He curled his arms around her and rocked them both, needing the contact as much as she did, maybe more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
September 21
Equinox
In the dark blue of early predawn, Cara could just make out Sven’s silhouette at the window. She didn’t know what had awakened her—maybe him getting out of bed, maybe her sleeping self feeling the empty spot beside her—but she knew the tense line of his body as he stood alone, and how the sight brought a clutch inside her.
“Sorry.” His voice came out of the darkness as he turned toward her. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I don’t know how you do that.” And it wasn’t just that he knew when she was awake, either. Over the past few days, as they had worked nearly around the clock to get the winikin ready to defend Che’en Yaaxil—teaching them to use the shield stones and fire-tipped projectiles that together gave them almost warrior-class armaments—he had seemed wholly attuned to her moods and fears too. He knew instinctively when to soothe, growl, or give her room. She couldn’t say the same, though; there were times with him when he got quiet and faraway, and she didn’t know what to do to help, or even whether she should try.
Like now.
Logic said he was a grown man and would ask for help if he needed it. More, for a man who had spent most of his life alone, she imagined it was a shock to suddenly find himself in charge of a small army, with all the demands that went with it. So she was trying to give him room. But at the same time, something—maybe her instincts, maybe the bond between them—kept telling her that he needed her when he got like this, quiet and withdrawn.
“It’s magic,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. But there was strain there too, and as he stepped toward her and his face came clear in the faint illumination from the bathroom night-light, she saw a silent plea for her to believe the smile and ignore the other.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what was wrong, but she didn’t. She wasn’t sure she wanted the answer, not today of all days, when their partnership needed to be its strongest.
Instead, she smiled back and, when he got into bed beside her, she let the dip and pull of the mattress draw her into him, so bare skin slid and heated. “No,” she murmured, “this is the magic.”
“Ah, Cara,” he whispered into her hair, but said nothing more.
Instead of asking, she tipped her face up to his for a kiss, and drew her hand down his body in a long, slow caress that made him tense and groan. This was what he needed right now. It was what they both needed.
Seeming to agree, he wrapped himself around her and took her under with a kiss that wiped everything else from her mind. Gone were her doubts and fears—about him, the winikin, the coming battle—leaving only sensation behind.
Her perceptions coalesced to the press of his lips on hers and to the good, solid strength of his body. She caught her breath when he skimmed his lips down along her throat and across the upswell of one breast to capture her nipple in his mouth and suck, hot and wet and mimicking the act of love.
Moaning, she clasped him tightly, urged him on. They kissed and clung, touched and teased, until the blood sang in her veins and her heartbeat trip-hammered with a rhythm of: more-more, more-more, more-more.
She might have said it aloud, must have, because he rasped her name, along with hot praise and dark promises as he rolled atop her, poised to enter her. She dug her fingers into his hips and arched against him, waiting, waiting, wait— Ah! She cried out as he thrust home, filling and stretching her, and making her see starbursts behind her closed lids.
Then he was moving, setting a hard, urgent rhythm that slapped her body from zero to sixty in no time flat, and from there to overdrive. She held on to him, bowed beneath him, and buried her face in his sweat-slicked neck, where she whispered his name, a moan, a litany of, Yes-yes-there-more-oh-there, as her body tightened around him.
Her breath stilled as her senses rushed inward and then pushed her up, up toward a huge-seeming goal, and then over. The orgasm flared through her, locking her muscles and leaving her helpless to do more than cling and cry Sven’s name as he thrust into her again and again, prolonging her pleasure and wringing out his own until, with a rattling groan, he plunged into her and held tight, body jerking as he came.
Then he held tight a few minutes longer, as they both shuddered in the aftermath and breathed each other in.
“Sweet Cara.” He kissed her cheeks, her lips, her forehead, then rolled to his side, parting from her body but taking her with him, so they were curled together. “Sweet, sweet Cara.” His words were drowsy, his breathing soft.
