by Eden Butler
“Let the asshole try.” Mai’s skin was cool to the touch when I rested my palm against her wrist. In front of us the ley lines hummed like an electric fence and their energy signature glowed bright. We need only step into the streams that ran perpendicular to each other—one shooting toward town, the other moving toward the back of the ridge and into the groves.
“Beautiful,” Mai said, resting her face against my shoulder. “So beautiful.”
“Don’t let it absorb you,” I told my twin, pinching her hand when she hummed.
“Right. I’ve got you.”
“You ready for this?” Mai nodded, gripping me tighter and we both stepped into the lines. But we weren’t alone.
Just as the brilliant energy coated us like a second skin, Mai shouted, pulled back from me as Joe grabbed her arm.
Chapter Seventeen
“Get off my sister!”
The tussle of strength was unbelievable. Joe shouldn’t have the power to battle me and Mai, not to mention the current that flowed from the lines, but he fought it, shooting hexes that looked dark, that the lines both absorbed and exaggerated the moment they left his fingertips.
“You idiot, you’ll kill us all.”
“Fine with me,” he growled, shaking Mai like she weighed nothing. My sister kept reaching for me, but my fingers ached against the current vibrating from the Elam and the struggle it made to drop into the lines. “As long as that damn thing is destroyed in the process,” he said, nodding toward the Elam.
Mai continued to struggle with Joe and it took all my focus to keep the Elam from bouncing out of my grip. All the time we were moving; around us, the forest slid past, a zip of trees and limbs and ground that became a big blur, the whiz of animals and rock all zooming past us as the line shot us forward on the surface of arcane energy. It was like walking on a half erected stone bridge with pavers that slipped and tottered with each step you made.
“Nearly there, Mai,” I shouted over my shoulder, glaring at Joe when he pulled my sister against his chest.
“You had better drop it before we reach the Cove.” Joe slipped his arm around Mai’s neck and she widened her eyes, immediately grabbing at his large arm to put her fingers between it and her neck.
“Stop it!”
“I’m not messing around, Janiver. Drop the fucking Elam or I will kill her.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“Are you stupid?” He jerked Mai closer to emphasize his point. “I killed my own blood when he overheard me talking to my trackers.”
“Wyatt…”
“Was too damn nosey for his own good.” Joe moved his gaze to my hands, to the glowing turquoise stone resting in my palm. “Now drop the Elam or I will choke the life out of your pretty twin.”
Behind Joe the lines rippled and I knew someone else had hopped them, but my attention stayed on Mai’s face, on the rounding of her eyes and the blue cast of her skin as Joe squeezed the breath from her.
“Please,” I told him, making myself seem small, wishing he knew what this pain was, to have an impossible choice. “I can’t choose between them.”
“Then you will lose them both. Your sister and your town. Either way,” Joe said dragging Mai closer as he stepped toward me, “the Elam will be destroyed.”
It felt so heavy in my hand. That beautiful stone, the small tortoise face blinking up at me, as though it could read me, see me, tell me how important I was, how pivotal it was that I restore it to its home. And then there was my twin, eyes wide, shining with fear as Joe choked her. The choice should have been so simple. It should have been something I needn’t give any thought to. My blood, my twin, she was what mattered most to me. But the Elam protected thousands. It kept us all safe. Millions more would be affected if it were destroyed. Life as we knew it, life as everyone knew it, could change. Disintegrate. Come to an end.
Who was I to make that choice?
“Save the Cove, Jani,” Mai spit out, her voice hoarse, raspy and I needed to only look at her expression, see that complete trust, that utter confidence in her eyes that she’d always shown me. I wouldn’t lose that and I wouldn’t let Joe take that from me.
“Fight like hell,” I told my twin, grinning back at her before I jumped from the line and rolled right onto the ground just two blocks from the town center.
