The wind puffed Jane’s robe and swelled her hair. In the glow of aether, her face was stark, her eyes without mercy. She raised her staff to the sky, gave a primal scream and slammed it into Fain’s ward. It boomed like thunder.
The ward held.
Bobbi screamed as Fain tried to consummate the rite. Quinn could do nothing but watch.
*
I jerked up my knee, caught him in the thigh. His full weight crushed me as he fumbled, trying to penetrate. His cock jabbed my thigh, my stomach. A zipper scraped my flesh. I struck out. My fist connected with bone.
He smacked his forehead against my cheek. Pain shot through my eye.
A deep voice rumbled, hot and wet in my ear.
“You will take me into you, daughter. You are my vessel. I made you strong to bear me into this world. Take me or I will break you.”
I couldn’t breathe. The world dimmed and closed to nothing but the stench of the man-demon smothering me and the pain of his blows. My teeth clamped onto his ear and I tore off a chunk of flesh. Blood filled my mouth. I gagged and spat, crying, choking. The beast-man screamed and hit me again.
Thunder boomed.
*
Jane’s staff crashed into the ward, her face set in concrete, eyes blazing with inner fire.
Boom!
The tip of the staff shone.
Boom! Quinn’s ears hurt from the sound.
Spirits shrieked and scattered, terrified by the awesome display of power.
Boom! She struck again. Red cracks zigzagged across the ward.
One more strike and with a sound like the shattering of the sky, the ward fell. The mage fire vanished.
Jane crumpled in a heap of billowing robe.
Quinn dove for Fain.
*
The pressure vanished. I rolled, coming up hard against a stone block. A headstone?
I wiped my eyes with a bloody, shaking hand. My mouth tasted of blood. I spat.
A cry of pure pain. I spun. Two figures wrestled at the edge of the candle light. William’s high voice whined. Quinn pinned him and punched. Blood splattered both of them. William shrieked. He bucked and clawed the ground, snatching a candle and smashing the glass votive across Quinn’s face. Quinn jerked sideways, his face exploding with cuts, eyes full of glass. William squirmed, reached and came up with a knife. He lunged at Quinn, the bladed arced high to strike Quinn’s back.
He never reached it.
A spectral figure in white rose behind him. Jane, eyes firing fury, raised her arm to strike. She called to the Lady and sank her sacred athame into William’s back.
“Never again!” she screamed.
Fain’s eyes rolled, mouth gaped. His features shuddered, sliding back to human. Jane pulled back and struck again. The knife slid into his neck. Blood spurted. His knees buckled.
Jane plunged the blade again. And again. And again.
“Never! Never! Never!” Until Abilene circled arms around her mother and pulled her back.
Jane dropped the knife. Her regal features crumpled and she wept into Abilene’s embrace.
Through a haze of tears, I saw William breathe his last breath. A bubble of blood popped on his lips and his aether blew away on the wind.
Quinn sat up. His face was a mess of blood. He reached for me and I fell into his arms, smearing my blood across his shirt.
And I broke just as Koro wanted. Sobs tore through me, loosing the rage that William had pinned behind a wall for days. Snot and tears streamed down my face. I pounded on Quinn, my blows striking his chest, shoulder and arms. He didn’t stop me. I shook and raged until my muscles gave out and I sagged against him.
“I got you,” he whispered and kissed the top of my blood-matted head.
18
Contrition
HORSES SPRINTED THROUGH THE FROST-PAINTED PASTURE.
As a kid, the sight of horses galloping never failed to thrill me. Every day, I woke eager to do my barn chores and feed the animals. Now, even the sleek, glossy horses shining in the morning light did nothing to comfort me. I pressed my bruised face against the cool glass and watched it fog.
Like my brain for the last week.
Two days had passed since the events in the cemetery. I’d spent one of those sedated at the hospital and the next in my old room at the farm, unable to sleep, staring out my window, waiting for the next monster to attack.
I rose and threw on a housecoat. The motion tugged at the stitches across my chest. My bare feet cringed against the cold floor. The weather had finally caught up with the calendar and the day was chilly. Emmett had started the old furnace. The house groaned and creaked as I headed for the bathroom. Downstairs, Emmett and Molly tiptoed around, afraid to disturb me, afraid I’d break if they spoke too loud.
It was a possibility.
The mirror in the bathroom, yellowed around the edges and shot through with fine cracks, did nothing to enhance my appearance. The bruise on my cheek was deep purple and swollen. I could look forward to the gradual fading to green, then yellow. A hairline fracture, the doctor said. I’d been lucky that William hadn’t struck me a few inches higher or he might have damaged the eye socket.
Yeah, lucky.
My bottom lip had scabbed. I felt like bits of William’s ear were stuck between my teeth and no amount of flossing could change that. He’d turned me into a rabid beast.
I looked into my eyes and didn’t know the person who stared back.
I had loved him. He made me do things—kiss him, touch him—but worse, he twisted my love into a tool. My emotions were no longer my own.
