Witch Fury

by Bast, Anya

Theo shifted and looked out the living room window, clearing his throat.

  “So, what’s going on, sweetie?” Maria asked. “Everyone expected you home from Kentucky three days ago. When you didn’t show up for work, Daniel was really concerned. You need to call him. Even Alex has been beside himself.”

  “I’m sorry, I—” Sarafina broke off. Clearly, she was looking for a way to explain her absence without revealing the truth and was at an uncharacteristic loss for words.

  Theo stepped forward and smiled. Sarafina’s mouth snapped shut. “It’s my fault. Sarafina and I have been seeing each other for a while, and when I saw how much she was grieving the loss of her foster mother, I insisted she drop everything and come away with me.” He paused. “I didn’t even let her pack a bag, which is why she’s wearing my clothes.” He stepped to Sarafina and took her into his arms, pulling her up against his side. “Isn’t that right, sweetie?”

  Sarafina stiffened. “Uh.” He rubbed his hand along the chilly skin of her upper arm. “Uh,” she said again.

  “Wow, Sarafina. Dating for a while? You never told me. What about Alex? You guys just broke up like two weeks ago!” Maria gasped and grinned mischievously. “Were you cheating on him?”

  “Did I say a while?” Theo asked. “Actually, we just met. It just feels like I’ve known her a long time.” He pressed a kiss to her temple and Sarafina’s eyes widened. “Isn’t that right, snookums?”

  “Maria . . .” said Sarafina with a shaky smile. She pulled away from Theo and led Maria toward the door. “I’m really tired. Thank you so much for your concern. You are the best of friends. Once I get myself in order, take a shower, and call Daniel, you’ll be the first person I contact, and I’ll tell you everything.”

  Maria grabbed her purse off a small bright red and blue painted table by the front door. “Okay, you promise to call me? We can go out for mojitos or something.”

  “Absolutely.”

  Maria hugged her again. “I’m just so relieved you’re all right. Never do that again!”

  “I promise. I just . . . just got carried away.” She cast a furtive glance over her shoulder at Theo. “We’re kind of, uh, into each other right now.”

  Maria leaned forward and whispered something in Sarafina’s ear, glancing at Theo. Sarafina giggled nervously. Then Maria disappeared out the door.

  Sarafina turned. “Thanks. I had no idea what to say.”

  “What did she whisper to you?”

  She smiled, her eyes sparkling. “No wonder, he’s gorgeous.”

  Theo cleared his throat and looked away.

  Sarafina laughed. “You’re bad with people, but especially women, it seems. A pity, since . . . well, it’s a pity.”

  “It’s a pity since what?” His voice came out a gravelly, low growl and he narrowed his eyes at her.

  “Uh, because most women probably think you’re pretty hot. Most women would agree with Maria.”

  “Most women? That include you?”

  She tipped her head to the side. “Are you . . . flirting with me, Mr. Winters?”

  He grunted and turned away from her. “I’ll do the warding now.” While he pulled the proper charms from his stores and cemented them around her windows and doors, Sarafina went into her bedroom and changed out of his clothes.

  The wards snapped into place just as she emerged from the bedroom with his clothes neatly folded over her arm. Now she wore a pair of tight-fitting, worn blue jeans that did good things for her ass and a long-sleeved blue shirt that did good things for her eyes.

  Not that he noticed her ass or her eyes in any way but a perfunctory one.

  She handed him her clothes. “Sorry I didn’t get a chance to wash them.”

  “No problem. Your wards are in place. They’ll keep out Stefan or any of the Duskoff.” He jerked his head at the book she’d placed on her coffee table. “Read that and get back to me.”

  “Oh, that’s my first priority. I’m making a pot of tea, maybe some dinner, and settling in to read.” She glanced at a small table near her kitchen. “Right after I listen to the fifty messages I have on my recorder, probably all of them panicked.”

  Damn, she had fifty-two messages on there. Apparently, Sarafina had lots of people to care about her. That must be nice.

