Peace came like a thief, stole her sanity, and made her move like a rag doll. Only, as she stared at her reflection in the mirror, in a nefarious, maybe even sadistic sort of way, she thought she looked seductive and beautiful. Her long, auburn locks fell around her shoulders in large coils some woman had meticulously created. The veil glossed over those and down her back to the floor, creating a thin black puddle. A black hole she identified with. The dress hugged her every curve, soft and dark. Yet, it sparkled in all the right places. Her image made her smile even though her pulse began to pound. A dark goddess. A shiver snaked down her spine.
Her hands fell to the gown, rubbed over it, and picked at it, like a fussy bride. In her mind, she fought to discover the nagging feelings matriculating, a growing uneasiness and a mild sense of disgust.
“No bride should frown so,” her mother soothed, even though the sweetness of her voice grated on Kyna’s nerves, and yet, she reveled in the sensation. “Just cold feet. Have some more tea. It will warm them up right away.”
She drank. Couldn’t help herself. A junkie. She numbed, but not before a tear slipped from her eye. Immediately, a servant dabbed it away with a silk cloth. Kyna mourned the loss of such a show of mental reaction.
Complacent to the brink of nausea, she followed as her mother lead her to the ballroom she’d been shown yesterday. Today the place looked completely different. In fact, when the doors opened, she took a step back. Darcaryn spotted her. Looking in his eyes, a wave of want for something unnamable broke over her.
Saoirse pushed her forward into the sinister, scary environment. Kyna knew this, but couldn’t react appropriately.
Closing her eyes tightly, she wished for…for something…for someone, to save her from herself, from this nightmare.
Dozens of black candles, hanging from the walls and set on tables, faintly lit the room. The only illumination save for the thin rays of sunshine fighting to get around the long, black curtains hung over the floor to ceiling windows. An altar sat in the middle of it all, covered with a large, red candle, a glowing stone, and a silver chalice, along with rope and a dagger. The sight of it all made her heart skip a beat. She shivered. She numbed.
Moving closer, she saw wedding rings, large, bright, with dozens upon dozens of tiny diamonds adorning the matching round bands. A plaque in a dish holder sat behind it all. Black with white rings and a star, it bore a white animal like skull with black horns. She swallowed hard, and then sucked in a deep breath. The intense desire to run passed, leaving her with a yearning to chase it.
Music played, flowing throughout the room. The dissonant sounds with long crescendos of deep chords aroused her. She trembled, but felt gloriously alive. Merciful anger laced with the sinister suspense of the unknown had her searching the faces of those gathered around the table. There waited a cast of devil worshipers with more money than they could buy taste with, obviously.
A gong sounded three times, each impact ringing though her body, stirring the fight or flight response. She found herself surrounded.
Darcaryn looked her way and nodded.
She found she wanted him more than she wanted to leave.
A man behind the table spoke, “In Nomine Dei Satana Luciferi Excelsi! In the name of Satan, I call upon the forces of Darkness and the infernal power within. Consecrate this place with the power, love, and the light of Lucifer. Join with us, as we bind these two who shall be as one."
On and on the man recited. His voice sounded loud but deep as he welcomed Satan and called upon the elements. With words about darkness and some blue light of hell, a man bound one of her hands to one of Darcaryn’s. With the cup of wine handed to her and the dagger handed to Darcaryn, a menacing power grew around them. Compelled, she stood still, forced into a statue like state though her pulse pounded and her head throbbed.
They may as well have bound her entire body, as useless as it had become once the emotions flooded back into her being in an off rhythm, coming and going, leaving her to welcome them, yet try not to succumb to them at the same time. She assumed whatever caused the occurrence could only be as dire as even the presence of the devil they’d just called to join them in their ceremony. Sounded sick, so about right.
Her mouth dehydrated, and her neck tensed. The smell of something smoky and spicy offended her nose, burnt her lungs with each heaving breath. The man behind the table continued on chanting about roots and buds, unbreakable bonds, and Satan. Always Satan.