Mai would fight, I knew that. She was the scrappiest witch I knew. I heard the fight in her, that scream and shout of “you rotten bastard,” she cried at Joe as I took off. I bypassed the quick looks I received from the mortals hovering around the silhouette of smoking structures that had once been Batty’s and several other buildings but now looked like black, ashen skeletons.
A group of firemen glanced at me running away from the crowd, and a cop watched me as I dodged through traffic, but they all were already overwhelmed by what they were already tasked at doing. I kept running, weaving around parked cars and numbed spectators, toward the gazebo in the town square, running along the small picket fence that secured the town square and small courtyard.
“Hurry, Jani, he’s right behind you!” I heard Mai shout and my breath came out easier as I jumped the picket fence, hoping the small crowd of mortals would pay more attention to the smoldering buildings than to me or Joe, whose heavy breathing I could hear behind me.
The gazebo came into view as I ran around two large cypress trees. Just feet from me and I’d be able to climb the trellis and refasten the Elam to the amulet that secured us. Grant blood would be handy just now, and it hit me that I would have to face Joe if I wanted to use his blood to secure the Elam back into place. I didn’t need Bane’s strength as Joe had. I had my own.
But I had not anticipated on his shifting, not with so many mortals around. Joe did, however, stripping off his shirt just as I stopped to face him in front of the gazebo, stepping back when all that expanse of olive skin transformed into inky black fur. Panther and massive. His square jaw smoothed out, elongated and then recessed into powerful jaws, and the man’s small capped teeth stretched and reformed into fine, deadly points that snapped at me the closer he came.
“Figures you’d be a giant pussy,” I said, jumping when the panther growled and pounced toward me.
Behind me Mai was joined by Sam and Bane and a small crowd of curious mortals. No, they couldn’t see this, not the mortals. It couldn’t be explained. I glanced over at my twin, at my brother, shaking my head when they both advanced.
What are you doing? Bane shouted inside my head and I managed one quick jerk of my gaze at him before I smiled. You watch my family’s back. And then, I lifted my hands, throwing up a shield hex that would keep them back and leave Joe the panther and me to settle this without the intrusion of wizards or the knowledge of mortals.
He came fast and brutal, growling, snapping at me, and in the advance he caught the cord holding the Elam in his snapping mouth, twisting it around his tooth. Flinging his head back, Joe threw the Elam across the ground.
“No! I don’t think so.” And I charged, toppling him as I jumped on his back with my arms around his neck. The big cat’s growl and the rebuking sound vibrated against my hand as I gripped his throat. It sounded like the whip of lightning cracking across the sky.
“Jani! Please!” I heard Mai crying but her words or Sam’s cursing didn’t do much to encourage me, and Bane pacing outside the perimeter of the shield only annoyed me.
“You cannot have it!” I shouted at the panther when he charged toward the Elam lying near the steps of the gazebo. My focus, my energy came quick and sharp and with an effort borne of adrenaline and pure nerve, I moved my mind beyond the block Bane had constructed. It was hindering me.
Release it, I shouted at him. Release it now so I can beat this bastard.
I do that and you open yourself to me completely. When I merely grunted, he added, It’s the price you pay, Jani. I want to see everything.
Fine, I told him, closing my eyes to concentrate on the writhing cat in my grasp. Just do it.
And then, Bane’s block crumbled inside my head. There was no barrier protecting me from the raw, open flow of the lines. There was nothing protecting me from its angry magic. Stunned for a split second, Joe took advantage and threw me off his back. I sprawled there on the ground outside the gazebo, on my back, and when I looked up I saw the great black cat preparing to strike. I barely had time to think, to focus—I only had time to react.
The lines flooded into my skin, absorbing every pore, coating every cell and when my eyes flashed open and I caught the gaze of that big black cat, every bit of red energy and seeping power flowed right into him.
Chapter Eighteen
He’d fought to the end.
The lines shot out from me, flooded from me as the panther pounced, but there was too much pent up magic, too much aggression and frustration from the lines to stop me from shooting hexes and spells and crippling injuries at the beast as it came at me.