“Sleep,” she said, kissing him. “Turn it off for a while.”
He said something more, but it was lost in a sigh as, with a final nuzzle, he complied and let himself go lax. Within moments his breathing deepened and he was out. But although she badly wished she had the same option, her mind wouldn’t let her sleep. She kept coming back to his silhouette at the window, as he stared out toward the open mesas and the world beyond.
Don’t think about it, she told herself. Not today. She would talk to him about things after the equinox… or maybe not. He was giving her everything he had promised her, after all—he was protecting her, helping her, being there for her. How fair was it, really, to push him for more than that when he’d been honest from the start? She knew what she was getting into. And maybe—probably—she needed to find a way to let this be enough.
Somehow.
You must not let her destroy the gateway!
Rabbit lunged awake with his heart pounding, his ears ringing with his mother’s voice, and the power of the equinox coursing through him.
He was disoriented for a few seconds, but then the spins turned into panic, because not only was Myrinne’s side of the bed empty and cool, but there was another void, this one inside him.
Understanding stabbed like the sharpest knife. The eccentrics!
In an instant, he flashed back on last night, when Myrinne had met him at the door wearing nothing but a strand of obsidian beads. She had kissed him and led him to the bedroom, and they’d made love like they hadn’t done in months. In the aftermath, all loose limbed, stupid, and so damned tired of being inside his own head, he’d asked her where she went at night, and had somehow wound up telling her everything—about the eccentrics, his mother, and even her suspicions. It had all come gushing out, a vomit of emotions and self-pity that had damn near wrung him dry. And through it all, Myrinne had kissed him, held him, told him that she loved him and it was all going to be okay, and he’d believed her, believed in her.
Only now she and the stones were gone.
“No!” He threw on clothes, left his armband on the table, and raced out the door, sticking his old man’s knife in his belt as he hauled ass. He could just barely sense the stones, but it would be enough to track them. And her.
Traitor. Seducer. Betrayer. He wasn’t sure if the whisper was his own or not, but it fit all too well with the evidence. His chest hurt and his head was spinning.
There were Jeeps by the training hall, keys tucked neatly into the visors. He launched himself into one, fired it up, and sped across the compound in a spray of dirt and gravel. He said the quick spell to drop the blood-ward, used telekinesis to open the wrought-iron gates, and then restored both once he was through. His magic was running high, his temper and sense of betrayal higher as he figured out where she had taken the stones.
“Son of a bitch.” Nausea surged. He hadn’t been able to escape the dream after all. She was in the coyote cave, where he’d last envisioned her death. “Is this what you want?” he asked the gods that didn’t seem to be in the sky or the underworld anymore, but rather inside him. He tasted salt and for a second thought he was bleeding, but then realized it was tears.
Jesus Christ. Was this really happening?
The trip passed in a blur of kicked-up dirt and spinning tires. He didn’t bother with stealth, couldn’t
think beyond the rage and grief that pounded through him along with the pain in his head and the soul-deep whisper of, You have to get them back, become the crossover, and save all mankind.
He didn’t question how he could hear his mother’s voice without the eccentrics; he knew only that he could.
The cave mouth gaped wide and the once muddy ground surrounding it was cracked and crazed. The flash-flood river was gone, the earth parched, and his boots rang on the hard surface as he called a shield spell and strode through. His brain buzzed, filled with whispered echoes in his mother’s voice and the pull of the stones. And though there was a part of him that raged against both, saying that this was Myrinne—he loved her, trusted her—those thoughts were drowned out by the others that said she had betrayed him.
Inside the cave was cool, damp, and shadowed, and felt crowded with the animals that danced on the walls and ceiling.
Myrinne was at the altar, slim and lithe in jeans and a cropped tee that flirted with her tattoo. Her head came up at his entrance; her mouth went round with surprise and horror. And he felt nothing but murderous rage.
