BLOOD MAGIC

by Jennifer Lyon

  The feel of Axel riding her, totally out of control for her, was too much. She arched, digging her heels into the ground as he drove them both over the edge.

  His orgasm burst at the same time.

  Darcy wrapped her body around his as the sense of unity and contentment replaced the burning need. The more he released inside of her, the more she calmed. The twitching and pulsing of her powers eased back, settling into a gentle simmer in her chakras. She felt the touch of wings brushing her skin.

  Axel's heavy breath stirred her hair and tickled her ear. His chest pounded against her breasts, and his emotions were a steady waterfall of pleasure, triumph, and relief that he hadn't hurt her. That he hadn't lost control and gone after her blood.

  Then the waterfall went icy with doubt and distrust. What had she done to him? He'd gone to her as if she'd pulled the strings that controlled him. A witch. He'd just screwed a witch …

  Darcy squeezed her eyes closed, trying to block out the suspicion building in him. The truth of his feelings for her. His distrust. She knew his self-control was how he defined himself, and he'd lost that control with her.

  Like she'd been in control?

  It hurt to realize she scared Axel. No matter what he claimed, she frightened him. He didn't trust her. Her chakras began to close off, to retreat from her pain.

  Then she felt a sensation of wings sweeping around her, comforting her. What was it? Axel's hawk wings? She felt them as real and vividly as she felt Axel's body pressed against her. Was it real or …

  Axel suddenly pulled out of her and leapt to his feet.

  Darcy fought to keep from reacting to his rejection even while it sliced her heart.

  He looked down at her and said, “Someone's coming, get dressed.” He snatched up his shorts and stepped into them in a blindingly fast movement.

  She didn't hear anything, but his urgency washed over her. She grabbed her clothes, dragging her shirt on, sliding on her panties, then standing to step into the shorts. She lost her balance, and started to fall when Axel caught her. “It's Joe.”

  She could immediately feel his tension ease and his suspicion of her scaled back to an unconscious simmer. There was something odd about how clearly she was feeling Axel. Normally, she just got the fear and distrust; this was more. But right now she had to deal with her cousin. “Joe? Something must be wrong.” She shrugged off his arm and pulled up her shorts. Then she lifted her gaze to see Joe striding toward them. It wouldn't be hard to spot them in the moonlight as Joe clearly had. He wore pants and shoes but no shirt. His hair was wild, sticking out at odd angles. The closer he got, the clearer she saw the hunch of irritation in his shoulders.

  When Joe reached them, she said, “What's wrong? Is Morgan okay?”

  His blue eyes narrowed on her. “It's that damned cat. It started howling about five minutes ago. Woke me up, and I checked in on Morgan, she's awake, too. I went into your room, obviously you weren't there.”

  “Obviously.” She agreed, ignoring whatever he meant as a wave of excitement poured over her. Anticipation. Hope. That cat was the only link she had to her mother and her powers. She took a step. “I'll go—”

  Joe caught her arm and pulled her close to him. “Are you all right?”

  She lifted her chin and made herself look at him. “I'm fine.” She wouldn't explain. Didn't really think she could. She knew it was just sex. Axel had reacted to her simply because of his mega sex drive. But it had meant something to her. He had accepted her, told her not to fight her powers, made her feel safe enough to expose herself physically and emotionally.

  Then he'd been suspicious of her. Like she'd somehow tricked him, used him. He was the one who had come to her!

  Stupid witch.

  It choked her, but she swallowed it down. “Let go, Joe. I want to see the cat.” She desperately wanted a connection to who she was, to her mom. Needed it now more than ever.

  “If he hurt you or forced you …”

  She felt Axel's presence loom over both of them with that weird feather touch when she knew damn well he wasn't touching her at all. But Axel didn't say a word. Keeping Joe's gaze, she said, “He didn't.” She had wanted him, craved him, and she wouldn't deny it now. “I'm fine.”

  Joe nodded and let go.

