Caged Magic

by Jennifer Lyon

  “Easy.” Linc’s hands settled on her shoulders. “The baby is sleeping. Fine.”

  Blinking helped her bring the room into focus. She sat on a thickly padded table in one of the treatment rooms. Carla and Darcy were on one side, their glowering mates behind them.

  Linc was on the other.

  How long had she been out?

  “You burst several veins, getting a little close to your brain.” Carla’s eyes went to Linc. “You were using too much power without your familiar.”

  She cast around, trying to remember. “Everyone’s okay?”

  Darcy nodded. “Ram has electrical burns and a bruised sternum, but we healed that.”

  Sutton added, “Everything is quiet now. Our guess is Archer went back to his lair, wherever that is.”

  “He’ll come again for his daughter,” Axel said.

  Like a coward, Risa dropped her gaze to her hands. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Why, Risa?”

  Linc’s two words held a dictionary worth of meaning. She still couldn’t look at him. Or any of them. “Blythe is—was—Kendall’s mom, and Archer her father. Archer wanted nothing to do with Kendall and paid Blythe to keep him off any public records. Then four months ago, out of nowhere, Archer showed up and tried to physically take the baby from Blythe. He really scared her, so she came to me in Phoenix.”

  “Four months ago. That’s when his mother vanished,” Sutton said.

  Risa nodded. “He came around a couple times trying to sweet-talk Blythe into going back to Vegas with him. But she wasn’t biting. It escalated into violence, but when we tried to file a police report, the report would vanish and the cops had no memory of it. I knew it was magic, but not what kind.”

  “Asmodeus could easily have gotten one of his demon witches to do that,” Darcy pointed out. “That’s assuming Archer’s mother wasn’t around to do it at the time.”

  “Someone helped him. Another time, I took Blythe and Kendall to Utah, being very careful not to leave a trail, but Archer found us there too. Nothing stopped him.” They’d been so desperate, his fixation on Kendall growing more and more evident. “He let his hair grow, stopped shaving, showed up in ragged clothes. All he cared about was getting Kendall.” Blythe had been so scared, truly afraid for Kendall. Archer went from arrogant, well-dressed, spoiled playboy, to obsessively dangerous.

  “So why were you here in Vegas?”

  She flinched at the ice in Linc’s voice. But they deserved an answer. “Archer and two thugs with guns broke in and tried to get Kendall. They intended to kill Blythe too. I used my shield magic to get us out. The last thing Archer screamed at us was Once I spawn, you won’t be able to run fast or far enough. I didn’t know what that meant, but it scared the hell out of me. By then I knew he wasn’t mortal, but I didn’t know what he was. I had to get us away from him.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “And even then, I’d never imagined what would happen. That he’d become a demon and burn Blythe to death.” Tears stung her eyelids. Sick grief churned.

  “So you came here where you knew Archer lived?”

  The jagged doubt in Linc’s voice cut, but Risa had no damned right to hurt. None. She’d lied to him, to all of them, and they’d been good to her and Kendall. Swallowing the pain, she stared at the floor. “I grew up here and knew someone who could get us out of the country undetected on a private plane. He booked us at the hotel under assumed names. I trusted him. He was the one who helped keep me hidden after I turned my father in.”

  “Did he set you up?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “He was one of the victims that night. I think Archer tracked us and spawned there to get Kendall.” Too many memories spun in her head. “We were running, I’d taken Kendall, and Blythe was right behind me. He shot her with the hellfire arrow. The last thing she screamed to me was to take Kendall, that I’d sworn to protect her.” She shuddered, unable to contain the raging anger, fear and sadness at knowing that she’d never see her best friend again. Never hear her laugh, share Twinkies and ice cream, talk about anything and everything.

  “And so you lied to us,” Linc stated flatly.

  Her throat ached, and finally she turned to his harsh and unforgiving face. “Would you have saved her if I told you she was the daughter of Archer? The granddaughter of Asmodeus, the demon you’re all sworn to fight?” Terrible loneliness welled in her. “Or would you have left her there in that horrible place?”

