Magic Unchained

by Jessica Andersen

  She was trying not to read too much into Sven’s message—gods knew textspeak sucked at nuances—but he’d been gone since early that morning and he’d been furtive on the way out. She hadn’t pressed, but she had definitely noticed. They were still feeling each other out in the relationship department, still figuring out how it was supposed to work. It wasn’t like either of them had any practice at it.

  He was trying, though; they both were. And her warrior’s instincts—the gut feelings she had learned to trust even before she knew they were real—said they would get the balance right eventually. He would still need time alone and it would be a while before letting him in became second nature for her, but they would make it work.

  There. Coming. Pearl rose to her feet with smooth, lethal grace and stood at alert, body quivering.

  Cara didn’t quite quiver, but it wasn’t far off. Anticipation tightened her stomach as a big shadow came out from behind a nearby dune. “What the…?” Then she burst out laughing at the sight of a contraption straight out of Mad Max, driven by the man she loved.

  Sven, wearing surf trunks, wind goggles, and a huge grin, wrestled with a big wind sail set off-center on a two-person surfboard that rode on big, wide wheels. As he came around the corner and headed for her with Mac barking his fool head off and nipping at the tires, a gust caught the sail and sent the vehicle heeling over onto one set of wheels.

  “Whooo!” Sven counterbalanced and rode the breeze right to her, then made a wide, braking turn that he managed to make look ridiculously elegant. Then again, he was ridiculously elegant, completely at home in an element that had nothing to do with magic or the war, and everything to do with him. With them.

  Fun! Pearl sent. Fun-fun-fun!

  Yes, it is, Cara thought, and went to meet her mate.

  Love shone from his eyes as he dropped down from the wind sail and collected her for a sweaty, satisfying kiss that had her blood humming and tugged at the connection between them. When they parted, his eyes were dark with promises, and fully focused on her, on the moment.

  “I like your new toy, sailor.”

  “Our new toy,” he corrected. “Skywatch needs to remember how to have a little fun. Besides, I want to take you sailing, and thought this would be a good compromise for now.” He was breathing lightly and grinning like a kid. “After the war we’ll get ourselves back out to sea.”

  “It’s perfect. And so are you.”

  “Can I quote you on that?”

  “We’ll see.” Stepping away but linking their fingers to tug him along with her, in the easy contact that had become second nature, she went over to the contraption. “Take me with you?”

  He moved past her to right the sail and turn the thing against the wind, but he looked back over his shoulder, met her eyes, and said quietly, “Always.”

  That one simple word lit her heart with joy. Things weren’t perfect, but she wasn’t waiting anymore; she was living in the moment with the man she loved, the one who stood there now, bare chested, tan, and laughing as he held out a hand to her in invitation with a quirked brow that said, I dare you.

  And she dared. Oh, she dared. And as they sent the wind sail screaming across the desert, pressed together, laughing, kissing, and just being, with their familiars galloping behind, she couldn’t imagine a more perfect moment, a more perfect man, a more perfect love. It was a world—and a life—worth saving.

  Forever after.

  Don’t miss Rabbit’s book,

  Spellfire

  Coming in November 2012 from Signet Eclipse!

  Read on for a preview…

  Rabbit’s father had always said that someday Rabbit would get what he deserved… and it turned out he’d been one hundred per-fricking-cent right. Shit, Rabbit could practically picture Red-Boar standing in the doorway, glaring at him from beyond the grave with a big-ass See? I told you so plastered on his mug, as leather whined through the air.

  Then the brined lash cracked across Rabbit’s back, laying open another bloody ribbon, and the image exploded into white-hot pain. He twisted against his shackles as if it were the first time he’d been whipped rather than the thousandth, and he might even have screamed.

  Maybe not, though. He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of much these days; his world had condensed down to the stone-block cell that had become his prison, and the golden-haired bitch who tormented him, tortured him, trying to make him give up something he’d already lost.

  “Turn him around.” At her order, talons scraped on stone and he was hit with a foul stench. Claws swung him on his chains, and he went from having his battered face pressed against the putrid wall to staring into the equally putrid visage of a camazotz.