  Darcy rushed into the house. As soon as she opened the access door inside the pantry she heard the caterwauling noise of a catfight. It raised the hairs on her arms. Quickly, she went down the hallway, turned into her room, and stopped.

  Joe and Axel spilled in after her.

  The cat stood on the silver box, his hair stiffened along his back, staring at her.

  It was cold on the bottom floor, the tile under her feet felt like iced marble. She crossed her arms for warmth and said to the cat, “Tell me what to do.”

  The cat stared back at her.

  Her chakras opened up to the fifth one, but her powers bubbled and popped in agitation, like they couldn't find their mark. Shivering with cold, she considered her options. While she did that, Axel jerked the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around her.

  The gesture surprised her, and she looked up into his eyes. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged.

  She turned back to the tapestry. “How do I …” She blinked and stopped talking. The threads of the tapestry shimmered brighter than ever. So bright they lost their form, slipping from where they were stitched into the tapestry, and moving to the surface of the lake in a swirl of colors. Darcy felt herself tilting clumsily as she tried to make out the threads.

  A heavy arm settled around her shoulders and anchored her. Everything else slid away, the floor, the room, the walls, everything but Axel and the tapestry.

  The threads started to take shape on the reflective surface of the lake. Darcy's heart pounded as a woman formed. First the outline, then little by little, she became a solid figure resting on the water.

  Recognition sucked the breath out of her. All her life, she'd dreamed about this moment. And now, the woman's auburn hair, brown eyes with the strange cat tilt, the nose, the full mouth … “You're my mother.” She wasn't sure if she said, or thought, the words.

  The image smiled. “Yes. My name is Fallon Lundice. I have only this one time to talk to you before I must go.”

  “No! Go where? I've only just found you!” Or had she? Was the image real? Was it like Carla projecting herself as the Crone avatar through the Internet? Could it be someone tricking her?

  “Darcy,” she said softly, the echo of regret, sympathy, love, so many emotions mixed into two little syllables.

  She felt herself slip farther, unable to feel the cold tile beneath her feet, or even the blanket around her shoulders. All she could feel was the weight of Axel's arm and a slow tide of grief swamping her. The words scraped her throat as she said, “You're not alive?”

  “No. I didn't want to leave you, Darcy. I fought, please believe me, I fought to live. I ran and hid with you, but eventually I had a vision. I knew I wouldn't survive, but you had a chance if I put you with a mortal family; the MacAlisters.”

  Her chest grew tighter and tighter. It hurt to breathe; it hurt to feel. She looked at the image of her mother; she appeared to be so real and alive, as if Darcy could reach out and touch her. “What are you now?”

  “It's magic holding my spirit in the image of the cat in the tapestry. Now I have only this single opportunity to tell you how much I love you, how much I have always loved you, and that I will continue to love you even as I pass over into Summerland.”

  The loneliness, the wrenching anguish for her mother, took her breath away. Her eyes burned, her throat ached. She was alone. Still alone.

  And yet, she felt a set of huge wings fold around her, holding her as they had when she'd been a child and locked in the closet. The comfort of that made her push on. She had only this one chance to talk to her mother. Opening her eyes, she saw that her mother was weeping; the tears rolled down her face and filled the lake.

  “You di
d this for me? Bound yourself to a tapestry for twenty-six years?” She shouldn't cry. She should be damned grateful.

  “Time is nothing to me now, and I got to watch you grow up. I thank the Ancestors for that, Darcy. You are all that I could have hoped for and more.” The colors of the tapestry darkened. “Had I been able, I would have killed the man acting as your father.”

  That made her smile. Someone had been there, protecting her as best they could.

  Fallon added, “It was an effort to keep from attacking that drunken fool, but I feared it would take too much of the magic left to me.”

  “You attacked Axel and Joe.”

  “The witch hunter? I thought he was taking me from you, not bringing me to you. Plus he's a witch hunter. He'd been in your apartment once already. I was terrified he would kill you. I know Joe loves you, but he's a mortal and so I was afraid the witch hunter was controlling him.”