  He left the apartment, intending to walk down the stairs and go back home. Instead, he turned in the hallway outside her apartment to look at her. He didn’t want to leave her. It bothered him. There was something odd about her, something off, something he wasn’t comfortable with—

  “Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “Was I staring?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You know, you really need to work on your people skills. Good night, Theo.” She slammed the door in his face.

  Something really irritating about her.

  SARAFINA SLID INTO HER OWN BED, WITH HER OWN sheets and her own pillows, snuggled down, and sighed. It was almost perfect. She was just missing . . . Grosset jumped up and settled at her feet. Ah, now it was perfect. She smiled and closed her eyes.

  Immediately, an image of Theo popped into her mind. Her smile faded and she shook her head a little, grimacing.

  She tried to snuggle back down and immerse herself in the treat that was her own bed and apartment after the hellish few days she’d had, but rest didn’t come. Really, it was no surprise. The book Theo had given her lay on her bedside table. She’d spent all afternoon and evening reading it.

  It was not material that made for good dreams.

  Warlocks—witches gone bad—and demons? Demons? Really? And she was part demon? Or at least, created through a demon’s magickal tampering. It was all so unbelievable. Yet she’d felt the power inside her. She’d wielded it. She knew it was all for real, no matter how bizarre it was.

  Earth, air, water, and fire. She was fire. At the thought, the seat of her magick gave a little pulse.

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. That was Shakespeare, she was pretty sure. Had it come from Hamlet? She wasn’t sure, but wherever it had come from, it was true.

  She’d spent most of the evening stunned that she wasn’t more surprised by the contents of the book and by what had happened to her. In an odd way, the information she’d been given completed a circle of knowledge within herself. She’d always known there was something more, that she was something more, but until now she hadn’t known what.

  Like a puzzle piece finally fitting into place. Now she had the complete picture.

  Her mother had been crazy, there was no doubt about that, but maybe she hadn’t been quite as crazy as everyone thought.

  Ugh.

  She couldn’t think about her birth mother without a cold knot settling in the pit of her stomach. As she always did, Sarafina turned her mind from the woman who’d given her life . . . then had tried to kill her. Anything else caused too much pain.

  And who knew that witches were men, too? She’d always thought that women were witches and men were . . . wizards or warlocks or something. The term witch had always meant something feminine to her.

  There was certainly nothing feminine about Theodosius Winters.

  Why did she have to keep thinking about him? He was like some kind of virus she couldn’t shake.

  It was true she did feel better with the wards up around her apartment. If she concentrated, she could sense them: solid, unyielding, better than a moat around a castle. Ironically, Theo would help her sleep tonight.

  Forcing Theo and the book from her mind, she closed her eyes. After her foster mother’s death, she’d taken all her paid vacation from work and planned to use the time to get her head together. She would just have to ask her landlord to give her an extension on her rent. If she gave blood or something, maybe she could actually afford a few groceries and some dog food.

  Double ugh.

  First thing on her agenda tomorrow was a trip back to the Coven. That meant she needed to get some rest tonight.<
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  Eventually, she drifted off only to be awoken by a crash in her living room. Grosset jumped up and started barking. Sarafina shushed him so she could hear.

  More movement.

  Panic sending an icy jolt through her body, she threw the covers off and grabbed the baseball bat she kept by the side of her bed. She still wasn’t comfortable enough with her fire magick to use it as a weapon. Thanks to the warding, at least she knew it couldn’t be Stefan or any other warlock—well, she hoped like crazy, anyway—but it could be a burglar. The way her luck had been running, she wouldn’t doubt it.

  She inched to the doorway of her bedroom, holding a hand up to keep Grosset on the bed. He sat down and put his head on his paws with a whimper. Something crashed in the kitchen and Sarafina winced. It sounded like a wild animal was loose in her place.

  She peered around the doorjamb at her darkened apartment. Luckily, she was a lover of nightlights, so she could see a little . . . enough to know a hulking dark form blocked her path to the front door. She’d hoped she could grab Grosset and make a break for it. She’d had quite enough of fight or flight during the last few days, thank you very much. This time around she was choosing flight.

