Till Death And Beyond (Witch World)

by Lyn C. Johanson

  “Now listen, you dolt—I won’t have you blathering such preposterous things to the girl. Why, you should—”

  “Don’t,” Amira interrupted, silencing Martha. Even her voice sounded strange to him. “He can think whatever he wishes.” She cast him a narrow-eyed glance, turned, and marched down the hallway.

  Raven could not believe his ears, or his eyes for that matter. It was just not in her to run. She had always gone headlong against everything. For her, avoiding a confrontation was like stopping a stream from flowing. It was possible to halt the current for a short period of time, but sooner or later, it would burst through any dam that was built.

  Sometimes actions spoke louder than words. And her body language told him plenty. But at the same time, not enough.

  Raven knew he had to uncover the truth. He had too few memories, too many contradictory sensations. He didn’t know how he had ended up here, in his room. Who had brought him. He didn’t know where his dark angel had gone. Who this distant creature with the icy stare was.

  He could not bear chilling emptiness where he’d always felt the warmth of her presence. Silence, where he’d always heard her soft voice.

  “What do you think you are—” Martha’s question froze in her throat. The swish of sheets falling on the floor—the only sound in the room.

  Raven groaned as his stiff body protested at being dragged out of the bed. It took all of his strength, and some extra, acquired from he knew not where, to get up, fasten the pants, and slowly walk to the door. It was probably sheer willpower that kept him going; but he managed to reach the stairs, despite his trembling muscles, and Martha’s insistence that he went back to bed.

  He couldn’t understand why it was so hard to walk. It wasn’t as if his legs were broken. Only his abdomen hurt like hell. He paid no heed to it. His body seemed to be awakening from some kind of slumber. Or learning how to walk all over again. As if he’d been born anew.

  Raven shook those thoughts away and returned his attention to the steps. His legs felt stronger and steadier with every step—managing each of them with more efficiency than the last. Soon, his hands no longer needed to grab every solid ledge for balance. By the time he conquered the whole flight, he was walking on his own.

  * * *

  Amira ran. Worse, she had not the tiniest inkling why she was running. All she knew was her trembling fingers, pounding heart, and heavy breathing. It didn’t feel real to her. She could’ve sworn she’d been dumped in some strange dream. Right in the middle of it. With no understanding of what was going on. Except she hadn’t fallen asleep—she’d woken up.

  She stopped, realizing she’d ended up in the sun-chamber somehow. She closed the door, leaned against it, and took a deep breath in. Out. Repeated it three more times. The devastation in the room prevented her from finding the calm she sought.

  By now, she was used to leaving her body behind, but this … this felt different. Wrong. An intrusion by an unfamiliar entity. A possession, maybe. From the moment she’d taken the bullet out of Raven’s body she’d felt a foreign power churning inside of her, suppressing her own essence—the small side effect Dazlog had mentioned without any explanation. Some small side effect indeed! And how many more of them had he forgotten to mention?

  Make a deal with a demon, and you would end up paying twice—that was the rule. Her bill was already in the post.

  He had tricked her—hadn’t let her heal Raven completely. And by doing so, he’d taken away her only chance of convincing him that he’d never died. Worse still, now it appeared as if she’d left him for dead. And she couldn’t even tell the truth.

  Dazlog had laughed when she’d accused him, and asked if her knowing would’ve changed the outcome. He was right—it wouldn’t have. Raven’s life was more important than that. But the damned demon had the nerve to tell her that it was for her own good. As if any good could come of it now.

  The only thing that was clear was the presentiment she had yesterday, when she’d woken up in Raven’s arms and remembered how deep a hole she’d dug for herself.

  Their time was up.

  He might be alive. She might not die. But right now, she didn’t see a way out of this mess.

  The only good thing was that no one else knew the truth, except Ciaran and Logan. And it had taken her hours to persuade them to leave her. Hours filled with fighting, and quite a few lightning bolts.

  Amira had tried to convince them she could take care of herself, that she didn’t need guards to follow her around. That she was not a child, but a grown woman. That part of the conversation had definitely gone well.

  She still didn’t know how she achieved it, but they had left. With a promise to drag her home kicking and screaming if she didn’t return in a week.

  One step at a time, she told herself as she opened the door.

  One step at a time… and found herself face to face with the man who made her legs buckle.

  He looked pale, his face strained with tension. His left hand was clenching the wound, eyes searching for something. If she had ever thought such a predicament would turn him into a powerless human, she was wrong. She couldn’t see weakness—only strength and determination. All focused on her.

  “Did you think you could run away that easily?” He closed on her, eliminating the possibility of her slipping through the door.

  Easily? she almost snorted. Whatever it was, easily didn’t come near.

  “Answer me?” he demanded.

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “The truth,” he whispered, even now searching for it in her eyes. Just like she always did with him. If he saw it … She closed her eyes for a moment. She had made many mistakes, broken many rules. She was not going to break this one. A lie was all she could give him.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she finally uttered, her voice never faltering. At least she could lie without blinking. She could have congratulated herself, if only she didn’t feel like such a fake.