“Leave, Joe,” I warned and still he continued, scratching at me with weak, ineffective grazes against my arms, my legs.
Every step he made, every charge was deflected, weakened by the force of the lines that pulsed and vibrated through me. They shot out wicked, old magic that the shifter could not take, that I, honestly, could barely manage to control. Perhaps I never really did control it.
He stopped fighting once I reached the Elam and when I picked it up, when I managed to crawl toward the trellis with Joe’s blood coating my fingers and smeared across that beautiful tortoise face, Joe stopped moving altogether.
“Merge,” I muttered, pushing the Elam back into the amulet.
The effect was immediate. Beyond the shield the Cove went still. The approaching mortals froze mid-trot. The firemen and emerging feds that slipped from their cars paused, eyes stopping in blinks, breaths held as the surge of magic waved over the town and the lines were once again tampered by the strength of the Elam.
Birds in midflight overhead went still, the water from the hoses, stopped in mid-stream and all the mortals around us simply ceased in doing whatever it was they were involved in, pausing where they stood. Wizards, witches and shifters, however, watched it all unfold, caught the quick flow of magic tampered and resettled once again as the Elam fixed itself right and took in that ley line energy.
My sister smiled, shoulders lowering as she watched me. My brother ran his hands through his hair, his features relaxing as Mai touched his arm. The tension left them quickly, easily and I offered them both a smile, relaxing until I shifted my gaze to Bane and knew, with one glance that he saw everything I’d kept from him for ten years.
It was all there shifting beyond the block he’d lowered, part of my memories. It came back in a flash, and passed just as quickly.
He kissed me, taking and taking until I could not breathe. It was an overwhelming, unbelievable moment and I prayed for the endlessness, for the seconds to twist and stretch and never stop. Bane was large and beautiful and tasted like something that would fill me completely. I was greedy for each touch, each taste and my heart became something that sped and pumped like I had just run a race and needed the extra blood flow.
“Jani,” he said again, eager to have me backed up to the wall with his mouth nibbling against my neck. “Jani. Damn, what you do to me.”
“Please…please don’t stop…” And he didn’t and that thick, warm tongue drew circles into my skin, his hands gripping and pulling and I felt needed, more wanted than I could have ever imagined.
“Touch me,” he said, moaning, happy, when I obliged.
And I did, just then, my nails down his neck, over his chest, my teeth skimming across the wide contours of his chest. He seemed to really like my fingertips against his hard nipples and my lips and tongue wetting down the center of his throat. There was a heat, some sort of spell cast between our bodies, a hum that mirrored the heartbeat of the earth, the faint, but constant hum of the ley lines pulsing through the Cove. That’s what zipped around the room, the sensation foreign to anyone mortal. Bane tilted me back, his large, strong hands holding my back, my head as he smoothed his mouth and nose down my neck, in the valley of my breasts and my hips moved, grinding against him, making our centers touch. Just then I felt it, him, long and hard and gloriously hot through my thin shorts.
We had let ourselves go on too far. There was too much touching, too many months of pent up attraction that we could not see the light flickering through our limbs or hear the slow thump of each other’s hearts beating beneath our skin. Bane’s low, hurried groan of pleasure, my eager, needy moans grew louder, stronger until that great whip of electricity between us moved hard and easy through our touching bodies.
“Shit,” he said, stilling completely when I slowed my hips so that my center rode his straining dick. “I…shit, Jani…”
And just then, I knew Bane would stop me. He wouldn’t let me have the only thing I wanted before I left Crimson Cove. He’d let me have a taste, but only a brief one.
“It’s okay,” I told him, already stuffing down my disappointment. “It’s fine.” But as I tried to disengage from him and step away to retrieve my bag, Bane pulled me against his chest with his large arm hooked around my waist. “It’s not fucking fine,” he said, burying his nose in my hair. “It’s not fine that I have sell myself to some girl I don’t know because your coven is…”
“Poor?”