  Nearly eight feet tall, with the body of an overendowed man and a face cursed with ratlike red eyes, a smashed-in nose, and a triangular mouth that held way too many fangs, the bat demon was ugly from a distance, and really fucking gnarly up close. It kept its ragged wings and barbed tail curled near its body in the narrow confines of the cell, but the oily drool and the way its beady-ass eyes went over Rabbit’s body said it was thinking about taking what little was left of his skin for wing patches.

  A month ago, Rabbit would’ve told it to go fuck itself, and maybe even described the process in graphic detail. Now all he could do was groan as his spine grated against the sandpapery stone.

  “Back off,” his tormentor said from behind the creature, and the camazotz ducked its head and gave way, returning to its post beside the door with a hiss that was its version of Yes, mistress, anything you say, mistress. That left Rabbit with a view that—to him, at least—was worse than a chorus line of camazotz doing Pirates of Penzance.

  He didn’t know what the demon’s natural form looked like—the Banol Kax could take on many shapes, from humans to three-story-tall winged monsters that breathed fire. This one appeared to be a woman in her twenties, with long, wavy hair, high cheekbones, and pale eyes that were unnervingly like his own. She wore a long red robe and had the trefoil mark on the inside of her right wrist, just as he did. All that was the same as it had been before, when he had known her in the world outside his cell. But where before she had come to him, slipping through the protective wards around Skywatch to speak to him in visions where she seemed ethereal and ghostly, now she was flesh and blood, or at least pretending to be.

  It was all lies, after all.

  As she approached, he forced a sardonic smile through split lips that hadn’t even bothered swelling, as if his body had given up on any hope of repair, and said, “Hello, Mother.”

  She wasn’t his mother, of course. She had played the hell out of the role, though, getting inside his head and offering him what he’d most wanted: a mother who had loved him and a reason to think that his old man had given a shit. She had sold him on the fantasy of having a real name—Rabbie—and a real family. She had cooed over him, coddled him… and then she had turned him, gradually and irrevocably, until he believed with every fiber of his twisted being that she was his only ally and all the others were his enemies, even the one person who had loved him unconditionally no matter what.

  Myrinne. The word was a whisper in his soul, a cry of agony coming from the raw wounds of knowing what he’d done to her under the demon’s influence.

  “Rabbie…” The demon tutted sorrowfully. Even now, with him imprisoned and the charade unnecessary, she stayed in character. She might not be able to get inside his head anymore—his mental powers had vanished along with his magic—but she knew it was a bitter reminder to see her like this. Cruel enjoyment gleamed in her eyes as she leaned in close, brushed her fingertips along his swollen jaw, and whispered, “My poor, poor Rabbie. Why are you making me do this? You’re hurting us both, you know.”

  His flesh quivered in muscle spasms that had him twisting away and then swinging back when he hit the ends of his chains. The scraping of the stone along his flayed back tore a groan from his throat.

  Her eyes lit, though her voice stayed a purr.
“Just give me what I want, and all of this stops and I set you free.”

  If he’d been another guy, in another place and time—some other Rabbit who lived in a parallel universe that wasn’t a few weeks away from D-day—he probably would’ve taken the deal; anything had to be better than this, even death. But he knew that wouldn’t put him out of the demon’s reach. And he knew that if he couldn’t escape from his shackles—been there, failed that—he could at least stall by pretending he still had what they wanted. Better for them to carve him up trying to gain access to Nightkeeper magic than have them go after one of the others.

  It was his sacrifice, though they would never know about it. He did, though, and it brought him a spark of grim satisfaction to dredge up bloody saliva and spit in her face. “Kiss my ass, bitch. You want what’s inside my head? Come and fucking get it.”

  She hissed, her eyes briefly flaring demon red as the air around them crackled with the oily rattle of dark magic. The magic was useless against him, though, at least for her purposes. She bit off a vicious curse and waved to the camazotz. “More. I don’t care what it takes—I want him broken, damn you. We’re running out of time.”

  Rabbit braced himself, knowing the first few blows were going to hurt like a bitch. He didn’t close his eyes, though—he’d learned it was worse not knowing when the whip was going to hit. Instead, he glared at the demon bitch.

  But as much as he hated her, he was far from innocent in his sins. She had whispered, suggested, seduced… but he was the one who had failed to tell his teammates about the visions. He was the one who had listened when she said Myrinne wanted him only for his power.

