Spell Bound (Darkly Enchanted)

by Stephanie Julian

  “Actually,” she swung her legs over the side of the bed so she could sit up, “I feel fine.”

  Gabriel’s hands settled with a warm, steady weight on her shoulders. “Don’t move around too much. You might feel okay lying down, but—”

  “I’m okay, Gabriel. Really.” She couldn’t help but smile up at him. “I heard them. The voices. Really heard them. I could understand what they were saying, what they’ve been trying to tell me for so long.”

  He released her shoulders and sat back on the chair he’d pulled to the side of the bed. “What do you mean?”

  She grimaced as she held up a hand. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going crazy. I heard them. They’re not figments of my imagination or schizophrenia.”

  Gabriel’s arms crossed over his chest, and his eyebrows lifted, his expression skeptical. “Oh yeah? So what are they?”

  Without thinking, she reached out to cup his jaw with her hands, the rough scrape of his whiskers dazzling her skin. “It’s the women. The cursed streghe.”

  His expression shifted, became wary. “How do you know?”

  “Because I heard my mother.”

  He froze for a split second and she saw astonishment quickly followed by doubt flash through his eyes.

  Her chest tightened, and she blinked back sudden tears. Damn it, that shouldn’t hurt. She drew back but not fast enough. He caught her hands before she could get far. Still, the damage had been done.

  He didn’t believe her. And she cursed him for making her doubt herself.

  “Shea, wait.”

  “Fuck you, Gabriel.” She lashed out before she could help herself then shook her head, trying to tug her hands away from his. He held on, not enough to hurt, just enough to let her know he wasn’t going to let go.

  “Okay, sure.” He nodded as if she’d asked him to clean out her car or feed the dog. “If that’s what you want, no problem.”

  She knew he was just trying to get a rise out of her but her breath stuttered in her lungs at the image that popped into her head of Gabriel and her and a bed—

  Shit. “Gabriel—”

  “Shea, just give me a minute here, okay? I’m not saying I don’t believe you.”

  That brought her chin up. “I don’t need you to believe me. I know what I know. I have to go back and try to understand—”

  He nodded, his jaw losing the stubborn edge it nearly always wore. “Fine. Great.” He tugged on her hands, wanting her to look up. But she knew if she did, she’d get more pissed off and take a swing at that strong jaw. Or kiss it. “I’m glad you know what’s going on. But you’re not going back up there.”

  “What? Why?” Now she did meet his gaze and hers was blazing. “Who the hell do you think you are to tell me what to do?”

  “Shea, listen to me. That room will drain you dry. It might even kill you.”

  “What are you talking about?” She pulled away, and this time he let her go. Damn him, she did not miss the warmth of his hands. She scowled that much harder.

  “Versipelli energy is drawn from nature,” he said. “It’s not inherent, like in the streghe. The versipelli built that room to funnel power. It intensified your innate power before funneling it right out of you. If you’d stayed much longer, it would have killed you.”

  His expression twisted again, and he shook his head, drawing her gaze to his dark hair. He’d lost the leather band that had been holding it back and it waved over his shoulders. He had beautiful hair, almost too pretty to be a guy’s.

  “I wasn’t thinking.” He rose and started to pace. “I should have told you to go when I realized you were there. God damn it, you could have been really hurt, Shea.”

  He was pissed. She saw it in the way he stalked around the room.

  “Gabriel—”

  “You’re not going back in there.” He slashed a hand in front of him with so much force she swore she heard it slap the air. “So don’t even think about it.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath, ready to let him have it, the stubborn, overbearing, pompous—

  He slammed his fist into the wall by the door, exactly as Quinn had earlier today. She swore she heard bones crunch.

  “Gabriel!” She jumped off the bed and ran to him, grabbed his hand before he could do it again. “You idiot. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Vaffanculo , Shea, you could have been killed.”

  She looked up and found him staring at her, fear and anger making his dark eyes wild. He was mad at himself, she realized, not with her. It was a strange, warm feeling, to have someone worry about her. It’d been so long.

  She took a deep breath and reached for calm. Gabriel had enough mad for the both of them right now. “I’m fine. Gabriel, really. I’m better than fine. Let me see your hand.”

  He didn’t move, didn’t speak, just stared at her. She couldn’t handle that intensity for long and dropped her gaze to their hands. His knuckles were raw and bleeding. She felt his pain as if it were his own, felt it in her gut. Her Gift reached out to fix him, to make him better.

  Or maybe it was the woman who wanted to take him in her arms and—

  He flipped his hand and laced his fingers through hers.

  She watched their fingers slide together, felt the roughness of his skin against hers. She blinked when he raised his free hand and tilted her chin up so he could look into her eyes.

  He drew in a breath and she knew, before he lowered his mouth, that he wanted to kiss her.

  Oh, please, yes.