  “We’ll never know now. You didn’t trust me to find out.” Linc circled the table and paused by Axel to say, “I’ll take the next watch.” He vanished out the door without a backward glance.

  Risa’s eyes burned, and her nose clogged. He’d walked out. Left. She closed her eyes, trying to breathe past the savage pain.

  “You need to sleep,” Carla said.

  She slid off the table, fighting more dizziness. Blood loss, she supposed. “I can take Kendall and go to another building.”

  Axel wrapped his hand around her arm, leading her out of the room, down the hall toward the back where the staff rooms were. He stopped. “You’ll sleep here where we can protect you.”

  He’d let her stay? Protect her? “Why?”

  “Because like it or not, we need you to defeat Archer. Your shield magic saved us tonight.”

  Right. Yeah, they needed her magic, not her. She nodded and went into the small room that normally held two twin beds in the dorm-room style. The bare-bones rooms were meant for staff who needed to rest, not live in. One of the beds had been removed and a crib placed there. Risa dragged herself to the crib.

  Kendall slept on her back, arms flung wide, legs relaxed. Once she’d been bathed, dressed and fed, the baby’d conked out. Risa didn’t know what the last week had been like for the child, but Kendall seemed to know she was safe now and rested in the deep way of innocent children.

  It wasn’t the baby’s fault that her father was a hybrid who chose to spawn his demon side. It was bad enough she’d lost her mom who had loved her with such fierceness. If they all survived this, Risa was going to tell Kendall every day how much her mom had adored her. And that Blythe’s last wish, last words, were about the daughter she’d loved so much.

  She crawled into the small bed, and the memory, the one she’d been trying to avoid, swallowed her up.

  The second Linc had yanked the bird and himself from her. Like ripping her soul in half, taking away the love she hadn’t deserved.

  Hot tears seared her eyes. He had loved her for a few moments.

  Then she’d destroyed it with her lie.

  Her throat ached. Eyes bled tears. Chest burned. Her sobs wrenched her whole body until her back hurt, but none of it came close to the anguish in her heart.

  * * *

  Linc nodded to Sutton as the man relieved him from watch duty. He needed a couple hours’ sleep and headed down the hall to find an empty room.

  Not the one Risa was in, or he’d lose control of the anger and betrayal festering inside of him.

  Because I want you to know.

  Know what?

  That I love you. All of you, even the scars.

  Did she? Did people who loved someone lie to them? Distrust them with something so important?

  He’d trusted her with his worst moments, including mentally showing her a picture of the moment he’d been branded. It hadn’t been his intention, but he’d trusted her deeply enough to do it unconsciously.

  And she’d lied to him, unable to trust him. It hurt as badly as the night he’d been dragged out of his bed, sold by his own mother.

  Laughter filtered from the kitchen, stalling out his thoughts. “Perhaps you’re not ready to feed yourself?”

  Risa. God, his entire body heated at the sound of her amused voice. Shit. Keep going. You’re not in a good frame of mind to deal with her.

  And yet he turned, stopping in the doorway. The small fridge stood on the left, with an L-shaped counter next
to it. Directly across from the door was a table, pushed up against the wall. The baby wiggled in a car-seat-type device, kicking her feet while Risa tried to wipe her hand, which was covered in some sort of oatmeal-colored goo. The same stuff covered the kid’s mouth, chin and cheeks. Yet the baby grinned proudly.

  “Spoons work better than hands with cereal, K-doll.” Risa leaned down, kissing the baby’s soft hair. Then she picked up a spoon with a puddle of cereal and held it up. “More?”

  Kendall kicked her sleeper-covered legs again, bouncing in the chair and opening her mouth baby-bird style.

  Risa kept feeding her, chatting away. She had her hair scraped back in a ponytail, wore a tank top, dark-colored yoga pants and was barefoot. She laughed as Kendall happily smacked her gums around another bite of food.

  His anger still ached like a living thing, but she hadn’t lied about loving Kendall, a child that wasn’t her biological kid. Even the bird sighed at the sight the two of them made.

  Risa did another pass with the washcloth over the kid’s face.

  The baby gave her a frown, batting at the rag with her small hand and babbling sounds that made zero sense.

