Spellbound Desire

by Angelia Sparrow

  “It was me grandda’s unit in the Great War. The Kaiser and his men called the kilted Highlander regiments that.”

  I laughed and went back to his bracers. “I can’t read these. What do they say?”

  “Those are rune prayers, one for protection from the Lord and one from the Lady. You’d wear ‘em on opposite arms, like my sis does, Lady on the right.” He stroked my hair and looked serious. “It’s a sad and sorry way this country does its testing. Too many of you slip through the cracks to drink and drug yourselves to death, half trained, tasting power you can’t control.”

  He stroked my face some more. “You can’t be human. You aren’t mages. You lose yourselves in the Nightside and try to medicate away the nightmares. I’ve hated it since they sent me here. Who knows, I live through this mission and maybe they’ll let me retire to the Witan. Then I could fix it.”

  I kissed him for that. There were too many of us, too many knowing about the Nightside and working in it, or dying from it. “Do you know what they said? I was eleven when they screened me. Do you know what they told me, when I was eleven?” I looked down into his eyes. “Not powerful enough to train. Indian breeds never are. Let her drink herself to death like all the others.” I slammed both fists into the bed. He didn’t even flinch. “My grandfather’s grandmother should not have been an issue. That’s not the side the mana comes down for my family.”

  “Aye, and Jinx, he got rejected too, am I right? Mage wouldn’t wear all those charms like he does. Shame, since he does have enough to train. He’d make a passable, low-powered luck mage. And you should know how to control what you have. It’d make you happier.” He rolled me under him and kissed me. “Will you let me?”

  “Anything.” He could do anything at all as long as he kept talking to me, kissing me and letting me touch and smell him.

  “First,” he kissed my neck and shoulder, “I’m going to make love to you. Then we’re going for lunch. Then I think it will be time to get some scotch for me and some preventives for you. And we can work until time to get Jinx for the seminar. We need to get you some control and discuss what we’re up against.”

  Chapter Seven

  Bran

  Jinx lived in a little neighborhood, old for this city, all mixed-use buildings and mixed shades of people. D.J. and I pulled up to a two-story house that had been turned into a shop. A sign on the porch advertised fortunes, tarot and palm reading. I could feel the power coming off the place.

  I closed my eyes and took a look. Someone had made an excellent choice with the ley lines and power nodes. The place was a hot spot and I had a feeling the reader’s fortunes always came true.

  The energy from the second floor was muddled. I could feel Jinx up there, but there were so many conflicting spells and talismans they were canceling each other out.

  D.J. got out and went to knock. A pretty lady with a long black braid trailing from her scarf and lots of jingly, glittery stuff sparkled her way onto the porch. I closed my eyes again. She was Rom, pure Romany. Only they look like gold glitter shot through with black silk. D.J. flickered dimly beside her, a muddle of background and diluted power, eclipsed by her light like a nightlight in the sun. I trusted her at once.

  The landlady—Saraphina, I remembered—spoke animatedly about her lodger, with much arm-waving. Looked like D.J. had heard it all before, as she wasn’t looking impressed with the complaints.

  Jinx came down the stairs, his aura a little clearer than D.J.’s, although fuddled around his neck. I wondered how many charms he wore all day. Too many would attract the beings he was trying to ward against.

  He was quiet on the ride to the Pyramid. I’d glimpsed the shining metal building when I’d come into town, but now I knew how massive it was. The computer had told me it was thirty-two stories high and held twenty thousand people. The air off the river tingled against my skin. It was here. This was the place. All the lines and nodes in this town came right back here. All that power and twenty thousand desperate people to start the summoning….yeah, this one would be rough.

  The parking lot was about half full and the traffic thick. Admire parked us under a light and we got out.

  “Busy night at church, Admire,” I whispered, looking at the people streaming into the building. “Everyone that money hungry in this town?”

  “No, everyone’s that poor.” There was the temper and the difficulty her paperwork had warned me of. She didn’t glare at me, though.