The scents of vanilla, patchouli, and lavender filled the air, and the eccentrics lay in a round dish beneath a layer of fragrant oil that flamed blue, then red as his magic filled the space. He had dismissed her Wiccan stuff as useless, thinking it was her way to feel like part of the team. He’d been wrong, though. There was power here. Betrayal.
“Rabbit.” She held up both hands. “Wait. I’m just—”
“Don’t!” he thundered. “No more lies!” There was a wrenching, tearing pain in his chest, and he broke, shattering from the guy he had been with her into a new man, one who could see what she had done to him, all the ways she had manipulated him.
“I’m not lying. I—” She screamed as the eccentrics erupted from the oil in twin burning sprays and flew to land in his outstretched palm, where they seared into his skin without pain.
Stuffing them into the pocket of his jeans, ignoring the way his black Windbreaker gaped open across his bare chest, he advanced on her. “Were you going to destroy them right away, or were you going to summon her first? What were you going to do to her? Damn it, tell me!”
Tears streaked her face. “I wasn’t going to hurt anybody. I was just trying to help. After what you said about the stones, I got this idea—”
“Don’t.” The word cracked like a whip. “Don’t pretend this was for me. It’s always been for you, hasn’t it?”
“No.” Her lips shaped the word but almost no sound came out. Her eyes were wounds, her mouth a slash.
“You’ve fooled me, manipulated me all these years, but now I’m seeing things clearly.” He was at the edge of the island, where baked mud went to shifting sand. A drip-drip made him look down. His hands were bleeding from twin slashes across his palms, though he didn’t remember making the sacrifice. He was filled with equinox power, though, overflowing with it. More, beneath the red-gold sparkle there was a faint rattlesnake hiss. A clatter. Exhilaration pounded through him. It was the first time he’d heard the dark magic’s song since Iago took away his connection to that half of himself.
His lips pulled back in a feral snarl. “This was what you wanted, right? You wanted me to use the dark magic again. But why? Who are you working for?” He leaned over her and got in her face to yell, “Damn it, what are you trying to do to me?”
“I’m not doing anything! Snap out of it, Rabbit, please! This isn’t you.” Tears ran down her cheeks in fat, glistening drops. She was shaking, gripping the edge of the altar as if to hold herself up.
The fog was thick now at the edges of his mind, his vision tunneled to her face above the burning oil. He slapped the pan aside, splashing scented oil, and smiled as she screamed and backpedaled. Deep down inside him, a weak, puny kid heaved, puked, and beat at the walls of his mind, screaming, What the fuck are you doing? But that kid was a pussy who’d never done anything right, and was easy to ignore when another voice, so much louder, said, Yes, Rabbie. My Rabbie. You are the crossover. Do what needs to be done.
The dark magic rattled again, filling his veins with flames and terrible power.
Sobbing now, Myrinne cried, “Call for help, Rabbit. You need to call the others. Please. I’m begging you.”
“They can’t know until it’s over,” he said, hearing another voice beneath his own.
Her eyes went wide, stricken, terrified, as she understood. “No.” Again, it was more the shape of the word than the word itself, and then, louder: “No!”
She spun and bolted. He didn’t even move, just flicked a finger and sent flames searing around her in a bright, crackling cage of fire. She screamed and stumbled to a halt. “Rabbit, no.” She collapsed to the ground sobbing, shouting through her hands, “I was only trying to help. Please!”
He barely heard her over the dark magic, which thrummed through him, and coiled at the black quatrefoil mark on his arm. Nearby above the altar, the fog swirled, gathered, and began to glow in the shape of a doorway. He stared up at the spot and a smile split his face.
We’re waiting. Make the sacrifice and call us through.
She said “we”! His blood leaped at the promise of seeing his twin, his other half.
“Yes, Mama.” He whispered the words, afraid that if he said them too loudly the dream would disappear. This wasn’t a nightmare, after all. It was the promise of a new future.
At his command, the fiery cage moved toward the gathering gray cloud, forcing Myrinne to move with it. She staggered, went down, and cried out when the lattice burned her. Her hair was soaked with sweat, her eyes blank.