Her gaze darted around the people, looking for the horned demon to appear. She expected some grandiose version of the shadowy demons that had haunted her sleep.
Her mind screamed this familiar name that brought about no visual images in her mind. Music droned on in the background. The energy, dark and heavy, pounded against her from all sides, brought her back to life.
Aedan, in all his muscle bound glory, appeared in her drunken imagination.
They’d miscalculated somehow. Her magic, a warm, pure, and white energy, circled like a tornado inside her. Her thoughts and emotions cleared. This couldn’t have been part of their plan. Someone had screwed up royally here. Fear crashed into her power, caused a storm of epic proportions around her soul. Without a plan, she gave into the strength that emerged again inside her.
Beneath the black of her veil, she watched the light emerge from her body. The chalice of wine dropped from her hand to bounce off the floor with a metallic clang, splashing a fruity and spicy scented liquid up her legs.
The priest stopped speaking as Darcaryn stepped away from her. He yanked his bound hand away, tried to free himself, and then started to scream like a man on fire.
She watched, mesmerized, as Darcaryn fell to his knees, still yelling, still fighting with the cord, desperate to free himself from her.
In an instant, the many chandeliers hanging from the ceiling blinded the room. Growls, screams, and angry directions filled the place along with the flood of light that put stars before her eyes.
Darcaryn, now free of his bindings, fell away from her as her vision cleared.
Gunshots rang out, but she stood, unaffected now, a ball of light in the center of the room. Her power pushed away from her. She watched as it doused the evil energy in the room.
She heard punches, grunts, and more gunfire erupt. She feared none of it. Nothing touched her. She only sensed her energy shoving the chaos away. Giving into the invincible feeling, she formed balls of energy with her hands. Careful not to let them turn to flames, she formed air, strong gusts that moved everything further and further away from her.
Opening her eyes, she witnessed the men in black being swept to the walls along with an abundance of doused, black candles and other satanic crap. Any remaining fear left her in a rush. Other, positive emotions grew, made her feel human again. Overwhelming at first, she gloried in hatred, fear, compassion, need, courage, and love. She squared her shoulders. A cold sweat broke out, caressing its way over her body, but quickly dried on her warm skin.
Yet, the fast heartbeat, her shallow breathing, and the trembling of her goose-fleshed limbs all stopped when she heard her name yelled...in Aedan’s voice.
Turning toward the glorious sound, she let her heavy arms drop to her sides, stopping the flow of power.
He stood within an army of men, cops she assumed, along with maybe more of his SEAL friends. Men scattered the floor, some in the black dress of her wedding party, others in bright, yellow jackets, along with some in plain clothes. Those standing scurried about, checking the severity of wounds. Sirens sounded in the distance as Aedan swept her up into his arms.
“I thought I'd lost you,” he breathed into her ear.
“I thought you did, too, honestly, when I could think such thoughts. They drugged me. They spelled me,” she choked, tears changing her voice.
With her rush of emotions, she didn’t even try to stop them. They felt too damn good, just like Aedan’s arms. Real. Secure. Magical.
“Drugged you? Fuck! What was this ritual?”
She looked around her, but only shook her head.
“What was it, Kyna? Did Darcaryn have anything to do with it? Did you find your aunt?” he stormed.
“You mean my birth mother? Yes, I found her, aunt, mother, sicko, whatever you want to call her. And as far as Darcaryn goes—”
Words failed her again.
“Darcaryn what?”
She noticed Aedan looking around him, looking for Darcaryn somewhere in the rubble of men.
“This ritual was some sort of satanic wedding,” she whispered.
“Whose wedding?” he asked, hissing the words through gritted teeth. All at once, he stopped cold. He turned his head slowly to hers with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.
“Yours and Darcaryn’s?” he growled, a savage sound that vibrated his whole body.
“Yes. It didn’t finish, though.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered if it did. I love you. You didn’t love him, right?”