  “Sure you don’t,” he gritted his teeth, closing in even more on her, leaving her no space, no air to breathe. Only the warmth of his delectably muscular body to entice her senses. Visions of them entangled in the heat of passion simmering inside her.

  Damn! she cursed her tingling body. Why was this happening to her? It was only aggravating her situation. She couldn’t let her feelings rule her. But as his hand reached for her, her eyes shot to his against her will, and Amira was forced to grab on to something for support.

  How that something ended up being his neck, she would never know. One moment time seemed to freeze, and the next it flashed forward. One moment she was looking into his searing midnight gaze, and the next they were kissing.

  This was insane. This was … magical. She moaned. For a second she let herself be swept away. She was lost in his embrace, and she never wanted to be found.

  If only he could forget…

  “Tell me again,” he asked, shattering her illusion.

  “Hmm?” Amira murmured, unable to summon up any rational thought so quickly. They had flown out of the window, and were refusing to come back.

  “What happened, Angel?”

  She loved it when he called her his angel. But if he knew how much she cared for him, he would know it was impossible for her to leave him for dead. She took a deep breath, mulling over how to throw him off the scent. She came up with a total blank.

  “I am no angel,” she uttered. “Never was. I’m not obliged to heal you just because I can’t seem to stop wanting you. So let’s just leave it at that.”

  “Let’s not,” his voice sounded harsher, sharper; but one of his arms was still wrapped around her. “Something isn’t right. All I’m saying…”

  “All you want to believe, you mean? Doesn’t make it true, though.”

  “Uh-huh.” He made it sound so skeptical, Amira had to take a deep breath.

  “I had a choice. I chose. Simple.”

  “Lies,” Raven rebutted, shaking his
head. Doubts plagued him. Suspicions had him worried. His wound pained him—as if in mockery of everything happening inside him. And yet, in all of this turmoil, it was impossible not to feel their bond pulsing anew.

  The moment he touched her, it snapped into place so suddenly, he was still having trouble breathing. The wave that rippled through him could drive any sane man crazy. But it clarified a few things.

  “You are lying.” He leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “Worse, you are doing it with the truth.” Which was more damning. And more revealing at the same time. “What are you hiding?”

  “Didn’t you get that the wrong way round?” She put effort into escaping his embrace. Raven pulled her closer, refusing to let her out of his arms. The strain it caused in his body made him wince from pain.

  “Sorry…” she immediately came back to him, her hands gently landing on both sides of his bandaged wound. Raven could swear he felt her desire to heal him, but for the longest moment her fingers simply caressed him. Her gaze was glued to the small red dot on the white material. Then suddenly, she curled her fingers tightly, as if in frustration, and lifted her face to his. Gasped.

  “See, you can’t hide it from me,” he told her, seeing the unschooled expression in her face. Pure panic had flashed through her eyes. Panic he would never have noticed if he didn’t know her so well.

  She sighed, and her body shuddered. But before he could say a word, she laid her head on his shoulder and buried her face in the crook of his neck. “Do you trust me?”

  Strange question. They had gone through so much in the last few weeks—they pushed each other, they saved one another, each bled for the other. Even now, she was leaning on him, her hands wrapped around his back, but she didn’t put any weight on him.

  “I trust you.”

  “Two things I need to ask of you then,” she murmured against his skin. “Don’t ever ask me what happened. Don’t push.”

  “Alright.” He decided it was not worth fighting over. Besides, he knew she would only dig her heels in. He wouldn’t ask. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t find out, of course. “And the second thing?”

  “I need to know what you are hiding.”

  “With one condition…” Raven put his fingers behind her jaw and lifted her face in order to see her eyes. “Tell me why you never smile.”

  “What?” Amira twisted in his arms so she could face him properly. There was genuine curiosity etched in the lines of his face. Her brows furrowed in bewilderment. Of all the questions he could have asked her…

  “You never smile. Why?”

  “I never really thought about it…”

  “But if you had to guess?”

  “I better show you,” she decided, and placed her fingers on his temples. Her touch felt cool on his feverish skin and he welcomed the sensation. “This might not work,” she confessed in a husky voice. “Never tried this before, but with you … who knows. If you feel any discomfort, push away,” she instructed him and closed her eyes.

  At first nothing happened. And then the tendrils of her energy began flowing in waves through him, and images formed in his mind. It took time for the fog to clear, but when it did, Raven almost wished it hadn’t.

  One vision followed another, then another, until it became impossible to track them all. One thing remained the same—in all of them she was dying.

  “I didn’t think a person could die that many times. Are these nightmares? Visions? Is that the reason I don’t see any faces?”

  “My prior lives,” was all she said. “Now it’s your turn.”

  Raven nodded, but instead of telling her anything, he took her hand and led her out of the room.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked, following him all the way to the grand stairs and up to the second floor. They turned a few more times before coming to a stop—in front of a very unremarkable door.

  “Showing is better, right?” he uttered, reaching for the knob. Amira didn’t have time to ponder over what could be hidden in the room in front of her, before Raven twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

  The moment Amira stepped inside, darkness caught her unexpectedly—not the darkness of the room though. The darkness of another’s mind. She waited for her eyes to adjust to the night that apparently reigned here, and approached the figure sitting on the bed.