At least I’d been saved from one hellish fate; William hadn’t raped me—and even if I’d wanted it, begged him for it, it would have been rape. But he’d been saving that special pleasure for Samhain and his midnight picnic in the cemetery.
I splashed water on my face and went downstairs to find some answers.
“Where’s Emmett?” I asked Molly, who sat with her ubiquitous cup of tea in the kitchen.
“In the big barn. Do you want breakfast?”
I ignored the question and slipped my feet into muck boots. Outside, the wind whipped my housecoat, exposing bare legs. I ran across the yard to the bigger of the two barns, and hauled open the door.
“I want to know things.”
Emmett looked up from stacking bales of hay. His brown eyes were haunted, but he nodded.
“Let’s go inside,” he said.
I planted my feet. “No. Here. Now. Tell me why William waited to…fuck me until Samhain.” The curse word fell like a hand-grenade. I’d dropped all my anger into it—anger at William, anger at myself for being a victim. Anger at Emmett for hiding the fact that he was a Paragon med-mage. There was more anger to go around, but I’d get to it.
Emmett sat on a hay bale.
“He wasn’t trying to kill me. He was trying to rape me. Why?”
“Samhain is unique. It’s the night when the veil between worlds thins and Koro could more easily possess him.”
“And you know this because you were a demon hunter for Paragon.” I had learned a few truths in the last couple of days, and they didn’t all sit well.
He spread his hands across his knees. “I never actually did any of the hunting. I was more in the research and development side of things.”
“A med-mage,” I said. He nodded. “But my father…” I closed my eyes. He wasn’t really my father. “I mean Benjamin Cole, he was a hunter, a knight of Paragon.”
“He was also your father in every way that’s important. He loved you.”
I waved my hand as if this was of no importance, but a lump lodged in my throat. Ben Cole had always been my father, a giant of a man with a deep laugh. I had few memories of him, but even those were tainted now. Another precious thing William Fain took from me.
“So Koro was riding in the passenger seat on Samhain,” I said. “But why? He wasn’t trying to sacrifice me.” With dark magic it was always about blood. And William’s rite h
ad started that way. My hand came up to touch the bandage covered stitches on my chest. He blooded me, but that had only been an opening gambit, a way to let Koro possess him.
A horrifying thought cut into my mind.
“He was trying to impregnate me, wasn’t he?”
Emmett nodded slowly. “I think so.”
William had planned to plant his seed—my father’s seed—in me and grow what? Another demon? Did they think I’d willingly carry such a beast to term? That Jane wouldn’t murder me as soon as the ward fell?
“Why?”
“There is precedent. A demon can manifest by implanting his seed in a human host.” Emmett’s shaggy eyebrows lowered in that way they did when he was holding back real emotion. “And it happens fast, within minutes. Most human women are too weak to carry a full-blood demon to term.” He didn’t explain what that rapid gestation would do to a woman. I could imagine—stomach bulging, organs tearing as a fully formed demon burst from my womb.
By the gods. I thought I would vomit.
“In essence, he births himself, but he needed a strong woman to be his vessel.”
“One with demon blood,” I whispered. That was why Koro had stolen four human women twenty-nine years ago. He couldn’t find a host, so he made one.
“He’s been looking for me all this time?”
Emmett nodded. “He can’t interact on this plane. He can only work through possession. And contrary to Hollywood myth, it’s not easy for a demon to possess someone. He needs to find a willing host. And when he does, that host must stay off Paragon’s radar. We’ve stopped more than a few possessions before they became deadly.”
“That’s why you took me in. To watch over me.”
“At first, yes. Your parents weren’t really friends of ours, though we knew them through Paragon, of course.”
“I was a job.”
“No!” Emmett rushed over and squeezed my shoulders with his big hands. “Never that! You were a child in need. We took you in and you became our daughter.” He shook me a little. “Never doubt that. I love you as much as I love Grace and Jennifer,” he said, naming his flesh-and-blood daughters who I’d always thought of as sisters, “and probably a little more than I love Ryan.” He grinned and I half-sobbed, half-laughed. I couldn’t help it. I loved Ryan like a brother, but he didn’t make it easy.
I wiped my eyes. “One last question: did Koro kill my parents?”
“Yes.”
He’d been hunting me for nearly three decades. And he wouldn’t stop. William was dead, but he’d find another host and come for me. And I, the untrained witch with enormous powers, wouldn’t be able to stop him.
“I could go for that tea now,” I said.
*
I sat on the front porch watching horses zip around the pasture, a forgotten cup of tea in my hand. The cold weather made the animals frisky. The shadows were long and blue along the fence when a car pulled into the driveway.
Quinn.
I hadn’t exactly been avoiding him…yes, I was. I didn’t want to deal with my jumbled feelings right now. We’d started something good, possibly something amazing. It had all turned to shit. The cost of William’s betrayal grew ever higher.
Molly had filled in some of my missing days. Quinn had spied on me and learned the truth before anyone else. And he’d fought for me. But he’d also soothed me once, by accident. He’d confessed immediately and promised never to do it again. But the thought of that awful magic taking hold of me made the breath hurt in my chest.