“They tried to drug me, or spell me, or both, so I would. But in the end, something about the power evoked in the room, it actually, in some extreme opposition to mine, or something, broke the spell they had over me. I woke back up to myself just moments ago. Someone screwed up in a big way, is all I can imagine. Thankfully. I can’t tell you how maddening these last hours have been, since Darcaryn took me. I woke up in a bed with him instead of you the morning after we made love. Then, I lost myself. I had moments of rational thoughts, but I couldn’t hold onto…I couldn’t even think of your name by the end, or see your face in my memory,” she cried. “I love you. Please get me out of here.”
They turned to the door only to find it decorated with Darcaryn’s body, a dark shadow against the flames that appeared to shine behind him. With a raised hand, he pulled from the fire he’d created. Red, yellow, and blue flames formed, full of tiny serrated tongues that licked at his skin. He poised to attack.
As the ball of flames grew, a demonic image took shape in the middle. Teeth, like a thousand vampire incisors all shoved together in one mouth, showed as the demon face did something akin to a smile.
Gathering her power, she called to the water trickling from a wall fountain. The blue liquid formed white caps as it flooded to her hand in a huge wave. With a piece of the ocean at her command, she sent the wave to Darcaryn.
“Let that cool you off, you demonic bastard,” she screamed for the pleasure of her own ears, sure no one could possibly hear her.
The hiss of steam drowned out all the other sounds as water and fire met. A demon screamed in agony. The sound pierced her already battered eardrums. With her shoulders up as if they could protect her ears, she pulled more water from her source. The effort exhausting, she still continued on with all the energy at her disposal. She had enough rage to fuel it for hours.
She weaved this wave into a vortex as it began to break above her hand,. A tornado of water spun across the floor to the target of her wrath. Each flame met its match, hissed out one by one.
Darcaryn fought, punched at the waterspout. His fists flailed against a powerful but soft assailant, cool blue blankets over orange flickers of light. His frantic battle soon stopped as the water sucked him down and filled his lungs.
Kyna experienced her previously impending groom’s death as if the streams of water were her own hands around his neck.
Empowered, she watched him die. Only the faint hint of something akin to guilt washed over her along with the realization she’d taken a life. How many had he taken or destroyed, or would he have destroyed in the future, her brain countered.
“He's a man who would have taken your life if he couldn’t have you,” Aedan spoke in her ear as if he’d read her thoughts. “It’s war. When enemies come face to face, often one has to die to end it. Darcaryn would have as soon killed you than to give you up.”
A war cry interrupted Aedan’s words. As sirens grew closer outside, a band of men in black robes gathered themselves to standing positions all around the walls where she’d sent them sprawling. She sensed her army, men Aedan must have brought, gather behind them.
Seeing their guns drawn, she reacted with a flick of her wrists, her power yanked the series of swords decorating the walls to the floor before them.
“You’ll need these as protection from magical assaults,” she breathed out.
Immediately she gave her power to the metal. She watched their sharp edges blur like visible heat as they came to life with her magic.
“These sort of men will just block bullets with their powers, or worse yet, send them back at you. Put away your guns and take up these,” she demanded as the arrangement of swords lifted, hung in the air for the men behind her to grab.
Power, invisible waves, blew at them. It lifted her hair and tore off her veil, even as they used their swords to slice at the magic, weakening it before it could knock them over completely.
As the sounds of the sirens outside increased, signaling the group that the police had arrived, Kyna witnessed the man who had officiated the satanic wedding, shatter the windows with a wave of his arms.
Tiny shards of glass flew at her group like waves of water. Gathering her strength from her heart, her mind, her very soul, she did a wave with her own arms, one like a dance of a warrior. With her movements, the millions of pieces of glass, ready to slice into her and Aedan like a million tiny bullets, hit an invisible wall. Rather than let them fall to the ground, she used her whole body to turn them. She formed a tornado of glass as she had with the water.
Sweat trickled down her back as she swayed from right to left, sweeping her arms, and thus the glass, into a thick cyclone. The shards broke down to sand with the force. Her emotions fueled this mass beyond anything she’d thought it possible for her to create. Using the rush of emotions still overwhelming her now that the drugs were gone from her system, she funneled and redirected them into magic.