  That made her smile—no one controlled Joe. But it also made her realize a deep truth. “All those years, you really were with me. I thought I heard a voice singing songs to me. I used to talk to you …” She trailed off as she struggled to take it all in. She had a second mother who loved her, who'd been there the only way she could.

  “I heard you. I wove a few songs into the magic of the tapestry to play for you when you were alone. Something I could give you.”

  It all made sense now that she knew she was a witch. Now that she knew magic was possible. “And the voices? In my head?”

  “Ancestors. They were shocked that you could hear them. Then as you got older, as you struggled to repress your powers in order to survive with that man as your father, their voices receded farther and farther from you. But sometimes you still heard them. You are our hope, Darcy.”

  “I wasn't crazy.”

  “Or evil.”

  She could feel time ticking by, feel the threat of her mom, just now found, slipping away from her forever. “How long do you have? Why did you appear now?”

  Fallon rocked gently on the surface of the lake. “I don't know how long, but I have much to tell you. As to why now, you opened your fifth chakra and that is your communication beyond the mortal realm; your powers surged enough to release me.”

  She nodded, remembering very well just how her powers surged. “I tried to call for a familiar,” she said softly.

  Her mom's gaze grew wary. “And did your familiar come?”

  “No. Not yet. How long does it usually take for one to show up?”

  “Before the curse, it could be an hour or a week, it just depended on how far the familiar had to travel to get to you. But now, it's much more complicated. For you to understand just how complicated, and why you are the hope of the witches, you have to know what happened to me.”

  Darcy's mouth went dry. A fountain of questions gushed in her head. “How did you die?”

  “I was murdered.”

  The white mist closed in on her, trying to draw her into a tunnel and away from the truth. But she stood firm, refusing to let go of this magic that gave her access to her mom. She asked, “Rogues?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Darcy, I don't remember dying, but I remember fighting to live, to stay in that life to be with you. I would never have left you willingly. But we are witches, we have several lifetimes to live and learn. Our death cycle is really a period of rest until we choose to reincarnate. Or we can choose to stay in Summerland as an Ancestor.”

  Her heart squeezed at the comfort Fallon was giving her, along with knowledge. It was time for Darcy to listen. She pulled herself together and the mist moved back, allowing her to see Fallon clearly again. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I thought I knew a way to break this curse, for witches and for witch hunters. I was there when the curse was cast. I was one of the witches who alerted the hunters, through the hawk, their leader. The demon witches were causing chaos and terror in the town of San Francisco. Men killed their wives, mothers killed their children, gossip and lies tore families apart. It took the earth witches awhile to track the spells back to a coven of demon witches. We did this by opening our sixth chakra and using our third eye to see what the demon witches were doing.” At Darcy's look of confusion, Fallon added, “Your third-eye chakra is in the center of your forehead. When you open it, your regular sight leaves you, and your third eye opens. Once you learn to control it, you can have ‘visions’ with that eye. It will show you what you magically summon, or in the time before the curse, we used the third eye to connect with the Ancestors.”

  “You found the demon witches this way?”

  She nodded. “We saw where they were hiding, and called the witch hunters.”

  “They came?”

  “Yes. Three witch hunters were sent, all traveling separately. The demon witches knew they were coming, so they used a glamour to make themselves appear as three young mortal women and approached one of the hunters. The hunter didn't check to see if they were demon and had sex with them, and the demon witches captured him. The other two tried to rescue him, but they were captured as well. The demon witches held them in a deep cave until the full moon that night. Our power is always stronger where two earth forces mesh, for instance: where the ocean touches the shore. Or when the moon faces the earth completely, during a full moon. Those are power points for witches and for demons. Some call them ley lines. For witches, our familiars help us control and focus the power we pull through our chakras from ley lines.”

  Darcy absorbed this. “The demon witches needed the extra power at a full moon.”

  “Right. They conjured a magical barrier to the cave to keep us out. To break the shield, we had to open our chakras all the way up to the seventh level—knowledge. Very few witches can do that.”