  She wanted him to kiss her, wanted that connection, to taste him again…

  At the last second, he closed his eyes and let his head drop back.

  “We need to get the hell out of here.” He drew in a deep breath and released her hand. “You’re screwing with my head. It’s not your fault. It’s mine.”

  “I’m not—”

  Gabriel exhaled one short, hard breath. “Shea. Please. Just…give it a rest.”

  She opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind, but his expression made her pause. Worry showed in the furrows of his forehead and the flat line of his mouth. And that made her swallow anything she might have said.

  Taking a deep breath, Gabriel released her hands. “We’re leaving, as soon as we can get the hell away from here. Get your stuff together and wake Leo. I’m going back upstairs to finish what I started.”

  He looked straight into her eyes, worry firmly entrenched there, as well. “I don’t want you anywhere near that room. Do you understand?”

  It took everything she had to keep quiet when she simultaneously wanted to beat him over the head and kiss him. Instead, she managed a short nod, jaw clamped tight. He responded with a nod of his own and walked out.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The trip was uneventful.

  And deadly silent.

  Gabriel sat at the wheel of the Jeep Wrangler he’d traded for the Audi at the safe house, still berating himself.

  Shea and Leo huddled in the backseat, while an unusually silent Quinn sat in the front. They were headed to Crimson Moon, Serena’s compound outside Reading, and Quinn was probably trying to figure out what to say to her.

  And he sat here, trying not to think about the female in the back seat. She’d finally fallen asleep about fifteen minutes ago, Leo’s head on her shoulder. She hadn’t spoken to him since they’d left the safe house.

  It bugged the crap out of him.

  It shouldn’t. He shouldn’t even be thinking about her. But he couldn’t stop.

  And he had a lot of damn time to think. He knew the way to the compound on the northeastern side of the city as well as he knew his own name. Located in the forest that covered Mt. Penn, on a narrow path that wound up the mountain, the house was disguised by a complex series of spells and wards that no one who didn’t know the correct procedure to bypass them would ever get through.

  Quinn shifted on the seat beside him, and Gabriel heard him take a deep breath then release it. These woods had a
lways called to Quinn, just as they called to Serena.

  Which made sense, considering Serena and Niccolo, her husband at the time of the curse, had been blood-bound, their souls tied together throughout eternity.

  And Quinn, according to Serena, held Niccolo’s soul.

  Hell, if being blood-bound to another person made you as miserable as Quinn and Serena… Yeah, he’d take a pass.

  Gabriel slowed then brought the car to a stop. “You want to get out and stretch your legs before we get up there?”

  A weak grin surfaced on Quinn’s face as he stared out the front window. “Want a little time alone with Shea, huh?”

  Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Vaffanculo, ceffo.”

  “Dude, I got eyes. Not that I blame you. She’s great. And she looks at you like you hung the moon.”

  Gabriel flashed a look in the rearview, making sure Shea was still asleep. “Baciami il culo, Quinn. She’s a job.”

  But even as he said it, he knew it was a lie.

  And he knew Quinn wasn’t buying it, if his shit-eating grin was anything to go by. “She’s smart and strong and she doesn’t take your shit. She’s not too hard on the eyes, either.”

  Gabriel shook his head but couldn’t dispute a word of it.

  Still, he knew why Quinn was picking at him. “Maybe now, with Shea… Maybe Serena will—”

  Quinn’s snort cut him off. “You know her better than that, Gabriel. She’s even more stubborn than you. And it’s eating me alive. I’ve been sitting here dreading this but so damn excited to see her I’m shaking. She’s never going to give in. And for my own sanity, I’ve gotta hear her tell me to get lost, so I can get on with my life.” Quinn turned to face him, his expression set in hard lines. “You know I took the Bullet to get through college, right?”

  Gabriel nodded. The Bullet was a dangerous cocktail of drugs laced with silver nitrate. It allowed versipelli to control their change during full moons when the urge is most powerful, especially for the younger males.

  “I hated it,” Quinn continued. “Hated that it made me feel dead. You have a switch inside, Gabe, that helps you do what the Bullet does for me. I used to think you were a cold bastard, the way you could turn off your emotions. Now, I think you’re the luckiest man in the world.”

  “No, Quinn—”

  Quinn talked right over him, his eyes staring blankly out the front window. “Did I ever tell you what they used to call me at college? The Monk. So, not only was I an honest-to-God freak with a secret I couldn’t tell anyone, but the guys I lived with thought I was a completely different kind of freak.”

  The pain in his friend’s voice made Gabriel flinch. He’d known Quinn had been unhappy at Penn State, but he hadn’t realized how miserable he’d really been. “Hey, man, we’re all freaks in some way. You grow fur. I can stop a bullet in midair.”

