Forbidden Magic (Stolen Magic Book 4)

by Jayne Hawke

  Copyright Jayne Hawke (2020) ©. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is fictionalised and coincidental.

  Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  Cover art by Deranged Doctor Design

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  ONE

  TWO

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  OTHER BOOKS BY JAYNE HAWKE

  ONE

  My heart stilled in my chest. My breath caught in my throat. It took me a long moment to really process what he'd said, what it meant. The goddess was coming for me. I didn't know what that would entail, but I did know that she was a goddess and I was just a witch. There was going to be a high price for the gifts she'd given me.

  "Lily?" Elijah asked as he padded up behind me.

  Castor was gone without a trace. Maybe I could convince myself that I'd imagined it, a symptom of exhaustion after everything we'd been through.

  "What's wrong?" Elijah asked as he wrapped his arms around my waist from behind.

  "Castor was here," I said in barely more than a whisper.

  He tensed against me and held me closer while looking around us, his wolf rippling beneath his skin.

  "The goddess is coming to claim what she's owed."

  Elijah caressed my arms with slow gentle motions.

  "You're not alone. You have a pack now," he said firmly.

  That was what terrified me. They would follow me wherever I went, but I couldn't have their deaths on my conscience. I couldn't live with that. I allowed Elijah to lead me back inside and guide me into my usual seat. A numbness had settled over me. It was easier that way. There had been no way to really prepare for this moment.

  "Did he say anything else?"

  "No. He said he tried to hold it off, but it's coming. She's coming."

  Elijah sighed softly.

  He wrapped his hands around me, the callouses a comfort against my skin. My mind was racing trying to tease out some essential information that might save us from what was to come.

  "What happened?" Liam asked as he walked in rubbing his eyes.

  "Castor brought news that the goddess is coming," Elijah rumbled.

  The fox shifter stopped dead and looked at us with creases deepening around his eyes. His jaw slackened slightly. We knew it was coming, but it was so much more real in that moment.

  Liam set about making coffee once he'd snapped out of the shock. The familiar smell surrounded us and helped to ground me back in the kitchen, in our home. Slowly, I began to come out of whatever stupor I'd fallen into. We didn't know how this thing would fall, but we would fight with everything we had. Goddess or not, there was a way to win.

  A quiet voice ran Castor's words on a loop in my mind. The gentle tone, the sadness in his eyes. He'd been fighting for me all this time. A squirming sensation formed in my gut at what I'd done to him. He hadn't given me a choice, but I missed him and seeing that he still cared made that so much worse. What had he endured for me? I wasn't sure I'd ever know.

  Liam set a cup of hot black coffee down in front of me without a word. It was dark enough to stand a spoon up in, and that was exactly how I needed it right then. We hadn't been given a chance to breathe, to recover from everything we'd faced down with the lord. That couldn't matter. It couldn't hold us back. No, we would dive in and try to get ahead of this. We had no choice.

  TWO

  The pack was gathered around Elijah and me. There was an uncomfortable silence as we sipped our third cup of coffee and tried to figure out our best plan of action. As it stood, we were just sitting around waiting for the goddess to come to us. I'd already been through the grimoires and other knowledge bases I could access over the past couple of months. There was nothing. This is what I got for dealing with a fallen.

  Part of the deal with fallen is that when they fall all traces of them are removed from history. The gods do that intentionally to help ensure they stay fallen. No cults can stumble across information about them and decide to start worshiping them. Of course, that meant that we couldn't stumble across any information about her to use against her, either. Some people had whispered that there was a group devoted to finding and cataloguing the fallen. There were also theories about unicorns being friendly, but that was complete bullshit. Personally, I suspected that the rumour about the fallen was tied into the Shadow Hounds.

  The Hounds were a special branch of god-touched assholes that functioned all around the world, even on the Isles. Ryn had supposedly allowed a small cluster of them to wander through the fae lands on the condition that they behave themselves. The Hounds were an elite group devoted to hunting down and removing dark witches and fallen gods from the streets. The fallen couldn't be killed, so I wasn't sure what they did with them. Of course, there were theories, whispers, but I tried to ignore idle gossip where possible.

  Thankfully, I hadn't had to deal with the Hounds, but there was always a risk given my shadow weaving and all. I had no doubt that, should they find out, they'd be more than happy to drag me away to some deep dark pit. There was always someone lurking, waiting to take you down. The more powerful you were, the deeper the shadows.

  I rubbed my temples. We needed to do something. Sitting around waiting for our inevitable bloody deaths wasn't helping anything, or anyone. No, there had to be something.

  "Who has a client? A fight? Something?" I asked.

  "Dickhead's bounty is still up," Jess said.

  I groaned. I'd completely forgotten that Varehn had that clause that said if he died the bounty on us doubled. Naturally, he'd thought ahead so he could really screw us over. That meant there'd be bounty hunters and mercs from all around the world trying to take us out. It wouldn't pay the bills, but it'd help us blow off a bit of steam.