  Pride filled her heart. “But you could?”

  Her mom smiled. “I could. Together, knowledge and my third eye showed me the demon Asmodeus. He's the demon of lechery, jealousy, anger, and revenge. He appears to have a scrap of human DNA somewhere in his lineage, and that has tied his powers to earth. In the Underworld, that makes Asmodeus vulnerable to other demons who can force him into slavery for them. Asmodeus has to gain as much power as possible to keep that from happening. His powers grow in direct proportion to the misery he causes on earth. The demon witches that had the hunters trapped in the cave were doing Asmodeus's bidding “

  “How did you get into the cave?”

  “We had to outthink the demon and his witches. That's why we strive so hard to reach our knowledge chakra. Now that I knew the demon, I searched for his weakness. He uses lechery, jealousy, anger, and revenge to create misery, so we set up a circle of love using a ceremony of emotional and physical bonding.”

  “Sex?” The word tumbled out.

  “Sex is a powerful force and is a symbol of love. It can also be a symbol of evil, like rape and domination. Asmodeus thrives on meaningless, degrading, damaging sex. He hates positive, caring sex. We chose a witch and witch hunter who had real love inside of them that the ceremony would bring out. It's a beautiful ceremony; the bodies are symbols, it's the emotion that is real. We pulled that love into our chakras and, with the help of our familiars, funneled it at the dark shield in a steady stream.”

  “You broke through the barrier to the cave?”

  “At moonrise, yes. All the witches and witch hunters poured into the cave and that's when everything went wrong. Too late, I realized Asmodeus had set this whole thing up. He wanted us to get into the cave at exactly the right time—while the demon witches were casting the curse. When we burst in there, the curse ripped out all of our souls and tried to bind them together. We frantically cast a spell to reclaim our souls, but three-headed Asmodeus appeared and, in his fury, sealed the curse with fire. Our souls did our bidding and returned, but they were all damaged. No longer whole.”

  It was horrible to imagine. She had never realized such evil existed. “You know how to fix this? To break this curse?”

  H
er mom's brown eyes clouded in grief. “The curse was thrown with these words: ‘We bind thee soul to soul; in the blooded power that you crave above all else; in sex to claim your descendants.’ We had stopped the demon witches from binding the hunters’ souls to themselves, but the wording left the hunters craving witch blood, a craving that drove them to killing madness.”

  She tried to follow this. “So where did the souls bind?”

  Fallon's gaze filled with pride. “My theory was that in that one hideous second when all our souls left our bodies, witch souls bonded with hunter souls. Then the souls halved and went back to our respective bodies. Essentially that made us soul mirrors; two halves of a whole.”

  “How do we fix this? What part do I play? You said I'm the hope, but I don't see how, I didn't even know I was a witch until a few days ago.”

  Her mom's eyes grew dark with recollection. “I spent an entire year meditating and thinking about this, and I think there is a loophole in the curse. I believed that if we found our soul mirror and we bonded, our souls would be whole. It was obviously dangerous, since witch hunters were killing witches for the power in their blood. To protect myself, I created a powerful charm to cloak my powers so that a witch hunter wouldn't be able to smell the power in my blood, then be driven to kill me.”

  “Wait! We can do that? Then we can protect ourselves and—”

  Her mom's eyes filled with regret. “It didn't work for long. I called my soul mirror by the light of the moon just as I would call my familiar. What came was a young man, handsome yet …” She shivered. “He had already gone rogue. But he didn't know I was a witch. We had a powerful connection, so powerful that we had sex.”

  The white fog surrounding Darcy wavered and pulsed with her shock. “But—”

  “I know it seems crazy, but once I put things in motion by calling my familiar, I couldn't stop it. Sex was part of it. Before the curse, sex had nothing to do with calling a familiar. But this wasn't a familiar, it was a soul mirror, and sex was part of the curse, remember?”

  Darcy nodded. It was all so complex.