  A pair of pixies fluttered up to us in the late evening light. The dusky little beauty perched right on D.J.’s shoulder while the male held off a second and gave me a suspicious look.

  “Who’s the big guy, sweetheart?” he asked Admire, sounding jealous.

  “My leather-clad love muffin.” Oh hell, she was never going to let go of that. “The Wizard Witan sent him here. Whatcha got, Mag?”

  “Demon coming, yeah. You got sugar?” the female on her shoulder said.

  Admire dug in her pocket. I wondered if she carried sugar all the time as bribes. She took her coffee black, with just the rum. “Hang on, Kudzu.”

  Jinx inserted himself, holding a pair of Pixy Stix. “Is this enough for the intel?” he asked, trying to be cloak-and-dagger about the operation.

  Mag nodded. “Babe, you and your cousin and the muffin are walking into a big ol’ raising party. Might want to turn around while you can.”

  “But I’m the VIP attendee,” I put in with a smirk.

  The pixie flew up to my nose. “Yeah, I buy that, and stay away from my girl. She may be a Big, but she’s mine.” I saw Admire and the female trying not to snicker.

  “Mag, sweets, you know I’m all yours. He’s just a—what do you call them back home, Bran? A blow-in.” She tried to soothe the little fella, but he wasn’t having it. I was a bit chaffed at being called a blow-in.

  “That’s only if I’m in Formor’s Last Warning, our Irish branch, instead of the Ladies from Hell.” I looked at Mag and decided to humor him. “I’m only here for a wee while, sure we can work something out.”

  “You watch yourself, Jocko. We got eyes everywhere.” The pixie grabbed Jinx’s candy. “You want to walk into demon central, not my lookout. See you when you have Coke for us.”

  “Bye, Mag, Kudzu,” Admire waved as they flew off.

  “Your breed’s more aggressive over here.” I watched them go, carrying the sugar.

  “You come from the land of redcaps and kelpies and you worry our street pixies are too aggressive? When you’re a snack for anything bigger than a robin, you tend to be a little on the hostile side.” She was still shirty. “I like my pixies. They make good eyes on the street for me and they work for candy and soda pop. Not my fault Magnolia has a crush on me. And if you ever call him anything but Mag, he will get you for it.”

  “Good points all.” I wrapped an arm around her and followed Jinx into the building. I liked the way she tucked up in my side, her head just topping my shoulder. She seemed to like it too, because she let me cuddle her all the way in, despite the night being sticky and hot, and her being out of temper.

  We found empty seats and waited. Jinx sat beside her. The arena filled up and I looked down at the floor, so far away. Vertigo took my head so I closed my eyes and clutched my chair arms. When I opened them, I was staring into hell itself.

  The brightly lit stage was still covered with pale-gold carpeting and green chairs, decorated with enormous bowls of carnations. But dark, half-seen things slunk between the bowls and chairs. They crawled over the audience. I saw women reach for their sweaters, and men who had been sweating start to shiver. Every baby on the lower level set up a squall.

  The foul creatures, neither animal nor man, made their way all over the lower deck and then streamed back to the stage, taking up residence in the bowls of flowers. An air of contentment came off them and made every hair on my body stand up.

  “Bran, is it me or is it really cold in here?” She was covered in goose bumps.

  “Place i
s crawling with imps.” I wrapped my arm back around her and rubbed her shivery arms. “And I saw church buses. They’ll call it the Holy Spirit. They always do. Normal people can’t tell the difference, not when it’s this powerful. Something like Oeilett isn’t going to let its energy feel foul.” I gave her a squeeze. “Let’s see how fluffy and new age this Roark dares be here. He’ll tell it one of two ways, Prosperity Gospel, which I’m betting on, or Secrets of the Universe.”

  The house lights went down and the projection screens showed a pretty seascape with soothing music.

  “Your life can feel like you’re drowning,” began a pleasant female voice over soft piano music. “Bills and debts and more demands on your money and energy accumulate every day. But it doesn’t have to be this way,” she soothed.