The pussy inside him wept and railed, but his mage self—his better, stronger self—extinguished the flames and then reached for her with his blood-streaked hands. He got her by the hair and forced her onto her knees.
Her eyes focused, went wet with grief. “Rabbit, please.”
He set the knife to her jugular. “My name is Rabbie.”
“No,” she whispered, “you’re Rabbit. My love. My one and only.” She reached for the knife, grabbed the blade, and yanked her palm along it, and then clutched his free hand, matching them blood-to-blood.
The connection clicked into place instantly, traveling along neuronal pathways that had been burned into place by two years together and the love—or the illusion of it—they had shared. He fought to yank free, to shake her off. “Get the fuck—”
Then she dropped her mental shields. And for the first time, she let him all the way into her mind.
Vertigo spun around him as he plunged into the whirlwind without preparation. Then he was seeing what she saw, feeling what she felt, and knowing what she knew.
Terror, grief, horror, betrayal. The emotions slammed through him as he looked up at his own face, nearly unrecognizable in its fury. But beneath the fear there was Myrinne, opening herself to him. He caught memory flashes of the things that had made her the person she was: the abuse she’d endured at her foster mother’s hands, so much grimmer than he had ever suspected, kindling the drive to be more than herself—better and stronger, so nobody could hurt her ever again. He saw himself—as rescuer, lover, antagonist, friend, and, finally, betrayer and murderer, or close to it—and he felt the emotions of each.
But what he didn’t sense was duplicity.
She was pushy and ambitious, but she wasn’t a spy, a traitor, or a saboteur. She was, quite simply, Myrinne. The rest of it was lies.
“No.” He tried to yank away from her, tried to deny what he was sensing, what he had done. He succeeded in getting his hand free and breaking the bond, but he couldn’t get the truth out of his head.
Oh, gods. She hadn’t betrayed him.
But he had just betrayed the hell out of her.
“NO!” His shout echoed in a blast of power that was pure and gleaming, neither dark nor light, but a combination of the two. At his cry, the gray fog went utterly black and the hiss of dark magic rose up to a steampipe roar.
“Don’t let it through!” Myrinne cried. “Rabbit, for gods’ sake, shut it down!”
He stayed frozen, locked in place with horror as a presence boiled within the fog and then reached for him, whispering, Rabbie!
“No!” Myrinne lunged up and flung herself between him and the morphing cloud, then jolted and screamed when it lashed out at her, hit her. She was thrown back, struck the altar, convulsed, and went still.
Rabbit’s heart stopped.
The fog lifted from his eyes.
And he saw what he had done, what he had become.
“Myrinne!” He surged toward her, only to be brought up short by a blast of sound and power that came from behind him, nearly flattening him. He spun and saw the cloud fully for the first time—black and ugly, coiling from a split in what had to be the dark barrier. Revulsion lashed through him. Rage. “No!”
Flames shot from his fingertips, blasting into the cloud, which recoiled with a high keening noise. In his mind he heard, Rabbie, no! but he didn’t let that stop him. He didn’t know what that voice was—his mother, a demon, a member of the Banol Kax—but he didn’t care anymore. It was what had betrayed him, not Myrinne. And he had been so fucking hungry for a mother that he’d believed it. He hadn’t done the right things, asked the right questions. He’d been so caught up in wanting to know where he had come from, why he was the way he was, that he’d bought into the fantasy… and he’d become a monster. The dark barrier wasn’t the answer; the demons weren’t the good guys.
Shouting, he poured fire into the darkness again and again, moving forward as the cloud retreated back into the tear, then vanished. Even after it was gone, he kept hammering the rip in the barrier with his magic, building up layer after layer until there wasn’t a tear anymore, but rather a hard, scarlike strip.
Then he let the magic die and went down beside her on his knees. “Myrinne?”
Magic Unchained n-7 Page 30