  "Anyone know who's coming after us and when?" I asked.

  Elijah put his arm around my waist and pulled me closer to him.

  "We were in a small war yesterday. It won't do us any harm to try to unwind quietly at home for the day."

  He was wrong. I might implode if I tried to watch movies or some shit. I needed to be out there smashing skulls in. It was the only thing that I could reasonably do. And hey, if it meant reduced competition for us and making the streets a bit safer, well, then that was the icing on top of everything.

  "They'll be expecting us to keep our heads down. If we strike now, they won't see it coming," Jess said.

  At least she was on my side.

  Elijah exhaled slowly.

  "We need to be careful, tactical about this. What could the goddess want from us?"

  "To get back on the god plane," Liam said.

  That was where I was putting my money, too. Either she wanted to take over the Earth plane or get back onto the god plane. There just weren't any other options. She wouldn't have pushed me as hard to fight if she didn't plan on having me fight. It was her that had ensured I became a war witch. She'd nudged the coven into giving me that training, into guiding my skills
and experiences that way. The problem was, who the Hel would she possibly want me fighting that she couldn't handle herself? The Hounds?

  "What could I do that would get her onto the god plane that she couldn't do herself?" I asked.

  "The gods will have fail safes, else every fallen would be clawing their way up there," Elijah said.

  Fantastic. We were going to piss off the gods.

  Three

  With characteristic timing, the shadowy megaminds whose role in it all was crucial and unexplained were at hand. I’d grown used to them, comfortable with them. The pack had not. They weren’t aggressive or frightened, just put on edge by the alienness suddenly in their midst. I wondered if my shadow manipulation gave them a similar discomfort that they were more able to hide by virtue of repetition. Maybe I was more like the megaminds and Infinity than I was like the pack. It was a symptom of the intimacy issues that had been a survival tool for so long, but that didn’t make the feeling any easier to shake.

  The megaminds hit me all at once, imprinting information onto my mind like a data torrent. Their communication method was still improving, but it was becoming antisocial. They weren’t talking anymore, they were filling empty parts of my brain with things they wanted me to know, as if adding the memory of a conversation we never had. It felt completely natural, the shadow witch part of me connecting to them now in a way they had been unable to engage with my humanity. I had a moment of terror when I began to wonder if they had the ability to falsify memories, to alter my mind beyond a sharing of information and into a rewriting of who or what I was.

  They caught the question and sent me back a sensation like a galaxy worth of dark matter shrugging and pushed the ability to send basic information to others via the shadows into whatever part of me learned things like that before spinning away into the shadow of a lamp like cartwheeling ghosts.

  It was what it was.

  I tested the ability, whispered sweet nothings in the ear of the fae-blessed blacksmith whose services I’d employed from time to time and whose attentions I’d frivolously reciprocated when the pack was still a dream undreamt. I felt him startle, a sense of disconcertion and revulsion coming through faintly as the foreignness of it overrode any impression the message might have made. I knew I shouldn’t have expected anything else, but it still bit deep.

  I repeated the process with Elijah, who sat next to me, and he gave me a look of bemused shock before pushing back an image of me blindfolded under bright lights with his lips at my ear. It was what I needed to shake off the alienation, and I moved to curl up in his lap, silently smirking pack be damned.

  What they had sent me was a catalogue of random acts, everything from a clock in a house I’d never seen needing to be shifted eight inches to the left and turned an hour forward to sapping the supports of a foot bridge until it collapsed. The only explanation they’d given was that everything cast a shadow and every shadow had a purpose.

  I idly sent an image of a child piling up blocks on a snowy peak into the lamp shadow and was immediately met with warm giggling and the image of a shadowy giant roiling with curved lines tripping over the castle and knocking over the next mountain, the mountain’s shadow flying free and out of sight.

  Small causes, big effects. Message received. Time to set up some dominoes.

  Four

  "So what now?" Rex asked.

  I gestured for Liam to bring me his laptop. It was taking me a long minute to really get my head around everything. We hadn't been given a chance to catch our breath after the bullshit with Varehn, and it was weighing on me. Elijah brushed his lips over my cheek, offering me some grounding I desperately needed. He was so good to me. They all were, really.

  Liam placed the laptop in front of me, and I typed out the list the megaminds had planted in my head. It was longer than I'd initially realised. We'd have to split it across the pack. There was a wide range of tasks which were spread out across the city.

  I turned the laptop so that everyone could see.

  "What is moving a clock a couple of inches going to do to help us against a goddess?" Rex asked.

  How could I possibly explain the intricacies of the shadow plane to him? To a wolf that hadn’t experienced, and would never be able to experience, the vastness that it was. Or the obscure and complicated way that it was tied to our world.