  I saw movement down on the stage and a smiling, well-groomed man appeared on the screen. “Because God wants you to be rich! Not just rich in spirit and rich in love, friends and neighbors, oh no. He wants you to be rich in the material goods of this world, because we are children of the king and he has endless riches to bestow upon his beloved children!”

  “Prosperity Gospel doctrine, but they usually aren’t this enthusiastic.” I started to steal a kiss, having heard this whole speech a dozen or more times. I froze.

  She was sitting two rows away, all white and sheer, like a gauzy curtain. Her sad face was beautiful and she was very busy. She folded a leather kilt and vest that lay in her lap, smoothing them as neat as I could wish before she tucked them into a spectral trunk at her feet. Then she saw me. Her lovely features twisted into a nightmare of pain and rage, and she rose from her seat toward the pinnacle of the Pyramid, wailing.

  I covered my face with my hands, blotting out the sight of her. Her crying rang in my ears. “No. No, no, no.” I knew she couldn’t hurt me, the poor old thing was just a warning. But a death omen left me shaking, even though I’m not the fearty type.

  A soft, warm, very human hand rested on my arm. “Bran?”

  I near to jumped out of my chair. Then I looked down at Admire. She looked worried and I expected she didn’t wear that look for too many people. Oeilett had not manifested, but he knew I was here. He was just taunting me, most likely.

  “He’ll be coming. Have many banshees in these parts, do you, love?”

  She shook her head. “We have some, but I’ve never heard of one haunting a public… Oh shit. Bran, we gotta get you out of town.”

  “Lass, if this goes down, there’s not a place on earth that’ll be safe for the likes of me.”

  “Then we shut his incorporeal ass down.” She turned her attention back to the seminar.

  Roark was inveighing on his listeners to meditate, to claim the good things God wanted them to have. Oh, they’d claim them all right. I saw it all, fire-lit in my mind. No longer bound by marriage vows or property rights or any rules at all, they took what they wanted, be it a woman, money, land or objects. And under it all, demonic laughter covered by piano music played in my head.

  The silly man below me wittered on about God’s will and the wealth of this world. I tried to calm down but it took me a while. I could feel the demon, wanting out, but knowing it wasn’t time yet. I growled under my breath, “Come on, you slimy bastard. I’ll send you back. Permanently this time.”

  “Bran, shush.”

  I looked at her and saw her Jinx was getting into the seminar, staring down with the rest.

  “Beloved, if you aren’t having enough, you just need to ask! My God shall supply all your needs—I said all your needs—according to his riches in glory. And we’re going to tell you how.”

  His voice dropped to an intimate whisper, a ridiculous sound in the enormous venue, when the loudspeaker carried it up to where we sat at the top of the second deck. “Pray. Pray without ceasing, beloved. That is the secret. In the old Aramaic, there is a prayer that begs God to send all you need. Say it with me. Oeilett.”

  “Oeilett,” the crowd responded. I smirked. They weren’t even trying to hide this. Admire nudged me and I saw Jinx was chanting along with the others.

  He led them in seven repetitions of the name. “That is all, Beloved. Seven times with each iteration, seven times a day.” I shuddered at the amount of power in the room. These people believed and they believed fiercely.

  “The next seminar is in three days! I want to hear your testimonies of what God has done for you! I love you! God loves you! Pray without ceasing, Beloved!”

  He dashed off stage to thunderous applause.

  “Clever,” I muttered.

  “He’s good. I almost went with it,” Admire admitted.

  “Oh, aye, you’d get the money, but you stand to lose much more. Let your idiot cousin do the chanting.” Jinx would be an experiment. I’d never been around the people doing the summoning much. I just blew into town, destroyed my beastie and left. The effects would be interesting, but I doubted they’d be pleasant.

  “That was the plan. Let’s sit tight, shall we? The parking lot is going to be nuts.” She gestured to the thousands of people filing out the exits. “The AC is better here than in my car.”

  In truth, I was just as glad to sit. The rally had taken it out of me. All the energy raised had been sucked into the bowls of carnations by the imps. With the need and greed and the longing in that arena tonight, Oeilett would have no trouble manifesting and soon.