  The lash cut through the air, then into his shoulder and chest. And it turned out this was one of the times when he welcomed the pain, baring his teeth and riding it out with a sick sort of relief, one that said, Yeah, old man. I’m getting what I deserve. Not that it made up for what he had done, but at least he was being paid back some.

  By the tenth blow, the hot agony of each whip strike had turned cold and his body was shaking with chills. By the twentieth he was nearly numb, his eyes going unfocused as his consciousness threatened to take a hike.

  And then the weirdest fucking thing happened. He saw his father.

  It wasn’t like he’d been imagining, either. It was more like Red-Boar was really there, planted in the doorway, wearing brown fatigues and a camo green T-shirt, with a machine pistol on one hip and a ceremonial knife on the other. He didn’t register the blood or the beating, but instead scanned some distant horizon with a frustrated scowl on his battle-ax of a face. The vision was so real that even knowing his old man was dead and gone, Rabbit sucked in a ragged breath to call his name.

  But then the image wavered and disappeared. Rabbit’s struggles brought new pain searing as the shackles bit into his wrists and ankles, giving only slightly against the pins that held them in place. He wanted to roar and threaten. That would only please her more, though, so he just hung there, panting, while the nausea-inducing agony of the beating flooded back through him.

  “There’s no point. He’s useless.” The demoness waved away the lash. “Come. We’re going after the girlfriend.”

  “No!” Rabbit bellowed, slamming to the end of his chains. “Don’t you fucking touch her!”

  Eyes gleaming red with excitement, the demon bitch shot a vicious look in Rabbit’s direction. “Don’t worry; she won’t remember you by the time she gets back here. If she even makes it.”

  He roared incoherently, crashing at the ends of his chains as she left the cell, with the camazotz tossing the blood-soaked whip to the ground as it passed. Hatred pounded through him, would have consumed him if it hadn’t been for the guilt and fear, the knowledge that they were going after Myrinne because of him. Even from there, he could still hurt her, it seemed. “No,” he groaned, rattling the syllable up from the depths of his chest. “Please, gods, no!” But the gods didn’t hear his prayers anymore, leaving it up to him to save her.

  So, hooking his toes into the slimy stones for purchase and twining his numb, fumbling hands in his chains, he started climbing. He cursed when the rocks bit deep and then slid with blood, and again when pain made his stomach heave, but he kept going, pushing himself upward until he had a little slack in the chains. Before, he had found that it was just enough for him to get one hand near his face, and he had tried to tear the pin loose. Now he didn’t bother with the pin. Instead, heart hammering a frantic beat of Hur-ry, hur-ry, hur-ry, he jammed his thumb into a link of the chain as high up as he could get it… and jumped.

  There wasn’t even enough free fall to register before the chains snapped tight and the full force of his body weight hit that thumb with a sickening crack that echoed inside his skull. He howled, jerked his mangled hand out of the chain and against its shackle. Pain hammered through him, hazing his vision, but by the gods his broken hand folded and went partway through the iron! His consciousness fought to waver, but he didn’t let it; he couldn’t—wouldn’t—fail now.

  He pictured Myrinne—not as he had last seen her, but back when things had been good and right between them, and he’d known for damn sure he was the luckiest bastard on earth to have her. He imagined her dark hair falling loose to her waist, mismatched stones glittering at her ears, and her brown eyes laughing up at him in challenge.

  He didn’t remember any smell or sound beyond those of his cell, didn’t remember what it felt like to be touched with love rather than punishment, but he remembered that look. And it gave him the strength for another wrenching pull, one that dragged his hand the rest of the way free.

  Gasping curses, he fumbled, struggling to get the pin free from his other wrist, then from his ankles. He tumbled to the floor, landed hard, lay there dazed and disoriented by pain and weakened by captivity. Maybe there was some part of his warrior self left inside him, though, because he somehow found the strength to force himself to his feet. Grabbing the fallen whip and holding it in his good hand, he stumbled through the door and into an unfamiliar tunnel lit by a string of bare bulbs. An echo of sound told him which way the demon bitch had gone, and he set off after her with murder in his heart.

  He didn’t have any magic, backup, or even a freaking clue where he was, but he knew one thing for damn sure: He was going to do whatever it took to reach Myrinne and protect her this time, or die trying.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Epilogue

  Spellfire