  His clothes were rumpled, and behind the unbuttoned shirt, she identified old scars marking his pale skin. A part of his torso and chest was damaged by fire, and, she would wager, his right arm also.

  Amira gasped at the sheer number of other, more telling scars, not even daring to imagine what shadows were hiding from her. What other atrocities had been done to the man in front of her.

  Hesitantly, she stretched out her hand, and brushed the long ebony strands from his face to reveal a resemblance that was uncanny. He had the same midnight eyes. The same jaw. The same lips. This man’s eyes, however, were completely unfocused. The face had none of the stern lines Raven possessed, but owned a long scar slicing his right cheek in half straight from his temple to the corner of his mouth. His body was slender, leaner than the muscular frame of Raven’s. But most importantly, the person who sat several inches away from her was utterly lost.

  “He is your brother.” She lifted her eyes to Raven, who stood motionless from the moment she began her exploration. He simply nodded.

  “But it’s not the handiwork of the Order,” she said again, not even pretending that it was a question. He’d been tortured by a witch for a very long time, and now she understood so much … “but even if you’ll manage to cleave the witch’s head off, that won’t return him to you.”

  “Why the hell not?” he finally found his voice.

  “First of all, it’s not you who needs to behead anyone. It’s him.” And Amira was not convinced it was feasible. “But the bigger reason is that the cause of his condition is not as simple as spell, potion, or curse. Were they used on him? Definitely. I believe they played a huge role in pushing him to this, but in the end, it was his decision to retreat into himself. No beheading can reverse this kind of damage.”

  Amira could still feel the residue of dark magic sticking to him like a wet cloth. The amount of it had to have been smothering years ago—no wonder it had succeeded in driving him mad. But it was not the worst part.

  Amira had a nasty suspicion he was more like his brother than just in looks. Raven had fought against her spell once, so she knew he would have beaten any other witch’s in a second. If his brother had the same immunity… It would explain the reason he’d been forced to endure so many spells and tortures.

  If he hadn’t fought against the slave-bond—if the witch had been successful in leashing him to her will—this wouldn’t have happened.

  “So it’s doomed.” The look on Raven’s face was heartbreaking. And she knew she had done the right thing keeping the cruelest part from him. At least for the time being.

  “Not necessarily,” Amira said, not wanting to raise hopes. She was not sure it could work. Even if it did, what came out of the darkness might not be entirely whole; but she knew she had to try. “He is still there. I could try to reach him.”

  “How?” Raven crossed the distance he’d kept between them and crouched before her. “Is mind-healing another of your abilities?”

  “No,” she shook her head. She could heal a laceration, but not insanity. “But I won’t be healing. Think of it as walking the labyrinth. He’s stuck in the middle and needs help to get out. I can lead him out.”

  “So you see the way?”

  “If I concentrate enough, I think I’ll be able to. But for this to work, I need him to communicate with me the way you can.” Hopefully, it was in the blood.

  “If you’d do this…” she didn’t let him finish. Amira took his lips with hers, and after a long and thorough kiss, murmured, “you’d teach me how to smile?”

  “Anything, Angel.” If she brought Dacian back, there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her.


  He watched how she placed her fingers on his brother’s temples and closed her eyes. For the longest time nothing happened. He sat beside her in silence, waiting for the miracle as each minute was chased by another minute, then another. And then many, many more. Until he lost track of time, and almost of all hope.

  But then, a miracle did happen—his brother blinked, and focused his gaze on Raven. His brow furrowed and his lips curled into a sneer. “Your bitch just got sucked in.” With those words, Amira’s body swayed and slumped.

  Fury roared inside Raven, and he did what he’d never thought he would, or could, do—not in a million years—he decked his own brother.

  Chapter 26

  A day passed, filled with worry and emptiness. Hours of attempt after fruitless attempt to wake her up. She didn’t seem to hear him—she kept looking straight ahead, her too-familiar glassy eyes staring through him, rather than at him.

  Raven was afraid to shake her, afraid to move her at all, but his hands refused to release her. As if afraid she would fade away if he let go of her. So he stayed in his room, with Amira, from the moment he carried her there.

  The only time he’d left her was to find Dacian and demand explanations. His brother knew something, Raven was certain of it. But to his utter frustration, he refused to lift a finger to help a witch. He’d been close to leveling Dacian to the ground when he’d snorted, “What could you do that hasn’t been done to me already? Or has your new bi … sorry, your woman taught you a thing or two, brother?”

  There had been so much scorn in his words, Raven still felt the ugly emotions sticking to him like tar. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked—Dacian wasn’t exactly reasonable where witches were concerned, and with good reason too. But doing nothing wasn’t an option. Raven couldn’t just sit and watch her skin turn paler and paler with every second.

  If only he knew how to bring her back. But he had not the slightest idea how to lead her out of whatever labyrinth she was trapped in. All he could do was hold her and pray. She was a fighter, he reassured himself. There was no hurdle big enough for her not to overcome.