  “You’re all clean now, quit your scolding.” After setting the rag aside, Risa scooped the baby up and reached for a bottle. She turned to sit and froze, her gaze widening. Her happiness drained to something heart-wrenching. “Linc.”

  His chest kicked, and the bird stretched in the tat, as desperate to touch her as he was, pissing him off. He didn’t want to feel this yearning for her.

  “Sit.” He went in, filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove. “You’re up early.”

  “Kendall woke up hungry.”

  Damn it, her voice pulled hard at him. Turning, he leaned against the counter, keeping a dozen feet between them. Her eyes were bruised, tired. “Did you sleep at all?”

  “Some. Did you?”

  “Watch duty.” The gulf between them widened with every word. “How’s your head?” Guilt swam beneath the surface of his emotions. He could have helped her with the pain. “Any more soul screams?”

  Risa looked down at the child, a tender smile softening her mouth and making her eyes glimmer with real and guileless love. Her expression roused dusty memories that had been shoved into dark corners of his mind. Flashes of his mom when she’d been sober and smiling at him with love. Linc thought those memories had died.

  Oh, she’d loved him once. Intellectually he understood addiction had destroyed her, and she hadn’t had a true grasp of what she’d sold him into that night to pay off her drug debt. But he’d lived it each day. At first, in those early nights, he’d cried for his mom, sure she’d come. He’d believed she’d sober up and realize what she’d done.

  No one came. Ever. One day he’d realized no one would ever come and his tears meant nothing.

  Now he looked at Risa, gazing at her child with a tenderness that ripped a scab off his old wounds. How fucking pathetic did that make him? He had a Feral brand. He really needed to toughen the hell up.

  “No soul screams. You let the bird help me, and the souls calmed.”

  Her comment jerked his gaze to hers. “Let?” There it was, anger blasting his veins and stripping him down to a pure, hurting animal. “What did you think would happen? You piss me off, so I leave you to suffer? That I would abandon you in the time you needed me?”

  The baby stopped sucking on the bottle, her eyes widening.

  Excellent. He’d scared the kid. The one person in this room who deserved to feel safe and he’d scared her. Going to the stove, he shut it off. “Forget it.” He kept his voice soft.

  “I should have told you. I wanted to tell you.”

  He stared down at the blue teakettle. A tiny stream of steam escaped the pour spout through the hole in the stopper. It was exactly how he felt right this second, boiling with only that miniscule pinprick for the pain to escape. “I would not hurt a child, Risa.”

  He heard the chair move. Cloth rustled as she adjusted the baby. Heard the milk or formula or whatever she had in that bottle slosh. “I had no right to ask you if you would have rescued Kendall if you’d known who her father was. You would have. I just didn’t give you the chance.” Her voice moved a few steps away. “Or us.”

  The lid blew off his steaming emotions, and he shot across the room, blocking her from the exit.

  She stopped, tilting her head back, the baby on her hip.

  This close, he got the full impact of her red-rimmed eyes in swollen lids. Faint purplish smudges half-mooned below. “You didn’t sleep.” No, she’d cried. Alone.

  Her breath hitched.

  Unbearable. He used to look beyond the bars of his cage. Freedom had been there just on the other side. He could stick his hand through the bar but never quite touch freedom.

  That was how he felt right now. She was right there. He could touch her, but he couldn’t recapture the moment when he’d thought she really knew and loved him.

  The air between them thickened. Half of him wanted to pull her into his arms, and the other half snarled in pain. “Was any of it real? Telling me you loved me?” He took a breath, forcing his voice to stay level for Kendall’s sake. “Was any of it real?”

  She didn’t answer for several heartbeats. The baby developed a serious interest in his arm stretched across the door, while he stayed trapped in Risa’s eyes.

  She swallowed. “So real I go to bed each night with the taste of your kiss and wake to it in the morning. When other men touched me, I felt nothing. But when you touched me, I felt everything. You’re the most real thing I know.”

  Her words shredded him syllable by syllable, cell by cell. “I want to believe you.”

  She nodded in the jerky bobble-head fashion. “But you can’t. Will you ever believe me? Trust me again?”