Once she unleashed her creation, men attempted to run from the room. The tornado took them out like a ball to bowling pins. Once the last man had fallen, her sand weapon disassembled over their bodies.
Scanning the room, she found Saoirse cowering within a curtain at the far corner of the room. In the woman’s fear stricken expression, she saw her eyes and the line of her cheekbones. With hands clasped tightly on her dress, a shadow of a smile flickered across her face as she caught Kyna’s stare.
“Help me, mother. I deserve at least that. How do I end this?” Kyna demanded in a yell.
Her mother moved, turned from her, and walked to one of the fallen men in black robes.
“He’s the leader. If we use a chain of blood spell to restrain him, we can force him to sign a blood oath to leave our family alone, to end this once and for all. Blood is all men like this understand, and our best hope at ending what my father started, what I helped along in my desire for revenge, what I couldn’t stop on my own. I’m strong enough now, with you here, to do so,” her mother rushed out the words.
“I’m trusting you, Saoirse. Don’t let me down again,” Kyna threatened as she ignored the churn in her stomach at working alongside this woman.
She’d done nothing but put her in danger and lie to her. From the moment she’d been born, in fact. She had no desire to sift through all those lies that still made no sense at all. Kyna could live with the unknowns, given the fact she’d probably never get the whole truth anyway. She hoped her mother, had been drugged to continue to be a puppet to this society, outside of her desire for revenge, because that made sense.
She followed her mother’s lead to spell the man who’d spelled her. As anti-climactic as the chant and subsequent signing of the blood oath were, Kyna wanted to ask if that could really be it, the end to this whole nightmare.
She escaped with Aedan and a few other men in the moments of mayhem that ensued as the police, and swat team, and whomever else clad in uniforms arrived.
Chapter Sixteen
Although getting out of the castle had taken some doing, she finally collapsed w
ith relief into a chair in her bedroom hours later.
“Look at me, all bride like in black. This dress had to have cost a fortune, not to mention that castle. I still can’t wrap my head around it all. Even in my mind it sounds like a bad horror movie. Drugged by some spelled tea? Satanic wedding? What the hell? I’m glad we didn’t stick around to try to explain all that to the police. Besides, from what I learned, I would venture to say some cops are part of that society and would have made any issues disappear as they needed them to.”
“Sure you’re right,” he agreed.
Aedan comforted her with his body. His close proximity was exactly what the doctor ordered.
“So, when she called your mother claimed they had her drugged and spelled as well, for a time that is. She claims that in a moment of clarity, one caused from seeing you, touching you, she was able to overcome it. But, she faked it until the wedding, until she had a chance to save you. She even claimed to be the one who lifted your spell during the ceremony, allowed your magic to fight the drugs in the tea. She says this house is yours to live in with her, as well as all of her vast fortune to share. So, what are you going to do now?”
“First, I’m hoping it’s what are we going to do now,” she corrected.
“That’s a given. I can find work anywhere. I have a pretty decent resume. Well, what I can put on it looks good anyway. And, I have money put away, enough to live on for a long time if need be. So, what do you want to do now?”
“I want to use her vast fortune to fly me out of here as soon as possible. Then I want nothing to do with her again. She’s insane. After all this I’m supposed to just forgive her because she’s taking the credit for saving me? I can’t believe a word out of that woman’s mouth. She’s not my mom. My mom waits for me to return to the States. Besides, I have questions for her now, too. About how much she knew, how much she did to stifle my powers. Back to my aunt or birth mother, though, I guess money and power, not to mention magic, can turn a person. Even her explanations didn’t make sense. I want to go home. I want to introduce you to my real mom, the one who raised me, protected me from all of this for as long as she could. I want to be a science teacher. I want to be yours,” she ended with a seductive wink.
Beyond The Veil: A Paranormal & Magical Romance Boxed Set Page 35