  I sat and waited, trying not to think of the banshee.

  Chapter Eight

  D.J.

  Bran had been off since the seminar. A banshee, he’d said. Not good. He went to take a shower and I poured myself a drink. I needed one. The seminar had left me rattled. I could feel the energy being raised and the imps and everything. If this was what mages felt like most of the time, I didn’t want it.

  A low whoo sound came once and twice and then again. I realized I was hearing an owl outside my office window, my office in fucking midtown with no trees on the block. A shudder ran over me. I glanced out at the moon and a reddish cloud moved across it. Someone was going to die. I touched the cold iron of my gun and rubbed the packet of salt I carry in my left pocket. Then I sneered at myself for my foolishness in thinking I could ward off anything. Live on the Nightside long enough and you start to believe the superstitions.

  This job was going to get one of us killed, and as I listened to the water stop running in the bathroom, I had a sinking feeling it would be Bran. I didn’t want it to be Bran. I wanted to keep him. I wanted to wake up beside him every morning. I wanted to take him shopping and see how amazing his butt would look in a pair of tight jeans.

  I’d already rifled his sporran, and found the motorcycle license, but no driver’s license. I wanted to see him on a bike, kilt, vest and all.

  I wondered if all this was the mana or if I was getting maudlin on a single cup of rum. Or maybe I was just going soft, giving in to the nature of things as Mom had always said I would one day.

  Thinking of Mom made me have another drink. The old lady was ten years dead and good riddance. Listening to Bran talk about his family had made me ache, wish mine had been like that. He liked his family. It came through in the way his eyes crinkled and his voice went soft. He was proud of his sister, the combat mage, and of his mother for still working into her nineties.

  My family was nothing to tell. Jinx and I were the last remnants of a pair of sisters who had fought like two cats with their tails tied together all of their miserable lives. Maybe I should be nicer to Jinx.

  That I even entertained that thought tempted me to pour a third drink, but I didn’t. It was Friday and I had been sober most of the day. I mentally glanced back and realized how unusual that was for me. I was never sober on weekends unless I was working. The nightmares were too bad to face these days, so I just drank until I slept without dreams. And I tended to sleep most weekends away. The bit of rum in me now was warming me, but not blurring my world. I capped the bottle and set it back next to the three still-unopened ones. The bottle of Glenmor
angie scotch looked out of place next to them.

  Bran came out of the shower, the new towel wrapped around his waist, his hair dark from the water, like I imagined it had once been. I liked it gray. I still had no idea what it was about this battered, scarred old man that made everything in my body sit up and demand him, right this second.

  He settled in the chair, careless of the towel, and opened the scotch. Two fingers and a splash of water from a bottle went into the newly bought tulip glass. He swirled it and smelled it, a slow smile creeping over his face as if taking him by surprise.

  Then he took a sip and the smile bloomed, crinkling his scars and lighting his eyes.

  “That’s the good stuff, Admire.” He offered me the glass. “Taste it, love. Smoke and peat and honey and fire all blessing your tonsils and sweetening your tongue.”

  I took the glass, even if I wasn’t much for anything other than my rum. It smelled strong, but I took a taste anyway. It was definitely smoky, with a taste of wood, and a hard burn in my mouth that made the spiced rum into cola by comparison.

  I handed it back and tried not to cough. It slid down like glass and fire, settling into a nice warmth in my stomach. “Very nice. Not quite my taste, but nice.”

  He smiled and drank a little more. “Your shields are terrible, love. I can hear everything you’re thinking and feel most of your emotions right on my skin. You don’t just leak like a sieve, you project.” He nodded. “That’s all well and good, in its place and time. But a good shield will keep you sane in the face of things that make the local priest go gibbering.” Another swallow. “Come to think of it, Reverend Donald back home had himself a pretty good shield. He had to, living in a town of mages and being one himself. Fine healer, old Sorely Donald is.” He looked at me. “You’re wearing too many clothes.”