  "It's complicated. Little things add up to big things. That big thing will help us take down the goddess," I said.

  Rex looked thoroughly unconvinced.

  "Are we sure they're on our side?" Jess asked with a frown.

  "Yes."

  I answered without thought. I couldn't be sure if the answer or thought was really my own. Somehow, I just knew they were with us against the goddess. She was as much as a threat to them as she was to us, perhaps even more so. Still, there was that sensation of their being able to overwrite my mind and place whatever they wanted in there. I should have doubted it, analysed it, but we didn't have time for all of that.

  "How will we know if it's working?" Elijah asked.

  Something told me I'd know. I didn't quite know how, but I'd feel something shift. This new deeper connection to the shadow was mildly unsettling. I simultaneously felt more and less myself than I ever had before. Elijah's hand ran through my hair, bringing me back out of my mind and into the present with the pack around me.

  "Are you ok?" he asked softly.

  "It's just a lot," I said with a shrug.

  The small frown tugging at the corners of his mouth showed he didn't believe me, but I appreciated that he didn't push the point any further.

  "We'll know. Although I suspect the goddess might make an appearance. If I understood the megaminds right, this will really undermine her grand plans."

  "What are her grand plans?" Liam asked.

  I didn't know. That is, I wasn't entirely sure on the specifics; I could feel smudges, sensations left behind by the megaminds.

  "Something big. Something that will bind the shadows, including the megaminds."

  "Well that doesn't sound at all terrifying," Jess said.

  "Will this mean the other shadows will be on our side?" Elijah asked.

  I wrinkled my nose. That was a complicated question. The goddess controlled the shadows, they were somehow tied to her. The megaminds were powerful enough to have freed themselves from her influence, but the smaller shadows would have no choice. For them, it would be like a mouse trying to fight off a bald eagle.

  "I think they'll try."

  "Well, at least this is a change from the usual thieves and murderers. It's been a while since I screwed with someone purely for shits and giggles. Those furniture-moving ones look like fun," Jess said.

  Trust the cougar shifter to see the bright side and fun in the situation. She wasn't entirely wrong to do so. Allowing ourselves to be consumed by the sheer weight of it all would be the end of us before we even had a chance to fight.

  "Alright, Jess and I will take the ones which require sneaking. Who wants what from there?" I said.

  Elijah claimed the larger jobs that required big changes. Moving a ten-foot-tall stone statue two blocks north was the first on his list.

  "I'll have to make some calls and do it under the cover of darkness. We can't have too many questions asked."

  I laughed despite myself. There were sure to be quite a few people who would have loved to have helped us purely for the bizarre thrill of doing seemingly random things to screw with a goddess. He was right, of course. We wouldn't say a word of it to anyone whose help we didn’t need. Risk of word getting back to the goddess too soon was not worth considering.

  Five

  Elijah held me close when I woke up before sunrise the following morning.

  "Just stay here with me for a little while," he whispered.

  I'd normally have rolled out of bed to train, but I needed what he was offering. Who knew when we were going to get a real moment to ourselves over the coming weeks, months, or however long this goddess sh
it took? I wriggled closer to him and rested my head on his strong chest, smiling as his scent wrapped around me and his heartbeat helped me relax. He stroked a fingertip slowly up and down my lower arm, a gentle touch which relaxed me far more than I would have thought possible.

  Just being with him, our legs entwined as we allowed ourselves to be helped me find some much-needed calm and peace. I hadn't really stopped to think about the impact that the past few months had had on me - or him. We'd been through so much together. At some point between the fights, the stalker, the bloodshed, and saving the world, I'd fallen for him. Really fallen for him. I'd never thought that I'd be able to have something so precious as what he gave me. Yet there it was shining in his eyes as he smiled down at me.

  My breathing slowed, and I closed my eyes sinking into the bliss. That was what I was fighting for. Those beautiful moments where the world slipped away and it was nothing but me and him. Of course, I was loyal to the pack, but when things got really dark, it was going to be that feeling that pushed me through and kept me fighting. It was going to be him, and I wondered if it was always going to have been him.

  As I began to drift back to sleep, I was wondering just how much of this entire thing had been planned before I was even born. The goddess had chosen me before I was born. Castor had told me as much. She'd had a hand in my training, my upbringing. Who and what else might have had some part in how my life turned out? Thankfully, the thoughts dissipated, and I fell asleep free of such philosophical stresses. It was best not to lose myself in the angst of free will and all that came wrapped up in such discussions.

  When I awoke again, it was to find Jess eager to get started on everything, which was unsurprising given her temperament. Liam was plastered to his laptop with a plate of cold waffles next to him. He was muttering about researching something. Rex had already disappeared for the day. I hoped he was starting on his portion of the list, but I didn't have the energy to check. He was a grown man; he knew the stakes.