Quinn’s feet kicked up dust in the driveway. He limped slightly. One eye was covered with a white patch. I remembered the glass votive shattering over his head and winced.
He walked to the edge of the porch. His one blue eye, as dark as the falling shadows, ranged up and down my body, taking in my bruised face, disheveled clothes and the bandage sticking up through the collar of my shirt.
“I went by your house,” he said. “You weren’t there.”
Ah, we’d reverted to the awkward conversation phase.
“No. I didn’t want to be alone.”
He nodded as if that made sense. We stood watching each other like strangers for a long minute.
“How’s your eye?”
“Doc says it’s just a scratch.”
I doubted that, but I didn’t press.
Horses trotted past the drive, glowing in the last light of day.
“I’m sorry I didn’t stop him,” Quinn said. “Sooner, I mean.”
“No!” I suddenly felt foolish, ungrateful and a whole host of other unpleasant emotions. “I should thank you. You saved me when no one else could, when I didn’t even know I needed saving.”
My verbal explosion seemed to release something in him. He sagged and sat heavily on the porch by my feet.
“I shouldn’t have let it get so far. I should have taken you away as soon as I realized what he was doing.”
I laid a hand on his shoulder.
“It wouldn’t have made a difference. Koro would have found me anyway. He will always find me.” That truth was a cold hard stone in the middle of my wellspring. My aether could pool around it, cover it, mask it, but the truth would remain. Koro would come for me.
“We found out about William Fain,” Quinn said. He turned to see my expression. “I could tell you about him, if you want.”
I nodded. Nothing he could say would hurt me further. William was dead.
“He was from the Crestlayan Coven, near Charlotte. They’re an old coven with a few hereditary families. Fain was the last of his line. His High Priestess said he always felt like he had something to prove. He was reckless. She wasn’t surprised that he would open himself to possession. They’re coming to claim the body.”
I let those words work through me, sought an ending within them, but found none. I hoped they burned his bones and scattered the ashes.
The sun dipped below the tree line, sucking color from the world as it went.
“He made me love him,” I croaked.
Quinn shook his head. “I should have taught you to detect soother magic. I never thought…We’ll make it a priority in your training. I promise.”
His one good eye pleaded with me, but I couldn’t give him what he wanted.
“I think Abilene should take over my training. For the next little while at least.”
“You don’t think I would ever soothe you?”
“Not on purpose.” How could I make him understand? “I just need a little time…to find my real emotions again.”
He nodded and rose. We stared at each other, the few feet between us were an unscalable gorge.
“I’ll tell Abilene to expect your call as soon as you’re feeling up to it.” He turned to go.
I couldn’t leave it like that.
“Quinn!”
He turned. The last light caught the gleam of his dark hair and deepened the shadows on his face. He looked so tired. I had done that to him.
“We’re okay,” I said. “I mean, we will be.”
Quinn smiled and I felt a bit of life return to my dead heart.
Before you go...
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Sneak Peek at Trigger Magic: Hidden Coven Series, Book 3
You won’t have to wait long for Book 3 in the Hidden Coven Series. Here’s a sneak peak at the cover for Trigger Magic coming soon! Join the mailing list to get updates on new releases at www.kimmcdougall.com/contact.
While training with Abilene and Quinn, Bobbi botches a spell with dire consequences. Her mother’s grimoire may hold the key to fixing their mess, but no one has seen it since the day Bobbi’s family perished in a fire, over
twenty years ago. Quinn and Bobbi visit the ruins of her childhood home where odd memories of a nursery rhyme lure them into mystery and danger.
Chapter One
Invasion
THE SKY BROKE.
Fat heavy raindrops pelted the roof of my car. Tired of spring, Mother Nature just wanted the job done. I turned off the engine and sat in my driveway. To get soaked or not to get soaked?
I really wanted my bed.
Lightning reflected off the dark windows of my single-story house. The rain increased, and was that hail? Yep. Ice pellets pinged off my car as if daring me to break for the house. I closed my eyes and leaned against the headrest.
I’d been awake since before dawn helping my father at his Open Gate Farm Tour Fundraiser. Now close to midnight, I needed sleep. Emmett wanted me to stay at the farm, but I had to work tomorrow. I wanted my bed for tonight and my bathroom and closet in the morning.
The hail stopped, giving me a small reprieve. I readied myself to dash for the door, wishing I knew a spell against weather.
Wind nearly ripped the door from my grip as I jumped from the car. Hailstones crunched under my feet. Cold water dripped into my eyes and plastered my clothes to me by the time I reached the door.
Lightning crackled again. I froze. Something was wrong. I wasn’t proficient enough with wards to protect my entire house, but I’d set up a few magical trip wires around the perimeter. I should have felt a tingle of aether as I passed over them, but I didn’t.
The wards were gone.
I unlocked the door and flicked on the light switch. Nothing.
Just perfect. The storm knocked out the power. Or had it? I peered back into the rain. Several porch lights glowed up and down both sides of the street.
Inborn Magic: Hidden Coven Series, Book 1 Page 9