they stayed in there for any length of time, Lainey knew she would begin to suffer from hypothermia. When the next outcropping of grey rocks came into view, he was ready for them. “Hold on to my neck, Lainey, and whatever you do don’t let go.”
Doing as he asked, she watched as his hands made a lunge for the biggest rock, and with a vice-like grip, he scrambled on top of it. With a burst of speed and an impossible leap, he managed to jump the three metres needed to reach the other side of the bank. Both landing safely, they now found themselves nearly up to their necks in mud. Wading with forceful jerky movements, he carried them forward until the ground beneath them hardened and the roar of the river faded into the background. Struggling on and covered in dirt and grime, Lainey managed to gather enough air to speak.
“Do you think maybe you should carry this?” She waved her vial in the air, which was now almost unrecognisable, pretty much like the pair of them.
“No.” His voice was terse. “I think that may be the only reason she hasn’t killed you already. Kalliope wants that serum. There are probably two reasons she’s placed us in here. One is to exhaust us so that we will be of little threat to her when we finally confront her, and the other is to find out the trigger to your magic. If she can do that, she can localise your perceived threat. By the looks of things, she’s guessing it is shock, fear, or perhaps adrenaline.”
“Of course…she must have seen what happened last night. I’m hardly dangerous though. That’s the first and only time I’ve ever managed anything remotely resembling magic but then she probably doesn’t know that.”
Struggling to keep up with Mercer’s breakneck pace, they took off through an overgrown cornfield, battling to forge themselves a way through the tightly knitted stems. The stalks bit sharply into the flesh of their arms and legs but their slowing down was not an option. They knew exactly what lay behind them.
“How do we get out of this, Lainey? Any ideas?”
Lainey was wondering exactly the same thing herself, and she was still clueless as to the answer. “I think we’re stuck in here until we end up dead or Kalliope gets bored and decides that she probably doesn’t have much to fear by facing us. That’s my best guess.”
Mercer grunted. Pushing her behind his frame so that he took the brunt of the damage from the corn, they continued for a few minutes in silence until he turned around with another question. “Do you really think we can die in this place?”
Lainey shrugged wishing she knew for sure. “You’re probably safe. As for me, I’m ninety-nine per cent positive that she can’t kill me here, but I still don’t like the odds.”
“Me either.” Mercer’s head snapped back around in front of him. There were several low growls coming from up ahead, and they didn’t sound friendly. “Wolves,” he whispered. “What fucking next?”
Grabbing Lainey protectively in his arms, he carried her up high until they were clear of the field and facing a pack of white wolves, which must have numbered more than twenty in total. Each was snarling with its teeth bared. Behind them was a series of dilapidated buildings with corrugated iron roofs and smashed glass windows. It looked like an abandoned warehouse and if they could just get inside, there was a chance it might offer them some shelter.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk very slowly and see if they let us pass. If they attack, I’m going to run bloody fast for that building up ahead and we’ll try to get up as high as we can so they can’t hurt us.”
Lainey disliked that plan. Judging by the feral look on their faces and the unkempt, ragged state of their fur, these wolves were hungry. Their emaciated bodies confirmed this, and anything in Kalliope’s weave was bound to be nasty.
“Don’t bother with walking,” she said. “Normal rules do not apply here. I’ll get on your back, and you sprint as fast as you can for the building. If we can barricade the door once we’re inside, we’ll do that and if not then we’ll try to head for higher ground.”
Mercer considered her request and then shook his head. “If we walk slowly, there’s a chance that the pack will remain where they are. If there’s a possibility we can get through with our limbs intact, we should at least
try it. I will need to feed if I expend much more energy.”
“No.” Lainey shook her own head in response, and she understood Mercer’s exhaustion, but knew she was right in this. “Everything Kalliope does here, she does for a reason. She’s trying to exhaust, terrorise, and incite a response from us. I don’t think there’s any way we can manipulate the outcome of her little tests and since there is no going back, we can only move forwards.”
As if to confirm her theory, the wolves began to advance forward displaying sets of black decaying teeth and dark pink gums. As the leader of the pack focused his attention on them, Mercer finally assented knowing there was no question the beasts were going to attack. They were clearly riled as if someone had set them onto them.
Putting her down gently, he waited for Lainey to position herself at his back, before hoisting her into the air. Grabbing both of her legs, he yelled, “Hold on tight.” Then he sprinted as fast as his legs could carry him.
It wasn’t fast enough though. As soon as the wolves detected motion, they began running towards them and though Mercer was quick, he didn’t have enough distance to accelerate to his top speed before the beasts were on them. They leapt at him from all angles, and he had no way in which to tear their jaws off his flesh because he was gripping her.
With one arm around his neck, Lainey tried her best to kick and hit their attackers as fiercely as she could but as one fell off, another would take its place. Their jaws stank, and the smell of fetid breath and decaying flesh made her skin crawl, but it was their eyes that scared her the most. They were piercing blue and had a crazed rabid look to them. The pack ripped and tore at Mercer’s legs, sinking their teeth into him but since he was moving so quickly they struggled to hang on, and one after another, they fell by the wayside. Finally, spinning around in a dizzying circle, he managed to send the remaining beasts flying before barging towards their refuge just a few metres away.
Paranormal Magic (Shades of Prey Book 1) Page 176