  The large form turned and ambled toward her room. Oh, no.

  Sarafina turned quickly, her back pressed against the wall of the bedroom and her hands clenched on the baseball bat. Her breath came fast and hard and her nerve endings were electrified with terror. Grosset had his nose buried under his paws, seemingly as nervous as she was. God, she hoped he wouldn’t bark.

  What was that smell, by the way? It smelled dry and sort of bitter. How odd. There was something about that kind of scent in the book, wasn’t there? She searched her memory, knowing she’d read something about a smell like that. Wasn’t it caused by . . . Her whole body shook as realization took hold.

  Daaeman magick.

  Demons.

  The intruder reached her doorway and she swung her bat high and hard, aiming for the man’s face. The trespasser simply grabbed her bat and swung her instead. She slammed into the doorjamb with a crack of blinding pain. She collapsed on her ass, stunned for a moment.

  Grosset went ten different kinds of Pomeranian wild at the man’s feet.

  “Vae Sarafina. It is good to see you.”

  SEVEN

  SHE LOOKED UP AT HIM, RECOGNITION BLOOMING. RED eyes . . . killing rage. That’s what the red eyes meant, right? Right? She couldn’t answer, couldn’t move. Terror and pain had frozen her in place.

  Her thoughts came in quick succession. Demon. The same demon that had visited her at the farmhouse. There was a demon in the room and she was going to die.

  Grosset grabbed the demon’s pant cuff and shook it, growling. The demon’s massive red-eyed head swung toward the dog and he jerked his leg, sending Grosset flying. The little dog hit something and yelped.

  Fury exploded through her. “You bastard!”

  She lunged across the floor, grabbed the baseball bat, and rolled to her feet. Giving a battle cry that came somewhere from the very depths of her body, she swung the bat with all her strength at the demon’s head. This time she connected with a satisfying thump that sent the demon careening sideways into the wall.

  “Bai? Is that your name? Don’t ever, ever touch my dog!” She drew back to hit the demon again, but a hand grabbed it before she could swing. Sarafina looked behind her to see Theo, who grunted at her and stalked toward the demon. Theo’s magick rose in the room, making the hair all along her body rise. The scent of freshly turned earth filled the air.

  The demon pushed away from the wall with an animalistic bellow and turned his attention to the earth witch. Theo pushed her to the side and stepped toward him. Ordinarily, she might have been miffed, but in this case, if Theo wanted to fight the demon, it was her pleasure to be pushed aside. He could go for it.

  Sarafina ran to the corner of the room and scooped a cowering Grosset into her arms. He immediately licked her face and she sighed in relief that the little dog was all right.

  Magick exploded around her for the second time in two days. The bitter scent of demon magick burned her nose, mingling with the earth power Theo wielded. The demon blasted a hole in her wall in an effort to hit Theo, who’d leapt out of the way. Smoke filled the room and made her cough. Her night table exploded, along with her bookshelf, making it rain paperbacks and the occasional hardcover.

  A mound of earth doused the fire that had erupted from the burst of demon magick. In front of her the floor churned to a soil-like consistency and swallowed the demon whole.

  Eyes wide and mouth agape, she stared at Theo over the mound.

  “Go!” he commanded. “Get to the Coven. Now!”

  She went. Holding Grosset close to her, she dodged the odd grave in the center of her bedroom and dashed out the front door of her place just as the mound exploded in the bedroom and the demon roared his disapproval.

  Sarafina raced down the stairs, wondering just how long it would be before her neighbors woke up and discovered the battle of titans going on her apartment. Or the floor turned to mush. How was she going to explain that to her landlord?

  She kept an extra key in a holder hidden in the wheel well of her car. Holding Grosset in one arm, she found it and extracted it with shaking fingers. Across the street flashes of light burst from the windows of her apartment. She’d lose her lease and never get her deposit back at this point. The thought made crazy-sounding, nervous laughter bubble up.

  As if losing her lease was her biggest worry.