  Linc drowned in the hope warring with hurt in her eyes. “I don’t know.” Carefully removing his arm from the baby’s hold, Linc walked away.

  * * *

  “Risa?”

  She looked up from changing Kendall as Carla walked into the small room. “Hi.” Taking the baby’s arms, Risa tugged her up to a sitting position on the bed and handed her a cloth doll.

  The other woman sat on the bed, smiling at Kendall.

  Dropping the doll, Kendall reached up both arms to Carla.

  Laughing, Carla lifted her. Kendall latched on to the silver eagle cuff around Carla’s upper arm. “Ah, that was your real target all along.” She looked at Risa. “I’ve been had.”

  Risa didn’t know what to say, how to act. Nerves and endless regrets cramped her stomach. Did Carla hate her? What did she want? “She likes shiny things.”

  Carla slipped off the cuff, settled Kendall in her lap and let the baby have it.

  Kendall immediately stuck it in her mouth. Worried that she’d ruin it or something, Risa asked, “Isn’t that your witch book?”

  “It is. Originally it was an infinity sign, but Wing Slayer remade it into eagle wings. Magic keeps it clean. It won’t make her sick.”

  “Oh. That hadn’t even occurred to me. But that piece must be valuable. I don’t want her to damage it.”

  Carla laughed. “Wing Slayer’s power can stand up to a baby, trust me.”

  Confused, Risa glanced around, and unable to help it, blurted out, “I am sorry for everything. I know you all must hate me for lying.”

  Carla put a hand on Risa’s arm. “I hate that you and Linc are hurting. But the lie I can understand. You were scared and didn’t know us enough to trust us. I didn’t believe Sutton loved me at first either. I was sure that he loved my twin sister.”

  Surprised, she said, “You have a twin?”

  “I did,” she answered. “Keri. She died in a rogue attack, her soul trapped in a knife. It’s complicated, but I was able to keep her soul alive.”

  Risa leaned forward. “Like the souls trapped in my magic?”

  She nodded, her blonde hair swinging, catching Kendall’s attention. “Yes
. I believed that when Sutton touched my blood, it wasn’t me he felt as his soul mirror, but Keri’s through our twin bond.”

  “Was he?”

  “It’s a long story, but the end is this—his love was real even though I doubted it.” Squeezing Risa’s arm, she added, “You were afraid to trust that Linc’s love was real. That he would fight for what you loved.”

  She understood. The bottom dropped out of her stomach. “He doesn’t know if he can trust me again.” Tears filled her eyes, and she swiped at the moisture. “I managed not to cry in front of him this morning.”

  “Girlfriends…” Carla captured Kendall’s arm as the baby tried to shove a length of hair in her mouth, “…are much better for crying with. Guys either try to fix it or cure it with sex.”

  Laughter mixed with her tears, causing her to snort, then she laughed harder.

  Kendall looked up.

  Risa got a hold of herself before she scared the baby. Kendall went back to playing with the arm cuff.

  “I feel your magic all over her, like a security blanket.” Lifting her eyes, Carla said, “Shield magic.”

  “I wove security and love into it and settled it around her in the middle of the night. She woke scared, clinging to me, and it just…” No more crying. But she worried about any lasting effects Kendall would suffer from her ordeal.

  “So you risked shield magic after nearly bleeding out in the fight with Archer.”

  “It wasn’t a lot. I’m not shielding against physical danger, just wrapping her in the security of what I feel for her. Her mom’s soul is in my magic. Maybe she can feel that too.”

  Carla smiled. “She’ll be okay, Risa. And we’ll all give her lots of love while she’s here with us.”

  Her stomach clenched with the sick reality that she’d gotten Kendall back, but she was losing Linc.

  Carla stood up. “Come on.”

  “Where?” Risa asked, following the other witch.

  “Time to get to work. The guys are strategizing and training. But they aren’t going to be able to kill Archer. He’s immortal and like nothing we’ve seen before.”

  “I agree. Ram stabbed him right in his heart. Archer lit up a like a Christmas tree, but he didn’t die. He threw Ram back as if he’d been no bigger than Kendall.”