  Quinn frowned, drawing lines between his eyes. “You know I went out with a couple of girls in college, right? I never wanted one of them. Not Tammi, either. How freaky is that? I can’t live like this anymore. The past six years have been hell, knowing I can’t have the one person destined for me. How bad’s it going to be if I let it go on another ten or fifteen years?”

  Quinn turned away to open the door, but Gabriel caught his arm before he could get out. “Serena loves you. Maybe you just need to show her how much.”

  Blue eyes considerably dimmed, Quinn shook his head. “I wish I had your switch, Gabe. I brought a couple doses of Bullet. They’re in my bag. Just wanted you to know, so if I start acting weird, you’ll know why. I’ll see you up there.”

  Quinn opened the door and stood then shed his clothes and dropped them on the front seat.

  “Hey,” Gabriel called to him before he took off. “Don’t be too long.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Quinn flipped him off, shook his hair back from his face and let the change roll.

  The movies had gotten it more or less right about werewolves, the thought passed fleetingly through Gabriel’s mind. It was painful but worth the grace of the animal.

  Quinn rarely talked about the pain, but the howl that erupted from his throat as his spine contorted, his muscles lengthened and his bones reformed said it all.

  A soft gasp from the backseat made him look in the rearview mirror. He saw Leo staring out the window with wide eyes. Shea remained asleep, one arm still around Leo’s shoulders.

  “Is Quinn okay?” Leo’s voice quivered in the grayish-pink light of dawn.

  “Yeah, he’s fine. He’s almost done.”

  Quinn was on all fours now, his back humped as his hands and feet curled into paws and his skin erupted with fur.

  With a final shake, Quinn’s tail unfurled behind him and he turned to look at them with his human eyes. With a howl, he shot off into the forest without looking back. Gabriel figured Quinn would need at least an hour before he showed up at Serena’s door.

  “Does it hurt?” Leo asked in a quiet voice.

  Gabriel put the car in gear and started up the hill again. “Yeah, but Quinn says it’s a fair trade, the pain for the pelt.”

  “What’s the pelt?”

  “His fur.” He hit the edge of a nasty pothole and the car bucked. “Shit. Hold on, kid. This lane’s a bitch.

  “Gabriel, watch your language.”

  Shea had woken and, of course, the first thing she heard was his foul mouth. Just add it to the list.

  He didn’t bother to answer because it took all of his concentration to stay on what little there was of a road. Neither Shea nor Leo complained about the ride, although he heard them hit the sides of the car more than a few times.

  When they reached the end of the line, and he turned off the engine, Leo was the first to see the house. Gabriel could tell by his hushed, “Wow.”

  If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you could walk right by and not know you’d passed it. Built entirely of wood, with no windows in the walls but plenty of skylights, the one-story house rambled for close to a city block. Bark lined the outer walls, blending the building into the trees. Though the house was fully electrified and plumbed, you’d never know it from the outside.

  Even the stone chimney was camouflaged, due in large part to a heavy network of spells.

  “We’ll park in the underground garage then meet Serena.”

  None of them said a word as he drove around to the side of the building. After he’d muttered a spell and clicked a remote he pulled from his pants pocket, the wall split open to reveal a descending ramp.

  The sun had finally dawned and the light held a hazy blue hue. Then the garage door closed and the overhead lights flickered on, shutting off the outside world completely.

  The power, the magic, in the structure of the building shimmered like a low-frequency hum in the air. If you stayed long enough, you got used to it. He hoped like hell it didn’t trigger another one of Shea’s migraines.

  Gabriel had the bags out of the car before Shea and Leo climbed from the backseat. The kid hung close to her side, eyes wide. Her mouth set in a straight line, Shea took Leo’s hand and tugged him even closer.

  Gabriel fought the urge to pull them both into his arms and ease the fear on their faces. In the short time he’d had them, they’d gotten under his skin. And that, he knew from first-hand experience, could be deadly.

  If he wanted to keep them safe, he shouldn’t let them get close.

  But isolation sucked and he was sick of living in a vacuum.

  “Come on, let’s get inside.” He waved them up the stairs to a door at the top. “Serena’s waiting.”

  * * *

  Watching Gabriel open the door, Shea had the irrational urge to run. To take Leo and go somewhere no one would find them.

  Which is what you tried to do for a year and look how that had turned out.

  An insidious fear had started to creep up on Shea since they’d left the safe house, a panicky weight that settled on her chest and constricted her breathing.

  Would Serena, a f
ive-hundred-year-old strega, want to offer Shea up on a plate to Dario if Shea revealed what her grandfather had written in his journal?

  Or would Serena have another theory on breaking the curse, one that didn’t end with a knife in Shea’s chest?

  Hope and fear made her chest tight. Damn it, she was no coward. She wanted answers. If she wanted to get Dario off Leo’s back, she needed to be strong.

  Leo’s thin arm snaked around her back, hugged her closer. She looked down, expecting to see fear in his eyes.