He held me tighter, surer as though his touch would erase reality from the moment. He wouldn’t marry for love. He’d marry for power and my coven was small, too young to have any real clout. There was no way I would ever be suited for Bane.
But that didn’t make me want him any less and it didn’t stop him from spreading his fingers over my stomach, along my hips. “Right now I don’t really care about anything but the way you feel against me.”
I leaned back, resting my head on his shoulder as I scrubbed my fingers through his hair. “God, neither do I.”
That growl did something to me, had my body clenching and pulsing and I couldn’t help but arch against him, kissing him again, desperate, eager and then, it happened again.
That quick, smooth light, the flow of magic from the lines, the red pulse of energy, our skin firing sharp, bright, and I shuddered. Suddenly I was being opened up completely, and in a blur of heat and energy, my nexus unfastened, colliding like a hammer with Bane’s, and he and I both laughed joyously from the thrill of it, from the notion that this had been waiting for us for years. This had been what we were meant to do, to be, from the beginning.
“I claim you,” he said, but it wasn’t his voice. It sounded foreign, unreal.
“And I claim you,” I mimicked, not sure why I sounded so sure, so ethereal.
And then, with Bane holding me tight, with our nexuses melding together, merging, in the red glow of togetherness, the door flew open and I felt myself being dragged away, torn from his arms, the sensation of Bane’s energy, his warmth slipping further and further away from me.
“No! Don’t take her!”
“No, son. Don’t fight me.” Carter Grant held Bane back as my father kept a tight arm around my waist. “Lundi, I told you this would happen. You promised. That was the only reason I let him stay in this damn class. You said you could control her pull.”
“And I will, damn it, Carter. I will.” Then my father was holding me, brushing his fingers over my temple, soothing. “Take the memory, Janiver, mon petite bebe. Take it from him so he will not suffer.”
Bane’s face was a mixture of shock and despair, and his uncle whispered continuously in his ear, words that sounded old, foreign. It had to be the only thing keeping Bane steady. “It’s for the best, Janiver,” Carter told me. But his smile was really a sneer and the way he looked at me, looked through me made my stomach twist.
“Janiver, please, mon pet. For the good of the Cove. Take his memories.” My father pulled me close, pressed his mouth against my ear so only I could hear him speak. “Stay with him and your life will not be your own.”
&nbs
p; Bile rose quick in my throat and my father stumbled when I jerked against his hold. But he wasn’t wrong. Some part of me knew that, saw it in the fear and frantic way Carter held Bane. There was desperation in the old wizard’s features that I had never seen before.
And Bane, I could not take the fear working in his eyes. I could not let that shock, the horror that etched into his features settle too deeply. It had felt like bliss when our nexuses melded. It had been safe and home and secure, but who was I to take all of that and leave none for anyone else? My home was wherever my family was. My safety, my happiness would come only when theirs did. Who was I to take that from them? From everyone in Crimson Cove?
“Don’t be greedy,” Carter said, letting Bane come to me.
I glanced at the old wizard once, hating him, despising everything about him. “Leave us.”
“Janiver…”
“Papa, if you want me to take his memories, I’ll do it in private.” My father came to my side, stood next to Carter as both men glared at me. “Leave us,” I repeated, keeping my attention on Bane. Finally, they did.
“Come here,” I told Bane, and he obeyed, his head likely still compromised by whatever manipulative hex his uncle had done to him.
But Bane still kissed me, looping his arms around me, his mouth wide and eager against mine. For a few more moments, I let myself enjoy the taste and feel of him. He was mine, no matter what they’d make him do, who they’d make him marry, I would keep Bane in my heart, claim him. She, whoever she was to be, would never have him, not all of him.
And as he pulled me close, I flitted through the memory of the day, grabbing the mark of our melding, taking from him the touch and taste and feel of me against him.
There was a moment, small, microscopic, where Bane’s hands fell away and I stayed close to his chest. It was like watching him wake up…slow, confused until he blinked, his expression shifting from worry to alarm and then reorganization when his gaze landed on my face.