  Once in the car, she put Grosset on the passenger seat, jammed the key in the ignition, and took off with the tires squealing.

  As soon as she got to the Coven she’d go to Thomas Monahan and send help to Theo. She only hoped it wouldn’t be too late.

  “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? WHY WOULD AN Atrika go after you like that?”

  “Oh, goodie, I get to be special again. First I’m special to the head warlock and now a demon wants to cuddle with me in the middle of the night.” Sarafina dabbed a Q-tip covered in disinfectant over a nasty scratch on Theo’s face. He winced and she blew across it. Poor big baby. “This guy, Bai, asked for me by name.”

  Theo had come back to the Coven about an hour after she’d hightailed it there and sent some witches to aid him. She’d come into the dark, quiet Coven screaming for help, since she hadn’t known where to find anyone of importance. Thomas, Jack, and Claire had helped Theo drive the demon off.

  Grosset was uninjured. It seemed he’d hit the mattress of her bed, not the wall. Now he was fed, watered, petted, and amply cuddled and curled up on Theo’s couch, fast asleep.

  Theo rubbed his chin. “I guess this means what we’d suspected is true. Somehow the Duskoff have found a way to ally with the Atrika. I’d bet anything that demon was running an errand for Stefan.”

  “Uh, from what I read in Micah’s book, an Atrika wouldn’t be anyone’s errand boy.”

  “Something is drawing them together. The law of averages is against both the Duskoff and the Atrika taking a special interest in you at the same time.”

  “I really wish I were less interesting.”

  He glanced at the clock. “It’s only a couple hours until morning. The rest of the Coven might be able to make sense out of some of this.”

  “Have I said thank you yet?”

  “You looked like you were doing a pretty good job before I got there.”

  She snorted. “That was a lucky shot.”

  “Took guts.”

  Lifting a shoulder, she said, “He made me mad.”

  “Remind me never to do that.”

  She held a bottle of disinfectant in one hand and a bag of cotton balls in the other. She glanced pointedly at his ripped and bloody shirt. “Take it off.”

  He gazed past her while he pulled the garment over his head and tossed it on the coffee table, looking far away in Musing Land. Suddenly, Sarafina was all there, though, momentarily struck dumb by the confusing, al
luring, beautiful expanse of his body.

  The first thing she noticed were the tattoos. They covered his arms, shoulders, chest, and back in swirling and swooping black tribal designs. Underneath those, or meshing with them, really, were scars—thin, white, raised ridges of flesh. Perhaps once they’d been wounds made with a knife? Maybe even a whip. The scars dovetailed with the tattoos, flirted and danced with them. The effect was clearly deliberate and oddly beautiful.

  The second thing she noticed were the muscles. The sheer physical strength displayed in his upper body was as breathtaking as the tattoos. She allowed her gaze to travel the sculpted gorgeousness, every dip, curve, mountain, and valley. This was a man who took care of himself, who worked out on a daily basis and had a body fit for any male modeling job, scarring be damned.

  His gaze was now centered on her and his face wore an expression of challenge. “Got a problem?”

  Sarafina blinked and cleared her throat. “Problem? No, no problem. Your body is just, just—”

  “Scarred? Disfigured? Disgusting? Pick an adjective.”

  “God, no, you’re gorgeous!” she blurted and immediately wished to call the words back into her mouth. “I mean, the tattoos are very well done.”

  “Thanks.”

  She busied herself squirting some of the antiseptic onto a cotton ball. Not only was his chest decorated with ink, he had a couple of nasty gashes that needed attending. “Did you do them?”

  “Yeah. I had help for the places I couldn’t reach, but I did a lot of it.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “I do them for lots of the earth witches here, and some of the others who just want them for aesthetic reasons.” He paused. “Why? You want one?”

  She smiled. “Too late. Got one already.”

  He lifted his brows.

  “You’ll never see it, buddy.” She grinned and swiped a drenched cotton ball over a gash.

  He yelped.

  “Sorry. Considering you just fought a demon, you’re really kind of being a wimp about this.”

  He only glared at her in response.